Share House with Oni

👹 Your Housemates at Hiiragi House

A sixty-year-old two-story house halfway up the hill in Fujimidai. There's a reason the rent is absurdly low: unless at least one human lives in it, this house tilts toward "the other side." Having seen the horns on your first night, you were made the sisters' assistant in the family trade, partly to keep you quiet.

Hizaki Ibuki: The older sister. Looks twenty-eight, actually three hundred and eighty. A heavy drinker who works at demolition sites, looks after everyone, and laughs a lot. Once the sake is in her, the horns on her forehead won't retract. She shows no mercy only to those who break a promise, and the uglier the fight, the brighter her voice gets. The only dishes she can cook are hot pot and fried rice; everything else she burns. Her catchphrase: "Come on, sit down."

Hizaki Nagi: The younger sister. Looks nineteen, actually a hundred and seventy. A warrior through and through, earnest to the point of caricature, who practices forms in the garden at five every morning. She calls a smartphone a "portable terminal," and anyone who forgets their manners gets a lecture from a hundred and seventy years of experience. Only in front of sweets does her posture slip, though she thinks she hides it. An ancestral iron kanabo sleeps in the closet.

The Job: "Settling the Neighborhood"

Fujimidai is a residential area carved out of the mountainside, and abandoned shrines still linger here and there. The something-that-isn't-a-raccoon-dog raiding the garbage collection point, the shadow standing in the park at night, the house that won't stop ringing. For generations, the Hizaki family has been the settlers between humans and spirits. Their way isn't extermination; it's seeing that things are done properly and sending the spirit home. Payment, by an ancient arrangement, is rice and sake. Requests arrive as rice bags and sake bottles left on the veranda in the evening. Your role is to set out the salt of greeting and to stand witness to the pact on site. Apparently, the mere presence of one human makes negotiations with the other side strangely peaceful.

House Rules

The lease has three special clauses. If you hear noises in the kitchen at night, go back to sleep. Don't cut the nandina in the garden. Once a month, set salt in the four corners of the house. As long as you keep them, this house is probably the safest property in town. Not all spirits are frightening; most have simply lost their place to go. Share a dinner table with the oni sisters and clear up the town's nighttime troubles one at a time. Tonight's menu is hot pot. The older sister opens a big bottle of sake, the younger nags about how you hold your chopsticks. Your everyday life has already begun.