The Cursed Bus and the Ghostly Domain

The sun dipped below the horizon; it was Oma-ga-toki.

In a sparsely populated suburb far from the city center, a chilling aura permeated a somewhat dilapidated bus stop. Before the platform, an ordinary-looking bus slowly decelerated and came to a halt in front of four waiting passengers. Looking at the vehicle, Keitaro, a black-haired young man standing on the platform, couldn't help but swallow hard.

"A bus... it really came..."

"This couldn't be the one from the internet rumors, could it? It looks pretty ordinary," said Eiko, a fashionable woman about the same age as Keitaro, as she sized up the vehicle. On the other side, Yayoi, a gloomy young girl with purple hair carrying a small backpack and clutching a stuffed doll, had her attention fixed on a high school girl wearing headphones a short distance away.

Finally, the front and rear doors of the bus swung open, but no one stepped off.

'It's finally here... waiting for a bus in such a remote place takes forever...' Standing before the platform, Miko, who was holding her phone and listening to music through her headphones, felt a wave of relief. She thought to herself as she looked at the bus.

Miko was supposed to have been home long ago, but while waiting for her usual bus, she had been distracted by other thoughts and accidentally boarded the wrong one, ending up in this suburban area. Now, she had to wait here for a bus back. Fortunately, it had finally arrived.

'That's right, this is the route back...'

After confirming the bus number, Miko decisively boarded. Meanwhile, the trio of paranormal investigators watched her intently.

"She... she just went right in?" Keitaro's mouth hung open as he watched Miko board without a hint of hesitation. He wondered if she had no idea that this might be the Cursed Bus from the urban legends.

"Let's go, Keitaro, Eiko. The doors are about to close." As she spoke, the eight or nine-year-old Yayoi skipped onto the bus. Keitaro and Eiko shared a glance before immediately following her.

Once inside, Keitaro looked around. He noticed that aside from the high school girl who had sat near the front, all the other seats were empty. There wasn't a single passenger on the bus other than the four of them who had just boarded.

"It's so empty... there's really no one else but us?" Keitaro remarked, looking at the vacant interior. Suddenly, he felt a tug on his sleeve. He looked down to see the gloomy little Yayoi.

"We sit in the last row. We can see the whole bus from there."

Pulled along by Yayoi, Keitaro and Eiko sat together in the very last row of the bus. From there, they had a clear view of the entire interior.

Once everyone was seated, the doors hissed shut, and the bus started moving, driving forward into the twilight.

After the bus started, Miko continued to play with her phone, her ears plugged with headphones, focusing entirely on ignoring everything else. In the back row, Keitaro and the others kept a constant watch on their surroundings.

"It feels like just a normal bus. Nothing unusual... the driver seems like an ordinary person too... is this really the legendary Cursed Bus?" Keitaro muttered, frowning slightly as he looked around. He then turned to Eiko.

"Eiko, what exactly are the rumors about this so-called Cursed Bus?"

"Hmm... there are many versions online. Some say they were on the phone with a friend who mentioned boarding a bus, and then that friend vanished. Nearby residents often see the police investigating disappearances, and witnesses claim the missing people were last seen boarding a bus at that stop... Plus, a few years ago, there really was a bus accident nearby with many passengers, most of whom died. That's how the rumors of the Cursed Bus started..." Eiko answered, scrolling through her phone as she spoke to Keitaro.

On the other side, the gloomy Yayoi stared at the empty cabin. The skull-like marks in her pupils flickered slightly as she spoke slowly.

"My eyes don't see any spirits in this bus..."

"No spirits... then that means we probably missed it this time," Keitaro replied with a sigh of relief. Yayoi, however, tightened her grip on her stuffed doll.

"Ah... it looks like we won't be catching any evil spirits on this trip... what a shame."

As Yayoi spoke, her gaze focused once again on Miko in the front seat. Seeing her look, Eiko asked curiously, "What is it? Little Yayoi, is there something wrong with that girl?"

"..." Yayoi didn't say anything in response to Eiko's question. Seeing that she wouldn't answer, Eiko didn't press further.

In the glow of the twilight, the bus traveled along the remote highway. Everything seemed peaceful and ordinary, without a trace of abnormality. Miko, listening to her music and playing with her phone, felt incredibly lucky that she hadn't seen a single ghost nearby.

In the silence, the bus entered a tunnel. Suddenly, the light outside vanished, and the overhead lights inside the bus flickered on.

"We're in a tunnel..." Keitaro said slowly, watching the environment darken. As they entered the tunnel, he suddenly felt a wave of cold.

"Hiss... it's so cold... is it because we're inside the tunnel? I hope we get out soon," Keitaro whispered, wrapping his jacket tighter around himself. He began to stare out the window, watching the fluorescent markers on the tunnel wall flash past, waiting for the tunnel to end and for the sunset to spill back into the bus.

However, Keitaro stared out the dark window for three or four minutes, but the tunnel did not end, and the sunlight did not return.

'What's going on? Is this tunnel really this long? Why haven't we come out yet?'

Keitaro frowned, a bad feeling beginning to stir in his heart. Just as he was starting to worry, a bloody handprint suddenly slammed onto the window he was staring at with a loud "thud."

In an instant, Keitaro's heart jumped into his throat. Just as he was about to recoil and scream, he suddenly found it difficult to breathe; his scream was trapped in his throat.

Looking closely, a pair of hands had reached out from behind him and were now deathly tight around his neck. The immense strength made it impossible for Keitaro to breathe or speak. Terrified, he looked at the transparent reflection in the window and saw the thing behind him.

"Eiko!?"

At this moment, Eiko was positioned behind Keitaro, her face twisted into a bizarre expression. Her mouth was curved into a grotesque, exaggerated grin. She was strangling Keitaro with both hands from behind, possessing an inexplicable strength that he couldn't resist.

'Eiko... is she possessed? Possessed by an evil spirit!?'

As Keitaro realized what was happening, he grabbed Eiko's hands and tried with all his might to pry them off, but he could not overcome her unnatural strength.

At that moment, the anomaly continued. On the window in front of Keitaro, a bloody face with a sinister smile appeared. Then... the face emerged from the glass, rushing straight toward Keitaro, aiming for his wide-open mouth.

'Oh no... I'm going to be possessed too...'

Just then, a small figure leaped high from behind Eiko. The purple-haired young girl, holding a crowbar wrapped in talismans, swung it down hard, smashing it into the face on the window. Cracks spiderwebbed across the glass, and the bloody face receded in a painful distortion.

Yayoi didn't stop there. Stepping on Keitaro's shoulder, she immediately turned around and pulled a bottle of sake from her backpack. Popping the cap, she shoved the bottle into Eiko's open mouth and poured the liquid in. Eiko's expression changed instantly; she let go of Keitaro's neck and began to tremble violently.

"The ritual sake has been administered. The spirit is coming out! Keitaro, get ready!"

"Cough, cough... Right!"

Ignoring his dry coughs, Keitaro quickly pulled a white bag from his carrier. Inside was a simple stuffed doll.

Eiko stopped trembling, her mouth opening wide as if she were about to vomit. Keitaro immediately opened the bag and held it to her mouth. A cloud of purple-black aura erupted from Eiko's throat and was sucked into the doll inside the bag. Once the doll absorbed the aura, Keitaro immediately tied the bag shut.

"Got it!"

"Cough, cough... I... what happened to me..." Eiko coughed a few times and looked around blankly as she returned to normal. Yayoi, who was now standing on the seat, spoke bluntly.

"You were just possessed..."

"Possessed... eh? Didn't you say there were no ghosts on this bus?" Eiko asked in surprise. Yayoi responded calmly.

"Yes... there's nothing wrong with the bus, but there is something wrong with the road. The evil spirit that created the Cursed Bus doesn't live on the bus; it lives on the road the bus travels. Specifically, inside this tunnel." As she spoke, Yayoi looked out at the persistent darkness. Even now, the bus continued to drive forward without exiting the tunnel.

"We are likely trapped in a supernatural space constructed by an evil spirit. This bus has already been turned into a ghostly domain..."

"Eh... is that so?" Eiko couldn't help but shrink back. Keitaro, holding the bag with the doll, said, "But we've already caught one. If we keep going, we should be able to break this space, right?"

"Yes, if we can deal with all the evil spirits, we can get out. However... catching just one... is far too few..."

Yayoi spoke in a heavy voice as she turned her gaze toward the front.

At this moment, the once-empty cabin had somehow become crowded. Before the eyes of the three in the back row, every single seat in the entire bus was now occupied. Even the aisle was packed with figures clutching the hand straps.

A frigid aura filled the bus, making them feel as if they had been dropped into a vat of ice.

The entire bus had transformed from being empty to a peak-hour crowd in an instant. Seeing the backs of the figures facing away from them, Keitaro and Eiko's faces paled.

"You... you've got to be kidding... there are so many..." Keitaro said in shock. The number of evil spirits before them far exceeded his expectations; he estimated there were at least twenty or thirty of them!

"I heard... the bus accident nearby a few years ago happened in a tunnel... could the entire bus of people have become evil spirits... and why can I, who normally can't see ghosts, see them so clearly now!?" Eiko stared blankly at the scene, her mouth agape.

"It seems... this has exceeded my expectations..." Yayoi said, her expression grave as she looked at the massive group of evil spirits.

However, her gaze soon focused again on the high school girl in the front seat. Even now, the girl sat in her place, headphones on, listening to her music. She remained motionless, as if she were completely oblivious to the evil spirits that had suddenly appeared around her.

This sight left the young medium, Yayoi, slightly stunned.

The gathering of so many evil spirits had turned the bus into a ghostly domain. In such a domain, even normal people without spiritual vision could see spirits, and the spirits could transcend their usual limits to attack humans.

In this environment, surrounded on all sides by terrifying evil spirits, that girl remained perfectly calm, treating the spirits as if they were nothing. Yayoi couldn't help but be secretly amazed.

As a powerful medium, Yayoi had felt something special about the girl the first time she saw her, but it was only now that she was certain—the girl was a being just like her.

'To be this calm even in a situation like this... do you think that even this many evil spirits are nothing? Just who are you...'

Yayoi whispered softly as she watched the girl squeezed in the middle of a crowd of evil spirits.

In Yayoi's eyes, the girl who could remain composed under the gaze of spirits on all sides was clearly a hidden demon-slaying expert.

...

On the other side, Miko sat in her seat, her headphone volume already turned to the maximum. Completely unable to hear what was happening in the back, she used her peripheral vision to see the spirits that had suddenly appeared around her—spirits covered in blood, with gruesome injuries, or even charred black. Beneath her facade of forced calm, she was screaming at the top of her lungs in her heart.

'Help me! Why did so many appear all at once! They weren't there a second ago! How did this happen!!'

At this moment, the panic deep in Miko's heart had reached its breaking point. Faced with this sudden situation, she relied on her old method.

Pretend not to see them...

'As long as I ignore them perfectly, they won't be able to attack me! Just like before... just like before...'

Facing the terrifying scene, the only thing Miko could do as an ordinary high school girl was to ignore it as she always had. But she didn't know that this time, the situation was far beyond what mere ignoring could solve.

The evil spirits within the ghostly domain possessed the ability to cross boundaries at will. At this moment, countless gazes were already fixed tightly upon Miko.

...

Under the twilight, at the Kagami-oboro Inari Shrine, a broom with a white paper figure attached to it was automatically sweeping the fallen leaves. Miketsu, dressed in her miko robes, was lying on the shrine's torii gate, soaking up the sun for the first time in a while. Suddenly, she felt a slight flutter in her heart. She sat up immediately.

"I just formed a connection with her, and she's already run into something. It seems she really is a trouble magnet..." Miketsu muttered, rubbing her chin as she looked toward the distant sky.