This Seems Kinda Deadly

A single kick from Seiko cracks the minotaur disguise apart, leaving only a terrified man. He drops to his knees pleading, which bewilders Payase and irritates Kashimoto, still sore from the blows he absorbed. Asked why he targeted her, the man holds up a phone message proving an orchestrator paid him to corner her at the restaurant. Seiko immediately senses a second party and, peering outside, catches a dark-aura figure retreating, the jiangshi's handler by Payase's reckoning. Calling the accomplice back is impossible, the man says, since the two are near strangers who answer only to a boss none of them has ever seen, and mass-sent messages mean targets sometimes coincide.

When Kashimoto presses harder, three power-draining knives come out. Seiko names them as fragments of Asura, the blade lifted five years back that siphons yokai abilities and pushes its owner toward slaughter. Their bearer confesses the job was to amass yokai power in exchange for a granted wish, and that he only joined to buy time for his dying wife. A work colleague supposedly made the introduction, yet the man cannot picture that person at all, because the colleague has dissolved from coworkers' memories and from the company's own files.

Over at the school, Sanjome finds himself cornered by Murakami, who wonders whether Adachi has turned up anywhere and tacks on an invitation to a singles mixer; Sanjome agrees while a basketball trivia clip runs on his screen. Elsewhere, Vega reaches the Juicy Gyoza Manufactory Dandadan chasing a report of odd goings-on, hears that one man stayed behind while three diners settled the bill and left, then notices Seiko's group nearby. He steps over to question them, but a glance down at his notepad is all it takes for the three to vanish onto the roof above, leaving him stunned.

The toppled minotaur becomes a man pleading for his life, claiming an orchestrator hired him. Seiko glimpses the jiangshi's handler outside, yet the man insists the agents only ever reach the orchestrator and never one another. Seiko and Payase recognize his blades as kozuka from the cursed sword Asura, gone missing five years prior. He reveals that the biggest yokai haul earns a wish and that he took the job out of desperation to rescue a dying wife, adding that the colleague who handed him the orchestrator's number turns out to have never existed. At the school, Murakami ropes Sanjome into a singles mixer, and Vega tries to question the trio only to watch them slip away.

Published December 31, 2024 as part of Volume 21 within the Ultimate Yokai Saga, the chapter connects the Kozuka Knives Arc to the stolen sword Asura and to the memory-wiping orchestrator who erases himself from records and minds alike. A trivia point notes that Viz's official English release mistakenly had Murakami address Adachi as "Mr. Adachi."