Ombusman

Carried into the Ayase household, Rin is startled by Turbo Granny, whose glare she returns until she blurts out her suspicion that the chatty cat doll is a vampire in disguise, irritating the spirit. Seiko identifies the presence clinging to Rin as an Onbusuman, the ghost of a dead infant that finds peace when its bearer shows it love but crushes anyone who resents it. To pin down when the haunting began, she asks about Rin's younger years.

Rin opens up about a friend she lost and the guilt she still carries. In a grade-school memory, her classmates admire her singing, and a girl named Mai befriends her. Dreaming of idol stardom, Mai talks Rin into rehearsing with her ahead of a tryout for junior idols, and Rin says yes. Back at her house, Rin looks after her ailing grandmother and means to tell her mother about the audition. After her mother embraces her, thankful for the help with chores during long work shifts, Rin instead promises to mind her grandmother on the very day of the tryout. When she breaks the news, Mai and the others read it as an excuse and brand her mom lazy, so Rin snaps that chasing idol dreams is pointless. Stung, Mai labels her a traitor, and the group leaves trading insults. Home again, her grandmother says sorry for keeping her from her friends, but Rin claims she has none and would rather read indoors. That night she faces a mirror, weeping as she pictures sharing the stage with Mai.

Rin's vampire delusion extends to Turbo Granny as well. Seiko diagnoses the thing shadowing Rin as an onbusuman born from a dead child, prompting Rin to revisit her childhood and the friend she lost, Mai, who dreamed the two would debut as idols together. With her father gone, Rin shoulders the chores and her grandmother's care, forcing her to skip the audition and question whether the dream even matters. Her friends desert her, and she ends up alone before a mirror, miming an idol routine through tears.

Titled Ombusman, this twenty-one-page chapter came out on October 10, 2023. It belongs to Volume 15, the Onbusuman Arc, and the Kintama Hunt Saga, positioned between Chapter 123 and Chapter 125.