Kays Translations

Chapter 31 - A Town Called Machiyuwake

Being in elementary school means less time for training.

And just as I was thinking that, I briskly drowned out the thought.

This kind of thinking is probably why I didn't have many friends. ......

Looking back, I think that in my previous life, I had only superficial, casual friendships.

It's not that I didn't have any friends.

But after I graduated, the relationships mysteriously and spontaneously disappeared.

I was lucky that I managed to have friends I could talk to during breaks until high school, but the problem was college.

Yotomo (yo friends), I wasn’t only able to create relationships where I just said ‘Yo’. I'm not a member of any clubs, and I remember that I tried to limit my relationships to work-related ones at my part-time job. I wonder if this could be my bad dream.

Of course it can't be.

How could I have a friend? I hate it.

No, but since I've been reincarnated, why not?

I even have a friend my age, Aya-chan.

I want to make more human friends when I enter elementary school. Because this is my first attempt after coming here in this world.

How many friends should I make in elementary school?

A hundred is a bit too high, so let's go with about ten. Yes, ten is good.

"Itsuki, Hina. We’ll get off at the next stop.”

As I was thinking this, my mother called out to us, bringing me back to reality.

We were riding the Toei bus. We were on our way to a store to buy a school bag. Incidentally, we only had one car at home, and my father had used it to go to work, so we had to take the bus.

“Push it, Hina!”

With that, Hina pushed the stop button of the bright red bus.

A high pitched "pop" sound was heard and an announcement was made.

Come to think of it, I used to want to press that button when I was a kid too. I wonder why I always wanted to push that kind of button when I was little. I think I was rushing to press the button to call the waiter at a family restaurant or something.
"Itsuki. This way.”

“Yes."

Hina was being carried by my mother, so I had to get off the bus by her hand.

We decided to go to a store that my mother had checked out in advance.

The destination is not a department store, but a bag shop in town chosen by my mother. Mochi is for rice cakes. It was only a few days ago that I was told the theory that a bag is a bag shop, a theory that I may or may not understand.

Anyway, this may be the first time for us to do something like a normal family, with my sister holding my hand and me walking to the store. Basically, the only time we went out as a family was when we had an event such as "Shichi-Go-San" or when we had to go to work.

When I thought about it, I felt very strange, even though we were acting normally.

"Wow, Santa Claus! Nii-cha! Santa Claus is here!”

Hina said and pointed right in front of us.

We entered a shopping street on the way to the bag shop, and there we saw a townscape decorated for Christmas. A large Christmas tree stood in the center of the street, and Santa Claus stood in front of a store.

“It's really Santa Claus! Are there reindeer?”

“There are no reindeer! The reindeer are near the sled!”

“I see.”

I groaned in my heart as Hina told me.

Come to think of it, it's almost Christmas time.

I guess my sense of the season is a little off since I'm at home all the time. ......

Well, it's about a month before the "Shichi-Go-San," so it's about time.

“If you're a good girl, Santa Claus will come to you.”

“I'll be a good girl!!”

“And Itsuki too.”

“Hmm!”

What happened last year?

I think it was some kind of pack of assorted sweets or something that came......

No. is there something I want?

But it's all based on the premise of an internet connection, and since we don't have one, I inevitably have to ask for something else. And among them, the most childish thing would be sweets.

“What will Hina ask Santa for?”

"Not telling! I'll send him a letter!”

“To Santa Claus? Then, I'll have to buy a set of letters.”

My mother failed in her attempt to get what she wanted from Hina, but she was a master at recovering from her failure.  The way she returned to the front line was excellent.

And as I was admiring it in a strange way, the temperature dropped by 1 or 2 degrees Celsius.

"......?"

Why? I looked around to see what was going on.

There was a monster wearing thick winter clothes to withstand the cold, a knit cap on his head, and a muffler wrapped around his neck.

The face looked as if it had been formed by the darkness, with only one large eye staring intently at Hina.

“Oh…it’s delicious!』

It was a monster of the "first rank," judging from the fact that it wasn’t able to speak well.

I learned from my father the other day that a monster's intelligence and its "rank" are proportional to a certain degree. In other words, the higher the rank, the higher the intelligence.

However, this doesn’t apply to all monsters, and there are some monsters, such as the one that attacked Hina's house, who are of the second rank but have the same intelligence as a person. I also heard that you must be on your guard.

“I-I-I-I-I-I’m gonna get you!』

There's no way I'm going to let you do that.

The moment the monster's hand reached out, its arm disappeared.

The steel threads created by the ‘trait transformation: blade’ cut it off.

“Ah..?』

While tilting its neck, the monster’s heads fell off.

The scarf made the position of the neck clear, so it was easy to slice and save.

In the next moment, the monster dies and disappears in a black mist.

As I watched the wind carry it away, my mother asked curiously.

“What's wrong Itsuki?”

“No. Nothing.”

I shake my head and try to act natural.

My mother can’t fight and Hina is deeply traumatized by monsters.

It's not something I would bother to mention.

I answered with a smile, as if nothing had happened.

Well, in fact, nothing had happened, so there was no need to go out of my way to tell her.

With this in mind, I headed for the bag shop with my mother.

The school bags of today come in a variety of colors, but I asked my mother to choose a simple black one.

---------------------------------------

The mechanism by which monsters are generated is not well understood.

However, some of the exorcists have gathered statistics, and it seems that there is some correlation between population density and the number of "monsters" that appear.

So Tokyo is one of the world leading monster city.

However, nearly 90% of the monsters are of the first rank.

Therefore, the exorcists have formed a cooperative relationship with the police and are fighting to prevent ordinary people from being harmed.

“That’s a strange story, Soichiro."

“What's wrong, Renji?”

But they are in the suburbs. The two of them are in the countryside, about a two-hour drive from the city center.

They happened to be on the same assignment, and since both of them solved the problem early, they were looking for a nearby restaurant to have lunch together when Renji started a conversation.

“There were five monsters of the second rank and three of the third rank. That's a little too many for the suburbs, isn't it?”

"Oh, yes, that's right. Even though it's a local city, it's still too concentrated to go out on the same day.”

“Hey, Soichiro. Did you know? After Itsuki defeated that monster of the fifth rank, the number of monsters suddenly increased.”

Soichiro heard his words and replied, "Yes, that's right."

The reason he left for work without saying anything to Itsuki wasn’t because he was trying not to worry him. It was because he had suddenly received a call from work.

Since he was done, he would like to go home right now, but since Itsuki and his family had gone to buy school bags, Soichiro decided to have lunch with Renji, thinking that no one would be home if he got back now.

“I mean, Renji, are you trying to tell me that nothing is over yet?"

“Not only is it not over, but it could be the beginning.”

As I have said before, the mechanism of the generation of monsters is not well understood.

However, there are some things that are known to some extent.

One of them is that small monsters spontaneously begin to spring up as if caught by a big monster. It’s just like aftershocks of a big earthquake in the future.

“Hmmm......”

Hearing these words, Soichiro recalled the "Night Parade of One Hundred monsters" of the past.

And then he quietly replied.

“...... We just do what we have to do, no matter what happens."

That is the way of life of an exorcist.

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