With the crisp clack of wooden clogs and a rising wisp of murky smoke, the figure waiting there slowly came into view.
The figure had pale skin that looked as though it had been bathed in milk, and a powdered face resembling that of a noble young lady sheltered in a grand mansion. Long hair looped around a bone hairpin still almost reached the ground, while delicately poised fingers supported a slender pipe. A faint purple tint adorned the neatly trimmed nails.
"Phew."
Without those lips parting, several more clouds of murky smoke rose from that mouth. Only the bobbing Adam's apple and the glimpse of a flat chest revealed that this was no noble young lady, but an extraordinarily handsome man who cherished his own looks.
Hair-Eating Ghost, huh.
No wonder his aura is so weak.
As he watched the waiting figure come into view, Arata felt increasingly unimpressed.
"Looking closely, you really are quite a rare beauty yourself."
Naturally, Hair-Eating Ghost had no idea what Arata was thinking. After puffing out a few wisps of murky smoke, he completely ignored the threat posed by the magical chains. Instead, he used their radiance to study the person he had been waiting for.
"But you still fall a little short of that man."
"As expected, in all this vast Kyoto, only he possesses looks that utterly surpass my own."
Having said that, the man who prided himself on his exquisite beauty took another drag from the pipe in his hand, a trace of disappointment lingering between his brows.
Soon, that disappointment deepened until he was actually frowning!
"And I really dislike your short hair."
"What a waste of that face."
"Looking at it that way, even leaving that man aside, I'm far more beautiful than you."
As he criticized Arata,