My Scourge Wife can't be this Cute

"Onmyoji-dono, if you can perform the rites to guide my late husband's soul to rest, every last coin of this is yours."

The woman's voice drifted through the silent main hall, smooth as water flowing over stone, yet every word landed with a clarity and certainty that left no room for misinterpretation.

She placed a check onto the low wooden table between them. The motion was composed, measured, almost artful. And yet the soft rasp of paper sliding across lacquered wood rang out with unusual sharpness in the stillness of the old shrine.

Hikaru glanced down.

A single look, and his entire body nearly lurched upright.

Behind the familiar leading digits stretched a chain of zeros. A very long chain. Long enough to make any poor man's heart seize in his chest.

Outwardly, his expression did not change. He remained seated in the formal posture of an Onmyoji, kneeling properly on the wooden floor, both hands resting flat on his thighs, back straight, composure so unshakable it might as well have been carved from the same old timber that held up the shrine around him. Anyone watching would have thought not even a mountain of gold could rattle him.

Only Hikaru himself knew that inside his chest, a tidal wave was screaming.

'That much money... good grief, is this real?'

It was just a soul-guiding rite. Even if the deceased husband had been the chairman of some major conglomerate, throwing out a sum this absurd made no rational sense.

Something was wrong.

It had to be.

Four years in this line of work had taught Hikaru one very simple rule: the higher the price offered, the more dangerous whatever stood behind it.

Some clients paid out of fear.

Others paid out of desperation. But then there were those who offered grotesquely inflated sums precisely because the money was meant to bury something. To cover up a part of the truth they did not want examined too closely.

And Hikaru, after four years of living in this world, was no longer the kind of man who dove headfirst at any sight of money.

The shrine he called home sat on the outskirts of the city, old and solitary and faintly forlorn. The roof tiles had long since shifted to a weathered grey.

The thick wooden pillars bore the deep grooves of time, and in places the floorboards had worn thin and smooth beneath decades of quiet footsteps.

A summer breeze slid through the long corridor, carrying with it the smell of grass and old dust and the faint, layered ghost of incense accumulated over generations. Together they formed an atmosphere that only places of great age could produce.

Noon light spilled through the courtyard outside, pooling across the front steps before flooding inward in long, pale bars across the floor.

Everything was peaceful. If a stranger happened to pass by, they would likely glance at the shrine, see nothing remarkable, and move on.

But the woman seated across from Hikaru made the entire ordinary scene feel suddenly, inexplicably different.

She was tall, notably so even by Japonia's standards, and even seated, her presence carried no loss of weight or authority. Her figure was slender without being slight; there was a softness to her, a fullness in all the right measures, like a peony at the precise height of its bloom.

The kimono she wore was unmistakably fine, its fabric pressing close in a way that was modest in intent yet somehow made every natural line more visible rather than less.

The obi pulled her waist in neatly, and because of it, the curve of her hips below and the fullness of her chest above were framed all the more clearly within that quiet restraint.

Her face was gentle, mature. Not the kind of beauty that struck hard at first glance and then faded, but the kind that revealed itself slowly, pulling the eye back the longer one looked.

Her gaze was deep and warm, the colour of late afternoon sky just before sunset, her lashes long and curved, her lips soft and faintly arched as though a small smile lived there permanently just beneath the surface.

Her brown hair was gathered at the back of her neck, a few loose strands falling along her cheek, lending her beauty something natural and unguarded, and for that reason, something strangely difficult to read.

If he had to put it into words, Hikaru would have said her manner reminded him of floral tea. Nothing showy. Nothing that struck the eye at once. But the aftertaste was long. The longer one looked, the harder it became to stop.

This woman's name was Hashira.

Lady Hashira.

And she had come here in person, bringing with her a sum of money that would have sent any destitute Onmyoji dropping to his knees in gratitude without a second thought.

Unfortunately, Hikaru was not that kind of man.

He raised his eyes and met hers without wavering. "Hashira-san, a soul-guiding rite is something any major shrine in the city can perform. You could also seek out Onmyoji with far greater reputations than mine. There is no need to make the journey to a forgotten place like this, nor to offer a figure like this, simply to hire someone as unremarkable as me."

He paused briefly, glancing at the check before returning to her face. "A sum this large tends to mean the truth behind the request is anything but simple. If you want my help, I will need you to speak plainly."

Hashira did not answer immediately.

She simply looked at him.

Her gaze was warm by nature, yet for one very brief moment Hikaru had the sensation that beneath that still surface lay a layer of ice, cold enough to sting.

The gentleness remained intact, but somewhere underneath it, a sharpness had appeared that he could not quite account for. It was like being watched patiently, from the dark, by something that knew exactly when to move.

Then she smiled. A small smile, beautiful and contained. "Onmyoji Hikaru-sama."

Hikaru shook his head, his tone level and without concession. "We are not close enough for that, Hashira-san. My standing is also not high enough to receive a 'sama' from you. Onmyoji will do."

"And if you want this matter resolved completely, then tell me the truth. I will take your money, and I will do the work. But if what you tell me is only half the story, then I am afraid I cannot help you."

The air inside the hall went still.

Outside, the light was lovely. A bird called somewhere in the trees behind the shrine. Under the eave, wind chimes stirred and touched in the breeze, their notes thin and bright as drawn thread. Everything was as it should be, ordinary in every visible way.

But the silence between these two was like a flat lake surface hiding depths that did not end.

Hikaru did not press her.

He had met too many people who came seeking help over these four years. Some arrived trembling, barely holding themselves together, weeping the moment they saw him.

Others walked in with an air of entitlement, certain that money was sufficient to command anything. And some came through the shrine doors wearing expressions of complete innocence, when in truth they were the very reason the Wraith refused to depart.

So he had learned: when it came to matters of spirits and malice, Yin Energy and cursed things, the story almost never had only one side.

The person asking for help was almost always hiding something.

Sometimes out of fear.

Sometimes out of shame.

Sometimes because they themselves were the thread that had pulled everything into this shape.

Hashira continued to watch him, as though weighing something she had not yet decided to say. While he waited, Hikaru's thoughts drifted, the way they always did, back to the memories he carried without choosing to.

He did not belong to this world.

Four years ago, in another life, Hikaru had been a thirty-five-year-old man living on Earth. A stable job. A decent income. A reasonably comfortable apartment, a functional car, and, most importantly, a woman he had once believed with full certainty would become his wife.

That night, he had planned to propose.

The ring was ready.

The restaurant was booked.

He had rehearsed what he would say so many times the words had worn grooves in his thoughts.

What waited for him at the end of that evening was not a tearful yes, but a knife and betrayal. The woman he had loved most, together with the man she had been keeping secret from him, had killed him to take everything he owned.

The cold of blood leaving his body. The indifferent eyes of the woman who had once lain in his arms. He still remembered it with a clarity that surfaced sometimes in his sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, he was here.

A world that ran parallel to Earth.

A nation called Japonia.

A place that looked, on the surface, almost exactly like Japan: the architecture, the customs, the clothing, the forms of address people used with one another. But beneath that familiar exterior was something entirely different.

In this world, souls were real. Wraiths, malevolent entities, Yin Energy, curses, and supernatural phenomena were not stories told to pass the time. They were present dangers woven into daily life.

Because of that, the people who could confront them, Onmyoji, sorcerers, exorcist monks, ordained clergy, were recognized as legitimate professions with established standing in society.

When Hikaru's soul descended into this world, the body waiting for him was sixteen years old. No family. No money. No place to go.

His single stroke of fortune was that the owner of this old shrine had taken him in and allowed him to stay, earning his keep with small tasks and odd labor.

A greater stroke of fortune: he had something no one else possessed. A Merit System.

Each time he dealt with a supernatural event, guided a soul to rest, sealed a malevolent object, or dispelled Yin Energy causing harm to the living, he received Merit Points. Those points could be spent at the system's store to acquire items, learn techniques, or strengthen himself.

Through that singular advantage, within two years Hikaru had absorbed skills that would normally take an Onmyoji decades of dedicated study to approach.

After that he left the shrine, moved from place to place taking commissions, performing exorcisms, accumulating Merit Points, earning his living and sharpening himself. By now he had enough standing to return and maintain the old shrine on his own.

Of course, money was still short.

It was always short.

A nameless Onmyoji with a persistent habit of walking into cases harder than he needed to: how could such a man ever live comfortably?

So the check lying in front of him was genuinely, powerfully tempting.

And precisely because it was so tempting, Hikaru had to be that much more careful.

At last, Hashira exhaled softly, as though she had made up her mind. Her voice came slower now, quieter than before. "Lately, I have been seeing his spirit."