Chapter 24: Interlude: Never Done
A beep draws her out of her internal domain and after taking a sip of her tea she smiles at her little brother who had just taken a seat at the kotatsu next to her and poured himself some of his own, "Hello Sōta." The boy grins contagiously, clearly having forgiven her for Suzuki. "Just how many people do you have following me around anyways? I caught at least three of them at the tournament, then there's the one that always follows me to school, but that one has always been there so I don't think it counts." She grins back, "If they're bothering you I can hide them, but you already said that you don't want to become a kami and leave Kaasan as the only human. So there are just some things you're going to have to let us do for you so you don't evanesce."
He waives the comment aside, "Nah. I was more curious than anything. Speaking of curiosity, what has everyone been up to? I know that tousan is working on getting kaasan registered as his consort so none of the afterlife kami mess with her when she dies, and Kagome-neechan is focusing on university." With a lopsided smile Dekuyume fingers her fan, "Welll~ at this very moment Shikon is…" Sōta cuts her off, holding his hands up in a referee call for time out in soccer. "Wait! I don't want to know that! TMI Deku-neechan. T.M.I."
She laughs and explains that Ambrosia has finally decided to recreate his deer causing Sōta to lean back in surprise and take a sip of his tea, "That's a big step. Before Naraku adsorbed him and incarnated him as Goshinki… didn't he go crazy and turn into a satori yōkai because of what some humans did to his deer?" Dekuyume nods, "Yes, and he's even let some of us near them." She smiles shaking her head, "He watches us like a great big momma bear yōkai though, I'm going to have quite the time keeping a battlefield from forming if someone so much as gives one of those deer a paper cut. But it's important, if it was easy it wouldn't be worth anything, and he would never manage to grow up."
Pouring herself more tea, she continues, "As for myself, I finally finished dealing with all of the flickering kami that have approached me for en-souling. Though, now I seem to be receiving inquiries from kami who already have souls of their own, but find that the eons that have passed since their deification have left them stagnant and resultantly desirous of reincarnating so that they can have more room in their souls to grow." With a low whistle Sōta asks, "And just how many man-hours did that take?"
With a wry smile she answers, "Somewhere on a scale of Suzumiya Haruhi's eternal summer to Kaname Madoka's quest, I think?" Sōta winces and the two enjoy the rest of the afternoon as he pulls out the homework he needs help on. He knew that there were millions of people that would give anything to be a kami, but was it really a surprise that he didn't want to become one? The only time a Kami's work was done, was the day they stopped being one.