They drove back from the restaurant in silence, the truck's rattling engine and the rhythmic thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers the only sounds. Sae was staring at the notebook in her lap, her mind clearly replaying the implications of the Tengoku no Jigoku.
Akari pulled the truck over on the main street of the small town, just before the road that led back up to the Tsumagoi valley.
"Wait here," he said, cutting the engine. "I need to buy something."
"Buy something?" Sae looked up, confused. "Like... more salt? More... talismans?"
"Something like that." Akari hopped out into the drizzle. "Don't leave the truck."
He walked briskly down the street, past the noodle shop and the small post office, and ducked into a narrow store with a faded sign that showed a plastic model tank. It was a hobby and toy shop, smelling of plastic cement and dusty cardboard. Ten minutes later, he was back in the truck, a plain plastic bag in his hand.
He sat in the driver's seat, the truck still off, and looked at the bag.
"Okay," Akari projected inward, his hands gripping the steering wheel. "Do it."
The unseen presence of Izan, which had been resting passively above the truck, focused. A cold, immense pressure filled the small cab. A child's toy, Izan's voice echoed in his skull, layered with a dry, ancient amusement. How utterly appropriate for you, little fraud.
Akari squeezed his eyes shut. "Just... shut up and bless the damn thing. Or curse it. Whatever you do. Put your cosmic... juju... all over it. Make it... potent. Make it holy, make it unholy, I don't care. Just make it kill spiders."
There was a long pause. Sae was watching him, her face a mask of concern. "Akari-san? Are you... are you praying?"
He ignored her. The pressure in the cab intensified, making Akari's teeth ache.
This is a pathetic vessel, Izan stated. A hollow piece of plastic and cheap metal. But... the absurdity is... amusing.
A sensation like liquid nitrogen being poured directly into Akari's brain made him gasp. A wave of invisible, crackling power, cold and sharp as a razor, washed over the plastic bag in his lap. Then, as quickly as it came, the pressure was gone. Izan was just... floating again.
Akari was breathing heavily, a cold sweat on his brow. He tossed the bag onto the passenger-side floor. "It's done."
He started the truck.
Masamune met them at the door, his face a hollow mask of desperation. "Akari-san... did you... did you find something?"
"We did," Akari said, brushing past him. He set his backpack down by the front door. "Sae, wait in the main room. Get the... items... ready." He nodded toward the bag of useless rocks and incense.
Sae, understanding the cue, nodded and went to set up the "stage."
Akari turned to Masamune. The man flinched under his gaze.
"Masamune-san," Akari said, his voice flat and cold. "We have been operating under a false assumption."
"W-what assumption?"
"That your son, Takeru, is the one who needs saving."
Masamune's bloodshot eyes widened. "But... he's... you saw him..."
"Your son is the symptom," Akari said, stepping closer. "He is the... the rattling cage. But you, Masamune-san... you are the lock."
"I... I don't understand."
Akari sighed. This was the part he hated—the part where his bullshit theories had to sound real. "In both Shinto and Buddhism, there is a concept... a holy or unholy trinity. A connection. Musubi. The knot. A family is the strongest knot. Father. Mother. Child."
He pointed a finger at the man's chest. "She came to you. The Jorōgumo. She made herself the 'Mother.' You are the 'Father.' Your son... he is the 'Child.' He is the product of your connection."
"My... my connection..." Masamune whispered, a horrifying understanding dawning on his face. "The... the dream..."
"Exactly. The 'web of love' you told us about," Akari said, his voice laced with ice. "She never left you, Masamune-san. She severed her physical tie, but the spiritual one... the one she wove into your soul... that's still here. You are her anchor in this house. And through you... she anchors your son."
Masamune stumbled back, his hand clutching his heart. "No... no... I love my son..."
"I know you do," Akari said, his voice softening just a fraction. "That's why this is so effective. She is using your love, your life-force, to feed on him from a distance. As long as you are here, this house is her parlor. Takeru's soul... it's trapped in a 'heavenly hell' she wove, and you... you are the one holding the door open."
"My god... my god..." The man fell to his knees. "What... what do I have to do? Tell me! I'll do... I'll kill myself if I have to..."
"Don't be dramatic," Akari snapped. "You're no use to him dead. You're going to sit. And you're going to be very, very still. We're not exorcising your son. We're exorcising you. We are going to sever the thread."
He looked the man in the eye. "It will not be pleasant."
Night had fallen. The house was tomb-like, all shoji screens closed, all electric lights off. The main living room was lit by a dozen thick, white candles that cast flickering, monstrous shadows.
Masamune sat seiza in the center of the room, his face pale and slick with sweat. He was dressed in a simple white yukata. Around him, Akari had poured a perfect circle of table salt, "to contain what comes out."
Sae stood near the wall, her knuckles white as she gripped a gohei—a Shinto wand Akari had fashioned from a bamboo stick and some paper streamers.
"Your role is critical, Sae," Akari said, his voice a low, theatrical whisper. "You are the Watcher. You are the Guardian of this space. When I begin the chant, you must begin the purification. Wave the gohei." He demonstrated a slow, circular motion. "It... it purifies the spiritual air. It will keep you safe and keep him... contained. Do not stop. No matter what you see. No matter what you hear. Do you understand me?"
Sae nodded, her throat too tight to speak.
Akari nodded once. He knelt outside the salt circle, facing Masamune. He placed his "tools" around him—the polished river stones, the ofuda talismans, the compass. His backpack, containing the plastic bag, was near the shoji screen leading to the hallway. Close.
Akari lit a thick, cloying bundle of cheap incense. The smoke, acrid and heavy, billowed into the room, stinging their eyes.
He closed his own. He took a deep breath. The performance began.
"Namu... abokya... bei rosha nō..."
His voice was a low, guttural monotone. It wasn't a real sutra. It wasn't even a real language. He was reciting, from memory, the table of contents of the 'Sutra of the Inverted World,' mashing it together with lines from a kabuki play he'd been forced to watch on a school trip. But in the candle-lit, smoke-filled room, it sounded ancient. It sounded real.
"Sae, now!" he commanded.
Sae flinched and began waving the gohei, the paper streamers rustling with a dry, papery sound.
"Breathe it in, Masamune-san!" Akari ordered, as the man began to cough from the smoke. "Do not resist the purification! It reveals the poison! It agitates the nest!"
Masamune coughed, his body trembling.
Akari focused. 'Izan. Now. Tug the leash.'
There was no verbal reply. Only... a change.
The cold, detached presence of the eyeball, which had been floating unseen in the corner, acted. It didn't attack. It didn't reveal itself. It simply... reached out. It found the invisible, spiritual thread that bound Masamune to his predator... and it pulled.
Masamune screamed.
It was not a cough. It was a raw, agonizing shriek of tearing muscle. He clutched his chest, his back arching, his knuckles digging into the tatami.
"I... I FEEL IT!" he howled, his eyes rolling. "It's... it's pulling me! God, it... it hurts! It's in me!"
Sae gasped, her hand faltering.
"SAE! HOLD THE LINE!" Akari roared, his own heart hammering with a mix of fear and adrenaline. "IT'S WORKING! IT'S DETACHING!"
In the flickering candlelight, something new became visible. A faint, shimmering, ethereal thread, thin as silk but glowing with a sickening, greasy light, emerged from Masamune's chest. It stretched across the room, past the candles, and vanished into the darkest corner, where the shadows were absolute.
"I see it!" Akari shouted, playing his part to the hilt. "The anchor! The unholy thread! We have it!"
He pulled a small, ceremonial-looking (but completely blunt) knife from his robes. "I will sever the connection! I will cut the thread! By the eight million kami..."
He raised the knife, preparing to bring it down in a dramatic slice through the air.
"...Katsu!"
He never finished the motion.
Before the fake knife could fall, the glowing thread vibrated. It snapped taut, and the dark corner of the room imploded.
The shadows congealed, pulling inward, darkening, twisting. The temperature in the room plunged, and the candles guttered, their flames burning a sickly, pale blue.
With a sound like a thousand wet sheets tearing at once, she emerged.
She was not the beautiful woman from the dream.
The thing that unfolded from the darkness was a nightmare. Her lower body was the bloated, glistening-black abdomen of a spider the size of a carriage, perched on eight, needle-thin, chitinous legs that clicked as they met the tatami. Where the head should have been, a human torso rose up—the pale, marble-white skin of a woman, flawless and beautiful, but utterly cold. Her face was perfect, angelic, except for the six glittering black eyes that stared at them. Her mouth, a perfect red bow, smiled.
Her long, black hair, matted with filth and bits of... something... twitched as if alive.
She let out a high-Chittering sound that mixed with a woman's cruel, musical laughter.
"A... a... a..." Sae's voice died. She was paralyzed, her eyes wide with an annihilating terror. The gohei slipped from her nerveless fingers.
"SAE! THE WAND! HOLD THE LINE!" Akari bellowed, his voice cracking. The fake ritual, the script... it was gone. This was real.
"Such... a fraud," the Jorōgumo's voice echoed, seeming to come from every corner of the room at once. It was beautiful, silken, and dripping with contempt. "Such a... child. Did you think... pulling my thread... would scare me?"
She took a step, her spider-legs clicking on the mat, moving with horrifying, delicate precision. She looked at Masamune, who was frozen, his mind shattered by the sight.
"I came... to feed," she hissed. "He is mine. The boy... is mine."
Akari was no exorcist. He was no priest. He was a survivor.
In one fluid motion, he abandoned his "ritual." He kicked backward, scrambling on all fours, and dove for his backpack by the door.
The Jorōgumo laughed, a rich, throaty sound. "Running, little fraud? Yes. Run. I will enjoy the chase..."
"Not running!" Akari yelled, his voice tight. He ripped the backpack open and his hand closed around the cold, plastic shape. He tore it from the bag.
It was a Glock 18c. A replica. Black, plastic, and looking utterly pathetic in the face of the ancient, supernatural horror that dominated the room.
The Jorōgumo paused, her six eyes blinking, one after another. The laughter that came was one of pure, unrestrained mockery. "A... a toy? You... you bring a human toy... to fight me? A piece of... plastic?"
Akari's hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the gun, but his eyes were blazing. "All you damn monks and priests... so old-fashioned!"
He racked the slide. The clack-clack of the airsoft mechanism was loud in the sudden silence.
"Why chant sutras," he screamed, "when you can go CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG!"
He aimed and pulled the trigger.
The gun made a dull phut sound. A tiny, 6mm plastic BB shot out.
But a microsecond before it left the barrel, the "blessing" Izan had placed on the gun activated. The insignificant plastic pellet became a vessel. It was enveloped, saturated, filled with a quantum of Izan's cold, absolute, omnipotent power.
The BB, now a miniature, contained singularity of wrongness, crossed the room in an instant and struck the Jorōgumo's perfect white shoulder.
BOOMPH.
There was no blood. A chunk of her pale flesh and the black chitin beneath it simply... ceased to exist. It was obliterated, dissolved into a puff of foul-smelling, black dust.
The Jorōgumo SCREAMED.
It was not a laugh. It was a high, thin, disbelieving wail of pure agony and, more importantly, utter confusion.
"WHAT?!" she shrieked, her human face contorting. "WHAT... IS... THAT?!"
"It's not the bullets, you stupid bitch!" Akari shrieked back, his adrenaline-fueled voice cracking. He was grinning, a terrifying, manic rictus of fear. "It's the gun! My familiar demon blessed the whole damn thing!"
He fumbled for the tiny selector switch on the side of the Glock's slide, flipping it down to full-auto.
"And if you know anything about airsoft replicas," Akari screamed, gripping the toy pistol with both hands, "You'll know this G18c can shoot at TWELVE-HUNDRED ROUNDS PER MINUTE!"
He aimed at her face and held the trigger down.
The gun didn't roar. It shrieked. A high-pitched, plastic, mechanical BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! as the airsoft's cheap gearbox cycled at its full, ridiculous speed.
A solid, white-hot beam of pure, coherent destruction erupted from the barrel. It wasn't plastic pellets; it was a solid stream of Izan's power, channeled by the toy's full-auto mechanism.
The Jorōgumo raised her hands, her six eyes wide with terror.
Akari swept the beam up, from her spider-abdomen, across her human torso, and directly onto her beautiful, screaming face.
She didn't even have time to finish her scream. Her head, her six eyes, her laughing mouth—obliterated. Her torso was cut in two. The beam hit the ceiling, and the ancient wood and plaster vaporized.
Akari released the trigger. The magazine was empty.
Silence. Absolute, ringing silence.
The plastic gun in Akari's hand was smoking. The barrel had melted, drooping into a pathetic, ruined curl.
The Jorōgumo's severed lower half stood for a second, its eight legs quivering. Then, with a wet sigh, it collapsed, dissolving into a massive, spreading pile of black ash and foul-smelling ichor.
In the hallway, the intricate, shimmering spiderweb that had held the moth... instantly disintegrated into dust. The moth, freed, fluttered weakly and vanished.
Masamune, still in the salt circle, had fainted, slumping forward onto the tatami.
Sae was pressed flat against the far wall, her chest heaving, her eyes wide and blank, staring at the smoking pile of ash.
Akari dropped the melted, useless piece of plastic. His knees gave out. He fell onto his hands and knees, panting, the smell of ozone and burnt spider filling his lungs.
And then... a new sound.
It came from down the hall. From Takeru's room.
A small, weak, confused... but completely human sound.
A child. Crying for its father.
The next morning, the sun streamed into the house. The shoji screens were all open. The air was clear and crisp, and the smell of ash was gone.
In Takeru's room, the boy was sitting up, wrapped in a thick blanket. He was thin, pale as paper, but his eyes were clear. They were his eyes. He was clutching his father's hand, who sat beside the futon, his face a roadmap of exhaustion and weeping, grateful relief.
Sae knelt by the futon. The terror from the night before was gone, replaced by a gentle, tired warmth.
"You were very, very brave, Takeru-kun," she said softly. She held out her hand. In it was a single, brightly colored lollipop she'd bought at the toy store. "You deserve a treat."
The boy, Takeru, looked at his father, who nodded, smiling through his tears. The boy shyly took the lollipop, his small, thin fingers closing around the stick.
An hour later, Akari and Sae stood at the genkan, putting on their shoes. Masamune was bowing, his forehead nearly touching the floor.
"Akari-san... Sae-san... there are no words," he wept. "My son... my son... how can I... the money... it's not... it's nothing compared to what you've..."
Akari, back in his black coat, just shrugged, looking utterly exhausted. "The bill stands," he said gruffly. "The fee is the fee." He looked at the man, his gaze hard. "Just... maybe... don't go picking up any more strange women in your dreams."
Masamune nodded, speechless.
Akari and Sae walked out into the bright, peaceful morning, the perfect village of Tsumagoi already feeling like a distant, impossible dream. They got in the truck, the silence filling the cab.
Akari started the engine, the rusty rumble breaking the quiet. He glanced at Sae. She was staring at her hands in her lap, the hands that had, for a moment, held a sacred gohei in a real exorcism.
"You did good, Sae," Akari said, his voice quiet. "You... you held the line."
Sae just nodded, not looking up. She had seen it all now. The fake exorcism, and the horrifying, plastic-and-divinity reality that lurked just beneath her boss's fraudulent, exhausted, and terrifying world.
She was too grateful and exhausted to give a damn though