Chapter 44: A Beautiful Woman Who Often Gets Lost in Thought
No matter how you looked at her, Aoyama appeared like a troubled youth. The shocked expression on her face was rare, but for a certain shameless Godslayer, it didn't mean anything useful.
So, the girl continued to be stunned, and Hikigaya took the chance to smack her around a bit.
Afterward, he tucked her under his arm, jumped off the tree, and landed right in front of the Mountain Spirit.
They say humans can scare each other to death, but apparently, so can ghosts.
After all, spirits have feelings too.
So the Mountain Spirit, who had been seriously searching for someone, got startled by the sudden appearance of two people in broad daylight and jumped back several steps.
Then, realizing what had happened, it got angry and tried to attack.
But Hikigaya wasn't in the mood to play anymore and kicked it away.
Not stopping there, he tossed the girl to the ground and went after the spirit, giving it a brutal beating.
When he finally stopped, the Mountain Spirit was playing dead...
God knows where it learned that trick—ghosts pretending to be dead just isn't convincing.
"Hey! Don't steal my shikigami!"
Behind him, the girl named Aoyama Keiko tried to stand up, seemingly dissatisfied.
To be fair, this girl was quite odd.
After getting spanked by a total stranger, she turned around and acted like nothing happened.
Either she had issues, or the one who raised her did...
Hikigaya had accomplished many feats with his smacking hand since coming to this world, but this one was by far the strangest.
"Who's stealing? I wouldn't want such a dumb thing even if you gave it to me."
Spitting disdainfully, Hikigaya tossed the Mountain Spirit between them on the ground and waved dismissively. "Take it, take it already—what the hell are you doing?!"
He had reason to complain.
Because the girl, showing no shame in accepting handouts, jumped up, stepped back a few paces, then slowly pulled out a talisman from her bosom.
With a loud shout of "Go!" she hurled the talisman at the Mountain Spirit.
This time she finally hit it. The spirit got sucked into the charm.
But…
"Why did you step back?" Hikigaya knew the question sounded dumb, but he had to ask.
"Typical uncultured brute." He wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but she had the aura of an honor student looking down on a slacker.
"This is the proper procedure for capturing a shikigami." The girl—rather, the new-style Onmyōji master Aoyama Keiko—replied seriously.
She then carefully picked up the charm like it was treasure and stored it away.
"There's no such procedure! You're just terrible at this," Hikigaya began to reflect.
She was amusing, but with that level of skill, it was a miracle she hadn't already been backlashed to death by a spirit.
He should've just chased the Mountain Spirit away himself.
"Forget it, I suggest you hand this shikigami over to your teacher. You really can't handle it."
He really planned to leave this time. The voice was getting closer—close enough for Aoyama Keiko to hear it too.
Hikigaya could now see a figure leaping through the forest.
It was a woman.
Voluptuous and beautiful, with facial features somewhat resembling Aoyama Keiko.
In short, she was a very alluring mature beauty.
Hikigaya figured she was most likely Keiko's mother.
More importantly, this woman saved him from forming a completely wrong judgment thanks to Keiko—namely, that all Kyoto exorcist swordsmen were useless clown teammates.
This woman looked reliable—not only because of the significant spiritual energy she emitted, but also because she came armed.
Not the pair on her chest—those were another kind of weapon entirely—but the real weapon in her hand: a long blade. It wasn't just any weapon either—only someone of real skill could wield something like that.
As a Godslayer, Hikigaya could sense the ominous aura of the blade from a distance.
It wasn't divine-grade like the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, but for a human weapon, it was extraordinary.
"Keiko." In a blink, the woman was by her daughter's side.
She anxiously examined her from head to toe, to the point where the usually brash Keiko became visibly uncomfortable.
Then the woman's expression changed completely.
In a voice totally unbefitting her earlier elegance, she let out a furious roar:
"You damn brat! Are you trying to die?! How dare you go after the shikigami that Yakusumi lost?! And you even stole so many of Mom's talismans—AH!?"
The beautiful swordswoman finally noticed all the paper scraps on the ground—indistinguishable from ones used by certain men in private moments.
She let out a cry of anguish, gasping dramatically as if she might faint.
Hikigaya almost gasped with her—not because of her cry, but because her "weapons" jolted violently when she did, almost seeming to grow in size.
Too overwhelming—it was terrifying.
But the woman didn't notice the nearby pervert gawking at her.
She was now wearing an expression of heartbreaking regret, clearly wanting to retrieve all those talismans, yet conflicted because they were all crumpled up like something found in a man's bedroom drawer.
Of course, that was just Hikigaya's malicious interpretation based on her reaching-and-retracting hand gestures.
Then finally, she noticed him.
"You are...?"
Oddly, the moment she saw Hikigaya, the beautiful woman seemed momentarily dazed.
What's going on?
But her trance only lasted a second. She quickly looked away and glanced between her daughter—now sulking—and the chaos around them, and understanding dawned on her.
"I see... Thank you, young man."
Tch, are they really mother and daughter?
Their intelligence levels seem worlds apart...
"You're welcome." Hikigaya nodded.
Even as a Godslayer, he was still a man, and beautiful views always lifted his mood.
"To tame a spirit at your age is impressive. Is that person over there your companion?"
She now radiated poise and elegance—her expression had already changed three times. Which, on second thought, did confirm they were mother and daughter.
"Young man, forgive my rudeness earlier. May I ask your name?"
"I'm Hikigaya Hachiman, from Chiba," he answered with a chuckle.
He didn't care whether she knew he was a Godslayer—if not now, she would eventually.
"Hikigaya..."
Okay, now she was dazed again.
This was happening way too often—it was like one of those overused "cool protagonist smirks" tropes.
Hikigaya never realized his name had this kind of effect. If only it worked that well on rebellious gods too.
"Ah, sorry. I just had an old acquaintance with the same surname..." She quickly regained composure again—clearly a pro at getting lost in thought. "Could you tell me your parents' names?"
"Oh, my father's Hikigaya Keitaro. Do you know him?"
Hikigaya kept his smirk up—it was the only thing he could do.
He'd never dealt with a professional daydreamer before.
Come to think of it, the anime never showed Hikigaya Hachiman's parents. Maybe it was the same in this world.
Keitaro... When Hikigaya first learned that was his dad's name in this world, he was stunned.
His dad was an archaeologist. His mom too.
Their greatest joy was roaming the world with shovels and brushes, and they were rarely home.
When they did return, they always brought back weird souvenirs.
Still, ever since becoming a Godslayer, Hikigaya had come to appreciate it.
Thanks to them, there were plenty of books at home to read.
Coming out of his nostalgic sarcasm, Hikigaya realized the woman was silent again.
He looked over—yep, she was dazed again!
P.S. Spoilers: The characters are from Love Hina, the mother is Aoyama Motoko. The father of Hikigaya is Hikigaya(Urashima) Keitaro and the mother Narusegawa Naru. Other important spoiler: Keiko's father is Hikigaya Keitaro, so she is the half-sister of Hachiman.
Chapter 45: Miura's Curse Is Bound to Come True
The son of a once-flirtatious father running into one of his dad's old flings?
Hikigaya never imagined himself caught up in such a scenario.
After all, that bespectacled old man who's always off abroad digging up artifacts from another world didn't look like he'd ever had a popular phase.
The world had truly gone mad—nowadays, you couldn't even judge whether someone was a normie just by their appearance. And worse yet, your dad could actually be one!
Hikigaya figured he had the right to make that judgment.
Because after that curvaceous, dazed professional beauty snapped out of her trance, she asked him three questions.
She worded them tactfully, but the gist was: —How's your dad? —How's your mom? —How's the relationship between your dad and mom these days?
Forget the first two, but that last question was absolutely terrible.
Even if it's just his "cheap old man," it was still too awkward to answer.
Especially when she asked that third question—her eyes were clearly filled with hope.
And so, after making up a random excuse to ditch the mother and daughter, Hikigaya wandered back toward the torii gate, sighing aloud.
"Normies are the worst..."
Shaking his head as he strolled through the forest, he drifted lazily along.
After the mountain spirit had been sealed away, the gloomy, oppressive energy in the woods had vanished too.
In Chinese folklore, there's a saying that humans and ghosts cannot coexist.
Though he didn't know the scientific basis, from Hikigaya's perspective as a godslayer, any spirit manifesting in ghostly form radiates a kind of energy that is deeply negative—unlike the energy of nature-based spirits.
Such spirits inevitably exert harmful effects on nearby humans—not only physically, but mentally as well.
Take Miura for example.
The moment she encountered a ghost, she is extremely scared. No matter how hard she tries, it was no use. Hikigaya solemnly declared that this was clearly the spirit's fault.
Once again, proof that spirits are always professionally aligned to the trouble they cause…
In this world, spirits and humans jointly create the realm of Myth.
As the dominant beings in that world, yokai, monsters, and gods may differ vastly from one another, but if you trace their origins back, they come from the same place.
As a godslayer, Hikigaya was becoming increasingly aware of this.
Take Japan for instance—it's the land of eight million gods, and also eight million yokai.
Even the Japanese themselves acknowledge this.
While "eight million" is a figurative number, from the time of Emperor Jimmu to the Meiji period, the number of distinct, well-known yokai—ones not even worshipped as gods—numbered in the thousands.
How many spirits were given form and identity through human naming, descending from the realm of Myth to walk the earth? The number is impossible to count.
Of course, even after breaking free from the Myth realm and entering the human world, most spirits remain undetectable by ordinary people.
But once humans acquired spiritual power, their interactions with spirits became much more intimate.
For example, according to Japanese belief, yokai are just "gods that failed to ascend."
Hikigaya thought that was a pretty accurate description.
But even if it was accurate, the fact that they kept scaring people was another matter entirely.
Hikigaya admitted his thoughts were jumping all over the place—just a moment ago he was roasting his old man for being a four-eyed normie, and now he was thinking about Miura's scared face.
But there was a reason for that.
He had just spotted the torii gate up ahead. And as the ancients said, "Objects stir thoughts of people."
From a distance, he could see his classmates gathered in a circle, chattering animatedly.
What the hell were they up to now?
Hikigaya wasn't too concerned—after all, Tamamo-no-Mae was still with them.
He quickened his pace, speeding across the not-so-short distance like the wind, and appeared beside the group.
Strangely enough, no one seemed to have noticed him.
And there was a smell in the air—one that was familiar, yet slightly different…
Curious, Hikigaya leaned in for a closer look.
Then he regretted seeing it.
But regret was pointless now, because the person inside had already spotted him.
"Hikigaya, you bastard! You were hiding nearby watching me make a fool of myself!"
There was only one person who would shout at Hikigaya in such an angry tone—Hiratsuka Shizuka.
However, she looked extremely disheveled right now.
Well, Yumiko Miura still hadn't escaped the fate of crying and hugging others when encountering ghosts. This time, though, it was Hiratsuka Shizuka's that took the hit.
Presumably, since she was a teacher, she didn't feel right standing around watching Miura in such a state, so she went over to comfort her.
Still, seeing her in such a sorry state was strangely satisfying.
Although he couldn't say it out loud, which was a bit of a shame.
"Ahem, no way, I just got here," Hikigaya grinned awkwardly with an obviously unconvincing expression, then walked over.
Alright, seeing up close—it really was tragic.
Let's not even talk about Hiratsuka. Miura didn't even dare lift her head to face anyone…
After thinking it over, Hikigaya did the only thing he felt he could do in the moment.
He gave Hiratsuka, who looked like she had just stepped in dog poop, a big thumbs up and said, "Sensei, you've worked hard!"
Unfortunately, his goodwill was completely lost on her. Hiratsuka looked furious.
"Cut the crap! What the hell just happened? Where's that person who was playing ghost? I'm going to teach them a lesson."
Sorry… but that was actually a real ghost…
Hikigaya curled his lips.
Although Hiratsuka had martial artist-level skills from that particular circle, it was a bit surprising she didn't realize what she was dealing with.
Then again, not too surprising.
After all, not every martial artist who mastered ki ends up dealing with gods or ghosts.
Even those who practice something unexplainable by science often still believe in science. Hiratsuka wasn't the first, and wouldn't be the last.
"That person? Already ran off. But what now?" Hikigaya looked around. The expressions of the others were a mix of embarrassment and sympathy—but mostly relief.
Hikigaya was sure that sigh of relief meant different things to different people. For someone like Iroha, who had never seen a ghost before, it must mean something else entirely.
"There are a lot of people on the way back. It won't be good if we get seen," Hayama suddenly said.
"Ha? You think we can still keep climbing the mountain like this?" Hiratsuka snapped at him, though her tone was far gentler than when talking to Hikigaya.
"How about we wait a bit and then go back together?" Iroha nodded like a little adult, clearly thinking "Wow, Hayama-senpai is so cool!"
Not bad, finally something that matches the original storyline.
"No, no need. I can go back by myself," Miura looked up. Her face was red, but her expression was firm. "If everyone's plans for the day are ruined because of me, I'd feel terrible."
"In that case, there is a solution," Hayama said as everyone turned to look at him. He smiled and continued, "Let's have Hachiman take Miura and Sensei back. Hachiman knows martial arts, so he'll be quick."
"That last part was unnecessary, but good idea," Hikigaya replied.
It wasn't that he just wanted to escape the awkwardness—he had caught onto something.
He remembered Tamamo-no-Mae telling him that god-slayers tend to attract unnatural things.
Maybe that's why his classmates always ran into ghosts and monsters when they were with him.
This time was the perfect chance to test that theory.
"Here, you guys take this one," he said, dragging the idle Tamamo-no-Mae over to Iroha, who was practically sparkling with excitement. "She just eats and sleeps all day. Make sure you give her some exercise."