Chapter 3
I just recently learned about a phenonon called poltergeists that was recorded in ancient literature.
In my hands, I’m holding so books salvaged by the library my mother works at. Stamped on the cover was the character 「訞」 [“bewitching”]. Those of us in Harmony School and Sage Academy are allowed to read class one books stamped “recomnded”, “excellent”, and “good”. But class four books like this one are unavailable to most civilians. By a twist of fate, it had escaped biblioclasm by being buried deep in an underground storage room.
According to this book, during a ti in the past when not everyone had cantus, there were often reports about ghosts knocking on the walls, silverware dancing in the air, furniture moving by itself, creaking sounds in an empty house, and other strange phenona.
But in most reports, there always seed to be adolescent children in the household. One analysis of this is that most children are going through a lot of emotional struggles during that ti, and their sexual energy is unconsciously manifested as psychokinesis.
In other words, poltergeists are actually events of recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK), and it goes without saying that the Spirit of Blessing that visited was not a spirit, but an instance of RSPK.
A lot of things happened in the three days that followed the events of that night. Representatives from the Board of Education ca to our house shortly after my parents notified them that I had acquired my cantus. There was an elderly woman in white robes, a young woman who looked like a teacher, and a middle aged man in what looked like a monk’s work robes. The old woman in the middle wasted no ti in questioning about my health and emotional condition in minute detail. I thought that I would be admitted to Sage Academy after that, but this was just the beginning.
I was taken away from my ho for a while. The older lady said that this was part of the procedure to enter Sage Academy and not to worry. My parents sent off with a hug and a smile, and didn’t voice any misgivings they might have had.
I boarded a windowless houseboat and was given a bowl of sothing they said was anti-seasickness dicine. It was sweet, like brown sugar, but the aftertaste was incredibly bitter. My mind went blank right after drinking it.
I could feel the boat traveling at a good speed, but had no idea which direction it was headed in. From the way the waves hit the boat and the sound of the wind, I guessed that the path we were traveling was not very wide. Maybe we were on the main current of the Tone river. I wanted to ask, but thought it was probably better not to talk more than I needed to, so I didn’t. The younger woman accompanying questioned incessantly the entire ti. There wasn’t a the to what she was asking, and it didn’t seem like she was writing down my answers.
Three hours later, after many twists and turns, the boat stopped. The harbor and the surrounding area were well covered, giving no view of the outside.
And just as I expected, as we walked up the stairs into a temple-like building, no part of the outside world was visible.
A young monk in black robes and a recently shaved head ca out to greet us. The trio from the committee appeared too. I was led to an empty, traditional-style room. On the wall was a scroll with freshly written calligraphy. I couldn’t read what it said, but it looked similar to the one hanging in Harmony School.
I knelt down on the tatami, but at the monk’s directions, switched to sitting in the lotus position, with the tops of my feet on my thighs. He seed want to ditate and collect myself. Since we had to ditate every day at Harmony School, I was used to this, but secretly wished I had worn a more comfortable pair of pants.
I breathed deeply into my stomach and tried to settle my mind as quickly as possible. But I needn’t have hurried, because I ended up waiting for two or three hours anyway. During that ti, I realized that the sun had set. Ti seed to pass at a different speed that it usually did. I was only half-heartedly trying to calm my mind. For so reason, I couldn’t focus on just one thing.
As the room darkened, I started feeling a little bit uneasy. At first I couldn’t figure out why, then I realized that even though it was near sunset, I couldn’t hear “Going Ho”. No matter where you are in Kamisu 66, you can always hear that lody. If I was far enough that I couldn’t hear it, then it ant that I was outside the Holy Barrier.
Was that even possible?
Nature called. I spoke aloud asking if anyone was around, but there was no answer. I had no choice but to step outside. The corridor had nightingale floors that screeched with every step. Thankfully, the bathroom was right around the end of the hall.
When I ca back, a lamp was lit and an old bent-backed monk with a white mustache was sitting in the room. Even though I was only twelve at the ti, I was already taller than him. He looked ancient. He was wearing rough, heavily patched robes, and even without saying anything gave off an air of affability. I knelt before him.
“How are you? Are you hungry?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes, a little.”
“Since you ca all the way here, I would like to treat you to our vegetarian cuisine, but unfortunately you have to fast until tomorrow morning. Can you do it?”
I was disappointed, but nodded anyway.
“By the way, I am the preceptor of this ravaged temple. My na is Mushin.”
I straightened up reflexively. There was no one in Kamisu 66 who didn’t know the na of the holy priest. Like Shisei Kaburagi who was revered for his powerful cantus, Mushin was loved and respected for his character.
“I’m…Saki Watanabe.”
“I know your parents well,” he said, nodding. “They were outstanding as children, and I expected them to beco people the town could depend on. And they did, just as I thought.”
I didn’t know what to say, but it wasn’t unpleasant hearing my parents being praised.
“But your dad really liked practical jokes. He used to throw fake haythatcher eggs at the bronze statue every day. The sll was terrible and we didn’t know how to get rid of it. That was my statue, by the way. Ah, at that ti, I was the headmaster at Harmony School.”
“Oh, really?” It was my first ti hearing that Head Priest Mushin had been a headmaster. I also found it hard to imagine that my father’s personality used to be the sa as Satoru’s.
“Saki, you’ll be entering Sage Academy soon and becoming an adult. But before that, you must seclude yourself in this temple for the night.”
“Um, where is this temple?” I knew it was rude to interrupt him, but I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer.
“This is the Temple of Purity. Usually I preside over the Pure Land Temple at Hayring, but I co here to burn cedar sticks for coming of age ceremonies.”
“By any chance, are we outside the Holy Barrier?”
Head Priest Mushin looked faintly surprised. “Yes. It’s the first ti you’ve been outside the barrier since you were born. But don’t worry. There’s a barrier that’s just as powerful as the Holy Barrier around this entire area.”
“I see.”
Head Priest Mushin’s calm voice alleviated my uneasiness.
“Well then, it’s ti to get ready. The lighting of the cedar sticks itself isn’t so special; it’s just a normal ceremony. Before that we’ll have a short sermon. It’s not a very formal one, so relax. Also, it might make you kind of sleepy, so it’s okay if you fall asleep.”
“But that’s…”
“No, no, it’s okay, really. Insomniacs have co to my temple for this exact purpose, though that was a long ti ago. Anyway, spending an entire night not sleeping, but not doing anything else either is a waste of ti, in my opinion. Once, there was a sermon I had to give, but no one wanted to listen to it, so I found a bunch of insomniacs and made it a kind of gathering for them. Within the first ten minutes, everyone was soundly asleep.”
Head Priest Mushin’s speech wasn’t slow and stagnant like most people of his age. He had an ability to charm his audience. I laughed and talked with him easily.
Speaking of the sermon, it wasn’t so boring that I fell asleep, but it wasn’t particularly riveting either. It was about the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Basically, to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think about how you would feel.
“…this seems simple, but is hard to truly understand. Take this for example. You and a friend are hiking up a mountain and get hungry along the way. Your friend brought a rice ball and starts eating it, while you have nothing. You ask if she’ll share it with you and she says ‘no, it’s not necessary’.”
“Why?”
“Because I can endure your hunger.”
I was shocked. Even as an allegory, this was too unreasonable.
“I don’t think there’s anyone like that.”
“Of course not, but what if there was? What would you think? What part of what they said is wrong?”
“Which part…” I was at a loss. “I think they’ve violated the Code of Ethics.”
Head Priest Mushin shook his head, smiling slightly. “Sothing so obvious probably isn’t in the Code of Ethics.”
Of course, if they had written down every little rule like that, the Code of Ethics would have so many volus that if would overflow from the library all the way to the Holy Barrier.
“The answer to this isn’t sothing rational; it’s emotional.” High Priest Mushin thumped his chest.
“My heart?”
“Exactly. Can you feel your friend’s pain in your own heart? If you can, you’d want to help them sohow, right? This is the most important thing to humans.”
I nodded.
“Can you feel another’s pain?”
“Yes.”
“Not just hypothetically. Can you really take soone else’s pain and perceive it as your own?”
“Yes, I can,” I answered confidently. I thought the oral interview was over, but Head Priest Mushin’s reaction was different from what I expected.
“Then why don’t we try it out?”
While I was pondering what he ant by “try it out”, Head Priest Mushin took a knife out from inside his robes and unsheathed it to reveal a dully glinting blade. I was shocked.
“The experint is, can you feel my pain when it is presented to you like this?” Without warning, he stabbed himself in the leg with the knife.
I stared, dumbfounded.
“With enough training, we can endure any pain inflicted on our bodies. Plus, at this age, I don’t bleed as much anyway…” he mumbled disjointedly.
“Please stop!” I shouted, finally coming to my senses. My voice cracked and my heart thumped madly in my chest.
“This is for you. Can you really, truly feel my pain? If you can, then I’ll stop.”
“I can feel it, so please stop!”
“No, you can’t feel it. You’re still only imagining. Real pain cos from the heart.”
“That’s…” What was I supposed to do? My legs wouldn’t move.
“Is it okay? Until you feel the pain, I have to keep doing this. This is what I must do to guide you.”
“B-but, how can I…”
“Don’t imagine it. Recognize it. You. Did. This. To. .” High Priest Mushin’s voice was full of pain. “Do you understand? You. Are. Making. . Suffer.”
I thought my heart was going to stop. What in the world was I supposed to do to save him?
“Please, help ,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Stop this, help .”
How should I explain the atmosphere then? It was completely irrational, but I gradually believed that I was actually torturing the head priest. Tears flowed unceasingly from my eyes.
Head Priest Mushin groaned in pain. The hand holding the knife in his leg was twitching slightly.
Then sothing unbelievable happened. My body stiffened and I was unable to move, my field of vision narrowed and there was a huge weight on my chest, leaving breathless.
“Please. Don’t. Kill. .”
Those words triggered sothing. A sharp, stabbing pain started from the left side of my chest and ran all the way to the top of my head.
I lost my balance and fell sideways onto the tatami.
My heart. My breath, I couldn’t breathe. My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
I saw Head Priest Mushin peering down at like he was observing a lab specin.
“Please get a hold of yourself.” His voice ca from far, far away. “Saki, it’s okay. Look, nothing happened to .”
Through blurry eyes, I saw him stand up like nothing had happened. There didn’t seem to be a wound anywhere.
“Look carefully. I don’t have any wounds. The knife is fake. It’s made to not pierce anything.”
When he pushed on the blade, it retracted into the handle.
I remained lying on the floor for a while, utterly confused.
The pain faded away and I could move again.
I got up, seething quietly at this prank. Before I could open my mouth to complain, the changes in my body took by surprise.
“Shocking, isn’t it? But with this, you’ve passed the final test,” Head Priest Mushin’s face had returned to its usual benevolent expression. “If you can feel another’s pain as your own, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s ti to grant you your own mantra.”
My body felt normal again, but I still could do nothing but nod.
“But please don’t forget the pain you felt. Rember it every once in a while and make it a part of you.” His words went deep into my heart. “This is what makes humans different from beasts.”
The monk who was praying threw so pill-shaped things and poured fragrant oil into the altar and the flas flared.
The sound of the monks chanting sutras behind sounded like the echoing chirps of a thousand crickets.
After washing myself, I put on white clothes like those used to dress a corpse. I sat behind the praying monk and put my hands together.
The ritual continued without end as my fatigue peaked. It had to be close to morning. Scattered thoughts floated up and vanished like bubbles. I could no longer think straight.
{Every ti sothing was thrown into the flas, it was as if my sins and worries were being burned away, but the ritual was taking so long that I thought I must be a person with particularly deep sins and worries.}
“Now, your heart and body have been sufficiently cleansed. From here, let the last of your worldly desires be burned away,” Head Priest Mushin said from behind .
I bowed once. Finally, I was being released.
“Look at the flas.” The voice I heard from the darkness sounded like it was coming from the heavens. “Look at the flas.”
I fixed my gaze on the fire dancing above the altar.
“Try to control the flas.”
“I can’t.” Ever since the Spirit of Blessing ca, I hadn’t once tried to use my cantus.
“It’s okay, you can do it. Make the flas sway.”
I stared at the fire.
“To the left, to the right. From side to side…side to side.”
It was hard to concentrate, but after a while, my focus suddenly sharpened and the flas flared up. The inner fla grew brighter and the heart of the fla was almost transparent. The outer edges of the fla flickered.
Move. Move.
No, it’s not the fla, I realized all of a sudden. Fire is made of a bunch of shining particles, but they’re too spread out to have much substance.
I have to move the air.
I saw that I had to move the heat haze around the fla. The clear shimring current of hot air.
I deepened my concentration.
Flow. Flow… Faster.
The movent of the heat haze sped up abruptly.
In the next instant the fire was whipping from side to side as if blown by gusts of wind.
I did it.
It was a brilliant mont of success.
I didn’t believe that I could do it. That I could move sothing at will, without using my hand.
I took a big breath and once again reached out to the flas with my consciousness.
“That’s enough. Stop.” A severe voice cut in.
My concentration collapsed like a house of cards, the image I had in my mind swallowed by darkness.
“Your last desire is your cantus.”
I wasn’t able to comprehend what that ant right away.
“Cast away all your desires. In order to be enlightened, they must be purged by the flas.”
I couldn’t believe it. I just got my cantus. Why did I have to give it up again?
“You must return to the gods the power granted to you by heaven. From now on, your cantus will be sealed in this human emblem.”
Disobedience was not allowed. A doll made of two pieces of folded paper was placed in front of . On the head and torso were mysterious Sanskrit-looking characters.
“Control the emblem and make it stand.”
This task was considerably harder than the last. In addition, my heart was too conflicted for to concentrate.
But eventually, the emblem fluttered and stood up.
“Put all your emotions into the emblem.”
Paper head. Paper body. Paper limbs.
An unmistakably human figure.
I felt my own body rging with the paper emblem. I sent strength into its legs, balancing like a daruma doll.
The paper figure stood up gently.
Once again, feelings of happiness and power flowed through .
“Saki Watanabe, your cantus is sealed!” His voice rang through the temple, shattering the shining image I had in my mind.
Six long needles whistled through the air, piercing the emblem’s head, body, arms and legs.
“All your desires have been burned away. Let the ashes return to the vast, wild earth.”
The praying monk tossed the emblem into the fire.
The fire flared like an explosion, almost scorching the ceiling.
“Your cantus has been eradicated.”
Stunned, I could only stare at the events unfolding before my eyes.
“Look at the flas,” Head Priest Mushin commanded again. “You can no longer control them anymore. Try it.” His voice was emotionless.
I looked into the fire, but this ti, I couldn’t see anything. No matter how hard I tried, nothing changed.
Would I never be able to grasp that feeling of power again? Tears ran down my cheeks.
“In your devotion, you have abandoned your cantus,” his voice was suddenly warm and gentle again. “By the compassion of Buddha, you will receive a pure mantra, a new spirit and a your cantus, once again.”
He hit on both shoulders with a Zen stick. I hung my head, and the sound of chanting grew louder.
Head Priest Mushin leaned in close so that only I could hear and whispered my new mantra.
Having written up to here, I’m extrely perplexed.
No matter how I try, I can’t write down my mantra.
Even now, our society puts a lot of importance on the aning of our mantras. They’re words offered to the gods that are the keys to activating our cantus. We are warned to never use them in vain lest the power be lost.
On the other hand, these are just the words to the spell — sounds without aning. So revealing it here shouldn’t cause any harm.
I want to understand the reasoning behind that. In the deepest parts of my subconscious is a natural defense against exposing my mantra. Even now, I can feel the hand holding the pen being restrained every ti I try to write it down.
So for those who want to know what a mantra is, I’ve written an example below.
Namo âkâúagarbhaya oṃ ârya kamari mauli svâhâ.
Incidentally, this is the mantra of the Akasagarbha bodhisattva given to Satoru.
The rest of my initiation dragged on for a long ti, so I won’t write it all down. When it was finally over, the sky was brightening in the east, and everyone was exhausted.
I slept like a log for a full day afterwards. When I woke up, I spent a day in service with the studying priests, and the day after that I was allowed to go ho.
Head Priest Mushin and the other monks in the Temple of Purity wished good luck and bid farewell under the leafing cherry trees. I got into the window-less houseboat once again and traveled back to the village — the journey only took two hours this ti.
My parents hugged tightly for a long ti. There was a celebration that night; the table was filled with all my favorite dishes. There were oven-ward yam dumplings, raw altered-protein flounder filets, savory tiger crab soup…
With that, my long childhood had co to an end. The next day, I would start a new life.
Sage Academy, like Harmony School, is in Hayring, but much farther to the north, near Pinewind. My teacher from Harmony School accompanied into the stone building, but told to enter the classroom alone. My mouth was dry with anxiety.
Imdiately to the right of the open door was the podium. On the wall in front of hung the academy’s motto. On my left were amphitheater style seats, where thirty or so students were sitting quietly.
Mr. Endou waved toward the podium and I felt my legs shaking as I approached. Never before had I been the focus of so many people; I felt naked and defenseless.
I couldn’t even muster up the courage to look up at the class as I stood at the podium. I chanced a fleeting glance and saw that everyone’s eyes were averted. That instant reminded of sothing. Not Harmony School, but definitely so place I’ve been to before. What was it? The sa ambience hovered over the class like a fog. It was a strange sense of deja vu.
“This is your new classmate, Saki Watanabe.” Mr. Endou wrote my na on the whiteboard. Unlike the Harmony School teachers, he didn’t actually write on the whiteboard. Using his cantus, he sohow made black particles gather on the board in the form of words.
“You’re already friends with students from Harmony School, right? Please get along with those from other schools as well.”
Applause rippled through the class. I realized that everyone was as nervous as I was.
Feeling slightly better, I looked up at the class and saw that Maria, Satoru and Shun were waving at .
Upon closer inspection, I saw that roughly a third of the students were in the sa grade as in Harmony School. Although students entered the academy separately, it made the most sense to group them according to age. Realizing this alleviated my worries considerably and for the first ti I wondered what I would be learning here.
During recess, the other Harmony School students gathered around like they had been waiting for for ever.
“Took you a little while, didn’t it,” were Shun’s first words. If Satoru had said the sa thing, I would have snapped at him, but I just smiled.
“Sorry for making you wait.”
“Seriously, I was almost tired of waiting,” Maria said, turning my head to face her and rubbing her forehead against mine.
“I’m just a late bloor. It’s not like the Spirits of Blessing that co earlier are better, right?”
“True, but you’re the last from Harmony School. Whatever the reason, your Spirit of Blessing was too lackadaisical,” Satoru said, completely oblivious of his own shortcomings.
“I see you haven’t changed at all…” as I said this, a question popped up in my mind. “Wait, last? That’s not right, there were still so people left after .”
Everyone fell silent and their expressions went as blank as a shinshi’s purity mask.
“…we don’t study just theory here, we learn practical skills too. Did you know, I’m the top of the class at surface water manipulation.”
“You suck at force exchange though.”
“The teacher said that what’s important at this point is just the ntal image.”
Everyone started talking at once. It all sounded like gibberish to . They were discussing the classes, as if showing off the knowledge they had learned before . I didn’t like this feeling. But I fell into the habit that had been ingrained in us, naly, to pretend that certain forbidden topics never existed in the first place.
Since I couldn’t really follow the conversation, I listened intently, and ford a rather strange first impression of the class. Unmistakably, I had felt the sa thing at so ti, sowhere.
When the bell rang and everyone was heading back to their seats, I suddenly rembered.
“Lotus Farms…”
Only Satoru’s sharp ears heard my murmur.
“What was that?”
After a mont of hesitation, I answered.
“This class reminds of that farm. Rember? The one we went to in Harmony School.”
Hearing the word Harmony School, Satoru’s expression beca shrewd.
“Sage Academy is like the farm? What are you talking about?”
“Just the overall feeling is the sa.” There was an unpleasant feeling I couldn’t quite pin down.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Satoru also seed to be in a bad mood all of a sudden, but our conversation ended there as class started.
Lotus Farms, where we had gone for a social science field trip, is in Gold village. As the graduation period got closer, we were suddenly taken on nurous field trips. It seed like they wanted us to think about what sort of job we wanted in the future. The sight of the production sites amazed us and made us want to hurry and grow up. The products made at pottery and glass workshops that were part of the craft guild were extraordinary. When we saw them using their cantus to create incredibly strong ceramic pieces and glass as clear as air, we all declared that we wanted to apprentice there after graduating from Sage Academy.
But the thing that left the deepest impact on us was on our last field trip to Lotus Farms.
Lotus Farms is a series of experintal farms spread out over the villages and the biggest collective farm in the town. The first one we went to was a saltwater rice paddy in Whitesand. The rice we eat cos from the paddies in Gold, but here were fields of rice imrsed in saltwater. Using sothing called reverse osmosis, they’re able to filter out the salt in the water. We sampled the rice, and to our surprise, found it completely edible, with only a hint of saltiness.
The next ti, we went to a sericulture facility, where a lot of the silkworms spun rainbow cocoons. Not only did the fabric made from these silkworms not need dyeing, they also didn’t fade or lose color when washed.
In the neighboring building were foreign species used for reference in selective breeding. Silk worms from Indonesia were known for their golden silk, Tasar silk worms from India made threads ten tis thicker than usual, hundreds of silk worms from Uganda spinning cocoons the size of rugby balls, and more.
The best were the Hitachi silkworms kept in an isolated, airtight room. The two ter long, three headed worms were feasting on copious amounts of mulberry leaves and simultaneously spitting out silk from one of its three mouths. It was as if they had forgotten that they were supposed to be making cocoons and were just spitting silk in all directions. The inside of the observation window had to be cleaned off often to stop the silk from covering it completely. The tour guide explained that since the insects were so big, they had trouble breathing, so oxygen was pumped into the enclosure. The concentration of oxygen was so high that if there were an open fla near, the whole thing would blow up, which is why the worms were kept in an air locked room.
Next to the sericulture farm were fields with potatoes, yams, onions, radishes, strawberries and other plants. This ti it was the middle of winter and so of the fields were covered in snow-like bubbles. Potatoes and yams are susceptible to frost damage, so when the temperature dropped too much they used the bubbles produced by an insect called a seedbed froghopper to keep the plants warm. These bugs were originally a type of harmful pests known as froghoppers, but were mutated into a useful type with cantus.
The fields were also protected by huge wasps in shining red armor.
Crimson wasps were a hybrid of the fierce giant hornet and the brown hornet. They preyed exclusively on harmful insects while leaving humans and livestock alone.
Opposite the fields, on the farthest side of the farm was the barn.
I think there was a reason we never visited the barn until the very end. Unlike plants and insects, animals altered by cantus specifically for the purpose of producing large amounts of at, milk and wool were probably unpleasant to look at. So it was a relief when we visited the cattle barn and saw only normal looking cows lined up before us.
“What the heck? It’s all normal cows here.”
You had to admire Satoru’s insensitivity.
“That’s not true,” Shun pointed at a corner of the barn. “Aren’t those pouch cows?”
We all turned to look.
“It really has a pouch!” Maria exclaid.
Between the hind legs of a brown cow was a small white balloon.
“Oh, all the cows over there are pouch cows,” said the guide, a well built man whose na I’ve forgotten. He seed slightly uncomfortable, like we had touched upon a subject he would rather not discuss.
“How co you don’t take the pouches off?” Satoru asked, oblivious of the guide’s discomfort.
“Well…since the olden tis, all dairy farrs have said that cows with pouches have a better immune system and are resistant to diseases. We’re trying to determine if that’s true or not.”
Since we had not seen any altered animals in our field trips until now, I thought it was reasonable that we were intrigued by the pouch cows.
In order to explain better, I have a book called “The Natural History of the New Japan Islands” for reference. It’s stamped “classified”. This is the third class of books, treated with discretion because they have the potential to be harmful to the mind of the reader. Here is an excerpt.
Pouch cows, forrly called cow sac, received its na from the aforentioned pouch it has. It’s an interesting coincidence that its na is similar to the rhizocephalan.1
On the subject of rhizocephala, it is a crustacean related to the acorn barnacle. Resembling the sac from which it got its na, at first glance it does not seem remotely related to well-known crustaceans like shrimp or crabs. This change ca about as an adaptation in order to parasitise other crustaceans, like the Japanese mitten crab.
As a cyprid, the female rhizocephala attaches to the body of the crab and enters the infective state. It then injects a clump of somatic cells into the crab. These cells attach themselves inside the body then pierce through the abdon and develop its sac. The sac is an ovary, and does not have limbs or digestive organs. The cells inside the body grow root-like structures that absorb nutrients from the crab.
The infected crab becos infertile, a phenonon called parasitic castration.
(Omitted)
On the other hand, cow sacs were known to be tumors in the cow’s testicle or uterus. Since they didn’t affect the cow’s health, they were believed to be benign and overlooked. But in recent years, it was discovered to be an independent organism, like rhizocephala. Moreover, it had evolved to the point where it was now part of the animal, creating a new species of cow.
The origins of the pouch cow is uncertain, but the theory that it evolved by chance is largely accepted. This is likened to one embryo of a twin absorbing the other, who becos a tumor.
Pouch cow larvae are found in large quantities in the testicles of normal bulls. During mating season, the larvae are ejaculated along with normal sperm. They are around four centiters in length, with no eyes or ears, two long forelimbs, a body similar to a hornworm’s, and a needle-like ovipositor.
The larvae propel themselves with their forelimbs to climb around the host cow until they find an area where the skin is thin, then inject a clump of somatic cells. As the cells grow, a new pouch develops, and the host cow becos a pouch cow. Accomplishing this, the larvae dry up and die about two hours later.
At first glance, the larvae bear no similarities to normal cows, but can still be categorized as beings of the artiodactyla order, bovidae class. The claws of the forelimbs are split like cow hooves. This is the only remaining characteristic that show the two animals share an ancestor.
There is debate about whether a pouch cow is really inseminating the host cow, or rely robbing it of the nutrients it would usually give to an egg.
There’s a folktale, or perhaps it’s an urban legend, surrounding the pouch cow. Once, the larva was caught climbing on a cow. While it was being removed, it let out a noise that sounded just like a cow’s. The other cows heard it and beca disturbed, all crying out at the sa ti. This author has had nurous chances to observe pouch cow larvae, but regrettably, no cries have been heard.
It’s strange how we associated the miraculous power known as cantus with the strange animal called the pouch cow, silently eating its feed.
This probably isn’t because we were managed just like these animals by our school, but because we were all burdened with an identity we were not yet aware of.
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