Kyou kara Ma no Tsuku Jiyuugyou!

Chapter 4 of Ten ni Ma no Tsuku Yuki ga Mau! (The Ma!Snow Dances in the Sky!)

So I didn’t make a post about this novel’s chapters that were already translated like I did for KittoMa and ItsukaMa because there really wasn’t anything worth making a post about.  The Chinese version stayed really faithful.  There were a few jokes that were cut out and some that it seems like Vivarina just didn’t know how to write in English (Like when Yuuri was imagining Super Saiyans because the Big s.h.i.+maron tournament is called the exact same thing as the Dragonball tournament ‘Tenkaichi Budokai’).  There were also times where it looks like she mixed up who was talking. Although, one time even I"m not really sure if it was Wolfram or Yuuri making the comment. It seems like it had to have been Wolfram because the next line was definitely Yuuri, but it also seemed out of character. It wasn"t anything really important though so whatever ^-^

That being said, some of the names are a bit different because they got changed into Chinese phonology.  I"ll list them at the beginning of the chapter if they come up.  The one in this chapter is:

Saismoya > Sizemore

Oh, and I got the picture for this chapter from Portrait of a Demon King.

Anyway, here it is!  Chapter 4 of Ten ni Ma no Tsuku Yuki ga Mau! (The Ma!Snow Dances in the Sky!)

Chapter 4

      “What’s up with that!?  He’s all weak too!”
      Annoyed that I’m the only one hiding out, I give the door a light kick.  If Conrad were here, his little brother the third son would have been part of the cabin group without complaint.  If Conrad were here.
      “He’s Lord von Bielefelt, right?  I don’t think he’s weak at all.”
      “There you go again with the know-it-all talk.  He’s lost to me before, you know.  Well, we’re saying it was a draw though.”
      “He probably just underestimated you.  There we go!”
      He pushes a chair and a desk against the wooden door.  He’s probably making a simple barricade.
      “Hey hold up, Murata.  If you do that, then Wolf and the others won’t have anywhere to escape.”
      “They won’t retreat.  They’ll hold their ground outside and defend you to the death.”
      “To the death?  That’s a bit much.”
      “It’s just the coastguard so we’re probably fine for now.”
      As he stood by the window watching the scene outside, Murata let out a long sigh.
      “s.h.i.+buya, you need to get used to being protected.”
      At that moment, I understood.  He had taken out his contact lenses and was a black-eyed owner of j.a.panese DNA just like me.  There was a glitter that I had definitely seen somewhere before in his near-sighted eyes.
      “… You know everything, don’t you?”
      My friend from the same cla.s.s suddenly looked scarily old.  I can’t move my gaze away from the dark light in his irises, in his pupils, deep deep within.  As I gaze at the pinpoint, numbness runs up from my hipbone.
      “You knew… everything… and you kept quiet, didn’t you?”
      “Stop.” Murata hurriedly covers my eyes with his right hand. “It’s dangerous.  You can’t control it on your own yet.”
      “Control what…”
      “Magic.  You and I have a very special relations.h.i.+p.  Used correctly it can even become a powerful weapon.  But it’s a double-edged sword.  One wrong move can end in tragedy.  Do you remember that rampage at the Gilbit estate?  That was really dangerous too.”
      “Let go!”
      I impatiently brush off the hand on my face.  It was only for just a brief moment, but the daylight’s brightness hurt my eyes.
      “What’s this about a special relations.h.i.+p… what kind of phrasing is that!?  We’re friends, aren’t we!?  We were in the same cla.s.s in 2nd and 3rd year in middle school, right!?  Besides that… before, we were somehow… before we had human bodies we were together and you might have met Conrad… is that true?  Is all of that true?”
      “It’s true.  You might not be able to believe it though.  You and I… to put it bluntly, the Demon King and I have a special relations.h.i.+p.  I am able to aide a king who has great power.  I was made for that purpose.  But you aren’t used to using magic yet.  If we mess up while working together, we won’t be able to stop the magic from running wild.”
      The boat isn’t shaking, but I can’t properly p.r.o.nounce my first words.
      “Uh, um, in a video game that would be a tag-team combo?”
      “Hey, that’s a nice way of putting it.”
      It wasn’t the time for me to be praised for confirming the name of the technique.
      Murata even knew that I was the Demon King.  If he had happened to get caught up with me and just unluckily got brought to this world then he wouldn’t know that fact.
      “… Maybe it’s because my brain isn’t calm right now… but you sound like you’re a human from this world.  Maybe not a human.  A demon maybe.  Either way, Ken Murata from j.a.pan, a cla.s.smate from my hometown, was really someone from The Great Demon Kingdom! … Is what it sounds like.”
      “It’s something like that.”
      With his arms loosely folded across his chest, he’s leaning against the wall.  Half of his body is in view of the window and only that part was obstructing the sunlight.
      “… Who are you?”
      He looked black with the light behind him.
      “Who are you?  Murata?  You’re not Murata are you!?  You’re not the Ken Murata I know!  I mean, demons don’t have that kind of name.  Wolf is Lord von Bielefelt and Conrad is Lord Weller.  Gwen is Lord von Voltaire and Lady Celi is Lady von Spitzweg and Miss Anissina is Lady von Karbelnikoff.  Josak is… Gurrier.  What are you?  Who are you really?  You’re certainly not Muraken.  You don’t have that j.a.panese name.”
      “I said so, didn’t I?  I’m Ken Murata.  I’m not anyone else.”
      “There’s no one with that name in The Great Demon Kingdom!”
      “Then who are you?”
      After getting answered with another question, I’m at a loss for words for a moment.
      “Your Majesty, aren’t you Yuuri s.h.i.+buya?  Aren’t you a baseball fanatic who lived on Earth as a j.a.panese high school student right up until just before your 16th birthday?  Aren’t you Yuuri s.h.i.+buya, the owner, catcher and captain of a gra.s.s-lot baseball team and a Lions fan?  Even if you ask me who I am, I am me and there’s nothing false or true about it.  I lived on Earth for 16 years too.  I lived as a perfectly normal j.a.panese person with relatively ordinary parents even though they work a lot so there are days when I don’t see them at all.  I was in a different school district so our elementary schools were different, but we were in the same cla.s.s in middle school, right?  I was born with the name Ken Murata.  I don’t have any middle names or baptismal names.  I was there for almost 16 years.  I breathed the same air and was raised in the same world.  You wanna hear more?  We go to the same bookstores and convenience stores and we take a shortcut through the same park.  As a matter of fact, the ramen shop I went to after cram school in 6th grade was the same too.  Is that enough?  Can you be satisfied with that?  If you ask me who I am now, all I can tell you is that I’m me!”
      “But you…”
      My voice is high-pitched.  I felt like the floor under my feet would disappear and I would just plunge into the ocean.
      “… you said stuff about a cactus and a journey… Even though we breathed the same air for sixteen years, you’re talking about stuff I don’t understand.  You’re saying stuff that a high school student leading a normal life wouldn"t ever imagine, wouldn’t ever wonder about.”
      “Yeah.  That’s, it’s a little extra something I remember from before being born.”
      “… The thing about Conrad too?”
      “Yes.”
      He was the man who brought my soul to Earth and even named me.  But he’s not by my side.  He caused me all this anxiety and he won’t come back.
      “He embraced your soul and went to Earth and protected you with great care on the journey.  Until it was decided where you would be born.  My guardian was a ridiculous doctor, but he brought along Lord Weller, who didn’t know anything about Earth, and tried surprisingly hard.  You had a slightly troublesome pursuer and he needed to get away from them.”
      “Pursuer?”
      “Yeah, because you were the soul of the next Demon King.”
      What do you have to do to remember what happened before you were born?  I heard on TV that babies have memories from inside the womb, but what he’s talking about is from before we even existed.  We weren’t embryos or even eggs and sperm.  These are memories from when we were incomprehensible beings.
      “There’s no way I’d remember that.”
      “That’s right.  It"s erased.  The previous existence and memories of the former owner of a soul are sealed in a gap in the soul.  All souls without exception are storing up the memories of the ‘lives’ it has lived up to that point, but usually the door to them won’t open.  They’ll get in the way of living your life.  It’s fine to just use the knowledge gained in the current ‘life’ and only use that.  However, I’m different.”
      The guy who insists he is Ken Murata squints his black eyes a little.
      “… I remember.  I can’t forget.  I’m not allowed to forget.”
      “F-forget what?  Your past life and before that?”
      “Yeah, and even before that.  Way back… yeah, way back.”
      “I’m sorry.  I can’t really unders…”
      To be honest, I can’t really understand his explanation.  He has memories from when he lived before?  Is that like when girls get all excited about their fortunes being told and they say that they were a princess of a Daimyo during the Warring States Period?  They’re always some high-cla.s.s daughter and someone else is always some queen of a foreign country.  There are a bunch of people all across j.a.pan that were Marie Antoinette and there are probably a few hundred people across the world who are the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte.  There are some reserved people who say that they were rocks and for some reason that leaves a favorable impression.  But I’ve never heard of anyone talking about even before their past life.  I have a feeling I saw something like that on an ESP television show, but even that was only two or three generations back in time at the most.  How long is ‘way back?’
      “Hey, um, when you say way back, does that mean about 500 years?”
      “A little more.”
      “Then 800, 1000 years?”
      “No, well, about 4000 years.”
      “Seriously?  Then you remember all of the past 4000 years of Chinese history!?”
      “s.h.i.+buya~~!” he yells out in an exasperated yet amused voice.  “I wasn’t a Chinese citizen all 4000 years, you know.” (1)
      “If you weren’t in China then where were you?  Did you wander around the world?”
      “Hm, well various places.  But before me was a woman living in Hong Kong and before that was a military surgeon in France.  The owner before that was… um, well they died young so they didn’t really have an occupation.  They died in an accident before they were ten… don’t make such a sad face.”
      I had inadvertently imagined it and was on the verge of tears.
      “But, but you, ten years old is so sad… there was a lot of things you wanted to do, wasn’t there?”
      “Hey wait, I wasn’t the one who died,” Murata said as he unfolded his arms and pounded his chest with his fist. “It was the previous previous previous owner of this soul who died.”
      I stood there forgetting to close my mouth.  Like I can understand a crazy story like that.  I gave up just with past lives and souls and now he’s talking about it not being himself but an owner.  Your previous previous previous previous life isn’t you?  It’s hard to believe you can lead a happy life carrying the lives of people who aren’t you.
      “How can I explain it in an easier way?  For example, it’s kind of like remembering the main characters you empathized with in a few dozen movies.  Ah, World War I was pretty difficult wasn’t it?  The railroad engineer had a pretty wife, didn’t he?  It’s really great we have a cure for the bubonic plague nowadays, huh?  That kid really admired the Crusaders… and like that, I accurately remember the portrayals of main characters from movies from a bunch of different eras.  So, it’s not like I have gone through anything sad or painful myself.  Even though I have 4000 years of memories, I’ve only lived sixteen years.  I might cry over the pain of others or for disasters sometimes, but there’s nothing on par occurring in my own life.  Hey s.h.i.+buya, you paying attention?”
      “Who….”
      No, not ‘who are you.’  Do people with memories of their past lives talk about them like that?  Murata is surprisingly objective.  What century were the Crusaders from?  I regret that I failed world history.
      “But you know, 4000 years… do you remember Cleopatra’s movie?”
      “I saw the one with Elizabeth Taylor.  But during Cleopatra’s time, the owner of this soul lived in the land of the demons.”
      “In The Great Demon Kingdom!?  They were there!?”
      “It seems so.  At that time, the name of the country was…”  Murata lapsed into thought for a short while as if he was remembering something like in a scene in an old drama.  “Yeah, it has been here before.”
      It’s extremely… an extremely strange feeling.
      When I first came to this world, a spiteful American Football Macho used an iron claw on me.  Thanks to that, the acc.u.mulated knowledge of the language stored in that gap in my soul came out. I found out that the previous owner of my soul was someone who lived in The Great Demon Kingdom.  They lived as a demon in that country before I was Yuuri s.h.i.+buya.
      After forgetting all of that, I lived in j.a.pan for 16 years and made dozens of friends and acquaintances.  Now, one of those people I was close with is confessing to me that they also have memories from The Great Demon Kingdom.
      “It’s a really strange… odd feeling.  Having a friend that I can’t clearly a.s.sociate with either j.a.pan or here…”
      “That’s understandable.  Even I was a confused at first.  When I first found out that I could share this secret in this life, I was both happy and afraid at the same time.  It had been a secret for so long, you see.  Actually if I, as a child, told people that I had memories of a past life they’d call me a liar.  I’ve kept quiet about it all my life.  So even when I first met you I was apprehensive about whether you would realize the truth in the future.  Who would have thought that the soul that Lord Weller brought was living so close?  I mean, you and I were born in Boston and Hong Kong respectively and j.a.pan is a large country from north to south.  It was really weird that two people with a common secret would be living so close to each other.  But then again…”
      Oh, Murata was born in Hong Kong.  I heard that his parents are j.a.panese though.
      After discovering all of these shocking things, my consciousness was getting hazy even though it wasn’t nighttime.  For some reason I’m really sluggish and tired.  I want to escape from reality into a dream.
      “I have the important mission of a.s.sisting you, His Majesty the 27th Demon King.”
      “… Mission?  Then you’re trying to help me?”
      “I’ll be happy if I can.  The reason I have the vast knowledge from the time I was called The Great Sage is to help you.”
      “I see, The Great…”
      I haven’t eaten or drank anything, but there’s a round lump stuck in the back of my throat. After struggling and coughing for a bit, I realize that it’s air.  I was so amazed I forgot to exhale the air I breathed in.  Saliva went down the wrong pipe and my nose was burning.
      “Geh, The, The Great Sage!?”
      “Are you okay, s.h.i.+buya?  You want me to get some water?”
      That’s right.  In the first demon castle I visited, Blood Pledge Castle, I had seen a portrait of him.
      The Twin Black Great Sage.  The sole person in this world who stood on equal ground with The True King.  It is said that if it weren’t for him, the demons would have lost in the battle against the Originators and would have been forced to wander without land or country.
      He was the Asian-looking man drawn with a gentle expression standing a few steps behind the beautiful young king that looked a lot like Wolfram.  He was more intelligent looking than beautiful and only his black eyes and hair were the same as mine.
      “You"re that Great…cough … Sage… guy!?”
      “No, like I said I’m just plain old Murata now.”
      As soon as Josak had called him Your Highness I should have realized that he was someone of a high position.  As a baseball brat who had bad grades in language cla.s.s, ‘Your Highness’ was something I’d never heard before.  I probably wouldn’t have been able to read it without furigana and if you asked me to write it, it would have been impossible. I don’t even know how to use the word. (2)
      I don’t know why everyone else besides me realized this, but facing The Great Sage, a patriotic hero, a founding father (mother?) of the nation, a former Crown Prince wouldn’t be able to defy him.  The reason the spoiled prince was taking out all of his frustration on me was because Murata had too high of a status.
      “Tha- wh-wh-what’s up with that?  Then for the time being, I’ll just tack ‘Lord’ onto your name and call you Lord Murata.”
      “Stop that, I haven’t done anything to deserve that!  I just have the memories of that person!”
      “… But, then that means that you’re a lot more knowledgeable about this world than I am.”
      “I wouldn’t say ‘a lot more.’  For me, this is my first experience here in my entire life and the relations between humans and demons have changed a lot since their time.  With this old language and these old memories, this is a strange and unknown place for Ken Murata.”
      “Even so, you were tricking me…”
      “I wasn’t tricking you.”
      “But you didn’t tell me.  You even made an excuse that you could speak German when you were communicating that first time.  When you met Flynn and American Football Macho, you were pulling that half-baked deception that you were misunderstanding everything… All of that was to trick me.  That means you lied to me on purpose without any remorse.”
      I slowly slumped down on the floor and leaned against the foot of the desk.  The floorboards s.h.i.+fted under my weight and the door creaked lightly.
      “And not just in this world.  In j.a.panese high school life too.  While we played baseball on the weekends, when you brought me to the dolphin show, when you invited me to work at the beach, all that time you knew, didn’t you?  And then when I drowned at the dolphin pool you pretended to actually be worried.”
      “I was worried!”
      “It’s too late for that now!  You knew where I went and what I was going through.  So what was all that with ‘it seemed like you might have gotten washed out to the sea wall?’  Agh, I don’t know what to think anymore!”
      “Listen to me!  I was worried.  Even if I knew that you were a demon, it’s not like I was able to come with you until now.  No, because you were going to be king, I was even more worried about whether you’d get there safely.”
      “Shut up.  It’s just a whole bunch of lies.”
      All this time.  I had just been told some weird things by the person I thought was my normal friend.  In a way it was even more intense than when I came to this world on a Star Tours and was first told about my situation.
      Surrounded by a bunch of beautiful people I had never met before and being told that I was the Demon King starting today was so shocking I had nightmares because of it.  But the reason I was able to accept that was because everything was so bizarre.  Because everything here was so incredibly different than the world that I was raised in, I was able to sort out all of the new information.
      But this time someone who was my normal friend up until yesterday is talking about kings and sages.  Up until a little while ago, Murata was my cla.s.smate from middle school and now he’s the reincarnation of a national hero.
      It’s hard to believe, but it’s different than just accepting new information and filing it away.
      Someone who I believed had been my friend for a long time has been lying to me.
      “I wasn’t trying to trick you.  I just didn’t say anything.  I couldn’t say anything.”
      “That means you were tricking me!  Of course you can speak the language!  You’re this world’s greatest Lord Sage!  Demons and humans… and even that box, of course you know more about them than anyone else.  Compared to me who had no interest in the occult or psychic phenomenon until I was 15, who didn’t really know anything about science fiction or fantasy or religion, who, who didn’t even read all that much, of course you know far, far more about them than I do!  Even though you knew… I idiotically…”
      “s.h.i.+buya.”
      I wave my left hand at Murata who seems to be a bit fl.u.s.tered and tilted my head.  I’m so incredibly miserable I can’t even sit up straight anymore.
      “Whatever, I don’t care.  There’s no point in getting this angry.  It’s just… I felt like I had to protect you somehow because you didn’t know anything about this world, because you didn’t know that j.a.panese black hair and eyes were dangerous… because you only had me... it’s like I was being an idiot.  No, not ‘like,’ I was being a genuine, bona-fide idiot… d.a.m.n it, I’m so stupid… I’m such a joke.”
      “I won’t laugh.  I’m thankful.”
      I feel like crying now.  If I wasn’t so tired I would have already been wailing a long time ago.  I’d have grabbed a plate or a book or a pillow or anything I could reach and thrown it at him.
      I’m embarra.s.sed that I got all worked up by myself and I felt like screaming ‘You idiot!’ and running away.  I wanted to run somewhere far away and never see Murata again.  I wonder what he was thinking when I was going along with him so he wouldn’t figure out that this wasn’t Earth and when I was trying so hard to hide my ident.i.ty and position.
      How much did he laugh at me?
      “There’s no way I would laugh.  I was really thankful.  I felt bad because you were being such a good person.  I felt guilty because I couldn’t tell you about myself.  I thought it would be better if you could go on without ever knowing.  If things could stay the way they were and everything would resolve itself without me having to get involved, if you could go on without ever noticing… I thought that might be better.”
      On the other side of the window that I absently glanced at, the ‘skirmish’ (according to Josak) was about to happen.  No one had drawn their swords, but it was hard to call the situation calm.
      “I mean, I didn’t have any confidence.  It’s been a really long time since my soul went to Earth.  Compared to you who was just in The Great Demon Kingdom as a woman, I’ve been reincarnated elsewhere for a really long time.  While I was being born in various countries, there have been a few people I’ve confessed the truth to – that I had memories from my past lives.  That I had memories from over 2000 years ago from another world.”
      “… And?”
      His sigh turned into a laugh.
      “I got treated like a sick person.”
      2000 years was a little hard to believe.  If it was a hundred years, he might have gotten treated like a G.o.d, but people can’t really imagine such a long span of time.  For example, unless someone had experienced it for themselves, it would be hard to just believe that someone got flushed down a public toilet.
      “Even worse was when I was called a devil.  Ah, that time was really bad.  I almost got burned at the stake.”
      “B-burned at the stake..?”
      “Anyway, after going through experiences like that so many times, I realized it wasn’t smart to talk about the truth.  Not to anyone, not to my parents, and of course not even to my friends.  Not even to you… I was hesitating… over whether it was alright to tell you… right up until now.  But I thought if, as my last excuse, if you… if you confessed to me then I would confess too.”
      Confess what?
      “I wanted to hear it from you, but unfortunately you never confessed.”
      “Confess what?  You don’t mean… you don’t mean coming out about travelling to a different world?  You think I can just say something ridiculous to a j.a.panese friend like I’m the Demon King starting today!?  No one would believe tha- ah.”
      “Yeah, it’s ridiculous.  No one would believe it.”
      That’s right.  I couldn’t tell Murata either.  No one wants their family and friends to think they’re weird.  I put my head back against the leg of the chair I’m leaning on.  Then I slowly fold my knees and stand up with a short grunt.
      “We’re sixteen, after all.”
      “Yeah.”
      “Hmph.”
      “What?”
      When I playfully gave his shoulder a push, Murata pushed my shoulder back.  With the same strength.
      In the same spot.
      It’s the situation where guys would embrace and hug each other in a coming of age movie.  But neither of us will do those kind of exaggerated things in a situation like this.  We’re j.a.panese after all.
 



      “… I’m the Demon King.”
      “Yeah.”
      “Even though I was born in Boston and raised in j.a.pan, the soul I have is a demon’s and I was raised to become the Demon King.  It’s funny, isn’t it?”
      “A little bit.”
      “History, management, stuff like that?  How to be a king?  No one taught me anything like that.  When it comes to stuff I know there’s baseball… ping pong and baseball.  Forget college, I hadn’t even gone to high school for that long.  But all of a sudden I’m the ruler of a country.  I have to govern over hundreds of thousands of people.  It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
      “It is.”
      “What about you?”
      Murata once again explains his position in a way that a high school student who only reads sports magazines and manga could understand.  As I chimed in with ‘right?’ and ‘that sucks’ every now and again, it was like we were chatting in front of a convenience store cheering each other up.  Eventually we ended up bragging about which one of us had a harder time, but neither one of us came out on top.
      Because neither of us felt that there was anything unfortunate about the parts of our lives we didn’t talk about.
      Right now, I’m talking about demons with my j.a.panese best friend from Earth.  We’re talking about the road of fate we’re stumbling down like we’re discussing a drama.  At the opening ceremony of the second year of middle school, I never imagined I’d have this kind of relations.h.i.+p with Murata.  Suddenly a warm feeling pours into my chest, spreads throughout my veins and reaches all the way to my fingertips.  The rea.s.surance that there was someone I could talk about everything with spread throughout my body.
      But at the same time, I had cut off my one remaining, although narrow, escape route.
      “… But it’s all real, isn’t it.”
      “Hm?”
      “I just thought that this is now beyond a doubt all real.”
      Until now, I had met friends in a place that no one knew about and was the king of a country that no one had heard of.  The only proof I had was the Lion’s Blue pendant swaying on my chest.  If I had been surrounded by a bunch of doctors in a pure white hospital room in j.a.pan on Earth and they told me that it was all a dream, that it was all an illusion that I had seen, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to defend myself.
      But now it’s different.
      I have companions in this world and there is a friend who knows this on Earth.
      This is definitely real.
      No one can doubt it.
      “I can’t just explain it all away by saying it’s a dream… ah, huh?”
      On the other side of the window pane, a silver flash cut through the air.  It was the flash of steel.  There’s only one thing I imagine it could be: someone had drawn their sword.  Hurriedly looking out the window, I see that even Flynn has appeared on deck.
      “This is bad.  Something’s up.”
      Five men in yellowish beige work clothes have come on board from the coast guard s.h.i.+p.  The one who drew his sword is a young man in the rear who seems to be an underling and looked like the least flexible of the bunch.  The others were grinning at Flynn rather than Sizemore and Josak.
      When we stop talking and listen carefully, we hear that they were talking about the law in s.h.i.+maron and asking about who was responsible for the woman.
      “Ugh, those guys are going on about some other stiff thing.  What’s wrong with a wife representing her husband?”
      “What are you going to do?”
      “It’s obvious.  It"s times like these that we ‘Let’s Norman Gilbit!’  It was really lucky for us that he was a masked man.” (3)
      I noisily pushed the desk and moved the simple barricade.  I roughly turn the doork.n.o.b, but it will only twist a little in one direction.
      “Huh, that’s weird.  Did I lock the door…?”
      “I said it before.”  Murata holds out a bit of metal in his right hand.  It’s a small, bronze key.  His cheeks and the corners of his mouth are lifted in a slightly exasperated way.  “You have to get used to being protected.”
      “But they’re saying that they’re not going to let us through because Flynn is a woman!  It’s nothing all that dangerous.  I just have to make an appearance with Norman’s mask on and arrange for us to go on.”
      “No.”
      “Ugh, really!?”
      I put my foot on the door and twist the doork.n.o.b with all my might, but it’s definitely not going to open any time soon.  Giving up and running to the window, I grab the frame and try and lift it up.  It.won’t.go.up.  Just like the door, this one is securely locked as well.
      “Murata!”
      “No.  If you absolutely need to get out there then strike me down and take the key!  Ah, I wanted to say something cool like that.”
      He doesn’t look prepared for something like that at all.  After hesitating for three seconds, I groan and grab the back of the chair.
      “Aw, I was looking forward to playing a game where I go ‘I’ve never even been hit by my father!’”
      “It’s easier to throw around furniture than to hit a friend.”
      It also feels a lot better.
      The leg of the simply designed chair smashes the thick gla.s.s loudly.  Perfect, I’ve always wanted to do this kind of cla.s.sroom mayhem.  However, the st.u.r.dy wooden frame was still there and there wasn’t a s.p.a.ce I could fit my body through.  Even if I kick or throw my shoulder into it, it won’t break.
      An agitated conversation flows in along with the cold and damp ocean air.  The phrase ‘by force’ is mixed in there.  Everyone, calm down.  And before that, me, calm down.  There’s a keyhole in the center of the window frame, but it doesn’t look like it will break if I hit it with my hands.
      “… If you really are my best friend Murata,” the bronze key is sitting on his right hand’s index finger. “Then you wouldn’t tell me to keep my head down because I’m a king!  I don’t know about the Twin Black Great Sage though.”
      “And there you go again without any proof…”
      “Muraken would do this: he’d laugh and lift his head like this.”
      Murata did just that.  He dropped his gaze to the floor with a defeated expression as he played with the key with his fingertips.  Then he gave a small laugh and lifted his head.
      “I thought it would turn out like this.”
      That’s probably a phrase from someone else that he heard before he was born. (4)
      He tossed the key over and it flashed red.  It comes flying at me in an arc over the short, 50 centimeter distance between us that I could have reached across.
      I mutter a thank you, hold down my impatience and open the window.  The gla.s.s fragments scatter around, but I can’t worry about trivial injuries.
      “s.h.i.+buya, the mask.”
      “Oops.”
      I pulled the tight mask over my head and tied the leather cord.  I put one foot on the window frame and stick out the top half of my body.
      “Wait, all of you!”
      Everyone’s gaze is immediately drawn to me.  Murata murmurs behind me as I pitch forward out of the window.
      “… You should have used the door.”
      The Great Sage was absolutely right.


---------


(1)    At this point in the story, you’re supposed to have already put two and two together that Murata was born in Hong Kong and his previous life was a woman named Christine who also lived in Hong Kong because of what happened in ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’ in the gaiden KakkaMa that came out between novels 4 and 5. Or at the very least, be suspicious of that fact~ It was made fairly obvious in the last novel when Murata started talking about their guardians.  Everything that Murata has been saying regarding Conrad and Jose is from that side story.  Maybe I should have translated that first… But it’s really long! XD I promise I’ll get to translating that eventually!!
(2)    Furigana!  So, j.a.panese has three different writing systems, two phonological and one logographic.  Logographic means that one character can represent a word or morphemes.  Basically, the dreaded kanji!  Furigana are phonological characters written on top of or on the side of kanji like a little cheat sheet when a publisher/writer thinks their intended audience might not be able to read the kanji they have used.  Your Highness (geika) looks like this: 猊下.
(3)    The ‘Let’s Norman Gilbit’ here was in English ^-^
(4)    This is what Conrad said all the time.
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