Chapter 483: Monsters and Hysteria
After her father returned home, Maplehara Manyo immediately went to the family library to find the notebook.
Encountering a demon in the maple forest...
The notes that were previously viewed only as rumors about strange monsters have turned into some kind of horrifying documentary literature after his nearly fatal experience.
He thought of the girl, of the magatama with wooden texture, of the smell of cherry blossoms between his noses, of those interesting purple eyes...
Eventually all of this disappeared, and when he woke up, he was standing straight on the edge covered with slippery moss not far from the lake.
Could it be that... I really encountered a demon?
For a moment, he even wondered whether he had had an incredible dream.
*
Autumn is coming.
The weather has turned cold, and all the maple leaves have now fallen out. Except for the evergreen trees at home, the other trees are naked, as if they are dead, lingering and waiting for the next spring.
Maplehara Manyo just celebrated her seventh birthday.
At this moment, he was sitting indoors, looking at the scene outside the open door that was struggling to maintain but still unable to cover up the decadence, and he already had some kind of premonition in his heart.
——The Maplehara family may not get better as his father wishes.
They are also struggling to survive. The trees can still look forward to the coming spring, but the Maplehara family may not necessarily have a second spring.
Half a month later, the weather got even colder. Due to hard work and restlessness, my father contracted cold.
Even so, he still seemed to have no intention of slowing down.
Maplehara Manyo was very worried and tried several times to persuade her, but she still couldn't persuade her father to rest.
A few days later, for the sake of convenience, my father simply did not come back.
He was helpless and finally turned around and went to the library.
*
After finding the notes of his ancestors on a familiar road, Maplehara Manyo found a place to sit down, and then opened the last chapter recorded in the notes.
Although he had read it countless times in half a month, every time he thought about what happened to him that night, he couldn't help but take out his ancestor's notes and read them.
Birds... our ancestors privately thought they were spiritual monsters.
What Maplehara Manyo saw was not a flying bird, but what he saw before his eyes was truly strange.
It had been half a month since he went to Fenglin, and he still felt a little uneasy.
Unsolved confusion lingered in my heart, and the lake water was close to my feet, like some kind of deep fear.
Rina Yae...
Things that I didn't notice at the time have become weird now.
Maplehara Manyo didn't understand the miko assessment mechanism before, and thought that any woman could become a miko, until he later learned about the matters related to the miko assessment.
——The Yae Rina I met before was clearly a girl about the same age as myself, but she was far from the minimum age required for the miko examination.
In other words, Narukami Taisha Shrine will not have such a small shrine maiden.
The more Maplehara Manyo thought about it, the more strange he felt. When the cool winter breeze blew, a layer of small pimples appeared on the exposed skin. He closed the book and stood there thinking for a long time. He wanted to talk to his father about this matter, but his father was too tired and he couldn't bear to add to his father's worries over such things.
Maplehara Manyo leaned against the shelf where the books were stored, holding the books that had not been put back in her hands, and fell asleep unconsciously.
*
"Hey, hey - Wanyo, Wanyo!" A familiar voice came to my ears, and the sound gradually became clearer.
Maplehara Manyo opened her eyes in a daze. At first, the picture in front of her eyes was not clear. She could only see blurry patches of color...
Large areas of white and small areas of blue, a bit like the girl who appeared in the previous hallucination.
"Yae... Rina?" He shouted hesitantly, then slowly sat up and returned to the maple forest.
It has clearly entered winter, but the time in this maple forest seems to have been frozen, and the mountains are still the same red as before.
He stood on the stone slab next to the lake, with thick moss squeezing his feet. The previously blurred color blocks became clear. He took a closer look -
Not the Yae Rina in the previous hallucination.
It turned out to be a snow-white bird.
The bird's tail was dotted with a few streaks of blue. He looked at it for a long time and was surprised to find that the bird completely matched the records in his ancestor's notes.
So he vaguely heard Yae Rina calling him - was it also an illusion?
The little bird stood on a branch very close to him and was not very afraid of people.
Seeing that Maplehara Manyo remained silent, it tilted its head, seeming a little confused.
Then, the little bird flapped its wings, flew up, flashed a beautiful arc in the air, and then landed on his shoulder.
He felt the weight on his shoulders and couldn't help but look sideways.
But perhaps realizing that this was not the place he liked, the bird moved a little further, spread its wings again, and finally nestled on Maplehara Manyo's furry head, just like that.
It almost blends in with Maplehara Manyo's white hair, but if you look closely, there is a difference in the white color between them.
The white feathers of the bird tend to be cooler, the color is like the diluted sky.
"Do you like staying here?" The child laughed softly and reached out his hand to carefully touch the top of his head.
After touching a few fluffy feathers, he stopped breathing slightly, and a vague excitement burst out of his heart.
The next moment, his hand suddenly hurt.
The bird flapped its wings and flew away.
He didn't know why, but he found it a bit angry.
The surrounding environment began to fragment, and finally the familiar consciousness sank.
Opening his eyes again, he sat up and realized that he had fallen asleep again.
"Does it mean that birds can also feel shy?" A look of annoyance flashed through his clear red eyes, "I'll apologize next time we meet -"
and many more.
He suddenly reacted.
...This is just a dream.
Perhaps because he read the records in his ancestor's notes before going to bed, he had a dream about encountering birds.
And because the maple leaf forest and lake I saw before could cleverly overlap with the scene in the notebook when my ancestor saw birds for the first time, he was directly brought into the dream.
But no matter what - it was just a dream, right?
If it was a dream, he might not be able to dream of that snow-white bird again.
There is no way to talk about "next time we meet".
But he didn't know why, but he always felt that the dream just now was so real that it was difficult for him to distinguish reality from reality.
He was a little disappointed.
*
Before the first snowfall of winter, the servants of the Maplehara family secretly spread rumors that Master Manyo seemed to be suffering from hysteria.
It's just that he was in a daze all day long, and from time to time he would say a few words that he didn't know what to say.
He was obviously a child, but he couldn't sleep at night. He always sat alone on the corridor, staring at the moon, or holding the old notebook and saying nothing.
After observing the situation several times, the servant decided to tell the master of the matter.
Afterwards, Maplehara Manyo received deep care from her father.
"Man'ye, I will invite a gentleman to my home today, and you will come with me."
Maplehara Manyo felt a little strange.
He knew that his father had been training him as the next head of the family, but the most important thing he said was, "You are still young, you shouldn't worry about these things."
With the current approach...does his father think that he has access to those family affairs, so he wants to take him with him to meet important elders who must maintain relationships?
But since I am only seven years old, I guess this is not the reason.
It wasn't until he met that "sir" that he finally understood what his father wanted to do.
He heard his father say to the "sir": "Please, the hysteria in Wanyo... please tell me the solution."
……what?
Hysteria?
Maplehara Manyo wanted to ask his father, but the "sir" didn't give him time to speak.
He smelled a strong scent of incense between his nostrils, and then his vision went dark, and the familiar feeling of weightlessness came again.
"——Ah!" A panicked voice suddenly sounded.
He felt like he had been thrown hard, but he clearly didn't make any sound.
In a blink of an eye, the familiar maple forest and lake came into view.
"Maplehara Manyo! Why did you come here?!"
Yae Rina was startled, but luckily she hid quickly, otherwise she would have been hit.
It's so pitiful that she was so small. If she was hit by this reckless guy falling from the sky, she would probably die on the spot.
Maplehara Manyo covered her forehead.
This time he saw clearly.
"Rina Yae?" He thought about it again.
Yes, it is.
He was convinced.
It's her.
The other party was still wearing the scaled-down version of the miko uniform.
"What's wrong?" she replied, "You haven't explained yet, how did you get here?"
"I..." He recalled for a moment, then shook his head honestly, "I don't know."
he does not know.
Yae Rina frowned.
Looking at him with lake-blue eyes, his tone became unpleasant: "You have an unpleasant smell."
Maplehara Manyo was stunned.