“Slapping a talisman on my head… Am I supposed to be a jiangshi [1] or something?” Shinichi said.
That’s why Shinichi got up while laughing despite making a displeased face.
And then while Tomoe was still facing, he told her that she was cuter that way.
He told her that that was more like her, while he stuck the talisman onto his chest.
“…Uh, can you explain it so that I can understand?” Ryou asked.
Not only could Tomoe understand what the problem was with just a few words, the two even started flirting with each other.
Understandably, Ryou wanted an explanation.
“About what?” Tomoe said.
“Why did he collapse?” Ryou said.
“F-From there?”
Her childhood friend’s surprising lack of understanding made her come down with vertigo, but she somehow managed to keep herself from collapsing.
She knew that he hadn’t intentionally slacked on his studies, but she had considered this level of knowledge to be common sense.
“Every person possesses both a yin and a yang ki, but the ratio varies from person to person. Most people don’t have that big of a difference in their yin and yang, but…”
“My ki is evil to an abnormal degree because my element inclines toward that ki you call yin. If a person such as me were to be hit by an overwhelming amount of yang ki, his body’s condition is bound to plummet.
And even if it’s just the surroundings that’s affected by that overwhelming amount of yang ki, it would still be no different from spraying poison to the person in question.”
And while the way yin and yang are written might give the impression that the former is evil and the latter is righteous, it is actually best that the two ki always be in balance.
As for the existence of an anomaly like Shinichi, that is exceedingly inclined toward the yin, if someone like him were to come into contact with more yang ki than is safe, his yin ki would dissipate and his body’s condition would worsen.
That’s why calling it poison was not an exaggeration but a very fitting phrase.
“Seriously!?” Ryou said.
However, putting it in that manner made it sound as though one step wrong would lead to his death, and yet he spoke in such a casual manner that it did not make sense, so Ryou turned to Tomoe, who responded to him with a somber face, and such a face spoke volumes regarding the gravity of this matter.
“Yes, I’ve been really inconsiderate. I’m so sorry,” Tomoe said.
“But it was necessary, right? Since you had to think about the yin-yang balance, then that must mean that this place wasn’t normal,” Shinichi said.
‘Don’t worry, I understand,’ he seemed to say, and Tomoe had mixed feelings about that.
She’d intentionally delayed explaining what she was going to do to try and surprise him, but now she was regretting it.
She wanted to get back at him for always teasing her, but she did not hope to get back at him in this manner. Anyhow, she owed him an explanation.
As she renewed her mind, she talked about why she had to do this.
“…Well, yes. Although this place was indeed a battlefield just recently, no one actually died, and no one died in the incident before that too, so normally, there wouldn’t be a need for such a large-scale purification, but this whole place is insular.”
“Hmm, I think it’s open as far as land goes, though, regardless of the actual situation.”
After all, this was a floating city, and the fields were directly connected to the ocean.
It’s not as though there was a wall or something isolating the terrain from outside.
However, despite knowing that, Tomoe insisted on her earlier point.
“Geographically, yes, but there’s virtually no flow of people, and the fields are always protected by barriers. Dimensional energies do gather from outside, but they don’t get to go back out either, so…”
“I see, so even without any spiritual power, this whole place is basically a closed barrier. So all the residual thoughts that have accumulated after the battle aren’t able to leave.”
“Exactly. Though it’s a bit strange that such residual thoughts would gather in a place like this, that was created by the science of another world, but since it’s already happened, it’s something that will keep on happening. That’s why you have to shift the balance to an extreme yang; otherwise, the balance would just break again.”
Moreover, it was also a place where students competed without any deaths, so negative emotions tended to gather even more.
Although it’s still better off compared to a battlefield where people killed each other, various emotions did tend to leave their traces here and become stagnant.
Especially, since these competitions were held basically every day because of classes.
Such things were sure to have some kind of negative influence over everyone here.
Apparently, it was really bad when they entered school for the first time, but fortunately, Ryou could easily enter the fields, so with his help, she was able to regularly exorcise this place.
“…Okay, but why do your friends know about this?”
But the more she spoke, the more it became apparent that this was exorcist business.
So why was she so open about it to her friends?
But Tomoe shook her head.
“I didn’t tell them everything. It’s just that I needed the help of other female students in order to cover up my movements. Fortunately, by the time I realized the abnormalities here, I was already a famous fortune teller among the female students. So I was able to take advantage of that to mask my movements under the pretense of important work or training.”
After all, just Ryou’s cooperation alone wouldn’t be able to account for her absence, so she needed the help of other people too, which she was fortunately able to get through her clients.
That made plenty of sense, but a certain term caught Shinichi’s attention.
“Fortune teller? Not the ancient sort that used a rikujinshinka [2]?”
Shinichi was deeply convinced that any fortune telling by an exorcist had to be done the onmyouji way.
As for Tomoe, she couldn’t help but wonder how he was so well informed in things like that when he lacked so much common sense.
She wanted to ask him about that, but she decided to prioritize the explanation that she owed him.
“I do that too, but it’s not very popular among girls. Just like with my talismans, my fortune-telling method is an original that I came up with, based off an already existing method. It’s convenient since I can use it as long as I know the rotation of the stars and the name and face of the target. I started telling everyone’s fortune partly to see how accurate it was and partly to train myself. But it caught on way more than I expected, so I was really surprised.”
Tomoe said as she wryly smiled and gave her honest impressions.
The fact that the predictions and advice were more accurate than expected made it popular among the girls. This was despite the lack of advertisement.
No matter the era, girls always love fortune telling, it seems. Shinichi was half-impressed and half-dismayed by that.
Of course, that was merely in regards to her attitude. He held no doubts that her fortune telling would be accurate.
“Now, for the main reason I called you out here…”
“Wasn’t it for transport?”
Tomoe spoke meekly and Shinichi teased her, but her reaction was stiff.
“There’s that too,” she acknowledged. It was night right now, and they couldn’t enter the fields in the afternoon either.
Even the special class students couldn’t enter because the exams have just concluded and the fields were currently under maintenance. No one was permitted to enter.
As people privy to the truth behind the exam, they knew that this maintenance was really meant to ensure that there were no terrorists left, as well as to find and investigate any traps left behind. But that made entering the fields that much more difficult.
In that regard, nothing could serve as better ‘transport’ than the man that could teleport to anywhere in the world.
Although Ryou and Tomoe were both shocked when they found out about Masquerade, they figured they could ‘use’ him to solve this problem.
To that, Shinichi’s honest impression was that they were really daring.
“But that’s not all. I wanted to hear your honest impression too. I’d give myself a full score, but I want to hear the opinion of a person that knows what he’s talking about.”
For a moment, Shinichi’s teasing attitude threatened to come out, but because of how well the miko’s clothes suited her and how beautiful her dance was, and also because of how serious those eyes full of anxiety were, Shinichi kept that teasing attitude of his at bay.
She had been studying on her own for a long time now, but her childhood friend didn’t know much about the subject, so she didn’t have absolute confidence in herself.
As much as Shinichi loved to tease, his brand of teasing was not the sort that poke at a person’s confidence.
“…You yourself can’t feel the stagnant air in the fields anymore, right?”
That’s why all he needed to do was ask her that simple question?
Tomoe closed her eyes and expanded her senses, and when she’d confirmed that the air was indeed clean, she nodded.
“Then it’s fine already, don’t you think? You might not be aware of it, but just the ability to cover such a vast area with your senses is plenty abnormal. It’s also abnormal to have enough spiritual power, what more control, to purify an entire area completely.”
“But my mother could do this much easily…”
“In that case, both mother and daughter make quite the powerful pair, don’t you think?”
[1] – Also known as a Chinese hopping vampire, is a type of reanimated corpse in Chinese legends and folklore. (Source: Wikipedia)
[2] – An ancient form of divination from China based on astronomy and Kanshijutsu (Oriental zodiac)) (Source: japanese-wiki-corpus)
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