Web of light. Part 1.2

"I don't see the world. I see objects, I hear water flowing, I feel a solid floor under my feet, but I don't see the world."

Holy shit! Of course, magical creatures are very different from humans in their perception spectrum, I might have guessed. Even when they curl up their aura, they can almost feel the world with their "sixth sense" and taste it with their power. And I put an analog of a mobile prison on Mizuchi... Well, what should I do?

In the end, I just pulled out other glasses and made a standard magic detector. Let it be "not that", let it be a pathetic substitute for the variety of information that the spirit receives directly from the world... especially the water demon in a world where 70% of the surface is occupied by water... After all, did you want to see the world "through people's eyes"? So let him watch.

Are we going out now? Horseradish again! Hiroe became interested in manipulating glasses, and after receiving comprehensive explanations, she wanted the same ones for herself. Cami! Here, just get off! And then Rinko blurted out about mago-protected clothes at the wrong time, and I had to process Kaname's things as well (the ritual of locking myself in the bathroom was repeated). As a result, our "bespectacled club," as the cropped ulcer aptly put it, left the house only at eleven in the morning. Considering how much we have planned for today, we should be busy until the evening. The big campaign for "introduce Shizuku to people's lives in the first person" has begun.

chapter 98.

First of all, Hiroe dragged our entire company to "eliminate all this horror," in the sense of bringing Shizuki's clothes to the standard of "dressed with taste." Well, yes. Kaname was absolutely not satisfied with buying everything in one place, and as a result, instead of enjoying shopping, everyone except Hiroe got nervous. In a situation where undressing means putting your life in mortal danger, trying on fashionable things is somehow not the topic. As a result, I had to buy a size 56 clothing cover, apply a suppression seal, and the girls took turns putting this improvised canopy on top of the snake and holding it while she changed one wardrobe item for another. This, I note, is inside a cubicle that is not too free. Then Mizuchi would say whether it was suitable or not, and the purchased item would "steam off", and the procedure of changing clothes would be repeated in the toilet of the shopping center. According to the results, about a third of Rinko and Hiroe were rejected, but there is nothing to do. Exchanging an item in a store for a different size when you give back an amulet of magical protection in the form of a recently purchased product is at least unwise. Fortunately, Hiroe sponsored us, otherwise I would have squandered my "savings" again.

As a result, by one o'clock in the afternoon, we had a very good appetite, a slightly spoiled mood, and Mizuchi, dressed in a matching and stylish blue and white dress, blue sandals, and blue knee socks... In short, all that remained were Rinko's hairpins, glasses, and some jewelry. I had to look for a cafe, and Shizuka rejected the first one right away because of the smell. When we found out that the oil in the grill hadn't been changed for almost two days, we agreed with her. Should I file a complaint against the owner? Such violations are strictly dealt with here. I already paid for lunch.

After eating our fill, we got out of the cafe and headed towards the convenience store. A towel, a toothbrush, bookshelves-and a set of "normal kitchen knives instead of these rusty, blunt blocks that are impossible to cook with." It was an expensive pleasure — Rinko and I had to discount. Kuzaki, however, had her own interest: ayakashi promised to give some cooking lessons, and my friend was determined to give herself to this process with all her might. After dragging the bags that had become too bulky home, we took a break... And hooray! Finally, we went to do what I like: assemble computer components for Mizuchi. There was a computer store in the next block, but I wasn't satisfied with the prices of new components, but used ones were much cheaper if you bought them in parts. I explored the den of geeks and perverts not so long ago — when we were assembling the drive part of the quadcopter's control system. Why geeks? Well, these comrades, who could chat for hours about any, I emphasize, ANY board from their "unique collection", shit on Microsoft and praise the Open Source movement (I took a look for the sake of interest — all but two of them had WinXP on their work computer), were real "twisted" to my taste. But the perverts... No, that everyone has at least one poster in their kiosk with a not very dressed female person with long ears, horns, a tail, or some other contraption like a full-length sword, that's okay. Maybe it's their aesthetic sense, and these guys are mostly from our city polytechnic, working part-time in their free time... HOW THEY STARED at the three girls who accompanied me. And Kondraty almost missed one thing altogether when Hiroe, who was looking at SCSI controllers, asked something about parity. Sysadmin dad is a brutal way to break the geek template!

In general, by the time the components were typed, everyone remembered me there. Three asked to reveal the terrible secret of the heartthrob. Two — start telling the girls about how much cooler they are than the bespectacled kid (and flew past the money). And of course, everyone suddenly had the titanic parameters of computers assembled at home (at the department, at their second job, in their own design studio...). To one guy who was strenuously inviting him to go and see, offering a free computer build, Shizuka casually burned the system unit, aiming a drop of water somewhere into the power supply, after looking around and breaking through the disguise.

"Yuto," Rinko asked me on the bus, "are you sure you want to go to the Polytechnic? They're like that... er-er-er... nasty, fe, these students".

"Don't pay attention, there's usually a bunch of people in these places who have different interests: work less, talk more."

"This is the first time I've seen so many perverts at once," Mizuchi nodded in agreement.

"Serious students all work in serious companies starting from the first year, if they want to, of course. But usually they work, especially the rich do not go to the polytechnic, but go to finance or economics," Hiroe intervened. I was going to graduate from Kyoto University of Journalism and Law... apparently, we'll have to harness ourselves to the exterior.

"Why?" Rinko asked innocently.

"Because at the age of sixteen, our Yuto's amulet will stop working and he will turn from a human and a teenager into a figure at once."

"What? What are you saying now?"

"It's simple, you know," the snake supported the conversation. "Yuto chose the path of building peace... but to arrange a peaceful coexistence of humans and non-humans, you need something more than the desire of one person."

It's good that the bus is almost empty, and the old people sitting in front, in my opinion, do not even hear the stops.

"So what?" The swordswoman next door asked anxiously.

"And that's it!" Hiroe mimicked. "There is no power behind Yuto, and without the power of a person, no one will listen. They'll just make you do what you need to do. Most likely, to kill people like her."

Shizuka nodded.

"Yuto, what are they!" Rinko turned to me. There were tears in her eyes, and her face was desperate. "Is it true?!"

"However, this is indeed the case. When you and I talked about gaining control of my "blood legacy," learning all sorts of unsafe things, and figuring out the balance of power among the yokai and clans, it was all implied. Alone in the field is not a warrior. If everything works out, we will be able to find enough supporters among humans, demons and magicians, if we can find something to guarantee their loyalty and how to repay their loyalty, we will get an island of a new world in the old one. We will become the third force in the struggle between magicians and inhumans. And we'll try to become strong enough so that we don't get knocked down casually... and necessary enough that they won't unite against us.

"It sounds like a manga story," Rinko squinted. "And do you really think?.."

"Ha, it's not a boy's speech, but a husband's!" Ayakashi slammed it down. "You surprise me more and more... Amakawa Yuto!"

"But Yuto is a child, just like us..."

"We are also well-made" Kaname smiled rapaciously.

"And I was hoping for a quiet study at school, to finish junior, then middle school, to show off as a high school student, and to be a mature girl..." here Kuzaki blushed rapidly and stared at the floor.

"Just think of it as a job, like the guys in the mall." Kaname advised. "Moreover, this is the case. Politics is just a job. Even protecting yourself and others is just a job..."

"And it's going to be very hard for me to handle it without you." I finished for our analyst.

Rinko looked up at me with reddened eyes and grabbed my elbow. Her face, so childish and slightly angular, suddenly seemed to me like the face of an adult woman. A steely expression, familiar to me from her training and a few conflicts, appeared in her eyes. Predatory joy on Hiroe's part. Shizuki's calm confidence. The starting point has been set — now, for better or worse, I am responsible not only for myself, but also for the people who trusted me... and not people. And I thought it would only start in two years. Lucky me!

Part 19

Chapter 99.

The morning of a working day, and for me, a school Monday, greeted me with clean, humid air and killer food flavors. Mizuchi had already eaten and was now arranging the papers she had retrieved from the hiding places she had gone on a raid for "into the night." Meeting my gaze, Shizuka pushed the "blue" passport of a Japanese citizen in my direction. I opened it: the photo is really similar. And the name? Hmm, Chidori! The Goddess of Rivers has a surname, so now it's Mikuni. Almost Mizuchi, good harmony. But where did she get it from?

"I found it in their bag," snake shared her memories with me, not too happily, "near the destroyed camp. The Yokai is an ogre. Daughter and parents... We buried what was left."

Shoving food into my mouth with one hand, I logged into the Ministry of Emergency Situations website directly from my mobile phone and punched through my passport data. Hmm, they don't appear in the search, but the database is uniform across the country. And why? Yeah, I picked a folder out of a pile of papers: a certificate of purchase of a farm on the coast. We've already decided to relax in the mountains on our own. And snake is doing well — he knows how to work with documents.

"Do you have many of them?" I returned the documents to Mizuchi.

"Twenty pieces a year," she shrugged her shoulders. "It doesn't happen every year that they are suitable for age and appearance."

"It means that a hundred people are regularly eaten in our mountains..."

"About a hundred and fifty."

"...every year. Interesting."

Statistics of population losses. The mountains... wow! More than a thousand. Well, of course, the gang from which Shizuka "holds" not the entire array, but most of it... This means that the losses are mostly accidental — I lost my temper, got drunk and froze, and so on. What about the rating? What about the rating? Car crashes — about 5,000 people a year, and that's just on our island. That's a tough one... but I'm still against pseudo-dirty creatures living in the mountains who love human meat. Because reasonable people won't just starve to eat reasonable people's meat...

"Okay, I'm off. Close the door behind me, please."

"Okay," Shizuka got up and went to the door, suddenly asked: "Will it be possible to see your school?"

"Yes, there aren't many lessons on Saturday, we'll do it." and I left her at home and went to class.

chapter 100.

It's the middle of summer. It's warm, it's good, the last week of classes, and the schools will close. Applicants who have not passed the spring exam will have a chance to try to get a passing grade in a new one or choose another place — an innovation that is only five years old. The "Tokyo incident" — I didn't have anything like that "there"... And that's good. The mass suicide of 198 people from Ronin, who jumped from the roof of the 120-storey tower of the shopping and business center with a beautiful, almost exactly round figure. It's a murky story. It comes out in the search engine with the query "mass sacrifice", it seems that the police have unearthed some kind of trace there. But the government could not help but respond to the "official" reason, and the school (and student) academic year was "moved" so that it became closer to the European one...

Why am I thinking about this? I just decided to "go through" my "post-knowledge" again: over the past two years, a number of inconsistencies have accumulated... Although there is not much value from the "after-knowledge" either. I'm sure that if I hadn't recognized Shizuka by her appearance and characteristic speech, I still wouldn't have rushed at the enemy until she attacked. But would I invite her to my house? Well, let's assume that the manga helped me here. But Rinko, I managed to fix her behavior a lot: instead of showing a "boyish" character, she confidently engages in both school and kendo. And he still walks around without the "cat" ribbons, to which an entire chapter is devoted in the manga. Although they may be "supposed" to be bought this summer?

Shizuka, on the contrary, looks much more sane, about a year after communicating with the "canonical" Yuto. Or have I just not talked to her enough yet? But there are no hacks like "this food is not for you" or "if you slip up, I'll kill you." On the contrary, I was the one who asked snake to try to analyze our joint actions taking into account her broader life experience, and I got a thoughtful look and "I'm trying to change something for the first time, just like you, you know." And Rinko teaches cooking. And I went out with Hiroe a few times. I have only one explanation: something like this happened between this summer and the summer of 2012, when I will be sixteen years old. And this "something", perhaps, should be kept in mind.

Shizuka told me a bit about their "spirit community" and mentioned the problems with regular attacks. This is after I showed the surveillance system in action and explained the principle of operation in general terms. And then I found out one unpleasant thing: Mizuchi knows almost nothing about classical magic. This is despite the fact that she told me the layout of the hunter clans (well, I finally found out something about them! And, by the way, Yakoin is the surname of all detectives, not the name of the girl from Tsuchimikado o_O), about the magic techniques used... imagining the result and the affected area, she doesn't know how it works. More than that! The mana generated by the snake is incompatible with mine. At least in her hands, the mana-electricity converters don't work, no matter how much energy she pours into them. But the wooden roundels were soaked with water and swollen. Damn, a "chakra with an elemental aspect", like in Naruto. And I've already rolled out my lip... But I can make an amulet for Mizuchi. And the overwhelming universal "cuts" any type of chakra, that is, mana. It's a real problem...