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ArabicAnime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 7
Chapter 7: A Collective of Hundreds of Evil Spirits
“How… how is this possible…”
Pinned beneath the multi-eyed gaze of the arachnid monstrosity, Yotsuya Miko felt as though she had been shoved into a meat freezer. A bone-deep frost paralyzed her limbs. She wanted to turn, to sprint toward the stairwell, but her muscles refused the command. She couldn’t even twitch a single finger.
Her golden pupils trembled violently. Yet, no tears fell.
It wasn’t a sudden surge of bravery. Her mind had simply blue-screened from the sheer terror.
“You! Can! See!”
The spider spirit unleashed an ear-piercing shriek. Its towering, bristled legs caged the rooftop, the bloated mass of its abdomen entirely blotting out the afternoon sun. Shadows swallowed the concrete.
A sickening, wet gurgle tore from its throat—a meaningless, chaotic noise that scraped against the eardrums. The grotesque human face fused to the spider’s thorax suddenly stretched outward, unhinging a jaw lined with jagged rot, and lunged straight for Miko.
‘Am I… going to die?’
Time dilated. As the gaping maw descended, the chaotic noise of the world faded into an eerie, vacuum-like silence.
In this razor-thin margin between life and death, the emotion flooding her chest wasn’t panic.
It was deep regret.
The “door” Yozora had mentioned. The hidden truth behind these grotesque entities. What were they, really?
It seemed she would take those unanswered questions to the grave.
Just as the spirit’s putrid breath washed over her face, its fangs inches from tearing into her pale neck, a casual arm intercepted the strike.
Crunch.
The stomach-churning sound of blunt teeth grinding against bone echoed across the rooftop. Crimson sprayed across the smooth concrete floor, pooling rapidly.
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
The voice drifted into her ear, lazy and entirely out of place.
Miko forced her eyes upward. Yozora stood directly between her and the towering monstrosity. His face bore the same half-asleep, thoroughly bored expression he always wore. He even stifled a yawn with his free hand.
He looked like a tourist lounging on a tropical beach—a jarring, almost psychotic contrast to the reality of a massive evil spirit currently sinking its teeth deep into his forearm, fresh blood soaking his sleeve.
“Looks like you’re in one piece.”
Yozora gave her a cursory glance. Satisfied she wasn’t missing any limbs, he gave a noncommittal nod.
Then, he turned his attention back to the grotesque spider face latched onto his arm and offered a bright, hospitable smile.
“How’s the taste? Good?”
The spider spirit froze. Its tiny, erratic brain clearly hadn’t processed this reaction. Humans were supposed to scream, to thrash, to exude delicious terror. This prey was casually asking for a restaurant review.
A second later, fury overtook confusion. The four swollen eyeballs embedded in its face spun wildly, and a thick, suffocating black mist began to bleed from its pores.
“You can see me too!? Kill you!”
The spirit unlatched its jaws, snapping its elongated neck back several meters like a coiled spring, preparing to launch its entire body weight forward.
“Oh, you even come with a catapult start?”
Hearing Yozora’s dry quip, a hysterical sense of absurdity washed over Miko.
What kind of time was this to be making racing jokes?
Yet, despite her terror, she had to admit the term perfectly described the spirit’s kinetic, spring-loaded posture.
“It’s over.”
Yozora didn’t dodge. He simply spoke two quiet words.
An instant later, Miko watched in horror as the spirit’s massive, bloated abdomen began to violently expand. It swelled like an overfilled water balloon, the grotesque human face stretching into a mask of pure agony.
BOOM!
With a deafening roar, the colossal entity that had eclipsed the sun detonated. Chunks of ethereal gore vaporized instantly, reducing the terrifying predator to a cloud of harmless black ash that scattered into the afternoon breeze.
“This is…?”
Miko sat slumped against the floor, completely dumbfounded.
What just happened?
Why did the monster suddenly self-destruct?
“Alright, all clean.”
Yozora’s casual dismissal finally shattered her shock. Reality crashed back down.
Her legs turned to jelly. She slumped fully against the concrete, the delayed adrenaline hitting her system like a freight train. The terror she hadn’t had time to process earlier flooded her chest, leaving her gasping for air.
“Easy now. Breathe.”
Seeing Miko hyperventilating, her tear-filled eyes looking inexplicably pitiful and alluring, Yozora crouched down and patted her shoulder.
He recalled her infamous train incident from the original plot, where a close encounter with a spirit had quite literally scared the piss out of her.
If she lost control of her bladder right here on the school roof, the cleanup would be a massive headache.
“Yo… Yozora.”
Miko’s pupils darted erratically. She reached out, her trembling fingers gripping his bloodstained sleeve like a lifeline.
“The… the evil spirit! It disguised itself as Hiratsuka-sensei!”
“Yeah, I know.”
“No, you don’t understand, you didn’t see it! It literally morphed into her! It looked exactly like her!”
“Like I said, I heard you.”
Seeing his completely unmoved expression, Miko froze. She assumed she wasn’t explaining the sheer impossibility of the situation clearly enough.
“Did you miss the part where it looked human? The evil spirit was disguised as—”
“I said, I heard you. Loud and clear.”
Yozora shrugged, his tone dripping with deep apathy.
“That’s three times now. What exactly do you want from me here? Am I supposed to draft a formal condemnation of this cunning spirit for using underhanded tactics to deceive an innocent JK?”
Miko stared at him, utterly speechless. She didn’t want a condemnation; she just wanted him to acknowledge the terrifying gravity of a monster mimicking human skin.
She genuinely couldn’t tell if Yozora was failing to grasp the implications, or if he understood perfectly and simply didn’t give a damn.
Given the past twenty-four hours she had spent with him, the latter was a terrifyingly safe bet.
Yet, strangely enough, his deadpan banter worked. The icy grip on her chest loosened, her frantic heartbeat finally slowing to a normal rhythm.
She pressed a hand to her chest, taking a deep breath. The image of the exploding monster flashed in her mind, overriding her fear with morbid curiosity.
“Why did it suddenly explode?” she asked softly. “Is that… another one of your special abilities?”
“How should I put this?”
Yozora tapped his chin in thought, then offered a faint, unsettling smile.
“You can think of it as a unique dietary constitution.”
“I am, essentially, a walking collective of every evil spirit I’ve ever devoured.”
“How many is that? I lost count a long time ago. Probably somewhere in the high hundreds.”
He glanced at the drying blood on his arm. “Even a single drop of my blood contains a density of malice that an ordinary spirit isn’t qualified to digest. Simply put, it bit off more than it could chew. It over-ate, and it popped.”
Miko nodded numbly.
Under the relentless barrage of near-death experiences, exploding monsters, and casual admissions of cannibalizing hundreds of ghosts, her brain finally threw in the towel. Her worldview hadn’t just collapsed; it had been pulverized into dust.
“Speaking of which…”
Using Yozora’s arm as use, Miko shakily pulled herself to her feet. A lingering shadow of dread passed over her eyes as she looked at the spot where the spider had died.
“I’ve never seen an evil spirit mimic a living person before. If you hadn’t been here, I would have died.”
Yozora’s lazy smile finally faded. His gaze turned cool and measured.
“Though it wasn’t my intention to use you as bait, it’s just as well.”
Miko tilted her head, a fresh wave of confusion washing over her. “What’s just as well?”
Yozora looked out over the edge of the rooftop, his voice dropping to a serious, quiet register.
“What you just witnessed—the ability of an evil spirit to wear human skin—is one of the direct influences brought about by the Gate.”
[Inorin’s Note: “JK” is common Japanese internet slang standing for “Joshi Kousei”, meaning high school girl.]