Yusa took a step back with the little Yuki-Onna, and a blood-red teleportation magic circle abruptly appeared beneath them.
In the next second, Yusa and the little Yuki-Onna vanished instantly.
Once the Yuki-Onna Yusa had left with the little one, Kawashima Toya breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally gone."
"Time to go home!"
His interaction with Yusa hadn't felt great. Although her beauty was top-tier and her figure flawless...
Yusa was, after all, an adult Yuki-Onna. No one could say for sure whether her personality was gentle and virtuous or cruel and violent.
This was why, in Japanese legends, half the stories depicted encounters with Yuki-Onna as beautiful romances...
While the other half described them as terrifying ordeals.
Some Yuki-Onna were gentle, while others were cruel.
An ordinary person encountering a gentle Yuki-Onna might experience a beautiful romance—though most endings were tragic.
Encountering a cruel one meant watching helplessly as one's life force was sucked dry.
----
The Demon World.
Yusa and the little Yuki-Onna had returned home via the teleportation circle.
Yusa crouched down and asked gently, "Sister, what kind of person was the big brother who brought you home?"
At the moment of parting, for some reason...
She had developed an interest in Toya, who seemed ordinary yet radiated a terrifying threat.
That feeling was akin to love at first sight.
Thinking of this, a faint blush rose on Yusa's flawless, beautiful face.
"Have I fallen in love?"
"I've memorized that aura."
As a newly adult Yuki-Onna, it wasn't strange for her to fall for someone at any time.
Of course, the object of affection had to be human.
She felt no attraction whatsoever to the yokai of the Demon World.
The little Yuki-Onna looked at her sister with a dazed, cute expression, completely failing to understand what was happening.
"You're still young, sister. You don't need to understand this feeling yet." Yusa stroked the little Yuki-Onna's head gently.
Just then, a devil with the upper body of a blonde beauty and the lower body of a terrifying cobra saw Yusa's smile.
"Hahaha! Look at you!"
"I told you, you stupid Yuki-Onna, you'd fall for a lowly human eventually!!!"
----
Back at the Apartment.
As soon as Toya entered, he saw Kasumigaoka Utaha with an icy expression on her face.
Toya greeted the pouting, inexplicably angry Utaha. "Yo, Utaha. Long time no see."
"Have you eaten dinner yet?"
"So you remember to come back," Utaha said, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes grumpily. "Look at what time it is."
"I'll order takeout! Let's eat together!"
Seeing Utaha acting like a resentful little wife, Toya smiled and said, "I took on an interesting commission today."
"Want to hear about it?"
"What commission?"
Utaha's curiosity was piqued.
It wasn't her fault for losing her "flower on a high peak" aloofness from Toyogasaki Academy.
After all, Toya was someone from the supernatural side. Could his commissions be ordinary?
Without thinking, she knew it had to be paranormal.
Toya sat down right next to Utaha, his tone mysterious. "A commission involving the legendary Yuki-Onna."
"Yuki-Onna? Are they real?" Utaha was stunned, her wine-red eyes filled with surprise. "Yuki-Onna are yokai. Do yokai actually exist?"
Hearing it was a Yuki-Onna commission, she was slightly disappointed at first.
But then her interest grew even stronger. Didn't this prove that yokai were real?
"If they weren't real, how would there be legends?" Toya looked at her as if she were silly. "I met two Yuki-Onna today."
"One adult, one juvenile."
Utaha's curiosity was completely aroused. "Tell me about it."
After Toya finished explaining the details about Yuki-Onna, Utaha realized just how terrifying they were.
"Ordinary people can't even look at them?"
"Even girls?"
Toya smiled faintly and nodded. "Boys want to marry them, girls want to... well, become very close friends."
"But don't worry too much about a Yuki-Onna's beauty. No Yuki-Onna would be foolish enough to walk around the Human World in her true form."
The current era was completely dominated by humans. Almost all yokai had retreated to the Demon World.
It was rare to see yokai in the Human World anymore.
"Although yokai aren't common, incidents involving Evil Gods aren't rare," Utaha sighed softly and handed her phone to Toya.
"Kawashima, take a look at this."
Toya took the phone curiously and started reading.
[Supernatural Disaster Strikes Pacific Island: Uninhabited Island Sinks for Unknown Reasons.]
Toya spent a minute reading the push notification news, his gaze lingering on the map at the end of the article for a long time.
"Why does this location look so familiar?"
Toya stared at the location on the map, feeling an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
He felt like he knew this place but couldn't quite recall why.
Inadvertently, he glanced at the high-tech smartphone he had spent one hundred Source Points on sitting nearby.
Everything clicked instantly.
"Wait... isn't that island the location I used to trick that little priest?"