Chapter 544 – Episode 59. Because He’s a Teacher.
Before leaving, I called the Naruse residence once again. Also doesn’t answer the phone. Next, I called Naruse Shiyo’s father, and this time he answered.
-Who are you?
“Ah, this is Miss Naruse’s homeroom teacher, Ryuta Yamashiro. My classmates were worried that Ms. Naruse hadn’t been able to contact me for several days, so I contacted her. “Are you okay, Naruse-san?”
-… I see. Siyo is not feeling well right now… It’s a bit difficult to get in touch.
Does it hurt a lot? I wondered if the reasoning that Konoka Urabe and I had made was wrong, but there was still something about the way Naruse Koyou, Naruse Shiyo’s father, spoke that was a little annoying. It was a tone of voice that seemed to be trying to hide something, but also implicitly revealed the father’s grieving heart. It seemed clear that something had happened to Shiyo Naruse. I’ll definitely have to check.
“Then I would like to make a home visit. Is that possible today?”
-That… I’m in trouble, teacher.
“Okay. All right. “I’m sorry for asking an unreasonable request.”
I hung up the phone. Whether it was Naruse Koyou or the Naruse family itself, there was definitely something they were hiding. After hanging up the phone, I immediately called Terue Daigo.
-Mr. Yamashiro, what’s going on?
“Director, I have a favor to ask you.”
-Please?
“Yes, can I find out when the Naruse family’s female students entered St. Francis Girls’ Academy and when they graduated?”
-Yes? Students from the Naruse family?
From Daigo Terue’s perspective, it must be strange for me to suddenly ask for a strange request. But I had no choice but to check if my hypothesis was correct. Since the list of enrolled students and graduates is not confidential information, it is not information worth hiding, so we will let you know.
“Yes, I’m sorry for your inconvenience, but please ask.”
-All right. I will tell you about the students and graduates of our academy as it is not confidential information. Instead, we have to extract only the data from the Naruse family students, so it will take some time.
“Time is fine. Oh, and please check whether there is a daughter of the Naruse family among the students on next year’s admissions list.”
Since I have time to go to the Naruse residence anyway, I will organize the materials and send them to you in the meantime. After finishing my phone call with Terue Daigo, I first went home, changed my clothes, put on a bike helmet to roughly hide my identity, and then drove my folding bike and headed to the Naruse family’s mansion.
When the Naruse family residence on the hill looked small from afar, an email from Terue Daigo arrived. I stopped the bike for a moment and checked the email from Terue Daigo. In her email, Daigo Terue said, “It’s strange,” And an Excel table was attached, detailing the admissions and graduations of the female students from the Naruse family that I had requested.
The total number of Naruse family daughters admitted over 160 years was 82. 47 people graduated… Graduation was too low compared to enrollment. Although there have been many events such as wars and earthquakes over the past 160 years, I thought that the small number of graduates, which was almost half that of the number of students enrolled, was correct.
Based on Shiyo Naruse, I began counting the students who graduated, died, or disappeared in the year immediately before Shiyo Naruse entered school, as well as students who graduated, died, or disappeared just before Shiyo Naruse entered school again. There were 30 people in total. Most of them died or went missing in their third year of high school or a little earlier, in their second year of high school, just before they became adults, and the very next year, a new daughter of the Narusega family entered school.〈 Br〉
The Naruse family was enrolling female students who would die or disappear every six years. These were the seals that Konoka Urabe had talked to, or the students who had a very high potential for wealth. Of course, there were daughters of the Naruse family who did not overlap with this cycle, but it was not strange because there were ordinary daughters of the Naruse family who were not sacrifices or seals. The Naruse family has maintained the family’s glory by sacrificing its daughters for hundreds of years, perhaps more.
At the end of the email sent by Daigo Terue was the name of the Naruse family’s next year’s student at St. Francis Girls’ Academy. Minori Naruse (成瀬実祈)… Perhaps this child is the new sacrifice.
Rena Sakagami should be safe… Normally, there would be no worries, but the Naruse family is an onmyoji family. I was quite worried because I didn’t know what kind of trick Rena Sakagami would get into.
The Naruse family’s mansion was quite far away. And since there was nothing around, and it was built on a small hill, even if someone approached, they could easily find it, so it was difficult to approach, but it must have obscured their face as well. I decided to just take a staged approach. Since I have regenerative power and telekinetic defense, there won’t be many people who can harm me.
I rode the folding bike and rode along the road connected to the Naruse family’s main gate.
-Stop! Stop! The road you are currently running on is the private property of the Naruse family. Any further entry will be considered trespassing! Stop!
Someone shouted at me, but I didn’t care. As I continued running without pretending to hear the announcement, the guards tried to block my path with a hail of bullets. They’re trying to kill someone just because they ignored a stop sign. They think this is America. I didn’t need protection, but the folding bike I was riding needed protection, so I ran with the telekinesis shield on. A ticking sound was heard and bullets from the enemy’s submachine guns bounced off.
“Open the gate!”
I shouted and used Shadow Control and Abyss to coat the telekinetic reaction shield. It got dark for a moment, but it was all to destroy the main gate blocking my path. I became my own siege weapon and ran, destroying the main gate of the Naruse family mansion and entering the mansion.
“What are you!”
“Do you want to die?”
It seemed like they had some kind of belief, but when they saw me come in unscathed after destroying the main gate, the guards were pointing their guns and swearing. Of course, it didn’t really hit home because it was a Japanese swear word like “Pagaya”. At least you had to listen to Korean swear words with a lot of doubles or English swear words full of the letter F to make you feel like you were swearing, but it wasn’t even this much swearing.
“I’ll just leave if you give me back the ninja you have with me.”
Still, since I was a guest, I explained my purpose for coming. I couldn’t just kill them all, so I thought that if I spoke kindly(?) Like this, they would understand.
“What bullshit? Kill it!”
When the guard, who appeared to be the leader, ignored my words and gave orders, fire flashed from the muzzle and bullets flew at me.
Looking at the flying bullet, he stretched out his palm and stopped it in the air with telekinesis. Everyone stopped shooting because they were so surprised that it looked like something out of a movie.
“Say it again. If you give me back the ninja you have with me, I will leave. Or not… “Everyone will die.”
In fact, I thought the guards were innocent, but when I looked at the damn Naruse family, who sacrificed a girl every six years, I felt like they weren’t innocent at all. They shoot people just because they approach the mansion. As life was slowly getting better, the guard captain came out.
“Now, just wait a moment… !”
His attitude was quite servile considering he had just ordered me to be killed, but he decided to wait for a while as the guard captain said. It’s likely that Rena Sakagami is being held by someone other than security, so she’s reporting there.
“He has permitted you to enter the mansion. Please follow me.”
The security commander began to guide me politely as if the swearing and shooting at me had never happened.
Naruse Mansion was a well-built mansion in Western style. It looked like it was probably built during the Japanese Empire, but it felt old-fashioned but not out of place. As I walked slowly and looked around for a while, I saw a man drinking tea on the lawn. The man looked at me, smiled, and stood up.
“Hello?”
A bespectacled man wearing a gariginu (traditional Japanese clothing with slits at the beginning of the sleeves) worn by onmyoji in manga and animation greeted me with a gentle expression.
“My name is Kinji Naruse. Do you know?”
When I checked the information in the morning, I saw that Naruse Kinji was the first son of Naruse Hirohide, the head of the Naruse family. Despite this man, Hirohide Naruse adopted Shiyo Naruse’s father. It was clear that this man, like Naruse Hirohide, knew about Narusega’s dirty side and contributed to it.
“Your name doesn’t matter, I just need to take the ninja who came here.”
Because the priority was to rescue Rena Sakagami, I kept repeating the words to give the ninja, like Kim Doo-han, who kept shouting for 4 dollars.
“Well. Whether you or a ninja, from our perspective, you are an intruder. But if you pass my test, I will give you back the female ninja.”
He never said she was a woman, but seeing as she was a female ninja, it seemed certain that Rena Sakagami was caught.
“What is the test?”
“Defeat my shikigami. “Isn’t it very easy?”
It’s a food spirit… A monster or spirit creature that moves under the orders of an onmyoji was called a food spirit. I remember there was a shikigami tree in the summoning build. Perhaps because it is a cyberpunk world where monsters are difficult to appear, they were not visible in the game. It may be that a specific lineage is required, or it may not be visible because Korea or the United States is the main stage.
“Can I kill you?”
“It doesn’t matter. If they lose, they too will be killed by my food spirits.”
Ginji Naruse spoke as if I was the one who was going to die. I thought it was because he didn’t know me very well, but his attitude was a bit unpleasant.
“Tetsuki, take care of this intruder.”
As soon as Ginji Naruse finished speaking, the air opened and a monster with metallic skin appeared and swung her claws at me.
The telekinetic reaction shield that I had been unconsciously exercising was torn, and sharp claws came right in front of my eyes. I tilted my head back and dodged the claws. Although his proficiency with the telekinesis shield is still low, he seemed to be a very difficult enemy to deal with, as he was able to rip apart the telekinetic reaction shield, which even blocks bullets, with a single blow. I glanced at Ginji Naruse and saw that he was still watching our fight with interest, with that gentle smile on his face. A bit unlucky, that guy.
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