Volu 4, Chapter 1: Zashiki Warashi Yukari / The Past is a Present that Once Was
Part 1
March 24, 5:00 AM.
I was napping and not sure if I was experiencing a dream or reality.
My mind had fallen to an odd level not quite awake and not quite asleep. In that state, I suddenly felt a sensation seeping out from my chest. It was as if so kind of barrier had grown weak.
Sothing was clearly wrong.
From the top of my head to the end of my butt, I felt sothing like thin, thin wires passing through the center of my body.
They were not sturdy or strong. In fact, they felt like they would break like dry pasta if I twisted my body even slightly. Nevertheless, I felt a vague chill of unease as if letting those sharp fragnts spread through my body would be a fatal mistake.
At that ti, it ca clearly to my mind.
Ahh. I’m definitely not a normal Zashiki Warashi.
National Registry ID #36110054Ra2.
XXXXX Prototype Ver. 39 XXX.
Traditional Species Designator: Zashiki Warashi.
Personal Na within the Jinnai Family: Yukari.
There were a lot of terms that could refer to , but not even I knew which one truly indicated “”. Even if there was a “” I wanted to be, the truth of the world would not necessarily take my side so conveniently.
As I thought on my vague definition of myself, the sense that sothing was wrong travelled down my back.
The thin wire-like sensation seed to say it was the only thing on which I could rely to identify who I really was.
“...”
Even sighing seed like too much trouble, so I closed my eyes once more within the thick futon blanket.
This was a thought pattern that only existed in this vague level of consciousness.
It was a fluctuation.
An error.
Once I clearly woke or clearly fell asleep, this unease would vanish. And I hated putting in any kind of effort, so going back to sleep was always the way to go.
Or so I thought.
Another action interfered with my ager plan.
Sothing began rustling around next to in the futon.
“Yukari.”
I heard a small child’s voice and a boy’s head popped out from under the blanket.
He was about six and had short, black hair.
His face was as red as a boiled octopus as he spoke.
“It’s hot and hard to breath.”
“That’s what you get for pulling such a thick blanket over your head.”
He was well-known for tossing and turning in his sleep, so his pillow had been thrown to the other end of the bedroom. And it was not the work of a Makura-Gaeshi.
If he had woken up, going back to sleep would be difficult.
I rolled over to check the digital clock and found ten minutes had passed since I had last checked.
The rectangular clock was not my taste.
In fact, the futon itself was not mine.
Sneaking into the family’s futons at night is a trait of the Zashiki Warashi, isn’t it?
I rubbed my eyes, gave a quick yawn, and spoke to the actual owner of the futon.
“Good morning, Shinobu. I’d like to change, so could you scoot back just a bit?”
Part 2
“Bust: 98 cm. Waist: 54 cm. Hip: 85 cm. Isn’t it a bit of a curveball to call this a Zashiki ‘Warashi’?[1] In fact, it’s downright cheating.”
I was inside a large thatch-roof house.
When I lazily made my way to the altar room, I found Shinobu’s mother waiting for . As Youkai did not have lifespans, it could be hard to judge our ages once we passed our growth period, but it was true I would likely be categorized as a “young wife” using their standards.
Also, there was only one thing I could say to the words thrown at the instant I opened the door.
“I’m not sure what you want to do about it.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“And another thing. The Zashiki Warashi species also contains young samurai and one-legged monks. It doesn’t have to be a small child wearing a kimono.”
“Sure, sure. Now, how’s Shinobu doing?”
“He insisted he could change on his own, so I’m betting he has his head stuck in the neck hole while he flails around like a giant stuffed amoeba.”
“Did he wet the bed?”
“If he had, I would look a lot more upset right now.”
“It’s my mother-in-law who would be upset since she uses you as a dress-up doll. There aren’t many people who wear kimonos.”
“Then why don’t you wear them?”
By the way, she was in the altar room in order to bring my breakfast.
In the Jinnai house, the humans ate in the living room and the Youkai ate in the altar room. It was a fairly lax rule, so there was no restriction on switching location after the al actually began.
After setting down the food and placing a bowl of rice in front of the Buddhist altar, Shinobu’s mother waved at .
“Okay, enjoy yourself. And make sure you bring fortune and prosperity to our house like a Zashiki Warashi is supposed to☆”
After making sure she had left the room, I sat in a daze for a while. Rather than wanting to sleep but finding I couldn’t, I knew I had to wake up but found doing so was too much trouble.
I decided to switch on the flat-screen TV in a corner of the room and flipped randomly through the channels while I waited for my mind to awaken. Hunger really seed to play a large role as a ntal support.
“Here is the number one for today, March 24! If you’re an Aries, listen up! Your perfect match is a Virgo! And your lucky color is...”
“Here is today’s selected best seller. ‘The Nail that Sticks Out is Hamred Down ~How to Create a Society where only Idiots can Survive~’ This is the latest novel from the author of ‘The Idiots whose Nas Deserve to Go Down in History’! It far outdoes its predecessor which was famous for readers having such extrely divided opinions of it that they got into actual fistfights.”
“Beauty! This will be the three-minute exercise for the morning. If you want to smile below the sumr sun, you have to put in the effort now! This is the perfect exercise for you piglets who are afraid to look in the mirror.”
“ ‘People are Killed for Such Stupid Reasons ~Selfish Motives Straight from the Murderer’s Mouth~’ This week’s special drama is the ninth entry in the series of true stories that reveal the mysteries behind brutal cris that will freeze your blood! Don’t miss it Friday night at nine!”
Just as I thought I would rember that my stomach was empty after another fifteen minutes, I heard a sound.
It sounded like dishes clinking together.
I quickly realized it did not just “sound like” that.
“Yukari, Yukari. You can’t eat alone.”
“Shinobu?”
The six-year-old child carried a tray with unsteady hands that pushed the danger ter up to 130%. It seed he had taken it all the way to the altar room.
“They said on TV that food tastes better when everyone’s together.”
“Shinobu, you’re kind of missing the point and you’re also spilling miso soup at a concerning rate.”
“Yukari! Don’t eat alone.”
I was forced to grab a rag and put in the manual labor to fix a disaster that would delight only a tatami mat craftsman.
He seed to think I was on the verge of becoming a shut-in, but that was just how Zashiki Warashi were. It was just as pointless to urge a bat or mole to sunbathe.
At any rate, I left the TV on while eating breakfast with Shinobu whose misunderstanding remained.
“Grandma’s food is good, but it’s all so brown.”
“Well, she prefers Japanese food while your mother goes more for the Western food.”
“Grandma should just make omurice too. That would add a bunch of yellow and red! And if she added parsley, it’d have green too!!”
He pouted his lips as he complained, but it was interesting to note that he finished his vegetables more often when his grandmother made the food.
Making a six-year-old child eat his vegetables seed like a good indicator of skill to .
“I can eat bell peppers.”
“Oh, can you?”
“I can eat celery too.”
“Personally, I’d much rather not.”
I refused to eat celery on principle, so I turned down his persistent sales talk about adding mayonnaise. His small hands then made an odd movent.
He pulled out several tal skewers divided into different bright colors.
“Um...Shinobu? What are those?”
“You don’t know? Beauty!!”
I had a feeling I had heard that word on TV earlier and he stuck the colored skewers into his boiled eggplant and taro.
“You can go on a diet by stabbing these into the food before eating it!”
“Um, a diet?”
A six year old on a diet?
“This one’s for at and this one’s for fish. You only get one or the other of those, though. This is for green vegetables, this is for red vegetables, and this is for yellow vegetables!!”
“Oh, I get it. It has a lot more skewers for vegetables, so if you use them evenly, you’ll naturally get the vegetables you need.”
“Beauty said it. Beauty said it on TV, so it has to be true!”
I then recalled that effeminate male TV personality whose hair was dyed a bright color.
He was known as a fashion leader and the one who started the latest diet boom, but for so reason no one actually wanted to be just like him. It seed like an odd position to .
“If you diet, you’ll get big and strong. Big and strong!”
“Shinobu, you have the entire concept wrong and I’m afraid you’ll get the skewer stuck in your throat, so stop sticking it in your mouth to eat from it. Bite the food off the side instead.”
So are these colorful skewers an official product?
I doubted there was a specialized shop in the rural area, so soone in the family had to have bought them off the internet. The biggest suspect was Shinobu’s mother. She had a bad habit of buying things on a whim and then only using them once. The porcelain bibimbap dish set and the ho-made southern rice cracker set were two of the latest ones.
“Yukari, did you know that ikra is Russian for roe?”
“You sure are knowledgeable.”
“Priozhki!”
“Although maybe your knowledge wouldn’t be so strange if we didn’t have all those cable channels.”
Part 3
No major incidents would happen.
There were no real ups or downs.
The job of a Zashiki Warashi was to laze around a large rural house, so I only had to find a spot that wouldn’t get in the way of the vacuuming and lie on the tatami mats. I was in a carefree mood far removed from my past of being imprisoned and experinted on by the organization nad Hyakki Yakou.
Or so I had hoped. Unfortunately, I heard a commotion out front.
As usual, it was Shinobu’s voice.
I circled around to the front entrance, put on my geta, and went outside. There, I found Shinobu having a small disagreent on the road in front of the house.
His opponent was...sothing. It was a giant three-eyed dog the size of a small truck and it was cutting across the road to block the way.
“I am a Nurikabe and I will not let you through.”
“Why!? Why won’t you!?”
“If you are going sowhere, you must have an adult with you. Go call soone.”
“You stupid Youkai. I bet you’re called a Roadblock or sothing!”
“I am a Nurikabe. I already explained that. Now go call for an adult.”
Shinobu grabbed the thick fur on the gigantic dog’s side and tugged, but it did not seem to bother the Nurikabe.
The Youkai was as harmless as it looked, but I had heard of them having a serious effect on the dostic economy when they appeared on a highway or railroad. Youkai like us wouldn’t be hard by having a dump truck run into us or a tanker truck explode on us, so there was not much the humans could do.
However, I had thought a Nurikabe looked like a large hunk of konjac with short arms and legs.
Letting this continue forever would help nothing, so I decided to call out to Shinobu.
“Shinobu, what are you doing?”
“School! I’m gonna go to school!”
He swung his arms around to try to persuade .
“I’m starting school in the spring, so I need to make sure I know the way!”
anwhile, the Nurikabe glanced over at with its three eyes and slowly vanished as if dissolving into the air.
“Ah, the Roadblock went away! Okay, let’s go!!”
“Shinobu.”
He looked like he was about to run off and not stop until he was on the moon or sothing, so I lightly grabbed onto the nape of his neck to stop him.
“Do you even know where your school is?”
“I’ll let you join my exploration party. You should be thankful.”
If I refused, he would probably get lost on his own and manage to escape the Solar System, so I had no choice but to go along.
It was the morning during late March.
The weather was in a bizarre state where the temperature would change quite a bit each day, but it was fairly warm on this day. It was also sunny and there were even butterflies flying around after waking up too early.
“The trees are wearing scarves.”
“Those are made of straw.”
“They must really not like the cold. It’s so warm today.”
I decided to keep it a secret that they were put up to allow bugs to nest in them and then burned to kill the bugs gathered inside.
anwhile, Shinobu was looking around in confusion.
“This is tricky,” he said while forcing a knowledgeable look. “Finding your way without landmarks is tricky.”
Spreading out before us was the stereotypical scenery of paddy fields one would see on a postcard for foreign tourists. The landscape contained water-filled paddies, thatch-roof houses, and narrow roads and waterways connecting it all together.
However, this was not just so old rural area.
On pillars set up at set intervals along the roads were solar panels that changed angle like sunflowers, the waterways contained small water wheels for power generation, and the paddies without water were being plowed by unmanned drone tractors. I’d also heard that the scarecrows contained sensors to precisely fire a spear-like sound wave at any animal movent using trumpet- or gaphone-shaped directional speakers.
To combat the cheap and plentiful imported vegetables, this special village created an ultra-high quality brand out of the limited dostic crops.
A new idea of the rural had been created to battle those other nations. It created a fusion of tradition and cutting-edge technology that used the words “safe” and “delicacy” as weapons to sell a bunch of grapes for 30,000 yen and a liter of the water in its rivers for 300 yen.
This was an Intellectual Village.
Japan had suffered a critical defeat in the precision machinery industry and these villages had been created during the great change of focus intended to help the economy recover.
That was the sort of village we lived in.
And at the sa ti...
“Look, Yukari. There’s an Umbrella Obake and a Lantern Obake.”
“Looks that way. But I think they’re in a hurry, so let’s leave them alone.”
Shinobu was pointing at a road beyond a paddy field. A paper umbrella and paper lantern both with a single comical eye were speaking loudly to each other while running(?).
“Hurry! Mrs. Yonesaki’s labor pains have already begun!!”
“Oh, dear. We need to hurry back to the house!!”
The perfectly recreated rural scenery had invited Youkai back to human civilization after they had hidden themselves during the rise of modernization. That umbrella and lantern were likely causing trouble at one of the village’s houses just like I was.
“Shinobu, I don’t think you need to search for landmarks on a straight road.”
“Y-you’re right! I’ll write on the map that this part is okay!”
“Shinobu.”
He began writing a aningless comnt on a piece of drawing paper.
Once we arrived at a critical fork in the road, he spoke up with a troubled look.
“I’m at the edge of the paper, so I can’t draw the rest of the map.”
“This was nothing but an empty straight road, so why did you draw it so long on your map?”
Of course, he would be travelling in a group for a while after beginning school, so there was no need for him to draw a map and rember the way.
In the end, he flipped the paper over, said “I’ll keep going from here!”, and continued drawing while dragging further along. He was so focused on the paper that I wasn’t sure he had even seen the fork in the road.
Soon, soone approached us along the narrow road.
It was a girl of about Shinobu’s age who held a large dog on a leash.
She may have been the target of an overprotective parent because every single article of clothing was homade. She looked a lot like a storybook illustration of Red Riding Hood.
“Oh, it’s Nagisa! Beauty!!”
“B-beauty.”
...If she understands that greeting, that effeminate TV personality must be popular with more than just Shinobu. I wonder if that’s been nominated as a fad phrase.
It seed Nagisa’s parents had misread the harsh ups and downs of the late March temperatures because she looked hot in the Red Riding Hood look.
Shinobu would sotis throw fried chicken bones to play fetch with it, so the Saint Bernard that protected the nervous-looking girl wagged its tail and welcod him. The rumor was that Nagisa’s parents had put it through a legitimate war dog training program and it was trained to imdiately rip out the windpipe of anyone suspicious who approached the girl, but I had to wonder if it was true.
At the mont, she hid behind the dog that looked like a giant stuffed animal.
“Shinobu-chan, are you with that Youkai again? A-aren’t you afraid?”
Oh, how troubleso.
The existence of Youkai had been generally accepted in the Intellectual Village, so it wasn’t often you saw soone afraid of us like this.
Of course, the nation had no laws to judge Youkai themselves. It was treated the sa as an accident involving a falling rock or a lightning strike, so I couldn’t really complain if people were afraid of us.
Shinobu on the other hand was comfortable around Youkai to an unusual degree.
“Hm? Afraid of Yukari? You don’t have to worry about her. She doesn’t bite.”
...
Now, then.
“Roar!! Grrrrr!!!!”
“Don’t do that, Yukari! Nagisa won’t get it’s a joke! Look, she fell down!!”
By the way, even though Nagisa had stiffly collapsed like a cicada skin, the Saint Bernard did nothing more than calmly look up at with its tongue sticking out. Then again, it could probably tell at a glance that I didn’t an any real harm.
“Sh-Shinobu-chan, you’re an. If you lie, you have to swallow a thousand needles.”
“No, Nagisa. Liars have to swallow a porcupinefish.”
In just a few seconds, their conversation took a zigzagging turn toward the roots of old words[2] Their conversations were quite peculiar. They were logical, but they would take sudden bypasses based on instinct or emotion. If you lost sight of the flow of conversation for even an instant, you would never find the link.
And if you could not follow the thread of conversation, you could not join in.
With nothing to do, I looked the well-behaved Saint Bernard in its small, round eyes.
No, I can’t start empathizing with a dog. I’m not going to sit and wait like that. My position has to be sowhere higher.
“Bye, Shinobu-chan. I need to finish my errand.”
As I thought about my dignity and respect as a Youkai, their conversation finally ca to an end. Nagisa seed to be dragged by the leash more than she was walking with the dog, but she began walking toward the small post office all the sa.
We corrected our course toward our destination. Or rather, I corrected Shinobu’s course.
The village had a single elentary school, middle school, and high school and they were all located near each other. To ensure a safe walk to school, it was probably best to have them all use the sa path.
“I’m thirsty.”
“Well, we did walk about two kiloters.”
After traveling a little more, we saw a large area surrounded by a chain-link fence and a large rectangular building inside.
“Is that my school?”
“No, that’s not where you’ll be going. I think it’s the high school. Y’know, the one Hayabusa goes to.”
It was late March, so I was pretty sure all the schools were out for spring break, but there were still quite a few students in the schoolyard. Sports teams such as baseball or soccer may have been practicing.
For so reason, Shinobu was trembling while pressed up against the fence.
“What is it, Shinobu? If you’re thirsty, how about we go in and borrow their water fountain?”
“No, I could never go in the high school! I don’t have the right!!”
It wasn’t so consulate, so I didn’t see why he would have to worry about that. However, it seed he had run up against a barrier of age or school year that kids seed to have issues with.
Having heard the commotion, so girls wearing track suits approached from beyond the fence.
“Hm? What are you doing here? Do you have a lunch for your big brother or sister? If so, go to the main entrance on the other side.”
“Ee!? N-no, I do not have a lunch! And I do not have a big brother who plays sports!!”
“Ah ha ha. Why’s he speaking so politely all of a sudden?”
Shinobu had started to panic, but his confusion faded as ti passed. His eyes opened as wide as they would go as he looked at the schoolyard through the fence.
“That’s a big horizontal bar!”
“Yeah, I don’t think I could do a back hip circle on that,” replied one of the girls.
“There’s a sandbox there but no slide or swings. It looks boring.”
“Well, that is for the long jump.”
At that point, Shinobu finally seed to take an interest in the girls he was talking to through the fence.
“By the way, who are all of you?” he asked with a confused look.
“We’re the tennis team.”
“If you lie, you have to swallow a porcupinefish.”
“Why are you calling a liar out of nowhere!?” asked one track suit girl who seed quite willing to play along.
Shinobu proudly puffed out his chest and gave a snort as he made an announcent to her.
“Girls who play tennis wear clothes that flutter around.”
“That’s only in official gas. We aren’t going to wear that embarrassing thing all the ti.”
So boys who had appeared out of nowhere began pouting their lips and protesting while swinging their rackets around.
“C’mon, wear the embarrassing outfits! Half the reason we started playing tennis was to see those, so why are you wearing those horrible track suits year-round!?”
“Because lowlives like you have eyes, you damn boys!! Get lost! Any guy without pure eyes needs to go away!!”
Having heard all the noise, a female teacher who seed to be the coach began hitting balls over at them with her racket, so the boys and girls began running around in confusion.
The teacher walked over to Shinobu who was the flustered source of the commotion.
“Are you interested in tennis?” she asked while perfectly expressionless.
“I don’t know the rules!! I only know you hit sothing back and forth like in badminton!”
“I see. Then let give you a chance. This is an old ball. If you’re interested, learn how to use it.”
She forced the yellow ball through a hole in the chain-link fence and handed it to him.
One of the track suit girls running along the schoolyard opened her eyes wide.
“No fair! Are you luring him in with toys like Santa Claus, you old hag! No matter what you say, you’re the kindest one when it cos to little kids!!”
“Shut up!! I’ll have you know I actually wanted to teach elentary school! But the next thing I knew, I was dealing with you deceptive mini-adults and your dead eyes!!”
However, Shinobu had not heard that exchange because he was too focused on the ball in his hand.
“It’s yellow, round, and fluffy. I’ve never seen a ball like this. It’s like a baby duck.”
“Ahhh, Shinobu. This isn’t good.”
“Wow! It bounces really good. This baby duck bounces more than a baseball!!”
He shouted in delight as he threw the tennis ball against the road again and again, but I groaned as I watched.
He had reacted in much the sa way when he had gotten a small rubber ball at the temple festival. After making a hole in every sliding door and screen in the house, he had broken the glass in the wall clock and helped revive the intangible cultural asset of the crying child locked in the storage shed as punishnt. However, it seed all of that had vanished from his mind.
I earnestly hoped that a small storm was not approaching the Jinnai house for that night.
“Shinobu, the elentary school is this way.”
“Sure. With this baby duck ball, I’m not afraid of anything!!”
With the legendary Baby Duck Shooter in hand, he grew too bold and tried to walk down the center of the road, so I grabbed the nape of his neck and pulled him to the side of the road.
The elentary school he would begin to attend co April was quite close to the high school. The middle school was also nearby, so the village planners had probably vaguely decided “the schools go here”.
Speaking of which, the village did not have a university.
A tidy place of learning may not have fit into an Intellectual Village that was strategically managed to have the proper image.
To use Shinobu’s checklist from before, this schoolyard had a few swings, slides, and other playground equipnt. The horizontal bars seed to have different heights for the lower grades and the higher grades. Also, the soccer goal and basketball goal were smaller than the ones at the high school.
However, a Youkai like noticed sothing else first.
“Why are high schoolers kicking a ball around outside the elentary school?”
For one, it was spring break. Elentary school had no concept of sports teams or clubs, so there would not have been any elentary school students here in the first place. But when you found larger middle and high school students there instead, it looked a lot like they had chased out the younger kids to have the place to themselves.
And that may not have been far from the truth.
The children at the high school had been the passionate athletes. It would have been difficult to dislodge them if you just wanted to play around. And if they then wanted to play sowhere else, it was only natural what would happen next.
They may not have even realized they were forcing out the younger children who should have been there.
However, would elentary school children really choose to gather in a place filled with clearly older and bigger children? Just as Shinobu had been oddly unwilling to enter the high school, the elentary school children may have naturally left without being actively threatened by anyone.
From high school to middle school and from middle school to elentary school.
As the people were left out, they would move down to the next school in line. It was certainly a twisted social structure.
Whether he had caught on to the situation or not, Shinobu tugged on my kimono and asked a question.
“Is this my school?”
“Looks like it. You’ll be going here every day co April.”
Before I had finished speaking, a soccer ball crashed loudly against the chain-link fence.
It rolled along the ground in front of Shinobu whose eyes were opened wide.
I assud soone had accidentally kicked the ball this way, but I was quickly proven wrong.
“What are you doing here?”
I heard a scratchy voice much like tal scraping together.
It seed this high school boy had kicked the ball our way on purpose.
“We already told you the rules, rember!? We’re using this place right now! We even got permission from the teacher as alumni of the school. We’re not gonna deal with little brats like you. If not having your schoolyard is such a problem, go tell on us, but don’t bla for what happens then!”
“Hm? Hm???”
Shinobu was not used to being the target of that kind of hostility, so he was more confused than scared.
The boy seed to have mistaken him for an elentary school kid who had co to play.
A glance through the fence showed that there were no small children despite it being an elentary school. Everyone there was a taller high school student.
“Dammit. Why do they get to be first string and we’re only second string. They’re just splitting us up based on who they like and using up all the equipnt and practice space for themselves. Practice...I need to practice. Thinking you can win with guts or a fighting spirit is complete nonsense. I’ll prove to them that people grow more with a training regin calculated out by a program.”
Shinobu tilted his head and looked up at .
“Yukari, what is he talking about?”
“He’s saying it’s tough not being a winner because he can’t live up to his parents’ expectations or get the cute girls in his class.”
I gave an arbitrary comnt with a lovely grin and received obvious verbal abuse for my trouble.
“Shut the hell up, you damn Youkai!! I know you don’t have any human rights, so how about I beat the shit out of you right here!?”
“We all know you can’t do that☆”
The boy I decided to call Grumpy-kun kicked the fence and then left.
Um, what am I supposed to do at tis like this?
Oh, right. Raise my middle finger.
“Yukari, what was all that?”
“Don’t worry. Guys like that have probably never even held hands with a girl. You have him beat by a wide margin, so you don’t have to worry about anything.”
“???”
There was nothing more for Shinobu to see. Or rather, the schoolyard had more or less beco a post-apocalyptic land where everyone had a mohawk, so sticking around was unlikely to be an enjoyable experience for him.
Today’s the had been “learning the way to school”, so bringing that to an end and going ho was the best option.
“Things can look different on the way back, so let’s try that too.”
“What are you talking about? It’s the sa path, so there’s no way to get lost.”
“Shinobu, you’re already taking a wrong turn at the first fork in the road.”
I grabbed the nape of his neck and corrected his path.
He flailed his arms and legs around in protest for a while, but he finally gave a low energy comnt as if he were a wilting house plant.
“I’m tired from walking so much.”
“Sorry, but I’m not going to carry you. Why? Because it sounds like a lot of work.”
Part 4
When we returned to the house that had a full security system and solar panels on its thatch roof, it seed to be lunchti.
The day’s lunch was oyakodon.
als were always prepared by Shinobu’s mother or grandmother, but the food was always plain yet reliable when his grandmother made it.
After lunch, I had nothing to do and just lazed around until I heard soone talking on the phone.
The voice ca from the hallway.
I saw short hair dyed brown and glittering silver accessories.
Hearing he was in his late teens might make you think he was Shinobu’s older brother, but he was actually his uncle.
His na was Jinnai Hayabusa.
He was an obvious delinquent boy who rode around on his electric maxi scooter and got into fights.
“Yes, yes. I get that. What? You think I’m a moron? I agree the instigator on TV is clearly suspicious, but soone that well-known would never do sothing so dangerous.”
“You an...still...how...ick works?”
“I already told you that! I don’t know what the trick is or how it works! But they’re definitely using a Package involving a Youkai. Anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred people are involved in a single cri, so we aren’t going to find them that easily! Are you sure you aren’t the moron here!?”
“Ha...ha. Watch what...say or...a kick in...balls.”
Oh, a Package? This sounds dangerous.
That was a criminal thod that incorporated the vague existence and traits of a Youkai into a single system.
For example, a Satori’s ability to read minds could be used for insider trading.
For example, a god of pestilence’s ability to make people sick could be used to bring a natural death to soone you hated.
These cutting-edge cris that involved the occult were often put off until later by the professional police. This was not sothing a high school boy should be getting involved in, so I decided to cut in.
Specifically, I snuck up behind him and kicked him just as the voice on the phone had threatened.
“Take this!!”
“Anyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”
I seed to have misjudged my strength because Hayabusa was left rolling around on the ground.
I ignored him, picked his cell phone up off the floor, and heard a dignified female voice.
“Hello. I don’t know who this is, but thanks for stopping Hayabusa-kun from getting too worked up. Heh heh heh. That was a surprisingly cute scream. What did you do?”
“You could say I helped the student council president with the mischief she’s notorious for. Anyway, please don’t get our stupid boy caught up in anything. Half the ti he’s suspended it’s due to the requests you give him.”
“I never ask him to go that far. While I do want to stop anyone in our school from getting involved in Packages, he has a bad habit of rushing in too quickly. It’s because he goes too far in his handling of justice. On a field trip, he rescued a girl in his class from so boys of another school and ended making the girl he rescued afraid of him.”
As I grew bored with her non-committal answer, I heard what sounded like a groan from the dead in the depths of the earth.
Delinquent Boy Hayabusa reached a hand toward while curled up on the floor that was polished to an amber color.
I sighed, tossed the phone toward him, and gave him so relevant advice.
“Halfheartedly getting involved in Youkai-related cris will only shorten your life. You can’t resolve this kind of thing, so if you have ti to talk about this nonsense, try to find so trouble more your size. Maybe you could deal with those complete idiots who’ve taken over the schoolyard of the elentary school Shinobu will be attending soon.”
“Y-you do know assault is a cri, don’t you?”
I had done what I had to do and it wasn’t my job to decide whether he would listen to or not.
There was no cure for stupidity or death. I began to leave the hallway, but another voice reached from behind.
“Vwooooom.”
It was Shinobu. By the ti I figured out he was making an airplane noise, he had already run right into my butt.
“Crash!”
“Shinobu, what are you doing?’
“Chomp.”
“Hyah!?”
The unexpected action made jump away.
Not because it hurt, though!
I frantically turned around and Shinobu was confused by my extre reaction.
“Hm? Yukari, what is it?”
“Shinobu, um, don’t do that. You aren’t supposed to bite people.”
That was sothing I should never have had to tell anyone, but he only tilted his head further.
“But mommy does it all the ti. She bites my arm or side.”
“That stupid mother! Can’t she think about how things will influence her child!?”
Anyway, why is he here?
As I wondered that, he waved a hand weakly and asked a question.
“Where were you going?”
“?”
“”I’m going to sleep, but I can’t sleep without you there.”
“Oh, you wanted to take a nap, didn’t you?”
Normally, a Zashiki Warashi snuck into the family’s futons as a harmless prank, but Shinobu had gotten so used to it that he could not sleep without soone in the futon with him.
I laid out the futon in his bedroom and we both lay down in it.
“Yukari, that’s too tight.”
“Bear with it.”
I was holding him in my arms more tightly than absolutely necessary for a good reason: he tossed and turned a lot in his sleep. It was completely normal for him to end up upside down, take the entire blanket from as he rolled around, find his way underneath , get tangled up in my long hair, or anything else really.
However, he did not have trouble getting to sleep.
The trip to and from his school must have been a lot for him because he fell fast asleep only five minutes after his complaint.
I had nothing to do until he woke up and my eyelids grew heavy as I passed the ti doing nothing.
However, my eyes opened again before I fully fell asleep.
Soone had snuck into the bedroom.
“Heh heh heh. They’re asleep. Fast asleep. Buuut, this makes a little jealous as his mother.”
It was Shinobu’s mother.
For so reason, she was lifting up her breasts with her hands.
“Does he naturally choose the one with the bigger breasts and smoother skin? I guess I can’t compare to a Youkai that doesn’t age.”
“You have no reason to get upset over this. The only reason he can approach so easily is because I’m not as close an existence to him. In fact, it’s because I’m so different.”
“What do you an?”
“Children sotis have complaints they find difficult to make to a parent, but they can reveal those to a stuffed animal. There are advantages to being sothing other than human. ...However, that can be a harsh truth to the one being treated that way. If you want to be his parent, you don’t want that, do you?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure he puts that much thought into it.”
“It’s even harsher because it’s done subconsciously.”
I gave a dark and cold smile I never let Shinobu see.
This was a good opportunity and I felt like there was a little more I needed to tell the parent who was ant to protect him.
“There’s sothing about Shinobu that worries .”
“What is it now?”
“He’s completely unaware of that forbidden line that everyone can naturally sense. Think of a school at night, an abandoned hospital, or a sealed-off tunnel. He might find those places scary, but he would never think of turning back.”
For example, he had no problem bringing his food into the altar room that slled of the dead to eat with sothing as inhuman as a Youkai.
I felt it was worth noting the positive possibilities of getting along with any Youkai, but our traits did not always have a positive effect.
“He can’t sense that line that everyone else can, so he always ends up stepping into areas that are best avoided. You need to be aware of that. If a location is separated out, there is reason why. Entering forbidden territory does not always have a happy ending like with Momotarou. It can also end more like Kaguya-Hi or Urashima Tarou.”
Shinobu’s mother lightly traced her index finger along her chin.
“Urashimia Tarou, hm? That really is a strange story. Unlike a lot of old stories, it has no lesson. The main character rescues a turtle and it ends with his misfortune.”
That was how the story went when looking at it with human standards.
None of the major characters of the story – Urashima Tarou, the turtle, and Otohi – had ant any harm. Urashima Tarou had rescued the turtle with no intention of gaining anything from it, the turtle had tried to repay him with no ulterior motive, and Otohi had genuinely fallen in love with him.
Nevertheless, the story ended with his despair.
We might look a lot alike and we might use the sa words, but humans and Youkai had definitively different values. In Urashima Tarou’s case that difference was in the view of ti. Youkai have no lifespan, so they had not known Urashima Tarou would not like what happened to him.
“It has nothing to do with good will or malice. That is a constant danger whenever humans and Youkai co into contact and it is a risk that never occurs between parent and child. Do you understand now that I’m not stealing your position?”
“Hmm.”
That was all Shinobu’s mother said.
It was short and concise.
But then she said more with a hint of a smile.
“But you don’t want anything like what happened to Urashima Tarou to happen to Shinobu. That’s not a bad reaction as a parent, you know?”
Part 5
It seed I had fallen asleep at so point.
When I opened my eyelids, Shinobu was absent from the futon.
I started by heading to the kitchen and drinking a can of chilled soda from the refrigerator. The refrigerator had a flat-screen computer on the door for looking up recipes. I swiped my finger across it to wake it from sleep mode and opened the online news page.
“ ‘How Does Pizza Arrive at your Door in Only Thirty Minutes?’ is finally getting a movie! This new schedule(?) mystery is from the author of the masterpiece ‘Hamburgers, the Magic of Ninety Seconds from Order to Completion’. This will be another problem film filled with fast food trivia you’ll wish you didn’t know. It is being directed by...”
“...”
With the red can in hand and a blue face, I returned the computer to sleep mode.
That was not an article I wanted to read while drinking that. Of course, there were rumors the extre junk food criticism was a way of opposing imported goods.
I carried the cold can around the house and found a large number of paper airplanes scattered around the Japanese living room that was large enough for a judo match.
This was not the result of so bizarre person getting obsessed with a single action.
A Kappa, a Tengu, and a Yamanba – a group needing no explanation due to their appearances in picture books and Youkai manga – were forming a system for mass producing paper airplanes using the giant pile of paper Shinobu had prepared.
I decided to ask about it.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, Yukari. We’re having a paper airplane championship! It’s not too late to catch up now!!”
“What are you doing?” I asked again.
My voice was more threatening the second ti and it was directed at the Youkai rather than Shinobu. They looked up as if they had co back to their senses.
“O-oh, no. I returned to my childhood for a mont there! We didn’t head into the mountains to do this!!” (
Reviews
All reviews (0)