Ch.11Chapter 2. Bread and the Heroine (5)

That was a strange sight.

In a completely frozen world, only the coin and my finger on top of it were moving.

Kaneko and Ikeda’s fingers remained motionless. Their fingers were definitely placed firmly on the coin, but the coin moved as if ignoring friction and pointed to “YES.”

Moreover, I wasn’t even moving this coin. It just moved toward the “YES” position on its own.

But “she” seemed to think that was the truth.

“Then, have you come to interfere with what I am about to do?”

This time, the coin moved toward “NO.”

“I see.”

The voice spoke as if amused.

“This is the final question.”

She hesitated as if choosing from a feast of delicious foods laid before her. I could almost hear her humming. Not that I actually heard it. It was an incredibly strange sensation.

“Ah, I see. This question will do.”

Giggling, “she” spoke into my ear like a child.

“I wonder—do you believe in God?”

“……”

Even if I could move my mouth right now, I probably wouldn’t have said anything.

Not because I didn’t want to speak.

It was much simpler than that. I was just at a loss for words.

I had been tensely expecting some profound, fundamental question, but instead got something rather ordinary.

“Yes, yes, I see.”

As if reading my thoughts, “she” spoke with delight.

The coin was still placed on “NO.”

“You don’t believe in God. How interesting.”

What was so interesting about that?

“You wouldn’t consider me, who prepared this body, a god?”

The coin didn’t move.

“Ah, I apologize. I’ve already used up all three questions, yet I asked one more. So, I would like to tell you one more thing.”

The whispering voice drew closer to my ear. Though I could only hear the sound, it felt as if someone was breathing into my ear, which was very unpleasant.

“First, let me tell you what I promised. My name is—”

The voice pressed its lips close to my ear and spoke.

“Nirlas Shura. Mother of a thousand lambs.”

“……”

I tried not to think anything at all. Finding this amusing, she giggled once more.

“And second, you are my one thousand and first lamb.”

Blink.

My eyes blinked.

“Ah!?”

I flinched at someone’s sudden cry and my shoulders trembled.

“Huh? What? What’s going on?”

The first to cry out was Ikeda. She was so startled that she quickly brought her finger, which had been hovering exactly at the height of the 10-yen coin, to her chest. When her thick glasses slid down her nose, she quickly pushed them back up with her other hand.

Kaneko looked back and forth between her finger and mine, then shuddered.

Bang!

She slammed both palms on the desk and jumped to her feet.

“What’s this? You really do have a talent for this! No, wait, you’re the very embodiment of the occult! Izumi, did you see that? Did you see? Her finger suddenly moved! Even though I was pressing down hard on the coin, it moved to that side! Without us even noticing! How can you say this isn’t meant for the Occult Club!?”

“Don’t talk nonsense!”

Ikeda shouted.

“You’re the one who did something strange! What was that? Magic? Using tricks to recruit members is going too far!”

“No, what kind of magic could possibly do that?”

Kaneko said, looking bewildered.

Ikeda quickly grabbed one of my arms.

“I absolutely won’t let you take her. Besides, your club hasn’t even been officially approved and doesn’t have a faculty advisor. Above all, the coin pointed to ‘NO’ before we could even ask Kotone. That means Kurosawa refused.”

Well.

Since the last question was about that. I don’t believe in God. Looking at how I crossed over to this world, there doesn’t seem to be anything like that.

More importantly, Nirlas Shura?

……That’s obviously a knockoff of Shub-Niggurath.

And what? Mother of a thousand lambs? If you’re going to use the same setting, why change the name?

Or maybe it’s a character created “to claim copyright.” As long as it’s not exactly the same, I guess.

So what’s in my left hand isn’t a black dragon flame but a black goat.

Might be healthy if boiled and eaten. Looks pretty cheap too.

“…Can I have some snacks now?”

“Oh, of course! Since I’m the only one eating them right now, there are plenty left. I use all the club activity funds to buy books, and whatever’s left goes to snacks.”

What an excellent club.

So these snacks were bought with Hanakawa High School’s money.

I’ll have to get my money’s worth from my tuition.

I don’t even know if I’ll go to university, so it would be a waste otherwise.

Thinking this, I reached for a dorayaki—

Creeeeak, I heard a sound that seemed familiar.

As I was trying to remember where I’d heard it before, the sliding door of the literature club room opened with tremendous force.

Not a gentle slide but more like a crash, followed by a bang. That’s about right.

I was so startled that I dropped the dorayaki back into the basket. Fortunately, I dropped it before opening the package, so it wasn’t ruined.

“…Kurosawa?”

Somehow I seem to hear this voice every lunch period.

I slowly turned my head toward the open door and saw Yuka Yuuki standing there.

She was holding the door, breathing heavily and sweating.

She had something wrapped in cloth slung over her shoulder.

…It looked like it probably contained a “katana.”

“…Yuuki.”

I called her name.

“Yuuki? Is she your friend?”

Ikeda asked from behind me.

“That’s… quite a dramatic entrance.”

Kaneko muttered, looking a bit dazed.

Yuuki’s eyes moved from me to the two sailor-uniformed girls around me, to the Kokkuri-san paper spread on the desk. Then back to me.

“What’s going on?”

Come to think of it, her family can sense the presence of yokai, right?

Yuuki’s gaze on me was sharp.

“What do you mean, what’s going on?”

Ikeda asked.

“Did we do something wrong?”

Kaneko asked.

“……”

Yuuki seemed to finally realize that I was just sitting in the literature club room, barely having picked up a snack.

But she didn’t seem ready to completely drop her suspicions.

Yuuki entered the club room.

“Oh? Are you interested in joining?”

Ikeda asked, her eyes shining.

Yuuki looked at me once, then back at Ikeda and asked.

“Did Kurosawa join too?”

“Of course! Join now and snacks are free!”

Does that mean they charge for them later?

Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll eat plenty while they’re free.

I finally managed to pick up the dorayaki.

To avoid looking too eager, I slowly pulled it toward me and carefully opened the package on the desk.

Dorayaki is usually translated as “red bean pancake” in Korea, but strictly speaking, they’re different. Red bean pancake is literally bread with sweet red bean filling, while dorayaki is red bean paste sandwiched between pancakes.

The texture is completely different, and so is the taste.

I carefully put it in my mouth and chewed, and the pancake exterior, which was only cooked on the outside, cut softly. It’s different from the dry, stiff coffee bread I usually eat.

“…Is it that delicious?”

Ikeda, watching from the side, asked.

I quietly nodded.

It certainly is.

I like both pancakes and red beans.

It seems they bought it from a fairly famous place. Ah, I’m glad I joined the club.

Could I skip dinner with this and avoid having to work part-time?

*

In the end, I ate three dorayaki and finished the club activities.

Ikeda didn’t seem to mind at all. She was extremely happy that she had secured two new members in one day. Well, I suppose a literature club doesn’t just read books every day.

No, actually they probably should just read books, but maybe they’ve been playing around too much?

…Anyway.

Kaneko didn’t seem particularly interested in recruiting Yuuki for the Occult Club. Well, she chose me because I resembled Sadako, so Yuuki, who would look like a disciplinary committee member if she just wore an armband, probably didn’t seem like a good fit.

Though she doesn’t fit the image either.

Well, it doesn’t matter. Thanks to this, I learned the conditions for summoning that… Shura… that Shub-Niggurath knockoff.

Is it easier to summon now because it was called through what’s engraved on my wrist? Or can it really be summoned with just minimal conditions as it said?

There was a similar setting in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Most gods have such strange names that humans can’t even pronounce them, making summoning through human speech impossible, but Hastur was said to be easily pronounceable by humans.

Not that he always just pops out—it’s up to Hastur’s mood, so that Shub-Niggurath knockoff is probably similar.

It showed up without me even calling its name in the first place.

As I was walking forward thinking about these things, I kept hearing footsteps behind me that overlapped with my own.

When I stopped walking, those footsteps also stopped.

I looked back.

Yuuki quickly turned her gaze elsewhere and started whistling.

“……”

I finally turned completely toward Yuuki.

A slight breeze blew. The sky was tinged with sunset, and since we were leaving school at an awkward time—not right after classes ended nor after club activities were completely finished—there were hardly any students on the street.

Looking at the atmosphere, it seemed like we might exchange confessions, but of course that wouldn’t happen.

Rather, I was now facing a stalker-in-training who was following me.

I’d welcome a pretty girl following me, but not one carrying a Japanese sword on her back.

I walked toward Yuuki. By this point, Yuuki had given up on whistling, which she couldn’t do properly anyway, and shifted her gaze back to me.

“…Do you have something to say?”

At my question, Yuuki’s expression became one of carefully choosing her words.

It would be a bit much to directly ask if I’m a yokai. I don’t show any signs of being one normally.

No, I’m not even sure if I am a yokai. This body seems to be an avatar, so strictly speaking, the original owner would be the yokai.

If that’s the case, what she sensed was probably similar to what I sensed from Miura.

“Um, well…”

But how would she explain it?

A yokai is attached to you, so you might be killed in a few days?

If I could have convinced someone that way, I wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble trying to save Miura.

“If you have nothing to say, I’ll be going.”

I said that and turned around again.

Just letting her know that I’m aware she’s following me should make it quite uncomfortable for her to continue.

I know Yuuki is a good person. She’s probably following me now purely out of good intentions.

But if my identity is revealed, that’s another story.

As I was turning around, my body stopped midway as if caught on something.

Nothing dramatic happened. Yuuki just grabbed my arm with her hand.

“…Wait.”

“What?”

When I looked up at her face and asked, Yuuki seemed a bit flustered, but finally opened her mouth and said:

“Would you like to come to my house today?”

“……”

She seemed quite embarrassed by her own words, judging by how her eyes darted around.

“Why would I?”

“……”

Now it was Yuuki’s turn to be at a loss for words.

“If there’s no particular reason—”

“—yaki.”

Yuuki interrupted me.

“Tonight, we’re having sukiyaki.”

I looked up at Yuuki for a moment.

“Sukiyaki.”

Yuuki said once more, as if to emphasize.

“I’ll come.”

I answered.

*

And I slightly regretted that answer almost immediately afterward.

Yuka Yuuki is a person who hunts yokai. And her family has passed down that profession for generations.

Where would such a house be located?

If it were just an ordinary house or mansion, that would be more surprising.

Yuuki’s home was a shrine.

It took a little over 20 minutes by subway from Tamachi Station to Kamata Station, where Yuuki’s shrine was located. After getting off there and walking leisurely for about 15 minutes, we came to a shrine.

“This is it.”

The shrine was situated right in the middle of a neighborhood of detached houses clustered together. It gave the impression of not being particularly famous as a tourist spot. You’d have to come all the way into a residential area to find it.

“It was built quite a long time ago. So the shrine was built first, and the nearby houses were built later.”

I nodded at Yuuki’s explanation for no particular reason.

At the entrance to the shrine stood a torii gate. A black sailor-uniformed ponytailed girl with a cloth-wrapped katana slung over her shoulder, standing under the bright red torii gate.

The image somehow fit perfectly.

Yuuki led the way, and I followed slowly behind her.

Although it was in the middle of a residential area, the shrine was larger than I expected. Most of the surrounding area gave the impression of being flat, but the shrine itself was slightly elevated. There wasn’t enough of an incline to require stairs, but there was a gentle slope for a short distance.

And as I climbed that slope, I thought:

Yuka Yuuki is the daughter of a much wealthier family than I expected.

Not that she spends money lavishly like some chairman’s daughter, but still, how many people in Tokyo own this much land?

Moreover, as we climbed, Yuuki exchanged greetings with people who appeared to be local residents. It seems quite a few people visit the shrine.

There was even a shrine maiden!

“Oh, she’s just a part-timer.”

Yuuki said as she waved to the shrine maiden.

I see…

Well, I’ve read about this so I know, but somehow hearing it from an insider was a bit disappointing. It felt like sitting on Santa’s lap and having a nearby grandmother reveal that it’s actually her husband in disguise.

“Now, let’s go straight to Grandfather. He should be watching TV in his room right now.”

…The homey details made me feel a bit disillusioned again.

And so we walked slowly, crossing the quite spacious shrine grounds, passing the main hall—

—and then exiting the shrine again, entering an ordinary house on the opposite side from where we had entered.

…

Huh, they don’t live inside the shrine?

“My father is the chief priest.”

Once again, my illusions were shattered.

Wait, if that’s the case, why did we need to cross through the shrine? Is this way closer to the subway station?

After passing through the low gate typical of Japanese homes, Yuuki took out a key from her bag and unlocked the door.

“Grandfather. I’m home. I brought a friend, is that okay?”

Yuuki said loudly as she entered the house.

There was no particular response from inside.

“You can come in.”

I silently followed her in.

When I go to my own home, I just carelessly kick off my shoes in the entryway, but I’m not shameless enough to do that when visiting a school friend’s house.

Like Yuuki, I neatly removed my shoes in the entryway and entered.

“Grandfather!”

“Hmm?”

Only after Yuuki called out toward what was probably the living room did Yuuki’s grandfather respond. Judging by his slightly hoarse voice, he had probably been sleeping.

The sound of a TV came from the living room. It seemed to be a documentary about tuna fishing boats battling waves and catching tuna with fishing lines as thick as wires.

“I brought a friend.”

“Oh, Yuka.”

The grandfather responded a bit late, sitting up on the sofa.

“We’re planning to have dinner together, is that okay?”

“Of course, of course, that’s fine—”

As he said this, Yuuki’s grandfather turned his head a bit more to look at me.

And then he froze stiffly.

“……”

Hmm.

Come to think of it, it was probably people from this family who specifically sent Yuuki to our school as a transfer student. So naturally, her grandfather or father would also have an eye for such things.

They might even be more impressive than Yuuki.

“…My name is Kotone Kurosawa. Pleased to meet you.”

But since it seemed a bit awkward to just have a staring contest, I bowed my head toward the grandfather and introduced myself.

“Hmm, I see. So you’re Kotone.”

Upon hearing my voice, Yuuki’s grandfather instantly returned to normal.

“Yuka. Could you perhaps start preparing a bit first? I need to use the bathroom.”

“Okay.”

Yuuki answered and then looked at me and said:

“Feel free to watch whatever you want while you wait. We need to wait for my father to come home anyway.”

“…Okay.”

Even if she tells me to watch whatever I want…

I don’t have a television at home, so I don’t even know what to watch at this time.

“Sit down and rest.”

Yuuki’s grandfather said as he got up from his seat.

And then I was left alone in the living room.

…

Well, I guess I’ll rest a bit.

Thinking that, I carefully sat down on the sofa—

“…This is comfortable.”

I almost melted into it instantly.

Doesn’t anyone throw away a sofa when they move? I’d be willing to drag one home by myself.

With that thought, I stared blankly at the tuna fishing on TV.

*

“Yuka. What exactly did you bring home?”

“What?”

The grandfather, who had said he was going to the bathroom, followed Yuka into the kitchen and asked.

“Kotone Kurosawa, was it? How does that child appear to your eyes?”

“Well… a high school student, right?”

Or maybe a middle school student. Kurosawa’s body looked thin and small compared to her peers.

“Do you see something, Grandfather?”

But her grandfather wouldn’t react this way over something so trivial.

“…Yokai eat people. Not simply tearing off flesh, but also sucking out desires and licking up resentments. Yuka, wouldn’t there also be beings that eat those yokai?”

“You mean Kurosawa?”

“I don’t know about the person herself. She might have been used by something. But I smell it. That child has definitely been covered in blood before. Blood that isn’t human. You sensed something too, didn’t you? That’s why you brought her here?”

“……”

Yuka was momentarily speechless.

“Yes, I was going to tell you about it—”

Yuka told her grandfather about what had happened at school before bringing Kurosawa home.

“……”

“What do you think she is?”

“…We’ll have to find out gradually. In any case, now that we know, we can’t just leave it alone.”

The grandfather sighed deeply.