Chapter 21: Look, it is Lord Laughing Prajna; we are saved!
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Uesugi Toru saw Tokugawa Ririko wipe the glistening droplet from the corner of her lips and asked in confusion, “Uesugi, why are you following me?”
For some reason, when the girl saw Toru suddenly appear, she thought of the new knowledge she had learned that morning.
Ririko instinctively took two steps back. With a strange expression, she waved both hands through the air. “Could it be that you want to do this or that to me?”
Splash, splash, splash.
Cool water gushed from the stainless-steel faucet.
After drinking his fill, Toru pursed his lips helplessly. “I came here to get a drink.”
As he spoke, he did not forget to turn off the faucet. His commitment to conserving water grew stronger every month when he saw the utility bills.
Ririko folded her arms and gave a derisive snort. “Oh, what a coincidence. You’ve managed to find the place with the best-tasting tap water in the entire school.”
“But since it’s you, Uesugi, I suppose I can reluctantly share this treasure with you.”
Toru stared at Ririko, who seemed to have become an entirely different person, and finally voiced the question that had been troubling him. “Does having more people around trigger your aloofness?”
“That’s right.”
Ririko nodded and put on a listless, bitter expression.
“If you’ve never experienced having your desk and shoe locker stuffed full of love letters, with people confessing to you both during lunch break and after school every single day, then you probably wouldn’t understand why I act this way.”
Toru was left speechless.
There was nothing wrong with high school students having plenty of energy, but this was taking things a little too far…
As she spoke, Ririko once again equipped herself with an attitude that kept everyone at arm’s length. She spread her hands coldly. “After doing this, the whole world becomes peaceful.”
Toru could not help applauding in admiration. “So this is the older generation’s mastery of knowing when to advance and when to retreat. I’m impressed.”
After their brief conversation ended, Ririko lowered her head and gazed at her reflection in the water.
“Uesugi, I think I understand that officer’s actions now.”
That officer… Sister Nanjo?
Ririko’s voice grew subdued. “For ordinary people, knowing too much really isn’t a good thing.”
Toru remembered the danger he had faced after learning that his father was an oni and sighed. “Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.”
“I think I need to apologize to her.”
“You’ll have the chance.”
After bidding Ririko farewell with a smile, Toru found a patch of grass bathed in sunlight and lay down on it. As for the teacher, Ririko would naturally deal with that problem.
He closed his eyes.
An enormous surge of water pressure struck him.
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The fresh scent of grass vanished in an instant, replaced by a choking stench of sulfur.
Silently transforming into the Laughing Hannya, Toru pushed open the door with practiced ease and hurried toward the workshop.
His original plan had been to eliminate the workshop apprentices one by one, making sure not to waste even a speck of Soul Ash, and then kill the foreman at the end.
But the incident at noon, when Shizuma Manatsu photographed the White Hannya, together with the Onmyo Bureau’s helplessness in the face of supernatural methods, kept reminding Toru of one thing—
There was not much time left.
Since every second mattered, he could no longer slowly scrape together the paltry amount of Soul Ash offered by the apprentices.
“Roar!”
Toru’s reckless progress naturally attracted the attention of the farmers by the roadside. The moment one of them saw his Western-style uniform, it charged toward him like a madman.
“Fool.”
Toru snorted coldly, and a woodcutter’s axe appeared in his hand from thin air.
His footsteps did not falter in the slightest. He merely drew a deep breath, gathering the energy within his body until it reached its limit, then released it in a thunderous burst.
A rust-stained flash of steel flickered and vanished.
Gurgle.
The farmer’s head fell at the same moment as Toru’s departing footsteps, kicking up a little insignificant dust.
Soul Ash +5.
Before long, Toru reached the spot where he had previously observed the workshop.
It was clearly much earlier than the last time he had visited. There was no sign of the twin moons in the sky, yet the rumbling sound of machinery turning still came from within the workshop.
After straightening his clothes beside the stream and finding no flaws in his appearance, Toru strode openly toward the operating workshop.
When he reached the entrance, he was surprised to find that although all the apprentices had noticed his presence, not one of them dared leave their station.
He called out loudly, “Bring your person in charge here.”
None of the apprentices answered him, but less than two minutes later, the foreman Toru had seen earlier through the eyes of the Dodomeki hurried toward the entrance.
The change in the foreman’s expression was fascinating.
The instant he saw Toru’s Western-style clothing, his face became furious and ferocious. But when he saw the Laughing Hannya mask, that expression transformed into an excess of warmth.
“Mr. Laughing Hannya, greetings.”
The foreman approached with a broad smile and extended both hands toward Toru. “May I ask what brings you to our humble—”
Toru saw the thick yellow mist above the man’s head, but did not attack immediately. Instead, he asked, “I’ve noticed that your workshop seems somewhat different from traditional workshops.”
“Yes, yes!” The foreman bent at the waist and let out a heavy sigh. “The foreign factories have exploited everyone for far too long. At the same time, they have been destroying the environment without regard for the consequences, to the point that the farmland around here has been polluted and ruined.”
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Toru fell into thought. This was proceeding in a direction completely different from what he had expected.
The foreman paused, a sharp gleam flashing in his eyes. “So I thought we should cultivate a group of craftsmen and laborers of our own—local workers who belong to us.”
“And then learn the techniques used on those production lines…”
Toru raised an eyebrow. “Learn from the foreigners in order to defeat the foreigners?”
The foreman was stunned for quite some time before he more or less grasped the meaning. He immediately nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean!”
Toru asked another question. “Would you mind speaking somewhere more privately?”
The foreman nodded and pointed toward an unoccupied forest nearby. “Of course.”
In the foreman’s eyes, a Hannya wearing Western clothing must have been an exceptionally talented student who had gone to the places where those factories originated and received further training.
Otherwise, how could a Hannya—creatures whose heads were supposedly filled with nothing but muscle—wear such clothes and behave with such refinement?
He was nothing like the White Hannya that had come to the village to recuperate not long ago. When the foreman had sent apprentices to make contact with it, the creature had swallowed them whole.
It was practically the embodiment of an uncivilized, bloodthirsty beast!
This one, by contrast, was fully dressed, mild in tone, and courteous in manner.
A flicker of hope rose in the foreman’s heart.
Perhaps this was their chance to drive away those foreign factories…
Once they entered the forest, Toru walked on without saying a word, while the foreman followed close beside him.
After several dozen seconds, Toru finally spoke. “Your workshop has some potential. Can you move it away from the village?”
The foreman shook his head. “We can’t. Neither the machines nor the apprentices could endure a long journey.”
“And besides, if even we leave, who will care about this desolate Arakawa Village in the future?”
Toru said nothing more.
The two of them continued walking, farther and farther away from the workshop.
Perhaps the silence had lasted too long, because the foreman took the initiative to start a conversation. He said indignantly, “Several apprentices went missing two days ago. It must have been the damned outsiders!”
At those words, Toru stopped walking.
They were now far enough from the workshop.
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