“We should go into the house,â€ said Shiraishi as they climbed up the steps. “They know that they can’t disturb us in there.â€ Akiko could hear the protesters arguing amongst themselves, keeping their voices low for the most part, and decided that they weren’t likely to interfere for a while in any case. Mr Ito nodded, but he was very quiet now, following them into the house, merely murmuring the conventional courtesies.

When Akiko brought the tea into the reception room, he and Shiraishi were still sitting in silence. The priest glanced at Akiko, raising her eyebrows and shrugging slightly.

“Won’t you have some tea, Mr Ito? And tell us why you have come.â€

He took the tea, and sipped from it, staring at the table. Then he put it down, adjusting its position slightly, before looking up, glancing between Shiraishi and Akiko.

“This is a bit embarrassing,â€ he said, with a sigh. “I really don’t believe in this sort of thing.â€

“What sort of thing?â€ Shiraishi asked the question gently, but Akiko thought she detected an eagerness to hear the answer. Akiko herself was certainly curious.

“Oh, I don’t know. Kegare. Curses. Purification. I don’t know what to call it.â€

“What is the problem?â€

Mr Ito sighed, and looked at his hands again, staring at them for several long moments.

“It sounds silly when I just say it,â€ he said, finally. “I’m just having lots of bad luck. Little things. Dropping a pen behind a desk. Forgetting to unmount a disk before ejecting it, and then losing important data. Tripping in the street. Small things keep going wrong with the car. And I’ve constantly got small pains, although they move around. And I can’t sleep.â€ Shiraishi was nodding sympathetically, but Akiko was much more alert, remembering what she had seen kegare spirits doing, remembering the girl she had seen tripped up only a few minutes before.

She tried to recapture the state she had reached in the wood. <em>I needed to think like this, no, not quite, more like… Ah. Nearly. So maybe it was… Yes. Oh, no.</em>

Suddenly, Akiko could see kegare. Shiraishi was almost entirely free of it, and even the bits she had were burned away as Akiko watched by a faint glow that seemed to come from the priest’s skin.

Mr Ito, on the other hand, was heavy with it. Black vines of corruption wrapped round his body, pressing thorns into his neck, while bloated centipedes crawled over them, disappearing into the folds of his clothes and then reappearing on the other side of his body, almost as if they were crawling through him. Akiko had to fight to suppress a shudder.

“Ah, Mr Ito, is your throat sore at the moment?â€

“What? Er, yes. Yes, a bit. How did you know?â€

“Um…â€ Akiko wasn’t at all sure how she could explain, but she was sure that what she was seeing was real. She turned to the priest.

“Revd Shiraishi, I think we should perform a harae for Mr Ito.â€ Shiraishi was briefly startled, but then she nodded.

“I’ll get ready.â€

The rain was still not falling, although the clouds seemed even heavier, so they set the himorogi up on the former shrine site, this time leaving the go-shintai inside. As they knelt, and Shiraishi began the ceremony, Akiko tried to switch back to seeing the kegare. As the priest picked up the ohnusa, she finally succeeded.

The vines were moving around Mr Ito, constricting, while the centipedes scuttled ever faster. Then Shiraishi waved the ohnusa over him, and although Akiko saw no light from it this time, the vines and centipedes dissolved as if they were just painted on, and were being washed away.

Mr Ito’s face relaxed, and he smiled.