WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 69: Kyoto Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (3)

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The yōkai we had caught was named Kohaku.

The fox yōkai, freed from inside Gari's mouth, sobbed in panic as she confessed what she was.

Once she dropped her transformation, she was so small and squat that she could have passed for a little person.

"A three-tailed fox, huh? That's a little vague."

"Nine tails make a gumiho, so wouldn't three tails make her a three-tailed fox?"

"That's right. Fox yōkai grow stronger the longer they cultivate themselves."

Apparently, fox yōkai generally weren't considered powerful great yōkai until they had at least six tails.

Compared to those, a three-tailed fox was practically a grunt.

"So? You tried to seduce me with a honey trap. What kind of scheme were you plotting?"

"Eek! A scheme? I was only moved by your gallant appearance, my lord..."

"Gari, Prisoner 4885 is checking in."

Creeeak!

As Gari opened its mouth, Kohaku, the three-tailed fox, went pale and clutched at my pant leg.

"My lord! My looorde! Please spare me! Just don't send me in there!!"

"Who are you calling your lord? More importantly, your Korean is insanely good!"

"I like the Korean Wave! BDS! Parasite! Black Red! Gangdong Style! Kimuchi!"

"What?! Kimuchi?! You little punk, are you calling kimchi Japanese?!"

"S-sorry! I'm sorry! Please spare me!"

We were a little taken aback as the three-tailed fox threw herself flat on the ground and groveled at our feet.

She was on a whole different level of submission from the yōkai and evil spirits we'd met so far.

"Uh... aren't you being a little too pathetic? Don't yōkai have pride or something?"

"Oh, my lord! What pride could a lowly creature like me possibly have? If you just let me live, I'll serve you with all my loyalty!"

Wow, this was a first.

I glanced at Pastor Go, and he looked a little flustered too.

"She didn't react when I splashed her with holy water, right?"

"Yes, but there's no guarantee holy water works on every yōkai."

"Usually, it doesn't. What does your spiritual scent say?"

The whole area reeked so badly that it was hard to distinguish anything clearly.

But if it was something right in front of me...

"She doesn't smell bad."

"Okay. Looks like she isn't one of the evil kind."

Spiritual scent judged souls by the degree of their wickedness.

The closer something was to a demon, the more unbearable its stench became. Even ordinary evil spirits that harmed people smelled pretty bad.

It was subjective, but it had turned out to be surprisingly useful.

By spiritual scent standards, Kohaku, the three-tailed fox, was... unexpectedly clean.

"Looks like she hasn't committed any major crimes. What should we do?"

"We can't just let her go. A fox yōkai at a time like this was probably sent by the seven-tailed fox."

"Eek!"

The little fox yōkai hiccupped, as if that had hit the mark.

"She used transformation magic to become a beautiful woman and lure you in. What do you think her goal was? She must've intended to do something evil in the end."

"M-my lord!"

Kohaku threw herself into a dogeza. Her fox ears and tail trembled so hard that I almost felt sorry for her.

"I-if you spare me! If you spare me, I'll give you useful information!"

"Information?"

That caught my attention.

Pastor Go looked like he thought we should hear her out too.

"What kind?"

"Information that will help you find treasure, my lord!"

"Ooh..."

Treasure.

I wasn't Pastor Kim, but what man could resist the word treasure?

Come to think of it, stories about yōkai often mentioned them offering gold and silver.

What kind of treasure would a fox yōkai have?

"This is my most prized treasure, my lord!"

There was some kind of coin resting on her tiny palm.

It was old and shiny. She must've taken good care of it, because it gleamed.

But...

"That's a Tenpō Tsūhō. I heard they're fairly common among old yōkai, but it's impressive that you have one."

"...Is it expensive?"

"It has some value as an old coin, but so many were minted that not really? It'd be different if it were a silver coin."

What? It was useless.

Kohaku watched my expression, then rubbed her hands together and spoke in a desperate voice.

"Information! How about information?"

"Information?"

"Yes! I possess very hot information among the yōkai! It's high-class information that will definitely satisfy you!"

"Ooh..."

Information. Information was important.

When I showed interest, Kohaku rubbed her hands together with a sly look that said she'd got me.

"At Gyomu Super within walking distance of Kawaramachi, near Sanjokawaramachi, they sell limited quantities of moyashi for seventeen yen before tax at seven in the evening! If you buy a lot of moyashi then, you can eat it for a whole week!"

"..."

That was some extremely practical high-class information.

I guess it was the kind of information modern people would appreciate?

"Why would I need that when I'm not even a local? Three-Tails, don't you have anything else?"

"Ugh! Ugh! H-how about spots where acorns fall?"

"Forget it."

I couldn't decide whether this was useless or harmless.

"What should we do? She doesn't seem useful at all."

Just as things were getting genuinely awkward, Pastor Go suddenly smiled slyly.

"Fox yōkai have very high-quality inner cores."

"Oh, really?"

"She's only a young fox, but she's fresh, so the effects should be even better. I hear fresh liver is especially good for your health."

"Oohhh...!"

"Eek!"

I casually pulled a sword from inside Gari's mouth. It was a treasured sword called the Moye Sword, from issue thirty-three of that Chinese history series, I think.

Apparently, it was a very famous sword, though I didn't know much about it.

Its defining trait was that it was incredibly sharp.

"I wonder what fox meat tastes like?"

"Heh heh heh. It's been a while since I've had something good for the body."

"Eek! Eeeeeek!"

Then, like a villain, I slowly licked the blade of the Moye Sword.

Slurp!

"P-please spare me! Please spare meeee!!"

"Do you want to live?"

At Pastor Go's words, Kohaku nodded over and over through her tears.

"If we let you go as is, you'll probably leak our information..."

"I-I would never do that, my lord!"

"How can we trust you?"

He was starting to sell the pitch.

"T-then what should this lowly one do...?"

"Let's make a familiar contract, nice and clean. That way, you can't betray your master."

"Eek!"

Oh, that was an option.

"Make a contract with this guy. It will be indefinite, and you'll obey all orders without exception."

"Th-that kind of unfair contract..."

"Yohan, she says she doesn't want to! Boil the water!"

"Looks like we'll be having dog meat soup for the first time in a while. Foxes are in the dog family too, so it's basically the same, right?"

"Eek! I heard Koreans eat dog meat, but that's actually true?!"

Well, it was banned now.

Anyway, as the pressure dragged on, the fox yōkai raised both hands while crying.

"I'll do it! I'll do it! Just spare me!"

Well, I got a yōkai familiar for free.

* * *

The contract with Kohaku, the three-tailed fox yōkai, was completed quickly.

Faced with the choice between life and death, Kohaku tearfully agreed to the familiar contract.

"Fox yōkai know how to use magic, so it won't hurt to have her under contract. We couldn't let her go anyway."

"It feels like the number of mouths to feed keeps growing."

I had made a contract with Kohaku, but she didn't seem particularly useful in battle.

From what I heard, she had only been a lowly errand runner for the seven-tailed fox organizing this Night Parade of One Hundred Demons.

"Though it's surprising that she's one of the children of the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, one of Japan's Three Great Evil Spirits."

Kohaku was apparently among the youngest children born to the Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox.

So when I asked if that made her some kind of pure-blooded royalty...

"The Kyoto White-Faced Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox has over five hundred children."

"That sounds like a prince or princess from a Middle Eastern royal family."

There were so many that it actually made them less rare.

In other words, it was like a country where everyone and their dog was royalty.

Still, Kohaku wasn't completely useless.

"This is the nest of the yōkai that came for the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, right?"

We arrived at a place called Arashiyama, a little outside Kyoto.

It was thick with bamboo groves, and apparently a great yōkai that had come for the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons was hiding here.

"But there are so many people here. A yōkai is hiding in a place like this?"

Arashiyama seemed to be a tourist destination, because it was packed with people.

There was a river running through it, tourist spots lined both sides, and apparently tens of thousands of people visited every day.

A yōkai was hiding here?

"With transformation magic, they look no different from people. That's why they hide among crowds."

"Yōkai are cunning. They often hide in places where we cannot act rashly."

A Japanese man who looked like an ordinary tourist continued after Pastor Go.

His Japanese was a little awkward, but he was one of the attendants assigned to us by the Tsuchimikado Chief Priest.

They were ninjas, no less.

"Satomaru, I heard you guys are ninjas. Is it okay for so many of you to move together like this?"

There were over twenty ninjas assigned to us by the elderly Tsuchimikado Chief Priest.

I thought such a large group would stand out, but apparently not.

"If we pose as a tour group, we don't attract much suspicion. This is Arashiyama, after all."

"True..."

"Besides, the more people we have, the easier it is to find transformed yōkai."

In short, every person here was part of the search team.

"Of course, that's assuming the fox yōkai hasn't lied to us."

"Eek!"

Kohaku hiccupped in fear beside me.

She had hidden her tail and ears with transformation magic, so she looked exactly like a preschooler. The sight of a grown man glaring sharply at her looked pretty bad.

"It looks like child abuse to anyone watching."

"Ahem. I'll be careful."

"But there's definitely a yōkai here. A very evil one."

I pinched my nose at the obvious stench drifting out from the Arashiyama bamboo grove.

"Then we'll begin the search."

"Yes, do ninjas have some special search method?"

"We scatter objects that yōkai would dislike and watch for their reactions."

If someone's expression changed, they would single them out and verify it.

Wasn't that an awful lot of manual labor?

"Should I look for it?"

"...It will be difficult to do so just by smelling. As far as I know, spiritual scent only makes your nose a little more sensitive."

Ninja Satomaru didn't seem to have much faith in my spiritual scent.

Apparently, spiritual scent only went as far as detecting wicked smells.

The spiritual scent they knew and the spiritual scent I knew seemed to have somewhat different performance levels.

"Unlike downtown, it doesn't smell that bad here. And it isn't coming from every direction either... At this level, I can follow it."

I took the lead, following the scent.

The ninjas looked to their leader, Satomaru. When Satomaru sighed and followed, the rest came along too.

"I hope this isn't a waste of time."

"I understand why professionals would be suspicious, but isn't spirituality what matters first in this line of work?"

"Pastor Go..."

Satomaru wore a strange expression at Pastor Go's words.

How long had we walked?

The Arashiyama bamboo grove was a spectacular sight. I could see why tourists flocked here.

Korea had similar bamboo groves, and they had been perfect for walking trails.

Still, being a famous tourist spot, there were restaurants and souvenir shops here and there for visitors.

We stopped in front of one of the tea houses.

"Ooh, it has that old-established-shop feel."

"Is it here?"

"The smell is strong here."

Satomaru and the ninjas looked doubtful at my words.

But as we entered, the proprietress greeted us.

"Welcome~"

Yeah, even I knew what that meant.

Once we went inside, it looked like we were the only customers. The prices I had seen outside were pretty steep.

There was an employee and a woman in a kimono inside the shop, and Satomaru smoothly began ordering.

Tea? Dango? It sounded like he was ordering something like that.

"Yohan, are you certain this is the place?"

"The smell seems to be coming from here."

"I casually scattered a cinnamon sachet, but there was no change in expression. We heard it was a spider yōkai, but there was no reaction."

It seemed the ninjas tested reactions by using scents and objects yōkai disliked.

"Can I try?"

"...Do you have a different method?"

"Well, yōkai can see things, right?"

"Yes?"

I opened the shop door and called in Gari, who had been waiting outside.

Clack! Clack!

The two of them had been careful when entering buildings because of their size.

But when I called them inside the shop...

"Eek!!"

Crash!

The proprietress dropped the teacup she had been carrying.

Footnotes:

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