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

===Part 2===

“It’s time to explore Yahirodono Tsumugi’s home!!”

“…”

“C’mon, don’t be like that. We’re schoolgirls and its after school. Shouldn’t we be having a ton of fun to boost our affection meters to the max? Like sitting around a table full of drinks and chips and discussing ways to revive your shrine.”

With school out and her homework already done, Tsumugi was preparing to head home when someone grabbed at her shoulders. Tightly.

Her gaze wanted to escape to her phone.

“C’mon, shrine maiden whose boobs absorbed all her height. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I-if you have to ask that, it seems to me the answer is probably no. …But what’s with the tennis clothes?

“While I’m not officially on any team, I do help several of them out. This is the real deal with the special underwear below☆”

The gyaru sister grabbed her miniskirt in both hands and playfully waved it around. Could she be the kind of person who felt the need to wait until she had showered and let her hair dry before she changed into her uniform? …Apparently so.

Tsumugi stuck her thin leather school bag in the box below the seat of the rental aquamobile and took a large step to board it. She didn’t even sense when the facial recognition unlocked it for her.

Then she attached two hairpin-like objects to the back of her head. Those were her helmet. She ran a test with her phone that inflated and deflated something like a flat paper balloon shaped to envelop her head. It was designed to work with tilt sensors to automatically activate, but she had never been in a situation requiring it.

(Is this really safe?)

The aquamobile was something like a personal watercraft that could also travel on land, or like a snowmobile that floated in the ocean. At any rate, it was an amphibious vehicle. Cars and motorcycles required a driver’s license in New Sea City, but it was also a strange city where anyone was free to operate ''dangerous and unapproved'' new tech in the name of field testing.

With Terminal Float in the center, a few dozen megafloats were linked together in a fan shape with countless ocean canals running through them like leaf veins, so vehicles were about evenly split between land and sea. Traffic conditions could be checked on the phone attached to the handlebars, so they chose the ocean canals which were currently clear.

And while the two aquamobiles raced along side by side…

“We’re going to your place, right!?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then I know what achievement I’m unlocking next: bathing with a shortstack who probably has a hell of a time finding bras that fit. There’s no stopping me now (wink).”

“What if speed up and leave you in my dust?”

Unfortunately, both rental aquamobiles were restricted to the same max speed. Even traveling side by side, the wind made it hard to hear each other, so they tended to speak through the phones attached to the handlebars.

Not all the ocean canals were the same. Some were 50m wide like the one Mincemeat Drawbridge crossed, but this one was about the size of a small street. The smallest ones could be hopped over on foot.

The gyaru sister asked something while the contents of the boxy school bag forcibly carried on her back clattered around.

“By the way, aren’t you gonna do anything to keep me quiet? I mean, I saw the underside of the world and learned all those secrets about evil spirits and stuff. So aren’t you going to create a cute summer-exclusive LR shikigami and send her to watch over me to make sure I don’t spill the beans? I’ll even accept a monster type if it looks like a cute plush.”

“Why do you sound so happy about that?”

“If I am going to be caught up in something, it might as well be as fun as possible, right? Well, I already know I’ll be part of some bizarre action stuff, so bring on the legendary rares!”

“Shikigamis aren’t my specialty and I haven’t even been taught onmyodo. …Besides, I don’t need to keep you quiet.”

“Oh, you trust me that much? Go me! I’ve won this shrine maiden’s trust in record time!”

“You have no traditional background to support your claims, so no one will believe a word you say about the occult. Telling people you saw a ghost will only ruin your own credibility. Upload a video of you making the claim online and it will, well, haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“Oh, I see. So it’s like that, is it?”

“It’s like the risk of artificial additives.”

“…”

“No one wants to know the risks that would be a real problem for them. Everyone wants to spy on the secrets of different industries, but the truths they want to find are the ‘''Oh, is that all?''’ ones. It would be a problem for all of them if there was a real threat there. That’s why no one believes in spiritual phenomena. The power of groups is a frightening thing. Viewing the dangerous as safe has the shared benefit of putting everyone at ease, so it is a very powerful effect.”

(Come to think of it, wasn’t it around here?)

“Huh? Mugikko, are you taking a detour to the shopping district?”

“More or less.”

With that curt reply, Tsumugi drove up the ramp-like harbor to exit the ocean canal and got off the aquamobile on the sidewalk. For some reason, Rainy pouted her lips, bent over, and leaned on an n-shaped bollard pole. She forcibly squished he boobs against it and spread her arms in a mysterious pose of invitation.

“What? Is this not enough for you, shrine maiden? Then I’ll put some real heart into it: fall in lovey-lovey-looove☆”

“<span style="font-size:75%">Your sister is right behind you and that is your problem to deal with.</span>”

“Nwohhhhh, why are you staring at my underwear, Yuhi!?” “It’s kind of hard not to when you put it on display for everyone to see, Onee-chan!!” The angry shouting (with one of them sticking her miniskirted butt out behind her) scared Tsumugi, so she kept out of it.

“Anyway, Yuhi, are you on the way to a meeting at the TV station?”

“I’m still not done discussing this with you and you still haven’t apologized.”

“So are you here for library committee stuff? That would explain why you’re walking around in this heat instead of studying for your entrance exam.”

The gyaru sister pushed past the issue with a smile.

They had already released the rental acquamobiles onto the land street. They would use their rubber continuous tracks to either automatically return to one of the charging stations around the city or be rented by someone else first.

The two other than the gyaru sister were sort of awkward together.

“Hello… I am Betsuzaki Yuhi. I think this is my first time introducing myself?”

“Yuhi-chan. Th-th-that’s a really normal name compared to your sister…”

“That’s the thing, Mugikko. Our stupid parents learned their lesson with me and went with something normal for their second kid. But it really hurts her if you call it plain or boring, so be careful, okay?”

“Don’t worry. She can’t do more damage than you already have, Onee-chan you dumbass.”

For some reason, they ended up friending each other on social media too. Was this like how grownups would exchange business cards?

There was no need to tell Yuhi about the online shrine and all that. This would be sufficient to contact each other.

That aside, Tsumugi noticed Yuhi had a slightly mismatched way of speaking. She used a more boyish first-person pronoun, but otherwise spoke normally for a girl.

“Have you ever heard that a soccer player who initially learns to kick the ball with the wrong foot and then later corrects that habit can turn into someone who can shoot with either foot when necessary?”

“?”

“When she was little she talked just like a boy, but she started trying to fix that when she got self conscious around the teacher she fell in love with. Ugh, what a waste. She was so cute back when she was following me around talking like that.”

“<span style="font-size:75%">Do you have to bring that up…?</span>” said a barely audible voice.

Apparently that was a touchy subject Yuhi didn’t want to be teased about. Tsumugi had far too many of those herself. This was also a good lesson in how dangerous it could be to have a sister. That gyaru sister could be frightening.

“Ah ha ha. Everyone’s got their little quirks. I mean, so do you, Mugikko.”

“M-me? Eh? Eh? Where?”

“Right there. You start to use a more feminine first-person pronoun and then chicken out.”

“…”

“Working hard to break free of your shyness?”

Now it was the online shrine maiden’s turn to puff her cheeks out like a squirrel and tremble. With tears in her eyes. Why was she being teased here when she wasn’t even Rainy’s sister!?

Apparently none of it mattered to Rainy herself. The verbal machinegun continued as the three of them walked through the shopping district.

“So then I told that worried guy: It sounds to me like you what you wanted wasn’t to build a party of only female characters to enjoy a harem adventure, but to make the main character a girl and go hunting giant enemies like that. …You want to ''be'' the cute girl avatar (with a deep, sexy voice). So go ahead and make your VLTuber debut and become the ultimate heroine of your dreams! Heh hehh!!”

“Onee-chan, how did you get sidetracked this far from talking about our favorite miso soup ingredients?”

“Maybe some slight shaking ordinary people can’t pick up has rattled her brain? These megafloats are out on the ocean. And there was already something wrong with her from the moment she began – with no prompting – to talk about about which of the green onion and tofu was the seme and which was the uke. …Oh.”

“What is it, Yahirodono-san?”

“There really is one here. Excuse me a moment.”

The straitlaced sister watched on in confusion as the online shrine maiden lit a bundle of incense sticks with an oil lighter. When she waved those side to side, spreading smoke around, something appeared even in the blazing shopping district full of bright sunlight.

Shock covered Yuhi’s face.

“Whoa!? …There’s, what? Just a back coming out of the wall?”

“Looks like she’s fused with the wall. A woman must have melted into it from the other side. Probably died alone and- '''''gyah'''''.”

Both sisters must have passed their limit and tearfully grabbed onto Tsumugi. It was the standard test of courage reaction, but it was a bit much in the blazing sun. It was also dangerous when she was holding the incense sticks.

“Ugh, pwah. Most Malign Spirits are a mutation of the soul caused by the conditions of their death, so there are a lot of failures that end up unable to move at all. Then they are either bound to a location or become a stain on the wall.”

“So is that why you end up with toilet ghosts? I can’t imagine someone choosing to haunt a bathroom.”

It was unlikely this ghost could do anything with only a back, but a Malign Spirit was a Malign Spirit. Tsumugi handed the incense sticks to the gyaru sister and dealt with it using a bottle rocket. But that wasn’t the end.

“Wh-what? Why is there just a head sticking out of the vending machine slot? Where even is that guy’s body?”

“He must have died a fairly dramatic death. Oh, move your legs, there’s one under the car too.”

Setting off bottle rockets and firecrackers around town could easily cause a panic, but this was a tourist city floating in the ocean. No one noticed as long as she matched the timing to loud noises occurring outside the Groan’s range: a parade using explosives, an LCD ad truck loudly playing a trailer for an online drama full of gunfire, etc.

The straitlaced sister’s eyes darted here and there in fright.

“By the way, Yahirodono-san, I like the way you fan the fireworks out in your hand like that. It’s like a magic trick.”

“Do they teach that in shrine maiden training? You have great control. There must be a long history behind that technique.”

…It was probably best if she didn’t tell them she had learned to do this by practicing fanning out out the somen noodles before putting them in the pot. She had only received that oil lighter ''after'' the shrine burned down, after all.

“So you even defeat the little ones?” curiously asked Yuhi.

“Their strength doesn’t matter. When a truly harmless person dies, they go to the underworld without any lingering regrets. That a Malign Spirit remains in this world is enough to know they are made of regret and jealousy. So whenever I notice one, I make sure to deal with it.”

“Huh? But didn’t you say something about being given jobs? Don’t you wait until someone hires you?”

“If these Single Dread Star weaklings are allowed to grow, I might have to risk my life battling them later. Besides, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to wait until someone’s killed and a job comes in.”

As they approached the train station, they began seeing a lot of weird people around: a miniskirt maid washing a shop window with a Febseze exorcism set, a strange female fortuneteller, a self-proclaimed spiritual underground idol whose performances in small clubs were supposedly always accompanied by a spectral appearance.

“The adults in the high-tech corporations working in this city have to be aware of the existence of Malign Spirits and the Groan. Even if they refuse to publicly acknowledge it. I mean, whenever a Malign Spirit appears, all the drones and self-driving vehicles in the area run into trouble, so it directly affects their results.”

“They know it’s so dangerous? Then why do they stay here in New Sea City?”

“Malign Spirits don’t only appear here.” The modern shrine maiden conveyed a frightening truth to the ignorant straitlaced sister. “This is the country’s largest public road testing area and there are tax breaks for working here. Anyone who wants to be the leader in the fields of self-driving, powered suits, transportation mobility, and drones is best off sticking with New Sea City even if it comes with some risk. That said, they don’t want people demanding a recall because of unexplainable errors, so a lot of my jobs come from large corporations wanting to keep this all a secret.”

“Huh? So you mean you’re fighting for the benefit of us all? That’s so cool!”

Fire.

The burning sacred tree, shrine office, and main shrine. The blazing torii. And the woman standing below it.

“…My motivations aren’t all that great.”

“?”

Anyway.

“This city is only three years old. This is probably the only city of a million permanent residents in the country without a single large Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine. That creates a lot of room for niche industries.”

For example.

The sole survivor of a burned-down shrine who is desperate to keep its site up and running.