7CH Ghost Story: The Jukai and Salvation
As I was about to leap over the torii gate at the sudden sound, I stopped and turned my head. There stood Kiyohira right beside it. Without hesitation we charged straight at him and started throwing punches. It was our own unique welcome—a greeting packed with equal parts irritation and worry.
“You made a promise, so you damn well keep it! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Yeah! We even saw a corpse because of you! It was terrifying!”
“Wait! Quiet down, both of you—quiet!”
True to his reputation as a UMC fighter, Kiyohira deftly dodged or blocked our fists while pressing a finger to his lips. The look on his face was so deadly serious that we paused our barrage.
“My phone broke, so I couldn’t contact you. I had no choice but to trust the GPS and try to head out. But then…”
That morning, after finishing his dawn training deep in the forest, Kiyohira had been on his way to the meeting spot. Along the path he spotted a woman. Long hair, backpack, face hidden in shadow—the kind of expression that screamed she was about to do something irreversible.
Is she suicidal?
Thinking it better to be safe than sorry, Kiyohira decided to follow her. If she was simply out for a walk, he’d leave her alone. But if she truly intended to end her life, he would talk her down and send her back to society. It was a very Kiyohira thing to do. For all his delinquent background, the guy overflowed with a sense of justice; his actions made perfect sense.
The woman with the backpack glanced around nervously, then left the trail and slipped deeper into the woods. She stopped before a tree, pulled a rope from her bag, and began tying it to a branch.
Just as I thought…!
Confirming his suspicion, Kiyohira started moving toward her. That was when it happened. A dozen men wearing white masks and traditional kimonos emerged from the trees and began encircling the woman.
Startled, Kiyohira ducked behind a tree. With so many opponents suddenly appearing, his first instinct was to stay hidden and assess the situation.
What is this?
Most of them carried short swords at their waists, each about the length of a forearm. A dozen armed men. Even a UMC fighter like Kiyohira knew he couldn’t win against that many sharp blades with his bare hands. So he had no choice but to watch.
Better to look for an opening to help the woman escape than throw himself into a hopeless fight.
“Kyaaak!!!”
The men ignored her screams and began dragging her away with brutal efficiency. In a forest as vast as Jukai, almost no one would hear her anyway. Kiyohira followed them carefully.
They led him to the torii gate—the very one he had never noticed despite spending the last five days exploring nearly every corner of the forest. He wondered why he had missed it, but the question vanished the moment the men acted.
“𝔡𝔲𝔣𝔣𝔲𝔣𝔨 𝔠𝔨𝔞ℜ𝔬!”
⟨ GATE OPEN ⟩
The space inside the torii warped and rippled. A passageway wide enough for people to walk through opened, and the masked men dragged the woman inside. Once they had all passed, the portal snapped shut. The torii once again looked like any other ordinary gate in the woods.
Kiyohira had witnessed the bizarre powers of Fujigasaki Rinka’s martial arts since his high-school days, so he knew such hidden abilities existed in the world. Still, seeing an actual spatial illusion in action left him stunned.
“I can’t handle this alone…”
As he muttered those words, more men emerged. Two of them carried a clearly dead body and strung it up by the neck on a large tree some distance from the torii.
“So that’s how they operate…”
They were probably using some kind of sorcery on people who wandered into Jukai—or on victims kidnapped from outside—then staging their deaths as suicides. With the forest so poorly managed, the police would likely write it off without a serious investigation. Just another hanging in the Sea of Trees. A wave of righteous anger surged through Kiyohira. If he teamed up with the friends on their way, they might not be able to wipe out the entire masked group, but a careful infiltration could let them rescue the kidnapped victims.
“Sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to drag you into this mess.”
Kiyohira pressed his palms together in prayer for the murdered victim now hanging from the tree, then hung the prayer beads he wore on a nearby branch.
Maybe these beads are why the masked men never noticed me…
The thought occurred to him as he looked at the beads he had bought from a renowned temple. He also left the gifted GPS watch on another branch along with a note, hoping the police might recover the body.
After that, he returned to the torii and ran every experiment he could think of until we finally arrived.
“Experiments?”
“I was trying to figure out how to get through.”
“And? Did you succeed?”
Kiyohira flashed a grin and dragged a bound and gagged masked man out of the bushes. The cultist could barely move, let alone shout.
“Of course not. That’s why I kidnapped one myself.”
“Heh heh heh…”
“You scared the hell out of us. I actually thought you’d gotten smarter, Genba-ki.”
We looked at one another and burst out laughing, but Kazuhiro suddenly turned serious.
“Do we really have to do this ourselves? Our boss is from the famous Taira family. If we just report it under the Taira name, the police will handle everything immediately…”
“That’s true. But if we don’t go in now, the kidnapped people could die before the cops arrive.”
“Then let’s do both. Report it and go in to rescue them while we wait for the police.”
We settled on my suggestion. I called the police, gave them the GPS coordinates, and of course told them my name. The moment they heard “Taira,” their tone shifted to the kind of deference soldiers show a high-ranking officer.
> We will immediately dispatch a special forces team to the coordinates provided!
“Good. We’ll head to the shrine where the kidnapping happened first. The kidnappers might harm the victims before your team arrives.”
> It’s dangerous… Please wait at the entrance…
I ignored the officer’s plea and ended the call. The moment I hung up, I found Kiyohira and Kazuhiro arguing.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m saying you shouldn’t post something like this on the internet!”
“Come on, it’s not like my personal info is exposed. Besides, some of the replies were actually useful. What do you think, boss?”
It seemed Kazuhiro had posted the whole story on 7CH, sparking their little debate.
“It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. We’re doing something good, so letting people know isn’t a bad thing.”
“You think so?”
“When I was telling the story you kept complaining…! That’s not fair, Genba-ki. And look—everyone who read it said we did the right thing. See for yourself.”
He posted it while we were talking? You’re something else, Kazuhiro. How attention-starved are you?
Kiyohira and I leaned in to look at the smartphone screen he held out.
“See? All positive reactions, right?”
Thanks to all the verification posts he had made before, no one accused the story of being fake despite how unbelievable it sounded. Seeing mostly supportive comments, Kiyohira wore a faintly satisfied expression. I handed the phone back to Kazuhiro.
“Now that we’ve read the board, let’s get moving.”
“Hurry up and chant the spell so we can go in!”
At my order, Kiyohira removed the gag from the captured cultist. The moment the cloth left his mouth, the masked man glared at us and shouted.
“Glory to Shirashira!!”
He bit his own tongue clean off. Smiling at us, he spat the severed piece onto the ground with a wet splat. A true fanatic. I never expected him to go that far. Just how deeply brainwashed was he?
“Wait, if he has no tongue he can’t chant the spell. What now?”
“I’ll handle getting us inside.”
Kiyohira looked genuinely flustered that the prisoner had bitten his tongue the instant the gag came off. I grabbed the cultist—who would soon bleed out—by the scruff of his neck and hurled him into the bushes. Then I walked alone to one of the torii pillars.
The pillar was massive. Ever since obtaining the Abyss and mastering Shadow Dominion and Shinkai Yatsude, I could sense foreign forces when I focused. This torii was wrapped in protective sorcery.
I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. The Abyss gathered at my fingertips according to my will. I thrust them forward.
Shinkai Yatsude: Manshika Isshoku
Ten Thousand Branches Converge Into a Single Touch
Every ounce of power compressed into a single point and slammed into the torii pillar. A gaping hole tore through the massive wooden structure and its sorcerous barrier. Crude human magic and a mere oversized tree were powerless before the Abyss.
The torii collapsed. The space before us warped, and at the end of the forest path a shrine building appeared. It was a huge, traditional structure. The blood-red pillars and walls left a particularly strong impression.
“…! Ryuta! You—!”
Kiyohira stared at me in utter shock at the overwhelming destructive force I had just unleashed. He clearly hadn’t expected someone who wasn’t even a professional fighter to produce that kind of power.
“Heh heh. I’m Fujigasaki Rinka’s disciple. The student of the UMC’s undefeated champion should at least be able to do this much.”
“Whoa! Boss! That was insane! Don’t you have any kicking techniques? Something I could actually use in soccer?”
While Kiyohira watched me with a complicated, half-stunned expression—since I had just shown power in a field completely outside his specialty—Kazuhiro simply looked fascinated. It had nothing to do with his own expertise, after all. I let out a small laugh at his question.
“If I applied my techniques, the soccer ball would probably explode.”
“Aww, useless then.”
“Just learn Taekwondo. The old legend Zlatan Ibrahimović studied it and incorporated it into his soccer.”
“Zlatan Ibrahimowho? Never heard of him.”
It was 2053, after all. Made sense that Kazuhiro wouldn’t know the name. The only pre-possession legends this guy seemed to recognize were Messi and Ronaldo. For a professional soccer player, he really didn’t seem all that interested in the sport, did he?
“Soccer talk can wait. Let’s rescue the people first.”
Only now snapping back to reality, Kiyohira took the lead toward the shrine. Yeah—if we kept standing around chatting while people were dying, that would leave a bad taste. We would handle this matter quickly, then think about everything else later.