Volume 4, 1: Zashiki Warashi Yukari / The Past is a Present that Once Was(3/5)
I reached into the chest of my kimono and pulled out a handheld game system advertised for its graphics.
“Shinobu said I was really bad at this hunting game. I don’t want him to hate me, so help me practice.”
“I’m pretty amazed just seeing a Youkai from an Edo-period drawing holding a handheld game system.”
The game involved humans with weapons destroying giant out-of-control machines and tearing out the junk parts. It was well known for the online video advertisement with the development team getting argumentative about the rating not mattering because there was no actual blood.
It seemed Hayabusa had one of the systems as well.
Despite being less than a meter apart, we did not look away from our own screens.
As I pressed the buttons, I spoke.
“Hayabusa.”
“What?”
“I’m super interested in the writing filling that white board and the countless arrows connecting it all together.”
“Mgh!? J-just ignore it.”
“You’re writing up all the information on a ‘case’ and connecting it all? Do you want to be a detective from a police drama or something?”
“I told you to ignore it!! If you keep tearing into my heart, I’m going to cancel this mission to get the wings off of Giga Gordon! I’ll hit the start button and select ‘give up’!!”
“If you do that, I hope you’re prepared for a storm at the dinner table tonight. Once I bring up the term ‘sister-in-law’, the gates of hell will open. That supposed Cassis Orange of yours comes from a recipe your sister-in-law invented to avoid drinking while pregnant, isn’t it?”
“You idiot!! How long are you going to keep that up!? And it’s all in your head!!”
“The truth isn’t what matters. What matters is who they’ll believe.”
“You’re as horrible as someone who makes false molestation accusations!!”
Incidentally, the white board had the following things written on it: “gain trust”, “a famous name”, “false information is not a crime”, “far too few victims”, “some other rule to narrow down the targets?”, etc.
Just that was not enough to see what it was Hayabusa (and his high school’s beautiful student council president) was pursuing.
Then again, it was an amateur investigation, so they may not have known either.
“You really like doing things you get nothing in return for, don’t you?”
“I’ll get something eventually! It’s just the drop rate for Giga Gordon’s wings is 2%. In the worst case, we’ll have to fight this same powerful enemy 50 times!!”
“I don’t think that’s how probability works. Also, I was talking about your investigation of organized crime using Packages.”
“I’m not getting involved because I want to.”
“Do you seriously think that?”
“My upperclassman keeps telling me these things I don’t want to hear about. And she knows I can’t pretend not to see it once I know about it.”
“Have you fallen in love with her?”
“D-don’t ask a teenage boy that so bluntly.”
“Is that so? Resolving these things isn’t going to remove the label of delinquent from you, so I’m not sure why you want to stand in harm’s way for the very people who gave you that label.”
“I don’t have a choice. The police apparently put off the crimes involving Youkai and I sometimes hear about people from my school being involved.”
He sounded annoyed, but by the situation rather than what I had said.
“And this time, the term ‘organ trafficking’ has come up. There’s no way I can overlook this one.”
Part 7
Once night fell, I left the makeshift garage and returned to the house. It seemed dinner was ready, but Shinobu was forming a one-man protest after charging into the kitchen.
“Grandma, make Salisbury steak too! You still have time!!”
“Sorry, Shinobu, but I have trouble with recipes written horizontally.”
“You can’t give up before you even try! I’ll help, so let’s try to make it!!”
He was clearly troubling his grandmother, so I snuck up behind him, slipped my hands beneath his arms, and lifted his small body up like a forklift.
I even made the sound effects.
“Whirrrrr! Kathunk, kathunk!!”
“Ah! Stop! What are you doing!?”
“Moving a certain little boy out of the way. Kathunk, kathunk!”
“Ahhhh!! But the ambitions of the Salisbury Steak Empire!!”
Sorry, Shinobu, but Salisbury steak doesn’t go well with nikujaga and salmon.
I carried him to the Western living room just in time for his mother to poke her head in.
“Dinner will take just a little longer, so can you give Shinobu a bath?”
“You heard her.”
“But I’m starving! I can’t focus on a bath without Salisbury steak!”
Despite his protests, he raced to his room once I set him down. He was most likely grabbing his bath set.
I made my way to the altar room to prepare the yukata I slept in.
As I did, Shinobu dashed toward me.
“Hurry, Yukari! The bath is waiting!!”
“I see you’re as heavily equipped as ever.”
His wash basin had a rubber ducky, a submarine, and a wire ring meant for making bubbles. He also held goggles and had a float around his stomach.
He clearly had a fundamentally flawed idea of what a bath was for.
“What are you talking about? It wouldn’t be as fun without a bunch of toys!”
“Fine, fine. ...Now, then. I’m missing my spare obi. I’ll keep searching, so you go on to the changing room.”
“Make sure you hurry!”
His footsteps rang out as he left the altar room at full speed.
I soon found an obi in a color that matched my yukata and continued after him. However, he was nowhere to be found in the changing room.
I received the following eyewitness testimony from his mother.
“Shinobu? He went to the bath with my father-in-law earlier.”
“Shinobu.”
Shinoooooooobuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!
“N-no! It doesn’t matter who’s in there. I can still join them!!”
“You really shouldn’t. I’m worried about the old man’s blood pressure.”
I ended up diving head first into the kotatsu and sulking until a freshly-bathed Shinobu left the changing room in his pajamas.
His eyes opened wide when he noticed my illegal occupation of the kotatsu.
“You’re playing secret base.”
“Shinobu. I have no intention of speaking with little boys who don’t keep their promises.”
“Wow! You’d be safe in an earthquake like this! Let me in, let me in!”
“Ow, ow! There’s not enough space!! Your heel is shoved nicely into my solar plexus!”
I crawled out of the kotatsu like a bear chased from its cave after losing a fight.
Uuh... I don’t even get to sulk in peace.
Shinobu’s mother gave a bitter smile.
“Unlike Youkai, humans aren’t all that influenced by obligation or grudges. You just have to stay constructive and positive by making another promise. How about sleeping in the same futon tonight?”
“Mh.”
It was true lying on the living room floor would feel too empty.
I had nothing to gain by continuing to sulk and what was done was done, so I decide to take a bath.
Once I opened the door to the changing room, I heard movement from Shinobu.
He was speaking with another Youkai that was here as a surprise guest at our “inn”.
“I am a Tsuchigumo! I don’t follow the rules of humans, so staying up late is fine by me. People say I’m disobedient because I’m a delinquent!”
“I don’t care, but come with me. Going to the bathroom at night is scary, so you can take me to the bathroom door.”
“Sure thing. Delinquents are nice to little kids and abandoned cats on rainy days, so leave it to me!”
He was speaking with a spider several meters across, but as it was a Youkai, he was not even remotely afraid of it. Then again, kids his age might grab a normal bug too.
It made me wonder how old humans had to get before they started being afraid of bugs.
I thought on that for a bit, spent about half an hour in the bath, changed into my yukata, and left the changing room.
Shinobu was already gone.
I got another eyewitness testimony.
“Shinobu? He ate dinner, brushed his teeth, and then...what did he do? Oh, right, right. He went to sleep with that Tsuchigumo.”
“...”
Shinoooooooooobuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!
Part 8
“Beauty!! Today, I’ll be introducing a drink I absolutely recommend. I call it the completely-change-the-feel-of-your-skin-in-five-years drink. If drinking this doesn’t make you healthy, you should just give up on life! Now, the actual ingredients are...”
A crossdressing middle-aged man with brightly dyed hair (he was not transsexual and he merely viewed it as another fashion choice for men) wiggled around while shouting about something on TV. However, none of the adults in the living room were watching.
Sake brewing had been the Jinnai family occupation for generations and 50,000 yen a cup summed up just how skilled they were. Of course, judging an artisan solely for their monetary value had a way of making them mad.
In the name of product research, the house was filled with alcohol almost every night.
And they showed no real sign of limiting themselves to Japanese sake.
“If you don’t have an open enough mind to honestly recognize what your rivals are doing right, you can’t take on the world. Ohhh! This wine is all bubbly! What goes well with Shaoxing wine? Chinese food seems a little too on the nose.”
To put it bluntly, this was a family that needed strong livers.
It seemed the Jinnai line had always been able to handle its alcohol and any woman who married into a sake brewing family would have to like alcohol. This created a family selectively bred to have tough livers thanks to Mendelism.
At any rate, everyone was getting worked up, so I asked the obvious question.
“Um, why am I here?”
“Your heart was headed in a dark direction after Shinobu dumped you. That’s the perfect time to drink and forget it all!!”
“I’m a Youkai that can’t be killed even if I’m stabbed or shot, so it’s nonsense to think I’d get drunk. I technically don’t even need to eat. I just do it if I feel like it.”
“Calm down. I know you want to logically suppress your emotions when you’re feeling down, but you can’t! You can’t, can’t, can’t! It’s best to let them out as soon as you can. Suppressing them just lets them build up! Forget all about logic and take a nice swig!!”
“Sigh.”
It didn’t really matter.
I could swallow cyanide or monkshood without issue, so I decided to drink some and leave once the others collapsed.
...
............
...
“Hic. Huhhh? Why’sh the world all shpinny even though I’m a Youkai?”
“Mah hah hah hah hah hah!! That’s the magic power of sake! Nothing’s impossible and you can forget everything unpleasant!!”
This was not right.
I wasn’t even sure how much time had passed, so I tried checking the clock on the wall
What? I can’t read this. It’s all melty like what’s-his-face’s painting.
The very fact that I couldn’t remember such a famous artist’s name showed just how far I had fallen.
“Oh, I get it. Youkai focus more on mental laws than physical ones, so the placebo effect works extra well on us. If I think I’m getting drunk, I really will.”
Come to think of it, didn’t Hyakki Yakou’s anti-Youkai process include research into methods of trickery that used optical illusions and incorrect assumptions?
“What? You can still think logically about this? Then you need another drink! Keep on drinking!!”
“Oh, honestly. I don’t even care about being ditched by Shinobu anymore.”
“Nya ha ha ha ha ha!!”
The two women laughed like idiots.
Shinobu’s father, grandfather, and grandmother were there too. His grandmother merely smiled while downing sake at a rapid pace, but the men seemed unable to keep up with our excitement.
To put it more simply, they were a little disturbed by us.
And that didn’t sit right with me.
I slowly stood up and approached Shinobu’s father who was covered in muscles and had a fist that exceeded the upper limits of humanity.
Huh?
Don’t I normally view him like the lord of fear and can’t even look him in the eye?
“Hey, muscleman!! What’s with that grumpy look? Drinking’s supposed to be fun! Get to it!! And that ambiguous expression is banned!!”
“It’s no use. He only has the grumpy look of a sunglass-wearing killing machine from the future because he’s shy and don’t know how to act around women☆ On our first date, I found him standing at the meeting spot with a look on his face that made me suspect he’d actually called me out for a fight.”
“Come to think of it, why’re you always wearing those tight shirts? Hm? You got a problem? Say it loud!! Now that Shinobu’s ditched me, I’m not afraid of anything!”
“Hya hya hya hya hya hya!!”
“Gwa ha ha ha ha!!”
Ahh.
I have a feeling I’m saying a bunch of things that’ll cause problems later, but I can’t think straight.
Part 9
“Oh, Tengu. Have you heard about?”
“Just some rumors. But just hearing the name makes me feel sick. He definitely brings down the overall definition of. It’s not often you see version that’s so specialized in killing and nothing else.”
“He’s shown up.”
“This is gonna be rough. A lot of are going to die again.”
“But it’s not like we can do anything about it. He exists as a that’s been cut free of the simple hierarchy of power.”
“The Aburatori, hm?”
Part 10
On the following morning of March 25, my palm reflexively flew to the high-pitched alarm clock and an odd chill reached my arm as it left the futon.
I-it’s cold!?
And when and where did I even fall asleep last night?
The rain shutters were fully closed which blocked out the sunlight and left the area almost completely dark. That made it even harder to grasp the situation.
A female voice slipped into my ear from very close by. In fact, it was in the same futon.
“Heh heh heh. This is a married couple’s bedroom, you know? You’re quite aggressive to force your way in between a young couple like that.”
“Ahh!?”
I suddenly grew very concerned about the gaps in my memory, but the situation did not wait for me to recover from that confusion.
“Yukari, are you in here? It’s amazing! It’s amazing outside!!”
“...?”
Shinobu entered the dim room and it took me a while to realize why he was so excited.
It was his next words that clued me in.
“It’s snowing! Everything’s white outside!!”
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”
I grabbed the futon with all my strength to put up my defenses.
Shinobu was the type to go running around in the yard rather than curling up in the kotatsu. If I had to oversee his playtime, I would be thrown out into the below-zero weather of an early morning blizzard.
His mother seemed to realize I was unwilling because she spoke to her excited son.
“Shinobu, if you want to play outside, make sure you eat breakfast first.”
“Ugh... But look! You’ll see if I open the window. It’s amazing out there!!”
“Collllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllld!?”
“Collllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllld!?”
Shinobu’s actions turned the entire bedroom into a giant refrigerator and the traitor kicked me out of the futon as a sacrifice.
“Shinobu, go play with the Zashiki Warashi! I’m sure you’d love making a snowman!!”
“A snowman... C’mon, Yukari!!”
“No!! Please no!! It’s freezing everywhere! Just walking through the wooden hallway is hurting the bottom of my feet!! What’s going to happen to me outside!?”
My desperate pleas fell on deaf ears.
The magic of the snow caused Shinobu’s eyes to glitter to a disturbing degree while he dragged me into the snowy scenery while barefoot and wearing nothing but a yukata.
“B-brr! Brrrrrrr!?”
“Wow! I can’t even see the ground!! Everything’s white!!”
He was fully equipped with down jacket, mittens, long boots, and a wool cap, but I was receiving enough damage to give me a heart attack if I weren’t a Youkai.
“Mommy said to make a snowman! She recommended it, so we have to do it!”
“I-I-I-I can’t. There’s no way I can grab snow with my bare hands!! My fingers will fall off. Are you sure this is made of water? It feels more like liquid nitrogen! It’s so cold!”
“If you don’t hurry up, the snow will cover you and you’ll turn into a snowman.”
Not dying is not always a good thing.
While my mind filled with what sounded like a sentence from a terminal care specialist’s essay, I resigned myself to forming the snowball to become the core and then rolling it around. I don’t even remember what I shouted at the time. My memories vanished for a completely different reason than the sake from the night before.
“A-ah!? Afha!! Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shinobu, surely this is enough! We made a wonderful snowman, didn’t we!? Please release me!!”
Fortunately, his mother arrived to tell us breakfast was ready. I loathed her for wearing a giant fur coat as she did, though. Shinobu’s interest shifted to the food and I was allowed to return to the thatch-roof house.
“I-I’m freezing. My hair literally is frozen!”
“I did heat up a bath, so I suggest you take one before eating.”
I wanted to tell her she should have called Shinobu in earlier if she had time to do that, but any more arguing would have left me frozen like a fish even if it didn’t kill me.
But as soon as I had entered the bath and started to stick one leg in the tub, the bath’s window was thrown fully open.
The bath quickly transformed into a refrigerator.
“It’s amazing, Yukari! Daddy’s doing something amazing!!”
“Byaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!?”
Shinobu had supposedly gone to the living room, but he had gone right out into the backyard to get in a surprise attack from outside.
He was currently pointing towards one end of the back yard again and again.
“He knocked a bunch of snow from the roof and made a white mountain! It’s a slide of snow!! It’s so amazing!!”
Th-that damn man is our enemy.
He’s an enemy of all Youkaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!
I was naked and shivering, but I soon realized Shinobu had vanished from the window and I heard footsteps circling around.
Oh, no. He’s approaching the changing room!
I frantically charged into the changing room and desperately grabbed my yukata.
Before I could put it on, the boy burst into the room.
“Hurry! Hurry, Yukari!!”
“...!?”
I had managed to avoid being thrown naked into the snow, but my defenses may not have been much better.
Ten minutes later, I returned to the house while shivering like a newborn fawn.
“I-I learned something new today. Heating yourself up before being thrown into the cold makes it even worse.”
That was when the doorbell rang.
No one could stop Shinobu now.
At his age, children tended to think about nothing but food when they were even remotely hungry, but the world of snow outside seemed to be stimulating his mind more than breakfast.
He dashed down the hallway and spoke loudly from the entranceway.
“Oh, it’s Nagisa’s grampa!”
“That’s right. Are you the boy that’s been corrupting my granddaughter!?”
I doubted children of that age could get up to too much trouble of that sort, but she may have tried to put on her mother’s lipstick or something.
I didn’t have the energy to fix my yukata and walk to the entranceway, so I just lay on the floor and listened.
“What are you here for?”
“I’m using my truck to check all the houses that probably have a hard time removing snow from their roof. I’m gathering all the young ones to help, but I suppose the Jinnai Brewery has enough young ones to handle it on their own.”
“Young? So is Nagisa here?”
“I didn’t want to bring her with me, but I couldn’t leave her to walk through over a meter of snow with just the Saint Bernard. ...Hm? Hey, old man. I’m here with some volunteers. We’ll handle the roof and the road in front of the house, so have your boy look after Nagisa.”
I heard leaving footsteps, so I assumed Shinobu was back to playing in the snow. I wished him well while he did so far away from me.
However, his mother soon arrived with food on a tray.
“Sorry, but can you take this to Shinobu? I’m sure he’s focused on the snow now, but I don’t want him to skip breakfast.”
“Why me?”
“If I did it, I’d end up nagging him and telling him to eat. I don’t want to ruin his fun while Nagisa-chan is here.”
“And the real reason?”
“I don’t want to go out in the cold. I’m going to spend all day curled up in the kotatsu.”
I noticed the tray contained a few snacks on small plates in addition to Shinobu’s food. I guessed they might be for Nagisa.
“If they’re having a snowball fight, I doubt they’ll want to eat.”
“Those two wouldn’t be doing that. I hear you two already made a snowman and he’ll probably play house now that Nagisa-chan is here. So how about adding in some real food☆”
I borrowed a raincoat from Shinobu’s grandmother and skeptically made my way outside. But to my surprise, Shinobu and Nagisa really were playing house in a snow igloo in the large yard. I doubted the two of them could make such a nice igloo, so the people gathered for snow removal had likely made it for them.
Presumably to make the house seem more realistic, the igloo had a small waterproof bath TV inside.
“A Japanese translation of ‘Innocent Philosophers: 100 Questions from Children that Stumped Senators’ has arrived! The most amazing part of the book is...”
However, the children were ignoring the TV.
“Welcome! Today’s flounder is cheap.”
“Sh-Shinobu-chan, this is our house, so we don’t talk about the food like that.”
Nagisa wanted an orthodox household while Shinobu kept making more unconventional adlibs. He seemed to want adventure more than stability.
Today’s theme for Nagisa’s outfit seemed to be a snowman because she was covered from head to toe with fluffy white wool.
“Shinobu-chan, you’re the daddy, so you look after the baby. Make sure she gets to sleep so she doesn’t cry in the night.”
“But those peaceful days would not last long for Insect Mask who secretly protects the peace of the world. Kaboom!! It’s the FBI!!”
“Run away, honey!! Wait. What did you do, Shinobu-chan!?”
Shinobu began flailing his limbs around and almost unintentionally destroyed the igloo, so interrupted with the tray of food.
“Wow. You have bread for breakfast at your house?”
“When grandma makes it, it’s rice, but when mommy makes it, it’s bread.”
Shinobu pulled out the colorful skewers advocated by Beauty and stabbed them into the vegetables.
“Are you doing this too, Nagisa?”
“I-I am. And I’m even losing weight bit by bit.”
When I thought about it, I realized that diet method only worked if you were the person who decided on the menu.
“Do you drink milk, Shinobu-chan?”
“The adults love it when I do.”
The two of them got down to eating, but they also had “food” made from balled up snow next to them. Without my intervention, they might have eaten snow indefinitely. Shinobu’s mother may have intentionally had me stop that.
“Eh? You’re lying. There’s no way you can do that. You’re a porcupine fish, Nagisa!”
“I-I’m not lying. And it’s a thousand needles.”
They began arguing while ignoring the consideration of the adults.
It was hard to join in because the conversation jumped all over the place, but I somehow managed to grasp the general subject.
“Are you talking about fried prawns?”
Both Shinobu and Nagisa looked up at me.
“Nagisa says you can eat fried prawn tails, but there’s no way you can eat that plastic-y thing.”
“Y-you can eat it. You just don’t at your house. You can eat fried prawns from the head to the tail.”
Shinobu then tilted his head in confusion.
“But fried prawns don’t have heads.”
“They do to! They’re prawns! How would they swim in the ocean without a head?”
“Ah ha ha. You don’t know anything, Nagisa. Fried prawns don’t swim in the ocean. Their fried outside would get all wet.”
“Th-then where do you think they live?”
“Well...Their outside is all crispy, so...”
“It can’t be on land. Their outside would get all muddy.”
“The sky.”
“They don’t fly! Fried prawns can’t fly!”
Part 11
After clearing the roofs of the Jinnai house and the neighboring house, Nagisa’s grandfather and the young men with him drove to a different area. That meant saying goodbye to Nagisa.
Thanks to Shinobu’s mother’s love of Western food, we had fried prawns for lunch. Shinobu tried to eat the tail and took another step up the stairs to adulthood.
That’s right. You can eat the tails.
I could hear an early afternoon talk show on the TV.
“Eh? My recommendation is... Oh, I know. I’ll choose ‘Ten-Year Money Management Techniques You Can’t Afford Not to Know’. The best part about this book is-...”
“That’s a business book you wrote! Don’t just start advertising it like that!”
After finishing lunch, Shinobu spoke with his grandmother who was ironing the laundry.
“Look, grandma. I folded the shirt.”
“Oh, how wonderful.”
“I can fold pants too.”
“You’re so skilled with your hands, Shinobu.”
With a smile covering her face, the old woman used the instant Shinobu wasn’t looking to refold the clothing at Mach speed. She had perfected the style of praising people to help them grow.
Once the ironing was complete, Shinobu spoke up again.
“Since I finished helping, will you tell me a secret of the Jinnai family?”
“Okay, then. Did you know this house has a staircase?”
“Hm? But it’s a one-story house, so it doesn’t have stairs.”
“But it does. There is a small door somewhere that leads to a short and narrow staircase.”
Oh, is she talking about the stairs to the attic? <-->>