Chapter 92: It's Garbled, Damn It
Haruto and Kaguya's gazes were locked onto the ghost letter, and Yakumo Ran leaned in as well, her fox ears twitching with curiosity. Three pairs of eyes waited intently for its response.
Three seconds… five seconds… ten seconds ticked by… and still, there was no movement.
"In my opinion, we should just tear it up. It's useless," Kaguya declared, her patience worn thin.
She crossly snatched the spectral parchment, her fingers poised to rip it in two, when a powerful suction suddenly emanated from it. Her body swayed, and her eyes widened in surprise, but she made no move to resist. Instead, with a sharp thud, she slammed the letter back down onto the table and shouted in a fit of pique.
"This thing even requires a down payment?!"
The vitality it had drained this time was clearly more than the last. Kaguya spat in annoyance, then nimbly produced a vicious-looking Shark Knife. Without a flicker of hesitation, she plunged it directly into her own forehead.
With a dull thump, she collapsed to the ground. A moment later, a brand-new Kaguya reappeared before them, looking completely unscathed.
"As expected, this is much more comfortable." She stretched languidly, a refreshed glow about her.
"Can't you stab your heart next time?" Haruto couldn't help but complain. "Stabbing your forehead is just too unsettling to watch."
"Are you some kind of sadist?" Kaguya retorted. "How long do you think it would take to die from a heart wound? The brain is much faster."
"Are you afraid of pain?" Haruto shot back, his expression screaming, 'You've got to be kidding me.'
"What kind of self-respecting person who's afraid of pain commits suicide on a daily basis and fights to the death with their friends, ripping out hearts and lungs? Of all the people I know, you and Mokou have the least right to complain about pain."
"Is that the same thing?" Kaguya said, her tone full of righteous indignation. "We can still have a bowl of hot offal soup after we fight."
A new thought suddenly struck her. She began to size Haruto up, her speculative gaze making his skin crawl.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I seem to recall you receiving an Immortal Body reward, didn't you?"
"Stop! Cut it out! Absolutely not!" Haruto crossed his arms defensively over his chest, his face a mask of vigilance. "That kind of pleasure is something you two should enjoy in your own little circle. Don't you dare drag me into it."
"Don't be like that," Kaguya coaxed, gently poking him with her elbow. "The feeling is truly sublime. The fruits of hard labor are always the most delicious."
"Find someone else. It's not like I'm the only one who can regenerate. Go find Cirno; she can even respawn infinitely."
"Her?" Kaguya's expression turned subtle. "I'm afraid I'd become an idiot after eating her." She then added, "Besides, do you think just anyone is worthy of eating the offal soup made from me and that dead turkey?"
When she said this, her tone was laced with a hint of resentment, as if Haruto were an unfaithful lover who had just spurned her advances.
"Um…" Yakumo Ran chose the perfect moment to interrupt, pointing a delicate finger at the ghost letter. "Haruto-sama, your question still hasn't been answered."
Her reminder brought Haruto and Kaguya back to the matter at hand. Their gazes fell back upon the spectral parchment, only to find that it now displayed the number "23," followed by a string of blinking colons.
"Is the stake still not enough?"
If he didn't already know what the question was about, Haruto might have suspected the ghost letter had gained sentience and was deliberately coveting Kaguya's vitality.
"If you take the payment and don't do the job this time, I will tear you to shreds and feed you to the rabbits!" Kaguya threatened fiercely. She pressed her hand onto the letter again, this time actively transferring a portion of her life force into it.
The ethereal pen floated up once more, slowly tracing a "3" after the "23."
The two of them held their breath, staring intently as they waited for a fourth digit to appear.
Just then, a fair, slender hand suddenly reached out from behind them and snatched the ghost letter away.
"Damn it! Who was that?!" Haruto cursed under his breath as Kaguya angrily rolled up her sleeves, ready for a fight. But when they spun around and met a pair of narrowed, violet eyes, they both froze on the spot.
Yakumo Yukari dangled the ghost letter from her fingertips, a strained smile plastered on her face. "It seems that while I was away, someone took a great interest in my private affairs?"
The room instantly fell silent.
A moment later, Haruto retorted with a burst of righteous bravado, "What era is this? We value freedom of speech!"
"Freedom of speech?" Yukari's smile faltered for a second. She took a deep breath, then suddenly bloomed into a bashful, almost girlish grin. "But I really am a seventeen-year-old girl. If you don't believe me, you can ask the princess right next to you."
As she spoke, her threatening gaze drifted over to Kaguya.
The princess, finding it impossible to lie so blatantly against her conscience, chose the path of least resistance: she dove behind Haruto, using him as a human shield.
Yukari's expression grew even gloomier.
At that moment, Haruto, feeling his courage swell, pressed on. "What's wrong with asking about age? A true beauty is never afraid of revealing her age!"
Snap.
The sharp sound of a fan unfolding echoed in the quiet room.
"Yukari-nee!"
Haruto's bravado vanished in an instant. His mouth had written a check his body couldn't cash. Seeing that Yukari showed no signs of putting her fan away, he shrank back and muttered weakly, "Beautiful girls use their words, not their hands. Eirin has never laid a finger on me. If you hit me, doesn't that just prove you're not as good as her?"
"Exactly, exactly," Kaguya chimed in from behind him, nodding her head vigorously.
Yukari took another deep, calming breath. Just as she managed to suppress her rising anger, Haruto's next sentence sent it boiling over completely.
"How about… you give us the letter back first? We haven't finished asking yet."
Thump, thump—
After two muffled impacts, Haruto and Kaguya were both crouched on the floor, clutching their heads with tears welling in their eyes.
It wasn't their fault. It was just that Yakumo Yukari's fan seemed to glow with its own light, and it hurt like hell when she hit people with it. Haruto was starting to suspect that she had applied some kind of Boundary of Pain to the fan itself.
Thump, thump—
Two more hits landed squarely on their heads. Haruto, who had just barely recovered, clutched his skull again.
It was confirmed. This woman had definitely enchanted her fan with a pain boundary. It was already ridiculous enough when others used special moves in a fight, but this woman's attacks came with both special effects and boundary-based enhancements.
"Are you still curious about my age?" Yukari asked, her smile radiant.
"Not curious! Not curious at all!" the two of them blurted out, shaking their heads so fast they resembled rattle-drums.
In a desperate bid for self-preservation, Haruto decided to throw his loyal shikigami under the bus. After all, Ran could probably escape Yukari's wrath if she really needed to.
"It's just that Ran wanted to see the ghost artifact we brought back, so we just asked casually."
"Ran?" Yukari's eyes narrowed. "Since I walked in, I've only seen the two of you. I haven't seen Ran at all."
"Eh?"
Haruto and Kaguya were stunned. They quickly scanned the bedroom, only to find that Yakumo Ran had long since vanished. Forget a fox, there wasn't even a single strand of fox fur left behind.
Damn it!
She didn't even give them a heads-up before she bolted!
A flash of indignation sparked in both Haruto's and Kaguya's eyes. Any guilt Haruto felt about betraying her vanished without a trace.
"I was wrong," he admitted decisively.
"I was wrong, too. I don't even want that letter anymore," Kaguya added, readily abandoning the artifact that had consumed so much of her vitality without giving her a proper answer.
Yukari was quite satisfied with their prompt change in attitude. She casually tossed the ghost letter back to them.
Haruto watched her, his gaze filled with suspicion.
"Don't look at me like that. I'm not tricking you," she said. "You were right just now. In this day and age, we have freedom of speech. Ask whatever you want."
"Really?"
"Really," Yukari nodded. "I won't disturb you, then. I have things to attend to."
With that, she turned and left.
Not until her figure had completely disappeared from the doorway did Haruto and Kaguya impatiently unfold the ghost letter once more.
[233 ahahaha damn it back vasectomy accidentally designed...]
What the hell?
It was garbled?
Could this thing even be used anymore?
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