Chapter 59: Ye Chun from Twenty Years Ago

Jun Hazuki?

Twenty years had passed; how could she possibly still look this young... No, judging by her words, the Jun Hazuki standing before him had seemingly arrived at Kisaragi Station only a short while ago.

Subconsciously, Uesugi Toru reached for his sword handle, because no matter how one looked at it, the situation was a hundred percent suspicious.

"Um, I suppose I was a bit too abrupt." Seeing his guarded expression, Hazuki took two steps back, smiled awkwardly with her hands raised in front of her chest, and then scratched her head. "Nice to meet you, my name is Jun Hazuki. I originally boarded a private Shizuoka railway train departing from Shin-Hamamatsu..."

She sighed with distress. "I don't know why, but today the train seemed to take a different route than usual. I got too scared, so I decided to get off at this station first."

"Though it doesn't seem like there's anyone here..."

Hazuki's eyes lit up when she noticed the Second-Foot Adult. "Is the person next to you your younger sister, classmate? She's very cute."

Trying to close the distance through conversation, are we?

Let's wait and see for now.

Uesugi Toru withdrew his hand from the sword hilt.

Even though this Hazuki was most likely not human, for the sake of his second main quest, he decided to observe for a bit longer before making a choice.

Thus, Uesugi Toru nodded slowly. "Thank you for the compliment. Just call her Second-Foot."

The Second-Foot Adult flashed a bright smile at Hazuki.

"My name is Uesugi Toru. I just arrived not long ago."

"As for the train situation you mentioned, I encountered the exact same problem, which is why I decided to get off at this station."

Having smoothly conceded to all of Hazuki's guesses, Uesugi Toru patted the sword at his waist, wrapping himself in a plausible persona. "I was originally taking my sister to participate in the Tokyo Kendo Championship, but now it seems we probably won't make it in time."

"A Kendo Championship held in Tokyo! Uesugi-kun, you're amazing."

Hazuki breathed a sigh of relief upon confirming that the two people in front of her seemed harmless—after all, didn't urban legends often say that certain monsters could disguise themselves as humans?

"Well then, Uesugi-kun," she suggested, "how about we stick together? This place is a bit weird, and even when I posted on the forum, no one knew where this was."

"Though my phone calls still seem to go through."

Hazuki shook the flip phone in her hand, visibly much more relaxed after meeting a second person with the same experience. "So this must just be some remote platform or another."

A forum? A phone call?

A ghostly forum and a ghost phone call, more like. The netherworld could not communicate with the realm of the living, let alone the fact that this Hazuki had posted on the 2ch forum back in the year 2004.

harboring such thoughts, Uesugi Toru walked proactively up to Hazuki's side.

And then, he actually saw the comments constantly refreshing on her phone screen.

Uesugi Toru froze.

Wait, how could there possibly be living people replying?

Yet if they were ghosts, the number of comments was far too excessive, and the vast majority of them were offering advice to Hazuki, while the rest were expressing shock and disbelief...

It looked entirely like the harmonious scene of a 2004 online forum where people helped each other out.

Uesugi Toru looked up toward the top of Hazuki's phone screen—May 1, 2004.

He suddenly felt somewhat disoriented.

Was this merely a trick played by the urban legend to deceive people, or had this instance truly sent him back in time to the very day Hazuki entered Kisaragi Station twenty years ago?

Silently watching as Hazuki posted the news of meeting him onto the forum, Uesugi Toru spoke up.

"Waiting here forever isn't a solution. Let's grab some food and water from the convenience store, and then follow the railway tracks to see where they lead."

Hazuki stopped what she was doing, pondered for a moment, and nodded. "Uesugi-kun is right. Let's first see if we can run into any local residents."

With that, Hazuki ran into the convenience store, grabbed some high-calorie food and water, and stuffed them into the small backpack on her back.

Before they set off, under Uesugi Toru's watchful eye, she made another phone call to the police station, only to be criticized and lectured on the other end that there was no such place as Kisaragi Station at all.

The police station...

If the police station existed, did that mean the Special Affairs Bureau existed as well?

Let's test it out.

"Classmate Hazuki, could you lend me your phone for a moment?" Uesugi Toru patted the brim of the Second-Foot Adult's hat. "My own phone was lost by this fellow back on the train."

The Second-Foot Adult caught on instantly. "I d-didn't lose it! We can just pick it up at the railway bureau's lost and found next time!"

"Oh! Sure, but my phone battery seems like it's going to run out soon."

Mentioning the battery running low, Hazuki's tone inevitably dropped as well, since the phone was their only way of communicating with the outside world.

"I'll make the call quick."

Taking the phone, Uesugi Toru walked to the side and dialed the police station once more.

After a brief wait, the operator answered, and a middle-aged man's voice came through.

"Little girl, it's you again..."

Uesugi Toru interrupted him. "I am Uesugi Toru, an operational specialist from the Special Affairs Bureau. I am currently caught up in an urban legend incident."

The man laughed. "And now we're changing people to make up stories?"

"My superior is Tomoya Kondo. If you don't recognize the name, you can inform your chief; he will understand the gravity of the situation."

The reason he didn't mention Aimi Nanjo was because twenty years ago, Sister Nanjo was probably just a seven or eight-year-old child.

Such a calm tone made the man fall silent for a moment before he replied, "Hold on a second."

The line was hung up.

Uesugi Toru knew that this "wait" would likely yield nothing.

Because how long this game of passing the buck could be kicked around, nobody knew.

He returned the phone to Hazuki, thinking to himself that it was indeed the recent surge of paranormal incidents over the past two years that caused the operator to immediately contact the Special Affairs Bureau and dispatch Sister Nanjo the moment Ririko called the police station that day.

Though even now, Uesugi Toru still hadn't figured out whether the people on the other end of the line were human or ghosts...

Never mind, that wasn't important for the moment.

"Classmate Hazuki, let's go."

"Oh, oh."

In the dead of night, the trio followed the railway tracks toward the right side of Kisaragi Station.

Uesugi Toru sent the Second-Foot Adult to chat with Hazuki while he lagged half a step behind, glancing sideways at Hazuki walking ahead from time to time, attempting to find any flaw that proved she wasn't human.

Pity that after walking for half an hour, Uesugi Toru hadn't discovered any abnormalities.

Had he not known that Hazuki was the protagonist of an urban legend from twenty years ago, Uesugi Toru would have simply regarded her as an ordinary girl who had accidentally strayed into the netherworld.

Walking beside the tracks, Uesugi Toru suddenly narrowed his eyes. "Classmate Hazuki, wait a moment."

Hazuki, who had already been holding hands with the Second-Foot Adult, turned around. "What is it, Uesugi-kun?"

"There's something ahead."

Uesugi Toru drew his blade, the gleaming edge illuminating Hazuki's startled face.

—A real weapon?

Hazuki was taken aback. Weren't kendo competitions usually fought with bamboo swords?

Fortunately, the Second-Foot Adult was clever and quick-witted, hurriedly lowering her voice to add, "Don't let my brother's youth fool you; he's an Exorcist, you know."

A-an Exorcist?

Hazuki's mind was in complete turmoil. Could it be that all those urban legends were actually real?

Uesugi Toru, however, had already stepped forward, clearly spotting the markers floating above the heads of several drifting figures—

[Chi (Zero Star)]

[Chi (Half Star)]

A few zero-star and half-star vengeful spirits of the same name. Much like the farming laborers in Arakawa Village, they were merely low-level mobs on the Kisaragi Station map.

"Yet these are fiends I've never seen before..."

Once again deeply feeling his lack of knowledge, Uesugi Toru decided that once the situation stabilized, he would thoroughly cramble up on his knowledge of demons and urban legends.

"Second-Foot, protect Classmate Hazuki here."

With those words dropped, Uesugi Toru channeled his Breath-Harmonizing Technique and charged like a cannonball bursting from its barrel straight into the wandering pack of Chi.