Chapter 162 - Parasite

"By the way, I told her I'm a god…"

"WHAT?"

Kazehaya Gin could feel his eyes popping out of their sockets.

WHY? WHAT NOW?

Kazehaya Gin wanted to know.

Was this returner to ancestry trying to court death now?

He wondered if Ryuu had stopped caring about his descendants and began to care about his wife. It was good in a way, although scary as hell. After all, if Ara was horrified and rejected Ryuu even just psychologically, it would be the end.

"She didn't believe me of course," Ryuu sighed, looking a little bit forlorn, and Gin's heart that seemed to have stopped in his shock started beating again.

"Don't scare me like that," he said accusingly, his hand still over his chest as if he had a heart attack.

"I will continue to tell her though, seriously," Ryuu informed him, and Gin looked at him like he's out of his mind.

"Why would you even want to do that?" Gin couldn't think of any sane reason the Koutaishidenka would.

With this question, a gentle smile formed on Ryuu's lips. "Because I promised to tell her the truth as much as I could."

Gin sighed, giving up on reasoning with him. He knew that look. It was a look of someone besotted and gave the other a smile of exasperation as he looked at the prince fondly. It seemed his indifferent ward who was normally as cold as the artic wasn't so indifferent anymore. In fact, Ryuu might have just fallen in love already without him knowing.

Oh well…

If it was like that then he truly wished for the Koutaishidenka and Ara's marriage to be well.

Kazehaya Gin shifted on his feet as he remembered something.

"What happened today? I heard you encountered someone undesirable while shopping," he mentioned casually, and Ryuu looked around before telling him to follow him to his study.

As soon as they reached it, Ryuu asked him to close the door shut behind him and Gin wondered what all the secrecy was about. The others already knew what he was talking about anyway, so why did it seem like Ryuu was hiding something.

"Is there a problem?"

He couldn't help but ask. The Koutaishidenka seemed a little bit tense at the moment, and so he crossed the room and sat on the tatami opposite him before he spoke again.

"What's going on?"

Homura Ryuu sighed. "What do you think?"

Gin was thoughtful for a while. When Ryuu was being like this, it meant something big had happened. But he only knew that he and the others deliberately provoked the crazy girl who was with her accomplice today at Ginza as Rin and the others told him when he and Aki arrived earlier. He couldn't think about anything else related to the burikko that would cause Ryuu to be tensed.

Although…

Although Kazehaya Gin still couldn't understand the rationale of continuing to provoke the other. The girl was already ruined after all. There was nothing Okada Koharu could ever do that would enable her to tarnish someone else's reputation since her own reputation's in tatters already after being exposed totally. Even if she was still at large and hadn't paid yet for nearly killing Ara, she was not someone that the Homura House needed to personally incite.

The Okada girl and her small-time Yakuza sugar daddy weren't worth all the trouble. They could easily put her in an institution and just eliminate the other one secretly if the prince so wished. 

But Homura Ryuu personally did go to all the trouble to make that crazy woman angrier and crazier than she already was.

So, why?

In all his knowledge, there was only one other reason why Ryuu would bother with something or someone. But the idea that came to his mind was so… implausible .

But of course, he could be wrong. But if he wasn't then…

Gin's hazel orbs widened as he looked at the Koutaishidenka, searching his face with any telltale sign that his thoughts could be right.

"Well?"Ryuu prompted and Gin shook his head.

"I can't believe it," he said in wonder. "That Okada Koharu's a host?"

At the mention of the word, Homura Ryuu smirked, although his eyes became a pair of frosty orbs that glinted dangerously.

"That's right. I was not the only one who affected her mentally."

Finally, Kazehaya Gin could understand it now. No wonder she went mental much too fast. As it turned out, she was not only a naturally crazy bitch who had been charmed by a god; she was also a host to something nasty.

A host was a human who was harboring something that wasn't within. The non-human entity was mostly from the other world, usually the dark and violent ones that couldn't manifest on its own on earth ergo the need to take over a person's body.

An example was Aello, Gin's harpy. Aello couldn't appear on earth without Gin, which was why she protected him well because if he died, she would lose her access to the outside world.

An elemental parasite. 

"How did you know?" Gin asked, still in disbelief. "I didn't feel any dark aura on – oh wait…"

He did.

But Gin thought it was natural since the girl was already established as evil in his mind. He snorted in self-disgust. In his mind, Koharu was evil simply because she was Koharu. It was the same as thinking that Emi was a mindless seductress since she was the Makura. He and his bias struck again.

"What kind?" he asked, pushing thoughts about Emi at the back of his mind. He was not ready to deal with that yet.

"What other kinds are out there who can turn invisible?"Ryuu countered.

Months back, before Ara woke up from her coma, there was a disturbance at the portal, but there was nothing that came out. Now they knew why. It was an elemental parasite.

"A shadow lurker," Gin said blandly.

Shadow lurkers were one of the Black God's plethora of minions. They mostly fed on someone's negative feelings, getting stronger and stronger as time passed by. During this time, the host would become more and more unstable and volatile until he completely turned into a puppet, with the shadow lurker finally taking over the host's body in the end.

"I was not sure about it before when I bumped into her so I had to see her again."

"That nutjob would certainly be happy if she hears you say that," Gin laughed. "So what will you do now?"

"What do we always do with parasites?" Homura Ryuu shrugged.

Their invisible friend had finally decided to show himself. If they did not take care of it, it would transfer to another as soon as the current host died.

Yes, Okada Koharu's death was already guaranteed as soon as she had started showing signs of derailment. It meant that the shadow lurker had eaten most of her being and was too late to remove it without killing the host anyway.

"We'll eliminate it. We just need the correct timing," the Koutaishidenka continued, and Kazehaya Gin understood his hidden meaning.

As the guardians of the portal, it was their fault that the parasite was able to get in and occupy another person. If it's not for Okada Koharu, at least, for her adoptive parents, the Homura House would allow her existence until she graduated.