WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 67: Kyoto Night Parade of One Hundred Demons

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My family had never gone on an overseas trip.

It wasn't that we had no interest in it. My parents had always strongly opposed it.

"Travel abroad? If you want to go, save your own money and go. Dad doesn't have any."

"There are lots of nice places in Korea. Want to go to Jeju during break?"

My family wasn't that poor.

We were pretty average, really, but for some reason there was always a weirdly negative attitude toward overseas travel.

When I was in college, I even said I was going abroad with money I'd made from part-time jobs, and all of a sudden my parents had urgent debt. They asked to borrow it and said they'd pay me back later.

Back then I just thought I had rotten luck and resented it, but now that I think about it...

"Uh, mm..."

I had been asleep, drooling all over myself, when the sound of the plane landing startled me awake. I looked around in a daze.

The heavy vibrations were completely different from the passenger plane I'd taken to Jeju.

A low hum softly rattled my eardrums, traveled up through the floor, and reached all the way to my toes.

Gray fireproof panels, exposed wiring, and structural frames stretching across the ceiling gave the place a rough, utilitarian feel. Folding canvas seats ran down both sides, and the seat belts didn't just hold people in place, they practically tied us up.

Right.

We were currently in the cargo hold of a military transport plane.

"Pastor, we've arrived."

A soldier. More precisely, someone from a special forces unit assigned to the Mystic Association, apparently.

Pastor Park nodded at the soldier's words.

"Then should we get off too?"

"Yes, Pastor. I'll get the luggage."

"Uh, yes... y-yeah..."

Pastor Go moved quickly.

I bobbed my head and looked over at the military cargo box in the hold.

I'd put Gari and Eight-Foot Sister in there so they wouldn't go floating around. Hope they were okay on the way here.

"Are you two okay? That felt like a pretty rough ride."

Claaack...

【Devour...】

Yeah, guess it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.

I had at least been sitting in a seat, but even then I came away with a new appreciation for how passenger-friendly commercial airliners were.

"If you two look this bad, what kind of state are Jjaekjjaeki and the others in?"

I cracked the cargo box open for a peek.

Hmm. They all looked like they were about to die.

Couldn't be helped.

There was no way Jjaekjjaeki and Gugu could keep up with a modern aircraft at their flying speed.

"Mr. Park. Opening the cargo hold!"

The cargo hold opened, and the soldiers got out one by one.

People who looked like members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces were waiting at the entrance.

Apparently after we finished all the procedures, the Korean military and the transport plane would head back. Then on the way home... would the Self-Defense Forces give us a ride?

"Whoa. So this is Japan."

The view of Itami Airport spread out before me.

On the way from Seoul Airport to Itami Airport, I had a whole lot of questions.

What kind of sushi were we going to eat that we had to fly from Korea to Japan on a Japan Air Self-Defense Force military transport?

"Pastor Go, how did we even get on a military plane?"

"Exorcists who work internationally get perks like this. No matter where you go, there aren't many proper exorcists."

Apparently every country was desperately short on competent exorcists.

So if you called in a military plane, they'd put you on right away.

I hadn't realized that worked even across national borders.

"Our church does a lot of work overseas too, so we have agreements with each country."

"Still, taking a military plane just to eat sushi feels a little over the top."

"Uh, mm..."

Pastor Go hesitated, and Pastor Park cut in.

"Yohan doesn't have a passport, so we didn't have much choice. It'd take at least a week to make one, and we're in a bit of a hurry."

In a hurry? Was the sushi place about to go out of business or something?

Calling in a military aircraft over that was really something.

We left the airport in a military vehicle too.

The Self-Defense Forces soldier behind the wheel said something, and Pastor Park answered in fluent Japanese.

"What'd he say?"

"He said welcome to Japan."

"Oh, I see."

I already knew Pastor Park got around globally, but wow, he was good at Japanese too.

As the car drove down the road, seeing Japanese signs I'd only ever seen on HuTube really made it hit me that I was in Japan.

"This is my first time in Japan. No, actually, it's my first time traveling abroad at all."

"Why? Because your parents were against it?"

"You knew that?"

"Of course. I'm the one who told your parents not to send you abroad."

The person responsible for me never getting to travel overseas was right in front of me?!

"No, why?"

"At your age, if you said you wanted to travel abroad, where would it be? Japan or China, right? Other places aren't exactly safe either, but those two are especially off-limits."

"Why...?"

At my baffled reaction, Pastor Go in the passenger seat added an explanation.

"It's because Japan and China don't just have a lot of strange spirits and monsters. They're overflowing with them. China is just enormous, and Japan is... well, how should I put it? Things there don't listen to reason."

"They don't listen to reason?"

Didn't ghosts and yokai not listen to reason in the first place?

"When someone turns into a ghost in Korea, they can usually still be reasoned with. Even a maiden ghost who died with a grudge goes to a magistrate and pleads her case first. They don't all snap right away."

I had heard that before.

In folktales and old ghost stories, a wronged ghost going to a magistrate was basically standard.

"But Japanese ghosts go straight for hurting people. They turn into evil spirits unusually fast, and the ratio's high too."

"Why's that?"

"Part of it is because earthquakes make the ley lines unstable. And natural disasters got personified as yokai, so Japan ended up with an unusual number of powerful, vicious yokai. Tengu and yuki-onna are classic examples."

The Japanese feared natural disasters intensely and turned them into yokai.

Just like how urban legends are born, the more people's fear and negative emotions condense, the more powerful the strange thing that comes out of it. Apparently that's what Japan's yokai are.

And naturally, it also makes it easier for vengeful spirits wronged by yokai to become evil spirits.

"What a brutal place."

"Now you get why your parents were against overseas travel. Korea is relatively tame, and look how things already are there. If you'd come to Japan, who knows what kind of mess you'd have gotten into."

So that was why they had opposed overseas travel so fiercely.

Because they were worried I'd get eaten by a ghost on vacation.

But things were different now.

At this point, even the supernatural side of most urban legends would just end up as Gari's late-night snack, so I had no reason to be scared of overseas travel anymore.

"Let's go get some authentic sushi!"

"...At this point, it's tradition."

For some reason, Pastor Go was looking at me with pity.

* * *

Sushi Hanamachi in Kawaramachi, Kyoto.

A place famous as Japan's best sushi restaurant, chosen by Michelin for thirty straight years and visited by world-famous figures.

Or at least that's what the Papago translation said.

"Fifty thousand yen for one seating? That's five hundred thousand won?!"

"Even for Michelin prestige, that's expensive."

"Pastor! The congregation's offerings are being spent like this...!"

At that, Pastor Park smacked me on the head and said,

"Of course it's coming out of my own pocket, you brat. Your pastor's splurging on you, so just enjoy it!"

Was this compensation for slaving away like a dog for a year in the Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land?

Well, I did come back with a bit more muscle.

"More importantly, when's this friend getting here?"

"They said they'll be here soon."

"Who's coming?"

When I asked, Pastor Park answered.

"There's a fellow named Tsuchimikado who's the head priest. You know Abe no Seimei?"

"Oh, yeah, I've seen that name. In Japanese manga!"

An onmyoji, right? Some kind of person like that.

"Kids these days probably know the name from manga or games."

"Japanese people really do love turning their own historical figures into manga."

I mean, this is also a country that changes other countries' historical figures' genders and turns them into Japanese high school girlfriends, so what can you do.

"Anyway, that man's descendants became the present-day Tsuchimikado Clan. We're meeting him today."

"Amano... anyway, you said you're returning that sacred sword, right?"

"Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi. One of Japan's Three Sacred Treasures. You could call it the Japanese equivalent of the Xuanyuan Sword."

"Why was that in Pastor Kim's collection?"

"The history's a bit complicated."

Japan had the Three Sacred Treasures, relics from its creation myth that symbolized the imperial family.

They were supposedly kept at shrines and handed down to successive emperors, but a man named Dokyo stole them and fled to Silla.

"In the official historical record, it says he failed, right? In reality, they really were lost back then and hidden in Silla."

After that, the Japanese imperial family supposedly made replicas to replace them, and the one who found the real articles hidden in Silla was Pastor Kim.

Japan had kept asking for them back ever since, but Pastor Kim had ignored them.

Slide.

At that moment, the sliding door to our room opened and someone walked in.

He was an old man with a warm, gentle face, but he was dressed so plainly I thought he was an employee.

"Park-san!"

"Tsuchimikado-san! Youkoso!"

The two of them naturally slipped into Japanese.

Pastor Go and I stood and greeted the elder, and Pastor Park introduced me.

"This young man here is Baek Yohan. I told you about him in my message, right?"

"So this is the young man..."

The old man called Tsuchimikado looked me over carefully, then met Gari's eyes and gave a small nod.

"Hello. I'm Baek Yohan."

"I'm Tsuchimikado. Nice meet."

Tsuchimikado greeted me in clumsy Korean.

"The sushi here very tasty. Eat lot."

"Are you paying?"

"Not like I can't."

Tsuchimikado shot Pastor Park a sidelong glance.

Pastor Park caught the meaning and opened the bundle he'd brought with him.

"This is..."

"If it's you, you can recognize it, right? That it's something the replica kept in the shrine can't even compare to."

"We asked for it to be returned so many times, and you ignored us..."

"Did Japan return the things we asked to have returned?"

"Isn't that a government issue? That's not under our jurisdiction."

While the two of them talked in Japanese, dish after dish was set down in front of us.

"What about the Yata no Kagami?"

"That one isn't urgent. I'll keep using it for a while."

"So you did find it."

"You should be grateful I brought you even this much."

I dipped the first sushi in soy sauce and took a bite, and good lord... I had always assumed red tuna was supposed to be bland, but this was insanely good.

"Anyway, thank you. The seal had already started to weaken lately."

"That fox bitch. Looks like the replica really wasn't enough. It's already starting to shake in less than thirty years."

"Her daughters are no joke either. If she's a seven-tailed fox, it seems even major yokai can't go against her carelessly."

What was this fatty white fish? It was melting in my mouth.

"The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons is going to happen. Major yokai have already started gathering near Kyoto. Can you help us?"

"I do owe you for the Dueoksini and goblin calamity. But you know it won't be free, right?"

That balance of rich fat and red flesh. Was this the famous fatty tuna belly I'd only heard about?

This was on a whole different level from supermarket tuna sushi with mayonnaise squirted on top.

"Yohan, if you're done eating, do you want to head back first? The rest is something the adults need to talk about among themselves."

"Huh? Is that okay?"

"From here on out, it looks like it's going to turn into drawn-out negotiations. Take a taxi and go back first."

The three of them were chatting away in Japanese, so honestly it was awkward for me to just sit there and keep watching.

What were they talking about so seriously?

Not that I particularly cared.

When I stepped outside, it was raining. But cutting straight through the damp smell of rain was a foul stench that stabbed at my nose.

"Whoa, damn... this is incredible."

Incredible.

This insane smell of shit.

Now I could see why the two pastors had said Japan was heaven for yokai and evil spirits.

How did people even live in a place like this?

This smell.

Wasn't this way past just having a lot of evil spirits and wicked things nearby?

"Ugh, whatever. I'll get to the hotel, block my nose, and sleep. Taxi!"

A taxi stopped almost immediately.

The smell was still there even after I got in, but with the stench filling everything around us, of course the inside of the car would smell too.

Gari and Eight-Foot Sister couldn't get into the taxi because of their size.

I handed the driver a business card with the hotel's address on it and gave the destination in butchered English.

"This! Place! Go! Okay?"

"Understood."

The taxi started off, so I guess he understood me just fine.

Still, the smell inside the cab was unbelievable too.

Kyoto... this place really wasn't fit for human habitation.

My stomach was full, so I closed my eyes for a moment, but then, thunk, we went over a speed bump and I opened them again.

"Uh... where is this?"

We were on some road with a mountain visible ahead.

I had definitely asked to be taken to a hotel in the city, so what the hell was this?

"Ugh..."

The smell was still there.

We had come a fair distance away from that place where the stench had been overwhelming, but it was still this strong.

"Excuse me?"

"..."

I tried talking to the driver, but no answer came back.

Maybe Korean was the problem, so I tried one of the few Japanese words I knew.

"Sumimasen?"

"..."

Still no answer.

The sound of raindrops tapping against the windshield.

The wipers shoved the rain aside in a steady rhythm, but they were nowhere near enough to keep up with the sudden downpour.

The atmosphere was so sinister it made my spine go cold.

I could see the driver's hands on the steering wheel... and the rearview mirror.

Then I met the eyes of the taxi driver, smiling in a bizarre way, in the mirror.

"Excuse me? Excuse me?"

"..."

"Driver? Driver?"

"..."

He didn't answer.

Like not answering was the rule.

No, was it because I was speaking Korean? Panicking, I pointed and shouted.

"Look beside you! Beside you!"

"...?"

Along both sides of the speeding taxi.

Clack clack?

【Devour?】

Things even scarier than evil spirits were running alongside us.

【Kieeeeeeeek!!】

No, hold on, why are you the one getting startled?

Vroooooom!

The taxi evil spirit slammed the accelerator all the way down.

Footnotes:

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