UTAHIME POV
The drive to the outskirts was heavy and gray, the rhythmic slapping of the windshield wipers against the glass the only thing cutting through the silence.
Outside, a relentless July rain turned the landscape into a blurred mess of green and slate.
I kept my eyes on the folder in my lap, trying to focus on the facts to ignore the slight chill settling in my bones. I wasn't sure if it was the air conditioning or the place we were approaching.
"Apparently, this used to be the home of the president of a company managing a chain of local barbecue restaurants," I said, my voice steady despite the silent atmosphere inside the car.
I was sitting in the front passenger seat, watching the driver focus on the slick road ahead.
Mei-san sat alone in the back seat. She looked bored, or perhaps just indifferent, her gaze fixed on the rain-streaked window and the passing trees. I continued to brief her on the location and the origin of the curse.
"However, in July of last year, the mad cow disease outbreak dealt a fatal blow to his restaurants. He committed suicide with his family after they were buried under vast debt. A tragedy, really."
I turned a page in the file, looking at the grainy photos of the estate.
"From then on, local rumors claimed the president's house was haunted. Local school kids, college students, job-hoppers—they all started visiting it as a 'test of courage,' and subsequently... they go missing."
I sighed as the car hit a deep puddle, spraying water across the side.
"Rumors do tend to spread rather quickly around haunted spots," Mei-san's voice drifted from the back, cool and nonchalant. "They can spread at an unbelievable pace nowadays, thanks to the Internet."
She paused, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "But this all just means even more work for us jujutsu sorcerers."
Ignoring her comment about the money, I continued briefing her on the mission. "In addition to that, three grade school kids went missing on their way home from school. There's also a high chance the families, police, and friends who trace the paths of those who disappeared will reach the mansion and become victims themselves."
I looked out at the rain outside, my jaw tightening. "We have to sever the root of this issue as soon as possible."
The driver slowed the car as the silhouette of the estate emerged through the downpour.
"HQ sent us to investigate because they reached the same conclusion," Mei-san noted, her eyes finally sharpening as she looked toward the house. "They're even paying my fees, which aren't cheap."
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror, the rain streaking across the glass behind her head. "Did you overcharge them again?"
""You make it sound so bad," Mei-san replied with a small smile. "Call it negotiation."
I rolled my eyes and signaled the driver to stop.
"We're here."
"Let's get going then," Mei-san said, her voice smooth as she grabs the handle to open the door.
We stepped out, our umbrellas shielding us from the relentless rain as we approached the Victorian-style mansion.
I reached for my charms, my lips already forming the words for the ritual.
"Emerge from darkness, blacker than dark—"
"There is no need for a veil."
I blinked, stopping mid-incantation. "Huh?"
Mei-san didn't even look at me, her eyes tracking the jagged silhouette of the roofline. "I don't sense the presence of any curse out here. The cause is almost certainly inside the building. You can cast the veil later if we end up attacking it from the outside."
I lowered my hand, scanning the overgrown yard. She was right—the air out here was heavy, but the actual malice was concentrated, pulled inside the mansion.
"...True."
We reached the massive front door. I reached out, expecting a locked handle, but the wood groaned open at a light touch.
"It's unlocked," I muttered.
As the door swung wide, a foul, stale odor hit us. Piled against the entryway were dozens of black trash bags and plastic poly bags, spilling all over the floor.
"What is all this...?" I whispered, stepping over a heap of garbage. The interior was a graveyard of junk, a hoarder's nightmare that felt suffocatingly cramped.
Suddenly, a cold prickle shot up my spine. My pulse quickened. "Mei-san..."
"It's here," she said, her voice as nonchalant as usual. "And it's all around us, too."
Before I could say anything , Mei-san already started walking, throwing something at me with a casual backhand.
A Flashlight.
"Let's get going," Mei-san said, already stepping over a pile of debris and heading deeper into the dark hallway. "I don't need that, but you do... right?"
".....Thank you."
I gripped the flashlight, clicking it on. The beam cut through the darkness, revealing peeling wallpaper and the broken glass of the inner doors.
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
As I followed behind her, the wooden floor beneath us groaned under our weight, the sound echoing unnaturally through the hollow house. We crossed the hallway, and the scale of the place became clear.
"It's incredible..." I whispered.
We came across the main hall of the mansion. A grand set of stairs led up to the second floor, flanked by shadows. Mei-san stepped toward the wall and flipped a heavy industrial switch.
Suddenly, the massive chandelier above us flickered to life, buzzing with a dim, yellow light.
"It still has electricity?" I asked, surprised.
"For now," Mei-san replied, her eyes already scanning the perimeter. "Let's have a look inside the building. I will take this floor; you take the second."
"Huh? All by myself?"
She tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable. "Is there a problem?"
"No... it's fine."
"Off you go, then," she said, turning her back to me and disappearing into the darkness of the ground floor.
"Okay..."
I turned toward the stairs, the beam of my flashlight dancing against the dust motes in the air.
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
The second floor was exactly like the first—a trash dump. Piles of garbage bags were stacked high against the walls, spilling rotting contents onto the floor.
I gripped the flashlight with both hands, my heart hammering against my ribs. Every creak of the house, every slight rustle of the wind against the windows, made me snap the light toward the sound. It felt exactly like being trapped in a low-budget horror movie.
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
TAP! chrrr
I came across the first door.
Click.
The door groaned as it swung open.
Chirnnnnnn...
"Haiii!" I yelped, thrusting the light forward.
Nothing. Just an empty bed room.
I moved to the next one.
Click—Chirnnn!
"Hah!"
Nothing. Just more trash.
I threw open the next one.
Bam!
"Hyah!"
Nothing. A guest room.
The next.
Slam!
"Who's there?!"
Nothing. A study.
The next.
K-crack!
"I'm coming!"
Nothing. An old bathroom, tiles cracked and stained.
"This is the last one," I muttered to myself, my hand reaching for the final handle.
SLAM!
I threw the door open with a burst of desperate energy. "Haahhh!"
Nothing. The room is unnaturally tidy compared to the rest of the house. Two beds sat side-by-side, each with clothes neatly folded on the blankets.
I stepped inside, my flashlight beam shaking. I had to be sure. I knelt down slowly, the wooden floor groaning.
TAP! CHRR
TAP! CHRR
I heard a low, skittering sound. My heart climbed into my throat as I lowered the flashlight toward the gap beneath the bed.
Something dark and fast blurred in the light, charging straight at me!
"KYAAAAA!"
I bolted. I scrambled backward, nearly tripping over my own feet as I dove out of the room. I grabbed the handle and slammed the door shut with a deafening BANG, throwing my entire body weight against the door to keep it closed.
"It was just a mouse!" I muttered to myself.
I stood there, gasping for air, my chest heaving as I braced myself against the door. Tears were nearly spilling from my eyes from the sheer panic of it.
TAP! CHRR
The sound came from right behind me. Before I could even spin around, a hand clamped firmly onto my shoulder.
"Huh?"
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
I shrieked, my flashlight flying upward as I whipped around, my heart nearly exploding out of my chest. In the dancing beam of light, I saw a familiar face, calm and utterly unimpressed.
It is Mei-san.
"You could be the next big scream queen, Utahime." she said casually, not even blinking at my outburst. She didn't wait for me to recover; she just turned and started walking down the hall.
"Hah... hah..." I was gasping for air, clutching my chest. "My soul... I think my soul actually left my body just now."
Mei-san stopped a few paces away and sat down on her haunches in the middle of the hallway to examine something on the floorboards.
"Please... don't startle me like that," I wheezed, leaning against the wall for support.
"You got startled all on your own," she replied without looking up, her voice as smooth as silk.
I took a few more deep breaths, finally calming my racing pulse and wiping the last of the panic-tears from my eyes. I adjusted my grip on the flashlight.
"Are you done exploring the first floor already?" I asked.
Mei-san paused. She slowly looked up at me, her expression shifting into something different.
"Huh?"
"What?" I blinked, confused by her reaction.
"Utahime," she said, gesturing to the hallway around us—the trash bags, the peeling wallpaper, the doors I had just finished checking. "This is the first floor."
"I was walking down the first floor hallway," Mei-san said.
"What? But... I know I climbed the stairs and entered the room at the end of the hallway!" I argued, my heart racing.
She pointed at the floor. "A box of candy, a bag of potato chips, cans, a backpack, a sweatshirt. I have already seen this 3 times."
And pointing at the wall she continues, "And see these marks? I made them on my way through here."
I squinted my eyes to see the marks made by her cursed energy. They were faint but unmistakable—jagged lines that shouldn't have been there if I were on a new floor.
She continued, "It seems like we are already in the belly of the beast."
"Huh?" My eyes widened in surprise as I looked ahead. The long hallway didn't end; it stretched endlessly into the shadows, defying the physical dimensions of the mansion.
"For real?"
..
We had been walking for some time.
"How long is this hallway?" I asked, the beam of my flashlight shaking slightly as it cut through the thick, stagnant air.
Mei-san answered without looking back, "We have been walking for 30 minutes, so roughly 4 km so far."
"It's not an innate domain, right?" I asked.
"Those are cursed spirit manifestations of a mindspace. Which means this is a..." Mei-san said, trailing off to let me finish.
"Barrier," I answered.
"Correct," she replied. "Most likely the victims are trapped inside this and then killed by the cursed spirit. Though considering the use of this technique, the cursed spirit itself should be weak. If we can just escape this barrier, even you can exorcise it."
"What do you mean 'you'? 🙂" I asked, feeling a vein pulse in my forehead.
Ignoring my question, she continued walking.
As we came across the curse mark again, she stopped and turned toward me. The dim light of the corridor casting a, sharp shadows across her face.
"Now, quiz time," she said, her voice echoing in the unnaturally long corridor. "How would you break this, Utahime?"
I moved forward, then sat down on my knees in the dusty floor, surrounded by the piles of trash. I needed to visualize it.
"This hallway is repeating itself," I said, my voice echoing. "At first..."
I began grabbing the discarded boxes and cans, assembling them in a circle on the floorboards. "I thought..."
"I'm surprised you could even touch them," Mei-san said, her eyes tracking the movement of the garbage in my hands.
Ignoring her comment, I continued my thought. "...I thought it was shaped like a donut. A simple loop. But we passed by four times of the mark you made, right?"
I pointed to the jagged grooves she'd carved into the wood. "When I calculated how many paces apart they were, I got... 122, 203, 157, and 270 paces."
I looked up at her, the realization hitting me. "The spacing between the marks is random. If it were a simple circle, the distance between the marks would be the same every time we looped."
"I see," Mei-san said, holding her chin as she looked down at my makeshift map.
"The repetition between the intervals isn't standardized," I said, my voice gaining confidence. "Which means that most likely..."
I gathered the discarded boxes once more. This time, I didn't make a circle. I began to assemble the boxes in a straight line, pushing them across the dusty floorboards.
"...this barrier is patching spaces together."
I looked up at Mei-san, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. "So, if we both run down the hallway at top speed, then at some point..."
I began moving with a frantic energy, hurriedly putting the boxes again and again in front of one another. Because of my speed, the boxes weren't landing in a perfect row anymore; they were forming a jagged pattern with visible spaces between them.
"...It'll break," I said, a smug smile forming on my face.
Mei-san leaned down and snapped her fingers. "Close. Ninety points."
"Huh? What's the remaining ten?"
"When we run, we do so in opposite directions at the same time."
A light bulb practically lit up above my head and I stood up. "I get it! So my patching theory is correct. If we both advance quickly in different directions, it makes it much harder for the cursed spirit to hold the barrier together. Once the stitching fails and we have an opening, we can get out!"
She clicked her fingers again. "One hundred points."
"Then, with that settled..."
We both dropped into a running stance.
"If this works, I'll be expecting a promotion," I muttered, my heart hammering.
"How much do you have in savings?" she asked casually.
"Huh?"
"Never mind. I'll think about it later."
"Okay... ready, set... GO!"
I bolted, my heart hammering against my ribs. As I ran, the physics of the mansion began to scream in protest.
The hallway behind me stretched like pulled pizza cheese before it started collapsing. It wasn't just falling apart; it was like the entire corridor was being sucked upward into an invisible vacuum.
"What—what?! Huh?!"
I didn't dare look back. The hallway in front of me suddenly tore open, the jagged edges of reality being sucked toward the now clear sky.
The very floor I was running on began to tilt and lift, caught in that same upward gravity.
"Kyaaaaa!"
Seeing the ground beneath my feet vanishing, I didn't wait for the mansion to finish folding into itself. I put every ounce of strength into my legs and hurriedly jumped out of the gaping hole where the wall used to be.
The debris crashed down around me, a chaotic symphony of splintering wood and crashing stones. I hurriedly flooded my limbs with cursed energy, the blue glow reinforcing my muscles just as the weight of the mansion tried to pin me down. Gritting my teeth, I shoved a massive beam aside and scrambled out of the settling rubble, coughing against the thick dust.
The sunlight hit my skin—yellow, warm, and real. As I stayed on all fours, gasping for air, a long shadow suddenly stretched over me.
I looked upward.
Standing there was a boy with striking white hair that seemed to glow under the sun. He is leaning down slightly, one hand resting casually over his knee, his eyes hidden behind a pair of blue glasses. Despite the chaos of the collapsing barrier behind me, he looked like he was just taking a stroll in the park.
Towering over Satoru is a massive blue western dragon, its scales shimmering like sapphires in the fresh sunlight. And above it, two more silhouettes are sitting—
Shoko and–!
"I am here to save you," before I could even finish my thoughts, Satoru said, that playful, mocking lilt in his voice.
"Uta-hi-me."