Chapter 183
Chapter 183
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 183
Chapter Title: Get Out of Our Yard!
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Ssslruk.
Luna, who had been curled up in my arms sleeping, suddenly woke up.
“There’s someone outside.”
Luna sometimes had an uncanny intuition. And right now was exactly one of those times. With a ka-ching—the sound of the bear trap going off—I thought maybe a Tanuki had shown up, so I glanced out the window.
Wah-gul, wah-gul—.
It wasn’t just a stray Tanuki. A fairly large crowd was invading our yard.
Around ten of them, maybe? They were wearing masks, so it was hard to tell for sure, but they seemed to be a mix of genders and ages.
Who would have thought people would trespass into a private home’s fence?
What the hell for?
Are they some kind of don’t-ask bandits?
Or maybe thugs targeting me, the hotshot adventurer these days?
Or could it be personal grudges from folks caught up in the underground market collapse?
People hiding their identities with black robes in our yard—it filled my head with all sorts of bad thoughts. It was horrifying.
Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like good news.
So I gripped my club tight and peeked just my face out the window, straining to figure out what the hell these bastards were up to.
For starters, barging into someone’s home without permission made them the worst kind of shits in the world, no doubt.
The silver lining, if you could call it that, was they didn’t seem armed.
Of course, with those loose robes, they could have poison-dipped daggers hidden inside, so I couldn’t relax.
“Hassan, who is it? Who’s here? Is someone outside?”
Luna asked quietly, looking at me staring out the window. She was trembling all over, clearly scared stiff.
It was natural to be frightened since the intruder wasn’t just some wild animal like a Tanuki. I couldn’t tolerate anything that terrified Luna like this.
So I bellowed out the window like I was some ferocious lion.
“Hey, you fucks! What the hell are you doing barging in here, you shitheads? Get the fuck out now, or I’ll smash you all!”
It was a lame threat in content, but I had confidence in my loud voice, so it came out as a pretty convincing growl.
“There are traps here.”
“Yeah, there are traps every year.”
“Should we just wait here?”
But the intruders in the yard ignored my masterpiece shout completely, chattering away under their masks with hee-hee giggles.
They acted like they hadn’t heard a word no matter how much noise I made. It was bewildering even to me.
No, could they really not hear?
Is that possible?
“You goddamn bastards!”
So I yelled even louder. I could vividly feel Luna trembling harder behind me, probably spooked by my foul language.
“Look, over here—there are potatoes.”
“Potatoes, huh. Steamed, they’re delicious. Didn’t expect potatoes at the ferry landing.”
“Are there potatoes across the river too?”
“Dunno. Still, I wanna go this year for sure.”
But these intruders didn’t even pretend to hear me this time either. It was weird.
At this point, the anger at these uninvited guests invading the yard gave way to fear and chills from the eerie atmosphere.
I might be thinking something ridiculous, but...
Those guys didn’t seem human.
If not human, then what?
No idea. They had human shapes, spoke like humans, but weren’t human—something else.
Chills ran down my spine, flashing back to old memories.
I used to tag along with my dad when he went gathering herbs in the mountains.
The herbs and materials he wanted were in the deepest paths of mountains without even maps—places only wild beasts and birds would go. It was brutal.
We often couldn’t time our descent and had to camp out.
When dusk fell and the night was filled with beast cries, Dad would tell stories to ease the lonely camp vibes.
Like tales of a crazy shaman he saw as a kid, or haunted trees—stuff you’d see on summer YouTube, told in a hushed voice.
"Son, the world of ghosts and the world of the living are different. But sometimes, the ripples overlap. Your dad here, being frail as a kid, saw a lot of ghostly stuff."
Seeing ghosts? In a world with 24-hour convenience stores?
Honestly, I didn’t believe him.
"I’m a discharged vet now. Ghosts? That’s kid stuff from elementary school."
I figured it was just to scare and tease me as a child, and it probably was.
But his ghost stories in deep woods or dark mountains were subtly terrifying, and even as I grew up, they never got familiar.
"Those damn ghost stories. Ugh, hate hearing them."
"Kid, who’d you get all this fear from? Anyway, listen up. You’re my son, so with your weak vibe like mine, you might see ghosts too."
Some stories stuck in my ears as deep memories. Like this one.
"Ghosts can’t see us like we can’t see them. But sometimes, there are ghosts you can see. Those ones even talk to the living"
"Ghosts talk to you?"
"Yeah, but never answer what they ask. They’ll stick to you. Your dad suffered as a kid. Couldn’t tell them from people. Now I can a bit."
Seeing ghosts and talking seriously about it.
Looking back, Dad probably had some mental illness. But that night, it sounded so plausible I couldn’t help asking back.
"Then how do you tell ghosts from living people?"
"You just know at a glance. Like seeing a dog and thinking, oh, dog. Cat, oh, cat. Same with people—you just know. But sometimes, it’s off. You see a “person” and think, is that really human?"
Dad’s face looked extra shadowed in the campfire light.
"Like a cat pretending to be human or a dog pretending to be a cat feels wrong. A ghost pretending to be human hits you like that. You ever felt it?"
"How the hell do you feel that? Ghosts aren’t real."
"Son, broaden your mind and hone your eye. Herbs, ghosts—you’ll see them with an eye."
That wrapped up the talk.
Those trivial scenes stuck vividly because the mood and content that day were pretty striking.
When you see a person but suddenly feel they’re not, it’s a ghost.
After that, I stared at passersby intently, but they were all just people. Dad was pranking me again.
Fooled once more.
That’s what I thought.
“So, when’s the ferryman coming?”
“Dunno. Let’s wait till just before sunrise.”
“If it’s another bust this year, I’ll be pissed.”
I never expected those memories to surface while looking down at the yard now. Even I thought it was odd, but those masked folks just didn’t look human no matter how I stared.
Just a feeling.
An eerie chill up the spine.
The feeling that what should be normal isn’t.
Was this the sense Dad talked about?
So I quietly called Luna over.
“Luna, come here. Take a look at those people down there.”
If Luna felt the same sense, then they really weren’t human. With that in mind, I cautiously beckoned her.
Trembling Luna peeked her face toward the window from beside me.
“What do you think? How do they look?”
“How do they look, Hassan...”
“Don’t they seem weird? What about to your eyes?”
Ssslruk.
Luna furrowed her brow. Then she said something I never expected.
“Hassan, there’s no one in the yard. Who are you yelling at? Are you okay?”
“No, really...?”
Luna’s fearful gaze wasn’t at the yard—it was at me. She acted like she couldn’t see the noisy, bustling yard.
“You really can’t see them?”
“What are you talking about? Hassan, did you have a bad dream or something?”
“No, they’re right there. The people.”
For a split second, I wondered if Luna was lying to me. But I couldn’t think of any gain for her in fooling me now.
So only I can see them?
Suddenly, I needed to pee, my teeth chattering—it was so creepy I wanted to shut my eyes.
Then Luna went “Ah—” like she remembered something.
“Wait a sec—”
She rummaged in the corner and came back with something in hand. It was a helmet-cum-face shield made from a cow skull.
“Why that...?”
“Wearing a face shield helps broaden your worldly sight. Things you can’t normally see look different through masks or glasses.”
So Luna donned the bone face shield and stuck her head out the window. Her shoulders shook like she was shocked.
“Hassan, there are people in our yard!! What, what is this! Get out of our yard!!”
Luna grabbed the silence totem beside her and dashed out to the first floor outside.
Luna’s agility is 10—superhuman like my strength—so I had no chance to stop her.
Stunned watching her go, I grabbed my club and hurriedly followed down to the first floor outside.
“You guys! This is our turf!!”
Luna shrieked like a banshee, swinging the silence totem at thin air.
The group that had been strolling the garden panicked at the sudden violence, scattering in terror.
“W-what is this!”
“I dunno! Never heard of guys like this at the ferry landing!”
“Isn’t that ferryman Chiron? He’s got an oar! Looks similar!”
“But it’s not an oar, it’s a club! Ugh!”
In the end, they got their jars smashed by Luna’s silence totem and hit the dirt.
Just moments ago, I’d been spooked wondering if these shits were ghosts.
But realizing they could be felled by a club too, the fear vanished like a lie, rage flooding my head.
“You shitheads, even if you’re ghosts, you can just waltz into someone’s garden!?”
“Gweh!”
Luna and I swung club and silence totem together, bashing all these untimely visitors’ heads. They fled every which way, hiding their masks.
“W-what is this!”
“Dunno, policy must’ve changed this year!”
“Policy my ass! If you’re coming to the garden, pay up!”
I spewed whatever came to mind to shake off the fear and anger staining my heart.
Watching these uninvited pests roll on the ground from my club hits, I even doubted if they were really ghosts.
We’d subdued about ten of them, leaving just one small-framed guy at the end.
“Huee, huiii...!”
The cry sounded like Paranoya, and the build matched, so a nymph flashed in my mind. A little girl?
For a moment, I hesitated if smashing its head was right. But my club didn’t have eyes, so whatever.
“Bash its head right in, this one.”
“M-money! Money! I have money...! I’ll give it...!”
Suddenly, the small masked girl prostrated herself.
She pulled a few coins from her bosom and offered them to me trembling like a sacrifice. Now I saw—2 coppers.
The others groaning around her said,
“Kaimi, that’s the ferryman’s fare. We just picked it off the ground—if we lose it, we can’t cross the river this year ei—.”
“Hassan, this one’s still conscious!”
Whoosh, thwack!
“Gehk!”
The one yapping about ferry fare got totally knocked out by Luna’s totem.
Luna shows no mercy to trespassers in her domain or anyone showing a gap. A true cruel goddess of the yard.
At that sight, the girl prostrating before me—Kaimi, apparently—trembled harder and sniffled.
“P-please forgive us! W-we didn’t know this was the goddess’s shrine. We thought it was the ferry landing...”
“What shrine? What ferry landing?”
“The Acheron River ferry landing. Isn’t this where you cross the river to the afterlife...? There’s a skull mark, r-right there.... And it feels like underworld gloom...”
To my question, masked girl Kaimi raised her trembling hand, pointing at the sign Luna and I made.
A skull stamp glowed faintly in the moonlight. Had I drawn the skull too well, causing a mix-up?
“Goddess, forgive us.... We were wrong...!”
And so masked girl Kaimi flattened herself.
Then Luna chuckled.
“Hassan, she’s calling me a goddess! Do I look that noble? Even with the face shield on.”
Under the two moons, gripping her club fiercely, Luna did look goddess-like—eerie and mystical.
“Kaimi, right? Do I look like a goddess? Moon goddess? Or goddess of youth?”
“...Th-the goddess of clubs and cow horns...”
“Get out of our yard!”