“Anyway, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did after we dragged you into our province’s mess. I don’t mean to suggest this makes up for everything, but I have brought you gifts in apology. Please accept them,” Hotaru said. There was a wagon behind him packed with wicker cases.
Yae was unsure of how to respond. What she truly wanted to say was that she didn’t need their thanks and no longer wanted anything to do with them. It was to communicate that very notion that she and the brothers had left Miya Province and returned to Shishina without saying good-bye to anyone. She had been polishing the comb every day and was making progress removing the black stains. Once it was clean, she was planning on asking Sui to help her repair it. He was skilled with that kind of thing.
Despite her wish to be left alone, however, Hotaru had arrived that afternoon with a horse-drawn wagon. He had come alone.
“We are sending a replacement for the young man sent to marry in Kaki Province… The chief there agreed to conceal the reason for this disaster. Fortunately, there was no real damage over there. If the truth came to light, Gentle Natures would grow even more uneasy around Wild Natures. He said he wanted to avoid that.”
“He would say that. Sounds good to me.”
“You’re okay with that, too, Dr. Yae?” It was embarrassing having an older person, and an elder no less, call her “doctor.” “Then if you can find it in yourself to forgive us, how about moving to Miya Province for real this time?”
“Uh, I don’t…” She was about to say I don’t think so but was interrupted when the tiger brothers, who had been sitting calmly at her feet this whole time, bristled their tails and roared. Yae and Hotaru were sitting on a bench outside the Can House. The interior of the house was unfinished and not ready for visitors.
“The chief of Kaki Province was very worried about you, Dr. Yae,” Hotaru informed her.
“I’m grateful for that, but…” Yae smiled. She was now able to accept those words wholeheartedly. “I’m going to live here. I want to live freely from now on.”
“Freely?” Hotaru repeated, inclining his head.
“I never really felt like I belonged in Kaki Province, either—though I now realize that was largely due to my own self-doubt… Anyway, I’ve been through a lot, and I feel like even if I return home, or move to Miya Province, I’ll always be treated like an outsider… I don’t want to live in either one!” Yae exclaimed, feeling liberated as she expressed her true feelings.
She didn’t need to be liked by everyone. She wanted to try prioritizing her own feelings, even if she disappointed people or made them dislike her in the process. That was her current state of mind. She still had some weakness left, but she believed she had made a little progress.
I found something I want to do, too. It made her happy to have people tell her thank you. Those words led to the smiles she had always wished to see. I should give this doctor thing a shot. The thought filled her heart with energy.
“I finally realized that if you don’t have a place to belong, you can make one for yourself. So I’m staying right here,” Yae declared. She was convinced that would be the end of their discussion, but Hotaru showed no sign of leaving.
“Really? That’s too bad,” he replied with a face that didn’t show much genuine disappointment. He picked up a package he had set aside and brought it to his lap. It contained what looked like an old notebook. The cover had a pattern of red and black plum blossoms.
“…Is that a seal book?” Yae muttered to herself, and Hotaru smiled cheerfully. The smile would have captivated her if she had been into older men, but instead she felt a chill.
“I’m impressed. Yes, this is apparently something called a seal book. It has been passed down in my family for generations.”
“…Huh,” she responded warily. Arai and Sui reacted with significantly more interest, and they suddenly resumed their human forms to peer at the book.
“What’s this…? Doesn’t it look familiar?” Arai asked.
“It does, Brother,” Sui responded.
It should, Yae thought. A seal book was a book used by visitors of temples and shrines in Japan to collect seal stamps. If they were truly well-known gods, then people very likely visited their shrine to receive a stamp with their name.
“The ink has blurred too much to read it, though,” Arai said.
“Or rather, the words are losing their shape as the book loses its meaning,” Sui added.
Hotaru smiled at the brothers’ analysis. Yae had an increasingly bad feeling about this.
“A story has been passed down from my ancestors… A group of people once calmed unruly beings from another land by using this notebook to write down the names and locations of gods. It is said that those people were the ancestors of each country’s Great Protector,” said Hotaru.
“Really?”
“And?”
Curiosity seeped from Arai and Sui as they urged him to continue. Yae tried to sneak away, but the brothers grabbed her shoulders from either side.
“Unfortunately, there is no longer anyone left who can read these characters, and the book has lost its meaning. The mysteriums have increased in size over time, and even the sealed, unruly beings have transformed,” Hotaru explained, his face serious. “Ceremonies remain in each land, but the number of people performing them has decreased. It is said that impurities and fallen gods have come to roam the world in great numbers. I think this may be the cause of the increase in deformation in recent years.”
“I’m sorry, but what does any of that have to do with me?” Yae asked stiffly, worried about where this was going.
“Someone needs to use this notebook to find the transformed beings, pacify them, and rewrite their names. That will do the land a great service. Unlike other shades and fallen gods, their power is too great. They cannot be left unchecked,” Hotaru answered her.
“…Wow. Sure sounds difficult.”
“I had planned to find and seal them myself, but this recent deformation has left me weak…”
“You look totally fine to me.”
Hotaru smiled and pressed the notebook into Yae’s hands. She tried to push it back, but he forced her fingers around it.
“I’m not asking you to do it for free. I will give you all the support I can. If you need extra men, I have a few young candidates I can send your way,” Hotaru offered. Yae had a feeling she knew who he would send.
“I’m good.” She rejected the offer. She was now able to tell people openly when she didn’t want something. But Hotaru didn’t falter.
“I am not trying to force a burden onto you. Honestly, this isn’t really about you, Dr. Yae. I just thought it would be best to entrust this to those two.”
“Arai and Sui?”
“They are not ordinary elebeasts, are they?”
Yae was startled by the question, and Arai stole the seal book from her hands. “…My family might be in here,” he said.
“Our family?” Sui asked.
Yae wanted to groan. This was getting bad. She wouldn’t be able to ignore it if there was a chance that Arai and Sui’s family members were suffering. She had forgotten that Hotaru had divine power. He must have noticed that the brothers’ powers were unusual. If she accepted the notebook, however, she couldn’t help but feel she was going to have to kiss her quiet life in Shishina good-bye.
“Yae, you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. You come first in our hearts,” Sui assured her with a pained smile, and she felt the stubbornness in her heart begin to sway. She was way too much of a pushover…
“But Yae won’t be able to refuse. I know her personality too well,” Arai said with a smile, peering into her face. “Yae, can you do me a favor?” Her swaying heart filled with heat. “If you do, I might come to like humans…”
“Like I’d believe that!”
“If you don’t, I might curse them…”
“That’s horrible!”
Wait, what are these feelings? Please don’t give me that captivating smile. I really can’t handle it. Falling for a Wild-Natured man as a Natureless woman is way too rough a path for me.
“It’ll be fine, Dr. Yae. Let’s show those monsters what we’re made of!”
Shouldn’t he be saying Let’s heal the souls of the corrupted? After all, Yae was a doctor specializing in deformation.