The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village

Volume 6, Chapter 1: Introduction@Jinnai Shinobu & Yonsesaki Hiro Part 1-8

Part 1 (Jinnai Shinobu)

In the end, I didn’t get even a wink of sleep.

“You idiot! You complete moron!! I told you this was your fault! It hung up because it mixed up the signals from my room and yours after you messed with the router’s settings!”

“Ahem. You can blame it all on the video lagging while I was playing my FPS.”

“You aren’t getting out of this by pouting your lips. Oh, honestly. It didn’t record that foreign drama because of this… What happened to that terrorist after he jumped from the dam!? There’s no way he’s dead!!”

“Shinobu, listing past regrets isn’t going to change anything. Think of it as the beauty next door asking you to hook up her digital recorder. It sounds like a lovely memory now, doesn’t it? Yes, and you spent all night with her.”

It was true that Zashiki Warashi didn’t often come begging me for help with her hands clasped together and tears in her upturned eyes. Just how addicted to entertainment was she? The real problem was that her description had made my heart skip a beat. If she found out, she’d have me doing her bidding for the rest of my life!

By the way, her room was filled with the sweet smell of incense. Once I finally got the internet connection working, the cable broadcast returned to the flat screen TV. When I saw the dry early morning news playing, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Disconnection education or trauma disconnection is the idea of optimizing the brain’s network of synapses using the fact that heavy mental stress will block some of the circuits in the brain. The experts have admitted this provides extraordinary improvements in calculation speed, but at the same time…”

It was just too dry. Given the time, it was too early for breakfast but too late to get some sleep. Even if I washed my face and set my hair, I’d still have some time leftover.

It was mid-October. After finishing with my face and hair and putting on my winter school uniform, I had a little extra time on my hands, so I decided to play with the Nekomata, a relatively sensible Youkai.

“Nekomata-san, Nekomata-san.”

“What is it now? Why are you bothering a lady as she tries to eat?”

She sounded a little annoyed, but that might have been because my Western cuisine loving mom was in charge of the cat food today. The can of tuna cat food cost a little more than the human food, but this Nekomata much preferred the “cat rice” my grandma made by putting miso soup on leftover rice.

Giving that cat rice to a normal cat would be deadly with all the salt and the green onion, but this was a Youkai. Things must have been different for her.

The Nekomata devoured the can of food despite her displeasure, so I sat in front of her and asked about something.

“It’s been two or three months since we met, hasn’t it?”

“Munch, munch. What about it?”

“Then I think it’s about time we brought our communication to the next level.”

“?”

“Let me touch your tai-…”

“I’ll kill you, brat.”

She didn’t even let me finish.

Don’t think I’m going to give up! I’ve got nothing else to do!! And I’m going a little nuts from the lack of sleep!! (←Yes, I was well aware that was the cause.)

“C’mon, c’mon. Just a little, okay? Let me touch your tail just a little. Do it with a normal cat and it would scratch your hand with a cross counter, but I can talk it out with you since you understand human language!!”

“If you know I won’t like it, then don’t force me to put up with it! You sure are impudent for an M!!”

“Oh, come one! You’ve got two tails and I’m only asking to touch one! Quit being so stingy!!”

“How stupid can one brat be!? Would you agree to have one of your balls crushed just because you have two of them!? And I called you an M, so how about you at least deny it!?”

As we argued, my spine tingled as an intense gaze reached it.

For one thing, the gaze came from somewhere unusual.

“Wh-what? The ceiling? Gh!?”

“…”

When I looked straight up, I saw a square hole removed from a corner of the ceiling like something from a ninja mansion and I saw two eyeballs peering down from it.

The succubus that lived in the attic was observing our exchange. With round goat horns, bat-like wings, an arrow-shaped tail, and her micro-bikini, she was (from a purely visual perspective) a wonderful housemate, but…

“Master, if you want to play with a tail, you can always use mine!!”

“Why do you sound so excited!?”

“Because I’ve been so bored living in the countryside!! There’s no stimulation from young men and women here!!”

The Western demon slipped down from the ceiling.

“Look, look. If you want to touch a tail, you can try mine out as much as you want. If you like, I can moan erotically every time you poke it which should leave an impressive bulge in your pants before you head off to school! In the world of imagination, of course!!”

“Oh, sorry. It doesn’t work if I know it’s an act.”

Besides, I already knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to love on that cat’s tail! I had to see if it was as soft and fluffy as I imagined it was!!

But the Succubus pouted her lips.

“Boo. You’re too cold, master. Maybe it would be more effective if I messed with you instead. I could use the arrow on my tail to thrust right on in from behind.”

“Wait! Wait!! You’re doing what to where!?”

I was already panicking, but that was when yet another deadly Youkai wandered in.

This yandere marriage hunting Youkai was the Yuki Onna.

“Nope! Back right on up!! I’m not letting you make this any more complicated! And you don’t even have a tail!!”

I prepared myself to flee at a moment’s notice, but the Yuki Onna was acting oddly.

Her face was as red as a boiled octopus, her kimono was practically falling off of her, and she was swaying back and forth.

Hm? Huh? Was her kimono always this baggy???

“Haphew… Trying to take a morning bath was a mistake… I-it was practically boiling after your grandfather took his bath…”

The freezing chill that usually hung around her had vanished.

What’s going on here? Did that hot bath weaken her? And she still looks soaking wet.

So that means…oh?

Are her deadly below-zero defenses not working right now?

And she’s still intent on marriage?

Huh?

So what would happen if I let her take control of the situation and we ended up on the floor together?

“…”

I, Master Gentleman Shinobu, cleared my throat and stood up from the tatami mats.

I put on my best gentlemanly look and spoke.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to lay out a futon over there to help nurse the overheated Yuki Onna back to health.”

“Getting her drunk and taking advantage of her? You really are the worst.”

“That is not what I’m doing!! Removing her violent side just barely brings her into the acceptable zone. …But wait. What is this? Is she melting or shrinking? Where did those small yet promising breasts go!? Now, I’m even less sure, but I bet this weakened state is only temporary. The second I do anything, she’ll probably make a full recovery and freeze me! So for today, I’m just going to keep an eye on her!! Damn, if only her chest was still there!!!!!”

“Oh, c’moooon, master!! If you’d only told me, I could have let you use all sorts of cheats to get any girl to fall in love with you. How about it? To get you started, I’ll let you try one out at the low, low price of only one year from your lifespan!”

“I said I’m not doing anything today!! And I’m not interested in that right now anyway! Now, Nekomata, just let me touch your fluffy tail!!”

“Don’t turn that Succubus’s attention my way. Stick with the Yuki Onna.”

“Is it just me or are you leading me in that direction even as you look down on me for doing it?”

“And now your muscular dad is standing right behind you. So how do you plan to explain your way out of this one?”

Eh? No, wait!!

“You’ve got it all wrong!! Eh? Wh-why are you clenching that gigantic fist as hard as rock!? They were the ones leading me astray! I was only trying to nurse her back to health, so it would be wrong to only hit me!!”

Part 2 (Jinnai Shinobu)

After the great panic that morning, it was time to leave for school.

“Oh…ohhh…ohhhhh…”

I groaned and rubbed the top of my head as I plodded along the usual path to school. After my dad’s fist dropped, the Youkai and demon fled like they were hit by the shockwave of a meteor strike. The Zashiki Warashi hadn’t even been in the same room, but she still spent a while hiding under the tea table (without realizing her butt was sticking out). Honestly, there were too many questions about the way that man scared Youkai.

Hmm.

This winter uniform’s collar is too stiff!! I know I’m probably just not used to it after not wearing it for so long, but it’s still bothering me!!

And then…

“Today’s lunch is sukiyaki! What an age we live in.”

“First years, don’t leave the sidewalk.”

“PE’s so boring now that swimming lessons are over.”

What’s this? What’s this?

It felt like there were a lot more little kids than usual.

When I gave the backpack-wearing group a puzzled look, a sporty classmate of mine named Tarou spoke up after joining me from another farm road.

“You hadn’t heard, Jinnai? A bunch of city kids were invited to the elementary school. It’s an entire year of kids from some city school. They’re calling it a cultural exchange and it’s making things pretty cramped for those of us in the lodging group. I want permanent residence in this village so bad. I don’t want to be a servant to some brats.”

“Yeah… Who knows how much it would cost to stay in an Intellectual Village inn.”

“Your place doesn’t accept guests, so I’m pretty jealous. Of course, that wouldn’t leave anywhere for me. Some places take in about twenty people in one house. That really makes you feel like a maid. I don’t know if it has to do with the genius kid boom they’ve been talking about, but those city kids see right through anything you try to get by them. They’re so not cute.”

It was easy to tell which ones lived here and which ones were from the city. One group looked shocked whenever a Youkai showed up and the other group ignored them completely.

“There’s a 30% chance of rain today. I must protect my master from a sudden downpour!”

“The sun sets quickly once autumn begins, so it couldn’t hurt to have a lantern!!”

An Umbrella Obake and a Lantern Obake with a single eye and a large tongue sticking out were carefully guarding a boy of about ten from either side.

Let’s see… That boy in the blue sweater and beige pants is Yonesaki Hiro, right? Didn’t I meet him during that stuff with the Shichinin Misaki?

“Jinnai, is there any kind of Youkai you want?”

“With them, I really don’t think it’s about what you want.”

After all, you suddenly find them living with you! That might have had something to do with how my Youkai-loving mom kept taking them in, though!!

“Eh? But wouldn’t you love to be like Taira no Masakado or Takiyasha-hime? Don’t you dream of being completely untouchable as the ultimate Youkai tamer?”

“I think they dealt more with vengeful spirits than Youkai. And no thank you. That always ends with having your physical body taken over.”

“But our school has a bomb shelter dungeon. You’d have to be crazy if that doesn’t get your imagination going!”

“That’s just part of the disaster infrastructure in case a typhoon or landslide isolates the village. After all, an Intellectual Village is so reliant on online shopping that we’d starve with the roads cut off. All you’ll find in that shelter are sleeping bags and canned biscuits.”

“If you go to the very bottom, there’s gotta be a half-naked spring spirit girl with wet, see-through clothes!!”

We continued our discussion all the way to our high school.

The classroom was filled with activity before homeroom because first period was PE. My school had a general understanding that the boys changed in the classroom while the girls changed in the locker room. I couldn’t have been the only one who shed tears of blood that it wasn’t the opposite, allowing me to “accidentally” open the door to that world of pink.

“Have you heard, Shinobu-kun? We’re running a marathon for PE today. Can you believe that? And after I was up until four in the morning trading and drinking health drinks.”

“Madoka, you really need to get some common sense. They split up the boys and girls for PE, so… Whoa!? Our summer wasn’t over after all!!”

“Thank you for the reaction I expected. Can I hit you now?”

My classmate, the eccentric beauty named Madoka-chan, was squirming and rubbing her thighs together, but that was obviously because of the red bloomers she had changed into for PE. And while her hair was short, it was cutely tied on either side.

“Honestly, I thought we were finally free of this now that autumn is here, but they said track suits aren’t allowed for the marathon! We have to run outside the school grounds dressed like this. Can you believe that!? I know Intellectual Villages create a high-quality agricultural brand name by intentionally reproducing the original scenery of Japan, but they didn’t have to bring this back with it! It feels like using your computer’s recovery point and bringing back a virus you thought you’d already dealt with!!”

Angry Madoka was speaking faster and a lot more than usual.

Hm, I see. Since she’s so isolated with no connections to our other classmates, I bet I could improve her bit by bit a lot like with shock therapy. Grin, grin.

“Sigh. Never mind. Shinobu-kun, you don’t hold back when you have a chance to look, do you?”

“By the way, we’ve known each other since April, so that’s over half a year. Isn’t it about time we ended up back to back in a hot spring after we unexpectedly find out it’s a mixed bath?”

“Keep up the perverted jokes and I’ll have my armed guards snipe you.”

“Oh, no fair! You’ve got two breasts, so can’t I grope just one of them!?”

“Shinobu-kun, that makes no sense. You have two eyes, but does that mean you don’t mind if I jab my finger into one?”

“If I can give up an eye for near-permanent access to one of these breasts, you can call me Mr. Eyepatch!!”

Madoka’s expression immediately grew flat as she gave up on thinking.

She then snapped her fingers.

“Heyyy, Whatever-Your-Name-Is Nagisaaa.”

“You!! You’ll call in Nagisa when you don’t want to deal with something now!? Couldn’t you find a less horrifying way to get smarter!?”

It may have been good for Madoka to have some interactions with some other classmates, but that didn’t make it any less frightening. If Nagisa’s yandere thought processes infected Madoka, the power of money would turn her into an even greater monster!

At any rate, it was time for an appearance from Japan’s #1 girl when it came to carrying a chainsaw in the pale bluish light of the full moon.

“What is it, Shinobu-chan? Are you recruiting the people you need for a love spell? Eh heh heh…”

“No! I have no plans for any insane ceremonies involving muttering magic words while cutting your wrist to pour blood into a handmade box lunch!! Bye!!”

I raised a hand and made a full speed dash from the girls in bloomers.

Nooo!! The guys are supposed to change in the classroom, but that’s a lost cause now. I have to stay away from this area for a bit, so I might be stuck changing in the bathroom!!

As I shed tears and a youthful sweat, I ran down the hallway and collided with my nervous homeroom teacher who suddenly appeared from the stairway.

“Wakyaaah!?”

“Bfh!? Y-you’re kidding me? Why do you have toast in your mouth at school!?”

“I know we fell into a heap here, but if that hand keeps creeping silently toward my chest, I’ll scream!!”

Tch. She noticed.

And come to think of it, how does that cliché even happen!? If I really grabbed her breast with my full weight on her, I think I’d either sprain my wrist or break her ribs!!

“No, wait. If I fall down normally from the initial hit, roll on the floor to change position, and reach out my hand, I can ignore my weight and the potential energy. That means it might be possible to get a nice feel in without worrying about the risks of the fall. But I can’t pull that off right away. It’ll take some commitment. Maybe I’ll start by getting the judo team to help me practice my falling technique. Mutter, mutter…”

“Um, Jinnai-kun?”

I suddenly noticed my homeroom teacher with teary eyes beyond her glasses as she sat on the floor closely guarding her chest with both hands.

Oh, dear. Did I frighten you, young lady?

“Heh. Not to worry, teacher. Not even I would treat a virgin roughly. I know how to contain myself, so please relax.”

“Wha-!?”

“I mean, that necklace came as an extra in the fashion magazine Autofocus, didn’t it? It costs less than two hundred yen! And isn’t that magazine’s primary demographic middle school girls? If you’re still seriously consulting that at your age, it makes some things pretty clear.”

“Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-!?”

My homeroom teacher’s entire face grew beet red and she began waving her hands around for some reason.

There was no sign left of her previous fear.

Hah hahhh. This is what happens when Jinnai Shinobu, shock therapy master, is on the case!!

“Mutter, mutter. It’s true Ram-chan wrote that it’s an all-purpose piece that anyone from children to adults could-… N-no, you’ve got it all wrong!! The thing is…um…It’s certainly not true that I have no experience whatsoever at my age!!”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s a beautiful thing. It’s perfectly fine. In a way, it’s a rare find.”

“You’re attacking me with that ‘in a way’, aren’t you!? You added a silent laugh in your heart, didn’t you!? I’ll have you know that I spent my college days in the big city of Tokyo! Every day and every night was spent in melted in someone’s arms like ice cream on a sunny day!!”

“Do go on.”

“And it goes way beyond just lovers! It was…um, is it called friends with benefits? I still have some of the addresses from back then. Yes, yes. And it involved all sorts of things that I could never tell a high schooler like you about. You’d be left amazed that those things could be used like that! O-oh, it’s such a shame. I can’t think of a good way to explain to you just how obscene and splendid my weekends are. Ah ha ha ha ha.”

“Do, do go on.”

She meaninglessly thrust her chest out proudly and waved her hand as a fan to combat the sweat pouring down her entire body.

But was she aware of the new threat approaching from directly behind her?

“Ahem! …Tanioka-sensei, care to explain just what you were talking about there?”

“Eh? Ah? Eeeek!? P-principal!?”

“I prefer not to invade on others’ privacy, but I believe I just heard something unbecoming of the holy profession of an educator and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.”

“A-ahhh!! That’s not it at all, principal! Kh, but if I deny it all here, Jinnai-kun will think-… Waaah! How am I supposed to explain this!?”

“No need to worry. You can explain everything in the soundproofed student guidance room. …Of course, this is the first time in my long time as a teacher that I’ve heard of a teacher needing to be scolded in there.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!? J-Jinnai-kun, see you later!!”

I waved a hand as my nervous homeroom teacher was dragged away by the back of her neck with tears in her eyes.

With an entirely serious expression, I pulled out my cellphone.

“Good, it can record audio. Good, it can record video.”

After checking its functions one by one, I too made my way toward the student guidance room.

Now, then. It’s time for some sleazy desire! If she’s being questioned over what she said, she’s definitely going to be asked if she’s a virgin or if she slept around like crazy. We can’t have that! I simply can’t allow that kind of sexual harassment to happen behind closed doors in the constitutional state of Japan! In the name of having audiovisual records of the outrage, I, Jinnai Shinobu, must do my part to ensure the smooth execution of fair and impartial justice. More specifically, I want to see her face when he asks her and makes her squirm!!!!!

In the end, I got a little too carried away and the principal found me almost immediately.

I ended up sitting in the student guidance room right alongside my homeroom teacher.

Part 3 (Yonesaki Hiro)

Today’s walk to school was a little more exhausting than usual.

The kids from the city for the cultural exchange kept asking questions and my throat was sore just from answering them all. I had the umbrella and lantern helping me, so the other kids must have had it even worse.

“There’s a 30% chance of rain today. I must protect my master from a sudden downpour!”

“The sun sets quickly once autumn begins, so it couldn’t hurt to have a lantern!!”

The kids from the city were extremely interested in the umbrella and lantern that kept pestering me. They grabbed at and tugged on the two Obake.

To me, those kids were the strange ones.

For one thing, the color of their backpacks wasn’t normal. Instead of red or black, they all had different colors like sky blue or emerald green. They said some of them could swap out the cover for another color based on their mood that day.

Their clothes were the same. To describe what each one of them was wearing would require using four or five brand names you heard about on TV.

“Have you seen Corundum’s new color? I don’t think I could put that on my nails.”

“Also, Kanade-chan really is going to use her spring boots during fall too.”

“That drinkable perfume apparently doesn’t work. Mi-chan from Class 2 collapsed from it.”

Listening to their conversations made me feel a little embarrassed. I chose my own clothes too, but only from the online stores my mom said I was allowed to use. It made me feel immature.

The local kids and I had to explain everything to the mature-looking city kids. It all felt unbalanced, so I had trouble relaxing.

I was already feeling isolated and it didn’t help that the girl walking next to me was especially mature-looking even among the city kids. She felt like the center of both her class and her entire year.

“An Intellectual Village has lots of Youkai, right?”

Her name was apparently Ranzono Sachi-chan.

Her long, chestnut hair had fluffy curls with enough volume to make her already small face look even smaller. On the side of her head, she had a…what do you call those? It was a white rose accessory. Her slender, doll-like body was covered by a white turtleneck sweater, a reddish jacket with the front open, a black miniskirt, skintight jeans, and chocolate-colored boots. She also had a leather belt loosely wrapped around her waist. According to the others, all of her clothes were from a fashion magazine that middle schoolers read.

And that wasn’t surprising.

“Heh heh. A nostalgic coloration wouldn’t be bad. Wearing an actual kimono would be out of the question, but combining the amber brown of wood with red Japanese paper could make for a decent coloration.”

“Will you make it in time for the next issue?”

“Probably not, but I can do what I want for the issue after that. Heh heh. I’m a model and a writer, so I can absorb plenty here and bring it to everyone else.”

That was the gist of it.

On the day Ranzono-san and the others arrived, my classmates had already gotten their hands on enough information to have gathered the fashion magazine Autofocus that middle schoolers read. Middle schoolers seemed out of our reach and even they looked up to Ranzono-san, so knowing the person pictured in the magazine would be standing with us and breathing the same air as us had filled the class with excitement.

Ranzono-san herself was very aloof and did not seem nervous when everyone focused on her. As she peered inside the lantern from above and opened and closed the umbrella, we arrived at the wooden elementary school.

She commented on the schoolyard.

“I see you can play soccer outside in rural schools.”

I had always had trouble speaking with girls, so I had no idea what to say to a celebrity who seemed to be from a different world.

I managed to work out a safe answer.

“Are schools in the city different?”

“We don’t have a schoolyard. We only have the area inside the fence on the rooftop.”

I didn’t see any real sparkle in her eyes when she said that, so she might not have been all that interested in sports.

The PE outfits the city kids had were so much cooler than ours. They had called them…um…spats, was it? They were streamlined and cool like the swimsuits designed to make you swim fast or an F1 racer. They were so much better than our rectangular shorts.

But I wasn’t sure what to do when Ranzono-san didn’t say anything.

I just wasn’t any good at speaking with girls. I only went with the safe and harmless things that everyone had asked and everyone already knew the answer to.

“How do you become a model for a magazine?”

“Heh heh. I’m a model and a writer. They contact you. Anyone’s fine as long as they’re active online. It’s entirely based on merit, so they treat me just like an adult and I design the layout for a magazine middle schoolers read.”

“Middle schoolers, huh?”

That seemed like such a distant world. It felt as far off as the moon. I knew people had gone there, but I couldn’t picture myself standing there.

In other words, Ranzono-san was standing on the moon like that.

We could all tell she was hopelessly out of reach for rural kids like us and it made perfect sense that she was the leader of the city kids. We were all obsessed with talking about “the moon”.

“Hey, is it true Intellectual Villages are full of rare Youkai?”

“There are plenty like the umbrella and lantern, if that’s what you mean.”

“Hmm. I was thinking of something bigger. Like an Oomukade or Tsuchigumo.”

“I wouldn’t know about that… I do know an older boy who knows a whole lot about Youkai, though.”

“I see.”

“But you know a lot for a city kid.”

“Heh heh. I did a lot of studying.”

The chirping of a small bird interrupted us. I looked over but didn’t see an actual bird.

“That’s an Okuri-Suzume,” said Ranzono-san with a smile.

“?”

“An O-Ku-Ri-Su-Zu-Me. Heh heh. It’s a small bird Youkai that no can see. Its voice is supposed to inform people of coming danger.”

She was so smart. She could study, she could do sports, she knew lots about fashion, she played the piano during music class, and she seemed good at cooking during home ec. It felt like there was nothing I could do better than her. I had thought Youkai knowledge would be the one thing, so it was embarrassing having her explain one of them to me when I actually lived in an Intellectual Village.

Our conversation ended there.

I worried that I should say something and that staying silent would be bad, but I couldn’t find anything to say.

We simply walked toward the school entrance in silence.

As time went on, I realized something.

This doesn’t feel all that bad.

It was just like the umbrella and lantern that were always with me. There was no reason to keep playing catch with our conversation like shoveling coal into a steam engine. Simply giving ourselves over to the flow of time while walking side by side was plenty relaxing. It felt somehow meaningful.

“Hm? Did you say something?”

“No, nothing.”

It felt like I could get along with her after all.

I certainly hoped I would be able to.

Part 4 (3rd person)

The Umbrella Obake was sticking upside-down into the umbrella stand to one side of the elementary school’s entranceway. His large tongue was sticking out and hanging down due to the pull of gravity.

“…”

“U-Umbrella!! This trial is necessary to protect Hiro-sama! So stick with it for another five hours!!”

“Heh. A lantern like you could never understand the grudge of an umbrella left behind like this! Ahh, ahh. I know all too well how a cheap plastic umbrella must feel!!”

The Tsukumogami seemed worked up, but they were really just bored. They were worried about Yonesaki Hiro of the family that owned them, but there was nothing they could do during school. If they tried, the teacher would throw them out. That of course meant they needed to supply themselves with a way to pass the time until school let out.

Today, the lantern carried a teen fashion magazine named Autofocus in her mouth.

“Now, let’s see here. The bonus magazine gives twenty ways to ensure your love comes true.”

“What can a lantern like you learn from a magazine for humans?”

“I am a lady, you know!? I worry about looking after my skin!!”

“And I’m asking how that magazine will help a lantern!”

As they argued, the umbrella moved his single upside-down eye to stare at the magazine’s pages with the lantern. He was a man(?) at heart, so he doubted it would interest him much. Still, he needed some way to pass the time.

But…

“What are all these stripes? I thought a fashion magazine would be filled with models posing in colorful clothing.”

“These are called barcodes or matrix codes. They’re also called AR markers. Basically, you can hold up a cellphone or smartphone to see images or videos of the models.”

The umbrella looked to the magazine that had codes filling the boxes that would normally hold pictures.

“How strange. Then why not look at it all on the internet in the first place?”

“They apparently did that at first. It was only after setting up a successful online business that they decided to enter the paper magazine industry.”

The lantern only knew so much because the children had been talking about little else. Model and writer Ranzono Sachi gathered enough attention to drive out all other conversation. Hanako-san and the statue of Ninomiya Kinjirou had to be crying.

“They scout people without asking about age, qualifications, education, or work history. You can be a scathing critic on a blog, a frequent user of ratings sites, a popular commenter on an SNS, or a creator on a video sharing site. You only need some accomplishments online. Human jobs certainly have changed a lot.”

The internal staff may have been the only exception because the magazine filled with black and white codes included a few actual pictures of posing models.

Although based on their sensibilities, the AR and video codes may have been the main draw while the normal pictures were only meant to fill space.

The model wearing winter boots a little early was Ranzono Sachi.

“They’re pushing her as their top model, but she’s also part of their internal staff. She’s probably easy to use when they need to fill some holes in the magazine.”

“Kids sure have it tough. There are plenty of things they can’t do once they grow up, so I feel like they should make the most of being a kid while they can.”

“Yes, Umbrella, but you mustn’t say that in front of Hiro-sama. At their age, nothing irritates them more than being lumped together with everyone else by saying what they should or shouldn’t do.”

“Hmm.”

“Also, they’re only using the right person for the job. Unlike us, humans only have a short time to live. They don’t have time to have an outsider blocking their freedom and holding them pointlessly in place.”

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

Part 5 (Jinnai Shinobu)

The principal got even more heated up than expected in the student guidance room, so – to make a long story short – coffee sprayed from his mouth like a poisonous fog and it poured all over my nervous homeroom teacher.

However, she had no real change of clothes with her, so she had been forced to borrow the “last resort” from the infirmary.

In other words, she had a dead look in her eyes as she stood at the front of the class in a PE outfit.

She wore fiercely red bloomers.

“Um, so when it says ‘spit’ here, it refers to a folk belief at the time. The story of Tawara no Touta slaying the Oomukade with an arrow he had spit on ended up spreading far enough for people to falsely believe that all Youkai had a weakness to saliva…”

She continued her lesson in monotone while looking just like a robot printing a long trail of paper from its mouth.

Hmm, my heart is throbbing from guilt.

Still, it was the principal who made the finishing blow and, more importantly, this is some nice eye candy! I never knew how nice my teacher looked from behind as she wrote her boring notes up on the blackboard!! Yahoo! And while Madoka-san and the others are wearing short sleeve shirts with their bloomers, adding on the track suit jacket is pretty nice, too!! But only the jacket!! (←Important emphasis)

But then something interfered.

I heard a chirping small bird fly in through the open window.

“Hm, what? Did something come in!?”

“Is it a sparrow?”

“I don’t see anything? Did it get behind something?”

The class grew noisy, but then I saw a small bird’s footprints on the paper of my open notebook.

It was the same bizarre scene as an invisible man stepping in some mud.

“An invisible bird Youkai? Is this an Okuri-Suzume or something?”

“Oh, honestly!! Jinnai-kun, can you please give it a rest!? If you have some business with a Youkai, take it out in the hall!! Out!!”

“Eh? I don’t have any control over it!!”

I had no idea what was going on, but the invisible Okuri-Suzume was chirping something in its high-pitched voice.

No, now it was clearly speaking in human language.

“Trouble, trouble! Hiro-chan is in trouble!”

“Who the heck is Hiro-…”

“(Wham!!)”

“Ow!? You idiot, don’t peck at the back of my head! My scalp! My scalp!!”

“Hiro-chan is Hiro-chan. Yonesaki Hiro-chan!!”

Hm?

Yonesaki Hiro?

“Hiro-chan is in trouble. Boy, the time has come to stand up!!”

“Why do I have to-…”

“The Okuri-Suzume is a Youkai that warns of coming danger, but we originally could only warn that the Okuri-Ookami was coming. I tried to change that, but I keep having to work in symbols of the Okuri-Ookami. I tried to warn Hiro-chan directly, but it didn’t get through to him.”

“Again, why me?”

“All of the Youkai around her say Jinnai Shinobu is an Okuri-Ookami!! So I tried speaking to the Okuri-Ookami. And just as I thought, humans can understand me when I’m near you!!”

“Bfh!? Please try not to destroy my social life with some bizarre misunderstanding!!1 L-let’s discuss this further in the hallway, Okuri-Suzume!!”

“Hiro-chan is in trouble!”

To drive off the Okuri-Suzume that did not care at all about the circumstances of human society, I stepped out into the hall.

Which Youkai has been spreading half-truths about me!? I’d bet anything it was that Good-for-Nothing Youkai!!

But for now…

“What exactly is this about? Why is Yonesaki Hiro in trouble?”

“Save Hiro-chan! Before that deadly Youkai eats him!!”

“If an Okuri-Suzume is going nuts, has an Okuri-Ookami shown up?”

While the term Okuri-Ookami was often used in reference to a certain type of human, it was originally a type of Youkai.

It was a wolf that appeared on dark roads at night and followed travelers around. That alone would cause no harm, but if the traveler tripped, it would attack and eat them.

But…

“No, this is a different Youkai.”

This thing was invisible, so I had no way of knowing how it was acting.

Regardless, I heard it continuing to speak.

“It’s an Oomukade. An Oomukade is after Hiro-chan, so he’s in trouble!”

Part 6 (Yonesaki Hiro)

Classes for the day were over.

After cleaning the classroom and lining up the desks, the end of my right pinky finger itched a little. It didn’t look like anything had happened to it, but something might have irritated it.

Meanwhile, Ranzono-san was looking in her hand mirror in a corner of the classroom. She was staring at it with a serious look on her face, patting a hand across her face, and stretching her cheek with her fingers.

“What are you doing? Everyone’s already gone.”

“Oh, nothing.”

I called out to her and she quickly put the mirror in her backpack. She might not have wanted anyone to see her maintaining her looks.

The city kids and the local kids had all gone wherever they wanted to play, so it was only Ranzono-san and me. We naturally ended up leaving the school and walking home together.

Huh?

Am I forgetting something?

I clenched my hands trying to fill the blank in my mind, but it wasn’t working.

At the same time, Ranzono-san spoke to me.

“Would we be able to see a ton of Youkai if we went to the mountain?”

“The rice has already been harvested, but you should be able to see a Kappa if you go to the fields.”

“Is that so?”

I had said the fields, but she looked to the paddies for some reason. Some adults were gathered in the distance, but I couldn’t tell what they were doing from this distance.

“The Yamawaro – those are Kappa that have come up onto land – help with the work in the mountains. They mostly help the lumberjacks, but they apparently also help in the paddies and fields nearer the mountains. I’ve heard they’re something like migrant workers.”

Youkai, Youkai. …Hmm, it’s on the tip of my tongue.

I still couldn’t remember whatever it was, so I gave up. That was when my cellphone gave high-pitched ring. This was different from the usual ringtone. Even someone as high-tech as Ranzono-san didn’t seem to know what this was because her eyes opened wide.

We both peered down at the screen.

“It looks like a local message, but it doesn’t usually make this loud a sound.”

“Heh heh. There are emergency alerts, aren’t there? So what is it? Did someone spot a deadly Youkai?”

When an unfamiliar deadly Youkai appeared on the way to or from school, the school would tell us to be careful, so this kind of alert had to be an absolute last resort.

I checked more closely and read the message.

“Warning!! An Oomukade has been spotted. This Youkai is not from Noukotsu Village, so caution is needed. Be very careful if you run across it. One: do not approach it. Two: if you run away, it will chase after you. Stay put and see what it is doing. In the off chance that it approaches even further, a weapon with spit on it is said to be effective.”

I tilted my head.

“An Oomukade? What kind of Youkai is that? Is it just a big centipede?”

“…”

“It’d be pretty scary if it’s poisonous. It might be best not to get near the mountain.”

“No,” said Ranzono-san.

She pouted her lips in a somehow childish way that was the complete opposite of how she had acted before.

“The Oomukade isn’t a bad Youkai. There’s a story about it eating a clan of dragon gods, but doesn’t that mean it never actually ate humans? The humans just chose to side with one type of Youkai and then decided to slay the Oomukade.”

“Hm?”

“Like I said…!!”

Ranzono-san seemed irritated, but something else was bothering me more.

I hesitated to bring it up, but finally did.

“Ranzono-san, do you have something on your face?”

I looked up at her from below.

When I did, I could tell it was only a grass seed stuck to her. It had probably been blown there by the wind.

That was all it was.

But a moment later, Ranzono-san pressed the back of her hand to her cheek as if trying to tear it away.

I was left speechless.

Meanwhile, she frantically pulled her hand mirror from her backpack and checked her face. She had done the same thing while we cleaned up afterschool. She touched all over her face and even pinched and pulled at her skin.

“Here’s fine. No problem here either. Where? Where is it? Where is it out of balance? I thought I was fine after getting through PE without issue…”

She was muttering something under her breath, she was breathing heavily, and her eyes were rolling around in her head.

What was going on?

She may have misunderstood what I meant, so I tried speaking to her again.

“You have a grass seed near your bangs. Want me to get it for you?”

“Eh? Ah!?”

A blank look came over her as the previous horrified one vanished entirely.

She didn’t seem to know what to do with the mirror in her hands, so she fidgeted her fingers, grabbing and letting go of the device.

For some reason, her maturity had completely vanished.

“Where? Where is it???”

“Here.”

I ended up grabbing it for her.

Touching her nice-smelling chestnut hair made my heart race a bit.

“You couldn’t see it in the mirror?”

“Well…”

What had she been checking, anyway? What had she been so focused on that she had completely overlooked that obvious grass seed?

It seemed strange, but I didn’t have time to ask.

We had reached a fork in the farm road and she took the branch that didn’t lead to my house.

“I-I’ll be going now. See you tomorrow, Yonesaki-kun.”

“Sure.”

She nearly ran into a blonde-hired high school boy walking down that path, so she gave a quick shriek and jogged off toward the house she was staying in.

The high school boy looked back with a puzzled look and muttered something.

“What was that? Was it what they call a Twelve?”

Part 7 (Jinnai Shinobu)

I thought about the girl who had rushed off a moment ago.

She had worn a miniskirt, jeans, a turtleneck sweater, a jacket, and a white rose corsage on the side of her head.

She was probably one of the city elementary school kids here for the cultural exchange Tarou had mentioned.

I’m impressed she can do that.

I’d never be able to live with such a constrained lifestyle.

I was half impressed and half shocked, but then the boy left all alone called out to me.

He was Yonesaki Hiro, the elementary school boy who had been involved in the Shichinin Misaki incident.

“What are you doing here?”

“Nothing, really. …By the way, where are the umbrella and lamp that are always with you?”

“Ah!?”

He frantically turned back the way he had come, so he really must have simply forgotten.

As soon as I started feeling sorry for those one-eyed Youkai, they came rushing up the farm road at tremendous speed, as if my feelings had summoned them.

The Umbrella Obake and the Lamp Obake’s comical eyeballs locked onto me instead of Yonesaki Hiro.

“Stranger danger!!”

“Time for punishment!!”

Dfah!?

D-did those things really just tackle me at full speed!? The lamp’s one thing, but that closed umbrella jabbing into my solar plexus seems like it could be pretty dangerous!

They turned toward their master while ignoring me as I held my gut and groaned.

“Are you okay, master?”

“Honestly. Going home on your own is far too dangerous after an Oomukade alert was sent out.”

Yonesaki Hiro tilted his head as if he did not understand what they were talking about.

He then opened his mouth and asked a question.

“What’s an Oomukade?”

He seemed to be asking me more than the umbrella or lamp.

Don’t tell me he thinks I’m a Youkai Buster who can handle any kind of Youkai after I dealt with that Shichinin Misaki incident.

At any rate…

“It’s a giant centipede Youkai. Their size can vary a lot, but the bigger ones are apparently long enough to wrap around a mountain seven and a half times. You don’t often hear it, but they supposedly get their power through weird rituals like waiting for one hundred years or climbing a waterfall.”

“What does it do?”

“I don’t know. It depends on the time and the situation. Some say they can deflect any attack, some say they’re wrapped in lightning, some say they cause storms, some say their one hundred legs glow like torches, and some say the poison in their bodies can be used in rituals. The most famous one is the one that appeared around Lake Biwa and ate the dragon god clan. That one was then slain by a warrior. If they can eat dragon gods, I assume they can eat humans too. The dragon gods supposedly walked on two legs and looked like beautiful men and women.”

“Hmm.”

Yonesaki Hiro only gave a vague response and fell silent.

As a high schooler, I may not be one to talk, but kids these days are a pain to deal with.

The umbrella and lamp caused an uproar of their own in his place.

“We saw some damage from the Oomukade on the way here! The support for a roadside solar power generator was broken. If it had hit someone, there would be nothing they could do!”

“And in the paddies, the wall of a pump shed was broken. They say small fires and crimes against small animals are the harbinger of a major crime, so this is kind of scary. Tremble, tremble.”

Hm?

They saw signs of it too?

“I came from that way and I saw a few things like a tree fallen by the candy shop or a broken fence at a house.”

“See! It really is a deadly Youkai! And one dangerous enough to eat other Youkai!!”

“Yeah, but isn’t this a bit strange?”

The umbrella, the lamp, and Yonesaki Hiro all turned toward me.

Hm, that caught his attention more than I thought. I just don’t get what makes kids tick.

“I mean, the fallen trees and broken walls are scattered across the village from one side to the other, right?”

“What about it? That just shows how far the Oomukade’s rampage has spread. No one else has that much strength.”

“I heard they found centipede bite marks. Doesn’t that settle it?”

“But,” I added. “How does an Oomukade gain its strength?”

“Isn’t that obvious? One hit from its giant body would bring down a house or even a castle, so…”

After complaining so much, the lantern trailed off.

Yes.

“The Oomukade is big. Even if this one isn’t big enough to wrap around a mountain, it has to be way bigger than a Zashiki Warashi or Yuki Onna. You’re saying that deadly Youkai travelled from one end of the village to another, spreading destruction on the way? Then someone would have seen it somewhere. But I haven’t heard anything about that.”

“The only thing anyone has found is destruction seemingly caused by an Oomukade,” muttered the lantern. “No one has seen the Youkai itself.”

Yonesaki Hiro then cut in.

“Then maybe this wasn’t done by an Oomukade.”

“No! On the way here, I heard the villagers talking. The bite marks and leg scratches on the broken support were definitely from a centipede. A human could never do that!!” The umbrella opened and closed as he spoke. “And the stories about an Oomukade’s size vary quite a lot. That vagueness means its size isn’t fixed. It’s possible it can change its size.”

“That’s right,” added the lantern. “If it can shrink itself, it could sneak around, destroy things, and hide itself again. This is very dangerous!”

“…”

They had a point. If it could change its size, my doubts were meaningless.

Still…

“But why would the Oomukade sneak around like that?”

“Eh? Because it doesn’t want to be noticed, right?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” I immediately responded. “Youkai can’t be accused of a crime even if they kill people. And since the Oomukade can eat other Youkai, it won’t be punished by other Youkai either. If it was causing trouble, it wouldn’t need to hide. It would show up without hiding and leave without hiding. So why didn’t it do that?”

“Ukh…”

“B-but some humans are even more frightening than Youkai!”

Oh, do you mean people like Hyakki Yakou?

“If it was afraid of people like that, why would it cause so much trouble in the first place?”

“Ah.”

“It would take the risk if it has a reason worth doing so, but is destroying wooden walls and solar power generators really that important? What does that accomplish? None of this is making sense.”

Of course, I had no obligation to side with a Youkai I’d never met.

But a few things were bothering me.

Was there really an Oomukade here? And if there was, was it involved in this destruction?

And whether it was the Oomukade or just someone making it look that way, what was it supposed to accomplish?

What would anyone gain from knocking down trees and destroying walls?

And most importantly, the Okuri-Suzume had said Yonesaki Hiro was in trouble. It had said an Oomukade was after him. That Youkai warned of danger, so that wouldn’t be a lie. In which case, what connection was there between Yonesaki Hiro and the Oomukade?

Was there an Oomukade here or not?

Was the Oomukade involved in this or not?

The current situation was a combination of those four possibilities, but with the Okuri-Suzume’s “prophecy”, I knew the answer would ultimately lead to an Oomukade harming Yonesaki Hiro. So how did this all fit together to reach that answer? Even if I had cheated and learned the final answer ahead of time, if I misread the situation leading up to it, it was still possible I could fail to stop it.

What a pain.

“?”

Yonesaki Hiro tilted his head and looked up at me.

To be honest, I had no real reason to get too involved with this kid, but since Youkai had no rights, their testimony could not be used in court, and they could not be charged with crimes, I couldn’t just call the police and leave this with them.

Which meant I had to figure out what was happening in the village whether it involved an Oomukade or not. And until I had enough information to get my mind working and figure out what would happen next, I had to run around gathering that information.

I was beginning to seriously hope people wouldn’t start calling me the Youkai Detective.

Part 8 (Yonesaki Hiro)

I went back home with the umbrella and lantern.

My home was a used goods store and would fix just about anything except for electronics. It could be a broken rice bowl, a paulownia dresser, a stained hanging scroll, a pocket watch, or anything else. That was why we had a lot of “object” Youkai like the umbrella and lantern.

The house itself was a Youkai called a Mayoiga.

“I’m hoooome.”

I called out as I opened the front door and a bunch of different furniture approached. There was a tea table, a different kind of lantern, a pot, and even a teapot. Just like in an American anime (Were they called cartoons?), they shook like gelatin and the tea table and chair’s legs easily bent to move them around.

“Hiro-chan!”

“Welcome home, Hiro-chan!!”

“For a snack, there’s a donut made from pancake batter! It has plenty of caramel sauce and chocolate sauce!!”

I removed my shoes and walked down the hall with the furniture following me around. Lots of eyes appeared and blinked on the sliding doors and I saw a translucent humanoid figure peering out from behind a folding screen, but none of them meant any harm.

I washed my hands in the bathroom, rubbed my eyes, and felt the itching in my fingertip growing. It felt like the pinky was having difficulty bending. I tried to remember where the bug bite medicine was.

It must have not been able to wait because a table approached from the kitchen carrying a donut on a plate. It couldn’t get through the door, so it got caught.

“Ahh, Hiro-chan, Hiro-chaaan!”

I dried my hands and approached the lamenting table.

As I had the table back up from the doorway it could never fit through, grabbed the donut, and took a bite, the plate spoke up.

“It seems we have a newcomer.”

“A newcomer?”

“It’s a Fuguruma Youbi. Your mother is looking over it in the workshop. It’s an antique, so it should be an amazing Youkai.”

Fuguruma? What kind of tool is that? I wondered with a tilt of the head.

I didn’t want to get in the way of my parents’ work, so I decided to watch some TV with the furniture. I used the remote to flip between the cable TV channels, but most of the news was about Tokyo and most of the dramas were set there. It seemed so far away.

“Medical Camp in Nakano, Tokyo, has gained some recent attention due to a capital injection from the major distance education company Ganesha, but the consumer living center seems worried about the rise in anonymous data related to Medical Camp’s unique disconnection education theory.”

Hmm.

TV was directed at housewives in the evening, so it wasn’t that interesting. Nothing stood out to me. I checked around and finally found a show for someone like me.

“Are even idols moving from TV to online videos? New music videos get over thirty million views in just twenty four hours and a fourteen-year-old’s tweets can affect stock prices! This middle school esper girl is all the rage right now! It’s PSI_ver_RAIN!!”

The buzzer indicating a visitor rang, so I placed my half eaten donut on the plate and headed to the front door. A girl of about my height stood there in a kimono.

However, she was definitely a Youkai.

Based on the aroma wafting from her, she was a Furutsubaki.

She had to be way, way older than my grandma.

“I’m here to pick up the item we left here.”

“?”

“Is the pocket watch left under the name Jinnai fixed yet?”

She was blunt and hard to understand, but I checked around and did find a pocket watch labelled “Jinnai”. I handed it and the memo from my grandpa to the Furutsubaki.

“Um, this says the mainspring was broken, so he replaced it. It won’t be worth as much as an antique, but it says to forgive him.”

“That’s fine. The Jinnai grandfather received it from his father as a coming of age present, so all that matters is that it runs.”

The Furutsubaki took the pocket watch that had a chain attached.

I assumed she didn’t need anything more, but she suddenly started sniffing.

And then she stepped toward me.

Th-that’s really close!! A girl’s face is only ten centimeters away!!

“You’re in love, aren’t you?”

“Eh? Weh!?”

“A Furutsubaki has the ability to seduce humans, so we can understand their feelings. But be careful. The scent sticking to your arm is a detestable one…no, a monstrous one.”

“…”

“But I am also jealous. The standard way for a Youkai to repay someone is to marry them, but I’m not sure what to do with mine since half the time he’s filled with lust and half the time he’s completely clueless.”

The Furutsubaki seemed to lose interest because she turned away. Without looking back, she left with the pocket watch in hand.

The name Jinnai reminded me of that older boy who seemed to be investigating something.

That reminded me of the uproar over the Oomukade.

I thought back to that comment about a detestable or monstrous scent, and worry filled my chest.

I felt like something was happening without my knowledge.

Once this day ended, the next day would arrive. And then I would be able to see my friends and acquaintances again. However, whatever this was felt like it would overturn that basic fact.

For a while, I thought blankly about what the Furutsubaki had said, but…

“Hiro-chan.”

“What is it, Hiro-chan?”

“It seems our master is in love with someone. (Worry, worry.)”

“Umbrella!! We must not interfere with an issue of succession. Keep this a secret from the head of the family!”

I quickly turned around and the furniture peering out from the cracked-open door scattered like baby spiders.