Chapter 19: Haunted House

Chapter 19: Haunted House

The house in the request was about a ten-minute walk from the station.

"This house kind of gives off a vibe that says it has an interesting history doesn’t it! As the request form stated, there seems to be a few minor first-ranked spirits here and there."

"All small fry! This request is probably going to be a piece of cake!"

Karasuma shaded her eyes with a visor formed by her hand and Soya circled her fingers to make glasses like a kid in elementary school as they looked at the house for spirits.

I could only see the minor spirits peeking out of the window, but the two of them were using spirit detection to carefully measure the strength of the evil spirits. After a cursory inspection, we opened the door of the house.

–Creak.

With our shoes still on, we entered.

Soya held a talisman in her hand and I unsealed both my hands.

The room was dusty and gloomy, so much so that it was hard to believe it was daytime. On the other hand, it might have been because there was still a lot of furniture and household goods left, but there was a strong sense that someone had lived there until yesterday. However, the house was supposed to have been vacant for about two months now.

"It’s not like the people who lived here before are haunting this place. There are only minor spirits here."

The term "minor spirit" was a generic term that referred to wandering spirits whose souls had been worn out and were on the verge of disappearing, low-ranked animal spirits, and other similar spirits.

"But if that’s the case, why are all these minor spirits gathering in this house? This house doesn’t seem to be a place of mourning."

As Soya spoke, she placed a foot on the stairs leading to the second floor, where the presence of minor spirits was particularly strong.

"Guoooooooooh!"

"Uwahh!?"

A single minor spirit sprung at her from the second floor.

Soya screamed as she activated a simple warding barrier with a talisman.

"T, that surprised me. But if it’s just this much…"

Taking advantage of the moment the barrier and spirit were engaging in a power struggle, Soya threw an exorcism talisman at it. With that, the minor spirit was easily expelled.

"Wow, as expected of someone from class B."

"Hehehe, right?"

I praised her perfunctorily and Soya puffed out her chest with pride.

"You’re skillful at conserving your spirit power. It wouldn’t make sense to activate a technique when the spirit had barely enough power to qualify as first-rank."

Unlike me, Karasuma could accurately detect spirit power and praised Soya from a different perspective.

"…eh? E, ehehe, right–?"

For some reason, Soya paused strangely and made an ambiguous expression.

"W, well then! I’ll go ahead and continue exorcising the spirits!"

She shouted that as if to gloss over something and then proceeded to almost single-handedly wipe out all the minor spirits inside the house.

"–wait a second! This isn’t right!"

When the extermination of the minor spirits was completed and all that was left was to report the results to the client, Soya raised her voice.

"Didn’t we decide that today we were going to confirm Aoi-chan’s ability and see how well we would work as a team!? Why am I the only one working!?"

"No, there was no need for me to do anything since you were so eager to exorcise all the spirits."

I also didn’t want to use climax exorcism, if possible…

"There was no enemy worthy of me showing my true power!"

Karasuma said so proudly. This fellow… was really all talk wasn’t she?

"Oh, come on! We’ve wasted a whole day… hmm?

Soya suddenly started looking restlessly around the room and Karasuma also followed suit, with a "Hmph?"

"That’s strange. I’m sure Miss Misaki exorcised all the spirits but aren’t they gathering again?"

We looked out the window. Since we were on the second floor, we could see out quite far… and there were definitely some shadows coming towards us. Clearly, something was wrong.

"Is there still something in this house… that attracts other spirits?"

Soya summoned her four shikigami and ordered them to search inside the house.

"We’ll also try looking around, let’s do it together."

Following Soya’s lead, Karasuma and I began to search the furniture and the back of the carpet for anything strange that might have been left behind.

Minor spirits were attracted by places of mourning where negative emotions tended to accumulate, cursed items filled with grudges, amulets made by unlicensed exorcists, and also–powerful evil spirits.

"Gyupiiii!?"

About ten minutes after the start of our search, a shikigami’s dying scream echoed from inside the closet.