The water was still—too still.
A small boat cut slowly across the glassy surface of the abandoned lake, endless to the eye, silent to the ear.
At the stern sat the Perfume Seller, watching the quiet as if in conversation with it.
His fingers brushed lightly over the strings of the Benzaiten—not to play, but as if to remind it that it still existed.
The spiritualist sat across from him, grumbling, his tongue heavier than usual.
With a deep sigh, eyes fixed on the grey horizon, he muttered,
"So, what now, my friend? … No one around. Nothing moving.
I thought we'd at least see some boats in the distance."
The Perfume Seller didn't reply immediately.
He lifted his gaze to the clear sky, then slowly closed his eyes,
as if sensing something in the air that only he could perceive.
At last, he spoke. His voice was calm, flowing like cool water:
"We wait…
Patience is the mark of a good hunter."
Time passed, unmeasured.
But the spiritualist couldn't stay still.
"Do you really think the fish is that big?
Will it get scared and flee?
Do you think my gaze will scare it away?"
The Perfume Seller replied without turning, his voice soft but sharp as a knife:
"The only thing the fish will flee from is your face…"
Silence hung in the air.
The spiritualist fell quiet, a little angry, more embarrassed.
But the Perfume Seller didn't give him a chance to speak, and said coldly,
"Be quiet now. We haven't started hunting yet. You can complain later.
Actually… your voice is wasting my time."
After a moment, the spiritualist spoke again, chest tight with frustration:
"Let's turn back. I've had enough of waiting…"
The Perfume Seller chuckled softly, a laugh that was hard to read.
"Alright, alright… Looks like I have no choice but to play my trump card," he said.
Then, suddenly, with a sharp seriousness in his eyes, he added,
"From the start, we've been past the point of no return."
The spiritualist fell silent, clearly grasping the gravity of the situation.
Finally, he asked,
"So… what do we do now?
How are we going to catch the fish?"
At that moment, the atmosphere shifted completely.
The Perfume Seller steadily reached into his chest and pulled out an old scroll, inscribed with The Attraction Song.
He placed it on the boat's floor as though laying down a sacred offering.
He opened it slowly, the air around them still as death.
His voice even lower now:
"We're not hunting a fish… we're facing a curse.
You're after a reward…
But I… I'm after the heart of that curse."
He carefully set the ancient scroll before him on the wooden floor of the boat, turning it toward the center of the lake.
The spiritualist looked at it with confusion, then scoffed, letting out a dry laugh:
"We're relying on a tattered scroll? Its color says it's older than the villagers themselves."
The Perfume Seller responded with an expression void of emotion, as if he were speaking to the wind itself.
"This tattered scroll, ancient as it seems… predates your entire bloodline.
And today, it's our fishing hook."
The spiritualist furrowed his brows, mocking him with a defiant grin:
"What do you say—want to make a wager?
I'll give you half my reward if that fish actually shows up thanks to this scroll.
But if it doesn't… I want extra. At least enough to make up for my wasted time."
The Perfume Seller replied, his voice calm as the breeze over the lake:
"No need for wagers. Just prepare your half now."
He reached behind his back and took out the Benzaiten.
There was no pick in his hand, and he didn't strike the strings.
He let his fingers brush them softly, like a whisper only spirits could understand.
And then he played.
A quiet tune. Simple. Yet a subtle sorrow was woven into every note,
as if the sound itself stirred something ancient beneath the surface of the lake.
The spiritualist leaned back, watching the Perfume Seller and his instrument, then said with half-hearted admiration:
"I'll admit… there's something haunting in that melody."
Time dragged on.
The tune repeated, unchanged.
No shift in tone. No reaction.
The lake remained still.
The sky above—clear and quiet.
And the music… made no difference.
Finally, the spiritualist sighed, impatience creeping into his voice:
"You know, strumming an old instrument won't win you that wager.
I'm starting to think I've wasted my time here…
Maybe I should've joined spiritualists who actually know what they're doing."
The Perfume Seller didn't respond.
Didn't look back.
Didn't change the melody.
But the Perfume Seller said nothing.
His hands remained on the Benzaiten, playing the same unchanging melody,
his fingers unfaltering, his tempo untouched.
"Hey! Are you even listening?
That's not normal cloud cover!
Look at it—dark, thick… I think a storm is coming!"
He kept playing… steady, unshaken.
As if something out there were waiting for a precise rhythm to awaken.
The spiritualist had begun to lose patience, his gaze fixed on the still horizon, as if the fish would never come.
But just before he could speak again, the sky above them began to shift.
The blue that had once stretched calmly overhead faded slowly,
as if an invisible hand were painting clouds over a blank sky.
The spiritualist glanced up, unease creeping into his voice:
"What is this…? Do you see it?
It's like day is turning to night…
Is it going to rain?"
His voice grew louder with each falling drop,
as if the fear were bubbling straight out of his throat.
The spiritualist said nothing.
Silence had consumed him completely.
But it wasn't the silence of peace.
It was the silence of someone unraveling
beneath a sound that didn't belong to this world.
The new melody wasn't just music.
It was something deeper.
Each note slipped inside him as if it already knew the way,
as if it were knocking on a door that had been sealed for a thousand years.
Before he realized it,
tears had begun trailing down his cheeks.
Warm. Out of place. Nothing like the rain.
Then the sky broke open.
Rain poured down as if the clouds had been torn apart.
Winds struck from every direction.
The waves grew violent,
and their small boat began to sway on the edge of capsizing.
The sound of rain. The roar of thunder. And that ancient melody.
They didn't clash…
They converged,
like an old ritual being summoned back to life.
Before the spiritualist could catch his breath,
a towering wave rose from the heart of the lake.
The wave slammed into the side of the boat, shattering what little calm remained.
The spiritualist slowly raised his head.
The horizon had turned black—both sea and sky.
In that pitch-dark void, a faint light flickered from the ancient scroll.
Moments later, swarms of flying fish erupted from it.
But they didn't swim through water.
They floated through the air.
Their bodies shimmered with a spectral dew,
glowing like soul-lanterns adrift in the night,
casting a gentle, pulsing light that pushed back the darkness around them.
The spiritualist, eyes wide with disbelief, gasped:
"What is this…? What have you summoned?!"
But no one answered.
At the edge of the forest, more spirits began to appear.
Their light spilled between the trees,
until the woods themselves seemed to catch fire—not with flames,
but with a holy blaze that seared the eyes and stilled the breath.
In a distant village,
where the drought had carved itself into the skin of the people,
rain finally fell.
Villagers emerged, stunned and wordless.
Some lifted bowls to catch the falling water.
Others ran barefoot through the mud, laughing like children.
It was the children who laughed first—
the first to sense that the sky had come alive again.
But no one knew why.
No one knew what had brought it back.
Only the spirits did.
Back on the boat, the melody rose.
The spirits flew overhead, echoing the tune,
repeating it note for note, rhythm for rhythm,
as if the song had been written in their very bones.
The forest whispered.
The water boiled.
The spiritualist sat frozen, paralyzed by awe that bordered on terror.
The Perfume Seller grabbed him by the shoulders, shouting above the roar of spirits:
"Enough! Stop it! What's happening?!"
"These are the spirits… and this melody…
it seems the scent of your perfumes has affected you.
Stop now, I can't take it anymore!"
The Perfume Seller turned calmly to him, a faint smile on his lips:
"Prepare yourself, warrior. The hunt has just begun."
There, in the deepest part of the lake, something stirred that should not have stirred.
The sound came first: a roar soaked in silence, as if the lakebed remembered something long forgotten.
Then came a strangled laugh beneath the water, unfitting for a living creature or a pure spirit.
As the echo reverberated three times, small bubbles rose.
With each bubble, a golden light slipped toward the surface,
as if the sky were reflecting the body of a creature not yet born.
Suddenly… the fish appeared.
It leapt from the heart of the lake into the sky, huge like a floating island.
Its golden scales shone bright, and its fins flowed like translucent amber, waving softly in the wind.
Its eyes held an ancient wisdom, reflecting the faint light of spirits and stars.
The massive shadow of the fish covered the boat. Time itself seemed to freeze.
The spiritualist instinctively bent forward, burying his face in his arms, gripped by fear and awe.
Meanwhile, the Perfume Seller lifted his gaze steadily upward.
His eyes fixed on the one thing he had come for:
the heart of the fish—glowing, golden, pulsing like a sacred ember.
The Perfume Seller's eyes bloomed with the light of the heart.
He neither moved nor spoke.
In that moment, everything else vanished from his sight.
The giant fish plunged back into the lake, sending the boat into a violent sway.
The spiritualist staggered to his feet, gripping the Perfume Seller's shoulders as he shouted:
"We're going to die! We'll drown here! Stop playing!"
The Perfume Seller smiled faintly—an expression disturbingly out of place given the chaos—and said:
"Strange… I thought the fish would be terrified by your arrival."
The spiritualist screamed, ignoring the mockery:
"Please! It looks furious! With one strike, it could swallow us whole—stop the melody!"
The Perfume Seller lifted his gaze to the darkened sky, his smile sharpening:
"Furious? It doesn't seem so… In fact, it looks rather pleased. More than it should be. Hahaha."
Tears streamed down the spiritualist's face as he cried out:
"Please… enough! I want to go back to the village. I've had enough!"
He raised his trembling hands toward the sky.
"Oh God…
If I leave here alive, I swear I'll change.
I'll visit the temples. I'll be honest with myself.
I won't deceive people anymore…
I swear I'll never lie again, never pretend to be a spiritualist."
The Perfume Seller sighed, his voice calm, almost bored:
"Spirit medium… liar… fraud.
Still… I don't think you deserve to live.
So I'll keep playing—until we drown together."
The spirit medium screamed, clutching his robe with shaking hands:
"This is no time for jokes! Stop—please!"
The melody cut off abruptly.
The scroll trembled on the boat's floor.
The Perfume Seller fell silent.
The spirit medium's eyes widened as he listened.
The sound was still there.
The spirits… were still playing.
"B—but you stopped!"
The Perfume Seller rose amid the howling wind, lightning tearing across the lake with blinding light.
His voice was soft, yet sharp as a drawn blade:
"Now… we begin."
He turned to the spirit medium, his eyes cold and resolute:
"If you want to survive, follow my instructions exactly.
What you did foolishly is already enough to doom us both."
The spirit medium shook his head, retreating as his voice broke into a whisper:
"No… I don't want this… please… don't make me face it…"
Suddenly—a slap.
A sharp, resounding strike from the Perfume Seller silenced every whisper in the spirit medium's mind.
The Perfume Seller fixed him with a cold, piercing glare.
"Face the consequences of your own actions.
You chose to stay here.
Don't whine now… What did you expect? That your deeds would go unpunished?"
"You're no child anymore. This is the world of the living, not the dead.
To believe your actions come without consequence…"
"You chose to be here. Now carry that burden."
"Open your eyes… and focus."
The spirit medium froze, stunned, as if the slap had wrenched something long buried from his soul.
His eyes widened. He began to see—truly see.
Then, from the heart of the lake, a new wave of light erupted.
A flash of gold surged through the mist, bright enough to sear the eyes.
Silence fell.
The forest, the lake, the sky… everything froze, suspended in a single heartbeat.
Spirits twisted in midair, like moths drawn to a flame, writhing as if something ancient had been unsealed.
And there he stood.
The Perfume Seller.
His hand slid along the neck of the Benzaiten.
A pause—then the hidden blade revealed itself.
Steel gleamed under the storm-darkened sky.
The silence shattered, replaced by the cold whisper of impending doom.
"At last," the Perfume Seller said, voice calm yet deadly.
"It has come."