In this chapter, we get to see some of Takara's inner thoughts and opinions.
I picked Kagura up from her school after I did some grocery shopping. Finally got butter in the fridge! Yes! Happy day!
When we were walking together to pick up Yomi from school, we talked a few times. She told me stories of her old school. There was one where one of her old classmates kicked another peer in the back when they were bullying her. I just hope Kagura won't think it's okay to become violent from that.
Kagura and I are now waiting outside the gate of Yomi's school; it's not after hours yet so classes are still in session. I'm on break so there's no need to study! Yay!
"Big Sister Takara?" I hear Kagura call.
I snap out of my thoughts and look beside to my right. "Hmm?"
"I was wondering…" She begins. "Why do you live so far away?"
"Huh?" Hmm, why do I live far away? I never questioned it.
I look up to the clear sky thinking about what I'll say. "Well, you see, I can't give you a solid answer. " I take a deep thought. "But it's probably because my dad wanted his wife and daughter to have a relaxing life. You know, maybe from the noisy city and people."
"He sounds like a cool dad." Kagura says after hearing my answer.
I look back down and think back to the times I had with him. The time when he put a Band-Aid on my finger when I accidently cut it with a knife. When he encouraged me that there's no need to overexert myself in anything and that I can go at my own pace. When he and I had a contest to see who would get the most kisses from mom. The time when he and mother were there when I cried.
"Yeah, he was a cool dad." I said with a hint of depression.
I hate how he had to leave on that day. I would treasure just another day with him. Just another day where there was him, mom and me…
Smiling…
The conversation was filled with silence for a moment. "I'm sorry." Kagura said apologetically.
I look to her with confusion. "Eh? Why are you apologizing?"
I then realize why.
I stutter my words trying to convince her that it was all right. "No no, it was a long time ago. No need to apologize." Mine was years ago, while Kagura's mother was recent, so there was definitely no need.
It took a few minutes, but the atmosphere eventually went back to normal and we're still waiting for Yomi. Some students are leaving now.
"Sorry. We're you guys waiting long?" I finally hear the star's voice.
Kagura shakes her head. "No." "Not at all." I waved.
Yomi points towards the direction of the house with her sword, which is currently covered. "Let's go home."
We walked with Kagura in the middle.
"How was school? Did you have fun?" Yomi asked Kagura.
"Yeah. In science class, we learned all about how levers make it easier to lift things by using a fulcrum."
"That's great." Yomi said with a smile.
"Oh science class, when simple letters turn into big words…" I sarcastically said.
"'Education is important so I should work hard on it while I'm still young.'" Kagura says reciting from a man we all know.
"According to father." We all said in unison. We let out a heartfelt laugh from the joke.
We continued our walk then I hear Yomi. "Takara, can you make dinner tonight?"
"Sure, no problem." I smiled. I can finally make that pork and rice congee.
But before I can think further, Yomi then says "And we'll be having whatever Kagura likes."
"Eh?"
"To make-up for the century eggs." She explains to her.
I stopped her there and give her a look. "Hey, is it really a make-up if I'm the one cooking?"
"No worries, I'll help too." She smiles at me. "And you cooked the century eggs, so we're both going to make it up to her."
Ouch. I go quiet. She got me good with the guilt trip.
She then turns back to Kagura. "It's your choice. What would you like?"
"Hmm…" Kagura thinks.
"We'll make anything you want." Yomi says.
"Hey! Don't decide what we'll do without me!" I yell at her. I'm not even sure if we'll have the right ingredients either.
We stop walking as a train is passing by, letting Kagura think some more.
Her face lights up "Cream croquettes!" Those will take awhile to make. Good thing I went grocery shopping earlier. Yomi is surprised. "Cream croquettes?" Her face took a look of exhaustion. "Ah… That would take a bit of effort."
I lean forward with a grin. "Regret it now don't ya?" I snickered.
"Is it a no?" Kagura also leaned in.
Yomi continued thinking as she gave me side-glance. I knew what her question was even if she's not talking. I give her a smile as my answer.
She also smiles then turns to Kagura. "Okay! We'll make cream croquettes. Will you help us out?"
"Yeah!"
"I already bought the ingredients earlier. They're already at the house" I grin.
"One step ahead of us. Let's go Kagura." Yomi laughed.
"Okay."
We began walking home after the train passed but then Yomi's phone gave a small ringing sound.
"I'm sorry. I have to go." She says. Must've been the call-code.
"Okay" Kagura told her.
"It's no problem." I said.
Yomi start to run back to where we came from but then stops. "Remember the way home?"
"Yeah, no worries." I honestly told her and tapped the side of my head. "This brain can hold a lot of things."
She smiles but it disappears when she faces Kagura. "I'm sorry but follow Takara home for now."
"Will you be late?" Kagura asks her. "Depends how long I'll work…" Yomi says painfully. She and Kagura connected so quickly, it's sad to see this.
"Okay…" The small Kagura replied to Yomi.
Yomi begins to turn to where she needs to go. "I'll be home soon."
I wanted to soothe Kagura that It'll be alright, however, as I was about to extend my arm to grab her hand, I see it clenched. I look back up and see her head down.
"My mom said that too."
Yomi stops in her tracks. She and I look at Kagura with worry.
She begins to sob. My eyes go wide when I hear her cries. It starts to bring up a deep memory. "She told me to wait for her. That she'll be home soon."
I still hear her cries and I remember… me. Looking at my father's grave.
"When she left, I told her that I'll be good while she was gone. I told her to come back soon." Kagura continues to sob and I stare at her back.
"But in the end…" She cries. I want to do something. Something to help this girl. Something so she won't feel this pain.
"Mommy!" I hear her cry out.
I'm frozen from my spot but Yomi is not. She runs to Kagura in an embrace.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She tells Kagura. I look down to my hand that I was about to grab Kagura's hand with. I put it into a tight fist. I don't know what to do, but I know I don't want this girl to feel any more loss. This young girl loosing a loved one…
I walk forward, next to Kagura. Yomi is now crouching down to her eye level, hands on her shoulders. She reassures her that everything is not like back then. That everything now will be different.
I pat the young girl's head. She looks at me with tears still in her eyes. I look away for a bit and then I ruffled her hair. "We can still make a happy future. All of us, together." I give her a bright smile.
Kagura eyes show a sign of surprise. She still have some remaining tears but I don't sense any more sadness in the atmosphere.
Eh? I thought about my words. Then the next moment, I'm blushing. I look the opposite way, rethinking my words. I crouched down to the neared bush, my face away from them. What did I just say? I never heard myself say those words before. I should leave the comforting to Yomi next time…. Damn it, this is too embarrassing.
"Let's go. I'll show you our job." Yomi tells Kagura, still in a comforting voice. I glance over my shoulder and see Yomi letting out her hand to Kagura.
"Together?" Kagura says looking up to her.
"Yeah."
No wait a minute. Won't we get in trouble if we bring her?
As Kagura used her own hand to grab Yomi's, I jump up from my spot. "Wait wait!" I scream out. They both look at me wondering what I'm making a fuss about.
"You sure we're allowed to do that? What about dinner?" I ask Yomi with distress.
Hand and hand with Kagura, Yomi head towards where she needs to go.
"No worries. If you want to, you can go on home. Knowing you, you'll be able to make dinner in no time." I'm not sure, but I think she gave me a mischievous grin. She then runs off to her destination with Kagura.
"Wait! You're going to leave me with dinner duty? What about your father?!" I yell but they're already far down the street.
Not wanting to get the wrath of getting grounded, I make the decision to run towards them.
Daylight is coming to a close and I ended up following along after I gave up trying to convince Yomi that it was a bad idea to bring someone so young.
We're at the armored jeep. Yomi enters first and I let Kagura enter after her.
"YOU'RE LATE!" Iwahata screamed out to us.
I got a mixture of surprise and terrified at that moment. I could feel my heart wanting to jump out of my chest.
"Are you crazy yelling at a little kid?" Yomi angrily asks Iwahata.
"I'm fine." Kagura nicely said. Then she pats my arm caringly.
I take a moment and realize that I'm hugging Kagura. I immediately let go and regain my composure. Should be careful what I do when I get scared next time.
"Who's the kid?" Iwahata refers to Kagura. "You know you can't bring citizens on top-secret mi-" Yomi raises her hand to stop Iwahata from speaking further.
"She's not a citizen. She's Kagura Tsuchimiya." Then everyone else in the car got a surprise look.
"Tsuchimiya? As in the Tsuchimiya family?"
I'll regret doing this later but I speak up to confirm. "That's right."
The commotion died down and everyone introduced themselves to young Kagura. Yomi is going in and out of blushing and trying to beat up Noriyuki once again. I look down and see Kagura slightly blushing from seeing them. I bring my head down and whisper to her ear. "Fun fact: Those two over there are engaged."
Kagura looks at me with shock. "Eh!" She squeals.
"Here, this is Michael 12th. Air pressure type, anti-evil drawing blade. The Master's latest work." Iwahata hands her a big sword that's still in it's sheath.
Kagura takes it out of his hands.
"Hey, is it a good idea to give this to her?" I ask him. "She's not a Vanquisher yet."
"You shouldn't even be telling her all this." Yomi says after. Finally looking like she's on my side on this one. But Kazuki contradicts us.
"If that kid is from the Tsuchimiya family, she should be able to use it easily enough."
"That's not the problem!" Me and Yomi furiously yell at him.
"If you hold down the trigger when you draw the sword, the pressurized air in the sheath will triple it's cutting force." Iwahata explains to Kagura, completely ignoring our disagreement.
Yomi face-palm herself. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought her along…"
I gave a look that said 'I told you so.'
"Listen to the younger generation next time." I tell her. Too late to go back home now.
The radio then pitched in and everyone listens.
"Operations room to Disposal Unit." Someone said through it. Iwahata responds. "Disposal Unit here."
"According to information received, the Supernatural Disaster Source came from Kanda district in Chiyoda. Proceed to scene immediately." It statically said.
"Roger that." Iwahata answers.
Good thing I'm already wearing my jacket. I begin counting my thunderbolt knives to see if I have it all. A problem with using knives is that unlike a sword, you'll lose them when you're attacking something.
Consider the knives 'ammo', my arms the 'gun', and my eyes the 'scope'.
Since the knives are custom made with seals on them, I also have to go around and pick up the ones I've thrown or else it's either going ammo-less and dying, or waiting weeks for a new batch to be made. And either one is a pain in the arse.
We finally arrive to the destination and get out of the car. There's a gigantic phantom that's surrounded with a barrier to keep it in place.
Civilians continue to walk about with their day. They, of course, can't see the phantom. Most humans with what you call, 'a sixth sense' can see it.
"What's that?" Kagura points at it.
"As expected from someone from the Tsuchimiya family. She got good eyes for someone so young." Iwahata complements.
"It's definitely a leftover from yesterday." Nori said.
"Huh? We didn't get them all?" I questioned with a bewildered look.
"Let's finish it quickly while it's still inside the barrier." Kazuki told us. "We don't want to deal with it when it's done regenerating."
"I'll do it." Yomi says, uncovering her sword. "Takara you can stay here."
"Sure thing." I replied to her.
"But Yomi…" Kagura looked at her worriedly.
Yomi faces her and crouches down to eye level. "I want you to watch carefully. This is the job I was telling you about."
"Huh?" Kagura looks at all of us.
"We're the Disposal Unit. A secret branch from the Ministry of Environment. We work with the Supernatural Disaster Countermeasure Division." Yomi explains to her.
"Think of it as being a garbage man." I told Kagura.
"In any case, our job is to dispose the evil spirits that bring chaos to the human world and the phantoms the curse the living." Yomi explains to the young mind.
The phantom that's trapped inside the barrier made a loud shriek and Yomi already runs towards it.
She unsheathes her sword and yell out. "Ranguren!"
She summoned the spirit beast?
A gigantic creature appears next to her. It had various parts of animals. It's head was of that of a lion. It's torso of a four legged mammal and there's snakes as it's tail.
This is the first time I got to see our family's spirit beast. Ranguren looks fiercer than I imagined. Though, that's because father always picked on me, saying that it's snakes will turn bad children into stone.
"That's a chimera." Iwahata tells Kagura.
"A what?" She questions.
I speak up while I still look onwards at the mystical beast. "A chimera. A creature made up of different types of other living creatures."
Iwahata's deep voice appears again. "Ranguren resides in Yomi's sword."
Shishio, the Isayama family's sacred sword holds Ranguren, the spirit beast. It is said that it's power is on equal terms as Byakuei.
Kagura speaks in amazement "Wow…"
We all watch from the sidelines. Kagura with quiet wonder in her eyes. And me with thoughts.
I remember when I first met Yomi. I remember laughing together with her. Even though she's not an Isayama by blood, I respect her as any other family member. She's strong-minded since day one I've known her.
When she was given Shishio, I was overjoyed that she did. She deserved it as anyone as hardworking as her. Even if Uncle Naraku never took her in, I wouldn't be able to get Shishio anyway. It would've been given to cousin Mei, who's the same age as Yomi.
But I'm glad that I'm not the heir to the family. I don't think I could handle all the responsibility and pressure from it. All the thought's of 'Don't screw it up or else it'll be your head!' isn't comforting whatsoever.
I lean on the railing in front of me, watching as Ranguren uses the famous 'Roar Wave' on the phantom.
Even when I stood in the corner and never reached for the title of Head of the family, Yomi ran towards that title headstrong with everything she can take.
.
And that's what I love about her.