Tokyo Psychic

She slowly approached Akira Kurusu, her slender body leaving graceful marks on the water's surface.

Wakaba Mutsu stiffly pressed against the stone wall, kneeling on the hot spring steps.

Her eyes seemed to be brimming with shy tears, but persuaded by the voices deep within her heart, she managed to speak with difficulty, "Please...please lie down here."

She didn't even dare to make a move.

Akira Kurusu wouldn't waste the little courage that this sheltered young girl had managed to muster.

He shifted slightly and naturally rested his head on Wakaba Mutsu's lap. "Is that so?"

With tears in her eyes, Wakaba Mutsu nodded.

Toyokawa Shoko, sitting opposite him, was completely dumbfounded.

But when she saw Wakaba Mutsu's expression, the barrier that had always made her feel guilty suddenly softened a little, so she gritted her teeth and began to approach them.

At this moment, Wakaba Mutsu was already bent over, looking down at the few fluffy impurities floating below the hot spring.

The soft, moist back of her hand brushed against Qi Xiao's nape, sending shivers down her spine.

Her movements were like unraveling a musical instrument string; as her fingers rose and fell, Akira Kurusu's gaze could follow the lines on the inside of her wrists to see the rise and fall of her chest. "Is the force... right?" The vibration of her chest as she spoke traveled through her spine, and her flushed earlobes almost touched Akira Kurusu's nose.

The neatly trimmed nails, glossy like the enamel of a shell, create a subtle temperature difference through the water film from the palm of the hand.

The hot water made a soft, tearing sound as it washed over her shoulders. Suddenly, Ruoye Mu's fingers dug into the hollow of Qixiao's shoulder blade, her fingertips kneading the muscle knots with a clumsy, even somewhat rough, force. The skin on the inside of her forearm occasionally brushed against the back of Qixiao's neck, the touch hotter than the hot spring, like melting maple syrup.

"How does Xiaomu know this?" Laixi Xiao silently endured the soreness from the ligaments being massaged.

"I learned a little bit from TV." Wakaba Mutsu gradually adapted to this intimacy that suddenly exceeded her psychological capacity.

Unlike the Toyokawa family's "misdeeds" at night, back then the darkness of the night and the darkness of the bed provided some cover, which could slightly alleviate the girl's shyness.

Toyokawa Shoko hesitated several times before speaking, until she felt a slight ache in her abdomen...

She was immediately terrified, completely disregarding any sense of modesty or shyness. She looked around frantically and noticed a wooden spoon placed on the steps to the side.

......

Snapped.

Suddenly, a spoonful of hot water was splashed on the two of them.

Toyokawa Shoko, holding the wooden ladle that was supposed to hold cold water, scooped up another spoonful of hot spring water and splashed it over.

She glared at Akira with her wet eyes, "Seriously... I've had enough!"

Akira sat up. "You don't need to use the restroom, do you?"

"Let me out!"

"Then remember to come back," the phantom thief said lazily.

"...Do you think I would entrust Xiao Mu to you alone?!" Another spoonful of hot spring water splashed onto Kurushi Akira's face.

----------

(Four in one! It's almost the end of the month, and all the free monthly passes and razor blades are about to expire, so please cast your monthly passes now.)

(By the way, I'd like to recommend a friend's book :)

147. Stray Cat and Pet Cat (Two-in-One)

On the same night.

The ruins of the livehouse "SPACE".

The girl carrying the guitar stood in front of the closed shop for a long time, staring suspiciously at the lock, then leaned closer to the storefront and strained her ears to listen inside.

There wasn't a sound at all.

Lena was extremely disappointed, but she refused to give up. She put down her guitar and simply sat down against the wall, as if to say, "I won't go home until you open the door."

But in reality, no one will visit the Mind Thieves' secret base for the next four days.

In a corner of the parking lot, under the illumination of the lights, Chihaya Aine asked Shiina Tatsuki, "Has she been like this all this time?"

Shiina Tatsuki's lips twitched a few times. "More or less..."

"I have a feeling that I'm going to run away from home."

"She might be homeless," Shiina Ritsuki sighed, just as she was about to approach Kaname Rakuna to urge her to go home...

A cat's meow suddenly broke the silence of the quiet parking lot.

"Huh? This isn't the one from 'STARRY'..." Just as Shiina Tatsuki was surprised, a long-bodied black cat with pale white fur on its four paws quietly slipped out of the open ventilation duct of the performance hall and landed nimbly in front of Kaname.

"Mona?" Kaname tilted her head, looking at the black cat in front of her in surprise. "Appeared suddenly?"

“Humans shouldn’t presume to know our power,” Morgana said smugly, licking his paws. “We’re not accepting guests here for now.”

"I do not go."

“It’s no use you staying here… Even if you sit here until morning, no one will open the door for you,” Morgana said mournfully. “Those heartless bastards left me here alone to guard the house, and I don’t have the key, so I can’t open the door for you.”

"You were at STARRY just now."

“You don’t understand. STARRY is life, this is work. They’re different.”

Lena couldn't understand, but she thought Morgana was amazing, and then she clapped at it with great admiration.

Morgana was smug about how easily it had gained the admiration of a two-legged creature. Then it waved its paw and began to shoo away Yao Lena, "Since you know no one will open the door here, you should hurry home. It's dangerous for a little girl to be out alone at night."

"Tomorrow, is that okay?"

"It will probably be about four days before this place reopens."

Lena nodded in disappointment, then stood up abruptly, "I'm leaving."

"Bye-bye," Morgana, who was assigned by the Phantom Thieves to stay behind at the secret base every night, said goodbye to her.

"OK Bye Bye."

Kaname nodded, then dragged her guitar and prepared to leave. At that moment, she saw Chihaya Aine and Shiina Tatsuki watching her from the side of the parking lot. She blinked strangely, then walked out of the parking lot on her own.

Shiina Tatsuki hurriedly chased after her; she simply couldn't bear to let a fourteen-year-old junior high school student walk home alone at night.

"Rakuna is actually talking to the cat!" Chihaya Aine followed closely behind Shiina Tatsuki.

"Who knows?" Shiina Tatsuki replied irritably, then stepped forward and grabbed Kaname Rakuna's hand. "The light's about to turn red, you better stop!"

Rakuna stopped in her tracks on the street, looking up at the green light that still had six seconds left. She became increasingly sullen, so she kept quiet and let the countdown slowly end. Then, Shiina Riki led her across the street when the next green light came on.

"Rakuna, do you know that black cat? I remember it was a STARRY employee." Chihaya Aine came over from the side and asked Rakuna with a playful smile.

Hearing about cats immediately brightened Yoro's mood. "Morgana!"

"Morgana...is that its name?"

"Ok!"

"It seems to have a really good relationship with you. It listens to you so patiently and even greets you!"

"Morgana is a friend!"

"So how did it get here?" Chihaya Aine wondered, pinching her chin. It must have been a long way from STARRY to here.

She clearly remembered that after the band rehearsal ended, she and Shiina Ritsuki took Yoru Na to STARRY to look for Iori Jinna, and they encountered the black cat in the store.

And this happened just thirty minutes ago.

How did Morgana manage to leave STARRY on its own and get here? And how could it be faster than a tram?

But ultimately, no one could answer this question for her.

......

【The next day. 】

[7:11 AM.]

[@LaiqixiaoOfficial: On a study tour with my bandmates, please follow the bands I'm participating in: @EndBand and @RedGingerBand.]

This is the second post from the account "Kurasu Akatsuki Official" since "Celebrating the Great Success of Game Nozomi".

[Spicy Miso: You...who are you?]

[Shogun Hatakeyama Yoshisō: Teacher, teacher, where's volume two of my "Nothing But a Game"? Teacher, teacher, what are you doing forming a band?!]

[Albatross's Broken Wing: It seems he was originally in a band.]

[Gravity Deployment·Grasshopper: I see, writing light novels is just a side job? O(∩_∩)O Hahaha......]

As a breath of fresh air amidst countless otherworldly toilet paper stories, and thanks to the efforts of some people with ulterior motives, No Game No Life achieved remarkable success in just one month.

As a result, Akira Kurusu's identity as a contracted artist with ATLUS agency was completely overshadowed by his fame as a light novel author.

In the time following the post, the comments section was flooded with requests for updates. With no new announcements for the light novels they followed and the author seemingly "not doing their job," readers tried searching for information about the two bands, only to find a few low-quality, blurry video clips of street performances from when the bands debuted.

......

In the mornings of Atami, stroll among the lotus leaves still damp with dew and the sun-drenched pebbles.

In the courtyard of the open-air hot spring, a few green leaves and late-blooming cherry blossom petals float on the pool. The gate is opened, and young men and women sit on the steps, enjoying breakfast in the bright sunshine.

Akira Kurusu had a beautifully presented bowl of eel rice on her lap.

Ruoye Mu sat quietly next to him, squeezing wasabi into the soy sauce dish on the tray.

Shoko Toyokawa curiously peeked at Akira Kurusu's phone screen. "Are you tweeting?"

"Yes."

"Is this what a 'professional' job is?"

"Hmm? More or less... But whether you're 'professional' or 'amateur,' there's a need to manage your account's activity, right?... Hasn't CRYCHIC ever managed a band's account before?"

Upon hearing this, both Toyokawa Shoko and Wakaba Mutsuko's expressions underwent subtle changes.

It was probably because I was thinking of the intermission after CRYCHIC's first and only performance.

Akira Kurusu keenly sensed his girlfriends' emotions. After a moment's thought, he quickly turned off his phone screen. "Let's finish breakfast quickly and go pick out swimsuits together."

But Toyokawa Shoko clearly had no appetite for breakfast. She took out her phone, searched for Kurusu Akira's account, and began to browse the comments section under each of his posts.

Unlike CRYCHIC, the account "@来栖晓Official" had a whopping 20,000 followers, which was twenty times more than "结束乐队".

Moreover, these 20,000 followers are all loyal fans who were attracted by "No Game No Life" within two days, and their enthusiasm in the comments section is no less than that of big bloggers who have accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers.

Toyokawa Shoko flipped through the book for a long time, but couldn't find a single bad word. She stared at Kurusu Akira in astonishment, "Wow...so amazing."

"Hmm? Is something strange happening in the comments section?"

"Surprisingly... I can't see even the slightest bit of slander or attack in the comments."

"Such a thing exists?" Even Akira Kurishi was surprised by this, as he was very aware of the hostility and irritability of contemporary netizens.

The fact that there were absolutely no insults or criticisms under his two consecutive posts was even rarer than when Izanagi woke up one morning, suddenly had an epiphany, blushed, and ran up to him tremblingly to confess her feelings.

But these netizens actually put aside their verbal sparring. When Lai Xixiao finished breakfast and walked into the lobby, Jing Qinren was still wearing that innocent and carefree smile. She was holding Anhe Subaru's Switch and chatting with her about which characters in Street Fighter were easier and more powerful.

Seeing Akira Kurusu approaching, Nina Izayoi waved at him, "Amamiya! Fighting games are so much fun!"

When Akira Kurusu saw that Serina Iza was still acting so oblivious, he was finally relieved. It seemed that it wasn't that netizens had really changed their minds and started to spontaneously maintain a harmonious online environment, but rather that someone was carrying the burden for them behind the scenes.

So he took out his phone and tapped on Futaba Sakura's profile picture on Line.

[Attic Thinker: Navi, are you secretly protecting the purity of the comment section?]

[Navi: ?]

[Navi: You mean those comments that were suddenly deleted, and those accounts that were banned? I can't do that!]

[Navi: Technically speaking, it's possible, but if it were actually implemented, I'd probably end up in a juvenile detention center...]

[The Thinker in the Attic: There's actually a master here?]

[Navi: I've been paying a little attention to your comments section. The IP addresses manipulating the comments are all within the Metropolitan Police Department. As for more information, I dare not investigate further.]

Akira Kurusu put away her phone and asked Shoko Toyokawa beside her, "Shoko, does anyone in your family work for the Metropolitan Police Department?"

Shoko Toyokawa tried to recall, and she did remember a distant elder relative who supposedly held some position in the Metropolitan Police Department. "I think... he probably does?"

Akira Kurusu suddenly straightened her face, "Even so, I would never marry into the Toyokawa family."