“You think it’s funny, shit-for-brains? I ought to kill you.”
When I recounted the whole business to Ononoki, she abused me with some filthy language─she’d never gone on such a tirade against me, in this world or the other.
She did maintain her expressionless face and affectless tone, but had she been this world’s original Ononoki, I imagine her look would have been anything but dashing.
“Who actually agrees to take a bath in that situation? With a married woman, at that. Who’s yet to follow her husband in death.”
“Um, I don’t know about that last part…”
If she was a ghost, she already was dead along with her husband. Ononoki also needed to be careful about her sexist assumptions─though among men, the same concept was called a pledge of eternal friendship, say, or the Oath of the Peach Garden.
We’d left the Kanbaru estate by now and moved to Shirohebi Park─not that we needed to be there, but I’d evaded the Rainy Devil the day before by coming here, so we rehashed the same pattern.
After getting out of the bath, I’d exited out to the yard, gotten on my bike, and jumped into Kanbaru and Ononoki’s battle, and the shikigami had taken that as her cue.
“Unlimited Rulebook─”
We’d shot into the sky.
As far as I could tell, the Rainy Devil hadn’t taken any significant damage, with just a few scraps missing from her raincoat.
Ononoki had managed to accomplish her mission, fighting to buy me time but holding back and not injuring her opponent─what a professional.
I wanted her to know that I, an amateur, had also done good work, so once we arrived at the park’s plaza, I related the ghost story I’d experienced in the wood bath─only to trigger the above verbal abuse.
“Sheesh… I feel like a kitty who caught a mouse and brought it to his master to be praised but who got yelled at instead.”
“What you did wasn’t so good.”
“The simile is, though.” I thought comparing myself to a feline when I didn’t care for cats expressed the depth of my shock.
“Also, casting me as your master? It violates good-faith principles. You’d be Big Sis’ sub-shikigami.”
“A sub-shikigami? Is that a real concept? Wouldn’t want to be under Miss Kagenui’s umbrella…”
I looked around the park as I said this─fortunately, there were no witnesses, or rather no one had overheard my exchange with Ononoki.
Anyway, I’d ended up taking a rather long bath, and it was already past noon. My plan was to visit Kita-Shirahebi Shrine again at night, and we still had the time for one other action.
“So, Ononoki. I was thinking of going to NAOETSUHIGH…er, Naoetsu High, but what do you say?”
“Hmm… Well, I guess that’s our only option if we don’t have any other leads. Meanwhile, if you want to know how I feel, I’m not terribly excited about following Miss Gaen’s sister’s advice.”
Feel, excited─words that didn’t quite suit Ononoki.
“Advice, it probably isn’t,” I said. “She told me she wouldn’t give me any─I think it’s a suggestion, or maybe a screening process…something like a hint that we’re free to discard.”
That just might be where she drew the line, I thought─just as Oshino had one when it came to saving others, she might be limiting her assistance on account of her cheat-grade skills, intentionally or not.
That was my impression.
“You keep on talking about these stigmata, monstieur, but you still haven’t shown them to me.”
“What? You wanna look? You’re telling me to strip here? I’m feeling a little shy…”
“You’re acting legitimately self-conscious when your story’s so phony that I can’t believe it without some kind of proof. Aren’t you just making stuff up to cover for the fact that you found nothing?”
“D-Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never cover up a blunder.”
I’d tried to come up with something, yes, but my dithering had led to getting my back washed by a married woman.
“Okay, turn around,” Ononoki said like a doctor─how funny, a doll was playing doctor with a guy.
I pulled up my shirt.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Huh? What? Why that tone? And why those words?”
“There’s not a thing there. Just a well-toned back.”
“I’m not sure how to respond to that compliment…but seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“No…”
I twisted my neck but naturally couldn’t see my own back. Still, how could Ononoki not see those impressive welts?
Yet now that she said so, the pain had vanished at some point… In the bath mirror, those nail marks had made me wonder if they’d ever disappear, but I suppose Ms. Toé had shown me some consideration. In that case, however, they’d gone away a little too soon…
“N-No, they were there until just now. NAOETSUHIGH, it said right on my back, in mirrored characters.”
“Wow. Desperate, aren’t you? A boy who gets trapped in his own lies about having a cute pen pal level of desperate.”
“No elementary school rom-com metaphors please, this isn’t a joke. I’m serious, Ononoki, look at my eyes! Are these the eyes of a liar?!”
“It’s the first time anyone tried that line on me. This isn’t a manga, looking at your eyes won’t tell me anything. That’s just called a staring contest. Want me to make a funny face while we’re at it?”
“Look at my pupils!”
“Are they dilated or something? A whole other kind of suspicious. Anyway, I’m not an ophthalmologist. But I wish the lady had gone for a nice, full sentence.”
“You’re traumatizing me!”
Like I’d let her scar me in essay form!
Capital letters were bad enough!
“…Um, Ononoki, are you saying you believe it now? My tale of adventure that unfolded as you were busy fighting the Rainy Devil?”
“Not sure if you should be calling it that, but…if you’re going to lie, try and tell a more believable lie.”
“Wait, are you criticizing me now?”
“Sorry. I meant to say that if you were lying, you’d try and tell a more believable lie… I’m afraid I blurted out my creed.”
“Your rephrasing was empty cant, then.”
“Whatever the case, it’s not like we have any other course of action. Right now I’m hung up on the fact that it was Miss Gaen’s big sister who gave you that advice…or hint, as you put it.”
Just like in my world, the name Toé Gaen carried that kind of connotation. Having met her, I could see why… Even apart from that, I didn’t particularly want to visit Naoetsu High.
I preferred not to, in fact. A place I thought I was done with─what sort of face was I going to wear walking into my alma mater when I’d gotten down on all fours and apologized in the teachers’ room on graduation day?
But at this hour, maybe school was out…and there weren’t too many people. Sure, a good opportunity to sneak in, but alumnus or not, I was an outsider now, and they might get really mad at me (I’d be lucky if it ended there).