Gotanda Station. The terminus of the train line, and also the terminus of my dwindling patience.

  The stream of people floods off the train, merging into the noisy and bustling Tokyo night. Karasu and I stand forlorn on the platform, two gods looking at each other with unconcealed disappointment. Throughout the entire long journey, absolutely nothing happened. There was no spatial distortion, no interference from dark energy, and most importantly, no unfortunate passenger suddenly evaporated into nothingness to end up at the legendary Kisaragi Station.

  "Clean," I swish my tail lightly against the concrete pillar beside me. "Suspiciously clean."

  It is just like that accursed elevator game. The mastermind simply encoded it with a series of tricks, and I fear this time it is many times more complex.

  "A waste of time," Karasu snorts coldly, the black wings on his back trembling slightly to shake off invisible dust particles. "I told you, standing guard here is like waiting for a persimmon to fall into your mouth. Let's go back."

  Just as we are both about to turn and leave, a strange sound resonates.

  Krr... krr... Teke... teke...

  The sound is not loud, but it is sharp and cold, echoing from the darkest corner of the station where the neon lights cannot reach. It sounds like the scraping of claws on ceramic tiles, interspersed with the wet slithering of a raw hunk of meat.

  Karasu reacts as fast as lightning. The Tengu's glowing red eyes flash with killing intent. He raises his hand, gathering a bolt of pitch-black Black Lightning at his fingertips, ready to launch it.

  "Wait!"

  I hurriedly reach out to stop him, my claws hitting his wrist with a thud.

  From the darkness, a grotesque form slithers out. It is a woman... or rather, half a woman. Her lower body has completely disappeared, leaving a jagged severance at the waist. She moves using her two hands, dragging the bloody torso across the floor, the other hand clutching a rusty sickle.

  Teke Teke. One of the most famous and aggressive urban legends in this land.

  "Let go, Itsuki," Karasu growls, the lightning in his hand crackling. "This vile beast is extremely dangerous to humans. It is not a pet for you to raise. Do you intend to wait until it escapes and slices a few innocent citizens in half before you deal with it?"

  "Are you always this hasty?" I push his hand down, my ears twitching slightly to show displeasure. "Look closely. Its aura is still very chaotic and weak. It has been lurking in this corner for a while without attacking anyone, even though the station still has people. It must have just formed."

  I glance at the watch on my wrist. 10 PM Tokyo time. The night is still long.

  "Planning to take it back for research again?" Karasu furrows his brows, his face full of disgust.

  "Forget it, this one has a simple structure, nothing interesting to dissect," I shake my head, walking slowly toward the monster. "However, it is the local spirit of this station. Although its intellect is not high, perhaps that twisted brain has recorded some interesting images recently. Let me 'rummage' through its head a bit."

  I turn back, winking at my former colleague. "You remember to watch the perimeter carefully."

  The feathers on Karasu's wings stand on end. "What? Since when did I become a private bodyguard for you?"

  "So what if Gakai suddenly appears now?" I lower my voice, the smile on my lips extinguishing. "I heard rumors he is frantically hunting down and silencing anyone trying to dig deep into Kisaragi."

  The name Gakai carries the weight of a thousand pounds. Karasu falls silent, his eyes wavering. Finally, he clicks his tongue in resignation.

  "Make it quick."

  He flicks his sleeve. A thin mist of black fog spreads out, enveloping our area, creating a perfect soundproof and visual barrier.

  With that done, I feel secure enough to approach the Teke Teke.

  She sees me. Her white eyes bulge out of their sockets, and her blood-filled mouth hisses a terrifying sound.

  "DIEEEEE!!!"

  She slams both hands onto the ground, borrowing the force to launch her tattered body into the air, the sickle swinging straight at my neck with sky-high resentment.

  But to me, her action is no different from a puppy trying to bite its master.

  Thud.

  My white-furred hand catches her disheveled head right in mid-air, as gently as catching a tennis ball.

  "Lie still, good girl,"

  A stream of blue divine power transfers from my hand to her brain. The monster convulses once, then her eyes roll back, and the sickle falls to the ground with a clang. She goes limp, collapsing onto the cold tiled floor, her consciousness gradually sinking into a deep coma.

  "Now then... let's see what you have seen."

  I close my eyes, still feeling haunted by the mental riddles of that Chief Executioner. Even though I know the mind of this anomaly is surely not that complex.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Upon opening my eyes, what hits my face is a pitch-black void, silent enough to hear a heartbeat.

  Compared to the hospital maze full of tangled wires and high-level security encryption inside the head of the Chief Executioner in the Beta Hell, the inner mind of this Teke Teke is pathetically primitive. It is like a poor student's dorm room: four black walls, a lonely wooden chair in the middle of the room, and an old film projector whirring, projecting a grainy beam of light onto a screen.

  "Tch," I kick the leg of the chair hard. "Truly a low-level Anomaly; its consciousness structure does not even have enough capacity to build a decent library."

  I comfortably flop down onto the chair, crossing my legs and snapping my fingers. "Come on, play the movie, darling. Let's see if you saw anything fun lately."

  The projector screeches with a piercing noise, then starts rewinding the memory reels.

  The memory of this monster is pitifully short, barely a week. Perhaps that was the moment enough resentment accumulated for it to form a rudimentary consciousness. The camera angle of the film is also distorted and low to the ground, exactly the eye level of someone with only an upper body crawling and hiding in the shadows.

  Day one. Day two.

  The screen is filled only with legs. Legs in leather shoes, legs in high heels, legs in sneakers... Thousands of people pass by, hurried, indifferent. The monster just hides in the dark corner, observing with instinctual hunger but not daring to act yet. At this point, it is so weak that it is merely a resentment-powered camera placed in the blind spot of the station.

  "Boring," I yawn, intending to fast-forward through this part.

  But then, at minute 3:07 of the third day, my pupils contract.

  A familiar pair of shoes appears in the frame. Old brown leather shoes, the sole worn down on one side.

  The lens of memory shakes slightly then looks up a little higher. Ogawa. The unfortunate Sensitive of Takama-ga-hara.

  He walks hurriedly out of the train car, his face tense, hands clutching his briefcase tightly. But he is not walking alone; he is accompanied by a stranger.

  This person wears an ash-gray windbreaker so ordinary it could not be more ordinary, the kind you can find by the dozens on the streets of Tokyo. He wears a peaked cap pulled low, obscuring part of his face.

  They stop right near where the Teke Teke is hiding.

  In the memory segment, there is no clear sound, only the hum of the train and footsteps, but through their gestures, it is clear they are arguing fiercely. The stranger points into the void at the end of the tracks, then pulls out a crumpled paper map, circling a specific point. Ogawa nods continuously, his expression shifting from doubt to astonishment, and finally to determination.

  The conversation lasts about fifteen minutes. Afterward, the stranger pats Ogawa on the shoulder once, then merges into the crowd, vanishing as fast as an illusion.

  "Freeze frame!" I command.

  The image on the screen freezes at the exact moment the man turns away. Although obscured by the hat, the profile of his face is revealed under the neon lights of the station. A small crescent-shaped scar right below the jawline.

  The film continues to run.

  The next two days, Ogawa still returns to this area, but only alone. He becomes surprisingly cautious compared to his previous haste. He even pulls out his spiritual phone, constantly taking photos, measuring spatial indices around the track area, occasionally writing in a notebook.

  And then, on the sixth day... Ogawa does not appear anymore.

  This timing coincides perfectly with when he received the fateful mission at the Keio Plaza Hotel.

  The remaining days in Teke Teke's memory are just a tasteless repetition of legs and increasing hunger.

  "Enough," I stand up, dusting off my suit. "It seems it was not entirely fruitless."

  I blink, pulling my consciousness back to the bleak reality of Gotanda Station. It is still quite early, at least not yet the peak hour for Anomaly to go dining. Karasu is still standing there, leaning against the concrete pillar, arms crossed over his chest looking cool, black wings loosely closed but his glowing red eyes scanning back and forth like military radar.

  Having excellently completed the mission, the poor Teke Teke at my feet has officially run out of use value.

  Fwoosh.

  A blue flame flares up from within its distorted body, slow and silent. The monster dissolves into nothingness as fast as my salary evaporates on the fifth of every month. Clean, neat, leaving not a speck of dust.

  "Well?" Karasu calls out, his tone retaining its usual grumpiness. "Did you scavenge anything from that mess?"

  "So-so," I shrug, wagging my tail to signal success. "Wait a sec for me to extract the data."

  I open the "Mind-Reader Pro" app on my spiritual phone, connecting to the temporary memory segment I just copied. It takes only a few seconds for the fragmented images in the monster's head to be synthesized into a sharp video file.

  My finger hovers over the [Send] button via Solak. But then, an idea... full of tactical genius sparks in my mind.

  "Damn it," I say in a tone of feigned innocence so blatant I want to punch myself. "Such bad luck. Solak seems to have a server error today or something. For some reason, I absolutely cannot send the file to Takama-ga-hara's system. It must be that the firewalls between the two corporations are conflicting."

  Karasu narrows his eyes, drilling a gaze sharp as a razor straight into my face. "What trick are you trying to pull now, you cunning fox?"

  "Well..." I blink with guiltless naivety. "How about... you accept it for me? Sending directly via personal connection will surely work."

  At this point, the Tengu begins to suspect the issue. Sending directly via personal connection? That means via GodChat. And to send via GodChat means...

  "Then wait until we return to The Nexus, I will call the technical support team to fix it and you can send it later," Karasu snorts coldly, turning his face away. "I am in no rush. The data is on your device; it is not running anywhere."

  "Oh, but I have been very forgetful lately," I lament, rubbing my temples wearily. "This old head contains too many things; what if I wake up tomorrow and accidentally delete it as a junk file?"

  "This case involves the lives of so many people, and you say you can just forget?" Karasu bristles all his wing feathers.

  "Of course I can forget!" I stretch my neck to argue, thick-skinned and shameless. "I have been busy up to my ears lately, hundreds of tasks, endless meetings, I am not just free to play pro bono private detective for you guys!"

  I calmly fabricate the story without blinking an eye. In reality, Director Ariel has prioritized me to handle Takama-ga-hara's case exclusively, so apart from that, I have nothing else to do.

  Karasu is speechless. He opens his mouth to retort, then clamps it shut again. He knows perfectly well I am playing tricks, but he does not know how to counter it.

  Finally, the resigned sigh of the crow rings out, sounding as pathetic as wind whistling through a narrow door crack.

  He resentfully pulls out his pitch-black spiritual phone, his finger tapping the screen so hard I start to feel sorry for the phone.

  Ting!

  My phone suddenly vibrates lightly. A new notification from GodChat pops up, bright and beautiful as the sunrise.

  [GodChat: User Karasu has unblocked you.]

  [Karasu: Send it over quickly. Don't make me change my mind.]

  "There, isn't that quick and neat," I happily press the send button, accompanied by a sticker of a fox making a heart sign. "I told you it was a technical error."