[Protection] and [Curses]

Outside the house, Suguru Geto watched the villagers arrive one after another, his gaze almost compassionate.

The crowd below chattered among themselves. Some even began pointing at Suguru Geto, who looked like a student.

Yet Suguru Geto showed no expression other than compassion.

"Master Exorcist! Almost all the villagers are here now. Only the village chief and his mother, who helped capture the monsters earlier, couldn't come because of their injuries." A man came up from below the platform. He was the middle-aged man who had gone to gather everyone earlier, and he bowed to Suguru Geto before speaking.

"Good. Have them quiet down. I will rid them of the evil spirits clinging to them, one by one." Suguru Geto decided to give them a little taste of kindness first and earn their reverence. Intimidating them with force right away might make them think he was a monster too.

"Yes, sir!" The middle-aged man stepped down.

"Quiet down! Form a line! The Master Exorcist will rid each of us of our evil spirits!" the middle-aged man shouted at the villagers.

"Say... Jian, is any of this actually true?! Who can prove he's really an exorcist? Doesn't he just look like a student?!" A man in his prime challenged the middle-aged man named Jian. He clearly had no intention of following Jian's instructions.

"Komaiwa! If you don't believe me, come up and try it yourself!" Jian told Komaiwa, who was plainly refusing to accept his authority.

"Hmph! You think I'm scared? Fine, I'll try it!" Komaiwa walked straight up to Suguru Geto.

"Go on, then! But let me make this clear! If you're a fraud, I'll beat you until you can't stand!" Komaiwa's defiant expression was no different from that of the gangsters on Tokyo's streets. It filled Suguru Geto with genuine disgust, and he nearly failed to restrain the urge to kill him.

"You will pay the proper price for insulting a Child of God." Suguru Geto used Cursed Spirit Manipulation on Komaiwa, absorbing the cursed spirit attached to him.

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Komaiwa didn't understand Suguru Geto's words. But a moment later, his whole body felt lighter. The back pain whose cause he had never been able to find suddenly vanished. He kept bending over and straightening up on the spot before finally looking at the [exorcist] before him with delight.

"I didn't expect you to be an [exorcist] at such a young age. Thanks!" Komaiwa thanked Suguru Geto with a little more sincerity.

"Now it is time for your punishment." Suguru Geto summoned a cursed spirit that looked much like a pig and set it on Komaiwa's shoulder.

"Aah!! What's happening?! It hurts! Aaaaaah-!" Komaiwa's shoulder hurt unbearably. He could only slowly crouch down, but then realized that did nothing to help. He lay flat on the ground and began rolling around, as though that was the only way to ease his pain.

"Son-! What's wrong?!" A woman who appeared to be Komaiwa's mother emerged from the crowd and ran toward him as he rolled around on the ground.

"This is the punishment for blasphemers. Two Divine Children descended upon your village, yet you abused and imprisoned them. Sooner or later, your village will be destroyed by your blasphemy without you even realizing it." Suguru Geto's expression was solemn as he addressed the crowd below in an emotionless voice.

"..."

All the villagers below fell silent. They were unwilling to believe those two girls were the supposed Divine Children, but they could clearly see Komaiwa crawling around on the ground, still looking as though the pain was more than he could bear.

"Sir! Please save my son! He isn't a bad man! It was all the village chief and his mother's doing! They tricked us!" Komaiwa's mother hurried over from her son's side and repeatedly knocked her forehead against the ground before Suguru Geto.

"Oh? Then, with me as your witness, tell the truth here, and perhaps your son may be freed from his punishment." Suguru Geto softly recited the incantation for a [Curtain], enclosing the surrounding area within it.

The villagers seemed to sense something. They looked up at the sky. Whether it was their imagination or not, the sky seemed a little darker to them.

"I'll tell you... I'll tell you... Back when the adults of the Kakehashi family were still alive... everyone in our village was healthy. We never had shoulder pain, back pain, or unexplained fatigue... Then... the adults of the Kakehashi family died in an accident..."

"Those two Kakehashi chil... no... those two Divine Children kept saying they could see ghosts and monsters... That was when we all started having health problems too... People in the village also began disappearing or getting hurt..."

"A few days ago... the village chief told us that the dead adults of the Kakehashi family had become vengeful spirits, and those two children were possessed by them too... Then the chief gathered the village's young and able-bodied men, tied up the two Divine Children, and imprisoned them in... this house..." Komaiwa's mother haltingly recounted everything that had happened.

[The villagers present all voiced their agreement with Komaiwa's mother. It seemed she was telling the truth.]

[The Kakehashi family... Could they have been jujutsu sorcerers living in seclusion? They kept exorcising cursed spirits in the village... They might not have been very strong, and one day they encountered a cursed spirit they couldn't exorcise... They died unexpectedly... The cursed spirit that hurt people was still in the village...] Based on Komaiwa's mother's account, Suguru Geto pieced together a very plausible explanation.

"Fools! The Kakehashi family were God Servants who had been ridding you of evil spirits all along! Once a powerful evil spirit killed them, of course it would attack you!" Looking exasperated at their ignorance, Suguru Geto revealed the [truth] to the villagers below.

"Ah! I wondered why, whenever I felt a little unwell, all I had to do was run into someone from the Kakehashi family..."

"That bastard village chief! He must have been afraid someone from the Kakehashi family would take his position, so he got him killed!"

"I saw him! The chief kept sneaking off to the mountain behind the village! That was where the Kakehashi man died in an accident that day!"

"The people who disappeared from our village after the Kakehashi man died all went missing on that mountain!"

"That bastard who serves evil spirits! He got our village's God Servants killed! And he tricked us into imprisoning the Divine Children!"

"Let's go find him together! Then we'll come back and beg the Divine Children for forgiveness!"

Filled with righteous indignation, the villagers gathered and headed into the village, seemingly intent on dragging the chief's family back here in bonds.

[Is the cursed spirit on the mountain behind the village?]

Suguru Geto gleaned another piece of information from their words: the village chief might have been responsible for the deaths of the Kakehashi family.