Once Yae had put her dry clothes back on and returned Sui’s robe, Sui insisted they find a place they could relax before she started treatment. Arai suggested they move a little farther to the west side of the mountain, and Yae spoke up in protest.
“If we go any farther west, we’ll be able to see Mount Saeba. That’s forbidden ground,” she said. The entirety of Mount Saeba except for the north side was designated as forbidden, so it was an unwritten rule in this country that you shouldn’t go anywhere near it.
“That’s exactly why it’s the perfect spot. People rarely go there,” Arai responded, ignoring her concern.
“We’ll make the gods angry if we enter forbidden ground without permission. They’ll punish us,” Yae argued, clearly afraid. Arai sneered.
“I’m something of a god myself. Who’s going to punish me?” There was no reasoning with him.
Yae may have instinctively treated deformation as impossible, but she was just as scared as anyone else of the gods of rivers and mountains and other mysterious beings feared since ancient times. She had been the same in her last life.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen, so wouldn’t it be better to not go charging into a dangerous place like that?” Yae said, looking to Sui for support. Unfortunately, he agreed with his brother.
“My brother and I will notice anything dangerous right away. We also have a good understanding of the mountain’s taboos, so there’s no need to worry.”
When Yae still showed reluctance despite Sui’s attempt to soothe her, Arai lost his patience and shifted into his golden tiger form. The Siddham script pattern on his forehead seemed to wriggle as if in irritation. “Hurry up and get on,” he said.
Sui lifted Yae up and put her on the golden tiger’s back. “Here’s my brother’s sword. Hold on to mine as well,” he said, forcing both of the swords onto her before transforming into his beast form, too. With Arai’s golden fur and Sui’s white fur, they truly did look like divine brothers.
The white tiger pressed his nose into Yae’s knees and began to walk at a sluggish pace. The golden tiger did so, too, with Yae on his back. She gave up her resistance and made a silent prayer. Please don’t let me get cursed. A great variety of things inhabited the mountains. Inhuman beings dwelled there just as humans did.
At first, Yae was gripped with fear as she rode the golden tiger, but when she felt the sunlight poking through the trees overhead, she began to think that maybe she could trust the two brothers. It seemed like Sui was telling the truth when he claimed they knew the taboos of the mountain. They made a number of decisions which seemed strange at first, such as making long detours, purposely passing through the same spot several times, and pestering Yae not to look one way or another.
The number of mysteriums increased dramatically when Mount Saeba came into view. Yae had never been to the west side of Mount Yagi. Villagers of Kaki Province rarely left the area where they were born and raised. Kaki Province had ownership over the south side of Mount Yagi, so people occasionally went there to hunt or sell crops, but they didn’t venture into the mountains beyond that. Mount Saeba, the majority of which was designated as forbidden land, belonged to the gods; people feared their wrath and didn’t go near it.
The tiger brothers were heading toward a valley on the west side with a wide river running through it. There were many cliffs, and steep rock faces dominated the view. Gold was once mined here, meaning the remains of mining tunnels were scattered about as well. But the resources had quickly been exhausted, and the mine had been closed and abandoned.
The presence of mining tunnels means there should have been a place of execution, too. Frequent cave-ins and fires made mining tunnels dangerous, so criminals provided the main labor force. It was always hard to remove the stench of death from such places. As a result, areas near mines were often treated as forbidden land. Being able to see Mount Saeba wasn’t the only reason people avoided this part of the mountain—it also hid a less-than-savory past.
Among the villagers, there were those who seriously believed that the darkness of night came from the mines. Furthermore, plants and animals grew to larger sizes in places that humans avoided or forgot, and the chance of deformation was greater. These considerations further encouraged people to keep their distance.
After running down an almost-vertical cliff, Arai and Sui came to an abrupt stop. Their fur rippled to show they were on edge. Seeing that made Yae nervous as well, and she looked ahead cautiously to see a long black shape through the gaps in the trees. Her first thought was that it was a caterpillar the size of a giant monster, but then she realized it was a mysterium—a locomotive engine.
“It’s okay. It’s not alive,” Yae said assuredly, and she patted the golden tiger on the head.
“I wasn’t scared,” he said indignantly, turning slightly to look at her.
“It surprised me,” the white tiger said, eyes sparkling, looking up at Yae on his brother’s back. She wanted to pet him, but she was afraid she would fall off Arai’s back if she reached out that far.
“The mysteriums in this area don’t have as many cracks or pieces missing,” Yae muttered as she fretfully waved her hands to shoo away a fly the size of a wasp. She felt like the insects had gotten slightly bigger along with the mysteriums.
“What’s that mysterium over there…? No way… It’s an instant noodle cup,” Yae said.
“Instant…noodle?” the white tiger repeated next to his brother, twitching his nose. Yae responded with a smile.
“It’s a container for a type of food… Wow, look at that one. That’s ginormous. I thought it was some kind of pillar, but it’s the remains of a toothbrush stuck into the ground.”
“Tooth brush…?”
“It’s for cleaning your teeth. That one over there looks like a coffee cup. Oh wow, is that a Matryoshka doll?”
“Co-fee cup. Matree…oshka doll.” The white tiger repeated Yae’s words with difficulty, twitching his whiskers up and down. It was an amusing sight, but he was perfectly serious. “Hmm… Be careful, Brother. There could be shades lurking around here. They like mysteriums.”
“And this is a mysterium graveyard,” the golden tiger muttered sarcastically as Yae caught sight of something red.
“Whoaaa!” she exclaimed after doing a double take.
“Wh-what is it, Yae?”
“Is it a shade?”
Her dramatic response startled the brothers, and they came to a halt with their ears straight up.
“Sorry, it’s not. I just saw something nostalgic and got excited,” she apologized. The mysterium she had found was a red can of soda that was so popular in her previous world that everyone on the planet would probably recognize it.
It was about the size of a two-story building. The part sunk into the ground had already begun petrifying, and there was a hole in the bottom large enough for an adult to walk through without crouching. It could probably be made into a house with some sprucing up. The side with the pull tab is facing down, so there would be no need to worry about the ceiling as long as there are no holes in the “bottom.”
The golden tiger glanced back at her as if he could hear her thoughts. “You like it, don’t you?”
“Y-yeah, I guess…,” she responded.
Arai trotted toward the can. There was a giant lidded glass bottle next to it that was the size of a storehouse.
The river is nearby, so maybe these mysteriums drifted down it and accumulated here.
Aside from the can, there was also a bowl, a porcelain savings box shaped like an animal, a mailbox knocked over on its side, and plenty of other mysteriums that could be used as houses among the trees. It felt like a small village could be built here.
“I’m going to look inside,” the white tiger said confidently, and he crept in through the hole in the can.
Yae got down from the golden tiger’s back and took a look around. She couldn’t sense any people there other than them, and she heard the pleasant chirping of wild birds. Sui emerged from the can almost immediately.
“There is an unspeakable amount of spiderwebs in there. I’m a horrible mess…,” he said miserably. His entire body was covered in webs. Yae smiled and began to brush them out of his fur. “There are traces that someone used to live inside it. They left some old things behind.”
“I wonder if there was a village here not long ago,” Yae conjectured.
The white tiger bobbed his left and right whiskers in an alternating pattern. “I don’t think so. You can see the entrance to a mining tunnel on the opposite cliff. The laborers might have used these as their temporary dwellings. The furniture inside is old and covered in dust. It looks like it hasn’t been touched by human hands for a number of years at least.”
“Could bandits have used it?” Arai asked after changing back into a person. Sui saw and followed his example.
Yae noted to herself that their human forms were gorgeous as well. They look so godlike. Or maybe I only think that because I know that’s what they used to be… Their beauty practically blinded her.
“I think the chance of that is low… But regardless, people haven’t been this way for some time,” Sui answered, still brushing spiderwebs out of his hair.
Yae began to think. If that was the case, she could use this as a temporary residence. As long as there were no shade, bandit, or beast attacks. But it’s not like I have anywhere else to go. If only I wasn’t Natureless, she thought fleetingly. If she had a Nature, she never would have been abandoned by the Miya Prefecture men. Most likely, at least.