Chapter 69: The Etiquette of the Young Girl Who Serves the G.o.d (6)
“Can the witch watch anime?” Xu Shenxing asked while swallowing up the octopus-shape Vienna small sausage and chewing it.
“In the past, Inochi Sama…” The girl first answered subconsciously, but then lowered down her spirits somehow, “I mean, the G.o.d I served once secretly took me to a video shop to rent Anime DVD.”
“Oh? It doesn’t sound like a thing a G.o.d would do…”
“Excuse me, but I also don’t think a G.o.d should have a part-time job in a small snack shop!”
Xu Shenxing was in a daze due to the girl’s tough tone.
However, he immediately realized that she was angry because he said something bad about the G.o.d she originally served.
To be honest, Xu Shenxing thought this behavior made her look more natural.
However, though her doll-like appearance was exquisite and quiet, he didn’t think it was good for a young girl.
“Did you have a good relations.h.i.+p with the original G.o.d?” He tried to start up a new conversation.
“I… was being raised by Inochi Sama.”
The girl hesitated for a while, finally, she slowly answered, “It’s said that at that time, the previous witch retired because of illness, so the Bureau of Onmyō was trying to find a right candidate. As for me, I was abandoned beside the Torii gate of White Bell Shrine at that time.”
“Inochi Sama personally took me back to the shrine and began to take care of me. After finding out that I had potential to master spirit abilities, she directly appointed me as the successor of White Bell Shrine… I heard that many people at the Bureau of Onmyō disagreed with her decision, but Inochi Sama just ignored them and took care of me in the shrine alone.”
“Kamisama, what can you see there?” Suddenly, the girl asked softly, pointing to the cypress clump not far from her.
Xu Shenxing looked at the direction she pointed at. He saw that there was a bluish, ferret-like creature peeping at them.
After noticing that Xu Shenxing was looking at it, the creature immediately dived into the bushes and disappeared.
“What a wonder, there is a weasel in Jiangjin City…” Xu Shenxing was a little surprised.
Although the color of its fur was a little strange.
“Actually, I can’t see it.”
The girl said. She held her knees in her arms and forced a smile. “My spirit ability is very weak. Inochi Sama often deliberately showed herself in front of me, that was okay. However, if it was a common youkai, I could only see a vague blur at most…”
“Due to this, the Bureau of Onmyō had come to the shrine several times. They hoped that Inochi Sama would replace me with a more experienced witch. However, Inochi Sama never agreed with them… She was like my mother and always took care of me. She not only taught me how to be a qualified witch, but also took me to play at the playground, movie theater, and even commercial street… Well, although because ordinary people couldn’t see her, we caused a lot of trouble.”
Maybe because the girl recalled some interesting things, she smiled brightly, “At that time, it was really fun…”
“Which G.o.d is ‘Inochi Sama’?” asked Xu Shenxing curiously.
&
ldquo;Her name is called ‘Yak.u.mo Inochi’. She was an incarnation of the lunar G.o.d ‘Izumo’, corresponding to Tsukiyomi-no-mikoto of Takama-ga-hara,” Sakurakouji Asahi said respectfully, “She was a very gentle, very great person. It’s said that she is the only G.o.d who has lived in White Bell Shrine for more than one hundred years!”
“Oh? Were other G.o.ds unwilling to stay there long?”
Xu Shenxing asked. He found something unusual from her words.
“Well, because from the dried up well which sealed the monster, there often blew out noxious ga.s.ses. G.o.ds have a certain degree of ability to purify air, but most of the G.o.ds are spirits. Unlike humans, they don’t have bodies, so they are more easily contaminated by those noxious ga.s.ses. The more often you stay beside the dried up well, the more badly the noxious ga.s.ses will affect your body. In that case, many G.o.ds were unwilling to stay too long at the White Bell Shrine.”
It seemed like the girl was afraid that Xu Shenxing would be scared, so she added, “But Kamisama, you have a real body, so the noxious ga.s.ses can’t affect you too much. I also heard that you could make ornaments to fend off those noxious ga.s.ses, so don’t worry about that…”
What she said should be Xiao Zhengyi’s “0.5 RMB Bracelet +2” and Fang Xiaoqian’s “Gold Necklace Worth Thousands of RMB +1″…
Xu Shenxing thought silently in his mind.
Indeed, he really had no worry about those noxious ga.s.ses, because he didn’t think that they were stronger than the radiation of the star weapons he faced in Centauri. You should know that Xu Shenxing was a man who could stay naked in the astros.p.a.ce (because his clothes had been burnt after he fell into the star)!
“Since that is so, why did she leave the shrine?… Oh, I’m sorry.”
After asking this, Xu Shenxing realized that his words might have hurt the girl’s feelings.
Since the noxious ga.s.ses could erode a G.o.d’s body, then it was very likely that the G.o.d left because the erosion effect had reached the limit she could suffer.
It was certainly a heavy blow to the young girl who regarded the G.o.d as her mother. His casual words were undoubtedly like sprinkling salt on her wounds.
“No, you don’t have to apologize. I’m fine,” The girl said with a wry smile. She hesitated for a moment, then said, “In fact,I don’t know why Inochi Sama left the shrine… She seemed to have just vanished suddenly, and never appeared again from day to day… If I had stronger spirit abilities, maybe I could find some clues, but…”
Speaking of which, the girl could not speak another word. Her face was full of regret about her weakness, then she fought back her grief with her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears, as if she would cry at any moment.
“…”
Xu Shenxing sighed silently and stroked the girl’s hair as a comfort.
After that, he folded up the empty lunch box.
“Oh, let me do it…” The girl said in a thick tw.a.n.g and snuffled.
“I’ll return it to you after I washed it clean,” Xu Shenxing took the lunch box away.
He stood up and patted off the leaves of gra.s.s from his body. He walked two steps to the cla.s.sroom where he would have a cla.s.s, then stopped and said slowly, “Let me state this upfront: I won’t promise to go to j.a.pan just because of a tragic story. You’d better not look forward to it.”
“Yes, I understand,” The girl wiped her eyes and smiled again. “Thank you for listening to me. I feel so much better after I’ve said everything.”
“Hum…” Xu Shenxing lightly hummed, then quickly left here, leaving only the girl gazed fixedly at his back.
After a long time, the hot summer’s breeze blew through the lawn.
The girl lifted up a lock of hair from her face to her ear, then said softly.
“Inochi Sama, do you see it? He is a nice man…”