How to drown your priest: An expert's step by step guide written for shits and giggles

Ishikawa Yuuto

Ishikawa actually sighed, which was impressive considering that breathing was merely a placebo for him. "I am only thirty years-old and are you even listening to yourself right now?" he asked her, wondering if they were even in the same section of the library, let alone on the same page. "Just how many rational thoughts had to die for that kind of leap in logic? All of them, I would guess." He did understand how she was still a student, however. Failing every analytical essay ever assigned in one's academic career would tend to do that.

"Ah, acting is it?" He remarked, pinching his nose. "So you were only pretending to be an arrogant fool? I could not tell. The greatness of your talent deserves applause."

Ishikawa Yuuto (with An Nam Il)

"Just what is it with you and your fascination of pedophilia?" Ishikawa demanded, throwing up his hands. "Do you accuse that of everybody over the age of nineteen? Or just the men? Am I supposed to think that you pulled this with your husband as well?" No wonder she was divorced, he did not add. The implication was definitely there, however. It actually lowered his esteem of her not at all because, Ishikawa thought viciously, there was no way to he could possibly think any less of her than he already did.

There were a million things that he would have liked to say to her but picking out the ones that he wanted to say the most (it was very difficult to find a dignified way to tell somebody to her face that she was the bitchiest woman he had ever met) that the verbal spat lulled. It was at that time that a familiar and very unwelcome voice broke in.

"Um, sorry, is this a bad time?" Nam Il asked, causing Ishikawa to start. His distant relative shuffled nervously, looking from side to side like a panicked animal, as if he expected to be eaten at any moment. His hands were clasped behind his back and after a few moments, he restlessly changed his posture a few times before settling back. "I accidentally, um, did something but -er, it can wait?"

Ishikawa stared. "叔父さん、何をなさりましたか？" He asked at last. Seeing Nam Il wince at the politeness level was, admittedly, something that gave him a degree of satisfaction. "妖怪をお見つけになりましたか？" He could never understand how much trouble that the boy caused, in spite of his genius level intelligence.

Nam Il laughed nervously. "A-ah, you know, you're technically my teacher," he said, voice falling down to a squeak under Ishikawa's gaze. "You can drop the keigo, really."

"私は厄払いをご準備いたしましょうか？" He continued on, merciless.

"Um, no, actually, there aren't any around here right now," Nam Il said. "But there might be later." The boy leaned slightly to the side, seemingly seeking out some kind of salvation and evidently finding it in the worst way possible. Ishikawa could tell from the way his eyes went wide a little upon falling on that woman.

Blithely and infuriatingly innocent, Nam Il asked him, "Wait, is that your girlfriend or something? Is that why you're mad at me?"

Ishikawa Yuuto (with An Nam Il)

"No, I am disappointed in your continued stupidity," Ishikawa snapped at his relative. "As a member of this family, you should know very well that your powers are not a toy." This was the reason why he disliked children. It was also the reason why he taught high school classes anyways, because children were idiotic and idiots did things like putting themselves in needless danger because gods-knew-why. Somebody had to put an end to it.

He sighed. "Fine, what is it and where did you put it?" Maybe the issue with Nam Il was simply a matter of upbringing. The boy's parents, before choosing to quietly settle down with him, were actually known for going out of their way to hunt down rogue spirits in their youth.

"Er, it's an egui," Nam Il said. "Last I saw, it was feeding off the dumpster behind the elementary school dorm. Like. Literally feeding off of it."

Ishikawa waited.

"There's a yeti trying to fight it," the boy continued eventually. "And there's a poltergeist in the garbage truck. The driver ran out screaming. I told him I'd find somebody to deal with it. And there was also-"

Ishikawa broke in impatiently, "Are any of these students or staff?"

"I think the yeti was," Nam Il said after a thought. "I think an angel passed by, too, but it left pretty quickly. Also-"

It was at that point Ishikawa gestured sharply. "Yes, I know, many beings, mostly overly excited, one student, at least two others which are not. You two stay here," he said, pointedly bringing the woman back into the conversation, "I suppose I will have to go and kill something now."

Ishikawa Yuuto (with An Nam Il)

"I really do not care what you do," Ishikawa told the woman quite emphatically. "If you become possessed, however, I will douse you with soulfire and that will be your responsibility to deal with afterwards. Nam Il, I need salt and your knife." Prohibited or not, he absolutely was sure that his relative had one on him anyways. It was only common sense to be armed, despite everything the Academy said about the matter and even if some students put that common sense to waste over blowing up classrooms and having brawls in one of the more deserted hallways.

Sheepishly, Nam Il reached into his pocket, flicking open the knife he drew out and handed it over hilt-first, offering a plastic bag of rock salt in his other hand. Ishikawa plucked both items from his fingers and, in a single fluid moment, stuck an ofuda to the boy's forehead. After a moment of hesitation, he shoved another slip into the hand of the woman with them. "Hold onto that," he said, without looking to see if she really did.

His next course of action was to shear off the branch of a nearby peach tree. Quickly shaving off the leaves and nearly ripe fruits, he managed to fashion it into a sharply pointed rod just a little longer than the full length of his arm. It was far from the best weapon he could have had but peach was a sacred wood and its mere presence was unattractive to spirits. Satisfied for the time, he began making his way to the elementary dorm.

"Um, Y-Yuuto?" Nam Il was following him from a little way's off. "Are you going to give me back my knife? I kind of need that for something."

Ishikawa glanced over his shoulder. "You fail the next test." Though, to be fair, he probably should have simply failed him out of the entire course with the amount of trouble he was making. Not to mention, besides running and hiding, Nam Il was proving to be incredibly inept with actually dealing with the supernatural.

The boy winced. "Fair. I'd take that. Um, please?"

Wordlessly, Ishikawa snapped the knife shut and dropped it in the grass.

Ishikawa Yuuto

At the very least, Ishikawa thought, Nam Il had been smart enough to lay out some lines of salt across the ground near where the spirits were gathered. That the salt affected him too now was an uncomfortable feeling that he would have to properly explore at a later time. For now, he poked gently at one of the lines with his rod, displeased to find that it suddenly felt leaden in his hand, pushing the bits of salt only a hair's distance at a time. If he had actually tried, he probably could have broken it as the line was not a very strong one at all. However, since Nam Il was there and Ishikawa was officially irked by his carelessness, he simply stared the boy into wiping all the lines away himself.

It was easy to tell how many spirits there were. The yeti was the most obvious one. Ishikawa recognized her as one of the Tibetan students from his class, the one who sometimes spontaneously showed her supernatural roots under times of great stress. During his exams, for instance. She was trying to bludgeon a poltergeist with a tire evidently ripped off of the trash truck, while another one pelted her with bits of garbage from inside. The egui was, as Nam Il had said, actually crunching bits off of the dumpster, which was currently inhabited by one ashiarai yashiki. In other words, a giant unwashed foot. When he followed a sudden movement in the corner of his eye, he saw a glimpse of something familiar in the bushes and promptly stabbed the hiding oni straight in its single eye.

The creature howled at the end of the rod as Ishikawa twisted his wrist and sent it in deeper. He might not have been a very strong man but he was skilled enough at aiming for weak points and the natural exorcising power of the peach wood was helping him in that regard. Besides, out of the trio that he and his siblings made, he was the one known for violence.

Somewhat tellingly, Ishikawa found that this was something he was perfectly capable of dealing with. It was a simple and routine job. The next second, he wretched the rod out and brutally shoved it down the oni's throat with a slight hum of vicious satisfaction. The two notable traits of onihitokuchi were firstly, their large singular eyes -something he had already dealt with- and secondly, the fact that an average one could swallow a human whole with little effort -something he was attempting to deal with. When he tugged his makeshift weapon away, the oni collapsed, dissipating into black smoke, leaving Ishikawa free to deal with the less dangerous spirits who remained.

A quick stab to the back of the ear left the egui disappearing as the oni had. To Ishikawa, that was not even a real task, the essential equivalent to swatting at a mosquito. Some spirits were very cunning, some were decidedly not. Ignoring the ashiarai yashiki for now (or possibly forever; the things were obnoxious and foul-smelling but fairly harmless in any case), he turned his attention to the poltergeists next. The two were now fully engaged in combat with his transformed student. Seeing as there was no way to avoid hitting her, he quickly infused the salt with his power instead and hurled it straight over the group. One messy chorus of shrieks later, the spirits were hurling off to a safer spot outside of the campus while the student ran off in the other direction, still under transformation and frantically trying to rub the salt out of her eyes.