Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 10 Chapter 1 (section)

== 1.00 Tamaki Part 1 ==

Kitazawa Tamaki had become a Mushitsuki around the time she enrolled in a prestigious middle school in the capital.

Mushitsuki were people possessed by the supernatural being known as Mushi. Mushi possessed adolescent boys and girl in order to eat their wishes, hopes and aspirations. —Apparently.

“Thanks, Tamaki!”

“Mhm, you’re welcome.”

Mushi were the subject of rumors for about ten years. Eyewitness reports increased, and the more realistic it seemed, those rumored to be Mushitsuki were being discriminated against. —Apparently.

“How did you manage to shake off that persistent stalker?”

“Oh, I just told him clearly. Don’t come any closer, you pervert! Like that.”

Recently she’d heard the word Mushi a lot more. Obviously, since the mass media and the government still claimed they didn’t exist, it was only at the level of rumors, though.

Perhaps the existence known as Mushi slowly became impossible to hide from the public.

—So she thought.

“What! That’s so scary!”

“Really, Tamaki, you have some guts!”

“Isn’t that dangerous? Would’ve been real bad if he attacked you.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. It might’ve been different if it was anyone else, but once the ‘actual person’ he’d been stalking told him this, it was quite the shocker for him.”

17 years old Tamaki narrowed her eyes, smiling and waving her hand around.

The place was the very, very back of a large shopping mall’s parking lot. Including Tamaki, there were five high school girls in this inspection site for a discontinued private railway line.

The vast premises had piles of rusted containers and the asphalt was cracked everywhere. The tracks used for transferring materials were also rusted red, and the railway crossing and rails had weeds growing between them. Chain-link fence on the verge of destruction was as good as not there, so the fact that anyone could easily enter the place was a problem.

There were cicada corpses at their feet.

Soon true summer would come. Since Tamaki hated the summer, she could hardly wait for winter.

“The actual person?”

Four faces looked at Tamaki with a blank look. Being stared by four cute high schoolers wasn’t unpleasant, but her slip of her tongue caused her to cover her mouth.

“Ah, no, it’s nothing. Anyway, you’re fine now. Right?”

“Thank you so much… he would follow me even on the way home, it was so scary…”

One among the uniformed girls, a petite girl with glasses, looked up at Tamaki with tears in her eyes.

''Ugh'', groaned Tamaki.

''Oh my… she has that “plain girl” style with glasses and braids that’s rare nowadays, not to mention that slender body and cute face… no wonder a perverted stalker got interested in her. Not to mention she looks so weak against pressure—

Her classmate friend had come seeking advice about being stalked three days ago.

And Tamaki managed to find the culprit just yesterday.

Then, just a while ago she’d called him to this very spot, barraging him with insults and abusive language to drive him off.

“Oh no! Tamaki’s looking at us with those wild eyes again!”

“Why are you breathing so heavily?”

As the friends all exaggeratedly shielded the glasses girls, Tamaki sidled closer.

“A-as thanks, please allow me to take a few pictures… C-can I, please? You can even just wear a school swimsuit…”

“Gyaaaa! She’s a pervert!”

“Even more than the stalker!”

“Please do something about that creepy dude-like side of yours.”

“D-don’t be mean, it was just a joke.”

As Tamaki pouted, the bespectacled girl averted her eyes bashfully.

“…I-If it’s one picture then it’s fine.”

“Really?! That’s quite enough! Also, please give me a s-smooch on the cheek!”

“This girl’s the real deal!”

“And she even snuck in something else!”

“I knew you had that sort of fetish!”

“No no, that’s obviously not true. Really. Probably. Definitely. Maybe a little.”

Tamaki laughed while denying it. One of her friends sighed.

“What a waste, really. You’d be able to seduce so many men.”

“Seducing is dirty.”

Putting a hand on her mouth, Tamaki feigned ignorance. Her friends were probably talking about her appearance.

She was the tallest one among them by a full head. Her long hair, with its bangs held by hairpin, reached all the way to her waist, and her bespectacled face was supposedly quite neat. Her body, clad not in the kind of uniform dictated by her public school but a casual t-shirt, was slim. Being slender was fine and everything, but ideally, she wished she had just a bit more volume in the chest area.

All of her friends instantly burst into laughter.

“What’s up with acting like you’re some rich lady—oh, actually, you’ve been to that kind of rich lady school, right?”

“Right, you told us about it. Horusu Seijou Academy in Akamaki City, right?”

“No way, that’s a super prestigious school! Then why are you in this countryside dumpster now?”

''Throb.

For just an instant there was pain in her chest.

But it did not show on her expression. She was used to hiding her pain with a smile.

“Right, I am a lady. How do you do?”

“Wow, sounds so fishy! Is that true?”

The girl’s besiegement was intense. When the five of them spoke in high-pitched voices time passed quickly. On the other side of the tracks full of weeds, the red sun was sinking.

“Umm… is it really fine for me not to thank you?”

“It’s fine, really.”

As the conversation settled down, Tamaki parted with the four girls. They were apparently still going to hang out around town for a while.

Tamaki, however, headed to the station. She was going on the train that was actually used unlike this place and would ride home.

Since Tamaki lived far away, she would take the limited express train every day to go to school. If she hadn’t gone back earlier than the others, she’d only get back home in the middle of the night.

“I already got my reward, after all.”

Pulling out a man’s wallet from her skirt pocket, she took out some bills and threw them away.

“Had a decent amount on him. Was he actually rich?”

Moist wind blew through the abandoned inspection site. Walking on top of the cracked ground, Tamaki went over the collapsed chain-link fence, exiting the shopping mall parking lot. From there she went out to the shopping district, and by walking a bit she would reach the station.

“I wish I’d found some weakness and squeezed a bit more out of him…”

While putting the bills into her own wallet, she mumbled with a cold expression.

Tamaki had repelled the stalker for her troubled friend. There was no doubt about that.

However, her method of doing so differed a bit from what she’d told her friends before. They probably wouldn’t understand it even if she explained.

Using her special abilities, Tamaki had literally “transformed” to her friend, telling the stalker “You’re so annoying, stop that”. Not noticing that he was being deceived, the stalker started crying out of shock. In addition Tamaki also received some “reparation money”, but that was a digression. She also thought of a chance the stalker would lash out at her and picked a place where there would be no victims, but it ended up being a needless fear.

Noticing she was disappointed, she sighed.

As she walked along the shopping mall, a couple of foreigners holding a map called out to her.

They asked her in English which way it was to the station.

“You need to go straight down this road.”

Tamaki, who learned some English, pointed with a smile toward the direction of the setting sun.

She waved at the couple thanking her and turned on her heels.

“—To get to the sea, that is.”

Leaking a cold sigh, she kept going to the station.

A collared chihuahua came running at her. It passed in front of Tamaki while dragging its leash behind it, vanishing beyond the crossing.

“…”

After watching the chihuahua pass, as she turned back, she saw a middle-aged woman running at her. When asked with an angry expression about whether she’d seen the woman’s dog, Tamaki shook her head.

“Sorry, didn’t see anything.”

Asserting this and leaving behind the woman who looked all around her, she resumed walking to the station.

It wasn’t like she held a grudge toward the foreigner couple or the dog’s owner.

And there was no malice either.

Even so, lying to them—was only because Tamaki was that sort of person. She would most likely never speak the truth to strangers her entire life.

Tamaki had become that kind of person due to certain circumstances.

“So boring…”

Approaching the shopping district, Tamaki mumbled to herself.

She’d actually been looking forward for the incident with the stalker, but his unconditional surrender bummed her out.

The countryside was boring. Although she’d moved from the capital city for another high school due to familial circumstances, every day was peaceful and without incident.

At the time of her enrollment, she enjoyed the atmosphere that was completely different from the big city, but that also had its limits.

Looking for some thrills, she helped her friends resolve their problems. However, all of them being solved without any huge effort—was perhaps because of her being excessively talented.

A year passed since she moved to the countryside.

The Mushitsuki called Kitazawa Tamaki was bored to death.

“Maybe I should just join that SEPB whatever…”

She unconsciously mumbled.

The Special Environmental Preservation Bureau.

It was a government agency founded for the purpose of concealing the existence of Mushi, overseeing unaffiliated hidden Mushitsuki and at times capturing them.

Tamaki already knew of them from long ago. Knowing about them while not being exposed to their threat meant that Tamaki was simply powerful enough to avoid it.

Although she’d mumbled it half-jokingly, it really was a problem.

“But if I destroy them too easily it’ll be really boring… I’m strong, after all.”

Twirling her hair with her fingers, she kept walking to the station when something happened.

She heard arguing voices on the road ahead. Looking there, she noticed a small group of men and women bustling and grabbing the arm of a petite girl.

A fight? But why did they need all these people against one small opponent?

While she was watching, the girl was being pushed into the back alley. Perhaps because it seemed like there were ill-bred looking men among them, although passersby seemed to mind them, they passed without stopping.

Should she call the police? That idea passed through her mind, but her body moved on its own.

“Trying to butt into a fight with ''this face'' would be a problem…”

She took off toward the alley where the girl and the others vanished.

Tamaki’s long hair instantly billowed. Her wide-open eyes were dyed in deep blue.

“For a fighting scene it’s definitely better to have this girl.”

Black mist rose from Tamaki’s feet. As the mist vanished, her form walking toward the back alley changed completely.

Seeing Tamaki’s transformation right in front of their eyes, people who passed by were glued to the place looking at her, but Tamaki did not mind. They’d end up thinking that they were merely daydreaming or imagining it anyway.

“Now, it’s time for you fuckers to let me have some fun.”

In a complete change from before, she mumbled in soprano.

Changing from the tall, black-haired Tamaki, she became a blond, blue-eyed foreigner girl.

The name of the original owner of that body and abilities—was Mitake Anneliese. 

A member of the SEPB Central Headquarters, she was a Mushitsuki known by the codename “Kasuou”.