Volume 2, Chapter 2: Temporary License Revocation Crisis
Tokyo Metropolitan School for Exorcists.
It was a training institute for exorcists that was established to deal with the increasing number of spiritual disasters.
The quality of students belonging to the School for Exorcists was outstanding among the several exorcist training institutes in Japan and many of its graduates became known as top professionals.
However, it was not only after graduating that students became active in the exorcism industry.
After completing some training, students formed teams to go out into the field to hone their skills by resolving spiritual phenomena that harmed people.
After all, these students were young talents who were going to shoulder the future of the exorcism industry, and at the same time, they were budding heroes who were going to save people from evil spirits, monsters, and other spiritual disasters.
Nevertheless, in every prestigious school, there were always going to be failures… about two weeks had passed since the case of a woman who runs away from boobs was resolved. During that time, our team failed most of the requests we took on and as a result, we have become the epitome of such failures.
"AAAAAAARGH."
It was an early afternoon at the beginning of the week after Golden Week.
Karasuma Aoi, Soya Misaki, and I–Furuya Haruhisa–were holding our heads in an empty classroom near the staff room. Soya’s beautiful face in particular was distorted and she let out a frustrated groan that sounded unbefitting of a girl. Even her trademark ribbon seemed to be wilting.
Even Karasuma, who was always energetically talking about women’s bodies, had a clouded expression on her face as she said, "My ambition is to rise in the world and become popular but…"
The reason why this was happening was because of a piece of paper on our desk.
Just a few minutes ago, I was summoned to the staff room and handed a warning letter in person.
The formal-looking document, which began with the words, "Soya Misaki, Furuya Haruhisa, and Karasuma Aoi–this is a warning to the trainee team composed of these three students," went on to say roughly the following:
"Your team’s mission success rate has been too low since the woman who runs away from boobs incident. If you three continue to fail any more jobs, your temporary licenses will be revoked by the end of this month."
"Even though we worked so hard to get our temporary licenses on our very first assessment! Almost no one ever does that! If we don’t do something, we’re going to go down in the school’s history as the team with the shortest time record for getting our temporary licenses revoked!"
Soya who had been looking down at the papers with a panicked expression suddenly stood up and banged the desk.
"I thought that with my temporary license, I was finally getting closer to finding clues on my curse! I was planning to keep this momentum going and get my permanent license too! Ah…! How did this happen?"
"It’s rather obvious isn’t it? It’s because you’ve been taking on all kinds of weird cases at random."
I was thinking about the plan that Soya had proposed about two weeks ago when we had just gotten our temporary licenses.
The reason why Soya and I were aiming for successful careers as exorcists in the first place was to lift the curses that had fallen upon us.
These weren’t ordinary curses.
They were the worst curses of all, the most disreputable, the most despicable.
Soya’s curse was named Demon Eyes.
It was an uncontrollable hellish ability that allowed its user to see all kinds of sexual information, including the fetishes and fantasies of any people its user saw, such as which body parts of the opposite sex a person looked at the most, how many people they had done it with, what porn they looked at…
As for me, what dwelled in my hands was known as climax exorcism.
It was a curse that should be called eternal disgrace since it could forcibly make any target, living or dead, climax when a pleasure point which appeared somewhere on their body was struck at, and as if it were just a bonus, also exorcised the target.
The seal my deceased foster father gave me–two bracelets with silver crosses on them–usually kept my abilities under control but the incomprehensible power to make even inorganic matter climax and the strange voice I had temporarily heard made me couldn’t help but feel that my curse was getting worse.
Furthermore, this curse couldn’t be broken even by the Twelve Heavenly Masters, the most powerful exorcists in the nation.
Soya’s family was one of the "Nine Old Families" that exerted tremendous influence on Japan’s exorcism industry and they were the main family line of "Soya the Shikigami". Despite having such a background, Soya couldn’t break her demon eyes curse or control it no matter what measures she took. As for my climax exorcism curse, even with the power of my foster father who was as powerful as the Twelve Heavenly Masters, a temporary seal was the most he could do.
Therefore, I had naturally resigned myself to the fact that I would be dealing with this curse for the rest of my life, however… Soya refused to give up. For a reason like not being able to fall in love due to her eyes, she rushed ahead and successfully teamed up with Karasuma and me after using (abusing) the power of her demon eyes.
Soya’s idea was that if she rose through the ranks as an exorcist, she would be able to access the confidential information managed by the Society and therefore, gain more information on her curse. It was an idiotic and crazy idea based on the theory that the Twelve Heavenly Masters were simply stupid and that if she got her hands on the information, she might be able to figure out how to break the curse herself.
So about two weeks ago, we obtained our "temporary licenses" as partially qualified exorcists and were able to obtain some information about the curses.
However, the only information we got was that the Demon Eyes were one of the lecherous relics of the Succubus King and that there were more lecherous relics in addition to the eyes. However, we had been able to gather no information on climax exorcism whatsoever, either because information about climax exorcism couldn’t be accessed with a temporary license or because information on it did not exist in the database in the first place.
To obtain more detailed information, Soya had vigorously declared, "I’m going to get a permanent license this time!" However, when the time came for us to take on requests, she came up with this "plan".
"Let’s prioritize taking on weird requests."
At that time, I thought, "What the hell?" and after asking her for details, she responded,
"We know now that there are other cursed things like my eyes and your hands, right? If we manage to find more of these kinds of things, we might be able to get the information we need to break our curses faster than if we just rose through the ranks. And if these things are anything like our curse, there will definitely be weird perverted stuff happening near them!"
Soya declared so confidently with a smug look on her face.
"So, let’s prioritize requests that involve weird and bizarre phenomena that seem like they could be related to things like that! Find out about the relics while also rising the ranks! It’s a plan that kills two birds with one stone!"
I was worried that since we were already known as the team of perverts, it might be a problem if even the requests we took on were perverted… however, carried along by Soya’s overflowing confidence, our team ended up taking on all kinds of jobs according to her plan…
"And the result of that is this."
I placed the report card which had been given to me along with the warning letter on the desk.
The recent requests we accepted and our results for each of them were neatly printed on the report card. Most of the requests were marked with red X’s. The only successful request was the one where we discovered that the reason why a Japanese doll grew pubic hair every night was a prank by some middle school students. That had been such a waste of time…
"It’s not particularly my plan’s fault that we keep failing our jobs!"
Confronted with the report card, Soya waved her hands in protest.
"For example, it was completely Aoi-chan’s fault that we failed the job involving the peeping wandering ghost incident the other day when the ghost escaped!"
"T-that couldn’t be helped! Since the ghost was a man, I couldn’t use my binding technique anyway! Since I had nothing to do, I thought it couldn’t hurt for me to use that time to peek into the girls’ bath!"
Pointed at by Soya, Karasuma began making incomprehensible excuses.
What the hell do you mean by it couldn’t be helped, pervert.
"Rather, isn’t there a problem with Furuya Haruhisa who mistook me, a living person, for the wandering ghost!? No matter how useless you are in any exorcist techniques other than climax exorcism, there has to be a limit to it right!?"
"No, well, that was also partially my fault but… no matter how stupid you are Karasuma, I didn’t expect you to be doing the exact same thing as the evil spirit when we were supposed to be working! Rather, instead of peeking you should just enter the baths normally! You’re a woman after all, aren’t you!?"
"The most appealing thing about peeping is the feeling that you’re doing something bad and the thrill that comes out of it. If I go into the baths normally, it would be no different from going to a nudist beach! There wouldn’t be any thrill at all! Idiot!"
You’re the idiot!
"Besides, as I said before, I’ll get wet if enter the baths together with other girls. That’s, you know, bad manners, isn’t it? Would you bathe in a public bathroom knowing that you would get an erection? You wouldn’t, would you?"
I felt like I was going to go crazy talking to this girl…
"Aoi-chan… looks like you still haven’t reflected enough, hmm?"
"Hii–!?"
Soya took an earpick from her pocket and cornered Karasuma against the wall.
"Mi, Miss Misaki…? I-it’s not good to take your anger out on others, okay? I think you were a little too impatient about getting your permanent license and only chose requests that were a bit too difficult for us. Although you can use a wide range of techniques, your output is still only on the same level as a D class student, after all. So I think it would better for us to take on requests that suit our team’s current leveeel–!?"
Soya softly inserted her earpick into Karasuma’s ear. Karasuma, who was weak towards being teased, immediately raised a strange voice and began to tremble. Soya seemed to be strengthening her demon eyes to grasp Karasuma’s weak points since the heart marks which floated in her eyes were beginning to penetrate through her colored contact lenses.
Not only was our team made of the dregs of dregs, we were dregs of dregs that violated public order and morals. Please forgive us. Ah, but well, it wasn’t like I had the right to act like I was any better.
"Uugh. Maybe the only reason why we were able to exorcise the woman who runs away from boob was because we happened to have good compatibility? At this rate, we’ll be back to square one. What do we do…"
Soya muttered mournfully as she continued to mercilessly give Karasuma her punishment.
And so, a little over two weeks passed since the incident with the woman who runs away from boobs.
There were no more major incidents after the woman who runs away from boobs and I didn’t get tangled into any trouble due to my climax exorcism getting revealed.
Although I was on the verge of having my temporary license revoked, the days around me continued to be rather peaceful.
The rumors that had been spreading around the school–that Furuya Haruhisa had used exorcism as an excuse to sexually harass a girl–were also calming down now that things were getting busier at the School for Exorcists.
Although it would be painful to lose my temporary license and get further away from figuring out how to break my curse, I was beginning to think that there was no need to rush if my days were going to continue like this.
But, well.
There was no way our surroundings could have continued being peaceful given the curses that possessed us.