Editing Internet Shrine Maiden Tsugumi-chan:Volume1 Chapter6 (section)

===Part 5===

The trio boarded public rental aquamobiles and drove full speed down the sea waterway.

The fact that traffic congestion caused differences in the appearance times meant the detective was using a car.

Would they make it in time?

New Sea City was made from dozens of megafloats.

The residential float in question was an above average one. It wasn’t a float a student like the online shrine maiden would have reason to visit often.

Several high-rise apartments with 20 or more floors stood in a row.

The farthest to the right was the Apartment of Many Deaths.

They all looked exactly the same, but it was obvious at a glance which one it was. That one clearly had more ''weight'' to it.

The design and construction were identical, but for whatever reason thieves only broke into one of them. People would jump from its roof. And not just the residents who lived within the auto-locking entrance. There were people who came from afar to curl up on the emergency stairs and die of old age.

Something like a giant jungle gym made of steel beams was located next door. The density of beams changed in places and meandered in S-shapes in other places, giving it too distorted a look to be seen as an actual jungle gym.

“My aquamobile just jerked. Is the water jet having trouble?”

“Or machines are starting to malfunction.”

They couldn’t bring the aquamobiles on land, so they parked them at a nearby docking zone and set foot on the ground.

“Those beams are really close together,” said the gyaru sister. “Are they going to put something heavy on there?”

“Some kind of pathway weaves through it, so they may be building an aquarium.”

While the sisters discussed that, Tsumugi tried to check her map app and found her trifold phone had frozen.

A faint shrill sound rang in her ear.

A Malign Spirit’s Groan.

(It isn’t a conference room jammer or damage to the antennas this time.)

“He’s here.”

“You!!”

Someone called out to her.

…It was the boy she had saved from the Forbidden Hands.

“That detective guy was here. Mom said he was here to help that girl!”

Based on what the boy said, he and his parents hadn’t laid a hand on the Threat Scapegoat. They even felt shame that they had known her pain and not done anything about it all this time.

Tsumugi was now even more convinced she needed to stop Hisame Kouga.

His methods were wrong.

“I’ve made up my mind. If that detective guy can help her, than I can hide her at our place!”

“Yes, but you won’t have to. …We will settle this before it’s too late,” said Tsumugi, looking up.

Someone stood at the top of the steel beams. A shadow in the moonlight.

Why was he there?

Was the apartment’s auto-lock too much for him? So he was planning to break in through a window higher up? When Tsumugi came here before, she had managed to sneak in fairly easily (thanks to the Groan’s effects).

(I can find out his plan later. For now, I just need to stop him! Besides, he might not be acting entirely logically at the moment!!)

That was a construction site, so it was surrounded by metal walls.

The online shrine maiden and the other two girls left the boy for now. It was time to get started.

“H-how do we get in? Damn, there’s annoying barbed wire at the top, but we might be able to climb over if there’s a bump in the wall…”

“Move, Onee-chan.”

Yuhi carried over a folded ladder that must have been somewhere around the construction site. She fully extended it and leaned it diagonally against the wall. The top pushed down the barbed wire, eliminating that problem.

“Did you learn this at the TV station too?” asked the exasperated online shrine maiden.

“Time saves and shortcuts are lifesavers at shooting locations.”

The trio climbed over and dropped down on the other side.

The figure was up top. Tsumugi kept her voice low.

“Be careful.”

“R-right.”

“We’re up against a human this time, not a dead Malign Spirit. So he’s going to be more clever.”

The online shrine maiden took the lead up the steep scaffolding stairs.

And as soon as she did, they were suddenly split up.

“Whoa!”

Hearing a shout and a metallic crash behind her, Tsumugi spun around.

The stairs ended partway down.

A steel beam had fallen from above to crush and pierce the stairs made of thin metal panels, leaving no way for the sisters to follow the online shrine maiden.

“Shrine Maiden-san!”

“Don’t try to clear it with a running jump! This was no accident! You’d be in serious danger if he predicted that move!!”

Tsumugi felt the need to quickly stop them because she could imagine the gyaru sister actually trying it.

The stairs groaned, threatening to completely collapse.

But as frightening as it was to have the metal stairs torn through, another risk occurred to the online shrine maiden. Each steel beams weighed more than a ton. ''How exactly'' had the figure above dropped one of them? An ordinary human wouldn’t be able to lift one. Even if they shoved on it with their feet, they wouldn’t be able to budge it…

The mysterious Malign Spirit didn’t scare her.

It was the familiar person doing things that shouldn’t be humanly possible that scared her.

(It doesn’t look like this is just a trick or an empty threat.)

“What do we do!?” shouted the gyaru sister from the other side of the gap.

“I can reach him, so I’ll just have to settle this myself.”

Only the online shrine maiden remained on the part of the stars above the break.

“I will settle this before it’s too late.”

She continued up and up and up to reach the equivalent of the seventh floor.

So she could reach the same world as him.

“Detective…”

“Didn’t you realize this would happen if you pursued me?”

His voice was icy.

It was Hisame Kouga.

She realized this was her first time ever facing him as an enemy.

“The professional thing to do would have been to come alone. Then I wouldn’t have had to do that.”

She restrained her heart as it threatened to be overwhelmed.

The online shrine maiden lit a bundle of incense sticks with the oil lighter and waved them.

The detective didn’t bat an eye.

He must not have felt a need to hide it anymore.



With a “vrum!!!!”, space itself distorted and a woman nearly 250cm tall appeared next to him.



She had long black hair and pale skin.

“Po.”

Her hands were unnaturally long and skinny.

“…………Po…………….po…………………………”

She wore a long white dress and a large hat.

“……………………………………Po po po………po.”

Her head was lowered, but a pair of eyeballs glared out from below the brim of the hat.

“Po po po po <span style="font-size:125%">po</span> po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po <span style="font-size:125%">po po po po po po po </span> po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po <span style="font-size:125%">po po po po</span> po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po po <span style="font-size:125%">po po po po</span> po po po po po po po po po po <span style="font-size:125%">po</span> po po po po po po <span style="font-size:125%">po po po po po po po po po po</span>.”

A Malign Spirit.

Hasshaku-sama.

“So it really is her…”

“You didn’t actually think it was all an act, did you?”

When Hasshaku-sama took a liking to a child, she would capture and kill the child. The distance between them was irrelevant.

Yes, she would capture them. Possess them. Which meant someone could get close to her as long as they accepted the considerable risk.

''Crawl, crawl, crawl, crawl, crawl.

There was a darkness. The detective’s entire right arm was bound by pitch black hair. That was something even more unclean than the hair clogging the bath drain. His palm was covered and stained so badly no sign of its original color remained. Dragging him toward a distorted and broken soul different again from simple death. His fingers all looked different lengths with the black hair tangled around them.

They were twenty meters from the ground, at a height of more than seven floors.

The straitlaced sister who frequently visited the TV studio might have been able to expand the scaffolding using wires and metal panels lying around, but she wasn’t up here.

Falling from here would mean death. Tsumugi had no choice but to fight up here with only the thin steel beams for footing.

“I will save that girl, even if it means relying on a Malign Spirit. As long as it lets me ensure no one ever calls her the Threat Scapegoat again.”

“So what exactly are you going to do? Slaughter everyone in the apartment? You’re letting Hasshaku-sama influence you. Although you probably could easily accomplish that using the Malign Spirit’s power.”

Hisame Kouga didn’t respond.

He never strayed for his own sake.

That was the kind of person he was.

He had been pursuing a case with his own life on the line, but he had taken an unnecessary detour to give Yahirodono Tsumugi a home after finding her staring blankly at the ashen remnants of the shrine.

(I get it.)

So he had reached out a hand to the Threat Scapegoat in the same way.

Without hesitation or thought to the burden it would place on him.

(I do get it…)

He knew exactly what Malign Spirits were.

No matter who you were or how young you were, a soul that had reached that point was beyond saving.

But.

That was why.

He would do everything he could to save a life ''before it reached that point.

He understood he couldn’t let that child die while carrying so much resentment in her heart and he understood saying “I did my best” wasn’t enough here.

(But you can’t give yourself over to a Malign Spirit to do it, detective!!!)

Tsumugi could no longer rely on the gyaru sister or the straitlaced sister.

She would have to settle this on her own.

The two who had worked together for so long were finally glaring sharply at each other.

It was one against one.



Online Shrine Maiden Yahirodono Tsumugi and Detective Hisame Kouga.

The time had come for them to battle.