The beep on my iPhone. I glanced at it.
[Too busy? Still looking for love?...]
I rolled my eyes and deleted the text. Human matchmaking spam ads are aplenty nowadays. With the Japanese population declining, and fewer people marrying, more of these ads keep popping up regularly.
Well, the Japanese got their revenge on the system. Working here as a human is somewhat an affront to family life. Overwork had led this country into a rapid decline in birth rates. Overwork by death was not big news anymore, unless a celebrity was involved.
Who wants a family when work takes away family life? Even the adult diapers outsell the baby diapers. That is how bad it is.
On our front, the yōkai population didn't need to worry. Our lifespans are long until someone decides to exorcise us. Even then, there are plenty of replacements as long as there are humans. A chance of resurrection also exists for us.
Another beep. A text message again. I really need to complain to the telecommunications company about these damn ads.
[Looking for your yōkai partner to spend an eternity with...]
You have to be shitting me. Of all the stupid things to learn, the yōkai had to pick matchmaking apps. A quick tap of my password so that I could send a message to voice my displeasure at the reply.
The full message revealed itself.
[Looking for your yōkai partner to spend an eternity with Izanami-no-Mikoto? We offer tailored made exorcism rituals for every type of yōkai or ghosts. Txt 'yes' to reply for more information]
A veiled threat. More to our ghosts than the rest of non-human origin. Izanami-no-Mikoto is the goddess of Yomi-no-Kuni, the Japanese netherworld. No yōkai fucks around with her.
If she drags you down to Yomi-no-Kuni, the percentage of escaping is so slim that an ant can get stuck.
A ghost will stand no chance. Not sure about the gods of human origin, but rumour is that their fate will be like those of ghosts. They, too, avoid her like the plague. Only those of celestial origins, and not Earth-bounded, could take her on because she only holds power over Earth.
Which idiot would actually send such a message? Human or yōkai.
The unique alert of new Line messages kept sounding off. Too many incoming Line messages.
Line, a popular Japanese online group messenger, is our usual communication network for all yōkai related businesses in Tokyo. The main yōkai of every business is in our chat group.
The more communal yōkai, like the kitsune and the itachi yōkai, has representatives to converse with us. More convenient than sending out the ever exhausting telepathic broadcast.
[Yako: Sounds like this Izanami-no-Mikoto message is a threat.]
Thank you for stating the obvious.
[Nurarihyon: I got it. Who else got it?]
A voice of reason and logic. Good old sensible Nurarihyon.
The humans have always mistaken him for the supreme commander of the yōkai. That is hilarious.
Nurarihyon isn't a commander of us but the supreme logician of the yōkai. His business is commercial espionage and the private detective work for disgruntled wives of the elite rich.
His famous reputation of slipping into places uncaught is real. Nurarihyon can do it so obviously, like entering a function with high security, and still make his escape.
Need information which a human has in the top echelons of the business world? Need to know where your rich sugar daddy of a husband frequent? His yōkai and ghosts could extract that easily.
He is so good with espionage that they kept tagging him as some elderly man who has a gourd-like forehead. Actually, he is also the supreme shape shifter of the yōkai. The shape-shifting prowess of the itachi has nothing on him.
Heck, we don't even know what his true form is. Not even the Kyoto Daiyōkai, like Sojobo, knew. His usual appearance is that of a pleasant looking man with deceptively kind eyes in his 40s, in a nagagi kimono. The only giveaway was Nurarihyon's aura, if he chooses to show it. Otherwise other yōkai would mistake him as an actual human.
[MinnaMujina: same. All of us got it]
Even the mujina, the badger yōkai, received the text message. The urban mujina are in the marketing consultancy and publishing business. The rural ones tend to hide away peacefully as part of the farming community.
Before the Edo period, the mujina were a wandering bunch of young boyish minstrels singing for entertainment. Unlike the other shape-shifting yōkai, their talent are expert observers of human behaviors and trends. No need for spells.
[CuteItachi: we didn't. None of us got it.]
I didn't realise that the itachi thought of themselves as cute. Those weasels don't look anything remotely cute.
This could be a clue. The itachi rarely use ghosts for their banking business.
[Daija: nothing sent to me.]
It is a clue. Other than partnering with me, Daija has his own roaring martial arts dojo side business. He doesn't need ghosts to be his clients in his dojo, training halls.
[Hage: We got it. Our human associates did not receive such a message.]
[Yako: Yeah my men said the same thing. Plus our human staff have not received this.]
[Ame Onna: Our group received it.]
Now, that bunch of Ame Onna, known as the rainy day yōkai. They are good with their rain making talent. Mostly running the insurance business, particularly fire and flood from earthquakes. I am their client too. With special yōkai discounts.
Their industry is a very lucrative one because Japan is the natural disaster capital of the East Asia region. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons etc. etc. - name a natural disaster, Japan has the risk of it happening.
The Ame Onna could put out fires faster than the fire department, and figure out where would be flooded the most. As most Ame Onna are former minor gods, they have old 'connections' to the river gods and the dragon gods of the seas. They knew where and who to sell the insurance to. Among their ranks were some female ghosts.
Ghosts are an obvious target of this mystery yōkai or human. Usually, we would laugh at the human charlatans who send rubbishy spam ads about exorcism and love spells. No one is laughing now.
Messages were starting to flooding in about that mass spam ad.
The main national Daiyōkai group had a lighted green bubble advising of unread messages mounting to the 100s now. Yet only the yōkai in Tokyo received the strange text advertisement. Others were saying that they never did.
All were concerned about the ghosts now. We use their services. Like Oiwa for mine.
Heard of ghostwriters? Some of them are real ghosts, writing realistic stories or research about the time period they had lived in.
Ghosts could be used for advice, information gathering, getting items, or the 'occasional scare the humans out of our habitat' function. They are an essential part of our ecosystem.
[Yako: Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Fukuoka branches did not receive the ad in text.]
[Nurarihyon: I have a bad feeling about this.]
Yes. Me too. This is too specific.
"Better recall all your ghosts," Daija suddenly spoke.
He had teleported into my office unnoticed, while I was distracted by the flurry of messages.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
Assignments still need to be fulfilled. Daija has truly no obligation to help me. He only receives payment for weapon modifications and the high level jobs.
"If it is like the exorcist groups which we had encountered in the old days, it won't be easy on everybody. I can run the front of Shinde Inc. if you need, while you initiate the contingency plans."
I sighed with heavy resignation. "It's dangerous to put you in the frontline."
"Don't worry about me, worry about yourself," was his reply.