Chapter 26: A College Student’s Adventure — Miss Kokkuri
Xia Jiuwei and Lu Nian’an appeared on the rooftop of a ruined building in the Under-Reality.
The structure was simple, the building was little more than a massive concrete block.
From the outside, it looked like an abandoned department store.
Along the side of the wall, an iron ladder ran up the side of the building, all the way to the roof.
The two of them stood at the very top.
The rooftop was vast and silent. The Under-Reality stretched out endlessly below them.
Black mist drifted through the air like fog.
Beyond the horizon was nothing but emptiness.
Broken buildings stood scattered like forgotten corpses.
Strange green vegetation covered the ruins, giving the dead city an unsettling sense of life.
The world felt alive… yet wrong.
At the center of the rooftop stood a small concrete room, completely out of place.
Barely two meters across, it looked narrow and suffocating.
Ding—
A sudden sound broke the silence.
The gray-green iron door slowly opened.
Several young men and women stepped out from inside.
Xia Jiuwei paused—her gaze landing on a few of the girls among them.
Those were her classmates—the same ones who had invited her to “explore” this morning.
The group hesitated before stepping out, their expressions tense as they looked around anxiously.
None of them knew where they were.
One of them turned instinctively back.
Behind them, the passage had become a cramped concrete compartment barely large enough for one person to stand in—as if no other exit had ever existed.
The four of them whispered to each other.
But none of them noticed—
Unaware of the two figures watching quietly from a short distance away—
Xia Jiuwei and Lu Nian’an.
A few hours earlier.
Inside a barbecue restaurant in the city, three female university students and four male students were seated around a table.
“Want to try out an urban legend later?”
The blonde girl said between bites
“Huh? So that’s what you meant by ‘something to do’?”
A boy wearing thin-framed glasses asked in confusion.
“Yeah. Why not?” she tilted her head.
She looked across the table, eyes wide.
“Come on, just try it~”
The other two girls chimed in.
“Don’t count on them. You can’t rely on him for this stuff. Leave it to us.”
another boy said with a grin.
The glasses boy thought for a moment, then finally nodded.
“…Alright.”
That night, the university campus felt unusually empty.
“Ding-dong—”
The blonde girl deliberately lowered her voice as they walked down the corridor.
“This is my clubroom. Nobody really comes here—it’s perfect for urban legends.”
She enthusiastically introduced a few simple “games.”
“Want to play Kokkuri-san with us?”
She pulled the glasses boy along, also calling over another male student.
“But Kokkuri-san answers in Japanese. Can you even read it?” the glasses boy frowned slightly.
“That’s why we need you—you can read Japanese, right?” she smiled at him.
The glasses boy glanced at the three girls. They had also used the excuse of “needing help with Japanese” to invite him out this morning.
He sighed.
“…Fine.”
“Then you guys go try the Four Corners game in the storage room next door,” the blonde girl said, glancing at the other two girls.
A secluded space, plus a little fear—was always good for bringing people closer together.
Inside the clubroom, only three people remained.
They sat around a folding table.
An A3 sheet of paper lay on the table. Simple drawings were printed on it—red torii gates at the top and bottom, “Yes” and “No” written in the center, numbers from 0 to 9 around them, and messy hiragana scattered across the edges.
Ling Cheng glanced at it and frowned slightly.
The blonde girl smoothed the paper and clapped her hands.
“Alright, let’s begin.”
She placed a ten-yen coin on it and signaled the others to place their fingers lightly on top.
In the process, her fingers accidentally brushed against Ling Cheng’s.
The three closed their eyes and began chanting softly:
“Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come.
If you are already here, please move to ‘Yes’.”
The coin moved slightly—
Sliding toward “No.”
The three opened their eyes.
“Ah… I marked it wrong. Let’s try again.”
The blonde girl laughed awkwardly. The tension eased a little.
They closed their eyes again.
“Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come.
If you are already here, please move to ‘Yes’.”
This time, the coin moved smoothly to “Yes.”
They opened their eyes again, not particularly surprised.
“Kokkuri-san, who here do you think is the most handsome?” the blonde girl asked casually.
The coin tilted toward Ling Cheng… then drifted back to “Yes.”
“Eh? Ling Cheng, didn’t expect that from you,” another boy teased.
Ling Cheng frowned slightly, analyzing the movement.
If neither he nor the other boy had applied pressure, then could Xiaoyue alone really control it that precisely?
“Stop joking, it’s just a game,” Xiaoyue laughed, defusing the situation.
“Your turn.”
“…Then, Kokkuri-san, what is my birthday?”
The other boy thought for a moment and asked.
After a brief silence, the coin began to move slowly.
0… 4… 2… 3.
“…Eh? That’s my birthday?”
The boy blinked in surprise.
“How did you know?” he looked at Ling Cheng.
“I didn’t,” Ling Cheng replied calmly.
The boy didn’t think much of it.
Ling Cheng’s turn.
“Kokkuri-san, in Hilbert space, what is the inner product of two orthogonal basis vectors?”
The coin didn’t move.
Silence stretched.
“Kokkuri-san, can you answer?”
Only then did the coin slowly drift toward “No.”
Ling Cheng felt a slight relief.
But something still felt… off.
After that, the questions became more casual.
“Am I good-looking?”
“Are you tired of school every day?”
“Who does Xiaoyue like?”
The questions ranged from silly to meaningless, and the answers were inconsistent.
But everyone simply treated it as a game.
“Alright, let’s stop after three more questions,” Xiaoyue said, glancing at the time.
“Kokkuri-san, will anyone among us get hurt today?”
The coin trembled slightly, slowly moving to the number “2,” then stopped on “Yes.”
“Two times… that sounds weirdly certain.” she laughed.
“But it’s probably just a joke.”
She looked at the others.
“…Hey, can I ask the last two questions?”
“Of course,” the boy immediately replied.
Ling Cheng said nothing.
“Kokkuri-san, does someone called Maiden J exist?”
“Yes.”
The coin moved quickly.
Xiaoyue’s eyes lit up slightly.
“Then… when we’re in danger, will she come save us?”
This time, the coin did not move toward either “Yes” or “No.”
Instead, it began to tremble irregularly.
Then it began to move across the hiragana grid—as if pulled by something unstable.
One character at a time.
Unsteady. Irregular.
Finally, it stopped.
ふ、れ、て、は、な、ら、ぬ