Part 2
The population distribution of Tokyo changed greatly in a brief span as it welcomed the new year.
The business district and most of the commercial streets were deserted, and on the other hand, the residential areas were more packed than usual, and shrines and their surroundings buzzed noisily with a large number of people. The flow of people was also unlike normal. Because it was a city, the number of people moving around didn't change by too much, but their routes and times were greatly different from normal.
The locations and change in actions of these people were also related to the spiritual aspect of the city of Tokyo. This was also because of the aura that every human more or less carried. Hence, the movements of large amounts of people would have an effect on the spirit flow that pumped through the ground - though temporary. A 'change' in the movement of people would create 'disorder' in the spirit flow.
The disorder of the spirit flow was linked with aura imbalance, and aura imbalance would give rise to spiritual disasters if it became serious. But because it knew of these tendencies, the Onmyou Agency had prepared countermeasures beforehand. It was a demonic aura purification that they performed every New Year. A large-scale magic ceremony with the goal of stabilizing the aura inside Tokyo.
The demonic aura purification would be carried out on the first days of the seasons along with New Year's Day. Even among these, the ceremony held on New Year's was the largest. The ceremony would continue until the last moment before the new year arrived, and the time from then until afternoon the next day would be occupied by the cleanup afterwards. The New Year's vacation would follow right afterwards. In other words, the Onmyou Agency's normal duties - other than those of the Exorcist Bureau responsible for purifying spiritual disasters - would mostly halt around New Year's.
"Well, the Onmyou Agency's also a 'government agency'."
It was Tsuchimikado Takahiro, who had once belonged to the Onmyou Agency Mystical Crime Investigation Department himself, who said this.
In any case, to the fugitive Tsuchimikado clan, the New Year was a great opportunity when the Onmyou Agency's manpower resources were shifted to the demonic aura purification. They had carefully hidden their traces and succeeded in slipping into Tokyo.
The Tsuchimikado family head Yasuzumi. Takahiro and his wife Chizuru of the branch family. Natsume. Also, Souma Akino who had moved together with them after the 'dark temple' Seishuku Temple had been destroyed, for a total of five people.
The stronghold they had selected wasn't in the western district. Rather, it was western Kichijoji [1] . Moreover, it was an old private home away from the station.
"It's a house managed by an 'acquaintance' of an 'acquaintance', but it seems that their renovation plans stopped, so it's become an empty house for the year. They left right after the renovation plans were decided, so we can borrow it without worry."
"......Though you say that, those two 'acquaintances' have their own hidden secrets, right?"
"No one in this world has no secrets."
Takahiro casually waved away his wife's accusation while announcing their new hiding place.
It was Natsume's first time experiencing a 'nuclear family'.
This was a two-floor wooden building. Allegedly, it had been built more than fifty years ago, and it could accidentally be mistaken for an abandoned building from its external appearance, so no wonder they had decided to renovate it. A small courtyard was built into it, but it was barren inside. It was a marvel that there was running water and electricity.
Chizuru shook her head, dumbfounded:
"We're going to have to clean up first."
With that, the Tsuchimikado family began an early spring cleaning in the beginning of the first month.
If they used shikigami, it would save trouble with their work, but they were fugitives right now after all, so they wanted to use as little non-stealth first-class magic as possible. Of course, they couldn't call on any relevant professionals, as they wanted to avoid attention from nearby residents if at all possible. With that, all they could do to avoid others' attention was secretly do it by themselves.
As a result, the cleaning that accompanied their moving in took two whole days.
"Honestly, it would be a waste if we have to move locations right away again."
Though Chizuru muttered that, she had deliberately rectified the living environment because they were anticipating that they would keep this hiding place for a long time - at least, it wouldn't end in a few days.
Though it had been an event from last year, the Tsuchimikado family had suffered an attack from the Onmyou Agency higher-ups trying to take back the Raven's Wing. As a result, the Raven's Wing had been stolen and the main family residence had been completely burned down. Since then, Yasuzumi and the others had moved around, continuously living fugitive lives. They had constantly been hiding in local cities since Harutora had lost control and taken Natsume back from Tokyo. That was because it was a bit harder for the Onmyou Agency to monitor things away from Tokyo.
But this year, they had slipped into Tokyo at the Onmyou Agency's doorstep. This was basically a decision made by Yasuzumi's divination. He had predicted that there would be huge movements in Tokyo in the near future, and they had braved danger and come to Tokyo in order to be able to deal with the situation. In other words, it had been predestined that they would be living in this house until the 'huge movement' that Yasuzumi predicted happened.
Of course, if the Onmyou Agency learned of this, they would have to change locations immediately.
"Anyway, we'll end here today. Let's eat. There's no gas here, so we'll use a grill in the courtyard."
It was Chizuru's style to never be lacking in food everyday even if they were living a fugitive life. Today's dinner was on a charcoal grill. Natsume and Akino brought cardboard boxes to the courtyard to use as chairs, Takahiro sat on the porch, and Chizuru headed over to light the grill.
The sun set rather early in this season, and it was already dim around. It seemed like dining in the courtyard would leave an impression on the neighbors, but fortunately, the courtyard faced a wall of a nearby warehouse. Hence, they were in a particularly cluttered area. But in these circumstances, they wouldn't be seen by those around them, so it was very convenient.
"Where's Yasuzumi?"
"He's on the second floor looking around. I already called him anyway, he'll only come after he's done."
"He does whatever he wants, huh. Well, we've known that. ...Ah, Natsume-chan, Akino-chan, I'll leave the chopsticks and plates to you."
"Okay."
"O-O-Okay."
Following Chizuru's instructions, Natsume and Akino helped to carry out the dinner's preparation work.
Akino was very happy when she heard it was mealtime. Natsume couldn't help but smile at that Akino. Their new resident since last winter always loved to eat. Though she herself denied making it, her blissful expression while eating had even been teased by Takahiro and Chizuru before.
Natsume was currently eighteen. On the other hand, Akino seemed to be unclear about her actual age. It was because she had been left at Seishuku Temple while still a baby. However, she had said 'probably twelve or thirteen'. She was as tall as Natsume, and her face was still childish. Similar to how Natsume tied up her long black hair with a pink ribbon, Akino tied her hair into two pigtails. She wore slightly large glasses and looked like a rather timid girl.
No, she didn't 'look like' one, she was actually very timid. She was always cautious, soft-spoken, and didn't voice her opinion. She was shy and didn't have much confidence in herself, and hence her self-esteem seemed to have unconsciously become low. After all, Akino's living environment until now had been extremely peculiar, and she also possessed a peculiar spiritual nature. Because of that, she had become withdrawn and counted as a helpless case on some level.
Recently, she had stopped adopting her cautious attitude in their daily life, but that probably stemmed from Takahiro and Chizuru's clever communication abilities. Actually, it looked like it took all her effort to greet the reticent Yasuzumi. Maybe Yasuzumi currently hadn't shown his face at dinner out of a sort of goodwill, to keep Akino from feeling tense.
"I'm thinking today's dinner will be a barbeque. Anyway, grill and eat as much as you want."
"Your best dish, honey."
"Oh my, dear, what did you say?"
"No, no, the fire's masterfully done as always."
Takahiro with a composed smile and Chizuru going "Right?" with a smile of warning. Takahiro was a large man who resembled a wrestler, but he carried a gentle atmosphere that made one associate him with a huge herbivore. In contrast to him, Chizuru was small and lively, like a carnivorous hunting feline. They were a starkly-contrasting yet well-matched pair of spouses.
"Then, Akino-chan, what do you want to eat? I'll help get it for you."
"U-Um, meat!"
"Hoho, you're as straightforward as always when it comes to food."
"Eh?"
"Because Akino's interests are eighty percent focused on meals."
"T-That's not true, you know? There are other things like...... W-Well, then I'll start with vegetables......"
Akino's face was so sad when she proposed this that Natsume couldn't help but laugh out loud as she sat next to her.
"It's alright, Akino. Auntie said to eat as much as you wanted, right? Here."
She placed beef on the grill's grid. Akino's face immediately lit up. That straightforward readiness and carefreeness was part of Akino's adorable personality.
Akino stared at the beef on the grid. Smiling wryly at how serious she was, Chizuru also started grilling the cut ingredients with a happy expression. "Natsume, do you want some too?" Chizuru spoke and Natsume answered with an "Okay". Takahiro planned on letting the children go first and still sat on the porch, casually drinking tea while looking at the female group surrounding the grill.
It was a scene like a true family. However, actually, not a single person of the five in the family were blood-related. Though Yasuzumi and Takahiro were both Tsuchimikado family members, the Tsuchimikado main and branch families had allegedly been separated for a long time. Maybe they could be called relatives, but they weren't really blood relatives.
A traditional Onmyoudou family. The Tsuchimikado that had been famous since ancient history.
But they were actually like this. It felt empty - but that said, it was unavoidable that she would find it unusual.
A bashful smile surfaced on Akino and she carefully used her chopsticks to turn over the beef on the grid several times. "That's poor manners, you know." Even though she reproached that, Chizuru still arranged chicken on it. It was bitingly cold oustide, but the crackling charcoal grill and the familiar people surrounding it warmed her heart and body.
"............"
Natsume raised her head to look at the second floor of the house. Light shone out of the second-floor glass windows. The lights that Yasuzumi had turned on.
She suddenly remembered her origins.
Natsume had been raised as the heir to the Tsuchimikado. As the son of the current head Tsuchimikado Yasuzumi.
However, Yasuzumi's true child was Harutora and not Natsume. Then where had Natsume been born? Who were her true parents?
When Harutora left and Yasuzumi came to welcome Natsume, her adoptive father had told her the answer himself before she opened her mouth.
"Natsume, do you still remember the Wakasugi family?"
Yasuzumi had posed this question first. His calm, steady tone was just like always. Natsume nodded on the bed.
The Wakasugi family was the maiden family of Natsume's dead mother - or more accurately, her adoptive mother - Tsuchimikado Yuuko.
Like the Kurahashi, the Wakasugi family was an old branch family of the Tsuchimikado. It was a powerful traditional family on the level of the Kurahashi, and they had been even more influential with regard to the not-yet-declined main family during the Meiji period. But unlike the Kurahashi that assisted Tsuchimikado Yakou and the Tsuchimikado family in recreating and reviving the magic community, the Wakasugi family had stayed out of things. They chose to keep a distance from the central powers and meticulously guard the traditional systems. In the end, although they were fortunate enough to avoid the chaos of the Pacific War, they were overwhelmed by the waves of the era and gradually declined.
Tsuchimikado Yuuko, whose maiden name had been Wakasugi, had been born in that family.
Yuuko had died as a twenty-year-old woman after giving birth to Harutora. Allegedly, she had recovered poorly after the birth, but it seemed that she had been very frail to begin with. Naturally, Natsume - and perhaps Harutora as well - had no memories of her. She was a gentle woman, as her name implied [2] , that she had only seen in photographs in the residence. The child Natsume had once gazed patiently for several hours at the photographs she had left behind.
But the first person Natsume thought of when she heard 'Wakasugi' wasn't Tsuchimikado Yuuko, but rather her mother.
When Yuuko married Yasuzumi, her father had been near the end of his life. After her daughter died, her left-alone mother had often visited Yasuzumi's residence to help him, as he wasn't used to raising a child. The childhood Natsume had once admired her as the 'Wakasugi granny'. Though she had died of illness before Natsume reached elementary school, Natsume remembered what she had heard from the mother very clearly.
But......
"You aren't looking for comforting lies or vague explanations right now. Therefore, I'll speak plainly. Natsume, you were placed on the Wakasugi's doorsteps not long after you were born. That almost never happens anymore...... But such things happened in olden times. The Wakasugi family was very famous in that era as a traditional Onmyoudou family."
It would be a lie to say that she wasn't unsettled. In other words, she was an abandoned child.
Maybe Akino was also an example of this, but there weren't many examples of children being abandoned by their parents after displaying spiritual abilities. Such tendencies were particularly notable outside of those who were born in families related to magic for generations. Normally, talent as a practitioner was decided to a great extent by bloodline, but naturally there were also exceptions. That was where the 'receptacles' of practitioners with no positions, like the Seishuku Temple where Akino had been - and along with traditional families of magic - were effective. There was a history of that.
"You were dropped off several days after Yuuko died. The Wakasugi mother who noticed the child placed next to the entrance seemed to feel that you were the reincarnation of Yuuko. But she was already old. It was very difficult for her to raise you, but she didn't plan on entrusting you to an orphanage, so she spoke to me about it. Then...... When I saw you, a child the same age as the just-born Harutora, a thought flashed through my mind like electricity. Natsume, that was...... the matter of raising you as Harutora's substitute."
What Yasuzumi spoke of were things that she had half-anticipated. Even so, Natsume couldn't stop her body from trembling.
The world that she had so naturally lived in was slowly crumbling from pure words. What was this if not magic? The truth that Yasuzumi spoke of was a reconstruction of the world to Natsume. Out of everything she had experienced to this point, this was the cruelest and most merciless second-class magic.
Yasuzumi continued.
"The reasons for which I chose to do that are too complicated to explain right now. But what I can say is that I had no choice at the time. It wasn't just depression from the difficulty of raising a child alone as a man. I was overwhelmed by the special destiny that the child was burdened by - his final fate - because I couldn't completely anticipate it. I didn't know what the correct answer was or what to do as the head of the Tsuchimikado or as that child's father."
Yasuzumi remained calm as he said this. Perhaps he had understood for a long time that the day would come when he would finally confess the truth to Natsume.
"That's why I understood the thought that flashed through my mind after seeing you as divine intervention. Fortunately - perhaps it's wrong to say that, but Takahiro and Chizuru had been unable to have a child for a long time. Because I knew the two of them wanted a child, I decided to entrust Harutora to Takahiro and Chizuru...... And to raise you."
Yasuzumi's eyes looked straight at Natsume - but he spoke with a look as if gazing far away.
Hypothetically--
If Natsume's relationship with Yasuzumi had been extremely good since before, then the shock Natsume received might have been far more than her current unsettledness. After all, it was a confession from the man she has always trusted as her 'father' ever since birth. Maybe she would have been irreversibly hurt by the rebuilding of her world into a dissimilar dimension.
However, ironically, Natsume herself understood that the relationship between the two of them was indifferent and businesslike. Hence, Natsume could accept the truth that she heard as simple facts. Maybe Yasuzumi had only treated Natsume the way he had because he had considered this. Natsume couldn't speculate about his outstanding 'divination' ability.
Of course, she wasn't unaffected.
But her chat with Yasuzumi afterwards saved Natsume's 'heart'.
Just then, Natsume raised her body from where it lay on the bed. Yasuzumi didn't stop her this time.
"......One thing."
Natsume turned her face away and asked.
"Please tell me one thing...... Father, did you ever think of using me as 'Harutora-kun's substitute'?"
Even if she didn't look that way, she felt Yasuzumi's slightly shivering presence.
After a brief period of time, "......I can't say I didn't think that way." Yasuzumi replied.
The brief period of time until the moment he replied could be taken as proof that Yasuzumi was being truthful.
"But my primary goal wasn't to make you into Harutora's substitute. ......To be honest, it wasn't only Mother Wakasugi who felt that you were Yuuko's reincarnation. I was the same. She was smiling and coming to help the useless me who was terrified and stunned in front of fate. That's how I felt when Mother Wakasugi brought you."
Natsume turned her face towards Yasuzumi when she heard those words with such an uncharacteristic tone.
At that moment, a bitter, self-deprecating expression had surfaced on Yasuzumi's face. It was Natsume's first time seeing that expression. It wasn't an expression of the Tsuchimikado family head, nor one of her father. It was just the expression of a man expressing his feelings.
Then--
"Natsume."
Yasuzumi spoke in a flat voice.
"Would you carry the Tsuchimikado burden together with Harutora? When Harutora faces his own fate, will you be able to become his strength? The reason I raised you...... were those prayers."
Those words - desires - calmly and swiftly tinted Natsume's heart. The twisted world that had crumbled and been reconstructed inside of Natsume. The several cracks and voices that had formed in the middle of that world were filled and supported by them.
Of course, Yasuzumi's desire was a one-sided exhortation, that was probably the truth.
Even so, Natsume felt that she had been 'acknowledged' as a person when she heard Yasuzumi's confession. She wasn't purely being viewed as a being constructed for use as a replacement, but rather as a person who had been raised with the future in mind, entrusted with a desire.
Tsuchimikado Natsume had died once.
And then in that business hotel room where she couldn't even remember her own name, she had awakened - in multiple senses - to the world. She wasn't of the Tsuchimikado, but she was undoubtedly part of the Tsuchimikado family. Even if she wasn't Yasuzumi's daughter, she was a direct disciple of his.
"............"
By the time she noticed it, Natsume had already been staring at the second-floor window for a long time.
Just then--
"Natsume-chan? Are you not hungry?"
Chizuru's voice called Natsume back from her memories. Upon careful inspection, all of the food on the grid had been changed.
Akino was also sequentially adding salt, soy sauce, and miso and then eating the grilled food with so much momentum that it seemed she was unwilling to let the grill go. Natsume smiled while reaching out her own chopsticks. Even Natsume was hungry.
The fire of the grill crackled and warmed her hands and cheeks. Akino opened and shut her mouth while chewing a grilled year cake [3] . The aromatic smell of the fat dripping from the meat and the soy sauce sprinkled on the mushrooms made her nose itch.
No matter how shocking the truth placed in front of her was, she would feel hungry as time went by and meals would taste delicious. That was probably something to be extremely grateful for.
"......Ahh! Delicious!"
Akino looked enraptured, an ecstatic smile surfacing on her face. It was probably rare to see such a straightforwardly joyful expression. Chizuru, who had prepared the food, was also satisfied.
Possibly seeing that it was about time, Takahiro rose from the porch.
Suddenly--
"Right. Natsume, it's time for the incense again."
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