Аннотация: Shizuka gives Ageha the task and the amulet. Sasa is dressed in a kilt. A trip to the spirit of the mountains.
Interlude 27. The hotel, Ageha's room. Ageha and Shizuka
"My head!"
"You woke up, you know." the snake commented, looking with satisfaction at Ageha sprawled in the "star pose".
"M-mizuchi? Where are you from?.. And what happened yesterday?!"
"You meanly dragged our Amakawa into bed... Go ahead of me, you know!"
"Damn, I also fucked someone... WHAT?! AMAKAWA?! OUR?!?! DID I TAKE AN OATH?!?!?!"
"A serious case..." Shizuka finally deigned to stand up and handed the bloodsucker a glass taken out of the refrigerator. A viscous red liquid was splashing in the glass at the very bottom. "Come on, drink it."
"Take a sip! Af-ha! What a class! Mizuchi, you saved me! Oh, damn it! Why the fuck were you scaring me out of my sleep, snake?!"
"Did you remember?"
"I remembered, I remembered... It was a busy night... By the way, what are you doing here?"
"I'm protecting you. Someone alarmed the whole city with an outburst of power, however, for some reason, the Jinguji battle group never reached the city, although they were called because of your tricks."
"Damn, we have to go! Eh? Is this it?"
"Yes, the amulet. You could have said thank you. You know!"
"Thanks! Personally, I'll tell Amakawa... Mm-hmm... I liked... HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Wrapping hinoyonma's head well with her tongue, which caused the latter to become quite distorted, Mizuchi was satisfied with the effect and, without releasing the "victim", continued:
"Morning wash, you know. And you won't even get close to Yuto, once is more than enough."
"A jealous yokai is something new," Ageha stated, puzzled, wiping her wet face with a pillowcase.
"Not enough to strangle you in your sleep... And you didn't even think about the problems you created for Yuto!"
"Is there already a queue for him? Oh, did you guess?! Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It was such a chance, ah, an innocent child and an adult experienced woman, the first one he would remember for years... and she's not aging, unlike a human woman."
"With "human women" in the club... There may be problems in the Squad, you know."
"At Amakawa's? I don't believe it! He was even able to buy the life of this overgrown slug from me..."
"...And that's why the Jinguji battle group is not looking for you," the Goddess of Rivers added in a tone.
"Yes, yes. He can handle it, I believe in him. A great bet for the future!"
"He can do it once. Don't think I'm going to let you repeat it!"
"Are you crazy around people, Mizuchi? I got caught up in this sex, I'm not some kind of person... Although... it was nice... Maybe we should try again..."
"Try it with someone else, you know!"
"I know... but something is not pulling. It's not my first time... and not the tenth, hehe. I've even been to Paris... ahem, let's not mention the specifics of disguise... Honestly, I was sure that sex was an empty and boring waste of time. I've never felt anything so special. Maybe it's not like that for human... And here... listen, Mizuchi. Maybe the rumors about this very Amakawa aren't lying? We should do a test... Oh, me! Get your tongue off me! Damn it!"
When the session of repeated unplanned washing was over and Ageha decided to get dressed, she finally noticed with what an "interesting" expression Shizuka was looking at her breasts. Are you jealous? But she didn't tease: tongue is an argument... You know!
"Besides the guards, as I understand it, Yuto asked you to give me something? A "one-time assignment"?"
"Right. I'm telling you literally: "Ageha, you have great acquaintances among the Yokai. Try to find those who would like to live in Takamiya according to the announced rules, and give the invitation. Candidates for the Squad are especially needed. I'm counting on you.""
"Ha! What a challenge!"
"Will you take it?"
"No problem! Paying with Yuto's blood?"
"Perhaps, and not only. He said that the regional office of the Committee can also afford to pay for its peace of mind. And don't call Yuto without a postfix! For you, he's Amakawa-dono now!"
"It's even more interesting! Is that all?"
"That's all for now. The first task."
"Great! Wait for the first applicants in two weeks."
"I'll tell you, you know... and read about erogenous zones in women, you know!"
When the door closed behind Mizuchi, Ageha shrugged, pulled out her laptop, typed "erogenous zones" into the search engine, and, chuckling skeptically, began reading the wiki article. To be fair, Hinoyonma vacated her hotel room only two days later.
146.
The first people I saw when I arrived at the hangar, sorry, the Squad office, were Hiroe and Sasa, who were extremely pleased... in a red plaid kilt... He was wearing a beret and a white shirt... and with bagpipes! It took me about a minute and a half to "freeze off" from the floor.
"Little brother!" the Blacksmith waved his hand at me, who had been trying to blow something meaningful out of a hellish machine with tubes, "Hiroe's sister told me that I have English roots."
"The Scottish ones." Kaname corrected me meticulously and, coming up to me, with a malicious smile, almost whispered in my ear: "Well, congratulations, hero! How does it feel?"
"You already know?" I asked wearily.
"Don't worry, no one said anything. You know me, it was enough to talk about abstract topics, huh!"
"I don't know what to say to Rinko anymore," I confessed.
"So you won't hide it?" The short-haired pest pretended to be surprised, but immediately patted me reassuringly on the shoulder. "Don't worry, that's my job. Anyway, sooner or later this question would have arisen. What's her name, Ageha, right? She just got there first. And that's good."
"Is it okay?!"
"Just fine! I doubt you could have resisted the "charms" of some beauty that grew up with you... in short, this lever of pressure would certainly have been used, and most likely by people, if we had achieved some success under your leadership. I'm sure Sugowara-san won't miss this direction... He just thought you were too small. And we're too small... and then, I must admit, I already envy the bloodsucker!"
"Hiroe?!"
"I'm kidding. Just kidding!" the girl whispered in my ear and touched her lips to my cheek. And looking at my reddened face, she immediately started laughing! "Yuto, you're something! e-e-e, really funny!.. But okay. The main thing is to remember," Kaname began to speak softly again: "You were seduced by an adult woman at a young age, and you haven't been able to look at youngsters since. The "mother complex," I think it's called that. A royal gift, as far as I'm concerned. The main thing is not to lose your temper yourself, and you can safely ignore any attempt to influence you through the bed. All you need is for that hinoyonma to flash by your side from time to time... I'll talk to the girls. I'm serious, Yuto. Do your job, lead us to prosperity and success. I will provide you with a moral climate and a reliable rear. That's my word for you, Kaname's word."
"Hiroe..."
"It is enough to say, "I admire you, beautiful and incomparable..."
"Vue-e-e-e"
It was Sasa who was able to extract a loud sound from the bagpipes after all. And I have a clear suspicion where he got it.. and clothes... and who had a hand in it.
"A Scot, then?"
"As you can see. Otherwise, I'm afraid our status unit would just be beaten up by human volunteers from the "squad". Hard workers don't like "gay" people.
"but he?"
"No, he's a normal kid... for the yokai. A little more strange than ours, but the same ones "corrected themselves" after the oath, don't I think? By the way, Sasa speaks good English... in both Korean and Chinese."
"Wow"
"Yes, your Ageha taught me. She's still a polyglot..."
"She's not "mine.".."
"Don't blush! Be a man! Otherwise, I won't be able to stop teasing you about this topic!"
147.
"Now no one calls me by the feminine gender! It was annoying!"
"Yes, yes, Sasa, we are happy for you. How far is it?"
"Behind this hill, we're almost there. Wee-doo-oo!"
"I should have taken the bagpipes away from him..."
"Hiroe, I remind you, it was your idea... And no one forced you to come with us!"
"Similarly, Kuzaki, similarly."
"I went because all sorts of stuff happens to you all the time without me! What did you do last night?! Why out of all the crowd out there, Yuto was alone dealing with this, this, this..."
"Hinoyenma."
"A whore! I can't believe it!"
"My sister is not a whore! My sister is kind and strong!"
"...Too strong, you know..."
"And you, Mizuchi! You were there! Why didn't you do anything?! It could have been done differently!"
"Not a single corpse from among the townspeople, there are no destroyed buildings, even the magician from the Committee was not injured..."
"So slow down, Kuzaki!.. And don't run so fast: We're in the mountains after all."
"I'll figure it out without you, Kaname! The suffocators weren't asked!"
"Rinko, you seem to have quarreled with Yuto, why did you come with us?"
"Because someone has to protect him, right? Someone with brains, not... bagpipes!"
"Rinko's sister, I have a brain!"
"I'm more interested in why Shizuka described everything in one sentence. No more details... It's interesting!"
"Yu, are you going there too?!"
"I'm interested too!"
[In three voices:]"Sasa, shut up and blow your bagpipes!"
"I think next time you should say not "school trip", but "kindergarten on a walk", Kashi."
Kashi, phlegmatically listening to the girly argument, snorted, stifling laughter. Yeah.
We were walking at some distance from a group of girls led by Sasa, who was showing us the way to the waiting area for Daydarbotcha. Kami, what a species name! You can break your tongue! Hiroe, as promised, gathered an "all-female company" on the same day and announced the results of "intensive negotiations." I don't know what happened, but when the four of them came to my house, Rinko immediately said that she wasn't talking to me until I realized. To the question "what do I realize?", I was immediately given a complaint about the idiotic manner of solving issues alone and without normal combat support, which is why "everything happens later! And anyway, I'm mad at you!" Moreover, at school, Kuzaki communicated with me completely normally, showing "fi" only among her own people. Yes, a joint... and we need to think about what to do so that the "squad director" does not ask his parents if a similar situation arises at three o'clock in the morning, and I will not be in town. By the way, it won't be soon. And something has to be done about the school. No, Hiroe and I made it to the second half of class... and everything is fine with the level of education, but why annoy the teachers? Oh, Ageha couldn't show up a day later! By the way, about Ageha, we should ask the Corpse Eater while no one hears us:
"Kashi, what do you think about what happened?"
"We made a rare mistake, Amakawa-sama, and you saved us. Just like last time, when they intervened in the battle."
"Me?! Saved you? When?!"
"Yes, I probably expressed myself inaccurately. Our dreams, our future, were one step away from falling into the abyss."
"For centuries, the Yokai have been accustomed to evaluating each other by strength. Approximately equal people fight, the weak and the weakest run... if they are released. If it wasn't for your disguise, Hinoyonma would have attacked right away, she alone was stronger than everyone in the patrol squad."
"Pacha had a railgun..."
"Without disguise, he wouldn't have been able to use it. Even on the first shot: too close. The patrolmen behaved so calmly because they did not feel the power of the bloodsucker: the amulet cuts off perception, but through glasses... the world is very limited. I was able to assess the power of the aura only after it was poisoned by your blood, Amakawa-sama."
"According to you, it turns out that when meeting a yokai of the Agent's level, you need to immediately shoot from the maximum distance to kill? They won't even listen?"
"Maybe they will... for fun... before you try to kill. The very first phrase about any restrictions on behavior is immediate aggression. If you want to dictate the rules, be stronger."
"Clear. But the amulets are part of our agreement, I don't see anything "life-saving" in this."
"That's not all. If I had come instead of you... I would have had to demand that Hinoyonma fulfill the requirements for the territory first and only then promote mutually beneficial offers. Otherwise, I would have lost the opportunity to be called a leader... Such things are not forgiven. You have to be ready to die for your beliefs. That's why most of the strongest intelligent yokai don't show themselves in any way: they either disguise themselves and live among humans, or they recluse themselves, or they find safe shelters and sleep most of the time..."
"Then it turns out that I am too..."
"No, Amakawa-sama!" Kashi replied firmly. "The unwritten rules of the yokai do not apply to you. You are a human being! You went to the loss of face to save your subordinates, for the sake of this you showed yourself weaker than you were... and only then did they show their strength, the strength to force them to comply with the rules of the Squad's territory. You're not even technically the head of this group... Hinoyonma couldn't submit to obviously weaker spirits... but there is no such segregation about magicians. And you said that you obey the rules of the territory... and then, for your sake, Ageha accepted them."
Great! Kashi put my actions down to taking care of my subordinates... Wait, and Ageha too? It turns out that the Blacksmith was "bailed out" to me because Ageha decided that I would be able to take care of him properly?! Awesome logic! Stop, stop! "Your rules are not like that... stupid, I thought." That's it. That's what Kashi is telling me now. "Losing face" is not a loss of face unless I put myself in the position of "the leader of the yokai gang". It turns out that we have a Hawk-nosed Shinji in the lead, hehe... And now we need to find out something:
"Tell me, loyal vassal... Why didn't you point out this annoying gap in my knowledge earlier? And Shizuka didn't tell me anything about the ethics of spirits... It was possible to at least finalize the charter, the "field" charter!"
"I'm sorry, Amakawa-sama... we are... I didn't even think that we would force those who are obviously stronger to follow the rules... It was so obvious... I'm guilty and I'm waiting for your punishment, Chief."
"Punishment... Okay, you'll be punished. You've been living among people for over a month now, and you've learned to think and act like them. Think from a human point of view, what else needs to be adjusted and analyzed. We can't afford to get into trouble like this anymore."
Kashi bowed in silence, and we walked on without speaking. Kashi seemed to have decided to focus on his "punishment" right now, and I was turning over in my head one thought that the Corpse Eater had suggested to me, and the longer I turned it over, the more I liked it. There are the rules of the yokai, there are the rules of the circle of exorcists, there are the rules of ordinary people. If we play by their rules with each side, we will lose one hundred percent. If according to the rules of the other side, they will be considered boundless and there will be a meat grinder without any rules. But! If we say that the special rules for the territory are universal and are not the rules of one of the groups, we can win. I acted with Ageha according to the logic of the situation, and by the standards of yokai, and by the standards of human, I was wrong. But I won because I acted from the logic of what was happening and based on my "canonical" knowledge. And who the hell is going to make me put my actions in the Procrustean bed of "it's accepted." I will act in such a way as to win! And I'll make the others! We just need to get it into the heads of our vassals and girls that we are not yokai, humans and magicians. We are citizens of Takamiya Territory, period! So, you will need to puzzle Hiroe and work with her on the civil code yourself. I'm sorry, hometown, but I'm going to have to shake up your once-sleepy world in a very specific way!
A very unkind smile settled on my face by itself.
148.
I hardly remembered the rest of the way to the saddle, overgrown with sparse fir trees and covered with a large number of cobblestones of various sizes: another rethinking of events forced me to look at so many things from a new angle that in the end, I typed the last line into my phone notebook: "enter and use the def. of wh. a reasonable being is". And here Plato's "two-legged without feathers" didn't fit at all: some people did have feathers. Damn it! I've always considered philosophy to be a kind of "relaxation zone for tired minds," and here you go: it's quite an applied field of knowledge... Okay. We've already arrived.
"They've come!" Sasa duplicated my thoughts. "Hey, Daidarabotchi, show yourself. Look! These are our new friends, and Ageha's sister told us to obey them as she did." And Daidarabotchi showed up...
Actually, after looking at the local yokai, as they say, point-blank, I began to understand a little where all sorts of spider-men and supermen came from in the modern media. And where the numerous spirits and all sorts of strange creatures came from in the anime is beyond doubt. I wonder if there's something like that in my old reality, too? Because the appearance of the spirit of the mountains was so clearly familiar that I even forgot to freeze from the grandeur of the picture. In my imagination, a sixty-meter giant slowly surfacing from a stone, with its head sunk into its body, with long arms almost reaching the ground, and with a strange pattern in the form of wide lines, painfully resembled Evangelion-01 rising on the elevator. More precisely, 00, because the color of the giant yokai was very white, and what could be considered an eye with some assumption was present in a single copy. By the way, Sasa is also a cyclops - that's such a touching friendship of brothers with a lack of eyes...
"Holy shit." came from the direction of the group of girls, it seems that even Shizuka was impressed. I chuckled, took out a laser rangefinder from my backpack and aimed a red speck at the top of yokai's head. Okay, and now to the soles of your feet. The angle, offhand... Ha! I guessed right: 63 meters, give or take a meter. I won't weigh it: if it turns out to be 1.5 kilotons, I won't even be surprised... Meanwhile, Daidarabotchi spoke... more precisely, I didn't hear anything, but a small tremor almost under my feet and the Blacksmith answering - it wasn't difficult to connect. Damn, what an unpleasant pulling sensation in my stomach! Infrasound, however. And Sasa, therefore, hears infrasounds. And Ageha, I remember, talked quite well with the giant in the manga. It seems that I need to survey my vassals for other things that they consider "common". So, write it down! And now I'll find out from Dai..The Daidor... Ugh, damn it, Dadarabotchi! I'll find out if I calculated correctly that I would be able to use this walking tower crane for work in the bay.
"Sasa, will you translate his answers for me?" I asked softly, approaching a completely happy Blacksmith, who was bragging about new clothes in front of another new listener. Da... Damn, I'm sick of it!
"Yes, of course, Amakawa-dono!" Oh! And I'm already in the report card above "little brother"?! I'm flattered, I'm flattered...
"The first question is, if I ask D... Will Daidarabotchi respond to the name "Dar", he won't mind?" A wave of elusive stone yeast: I was heard.
"He says, "I don't mind." Dar says he's bored sleeping all the time, maybe he'll play?"
"Dar, do you like to play construction kit?"
"He says, "I don't know what it is, but it sounds interesting. Will you teach me?""
"Otherwise, of course! At first..."
Phew! We barely made it in daylight. And how pleased the spirit of the mountains was! Especially when I found out that the giant can sense the magnetic field: and don't even ask me how long I took to explain to him which of his senses is a compass. Yes, and translated through a curious Blacksmith. But I was finally forgiven. When Dar, at my request, extended his broad palm to us... and he raised his arm up to its full length, and we were above the tops of the neighboring hills, almost at the edge of the low autumn clouds... and I was caught screeching in three traps from the girl's hands. And if Rinko and Hiroe were just afraid of heights (although the view didn't leave them indifferent either), then Yu... I don't even know what turned her on more: the height or the feeling of a giant doing your bidding. Mizuchi, looking around with eagle eyes, went to the center of the giant's yokai palm (yes, I'm careful and overprotective, and I don't want to check if Dar can catch me with his other hand) and hugged me from the side of my remaining free back. So we stood there, blown by an excessively fresh wind. Windbreakers didn't help at this height... and something dark, weighing heavily on as soul, blew out more and more in these gusts... Such a moment... when you realize that you are alive, and that you are just living, and not trying to catch up with the train that left yesterday... You don't make plans and you don't fight... You just feel alive...
...On the bus, Rinko settled into the seat next to me and wordlessly wrapped her arms around my left arm... And she fell asleep. And for the first time, I allowed myself to dream that one day... someday... We can all make time for ourselves to just live.