My Scourge Wife can't be this Cute

Chapter 3: Resentful energy

Hashira studied him with care. Something in his expression must have shifted, because she leaned forward almost imperceptibly. "Onmyoji, what do you think?"

Hikaru did not answer immediately. He reached for the teacup resting beside him and took a small sip. The tea had long since gone cold, thin and faintly bitter, but the gesture bought him a few seconds to arrange his thoughts.

Don't disturb the snake in the grass.

Not yet.

He set the cup down, his voice unhurried, as though he were simply discussing a routine procedure. "First, I need to visit your current residence and examine it in person. A secondhand account is not enough. I have to see the location where it appears, check for any residual energy traces, and determine whether any object has been marked by Yin Energy. If conditions are favorable, I can begin the process tonight."

The moment he finished speaking, he felt the shadow behind Hashira shift.

Not by much.

But enough to drop the temperature in the air by several degrees.

Hashira seemed not to notice. She exhaled slowly, the way someone does when a weight has been lifted from their shoulders. "That would be a relief. My car is waiting outside. If you agree, we can leave at once."

"That works." Hikaru said.

Hashira looked at him, her deep gaze searching for something she had not yet found. "You are far calmer than anyone else I have brought in."

Hikaru gave a mild smile. "In this line of work, if everything showed on your face, you generally did not last very long."

Hashira laughed, softly. The sound was lovely, perfectly modulated, but inside the quiet of the old shrine's main hall it felt faintly out of place, like something too refined set down somewhere it was never meant to belong.

Then the wind moved through the courtyard.

The chimes under the eave stirred and rang.

And the grinding sound came again.

KETCH!

Sharper than before. No longer like teeth meeting in the dark. Now it was like fingernails dragging hard across the lid of a sealed coffin.

Hikaru's back stiffened slightly, but he did not turn his head.

A glance from the corner of his eye was enough.

The shadow behind Hashira had leaned closer. Much closer. The warped mass where its face should have been was nearly pressing against her hair. The Yin Energy coiling around its body churned with new violence, a soundless black fire burning through the surrounding air.

The split where its mouth should have been widened slowly.

"Hashira..."

"You... liar..."

"I will... kill you..."

Each word arrived trailing cold, a thin layer of frost sliding across the skin. A freezing current swept through the hall. The talismans hanging in the corners of the room trembled. The incense burner on the table flickered, and the small flame inside shrank down almost to nothing.

Hikaru understood: the thing was running out of patience.

If they stayed much longer, its Resentful Energy could erupt without warning.

At that precise moment, Hashira tilted her head and looked at him with faint suspicion. "Onmyoji... what have you been looking at?"

The question landed, and the air inside the hall seemed to solidify.

One beat.

Two.

Three.

Hikaru held her gaze. And from directly behind her, the black shadow slowly raised what served as its head.

It had no eyes. But he could feel, without any doubt, that it was smiling.

A crooked, vicious smile, as though the darkness itself had been torn open to reveal a row of invisible teeth underneath. It knew. It knew that he could no longer pretend not to see it.

Hikaru's right hand slid quietly into his wide sleeve. His fingertips found a talisman folded and ready.

Outside, sunlight still blazed across the courtyard.

But behind Hashira's back, the darkness had thickened to the point where it looked as though it might begin to drip onto the floor.

Hikaru looked at her. His voice came out steady, almost gentle, as though he were answering a pleasantry. "I was thinking about your husband."

He paused for exactly one beat.

His gaze moved past her shoulder and found the shadow standing behind her directly.

"It seems he has no interest in being guided to rest."

Hashira's pupils contracted slightly.

At the same moment, the black shadow behind her wrenched its mouth wide open, and a piercing shriek detonated through the air.

Every wind chime under the eave exploded into frantic motion. Wind from the courtyard slammed through the open hall. The talismans hanging at each corner thrashed violently as though something unseen was trying to tear them free.

And the flame inside the incense burner before Hikaru...

Went out.

The moment it died, the entire main hall sank into a silence so unnatural it made breathing feel like effort.

No more wind chimes.

No more leaves rustling in the courtyard.

Even the sunlight falling across the wooden steps outside seemed colder, as though the Yin Energy that had just erupted had pulled warmth from the very air.

Hikaru did not move. His hand inside his sleeve rested against the talisman. His eyes stayed fixed on the space behind Hashira's back.

The shadow still stood there, mouth stretched open, Resentful Energy boiling upward in dark coils. But it did not lunge. After that piercing cry, it only stared at him. More precisely, it was memorizing him.

Hikaru could feel that with complete clarity.

An Onmyoji who could see Wraiths was, to entities like this, no different from a lamp lit in the middle of a moonless night. And a thing carrying this much resentment, substantial enough to manifest in broad daylight, making note of him was not something he could afford to treat as anything less than a direct threat.

Hashira had not turned around.

She likely had not heard the shriek, and probably did not know the flame in the incense burner had gone out. But watching Hikaru's expression settle into something heavier, the easy curve at the corner of her mouth faded.

"Onmyoji. Is something wrong?"

Hikaru did not answer immediately.

He kept his eyes on the shadow for one more beat.

Then another.

At last, as though it had recognized this was not the right moment, the black shadow behind Hashira began to dim. The Yin Energy still clung around it, not yet fully dispersed, but the dark form slowly twisted, contracted, and bled piece by piece into the sunlight behind her, like a drop of ink thrown into an ocean of light.

Within a few short breaths, it was gone, leaving behind a stretch of space so ordinary it was almost suspicious.

But Hikaru knew exactly what that disappearance meant.

It was not leaving.

It was retreating into the dark.

And before it faded, it had left him with a sensation like cold needles pressed directly into the base of his skull. That feeling carried one meaning only: it had committed him to memory.

Hashira frowned slightly.

"What were you looking at?"

Hikaru withdrew his gaze. His voice came out without a trace of disturbance.

"I was thinking that your husband genuinely has no desire to be properly guided to rest. He is not simply following you. He wants to kill you."

This time, despite her efforts to hold her composure, Hashira's pupils drew in just slightly. The hands resting on her thighs tightened a fraction.

"Then will you take the case?"

Hikaru looked at her.

One incense stick ago, he still had the option to refuse.

The case was clearly not clean. Thirty million sounded beautiful, but the stench of complications behind it was stronger still. He had every right to pass it along to another Onmyoji, or at minimum buy himself more time to investigate.

But that was before.

The moment the Wraith recognized he could see it, every available choice had changed. A creature like that would not leave him alone simply because he declined the commission. On the contrary, if he turned his back, the first thing it would likely do after tearing through Hashira was come back for him.

Something carrying this level of killing intent alongside this degree of warped awareness was not the kind of entity that stopped at a single target.

Hikaru cursed inwardly.

'Thirty million, and it was never going to come easy. But it doesn't matter anymore. Whether I take the job or not, I'm already in this trouble.'

"I'll take it." He said simply.

Hashira looked at him. The deep, still quality of her gaze shifted just slightly, like the surface of a late-autumn lake touched by wind. Then she smiled, slowly. The smile was as composed and gentle as ever, only this time it carried with it something faint underneath: relief.

She withdrew a business card and a handwritten note from her sleeve and set them on the table in front of him.

"This is the address of the villa where I am currently staying. I will return ahead of you to make preparations. When you arrive, my people will bring you inside."

Hikaru took the slip of paper, skimmed it, and folded it away carefully.

Hashira rose to her feet. The bodyguards in black outside seemed to receive some silent signal and moved at once toward the main hall's entrance.

At the threshold, she paused. She turned her head and looked at him, one corner of her full lips curving into something caught between amusement and a quiet test.

"Onmyoji-sama. Don't disappoint me."

Then she was truly gone.

The heavy footsteps of her bodyguards crossed the wooden floor and receded into silence.

Only when the last sound had fully disappeared did Hikaru let out a long, slow breath. He pressed two fingers to the center of his brow, feeling the dull ache already settling in behind his eyes.

"Thirty million..." he muttered, and then recalled the shadow, and the corner of his mouth pulled tight. "Generous. And every coin of it earned."

If it had been a routine soul-guiding commission, he would not be nursing a headache like this. But what he had just witnessed, in the middle of the day, with sunlight blazing across the courtyard outside, the Yin Energy on that thing had not weakened in the slightest.

That alone was not normal.

And on top of that, the Wraith had kept its attention fixed entirely on Hashira from start to finish. Every word that came from its ruined mouth had been aimed at her.

Liar.

Kill.

Two words. That was all. And they were more than enough to tell him that whatever Hashira had recounted just now was not the complete truth.

Hikaru stood, intending to return to his room and prepare his talismans and ritual implements. His steps stopped.

At the far end of the corridor leading to the rear courtyard, beneath the canopy of an ancient peach tree, someone was reclining in a rocking chair.

Sunlight filtered through the branches and fell across her, laying a layer of soft, diffused light over the white of her clothing like a veil of quiet radiance.

She was extraordinarily beautiful.

Tall and slender, her frame called to mind a white plum branch reaching upward through the cold of winter: delicate in appearance, with nothing fragile in substance. The gentle curves of her figure were held in the clean lines of a white Miko robe, formal and serene, yet radiating a quality of allure that was impossible to set aside.

Her skin was white as porcelain. Where the collar of her robe fell open at the neck, a stretch of smooth skin was visible, and that small exposure made her cool and untouchable beauty somehow more captivating, not less.

Her long white hair was tied up high, with a few loose strands falling along her cheek, catching the sun like threads of silver mist. Her features were refined and tranquil, her eyes closed, long lashes trembling faintly with each breath, her pale lips resting slightly parted. She looked like someone who had drifted into a perfectly peaceful sleep beneath the shelter of an old peach tree.

Beautiful.

Genuinely, inescapably beautiful.

Even after having seen her any number of times before, Hikaru still went briefly still.

That was his master.

Miyuki.

"Hikaru..."

A gentle voice drifted through the air, soft as a silver bell touching the surface of still water.