Editing Internet Shrine Maiden Tsugumi-chan:Volume1 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

The latest rumors? Let me think…



Okay, about five years ago there was a fire at a pretty big shrine deep in the forests of western Japan.

The shrine and its grounds were totally destroyed, leaving nothing behind. Apparently a lot of the people who worked at the shrine died and it still hasn’t been rebuilt. I heard it even lost its position as a…religious corporation? You know, that framework created by the government.



But the real rumor is that the shrine still exists.

Tucked away in a corner of the internet.

The shrine, its grounds, and the people who ran it were all burned, yet the shrine’s official site lives on.



Supposedly the site is still being updated from time to time.

But who could be doing it?

Did someone from the shrine survive, has some stranger taken over the site, or are these updates coming…from beyond the grave.



There are plenty of additional rumors about that site.

For example, the shrine’s site is hidden away where you can’t find it with a normal search engine, but once you visit it…



“It’s all nonsense.”

Yahirodono Tsumugi complained to the message board on her phone.

That tended to be the case with random rumors.

She was in the detective agency’s nap room. But while it was called that, it was effectively her second bedroom. The office was rented by Detective Hisame Kouga, but if the black-haired girl ever found him hanging around in the nap room, she would probably be miffed. …Not angry, though.

(Everything here is his. Because he took me in from the burned-down shrine and then lent me a home like this.)

A sliver of the tropical morning sun shined brightly in through a gap in the closed electric curtain. It was comfortable in here thanks to air conditioning, but in the world just outside the glass, it looked like another scorcher was brewing. The thin thread of light traced its way along the girl’s thigh.

She was in her underwear.

Tsumugi was seated on the small bed with her arms around her knees. The gyaru sister had once pouted her lips and said, if that pose naturally squashed your boobs, it was proof that yours were “truly big”, but while it did happen for Tsumugi, she wasn’t sure why it mattered. She languidly stared at the inside of the electric curtain. She had not discovered any kind of new information. She always did this first thing after waking up. She never remembered it, but maybe this meant she dreamt of old times every night.



Of the time before it all burned down.

Of the priest and all the older shrine maidens who had spoke so proudly of the shrine’s more than a millennium of history.

Of those few people even in Japan who could carry out real exorcisms.



“Their last job was five years ago.”



She roughly lifted the long hair from her face with a hand.

She spoke out loud to confirm the information and solidify her own mental image.

“They were tasked with purifying the site before construction of New Sea City began. To pray for the safety of a once-a-century project even greater than an international airport or rocket launch site. It should have been done by the priest’s shrine. And would have ''if that hadn’t happened''.”

Fire filled her mind’s eye.

She saw the torii, the sacred tree, the shrine office, and the main shrine blazing.

''And she saw that woman flickering among the flames.

She intentionally drove the nightmare from her mind.

149 deaths. Could anyone have benefited from that horrific incident? Almost certainly. As many as had suffered from it. Count up both sides there and the number had to be in the thousands. Which made it nearly impossible to identify the culprit.

And because the purification of the building site was canceled, the ritual meant to ensure safety remained incomplete…or had possibly been maliciously altered. That could even explain the unusual quantity of Malign Spirits in such a new city.

“Who was it?”

She had asked this question thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times.

That woman had been dyed red by the flames as she stood directly below the torii burning even more brightly than its vermilion lacquer.

She undoubtedly carried the most fearsome rank in the country. She was the only known Quintuple Dread Star.

Which meant the number of lives taken by that terrible Malign Spirit reached five digits…and that was only the ''known'' deaths.

“''Who was it that summoned you''?”



On the other side of the door.



“…”

Someone stood tall.

A girl of only 10 stood tall and was clearly upset even this early in the morning. Her name was Hanagushi Temari. Detective Hisame Kouga sat seiza-style on the floor, so even the little girl in a frilly blouse and jeans stood taller than him.

The usual ritual had begun.

When the girl peered at him from the right, her hands on her hips, Hisame Kouga turned his face to the left. When the little girl tried again from the left, his gaze fled to the other side. The process repeated a few more times before any words left the 10-year-old’s lips. In an icy voice.

“Look at me.”

“…Yes, ma’am.”

“What do you mean you can’t pay this month’s rent?”

“Princess. Japan has a saying: you cannot shake sleeves you do not possess. Since that saying has survived into modern times, we can tell just how many Japanese have loved and identified with the saying and kept it in use. Thus, not paying your bills is a national-”

“Nwohh! You must be working since you’re always so busy. I’ve been watching, you know!? So how in the world is it you’re always in the red every single month and don’t have enough to pay your rent!?”

…This month, the problem was the torn guardrails and meters-long hand prints in the asphalt of the haunted Overlook Bridge courtesy of the Ghastly Crusher’s ultimate slaps, but there was no point in explaining that.

Especially for Tsumugi who had risked her life to battle the Malign Spirit.

Not to mention that the landlord’s daughter, and thus the tiny commander of the rent retrieval squad, wasn’t at all interested in that.

“Can’t you work a side job alongside your detective work? Like flipping burgers?”

“If I did that, it would probably turn into my primary job.”

“And what’s the problem with that? Open a burger shop and start paying your rent like an honest citizen!!”

The nap room’s door opened.

The online shrine maiden muttered sleepily with only the top of her shrine maiden outfit thrown on, leaving her bright thighs bare.

“When’s breakfast?”