cursed 50: Bookseller IV: The Staircase in the Study

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Chapter 50: Bookseller IV: The Staircase in the Study

“Ma-ster, if you were here you probably could have prevented that.”

“Because of my eyes? I thought the two of them would have been fine, though? They’re pros when it comes to magic, right?”

“Mm… well, security systems aren’t supposed to stand out. If it’s not a malicious spell, it’s a bit harder to detect, not to mention something that lies dormant unless triggered. I have to admit, even I didn’t expect a simple residence to be booby-trapped; this kind of thing used to only be used for tombs and treasure stores.”

Honoka is somewhat impressed by the spark spell that Yutaka Mori-san had set up at his front door to ward against uninvited guests.

It only has the strength of a weak taser, but … how did the scorch mark come about?

Hanamori-san looks a little sheepish, so I can assume she had a hand in it?

As she and Jakuchi-san tinker with the front door, Honoka and I chat outside the gate.

The walk from the gate up to the door is very short so we were still fairly close to them, but if we speak quietly the separation should be enough to keep our secrets.

Not that we’re actually talking about any secrets, though.

“Could I really have been useful if the spell is dormant? I can only recognize spells that are activated, right?”

“Waiting spells are still classified as activated, technically. As long as the dormant spell actually contains magic in it, you should recognize that something’s there.”

Is that so…

“Whew… okay, Kousei-kun, Honoka-san, we’re done. Sorry about that~ no one would expect a normal Japanese residence to have a magic security system like that~.”

“Haa… you successfully deflected the spark, but didn’t you somehow amplify it, Sue? We’re dealing with a bit of a maniac collector, so it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that he might have something set up.”

“Eh… but Yasu missed it too~.”

… Are things going to be alright like this?

“To be honest, we should have expected this kind of thing after hearing that he’s a collector of random magic paraphenalia, but I’m not used to having to detect such weak hexes… Looks like I’ll have to get serious now.”

Hanamori-san rolls up her sleeves and flexes as Jakuchi-san opened the door for her.

“Sue, you let you high tension get the better of you just because you had a kouhai for today, didn’t you?”

“Uuu…”

“…”

I don’t even know what to say about this.

Honoka’s just smiling in the background.

She might as well just laugh, jeez.

“Anyway, I’ll start on the second floor. You and Kousei-kun start on the first.”

Jakuchi-san takes off his shoes as he approaches the staircase leading upstairs.

“Master, I’m going to investigate the back of the house.”

Honoka waved a hand frivolously.

“Alright, be careful. Remember, it’s an investigation. Let us know if there’s something wrong.”

“’Ka-y~. I’ll start off by looking around for youkai.”

There’s no way Honoka will make trouble for us, so I just let her go without worrying too much about it.

We’ve been working at Happy Life Work long enough for her to know what’s necessary and what’s not for an investigation, so I don’t think she needs supervising.

That leaves me with Hanamori-san, standing in the foyer.

“Alright, let’s get started. Close the front door, and I’ll check this room.”

I do as Hanamori-san says before asking,

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“Since we’re looking for the home owner’s disappearance, bloodstains or signs of violence, things that seem misplaced, and any sort of suspicious supernatural items, like magic relics or talismans. And anything else that seems dangerous.”

Hanamori-san begins by simply walking around the foyer area, looking around, before she walks to the middle of the room, saying,

“Alright, I didn’t see anything too suspicious at first glance, but as expected, we can’t just go on sight. I’ll now draw a magic circle that detects supernatural and magical objects. It’s not perfect, but it will give us a start.”

“What do you mean by not perfect?”

I asked.

“My magic is based on anglo witchcraft, so it’s possible that simple from the magic makeup, there might be certain types of magic that’s harder to detect. And of course there are high grade relics and talismans that are designed to be undetected.”

“I see…”

“By the way, I recently got something quite handy for drawing magic circles.”

Hanamori-san’s eyes glint at me mischievously as she stuck her hand in her bag.

“Ta-da-!”

Hanamori-san proudly showed me a stick with a piece of chalk on the end that she’d pulled out.

“…”

“Haha, I used to just tape a piece of chalk on a stick, but recently I saw these chalk sticks that parking police use to mark tires with, and this is soo much more convenient.”

… Hanamori-san… No, I guess if the convenience is there …

I stand to the side as Hanamori-san begins to draw on the ground.

“A lot of my magic is done with drawing magic circles, so it’s nice to find a good tool that helps me with it. Drawing large magic circles is a lot easier with this.”

As Hanamori-san chants, [Aria Recognition] definitely kicked in as the magic circle lights in, and Hanamori-san’s chant seemed to float from her mouth to match the circle’s shape.

If I could actually read the chant, I guess I’d be able to recognize what spell she just used even if she didn’t tell me earlier.

The magic circle and chant lit up brightly, then suddenly, the light shot outwards like ripples, filling the entire room before dispersing and leaving highlights on some of the items.

Since I didn’t even notice these items before, I suppose they’re inert?

At least, [Aria Recognition] isn’t working on them.

Hanamori-san stared around the room in surprise, her mouth open in an ‘o’.

“This man… collected a lot of things, didn’t he…?”

There are at least 15 items marked as ‘magical’ in the foyer alone, so I think she might be right.

Wait.

Does Hanamori-san have to check each and every one…?

… Investigating this house is going to take forever.

—

Hanamori-san looks so ‘done’, and we’ve only been through the foyer, the dining room, and the sitting room to the side of it.

“How has this man collected so many things without having anything bad happen to him before!?”

Her pleasant, school-teacher aura is turning into a frustrated disbelief.

I hand her a bottle of water as she rests on the couch.

“I thought that might be the case, but is it really such a bad thing to have so many magical items stored away like this?”

I asked.

Hanamori-san takes a long drink of water before responding.

“Hmm… well, generally speaking, it’s not really about the amount there are. Of course, having more items will increase the chance of something bad happening just because of probability, but if the items all come from similar magical systems, then there’s not much chance of them interfering with each other poorly.”

“Magical system…? Like how witch’s spells are different from Shinto spells?”

Although I don’t know the details, I have been seeing a lot of arias lately, so I’ve at least noticed the basic differences in structure.

“More or less. You could say that items from anglo witchcraft aren’t compatible with items from southeast asian shamanism and voodoo because they’re both too similar and yet different enough that they react poorly with each other.”

So … ‘it’s complicated,’ then.

“By the way, the best case scenario is that incompatible objects will trigger each other to generate a mana field. Although that can cause strange things to happen and attract youkai, that’s still manageable.”

“The worst case?”

“A violent reaction that destroys everything around it~.”

“…”

I feel a bit of a cold sweat.

Yutaka Mori-san didn’t only collect grimoires, he seems to have been interested in occult relics too, and boy had he collected a lot.

Most of them were trivial items, mere trinkets, but …

A dune is created from each grain of sand.

What if he happened to put things in a bad arrangement?

Even mundane people from THAT side have read fantasy stories about accidental demon summonings just because you set a candle in a bad spot!

“I guess… this is just how occult maniacs are?”

I say.

“Haa… it’s scary when a maniac has money.”

I agree.

It’s already bad that curiosity can kill a cat. It’s much worse when the cat is RICH and curious.

“Yes, it really is. It would be better if he at least tried to store them properly… well, he’s been really lucky thus far. I only hope that his disappearance isn’t due to that luck running out…”

“How could it be lucky if he disappeared?”

I can’t help retorting.

“I suppose that’s true as well…”

Hanamori-san frowns a little in concern before standing up and brushing her clothes free from wrinkles.

She could only sigh before saying,

“On to the next room?”

The next room… oh great.

It’s the study.

Which is basically a mini-library.

There are a few spells here or there that I could see with [Aria Recognition], but after pointing them out to Hanamori-san, they just turned out to be some spells to safeguard the desk drawer and keep dust off the books.

There are a lot of things that obviously look like occult relics lying around as well, but I’ll wait for Hanamori-san’s detection spell before pointing them out so I don’t mess up Hanamori-san’s system.

The only other suspicious thing would be the staircase going downwards, but let’s focus on this room first before moving onto the next.

If I start pointing this and that and everything I see, I’ll DEFINITELY screw up Hanamori-san’s system for investigation.

Since there’s even an anti-dust spell in this room, there’s even less chance of physical signs that anything had happened, and nothing else looks out of place, let alone bloodstains.

There’s nothing wrong here.

After we confirm it, Hanamori-san draws her magic circle again, and again, a bunch of things are highlighted – woah?!

A flash shudders from the stairwell, and [Aria Recognition] kicks in as some spell is triggered.

I flinch as Hanamori-san says,

“… Just the normal junk here. Haa… Do I still have to check every single one?”

Nonono, what ‘normal’ junk?

What about that staircase over there, it totally looks suspicious!

Although, if you don’t have [Aria Recognition], I guess it would just look like a normal staircase.

“… Are we just going to ignore the staircase?”

I finally ask.

“What?”

Hanamori-san looks over at me and tilts her head.

“Ah, no… well, when your magic circle activated, something was triggered around the stairwell.”

Too bad I don’t recognize arias or I could tell her what happened… I wonder how one usually goes about learning arias.

As I’m distracting myself slightly, Hanamori-san turns to me with an extremely serious face.

“Kousei-kun. What stairwell?”

I froze.

Huh? What?

My brain flails wildly for a few seconds before the confused look Hanamori-san gives me changes to concern the exact same moment when I also realized something was very, very wrong.

“H-Hanamori-san. Um. Tell me, is there a staircase going down to the basement on that wall?”

I asked as I pointed directly at the stairwell.

Hanamori-san only presses her lips tightly together as she approached the stairwell, but a good half meter or so in front of it, she stops.

Reaches out her hand.

Clearly presses against something solid that I can’t see.

Well, crap.

Now it looks like I’m the crazy one, since there’s clearly something there instead of a big hole in the wall.

Or so I thought, but Hanamori-san’s jaw tightens the more she pats whatever object is in front of her.

“… No, no, this isn’t right at all. Kousei-kun, you come over. Here. Mark each side of the stairwell for me.”

Hanamori-san hands me a few ribbons with thumbtacks stuck through them.

I expected to be stopped by an invisible barrier, but there’s nothing as a I move forward and stick one thumbtack on one side of the stairwell and the other on the opposite side.

And then I wondered if it was okay to be making holes in the wall of somebody else’s house, but it’s a bit late for that so … we’ll ask for forgiveness later.

Once I’m done pressing both ribbons in, arias suddenly flew out of the ribbons, almost blinding me as something like an explosion takes place.

“Waaah-!”

“Kyaaa!”

A bright light flashes as even more arias fly up from the stairwell again, and the arias fight against each other…

I back the heck up as fast as I can, covering my face with my arms, but nothing physical seems to happen.

Just … getting basically flashbanged at close range is super unpleasant…

As I get my sight back, I look over to see Hanamori-san also crouched down, hands covering her face.

“Ugh… such a strong reaction. Whoever cast this illusion is no joke! Gods…”

Hinamori-san curses lightly, but rubs her eyes as she peaked over me towards the stairwell.

“Um… that…”

I don’t even know what to say at this point.

Hanamori-san sucks in a sharp gasp.

“There really was a stairwell…”

Her murmur makes me feel relieved, but, ah… I would like an explanation of the situation?

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