Chapter 2 : The call of the chains

Eiji stood in front of the door of his house with a luminous gaze, full of hope and expectation.

He opened the door and closed it again before walking down the street, he walked through his neighborhood with a joyful and curious look like a baby discovering the world for the first time.

He continued walking like this for about ten minutes before taking the metro and went to the city centre.

Walking through the lively streets of the city and smelling the bustle of the city, Eiji couldn't help but smile.

"How wonderful the world is."

The noise of the city resounded in his ears like a marvellous symphony, the warmth of the sun on his skin was as pleasant as the caresses of a lover, and every scene he saw was worthy of a Picasso painting.

"Now I have to get a job."

With a smile on his face, he took out of his pocket a piece of paper with several job postings written on it, then began the challenge called job search.

Eiji clenched his fists with a determined look that even attracted the eyes of passers-by who were walking away from him thinking he was a madman.

"Step one to a peaceful life! Find a job!!"

A few hours later

Then he took a big determined step forward.

"Hello sir..."

"Sorry young man, we don't need employees!"

"You don't fit the profile we're looking for."

"We are very sensitive to your interest in our company but...."

"Sorry but we are no longer recruiting..."

Kneeling in despair in front of a soda machine, Eiji put his last five hundred yen coin in the machine and collected a can of Coca-Cola, which he emptied in five sips before breathing a deep sigh of despair.

"My dear predecessor before he bequeathed your body, couldn't you at least finish high school? Do you know what problems you are getting me into? Nobody wants to hire me! Even for jobs at ¥800!(*1)"

Eiji had dropped out of school very early, then from that he was a hardcore gamer who had never worked, his resume was completely blank and he was not in adequate physical shape for jobs requiring great physical strength.

No manager or boss worthy of the name would have dared to employ him.

Finally sighing in disappointment Eiji sat in a park while admiring the sunset on the horizon as several groups of children accompanied by their mothers played further away.

But while Eiji was lost in thought, he suddenly felt a burning sensation on his arm.

The pain was truly unbearable, it could have even made any trained soldier scream in pain, but Eiji didn't make a sound, he pulled up his sleeves and saw with a slight surprise that several marks strongly resembling chains were burning his pulpit.

"What's that?"

He got up from the bench on which he was sitting and walked to the north exit of the park, but the burning sensation became more frightening, even making Eiji's eyebrows tremble.

"The further I walked, the stronger the pain became! Do the chains that saved me want to tell me something?"

He then stopped, thought an intant and walked towards the East, the pain decreased slightly but started to intensify again after a few tens of seconds of walking.

Eiji then turned back and started walking in the park in the directions in which the pain was getting weaker.

Eventually the pain gradually subsided and disappeared when Eiji stood 10m away from a middle-aged man with dark circles under his eyes, a bald skull, wearing a high quality suit and looking at the park landscape with a strange look on his face, from his eyes, one could read an immense despair.

But it wasn't the appearance of this man that amazed Eiji, it was the monster behind him.

On the man's shoulders stood a pale woman with long black hair, a bloody mouth and slit cheek, her monstrous mouth stuck to the man's ear while whispering in a weak voice.

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

. . . .

But before Eiji had the slightest reaction, the woman on the man's shoulder suddenly raised her head and looked at Eiji with her red pupils, the surprised middle-aged man also looked up at Eiji in a state of panic.

"Run away young man!!!"

The woman jumped off the man's shoulder and went down to the ground, and flew towards Eiji who unconsciously put his two arms in front of him to protect him.

The monster that was a few centimeters away from Eiji suddenly stopped as black chains sprang from his arms and tied the monster up in an instant.

"Roar!"

The monster roared with pain as the chains imprisoned him, but it suddenly turned into a dark smoke and entered the ground under the eyes of Eiji and the middle-aged man who knelt on the ground with tears in his eyes.

The chains returned to the arms of Eiji, who was still in a dazed state, while the middle-aged man continued to cry.

"Can somebody fucking explain to me what the fuck just happened?!" Eiji screams out loud.

. . . . .

Eiji and the man didn't speak for a while, there was a strange silence between them, Eiji cleared his throat and then said calmly.

"Can you summarize your story for me, please, and explain to me why you had a monster on your shoulder."

Hearing the word "monster" the man shivered instantly, took a deep breath of air and lifted the trembling cup of coffee in his hands.

He took a big sip of coffee and then exhaled noisily.

"First of all thank you very much for your help, my name is Dewa Toyonobu, I'm 42 years old and director of the Tokugawa academy."

He bowed to Eiji in a respectful manner to the point of attracting the gaze of the other customers in the cafe before he said.

"Thank you for your help, you saved my life."

Eiji scratched his head without knowing what to say, Dewa raised his head and looked at Eiji and continued his story.

"Two months ago, towards the end of the school year, some of the students from my school were having fun organizing a supernatural game in one of the rooms assigned to the extracurricular club, that day I stayed at the academy later than usual, because it was the period after exams, I'm very busy during that time of the year."

"After finishing my work, I left my office and was getting ready to go home when I caught some of the students in question organizing an occult ceremony, it was strictly forbidden to be on the academy grounds after 9pm, I immediately reprimanded them before calling their parents to come and pick them up."

"But when I wanted to close the hall and leave the academy, I suddenly witnessed a sight I'd rather forget, the monster, as you call it, suddenly materialized in the room."

"Being a man of science, at first I thought it was a student joke, it had annoyed me slightly, so I approached and tried to catch the creature, but that's when my hand went through the creature's body and then it disappeared, perhaps was this to reassure me but I thought that it had to be a holographic projection, because the technology is more and more developed and the young people are capable of everything to have fun, I thus tried to forget this business and I went back home."

Drops of sweat were beginning to fall from Dewa's forehead, he swallowed a large sip of saliva while continuing to tell his story.

"But I didn't know at that moment that my ordeal was about to begin, the next morning when I woke up, I saw this monster sitting on my chest looking at me with a frightening smile, I was so scared that I screamed so loudly that I woke up my wife and daughter, but the next second the monster disappeared.

This continued for a week, it disappeared and reappeared at will, while I was eating or working, at the end, I talked about it to my wife, who made an appointment on my behalf with a psychologist, who diagnosed me with depression and overwork, so I took a vacation, but nothing to do, the monster was appearing more and more often asking me.

Do you think I'm pretty? Do you think I'm pretty?

I couldn't sleep, I lost 20kg in just one month, I researched the monster that was stalking me and finally I learned that this monster was one, Kuchisake-onna!".

. . . . .

*1 : Jobs at ¥800 per hour, Jobs barely giving the minimum wage, without any guarantee).