Web of light. Part 1.2 chapter 16

"I'm raising it."

"Support."

"I'm doubling up!"

"Pass."

If the first game was marked by careful probing, in which Yokai and the schemer literally tore Rinko, who took a careless risk, to shreds, then the "real fun" went on! Kuzaki's emotions from the game were somewhat distorted by the fact that she would have to "shoot" anyway, it was not for nothing that the snake so confidently supported Kaname, who had outsmarted herself, and therefore, instead of closely following the games, she sat on pins and needles, giving false signals to her opponents. She had no doubt that she would lose, having assessed the class of the participants in the first game, and therefore she took risks, bluffed and mixed up the opponent's cards in every possible way, not on purpose — and therefore effectively.

Hiroe, who held her poker face perfectly, strained her abilities, trying to keep track of everything, including the card shirts. The problem is that the cards were new and the shirt was exactly the same, but mathematics in poker begins to solve more than the case when the game drags on. The brains of the short-haired girl literally overheated, pulling out limited capacities by nature itself, promising headaches and apathy for tomorrow. He'll survive!

And Shizuka was surprised to realize that she was losing! The fourth game, and the chips slowly flow over to the meanly calm Hiroe. It is necessary to bring the devil out of balance! Mizuchi lowered her eyelids, unfocusing her eyes into her favorite "drowned woman look," and slightly released her aura, trying to put pressure on her opponents. Of course, it was possible to stupidly "get into the brain," but an honest ayakashi would never do that. By overstepping other rules, you stop being yourself so much that you want to die later. Yes, she's been through that too.

The demon's aura captured the figures of the opposing girls with its edges, but instead of slightly disturbing people, it brought the opposite effect — Rinko did not feel anything at all.: "another amulet that doesn't work properly" the snake stated with longing, but the exact opposite story happened to Hiroe — she suddenly cheered up and even smiled, and magic and auras began to flow two orders of magnitude faster than into Rinko's amulet. The snake, who could not believe her senses, activated thermal vision and made sure that the brain of the shorn girl, working with a temperature almost half a degree higher than normal, was rapidly returning to normal, absorbing the parasitic manapot of the yokai. Moreover, she confidently started winning! Hiroe's oddities formed a big picture and gave a clear answer to how a little girl can be so strong. Hastily pulling her aura away from the strange couple, Mizuchi barely managed to win back her last black chip in the fifth game (initially, each had two). So, following the results of a fierce poker battle of five games, Shizuka turned out to be the loser, Kaname stayed with her own and Rinko suddenly turned out to be in the lead. That's it!

"Well, Rinko-chan, you won, and you should be the first to ask questions. The loser," Hiroe broke the thickening silence after the game and immediately switched hands.

"Er-er-er..." Kuzaki drawled, "Tell me some secret of yours, Shizuka. You are welcome."

"A secret?" Ayakashi narrowed her eyes merrily "It's easy! I'm not human, you know. I'm actually a spirit, and you call my people Yokai... Isn't it scary at all?" Mizuchi asked, looking at Rinko's satisfied face (hooray, Yuto's plan has worked!) and Hiroe's delighted, anticipating grin.

"Nah," the short-haired piggy snorted, "You're actually more human than many of my friends, who are clearly trying to degrade towards monkeys as soon as possible. And, I want to say, it would not hurt to prove your words."

Instead of answering, the Goddess of Rivers casually made a drop of water about the size of a soccer ball roll out of the shell and hung it in front of Kaname's nose.

"I believe it now!" she whispered in a strangled voice. You can understand as much as you want that you calculated everything correctly, but such a collision with something you don't believe in is shocking!

"Is that enough?" Mizuchi asked, and Rinko nodded and put one of the black chips aside. "By the way," Shizuka grinned, looking at Kaname's dipping and pulling brush into the levitating water, and sent a drop back into the sink.: washing pans and dirty knives — since she had to open up anyway, why not help the hostess? "You two are also unusual personalities, I can tell you. Hiroe, you too... mmm... You're not an ordinary person, and Rinko, you're a very unusual person. At least this is the first time I've seen this rarity on a human." And the snake pointed her finger at her bangs.

"And?!" Hiroe leaned forward.

"Spend a chip, it's all fair, you know!"

Hiroe and Rinko exchanged glances and simultaneously pulled out a black chip from their piles.

"I'll start with you, Hiroe-chan. You see, I've been wondering who you remind me of: those all-seeing eyes, those grins, the ability to literally read the owner's personality through things... an overloaded brain and the ability to make variable predictions, which manifested itself when you began to pull my mana. You felt my moves, right? You don't have one iota of mana in you, but the basic abilities of each clan, which gave them a decisive advantage in the fight against the Yokai, were originally non-magical. So Hiroe Kaname, how far can you trace your family?"

"Before Grandma," Hiroe replied, involuntarily overwhelmed by the "revelation."

"Was your grandmother by any chance an orphan picked up by another family?"

"Where are you from... Oh, I see. And what is my "supposed to be" last name?"

"Ykoin. A clan of hunter-detectives. They have achieved impressive heights in controlling their own consciousness and brain... But don't get your hopes up. The clan won't accept you anyway, because, as I said, you don't have any magic at all. Apparently, your grandmother was the so-called "empty branch" of the family, and she was placed with other children in a clan orphanage. And then... There was a terrible war then... You know. I actually wonder how you can use at least some of your abilities, even without magic, if no one has trained you.

"What about me?" Rinko asked after a pause.

"And you," Yokai grinned, "I managed to get the "Blessing of the Spirits" somewhere. Yes, yes, the hairpin on your head. Only One-eyed Blacksmiths make these, you know, and you have to do a great favor for them to give the hairpin to other spirits. And for Ayakashi to give such a thing to a person... Consider, for all the spirits whose mind has not faded, there is a great pass fixed on your bangs. No one in their right mind would encroach on someone marked with a Blessing, and I won't even ask why you were given one. Curiosity killed the cat, you know! It is impossible to transfer such a thing, it becomes attached to the owner and stays with him forever... Well, are you going to ask me anything else?

"Well then..."

Yokai-with-principles and the would-be magical but talented Yakoin synchronously put forward the chips and demanded in unison:

"Then tell us the secret of Yuto!!!"

"All right," Rinko replied, inwardly ready for such a turn, "but I'll have to start from afar. Ok?"

"Come on, we're listening, you know!"

"Good. So, a long time ago, five hundred years ago or more, the Amakawa family lived in Hokkaido, no clan at that time..."

The extended meditation finally ended, and Yuto, rubbing his stiff legs and back, bowed to sensei. Picking up the phone, he received a bunch of text messages and a mark on the map that coincided with the house. "Shizuka has arrived," "Dinner is ready," and "We talked, successfully." Ugh, you can exhale and unclench your fingers on the shaft of the remote stunner in your pocket. And we need to go faster, anyway...

...The first thing Yuto Amakawa, who returned to his native penates, heard were bursts of cheerful girly laughter in three voices. He looked into the living room and found all three of them in front of the TV: the girls were watching the movie "The Bell".