Anime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Kyoto’s First Exorcist, Present!

As the final syllable left Yotsuya Miko’s lips, the churning black mist before her violently coalesced, snapping into a solid, humanoid silhouette.

A woman materialized. She possessed long, cascading black hair and a slender, hauntingly elegant figure. Her face was a porcelain mask—beautiful, yet entirely devoid of human emotion, like a discarded traditional doll. Clad in a dark kimono and wooden geta, she stood as a silent, unyielding barrier between Miko and the towering monstrosity of Hachishaku.

A dark cloth bound the woman’s eyes, lending her an eerie, suffocating aura. But the true horror lay hidden beneath the wide, draping sleeves of her kimono: a pair of grotesque, pupil-less white eyeballs had split open across the backs of her pale hands.

This was Miko’s Soul Manifestation—Hyakume. A yokai dragged from the depths of urban legend, just like the entity she now faced.

“This is… my power…” Miko breathed out, her chest heaving as she took a deep, steadying breath. She stared past her summon at Hachishaku. The trembling terror that usually clouded her golden eyes had vanished, replaced by a sharp, resolute determination.

“Go, Hyakume!”

As the physical embodiment of Miko’s inner self, Hyakume was intrinsically tied to her soul. Though modeled after a legendary monster, she was an extension of Miko’s will and would never defy a direct command.

The grotesque eyeballs on the backs of Hyakume’s hands swiveled with sickening fluidity, locking their dead gaze onto Hachishaku. Deep within those milky white voids, pitch-black pupils suddenly condensed. A chilling, predatory stare pinned the towering woman in place.

“I see you,” Hyakume whispered. Her voice was ethereal, dripping with a centuries-old resentment that seemed to echo from the grave.

Her strike was faster than her words.

In the blink of an eye, Hyakume closed the distance. Her hands clamped onto Hachishaku’s arms, her jagged, blackened fingernails sinking deep into the pale flesh of the giantess’s forearms.

There was no blood.

Evil spirits did not bleed.

Instead, thick wisps of corrosive black mist hissed from the open wounds. Hachishaku’s unnaturally wide face contorted in sudden agony, proving that Hyakume’s spectral claws carried genuine, lethal weight.

“Die! Die! Die!”

Hachishaku shrieked, a piercing, ear-splitting roar that rattled the corridor. Her long, disheveled hair whipped around her like a demon clawing its way out of hell. The scattered, yellowed joss paper littering the floor instantly swept up into a miniature cyclone, swirling violently to envelop Hyakume.

But the Soul Manifestation refused to be a passive target.

Though her frame was dwarfed by Hachishaku’s towering height, her raw spectral strength was terrifying. Digging her wooden geta into the floorboards, Hyakume violently dragged the thrashing giantess down the hall, hurling them both into the stairwell at the far end of the corridor.

With a heavy metallic clang, the security door slammed shut, cutting off the shrieks.

The sudden silence snapped Miko back to reality.

Almost immediately, a crushing wave of fatigue and severe dizziness crashed over her.

“Hoo… hoo…”

Miko’s legs gave out. She slumped heavily against Yui Yuigahama’s front door, massaging her throbbing temples with one hand. Her breathing was ragged, her skin slick with cold sweat.

‘Is this the cost of Soul Manifestation…?’she thought, her vision swimming.’This feeling is absolutely awful.’

When she had first summoned Hyakume, a fleeting rush of euphoria had filled her chest. She finally had the power to fight back against these grotesque things. The sheer relief of flipping the script from a helpless victim to an active combatant had been intoxicating.

But wielding a power capable of tearing apart evil spirits demanded a heavy toll.

It wasn’t a permanent sacrifice like her lifespan or her limbs, but the drain on her physical and mental stamina was catastrophic. Barely a minute had passed since Hyakume materialized, yet Miko felt entirely hollowed out. It was akin to staying awake for three days straight, only to be forced to solve advanced calculus at gunpoint. Her brain felt like mush; her limbs were leaden and numb.

This agonizing backlash only reinforced a terrifying realization: Yozora was a complete monster.

As an exorcist, the gap between them was an impossible abyss. Back in that abandoned building, Yozora had casually maintained that colossal white spectral hand for nearly three minutes. And after dropping back to the ground? He hadn’t shed a single drop of sweat. He hadn’t even been breathing hard.

To possess that kind of stamina was nothing short of unnatural.

“Miko? Miko? Are you alright?”

Miko blinked, her blurred vision slowly focusing on the cold, tiled floor of the corridor as it rapidly grew larger.

Wait.

She had been leaning against Yui’s front door.

And Yui’s front door opened outwards.

With a soft click, the door swung open. Miko, entirely devoid of the strength to catch herself, tipped backward and face-planted onto the freezing floor in a perfectly executed, utterly humiliating prostration.

Yui Yuigahama stood in the doorway, clutching her small dog, Sabre, to her chest. She blinked down at the girl groveling at her feet, her expression a mask of pure bewilderment. She hesitated for a few agonizing seconds before tentatively asking, “Miko, are you… drunk?”

Yui had seen her fair share of salarymen passed out on the sidewalks after a rough night of socializing. Aside from severe intoxication, her innocent mind simply couldn’t fathom any other reason why her classmate would be kissing the hallway floor in the dead of night.

“Yui…” Miko wheezed, her voice strained and desperate. “Yui, hurry back inside.”

Hearing Miko’s raspy tone, Yui froze for a second. Then, a bright, completely out-of-place smile bloomed on her face. She chuckled innocently. “Miko, this is the first time you’ve ever called me by my first name. I’m so happy.”

Miko nearly choked on her own spit. If she wasn’t so completely drained that twitching a finger felt like lifting a boulder, she would have forced herself up just to strangle the girl.

What time did she think it was?! How could she possibly care about first-name basis right now?!

But Yui’s very next sentence made the blood freeze in Miko’s veins.

“What are all these things?”

Yui squatted down, her free hand plucking a piece of the yellowed paper from the floorboards. She tilted her head in confusion. “Is this… joss paper?”

“You… you can see it?” Miko gasped, her golden eyes widening in sheer horror.

“Of course I can, it’s all over the floor, isn’t it?” Yui looked up and down the corridor, her brow furrowing in distress. “Mom doesn’t know where she went either. I couldn’t find her anywhere in the apartment. And what is all this stuff? It looks a bit creepy.”

Miko felt as though she had been plunged into an icy abyss.

What was going on?

Normal people couldn’t see the supernatural. Why could Yui suddenly see the scattered spirit money?

Wait.

Was this even the real apartment building?

Miko’s already exhausted brain short-circuited as the terrifying implications of a supernatural domain crashed into her.

Just then.

The heavy metallic clang echoed again. The stairwell door at the end of the hall was violently smashed open.

Simultaneously, a sickening tear ripped through Miko’s consciousness. She felt it instantly.

Her Soul Manifestation, Hyakume… had been completely shredded by Hachishaku.

“Wh-what is that…?” Yui stammered, the color draining from her face.

Emerging from the shadows of the stairwell was Hachishaku. The towering woman in the soiled white dress had to bend her spine at a grotesque angle just to fit her massive frame through the doorway. Even someone as slow on the uptake as Yui instantly realized that the monstrous, impossibly tall figure stalking toward them was not human.

“Yui, run…” Miko choked out, but the words died in her throat.

Run where?

They were trapped in a dead-end corridor. There was nowhere left to escape.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

Sensing the overwhelming malice, Sabre violently wriggled out of Yui’s arms. The small dog hit the floor and planted his paws, baring his teeth and snarling ferociously at the approaching giantess, desperately trying to intimidate her.

Hachishaku didn’t even blink. Her pace remained steady, her bare, snow-white feet stepping heavily onto the scattered joss paper, emitting a soft, skin-crawling rustle with every stride.

‘Stand up. I need to stand up,’ Miko screamed at herself internally.

But her body refused to obey. Her spiritual reserves were bone-dry. Summoning Hyakume a second time was a pipe dream; even mustering the strength to push herself up into a sitting position took every ounce of willpower she possessed.

Four meters. Three meters.

Hachishaku loomed over the two girls, casting a suffocating shadow. Miko closed her eyes, the bitter taste of absolute despair welling up in her throat.

Then, the air pressure in the corridor violently shifted.

Whoosh.

Without warning, the yellowed joss paper scattered directly in front of Hachishaku erupted into roaring black flames.

The giantess froze, slowly drawing back her raised foot. The terrifying eyes hidden beneath her tangled, seaweed-like hair shifted, peering past Miko and Yui to the space behind them.

A familiar, playfully arrogant voice drifted down the hallway, carrying a lazy smirk that instantly shattered the suffocating dread.

“Kyoto’s First Exorcist, Present!”

[Inorin’s Note: Joss paper, also known as ghost money or spirit money, consists of papercrafts or sheets of paper burned in traditional Asian rituals as offerings to the deceased or spirits in the afterlife.]