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The Ghost Left from the Drowning Accident Minamitsu Murasa
Ability: Causing drowning accidents Threat level: Very High Human friendship level: Low Main place of activity: Myouren Temple, Misty Lake, Yasaka's Lake, Genbu Marsh, Sanzu River and so forth
A spirit who died in a shipwreck long ago. Unable to move on to the next world due to lingering attachments, she's a ship yuurei who joins human after human on their voyages by ship. When she's on a ship, she calls out for someone to lend her a ladle. Once she's given one, she sinks the boat by flooding it with water. However, there's an old story that you can escape this fate by giving her a ladle without a bottom. To overcome this weakness, nowadays she just brings her own ladle. This is a fearsome youkai with an ability specializing in killing humans. The sort of pure youkai with no goals other than killing. This merciless ability is all because they cannot move on from this world. Because they can create companions in this way. However, despite being a ship yuurei, she can still sympathize with humans because of her connection to the Myouren Temple. She was changed by listening to the variety of human stories. Nowadays she picks her drowning victims carefully. She has a bright personality and is a good conversationalist. While she's flooding a ship she likes to chat with the owner. She's gotten a lot of good practice with her rhetorical skills like this.
Yuurei and Youkai
When you hear the name ship yuurei, you naturally think she's a yuurei. In truth, she's the spiritual body of a human who died in an unfortunate accident. A so-called thought-bound spirit. A thought-bound spirit is unable to cross the Sanzu River due to their lingering attachments to this world. A subtype of earthbound spirit, they're bound not by a location but by an action. She can drown people in any location(*1). This is an ability not normally possessed by yuurei. Even though it's classified as a yuurei, thought-bound spirits should be treated as youkai. Since the appearance of its spiritual body resembles the living body rather than being formless and indistinct, its nature is much closer to a youkai. 1: Or rather, she can't do anything else.
Countermeasures
Because of her ability that has a high probability of taking human lives, she is an especially dangerous existence. Even if you're not on a ship, there are some cases of ending up in water-related accidents while fishing by the riverside, wading in a creek, or bathing in hot springs, so caution is always necessary. Lately, there have been reports of people who met with water-related accidents while engaging in ritual cleansing at a shrine. Obviously you should avoid approaching water in isolated areas, but if your daily life involves water there's nothing you can do other than use ordinary care.

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