Chapter 12: Soya the Shikigami
"Here it is…"
Ten minutes had passed since I received the dreadful blackmail disguised as a love letter.
Having regained some composure, I arrived in front of practice room number five.
"…Phew."
I took a deep breath then opened the door.
"Ah, you’ve finally arrived!"
The person who had been sitting in a chair stood up with a flourish and a bright smile on her face,
"Starting from today, let’s be teammates! I don’t know what kind of technique you used back then, but it’s a real bargain to find someone with such powerful exorcism abilities in class D."
The sender of the letter and my blackmailer, Soya Misaki said.
"Let’s go exorcise all a bunch of spirits and rise up the ranks!"
"No, no, wait a minute,"
I asked Soya, who was suddenly trying to proceed as if it were only reasonable to do so, to wait.
Although I’d heard that she was looking for teammates from class S and class A, it seemed like this girl, Misaki Soya, was awfully determined to do exorcist work.
I was honestly happy that she invited me to join her team.
But it was another matter entirely if I had to go on exorcism missions together with her.
Unless it was an emergency like yesterday, I didn’t want to use my rotten climax exorcism ability nor let anyone find out my ability. No matter how much I risked my life to exorcise a spirit, I would be treated as a pervert. People would start avoiding me and I would die of embarrassment.
Therefore,
"I’ve come to turn down your invitation."
"Eh?"
Soya widened her eyes as I said so firmly.
"Do you want the contents of the letter disclosed? If you don’t join my team, it will be revealed to everyone."
This girl… so the blackmail was for this after all.
Shamelessly uttering threats with a cute face.
I had already anticipated Soya’s words so I tried to feign calmness as I retorted,
"Go ahead, do it. Who would believe such groundless bullshit?"
In reality, her letter wasn’t groundless at all but whether people believed it or not was a separate matter.
As I faced Soya, I was confident that as long as I remained unyielding this matter would resolve itself safely.
"…Hmmm, so you want to go about it that way."
Soya stared at my face and then suddenly spoke the name of a guy from class D.
The guy who said that Misaki was in some ways more frightening than Kuzunoha.
Soya blushed awkwardly as her gaze swam, then continued,
"J-juice made from 100% breast milk"
What cryptic nonsense was this? (f)reewe(b)novel
"S-send that to the guy I just mentioned. You’re his friend so you should have his contact information."
…Hey, it couldn’t be.
I messaged the words with a bad feeling. Then,
Bleep!
Within seconds, I received a reply.
"Furuya, you bastard… who told you my fetish… what do you want?… money?"
He spoke in a shaky voice, as if a knife were being pressed against his neck.
I almost dropped my phone. Soya fanned her red face with her hand and asked something horrifying,
"How many more people do you want to try? I have dozens more."
When I was unable to reply, Soya looked at me awkwardly and said, "….it’s not exactly something I spread around."
"I reject all the people who confess to me by saying things like ‘I’m not interested in guys who are into that kind of thing’ or ‘I’m not interested in guys who masturbate every morning’… I’ve found that it’s the most effective way, and more than that, it’s how I really feel."
Her face was red with embarrassment and she had a somewhat sorrowful expression. However, her words were brutal. Just imagine squeezing out the courage to confess only to get rejected due to your fetish… you’d probably end up forever traumatized.
If it were me, I’d be so suspicious of where the information leaked from that I would skip school for a while.
At that moment, I remembered what I’d heard from one of the guys in my class.
That in this school alone, numerous people had confessed to Soya.
Does that mean that… countless people in our school, including those in D class, have been traumatized by Soya? Too scary.
"So."
Soya smiled as if to say, "Give up already."
"I think that quite a few people would believe the information I send out, don’t you?"
"…hey, you bastard."
I was talking to the guy from class D who was still on my phone, not to Soya.
"Why didn’t you tell me that Soya has an outrageous psychic ability?"
Although I’d never heard of any psychic abilities specialized in pervertedness to this degree, secret techniques and incomprehensible mysteries were commonplace in this industry… I didn’t have the right to judge anyone either.
It was doubtful that I could have defended against Soya’s psychic vision even if I heard about it beforehand, but I decided to vent my frustration on the guys who must have been deliberately concealing Soya’s ability by questioning the guy on the phone.
"We… wanted as many people as possible to confess to Misaki-chan so they could also get shot down."
I see. So that’s why these guys were desperately trying to keep me and Karasuma in the dark about Soya. I should really stop being friends with these people.
"Or rather, since you’re asking this, you couldn’t have confessed to Misaki-chan and gotten rejected!? Congratulations! From today, we’re true buddies! Hey guys! Haruhisa has finally become one of us…"
I hung up. Let’s cut ties with them.
"By the way."
Before I knew it, Soya had approached me and was looking into my face.
"You know, my ability is rather well-known among professional exorcists… Isn’t there a professional exorcist in our school? For example, the one who appeared in your dream, Kuzunoha-san."
"–!"
My heart pounded.
"Naturally, she also knows about my ability."
"…!"
"Well, my ability is also why she has never let me meet her… at any rate, what would happen if that fearsome Kuzunoha-san got this information, too?"
She would kill me. If Kaede knew that I looked at her that way, she would kill me for sure.
After being socially annihilated, she would blast my soul with will-o-wisps.
I could no longer tell Soya that nobody would believe her. My life was now at stake.
"A-actually."
So I decided to stick through with my feigned ignorance.
"I don’t know what kind of misunderstanding you have but I’m a D class student who ranks lowest in the grade. As I explained yesterday, that shikigami disappeared on its own,"
"That’s a lie, absolutely impossible."
Soya immediately denied my words.
"You know don’t you, Furuya-kun? What people call my family?"
"…Soya the Shikigami, right?"
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