Anime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 46

Chapter 46: Professional Exorcist, Dispatch

“But…”

At this critical juncture, Yui Yuigahama displayed a sudden sharpness that completely shattered her usual ditsy image. She leaned forward, her brow furrowed in genuine concern.

“That place is already surrounded by the Metropolitan Police Department’s tactical units. Setting aside whether you can actually handle a bunch of kidnappers armed with live firearms, just getting past the police barricade would be impossible, right?”

Yozora merely smiled at the question. He leaned back in his chair, tapping a slow rhythm against the tabletop.

“What time is it right now?”

Yui pulled out her phone, the screen illuminating her confused expression.

“Four-thirty. Why? Is something wrong with…”

Her voice trailed off. The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her pupils constricted in sudden horror, and she quickly clamped a hand over her mouth.

“You don’t mean you want to…”

“That is exactly what I mean.”

Yozora gave a slight nod, his expression infuriatingly calm.

“In half an hour, it will be the Witching Hour.”

The logic behind his plan was straightforward enough. He would use a door to cross over into the Kyoto of the Inner World. From there, he would handle the twisted landscape to find the corresponding door that linked directly to the interior of the Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten, bypassing the police entirely.

It sounded simple on paper. The actual execution was a logistical nightmare.

First, Hachishaku’s ability to tear open a rift was still on its seven-day cooldown. If Yozora wanted to cross over, he had to locate a naturally occurring door that was already open.

Second, the geography of the Inner World mirrored the surface world perfectly. That meant once he crossed over, he would have to traverse miles of urban decay on foot. He would be handling through that suffocating, eerie black fog, dodging whatever grotesque horrors lurked in the shadows, just to reach the kindergarten’s coordinates.

And if he actually survived the trek and crossed back into the real world, his reward would be a welcoming committee of at least twenty mentally unstable thugs armed with assault rifles.

It was a suicide mission.

If Yui could piece together the sheer danger of the stunt, Yotsuya Miko understood it on a far deeper, more terrifying level. As a Psychic who saw the grotesque reality of those spirits every day, the thought of walking blindly through that fog made her stomach churn.

She stared at Yozora’s relaxed posture, a complex emotion flickering in her golden eyes. She wrung her hands together under the table, hesitating for a long moment before speaking up.

“Actually… you really do not need to take such a massive risk for this. Just leave it to the Metropolitan Police Department. They are the professionals, after all.”

Coming from Miko, those words carried a heavy weight. She might look fragile, a girl constantly trembling at the sight of the supernatural, but the train incident had proven her true nature. She was the type of person willing to throw herself into danger to protect someone else.

But that martyr complex only applied to her own life.

No matter how deeply she worried for the hostages trapped inside that kindergarten, she knew she had absolutely no right to ask Yozora to walk into a death trap for them. What were his actual odds of survival? A fraction of a percent? The variables were entirely out of control.

“Oh, right.”

Yozora suddenly snapped his fingers, remembering a minor detail. He dug into his pocket, fished out a sleek bank card, and slid it across the table toward Miko.

“There is sixty thousand in here. It is…”

Before he could even finish his sentence, fat tears welled up in Miko’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She stared at the plastic card as if it were a severed hand, looking utterly heartbroken.

Yozora froze, his hand still extended over the table.

“What is the meaning of this?” Miko sobbed quietly, her slender shoulders trembling with each breath. “Are you really that intent on throwing your life away?”

Yui stared at the card with an equally devastated expression. She reached out, lightly grabbing Yozora’s sleeve.

“Yozora… if you die out there in that black fog, those kids still will not be saved. How about we just sit down and think of another way?”

Yozora stared blankly at the two grieving high school girls. A beat of silence passed before he burst into a dry, exasperated laugh.

“What kind of melodramatic script are you two reading from? This sixty thousand is not my dying inheritance. It is the exorcism payment the old guy transferred to me for our recent jobs.”

“Ah?”

Miko blinked, the tears freezing on her face. A violent flush of embarrassment rushed up her neck, turning her ears bright red. She hurriedly pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and scrubbed at her damp cheeks.

She mentally scolded herself. Of course it was not a death flag. Given his shameless personality, Yozora was the last person on earth to willingly seek out an early grave. This was the same overly cautious Exorcist who would dramatically claim he was on death’s door after using barely a tenth of his actual power.

Processing the actual amount, Yui practically jumped out of her seat.

“Sixty thousand?!” she shrieked, before clapping a hand over her mouth. She glanced around the room nervously and dropped her voice to a harsh whisper. “Counting from Tuesday, we have been at this for less than three days. A sixty thousand yen commission fee? Is that not way too much?”

“Is it?” Yozora shrugged, completely unfazed by the sum. “We are fighting actual, flesh-eating evil spirits. We are literally saving our clients from gruesome deaths. Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about the market value of a professional Exorcist?”

Yui and Miko exchanged a long look. They both shook their heads in perfect synchronization.

“This is way too much money. We cannot accept this. You should keep it.”

Yozora stared at them, genuinely appalled.

Good grief, had he wandered onto the set of a sci-fi movie? Was this some bizarre high school adaptation of The Three-Body Problem? Sixty thousand yen was a massive windfall for a teenager. They could buy endless snacks, clothes, and concert tickets. And they were just rejecting it to his face?

Were these two actually angels?

“Just take it. I already did the math.” Yozora tapped the plastic card against the table. “The total payout was one hundred thousand. We each get thirty thousand, and the remaining ten thousand goes into the club activity fund, which I will manage for now.”

“This…” Miko stared at the card, her expression twisting with guilt. “I only agreed to help with these commissions because I wanted to save people. Taking a payout for it just feels… wrong.”

Yozora clicked his tongue, giving her a look of utter helplessness.

“Have either of you heard the parable of Zilu Accepting the Ox?”

Blank stares answered him.

“Young people these days really lack culture,” he sighed, shaking his head like a disappointed grandfather. “Let me break it down for you. Accepting fair compensation for saving a life is not just normal, it is a moral necessity. Setting aside the fact that we risk getting our faces chewed off by evil spirits, have you ever considered the economic fallout of working for free?”

He leaned forward, holding up a finger.

“If we operated as a charity, the result would be instantaneous. Every single person who misplaces their keys, hears a floorboard creak, or gets a mild case of sleep paralysis would flood our inbox with a commission. They would not care if it was a real threat or just a drafty window. Why would they? It is free. There is zero risk for the client to just try their luck.”

He held up a second finger.

“But for us, it would be a disaster. We would drown in a sea of meaningless, false reports. We would waste hundreds of hours sifting through garbage just to find the one person who is actually being hunted by a malicious entity. We are high school students. We have classes during the day. Our operational window is already incredibly tight.”

Yozora lowered his hand, his tone turning deadly serious.

“So, tell me. While we are busy investigating a fake ghost story because someone did not have to pay a deposit, how many real victims are going to be ripped apart by spirits because we could not reach them in time?”

The brutal logic of his argument left both Miko and Yui completely speechless. They were just ordinary high school girls. They had only looked at the situation through the lens of basic empathy. They had never considered the grim, logistical reality of supply and demand in the supernatural underworld.

“Alright, pocket the cash.”

Yozora checked the time on his phone one last time. He pushed his chair back, stood up, and stretched his arms over his head until his joints popped. A confident, slightly unhinged smirk crept onto his face.

“Now, it is time for this professional Exorcist to go save Kyoto.”

[Inorin’s Note: “Zilu Accepting the Ox” refers to a famous story involving Confucius and his disciple, Zilu. Zilu saved a drowning man and accepted an ox as a reward. Confucius praised him, stating that by accepting the reward, Zilu set a precedent that saving lives is profitable, which would encourage more people to do the same. This contrasts with another disciple who refused a reward for a good deed, which Confucius criticized for setting an impossibly high moral standard that would deter normal people from helping others.]