>

They may not have even realized they were forcing out the younger children who should have been there.

However, would elementary 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 elementary school children may have naturally left without being actively threatened by anyone.

From high school to middle school and from middle school to elementary 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 me a question.

“Is this my school?”

“Looks like it. You’ll be going here every day come 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 assumed someone 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 metal scraping together.

It seemed this high school boy had kicked the ball our way on purpose.

“We already told you the rules, remember!? 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 blame me 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 seemed to have mistaken him for an elementary school kid who had come to play.

A glance through the fence showed that there were no small children despite it being an elementary 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 equipment 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 regimen calculated out by a program.”

Shinobu tilted his head and looked up at me.

“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 comment 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 times 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 become a post-apocalyptic land where everyone had a mohawk, so sticking around was unlikely to be an enjoyable experience for him.

Today’s theme had been “learning the way to school”, so bringing that to an end and going home 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 same 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 comment 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 seemed to be lunchtime.

The day’s lunch was oyakodon.

Meals 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 someone talking on the phone.

The voice came 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 name 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 someone that well-known would never do something so dangerous.”

“You mean...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 crime, 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 method 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 someone you hated.

These cutting-edge crimes that involved the occult were often put off until later by the professional police. This was not something 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 seemed 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 time 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 some 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 me while curled up on the floor that was polished to an amber color.

I sighed, tossed the phone toward him, and gave him some relevant advice.

“Halfheartedly getting involved in Youkai-related crimes will only shorten your life. You can’t resolve this kind of thing, so if you have time to talk about this nonsense, try to find some trouble more your size. Maybe you could deal with those complete idiots who’ve taken over the schoolyard of the elementary school Shinobu will be attending soon.”

“Y-you do know assault is a crime, don’t you?”

I had done what I had to do and it wasn’t my job to decide whether he would listen to me or not.

There was no cure for stupidity or death. I began to leave the hallway, but another voice reached me from behind.

“Vwooooom.”

It was Shinobu. By the time 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 me jump away.

Not because it hurt, though!

I frantically turned around and Shinobu was confused by my extreme reaction.

“Hm? Yukari, what is it?”

“Shinobu, um, don’t do that. You aren’t supposed to bite people.”

That was something I should never have had to tell anyone, but he only tilted his head further.

“But mommy does it all the time. 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 me 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 someone 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 me as he rolled around, find his way underneath me, 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 time doing nothing.

However, my eyes opened again before I fully fell asleep.

Someone had snuck into the bedroom.

“Heh heh heh. They’re asleep. Fast asleep. Buuut, this makes me a little jealous as his mother.”

It was Shinobu’s mother.

For some 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 me 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 mean?”

“Children sometimes have complaints they find difficult to make to a parent, but they can reveal those to a stuffed animal. There are advantages to being something 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 meant to protect him.

“There’s something about Shinobu that worries me.”

“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 smelled of the dead to eat with something 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-Hime 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 Otohime – had meant 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 Otohime 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 same words, but humans and Youkai had definitively different values. In Urashima Tarou’s case that difference was in the view of time. 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 come 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 seemed I had fallen asleep at some 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 extreme 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 some 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 time and it was directed at the Youkai rather than Shinobu. They looked up as if they had come back to their senses.

“O-oh, no. I returned to my childhood for a moment there! We didn’t head into the mountains to do this!!” (<– Tengu)

“We’re here to get a sip of the mysterious sake of the Jinnai Brewery.” (<– Kappa)

“It’s made by humans, so I’m not expecting much. But I’ll try it out, so hurry up and bring some.” (<– Yamanba)

They showed no intention of apologizing for entering the house without permission. The Jinnai house seemed to act as an inn for travelling Youkai.

Shinobu was explaining his new discovery of folding down a corner of the rectangular paper and cutting away the excess to form a square, but he tilted his head when he heard what the Youkai said.

“Are you talking about work? I can go call for daddy and grampa.”

“Fwa ha ha ha ha. You probably shouldn’t. If they heard the master of Mount Kurama had rushed all the way here after hearing some rumors, they’d probably collapse in fear. It’s best for them not to know the details.”

That muscular man was the natural enemy of Youkai who would not hesitate to bring his fist down on anyone who strayed from the proper path, be they a Mikoshi-Nyuudou or a guardian of hell, but it was best for these Youkai not to know the details. They’d be the ones collapsing in fear then.

Shinobu then spoke up completely innocently.

“Do you want to see them work? Do you want to see how amazing they are?”

“If their sake really is good enough for Youkai to accept it, that would definitely be amazing.”

“How amazing?”

“Nobel Prize amazing.”

Ah, this generally arbitrary group just gave them an arbitrary title!

But Shinobu was completely focused on the sudden foreign term.

“Nobel... Y-you just need some sake, right!? I’ll show you how amazing they are! C’mon, Yukari! I think there’s some in there!!”

“Yes, yes.”

He pulled my hand and brought me right back to the kitchen.

Of course, I was not simply going along with what he wanted. My true reason was to stop him from getting into the first-class daiginjo.

The sake made by the Jinnai family was worth 50,000 yen a cup, so some people would not be happy if a child removed the stopper for a prank.

However, my fears proved unfounded when Shinobu did something unexpected.

He opened the refrigerator with his small hands, stuck his upper body inside, and pulled out a thick white liquid in a clear plastic bag.

“This is it, Yukari! This is the kind even I can have on New Year’s, so it has to be the best.”

“Well...I guess you can bring out the amazake. It isn’t a product at least.”

It was treated much like a leftovers meal made from scraps of meat and the centers of vegetables. Then again, everything from the ingredients to the preparation belonged to the Intellectual Village brand, so a cup would probably still leave you minus a 10,000 yen bill.

“How do you heat it up? The microwave?”

“You put it in a pot and use the stove.”

As Shinobu started getting worked up, I grabbed the nape of his neck to stop him.

Should a small child be distanced from the kitchen which was filled with fire, hot water, and knives? Or should they be familiarized with cooking at an early age to give them a good sense for the process? Both arguments could be made, but it was not my job to make that decision. If Shinobu’s family had chosen the former, I had to deal with the pot on the stove.

Not that I was all that good at cooking. No matter how many times I tried making rice balls, they never came out as a proper triangle. I could not let Shinobu see that.

Some of it burned onto the bottom of the pot a little, but I managed to heat up the amazake in about ten minutes. I had Shinobu carry a few cups and I brought the entire pot into the living room.

The Kappa, Yamanba, and Tengu looked a bit skeptical when they saw the thick white liquid in the transparent cups.

“Oh, I was expecting some mysterious sake, but it’s just some amazake for kids. If you think that’s going to get full marks from us, you- bvgrfaaaahhhh!?”

“What is it, Kappa!? Don’t tell me living in the water made your entire body overly sensitive to heat!”

“No, Tengu. Look at his face. He’s overcome by such euphoria that his pupils are opened wide. It looks like this sake might be known as the Youkai Crusher for a reason. I think I need to prepare myself and try it out for myse- bhyaaaaaaaaaah!?”

“Y-Yamanbaaaaa!!”

Youkai would not die from being stabbed or shot, so it was a mystery why they were so influenced by this amazake. And yet they would be able to eat an entire pufferfish or killer jellyfish without issue.

The Tengu assumed he alone would be fine no matter the disaster, so he chugged his cup of amazake and ended up collapsed on the living room floor.

“See, daddy and grampa are amazing, aren’t they?” said Shinobu.

“Mwa ha ha ha ha. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this good. I’ll turn you into Ushiwakamaru!”

“Eh? But Benkei’s way cooler. Then I could be big and muscly like daddy!”

You don’t need to be big and muscly.

Shinobu’s grandfather entered from the sake brewery behind the house in order to take a break, but he stopped walking when he saw the bodies lying around the living room.

He turned the troublesome question to me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m fully prepared to be thrown into the storage shed with Shinobu, but let me say one thing first. Shinobu seems to believe you’re artisans on a Nobel Prize level.”

“It’s hard not to get mad after seeing the commotion in here, but there’s something to be said for seeing humans and Youkai get along using something you made. That muscleman will probably still yell at you all like some kind of demon, but he might cry in secret afterwards.”

Part 6

Shinobu and I were severely lectured.

Fortunately, we weren’t locked in a room.

Then again, whenever Shinobu was locked in the storage shed, he would cry and wild Youkai would arrive to comfort him. Last time, some mascot-types that were either foxes or tanukis ended up filling the shed with him.

His parents had since developed a more effective method.

They only needed an illustrated encyclopedia of deep sea fish. Then they only needed to slowly turn the pages.

Giant oarfish.

“Nooo!?”

Footballfish.

“It’s all squishy! It’s alive, but it’s all squishy!!”

Snow crab.

“Oh, the crab’s kind of cool.”

Rattail.

“Gyaaah!!”

I was forced to sit still while he clung to my upper body and desperately tried to look away from the book.

As for why he had such a problem with deep sea fish...

“These are scary! That one looks like it’ll pop if you poke it! That one puffs up if you catch it and something comes from its mouth!!”

It was already evening.

After finally being released, I walked down the hallway that was filled with the orange sunlight. Shinobu was watching TV in the large Western living room. He was sitting with a giant fox and tanuki that had gotten in somehow. They were probably travelling Youkai who were spending the night.

I could hear voices from the TV.

“There’s fox udon and tanuki soba, but why isn’t there anything with badgers!? We’re seriously troubled by that question!”

“But badgers don’t sound very delicious! No one likes snakes!!”

“That’s adder! They barely sound the same!!”

“Then what’s a badger?”

“It’s in the same family as weasels and wolverines.”

“Wolverines! Now you’re scaring me!!”

“A badger isn’t that frightening! It’s more like a red panda or a raccoon!!”

“Oh, so it’s like a tanuki. Then why not just say tanuki?”

“Because it’s a badger! The fox, the tanuki, and the badger are the big three for transforming Youkai!!”

The stage on the screen had a single microphone stand with two people in suits standing on either side of it. In other words, it was a manzai act, but one of the two was clearly a Youkai. There were no laws or obligations restricting us, but the lack of human rights also meant we could not work. After all, we were not “human”. However, it seemed there was a loophole in taking a position much like a dog that was part of an act. I didn’t know the details of the situation, though.

I didn’t feel like interrupting, so I left for the time being.

However, I still had nothing to do, so I wanted someone to fill the time.

And there was one person I knew was the easiest to deal with.

“Haaayaaabuuusaaa!! Help me kill some time!!”

“No!! Why is this mass of selfishness here!?”

As expected, Jinnai Hayabusa, the brown-haired, accessory-covered delinquent boy, let out a girlishly shrill voice. He had been maintaining his maxi scooter in the garage he had made in the shed.

He had brought this unreasonable fate on himself by trying to look cool by drinking a Cassis Orange he had made. Then again, it wasn’t actually alcoholic. He had made an imitation by melting some cassis jam in hot water and mixing it with orange juice.

However, my enemy(?) was skilled.

To oppose my special skill “Forcing the Flow of Events”, he recovered from his panic on his own.

“Hey, god of pestilence. I’m sure you’re only here because Shinobu wouldn’t play with you, but as you can see, I’m busy.”

“Ahh, ahh. Mic test, mic test. Please respond, Jinnai Hayabusa-kun, the indecent boy who feels a slight throb of the heart when he hears the word ‘sister-in-law’. I repeat...”

“Bphhhh!!!?? Y-you idiot, stop making up things that could put irreversible cracks in our family!!”

“But it’s profane in a different way how you get so caught up over the word ‘sister-in-law’ and she has no interest whatsoever. Do you not care in the slightest what other people want?”

“Again, you’re completely wrong here!! You’re not going to claim these baseless accusations are part of your ‘innocent pranks’ as a Zashiki Warashi are you!?”

“Shinobu’s one thing, but you’ve got a troublesome trait as well. It’s not often you see someone who’s actually scared by a Hitotsume-Kozou or a Nopperabou. Of course they’re all gonna gather together to scare you.”

“Yeah, but I get attacked by the deadly ones too like a Kappa or a Makuragaeshi. Thanks to that, I could be killed at any moment.”

He seemed to think he was hated by Youkai, but in a way, it might have been the opposite. He was treated a lot like the monster in an RPG that gave a ridiculous amount of experience points.

“So what exactly are you going to do to kill time?”

“Well, I’ll roll you around and...”

“Don’t scare me! And I asked for specifics! I’m not some reaction comedian whose weapon is the boiling bath. If I tell you to stop, you seriously need to stop!!”

Tch.

This seemed to be another trait of a Zashiki Warashi. If the other person reached the point of actually crying, I naturally put on the brakes. My defaults were set so I would stop at the line of what qualified as “innocent”.

<-->>

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