"The clerk told me that most stores only sell hair spray these days — hair cream is basically extinct."
"So what do we do?"
"We've been out forever. We should head home."
"Come on, just a little longer."
"We walked all this way just to find out what hair cream was. Now we know. That's enough."
"But I still think having the real thing would be way more useful than just knowing the word."
The girls' chatter drifted into his ears. Amamiya Rin took a bite of his sandwich and barely registered it at first.
But that phrase — having the real thing is more useful than just knowing the word — made his chewing slow.
That was an odd conversation.
In his previous life, he would never have taken children's babbling seriously. But in a world where sinister curses lurked around every corner, who could say whether some dark script wasn't already in motion? Assuming kids had some kind of immunity was a rookie mistake.
He took a sip of strawberry milk, swallowed the last of his sandwich, and cut across the side street toward the little group of girls.
"Hey there. Are you girls looking for hair cream? What do you need it for?"
Amamiya Rin asked in a casual, offhand tone.
The girls turned to look at him, a flicker of wariness in their eyes — until they noticed the cane.
"Our teacher told us to."
The girl who had gone into the Convenience store answered.
"Your teacher?"
"It drives monsters away!"
Another girl, her hair done up in pigtails, chimed in.
"Monsters?"
"There's this weird woman! She's always hanging around outside our school, and one of our classmates got attacked!"
"A weird woman?"
"She wears a big coat and wraps a scarf around her face, and she runs faster than a car!"
"She's definitely a monster! Teacher taught us a spell to scare her off — you just have to shout 'hair cream' at her and she'll run away!"
...
The girls all talked over each other, and Amamiya Rin pieced together the full picture fairly quickly.
Recently, in the Setagaya area, a mysterious woman had been prowling the streets every evening into the night. Word was that several children had been attacked, though none had been seriously hurt.
The girls were convinced she was a monster. Their teacher had told them that if they were ever frightened by a monster, he happened to know a special charm to banish it — the word was: hair cream.
"Wearing a heavy coat, face hidden by a scarf, attacks children but never actually kills anyone…"
Amamiya Rin turned it over in his mind.
Could the strange woman the girls were describing be the skin-shedding mother from The Flesh-Colored Horror?
That woman wandered around every night in her overcoat like some deranged exhibitionist, accosting passersby and tearing it open to bare herself completely. If the person she ambushed happened to be a monk practicing the White Skeleton Visualization, no harm done. But for any ordinary person who mistook it for a lucky encounter — one moment a seductive stranger, the next, a figure stripped of skin, nothing but raw red muscle — well. The shock alone might put a man out of commission for life.
"I'm not sure where you'd find hair cream these days," Amamiya Rin said, snapping back to the present. He looked at the girls, and his expression grew serious. "But if you're really afraid of that strange woman, the last thing you should be doing is wandering around out here. Going straight home after school beats any charm in the world."
The dusk had deepened around them. Street lamps flickered on one by one, casting long shadows across the pavement. The streets in the distance had already sunk into a heavy, murky dark.
At this hour, even without any cursed urban legends, it was no time for children to be out roaming.
The girls shrank a little under the weight of Amamiya Rin's stern tone, exchanging glances.
"Fine, mister."
They answered with obvious reluctance, then shuffled off together in a grumbling cluster.
Amamiya Rin watched until their silhouettes disappeared around the corner of the alley. He finished the last of his sandwich in a few quick bites and drained the strawberry milk, then turned and continued along the roadside toward the address Teacher Takagi had given him.
The sky grew darker by the minute. The glow of the street lamps looked thin and strained against the thickening night. Before long, Amamiya Rin stopped in front of a detached single-family house.
The garden was planted with flowers and kept in tidy, careful order.
He pressed the doorbell.
A moment passed. The door opened.
A woman in her mid-twenties appeared in the doorway — long hair falling loose over her shoulders, face pale, a quiet melancholy settled between her brows. She wasn't in Kawakami Tomie's league, but she was a beauty nonetheless.
"Hello? Can I help you?"
The woman looked at the unfamiliar man outside with mild confusion.
"There's something I'd like to ask you about. Would it be all right if I came in?"
Amamiya Rin studied the woman's face and bearing carefully as he asked with courteous directness.
The woman's confusion deepened. A stranger showing up unannounced and asking to come inside — she naturally had no intention of agreeing to that.
"Recently, there have been a series of attacks in this neighborhood. According to witnesses, the attacker is a woman in a heavy coat who keeps herself completely covered."
Seeing that she had no intention of inviting him in, Amamiya Rin added that.
At those words, the woman went rigid. The look she turned on Amamiya Rin was shot through with startled, wavering uncertainty.
"May I come in now?"
Amamiya Rin's gaze sharpened.
He hadn't been entirely sure whether the address Teacher Takagi had passed along was genuine — but this woman's reaction told him all he needed to know. He was in the right place.
"I — I don't know what you're talking about."
The woman took a step back, one hand braced against the door as though ready to shut it in his face. Every inch of her radiated a lack of conviction.
"Kawabe-san," Amamiya Rin said, glancing at the name on the doorplate and getting straight to the point. "I don't imagine you'd want anyone to find out that the strange woman who's been attacking people lately has something to do with the Kawabe household."
"Ah — !"
Kawabe Mayo flinched as though she'd been struck, and a strangled, desperate sound escaped her lips.
"Please — don't! I — I'll do anything you want!"
"Wait."
The corner of Amamiya Rin's eye twitched. The words Kawabe Mayo had just said, paired with the look of pitiful desperation on her face, had produced an effect that was, to put it plainly, deeply inconvenient.
"Don't make that face."
Amamiya Rin let out a quiet sigh. His manner shifted — becoming earnest and grave, the air around him settling into something measured and sober.
"I only want to understand certain things about the Kawabe family that aren't fit for public knowledge. That's not exactly a conversation for the doorstep, is it?"
Kawabe Mayo looked pained, but she stepped forward, unlatched the iron gate of the garden, and led Amamiya Rin inside.
Once in the living room, Amamiya Rin set his cane to one side and settled onto the sofa. He glanced around — and spotted a small bald boy lurking in the corridor beyond, only his head poking out, watching them with quiet, furtive eyes.
The child's skin was mottled with uneven patches, as though he suffered from some skin condition.
Amamiya Rin knew better. It wasn't a disease. Those were the marks left by something viscous — like glue — being repeatedly applied and then torn away.
Kawabe Mayo poured him a cup of barley tea, then sat down across from him, hands resting on her knees, fingers curled slightly inward, her expression still carrying traces of anxiety.
"Please don't be nervous. I mean you no harm. As far as I know, Mrs. Kawabe has been sourcing all manner of unusual materials and attempting to replicate an alchemy formula left behind by her late husband. Am I right?"
Amamiya Rin lifted the teacup but made no move to drink from it. He looked directly at Kawabe Mayo and came straight to the point.
____
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🔥 New history: Oshi No Ko: Co-starring with Kana Arima
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