I have an unlimited number of shikigami

Soon, my feet started to sweat.

Kawashima Miki became increasingly uncomfortable and tried to pull her foot back.

"Wait a minute." Fujiwara Izaya wasn't about to let her have her way.

"Like a little dog..." Kawashima Miki couldn't help but curse.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she suddenly pushed Fujiwara Izaya down by stepping on his nose with both feet, then quickly sat up and hid her legs under her buttocks in a kneeling position.

Fujiwara Izaya crawled back, wrapped his arms around her waist, and laid her down on the carpet.

The rain outside continued.

Time seemed to stand still in the room, a warm, sweet scent lingering.

"...Fujiwara."

"Ok?"

"Does becoming a shikigami mean I have to listen to you in everything?"

"Theoretically speaking, yes."

As the candlelight flickered, Kawashima Miki slowly blinked.

The room was quiet and still, though the sound of wind and rain could be faintly heard outside, creating an atmosphere of isolation from the outside world.

"But I won't force you to do anything!" Fujiwara Izaya quickly added.

Upon hearing this, Kawashima Miki immediately questioned in a harsh tone, as if accusing him, "You actually thought of forcing me?"

"..."

Fujiwara Izaya thought to himself, "Haven't I forced you enough times already?"

Seeing his guilty look, Kawashima Miki smiled gently.

Then she rested her head on Fujiwara Izaya's shoulder, her nose touching his neck, and spoke without moving.

Surprisingly, she talked a lot about herself.

She recounted her childhood, her growth, and her experiences after arriving in Tokyo with exceptional detail and nuance.

"A divine messenger?" Fujiwara Izaya frowned slightly.

“Yes, that’s his code name.” Kawashima Miki said, running to the refrigerator to take out a bottle of white wine, opening it with a bottle opener, pouring it into two glasses, and then going to fiddle with the record player.

Fujiwara Izaya drank a little.

The wine was sweet and refreshing, as if it had been stored in a cellar for a long time.

"pat~"

The record player's needle dropped and slowly began to slide.

A speaker, hidden somewhere, began playing Bach's Fugue, a piece brimming with emotion and varied in tempo.

Sword Comes

In the flickering candlelight, Kawashima Miki returned and sat down next to him.

On the pristine white wall, two figures overlapped and intertwined.

“Back then, I had only recently become conscious and was still a little spider who couldn’t transform into a human.” Kawashima Miki gazed at the candlelight, sipped her wine, and reminisced about that time. “A person who claimed to be a messenger of God appeared before me and taught me how to cultivate and how to quickly transform into human form.”

"People from the organization?"

"Well, don't ask, I can't tell you even if you ask. Anyway, this is all I know. I and the other nine monsters are numbers one through ten, and the divine messenger is our only superior."

"Once we find him, I'll kill him for you."

"Thank you," Kawashima Miki said with a gentle smile.

As the record player finished playing a song, in the brief pause between musical transitions, Fujiwara scrutinized her expression. She seemed to be recalling something unpleasant; her face was as cold and clear as the crescent moon appearing on the horizon at dawn, and her body was tense.

However, when the music started playing again, her expression relaxed. Her clear eyes and shyly pouting lips exuded a charming and alluring mature woman's aura, radiating a friendly and approachable beauty.

“I was not even six years old when I first became human,” Kawashima Miki said.

Fujiwara Izaya took her hand: "She must be a beautiful girl!"

“Haha…” Kawashima Miki’s face was filled with a charming smile as she gently leaned on his shoulder. “After I became human, the messenger made me attend elementary school in Aichi Prefecture, saying that I should first learn to be a human being.”

"Was your primary school experience good?"

"not good."

"why?"

"Because I'm so beautiful."

“…Narcissistic!” Fujiwara Izaya retorted.

“I’m not kidding.” Kawashima Miki chuckled. “I’ve been a beauty since I was a child. In that coastal town in Aichi Prefecture, I was more beautiful and striking than anyone else. You could say I was so beautiful that I seemed otherworldly. In that town where all you could see were mountains, sea, fields, and reservoirs, everyone who saw me looked at me with amazement.”

Looking at her innocent and romantic appearance, Fujiwara Izaya believed that she was definitely not lying.

“But that’s not good,” Kawashima Miki took a small sip of wine and recounted her childhood worries in a boastful tone. “When I was young, I seriously wondered if I looked strange? Otherwise, why would people look at me like that? Did they see that I was a spider or something? For a long time, I was a little self-conscious, afraid that others would find out about my original ugly appearance…”

Fujiwara Izaya muttered, "No wonder you wouldn't transform into Jorogumo for me."

"I just won't give it to you!" Kawashima Miki snorted, her face stiff, then turned her head away, her lips pursed like a cat's. "In elementary school, because I was pretty, the teachers always favored me. But this made me more vulnerable to being ostracized by my classmates. The boys would get restless around me, and the girls would openly whisper behind my back with hostility..."

"Pitiful."

Fujiwara Izaya gently put his arm around her waist.

The lady's waist was slender, soft and elastic, with a wonderfully firm feel.

“It wasn’t until I entered high school that I truly felt integrated into this world.” Kawashima Miki looked down at his hand on her waist and said, “A youthful and vibrant chest, a suit jacket, a dark red bow tie around the neck, and a Scottish plaid pleated skirt that barely covered my thighs. Wearing this fashionable uniform, I felt like an idol from TV.”

"Even now."

As Fujiwara Izaya spoke, he suddenly pushed her down.

"Hmm~"

Kawashima Miki gasped softly, lying face down on the floor, her chest pressed against the soft carpet.

"And then? You came to Tokyo to go to university?" Fujiwara Izaya leaned on her back, his nose darting around her ear. The air there was filled with an indescribable fragrance of roses, so rich it was almost suffocating.

"No……"

Kawashima Miki silently closed her eyes, her hands gripping the carpet tightly.

“After graduating from high school, I originally planned to go to university, but the messenger felt that I already knew how to be a person, so it led me to my current job.” She sighed, a hint of regret in her voice. “When I first came to Tokyo, it was my first time entering a city. At that time, I wasn’t resistant at all; I was even a little excited. But later, I found that the streets of Tokyo were full of garbage, extremely dirty and chaotic, and people’s speech was very vulgar. I didn’t make any friends, and I had no one to talk to…”

The window at night, illuminated by candlelight, became a dim mirror, reflecting overlapping silhouettes.

Kawashima Miki kept talking as if venting her frustrations, continuing without stopping.

The rain kept falling outside the window, time flowed slowly, and she was the only one talking incessantly. The music stopped and started again, started and stopped again.

Looking back on her years in Tokyo, she can hardly say she was happy.

Whenever she had free time, she would sneak back to Aichi Prefecture, to the place where she evolved from a spider into a human, hoping to regain her past memories. But unfortunately, every time she returned, she was met with endless disappointment.

In that place that could be called her hometown, everything Kawashima Miki saw seemed shrouded in a layer of dust, devoid of life. The hometown scenery she had always longed for in Tokyo had become indescribably old-fashioned, and conversations with acquaintances had become utterly dull. Ultimately, she had never truly belonged there.

She would often walk alone through the familiar places—the barbershop she frequented as a child, the coastline where she took her dog for walks every day, and the convenience store near her elementary school—lost into deep thought.

What exactly is wrong?

She certainly wanted to consider that place her hometown.

My feelings haven't changed at all.

But that wasn't enough. Everything there, though old and cozy, consisted of bricks on the street, shop signs, and rusty iron railings, all of which were witnesses to her transformation from a spider into a human.

Kawashima Miki thought to herself, "That's evidence."

Her so-called transformation into a human was merely a direction she was driven towards by external forces over a very long period of time. Whenever she returned to Aichi Prefecture, the onlookers would mock her, reminding her of her true nature as a yokai.

Yes.

It's not their problem, it's her problem; it's that she's always living in this small town wearing a mask.

As she spoke, Kawashima Miki lay on the carpet, her body softer than ever before, as if her heart were completely defenseless.

Fujiwara Izaya tried to interject, but couldn't.

Wearing a uniform, with her hair exuding a wonderful fragrance, Kawashima Miki continued to speak in a way that was full of tiny mysteries: things she liked, things she disliked, things on the street, things in the world... Her round buttocks, encased in a narrow skirt, appeared even more perky and energetic because of her posture.

"If I had to pick the thing that made me happiest in Tokyo, it would definitely be being able to buy all sorts of beautiful clothes, bags, shoes, and lots and lots of perfumes and cosmetics..."

As she said this, a serene smile remained on Kawashima Miki's face.

It is a kind of pure and original joy, not dazzling or noisy, but a simple overflow of emotion, yet it is the purest that can touch people's hearts the most.

Fujiwara Izaya thought of the countless clothes in her dressing room and the hundreds of shoes in her shoe cabinet, and almost bit her earlobe as he whispered in her ear, "So I've hooked up with a rich woman now?"

"Humph!"

Kawashima Miki glared at him coldly, then buried her face in the carpet again.

"Being pinned down from behind by a little brat..." she mumbled, her tone a mix of shyness and annoyance, "It's something I never even dared to imagine. I still feel it's a bit unreal, like I'm smoking on the far side of the moon."

"You can't light a cigarette on the moon."

"simile!"

"Metaphors must also be based on facts."

I can't be bothered with you.

After that, Kawashima Miki fell silent.

Fujiwara Izaya rolled off the carpet and lifted her face up from the carpet.

At this moment, the living room was enveloped in a sense of tranquility, like a thin film, while the flickering candlelight and the sound of the burning wick gently told the story of the passage of time.

Kawashima Miki closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep.

Warm, sweet breaths emanated from her small nose, brushing against Fujiwara Izaya's face. Fujiwara Izaya didn't wake her; instead, he wrapped one arm around her waist and raised the other, his fingertips gently tracing the delicate pink of her cheek like a piano. Seeing that she intended to sleep soundly, he played with even more joy.

"..."

How childish.