Ayesha wrapped both hands around the hot teacup and leaned toward him.
It was time to hear the business that had made him call for a spirit medium.
“How much do you know about beings that do not die?”
And the first words from his mouth were a question beyond her expectations.
“……Beings that do not die?”
The first things to cross her mind were, of course, works created by someone’s imagination.
But surely the matter he meant to discuss after calling for a spirit medium was not a novel or a painting.
Ayesha sifted through as much miscellaneous common knowledge as she could—things she had vaguely encountered somewhere while out covering stories.
“There are a few figures in history. For example, the Count of Saint-Germain, sighted over hundreds of years, or the Wandering Jew who appears in the scripture of some distant country. Ah, and in the epic of an ancient civilization, Utnapishtim is said to have survived the great flood sent as God’s punishment and obtained eternal life.”
“Their stories are interesting as well, but the being I mean is not a ‘person.’ We are talking about something a little different.”
A thing that exists but is not a person.
A ghost.
It was utterly irrational, outside the realm she could accept, and yet it was the very topic she had to turn into as interesting an article as possible and bring money to the magazine—and now it had come right before her eyes.
Ayesha gazed at Kirix and parted her lips in a calmer tone.
No matter what clamor filled her head, it was time to show a cautious exterior and build trust.
“No, I understand. It is that.”
‘It.’
It was the furthest Ayesha, who still knew nothing, could go in expressing it indirectly.
Kirix nodded.
“Ayesha. ‘It’ is circling around me. It is eyeing my body, watching for its chance.”
……What? What is this supposed to mean?
Ayesha reflexively tried to look around this way and that, then quickly straightened her posture.
If she revealed her bewilderment exactly as it was, she would betray that she was a dabbler.
Avoiding Kirix’s notice, she secretly glanced around the dining room.
But no matter how much she looked, she could not sense any suspicious presence at all.
“I call it an ‘evil spirit.’”
Kirix’s voice dropped a level.
There was a power in the man’s voice—quiet yet forceful—that made the listener tense.
Ayesha, in turn, caught her breath and focused.
“Evil spirit…….”
Not a psychic phenomenon, not even the most commonly used word, ghost—he had said evil spirit.
An evil spirit, an evil spirit…….
Setting aside for now the question of whether such a thing actually existed, had there been some event sufficient to judge it ‘evil’?
What did it mean that it targeted his body?
“Are you speaking of possession?”
Because listening was her profession, she had picked up rumors of a similar kind here and there.
Someone she knew only by name through several people had been possessed by a ghost and reached the point of not recognizing even parents or siblings—enough time had passed that the exact details were hazy, but the news had probably been something like that.
What had she said then?
Ayesha carefully retraced her memory.
She thought she had advised, “Look into that person’s debt situation a little.”
And her prediction had hit the mark.
When she heard the conclusion that he had actually been unable to repay borrowed money and had pretended to be mad to evade the crisis, only to be exposed, she had clicked her tongue, thinking it was just as she had expected.
But there was no way the heir of House Eseldor could be in such dire straits that he had to fake possession.
He had vast estates, a huge manor, and above all a tremendous inheritance passed down from his ancestors.
Moreover, except for the absurd topic of an evil spirit, Kirix Eseldor was an utterly normal—no, an even more excellent—gentleman.
“It is not a simple possession.”
That was why, every time words like evil spirit or possession came from his lips, Ayesha flinched inwardly.
Those lips looked as though they ought to be discussing grand subjects like the future of the nation or the management of an estate.
“Is that so?”
“It wants me. To be precise, it wants everything of Eseldor.”
The man watched Ayesha with piercing eyes.
She wanted to ask why he thought so, but as a spirit medium who had to claim she could communicate with spirits, she was not sure how far she could pry without inviting suspicion.
“……For now, you must steel your heart.”
Seeing that look in his eyes, she felt she had to say something, but she could not decide how to begin.
Ayesha stalled with the most obvious encouragement.
“I know. I am trying to steel myself, but it is not easy.”
A deep sigh pressed heavily against her ears.
“Ayesha, the evil spirit will someday take my body. When I let down my guard, or when I become endlessly weak, and so lose control over my body, it will never miss that chance and will crawl into me.”
Apart from his calm manner of continuing to speak, fear that he could not fully hide flickered now and then in a corner of Kirix’s face.
“Perhaps the evil spirit may try to create for itself an opportunity to plunder my body. Judging by the persistent obsession it has with me, it probably will.”
The more she heard, the more it sounded like utter nonsense, but as she listened and seriously played along, her mind began to tangle in confusion.
If he could see spirits and hear their stories, wasn’t this man the one born with the makings of a spiritualist?
Then why had he called for a spirit medium?
Could he perhaps be seeing hallucinations or hearing voices?
Was there no chance those symptoms had finally developed into delusions?
Hadn’t they said that mental illness was in fact hereditary in this family for generations?
At this rate, this man too might at some moment lose his mind completely and become unable to distinguish delusion from reality.
Like his grandfather, who had forgotten even the wife who had borne him a child and lived with him all his life, and his only son, and had caused a rampage.
“That is why I absolutely need Ayesha’s help. Still, I am relieved that you arrived at this manor at the right time. As a spirit medium, you must know well how to handle an evil spirit.”
There was no way she knew such a method.
If he wanted to cure his abnormal symptoms, it would have been better to call a physician.
“Meeting the person I have been waiting for must be why—my heart certainly feels much lighter. Thank you for coming, Ayesha.”
“Not at all. I am the one who should ask for your guidance.”
At his words of thanks, Ayesha forced a smile.
Amid all the doubt, one thing was clear.
Kirix truly believed it.
That an evil spirit circling around him was trying to steal his body.
Ayesha reviewed the man before her eyes.
Kirix Eseldor.
The information she knew about this man was still not very much.
That he had the blood of some old royal house that had now vanished mixed in him, that although their status had changed, they had amassed wealth over generations, so all the land around here belonged to this family,
And…….
This man was the most beautiful madman among all the people she had ever met.
***
The bloody, cruel history of a distinguished family.
Here is a heartless father who tried to harm his wife and son with his own hands.
Hmm, but as long as the motive of mental illness exists, the word heartless does not fit.
Here is a son who forsook the natural bonds of blood and murdered his father.
This too, well…….
Since it was said that when the servants heard the commotion and ran to the scene, the son’s face was already covered in blood, there is room to take self-defense into consideration.
Ayesha read the few lines she had written down to draft the article, then stopped and crossed them out heavily until they were black.
She did not like any of them.
No.
Even if she did not like it, the editor-in-chief would.
For example, the family arson case she had covered was like that.
“Ayesha, why is the focus of this arson article like this?”
“Ah, that? When I looked into the story, their circumstances were pitiful. The parents were ill, the younger siblings had been injured in an accident, and they had no money for treatment, so it seems they simply set fire to the house to die together. But the flames happened to spread to the neighboring house.”
“So in the end, isn’t it true that a family of five next door died?”
“In the end…… it is true.”
“Then what is the problem?”
