“What, you’re rude. We haven’t seen each other in a while…”
The god who didn’t want to meet her was a woman named Kirika Tanaka.
It wasn’t an atmosphere of rejection due to dislike.
Susanoo-god’s reaction was closer to fear.
The god was afraid.
With each step Kirika took, Susanoo gasped.
“You used to tease me when I was a little girl and play with me, didn’t you? Eh?”
It was clear who was in charge.
Her way of confronting him was completely like a punk.
“I… I, did something like that happen?”
As if he didn’t want to recall past interactions, Susanoo-god, who could be described as a mighty man, looked away.
If you looked closely, you could see cold sweat on his forehead.
“It did, it did. There was even a time when if the old Tengu hadn’t stopped me, you would have ruffled my hair so roughly that my neck would have come off.”
Something was being hidden.
The atmosphere conveyed that Kirika and Susanoo-god were acquainted to the extent that one could tell if something was wrong.
“…You knew each other?”
“Yes, this god seems reluctant to admit it, but I remember it very, very well. The memory of this male god doting on me, and the work he forced upon me.”
Given that there’s a combination of a person and a god, Kirie and Mimamori-shin, it’s not impossible.
However, there’s a decisive difference compared to Kirie and Mimamori-shin’s relationship.
While Kirie and Mimamori-shin have a good friendship or connection, Kirika and Susanoo-god’s relationship is one of discordant acquaintances.
Kirika, completely assertive against Susanoo-god, who had messed up.
Even Keiri and Minami could only watch the events unfold, as if Kirika was trying to draw everyone into her flow.
“Work?”
“Y-yes, work.”
Was this born from her maintaining a disrespectful attitude towards the god?
No, it wasn’t.
It was a talent that Jiro Tanaka possessed, the ability to control the atmosphere of a place.
It was a talent inherited from her mother.
Like mother, like daughter.
If so, conversely, if the child can control the situation, the parent can too.
Instead of revealing her cards one by one, Kirika undermined Susanoo-god’s momentum, as if accumulating power.
Her arrogant and insolent attitude, which had been present before, began to fade when Kirika appeared, and the word “work” spoken by Kirika, who wore a bright smile, was the deciding blow.
“Do you know? Mimamori-shin. Thanks to the work that your acquaintance, that god, forced upon me, I traveled all over the world? And I was a naive little girl. To the outside world, I was a missing child. I didn’t go to school much, and I was a girl with no money or power. This god carelessly pushed the work onto me, saying, ‘You can do it.’ He irresponsibly pushed the work onto me.”
Then, with a grin, she began her great exposé.
She signaled to Ichiro, whom she had brought with her, with her eyes. He nodded obediently, unlocked the trunk case, and opened it.
“Here, I’ve done the work as you wished. It’s a report on adjusting the ‘Dragon Veins,’ specifically the flow that enters Takamagahara.”
There lay the report.
It spanned over thirty years.
That’s not time that a human can easily consume.
And then, as if to show it off to Susanoo-god, she pushed forward the stack of papers.
“You! You made her, a human, do this!?”
“N-no, I, I…”
Mimamori-shin, who had witnessed something unbelievable, scrambled to pick up the stack of papers.
And as he read the contents, he recognized that Kirika had indeed been adjusting the Dragon Veins, something that was like a lifeline for gods.
He also knew that the god before him was their original caretaker.
“That’s where you lose. In front of a god, a human’s lie is easily exposed. No matter how masterful your poker face, no matter how skilled you are at controlling your heartbeat, or even an abnormal person who can freely manipulate sweat, a human’s lie is insignificant before a god who can read souls.”
Furthermore, it was proven that Kirika was not lying.
No matter how she tried to explain it, the god himself would prove that Kirika’s words were the truth.
Kirika, pointing her index finger and laughing like calling “Doubt,” and Mimamori-shin, whose shoulders were trembling.
“You damn NEET!!!”
His anger erupted, crushing the report in his grip, and he lunged at Susanoo-god with the barely unbroken report in hand.
“You! You told Amaterasu-sama you’d do it properly and that would be the end of it, so you’re allowed to live in Takamagahara as a compassionate gesture, right?! Because it’s hard to live in the outside world where divinity has thinned, you were forced, truly forced, reluctantly, and Amaterasu-sama had to bow her head to various people!”
The scene of the girl confronting the grown man was, at first glance, like a child throwing a tantrum, but the content was purely a lecture.
Susanoo-god looked in the opposite direction, pretending not to hear.
There was no sign of remorse.
It was obvious to anyone.
Mimamori-shin, whose patience had long run out, didn’t notice.
“It’s fine, it’s finished properly, and if the result is good, then everything is good.”
In the end, he even brazenly argued that it didn’t matter now that he’d been found out.
He found the lecture troublesome.
He also glared at Kirika, blaming her for revealing such troublesome things.
“Oh, really? Really? So that’s the kind of attitude you’re going to take?”
If that’s the attitude you’re going to take, then there’s no more mercy. Something clicked inside Kirika.
“Ah.”
She snapped.
The first person to sense it was Minami, who often got scolded or lectured.
Having a terrible premonition, she quietly took a step back.
Next to notice was her sister, Kirie, who let out a quiet sigh and shook her head.
And then.
“Then, you can do the final adjustment of the Dragon Veins yourself. It’s alright, it’s alright, you still have three days left, and you can find out where they are by running around the world. Well, if this isn’t done in time, all the Dragon Vein flows will change and won’t flow here.”
She threw a colossal bomb.
“Haa!? You said it was over just now!!”
Only Susanoo-god, who had pushed the work onto her, panicked at the bomb.
“I said I did the adjustments, but I didn’t say I finished. I had a bad feeling, so I left the final adjustment. Oh my, I think I’ve thrown away work that I bet my life on.”
Towards Susanoo-god, who was now sweating profusely, far more than before, Kirika smiled a crescent moon smile.
“Haa!? Then finish it to the end!!”
“I don’t know. That’s outside the contract.”
The details of how Susanoo-god was entrusted with the important task of adjusting the Dragon Veins were not explained, but Kirika revealed that she was bound by a contract.
“The contract you forced me into was to adjust the Dragon Veins. It includes not letting them go berserk or collapse, but it doesn’t say when to finish it.”
“Then you’re in trouble too!! Breaking the contract with me means breaking a contract with a god. If that happens, you won’t get away with it lightly!!”
“That’s why, the contract you mentioned only said not to let them go berserk or collapse, but I said that stopping the flow is outside the contract.”
And she knew the details of that contract thoroughly.
“Ah.”
She wasn’t just busy adjusting the Dragon Veins for decades for nothing.
Her going to the frontier with Ichiro was because there was an important flow of Dragon Veins there.
Since adjusting those Dragon Veins, which was an impossible task for ordinary people, was possible for Kirika, whose magic aptitude was of Demon Lord class, she naturally learned to grasp its structure.
If so, it was not impossible for her to set a trap that would serve as the signal for retaliation, without violating the contract while doing the assigned work.
A god, even a “damn NEET.”
He wouldn’t forget the contract he had made, and he belatedly realized there was a loophole in the fine print of the contract.
“It’s too late to realize it now. The terms of the contract we made don’t include a clause about not stopping the Dragon Vein flow into this Takamagahara. It’s probably based on the idea that humans can’t stop the Dragon Vein flow, but well, it’s not impossible to redirect the Dragon Veins into another flow while maintaining their normal flow through continuous fine adjustments.”
Kirika grinned, having performed a feat that could have led to collapse if she failed.
However, her eyes held no positive emotions like joy or pleasure.
“Well, what are you going to do? If this continues, the Dragon Veins flowing into Takamagahara will stop in three days. Then, you, who were entrusted with managing and adjusting them, will be held responsible. I wonder what divine punishment will befall you then?”
No, she also exuded an atmosphere of enjoying tormenting the god a little, but that wasn’t her main intention.
“I-I can adjust it now, can’t I!! Three days is enough time for that!!”
“Where are you going to adjust it? I’ve submitted reports for the places that are finished, but I haven’t submitted any for the places that aren’t finished!”
Kirika stopped Susanoo-god, who was about to rush out of Takamagahara, as if bluffing.
“If you teach me.”
“I refuse.”
She directly confronted him with her refusal.
She could do this because she understood that Susanoo-god could not lay a hand on her.
“Are you defying me!!”
“Do I look like a woman who would obediently follow you?”
His anger flared, and he reached for the hilt of his sword, but the blade did not appear from its sheath.
“Besides, you can’t harm me. That’s what the contract says. It’s a contract you made, isn’t it? Until the contract is fulfilled, you guarantee my safety. That’s the protection.”
The god who had conferred his divine protection was now being strangled by his own protection.
It would be possible for the god to unilaterally abandon a contract between a human and a god.
However.
“A contract is a contract. It’s a contract involving a third party, the Great Tengu, acting as an intermediary. It cannot be broken.”
That’s if it were a contract directly between Susanoo-god and Kirika.
The contract that was actually made involved a third party.
Meaning, to nullify this contract, that third party must be involved.
“Now, now, what will you do? I can simply go on another journey to adjust the Dragon Veins, betting my life on it. But what will happen to you?”
That restriction threatened Susanoo-god’s position.
The god, unable to do anything but grunt, was confronted by Kirika, who took another step forward.
It was a posture of looking up, at the distance where Susanoo-god could easily blow Kirika away with a horizontal sweep of his arm.
“Now, I’ll ask you again. From what position are you taking that attitude?”
Despite looking up, Kirika declared herself to be in the superior position, puffing out her chest.
Susanoo-god grimaced with a face full of humiliation.
“…What is your objective.”
And with a voice like a strained whisper, Susanoo-god threw in the towel and surrendered to Kirika.
In response, Kirika beamed.
“Nothing much, it’s your specialty. Just fight a bit with the Sun God from another world.”
She brought up the main issue for her son, who was fighting for his life.
Today’s Word: In human relationships, you will encounter people you dislike.
Thank you for your usual feedback and reports of typos. If you find it interesting, please leave comments, ratings, and bookmarks. I’m currently serializing another work: Pandora Pandemic Panic. We’re fighting back with various things in our secret base and the like!! Please check that out too!!
