Аннотация: Rinko's birthday at the hot springs. Yuto inspects the pool with "heavy" water.
2.
In general, it is customary to be naked in a Japanese hot spring... but we didn't check what would happen to Rinko's parents when they saw us in the pool together and without clothes... and so I was asked five times in different ways if I was bored in a female company. Oh, yes! As if they'd let me get bored!
We celebrated Rinko's birthday according to plan: only gifts that can be shown to parents. So the katana I picked up for my girlfriend (Tengu, thank you! Even though you grumbled that a woman should be given a naginata... or a rolling pin.) He's waiting for her at my place. But Hiroe handed over the gift certificate of the fashion boutique right away: then you had to see the face of Kuzaki's mother, who, apparently, really wanted to ask her daughter not to forget to take her with her. But Tsukiro courageously restrained herself! But Kai's gift impressed both me and Shizuku. No, outwardly they were the most ordinary "combat gloves" - fingerless, made of thick skin, probably of a shark or a stingray - I don't understand. On the knuckles there is reinforcement in the form of a metal strip peeking out from under the leather patch with round rivets. But! The gloves were covered with "Steam" - an intricate, very clearly ordered pattern of elements, flowing in lines from the edges of the fingers and palm to a metal amplifier. Busy, busy, busy! Then I noticed Shizuka, who was also looking at the gift, with a long, very intent look.
"Jibashiri's combat gloves, you know." Without waiting for a question, the Goddess of Rivers came up to me and softly commented on what she saw almost in my ear. "I got a good look at them... then... and then, too."
Even better! The Jibashiri are the guys who massacred the Mizuchi family in the temple by the lake. And the ferry is an unfamiliar one. I've already seen enough of my grandfather's and father's creations to be able to tell them apart right away.
"Kaya, can you tell me how you got these mittens?" I asked Yokai as calmly as possible. If it's from the clan's artifact warehouse, then someone is waiting for a lecture on "don't squander your neighbor's goods." And Do that, too.
"I took them from the pantry" naive zashiki-varashi didn't even understand anything and answered quite calmly. "We keep damaged things there that are not suitable, but it's a pity to throw them away. I've been looking into it... There was nothing to do, I burned the completely rotten and scattered garbage and took some things to restore. Look how sheathed is the skin of a young stingray!"
"Cool! You're such a needlewoman!" I have a definite opinion about the contents of that "storage room"... Grandpa, damn it! Was it difficult to explain to your own brownie? Taking Kaya by the elbow, I led her away from the group of girls.
"Just please show me later what else you've been redoing, just in case. You see, this battle trophy is probably my great-grandfather's..." at this point, yokai gave a strangled squeak and twitched - the brownie realized what she had given and to whom without my permission. "...It is also an amulet. Judging by the unfamiliar "handwriting", it was the great-grandfather who did it."
"But I... looked at their magic..." it was a pity to look at Kaya - she was about to cry. "and she tried to let me in, just like your grandfather taught her, but nothing happened. I thought it was just a thing!"
"Calmly. Don't worry! Rinko is our woman, she can... but then sort out the things from that "storeroom" and have her send them to me before - I really don't want to get any more surprises. And now let's go to the birthday girl - nothing irreparable happened..."
Damn it! The scene is like something out of a King novel. I inherited an old house in a secluded place from my grandfather, which means that there are definitely dozens of skeletons in the cupboards! I should have personally poked my head into all the rooms... Okay, bullshit, now we need to carefully figure out what kind Kaya slipped Rinko.
I managed to take one glove away from the hero of the occasion quickly enough, and I concentrated and put mana into the object. Literally a microscopic portion... And nothing. The object, as befits an object, not an amulet, did not hold the magic, but evenly dispersed it. Uh, what? Then why the Ferry, excuse me? After playing around for a couple more minutes under the interested gazes of snake and Hiroe, the gift had to be returned. The item was definitely not an amulet... but the embedded "Light" definitely had some other function than strengthening. M-yes. But we'll have to figure it out...
In the meantime, having dealt with the congratulations, we went to fulfill our obligations.: The hotel needed hands, and we needed to put them in. Kaya and Mizuchi were seconded to the kitchen, Rinko habitually went to work with the arrivals, and I found Kaname five seconds later next to the business owner - it looks like the girl decided to conduct an unscheduled audit of the hotel. Well, then I also have a lot to put my analytical mind and honed intelligence into... to carry the boxes, for example! Then wash the floors. Then I had to peel a hefty bowl of potatoes (though in the company of a brownie, and I can honestly say that she did it much faster). Hanging clothes from a stool has not bypassed me either, because the growth is still childish. Well, what about it? A basket with towels or sheets weighs more than a box, and the "drying room" occupied a huge canopy behind one of the buildings - the specifics of hot springs, again...
In general, when we went into the spring ourselves - I was in swimming trunks, and the girls were in swimsuits, I felt a decent ache in my muscles and a pleasant emptiness in my head. No conflict resolution between youkai who managed to quarrel right in the middle of the patrol, no tasks like "create a workable amulet in 12 days, otherwise it's a mess", you don't even have to torture hamsters! In fact, Kashi, who was left "on the farm," called me, but rather to notify me that everything was in order than to really ask for something extra valuable. Although I got the impression that the spirit was just plain worried about letting me and Shizuka out of sight. It's a strange feeling to have someone worried about you... Well, I wouldn't call a Corpse Eater an "outsider". An employee? A comrade? I would not treat Rinko's excitement as something unusual, after all, we have been friends for more than four years, and for the last two and a half years she has actually replaced my whole family... Another thing is that "there" I got used to being almost a loner - I couldn't achieve permanent relationships for a long time, my parents lived on the other side of Moscow, and the scientific director and the people from the department... No, we used to drink together, and the next day we suffered from a hangover, but I wouldn't call them close people. And Kashi has only known me for six months. It's an interesting topic, I'll need to think about it at my leisure: I reached for my cell phone and cursed to myself - the handset was left "on the shore."
We got a fairly large swimming pool for dinner - about twenty meters in diameter, with a maze of stone back walls closer to the shore and a free zone in the center. A floating table is a great thing. Cold lemonade inside when there's forty degrees of water around - it's divine! No, there are hot pools too - we chose the "coldest" one for soaking. It's hard to sit in very hot water for a long time. For the first half hour, we were accompanied by adults, but after half an hour we remained only our circle. And correctly. No, I'm interested in listening to table conversations about modern Japanese politics, problems, and discussing all those aspects of life that I haven't come into contact with yet, like restoring car rights or pension payments... but not at a children's party! However, I got the distinct impression that the girl's parents and the small hotel staff, who had become almost a family to Aunt Kuzaki for so many years, did not go to sleep, but even "drink sake, wallow in water" - there were enough baths, and the visitors from them had already been dispersed. After making sure that the adults were not up to us, we took out Hiroe's hidden liqueur - cherry and something else - poured ourselves a small glass and indulged in hedonism. I mean, we were up to our necks, with a towel on our heads, staring at the stars, sipping delicious food with a small degree, exchanging words - in general, I haven't been able to have such a cool time since I got there! ..And in the morning - back to work! Having intellectually diversified the carrying of crates and peeling vegetables by raking lawns - the snow meanly left the flat terrace in the mountains, where the thermal groundwater went out, and in general it was plus five - I was released before dark and went to wander around the hotel grounds with a camera - I was interested in the crooked mountain pines and the opportunity to get my legitimate break - after all They're pulling the staff for nothing. For about twenty minutes, I caught the lens of an expensive DSLR that Hiroe had given me (so that if I took photos, I would take normal ones!) all kinds of squirrels, birds, like chickadees and pincers (fuck knows who they really are, maybe even canaries... No, canaries are in China... although, on the other hand, China is not far away), I looked at the flickering of disembodied trifles born in these mountains, and then I wandered to the natural reservoir located outside the hotel. Immediately, however, I doubted that the reservoir was really natural - and immediately remembered that the clan's possessions also began somewhere literally here.
The stone one... A pond? Let there be a pond - it was filled with hot water. Steam stood in the cold air in a dense clot, and there was a smell of some kind of salts... and the water in the pond was a single conglomerate of the Ferry's light lines. In balance, an oscillating clot of enchanted water with a volume of more than a hundred cubic meters. The "ferry" was not empty - the water clearly contained mana and somehow structured it. Having discovered a path and a ladder into the water, which was obviously used from time to time, I risked dipping my finger into the water... pinkie... on the left hand... and then the whole arm up to the elbow. Bliss! The water gently massaged the skin, removing fatigue from the overworked limb in a few seconds and giving it a feeling of vivacity and a feeling of long rest! Everything is clear - I saw a pond next to the house in Noihara, "lined up" in a similar way - the line drawings were about the same. I quickly undressed - fortunately, the uniform at the hotel at the springs was a yukata, that is, in fact, a bathrobe, only warm, I slipped into the water. Ah-h! Indescribable bliss! Five minutes turned out to be enough for me to fully restore the feeling of early morning - when I manage to get enough sleep and then get a good workout! And why doesn't anyone use the pool? Flying out of the water and pulling on clothes and shoes at a fast pace, enjoying the unfamiliar cheerfulness, I almost ran along the shore of the spring... and after a while I came across what I was looking for. A vertical row of light lines and collinear rings stretched through the thickness of the stone, about two meters deep. It was precisely such pipelines that I used for my signal network - only here it was not empty. Faintly, faintly, mana flowed through him from... I followed with my eyes the path of lines running down the slope of the hill... from somewhere higher up the hill. I "saw" the light lines for a hundred to a hundred and fifty meters. Well, I didn't have to walk in the mountains either. We need to arrange for us to be allowed to go for a walk together tomorrow in the middle of the day - the days are short, and in the mountains in winter the darkness is scarier than wild animals (which are not here) and yokai. It's time to dig up another skeleton in the ancestral inheritance!