WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 70: Kyoto Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (4)

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Crash!

The teacup on the tray shattered, filling the room with a sharp, noisy crack.

"Are you all right?"

"Huh? Ah! I'm sorry! My, my hand suddenly went limp!"

The spider yokai disguised as a human hurriedly made an excuse as she picked up the fallen teacup.

Then.

Click, clickclickclickclick!

Her heart... no, far below that.

The legs hidden deep in her abdomen trembled and spasmed.

'No. No.'

Don't move.

Don't curl up.

I'm human.

I am human.

The disguised spider yokai desperately repeated the suggestion to herself.

Otherwise, she felt like she might react at any moment.

A huge mouth that looked capable of swallowing her true form whole was growling right in front of her.

I'll be eaten.

If I show even the slightest opening, I'll be eaten.

Run now.

Climb onto the ceiling.

Spin a web and escape.

Spray poison.

Yet none of those thoughts turned into action.

She clenched her teeth and suppressed them, just as her survival instinct warned her to.

'What the hell is that? Is it even possible to control something like that?'

Cold sweat streamed down her chin.

It was a sight she couldn't possibly understand.

The instant she saw it, she knew.

That thing was a monster beyond all comprehension.

It was a lofty, exalted being.

Not something that should follow or serve a mere human.

Yet there was a human actually commanding that monster.

It was a situation so absurd it shattered every ordinary notion of common sense.

"Boss! I'll clean it up!"

An employee brought over a dustpan and began sweeping up the broken teacup.

The employee here was an ordinary human.

A part-timer hired by the original owner the spider yokai had eaten.

That was why she could calmly clean up the mess without realizing such a monster was right in front of her.

"I'll, I'll bring another one."

After saying that, she headed for the kitchen without looking back.

'I have to run!'

She had to escape.

The spider yokai intended to pour this golden opportunity into getting away.

If she said she was bringing more tea, she could buy some time.

Just as she tried to slip out through the back door...

【Devour...】

She saw Eight-Foot Sister waiting at the back door and quickly shut it again.

"What the hell is that...?!"

Why was that thing waiting at the back door too?

Had it blocked her escape route? What a terrifying bastard!

If she went out there, it would be the same as admitting she was a yokai.

The spider yokai slowly backed away and prepared fresh tea in the kitchen.

An urge suddenly rose in her.

Should she poison it? No, no.

Even if she poisoned all those humans to death, there was no guarantee the monster would disappear.

If anything, the monster might go on a rampage after losing its master.

Then she'd have to act her way out of this crisis with an award-winning performance!

"Here's the new tea..."

"Ah! Boss! I've cleaned everything up!"

The female employee smiled brightly. The spider yokai couldn't return the smile.

Its mouth was hanging wide open, as though it would swallow her at any second... no, she was already halfway inside it.

Ah, this was a test.

Could anyone stay calm after being driven to the edge of a cliff above the pits of hell?

After confirming that the female employee wasn't a yokai, the monster mouth slowly closed.

She had passed.

She wasn't a yokai.

Then the next one was...

Craaack!

The mouth slowly opened. The spider yokai couldn't let it show.

The moment she did, she'd be eaten.

She wanted to live. She really wanted to live! She had never wanted to live as badly as she did right now!

Clenching her teeth hard enough to break them, she resolved to give the performance of a lifetime.

"Here's your tea."

"Ah, thank you."

It's acting.

I'm human.

I'm the female owner of a teahouse in the Arashiyama tourist district of Kyoto!

All I have to do is play that role to the end.

Crackcrackcrack!

The mouth opened, casting a dark shadow over her.

Ah, it had spread its palate over my head now.

Click, click! Clickclick!

The sound of its joints as the mouth opened was vicious.

The moment those teeth, raised like a guillotine, came down, she would be sliced apart and swallowed.

"Matcha set... desu."

"Ah, I'll enjoy it."

The spider yokai set down the ordered tea sets in front of each guest.

The open mouth followed her movements, and the sludge-like drool dripping from above sent chills down her spine.

'Every time I set down a cup of tea, I feel like I'm losing ten years off my life!'

Still, she was alive. She was still alive! She could survive!

Just a little more.

Just a little more.

Just a little more, and this grand performance for survival would be over.

The spider yokai placed the last teacup in front of Yohan.

"P-Please take your time."

She desperately forced down the tremor in her voice.

Done.

It was perfect.

Now she just needed to leave naturally...

"Chotto matte!"

"...Pardon?"

Yohan suddenly stopped her, catching the spider yokai off guard.

Yohan gave the teacup a sniff, then asked Pastor Go beside him.

"How do you say, 'This tea smells weird,' in Japanese?"

"Hmm... I'll say it for you. He says this tea has a strange smell."

"A, a smell? That can't be."

Well, tea did have a smell, but it couldn't be a strange one.

"Would you like to smell it?"

The spider yokai cautiously bent down to smell the teacup. Then...

Sniff sniff!

"...! Wh, what are you doing?"

"Smeeeell~~"

Was this bastard insane? What smell was he talking about?!

"You! Fucking smeeeell~~"

"Eek...!"

Yohan came closer, sniffing as if he wanted to get a better whiff of the spider yokai's scent.

His breath was like he intended to inhale every trace of the smell coming off her.

The color drained from the spider yokai's face.

"Sniff sniff! You! Monster?"

"What?! W, what are you talking about? No! I'm not!"

"Liar smeeeell!! This is the smell of someone telling lies!!"

"What the hell is this crazy bastard saying...?!"

Yohan stood up.

The spider yokai stepped back.

"Lord God the Father, grant me eyes and a nose that can see through the truth."

"W, what are you saying right now...?"

Yohan muttered something in Korean, gripped his cross, and made the sign of the cross.

"If I'm wrong, I'll be sorry."

"Pardon?"

Thud!

He pushed her.

The sudden shove sent her body floating backward, and the spider yokai felt as though she were falling into a bottomless abyss.

"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Her death cry sank into a deep ocean. The mouth closed, and even that sound couldn't escape.

"Oh, the smell's gone. Correct!"

"..."

Everyone looking at Yohan had a strange expression on their faces.

Like they were looking at a complete lunatic.

* * *

The spider yokai captured in Gari's mouth was a subordinate of the great yokai Jorogumo.

Before starting the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, they had gathered in Kyoto. While infiltrating and staying throughout the area, their role was apparently to procure food.

That food was people.

"Would you look at these monster bastards."

I'd heard that yokai ate people, but I hadn't expected them to hunt humans this openly.

Maybe it was common in Japan, because the ninjas didn't look particularly surprised.

Following the spider yokai's testimony, we headed for a nearby valley where the yokai supposedly brought kidnapped people as offerings.

"There's a cave in a place like this..."

"Do you think the yokai dug it out?"

At the cave entrance, damp air pierced my lungs.

A horrific stench came with it.

"Let's... go in."

"Wait."

Just as Satomaru and the ninjas were about to take the lead, I stopped them.

"What's wrong, Yohan?"

"Something feels off."

A faint smell was drifting out, but considering the size of the cave entrance, it was far too subtle.

It was like smelling something through a nose clogged by a cold.

"If you don't have a particular reason, we'll go in and search."

"Leave the advance scouting to us. That's our job."

They said I wouldn't be in any danger if we went ahead like this. Still, was there any reason to let more people get hurt?

"Kohaku, do you know anything about Jorogumo?"

"J, Jorogumo, you mean?"

The yokai nesting inside was Jorogumo, a spider yokai.

An old spider that had lived for a full four hundred years.

"As far as I know, Jorogumo is a yokai skilled in illusions."

Illusions... illusions, huh.

I rummaged through Gari's mouth.

There was a treasure in there that the manual said was for situations exactly like this...

"Wh, what's that?"

"Uh... just a very old bronze mirror."

What I took out was a bronze mirror as big as my torso.

I'd cleaned it recently, so the thousands-of-years-old object was shiny enough to finally look like an actual mirror.

Its true identity was the Yata no Kagami, one of Japan's Three Sacred Treasures.

I'd wondered whether it was okay to bring something like this out in Japan, but Pastor Kim said it was fine as long as it wasn't in front of someone from the Imperial Household.

「No one knows what it looks like. But I recommend not using it in front of the Tsuchimikado Clan.」

It was so old, and the one actually being kept was a fake, so nobody knew what the real thing looked like.

He said he'd used another of the Three Sacred Treasures, the Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, in front of the Tsuchimikado Chief Priest and gotten caught.

Apparently the demand for its return had been a huge headache, so I'd better be careful too.

"Hoo... Did it say I just need to reflect sunlight with it?"

I climbed onto Gari and found a spot where the sunlight would reflect properly.

"Gari, float up a little."

Click click!

I held up the bronze mirror and shone it around. Soon, the moment sunlight reflected into the cave...

Fwooooooosh!

Something began to burn away, like fire spreading across a grassland.

"Huh!"

"W, webs?!"

The entrance to the cave was filled with spiderwebs.

If we'd just gone inside, we would've been caught in them and unable to move.

"I, it's an illusion! They hid a trap with an illusion...!"

The Yata no Kagami could see through and destroy illusions and barriers.

It had the restriction of needing to reflect sunlight in broad daylight, but once it shone on something, it could erase even the illusion itself.

I'd learned it from the manual, but damn, that effect was incredible.

"They're coming from inside!"

Just as Pastor Go shouted, black masses began writhing within the cave.

Scratch. Scratch.

Scratch. Scratch.

It sounded like hundreds of claws scraping against stone, echoing from deep inside the cave.

Then.

Red dots began to light up one after another.

There were so many that counting them was pointless.

"Jorogumo's young!"

"Open fire!"

The ninjas opened fire into the cave with the rifles they had each brought.

I'd imagined ninja tools and ninjutsu, but this was more practical than I expected.

Still, they didn't have enough firepower.

Even with the firepower of a platoon of roughly twenty men pouring in, Jorogumo's young were unimaginably numerous.

People said spiders had lots of babies, but this one really had a disgusting number of them.

"Eight-Foot Sister, you have permission to take out 'that.'"

【Devour!】

Eight-Foot Sister took equipment out of Gari's mouth.

A barrel as thick as a person's waist.

Pressure tanks connected like a backpack.

Sacred markings engraved in blessed silver.

At the end of the nozzle was a cross-shaped spray head.

"A sacred-flame flamethrower for exterminating great yokai. Length, 2.4 meters. Silver-particle consecrated-solution blended fuel. High-pressure triple-compression injection system. Cooling pipes engraved with 1,024 sacred markings, weight 341 kilograms! Effective range, 130 meters. Spray temperature, a full 1,700 degrees! The sacred-flame flamethrower for wide-area spirit banishment of great yokai, Jericho's Firestarter!"

"Perfeeeect! Pastor Go!!"

【Devouuuuuuuur!!】

Eight-Foot Sister wielded the monstrous flamethrower, something no human could possibly handle, with both hands.

Clack!

The moment she pulled the trigger, a thick smell of oil burst from the nozzle as it went through its ignition sequence.

Fwooooooooooosh!!

The entire cave turned pure white.

Fire.

No, a waterfall was pouring down.

Footnotes:

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