VOLUME 3

Chapter 9: Parent-Teacher Conference

The pale-faced, golden-furred, nine-tailed fox.

A beautiful siren who appeared frequently in China, India, and j.a.pan in order to trick the politicians of the age.

A powerful monster who overturns the government of one nation half for sport before reincarnating in a new nation and perpetrating the same offense.

In j.a.pan, she was known as Tamamo-no-Mae.

In the past, she was chased into a corner by exorcists, forced to reveal her true form and had her spiritual powers chipped away from her. She personally chose to then transform into the Killing Stone (1), a rock that spews out curses and poisonous gas. Even though her actions were then effectively sealed, she has been able to continue killing ma.s.sive numbers of living creatures to this day.

She was definitely not the kind of G.o.d who would be worshipped for protecting the land or helping things work, but rather, she was a vile monster who perpetrated various evils by skillfully ensnaring or just possessing people of influence.

“Ke ke ke ke ke!”

This G.o.d, the self-proclaimed Tamamo-no-Mae, was running rampant as she let out a high-pitched, fox-like cackle.

This huge random a.s.sortment of rocks first began to crush the walls and pillars of the building in its way and reached out for me. It quickly grabbed onto me.

Held in the giant’s grip, I was fished up into midair like a piece of wood.

“Ugh…”

I felt like I was getting crushed and sharp pains ran through my body, but more than anything, I was just frustrated.

If this body’s true owner were here… if my mother were here… she wouldn’t have been done in this easily.

“There. Now we can talk more easily, no?”

Tamamo-no-Mae began to talk to me in that shrill, annoying voice of hers.

“By the way, this huge rock monster is a Killing Stone Golem I put my heart and soul into designing! It is a giant spiritual robot that can make mincemeat out of even the most powerful of G.o.ds! My divine spirit – my true self – may have fallen into ruin after long battles with other spiritualists, but that does not mean it is something to be neglected and tossed away, correct? The power of the pale-faced, golden-furred, nine-tailed fox is not to be trifled with!”

Purple-colored steam leaked out from many places on this Killing Stone Golem’s body.

“I know your weakness all too well. You may possess the immense power of the Supreme G.o.d, but to use it you must retain your consciousness. If the Tsukuyomi Priestess falls unconscious, or if her awareness grows hazy, then she will not be able to properly exhibit her power.”

That was certainly true.

The Tsukuyomi Priestess was always drugged so she couldn’t alter the world too much.

My “sarcoma” also was meant to support me when I was sleeping or knocked out.

This enemy really had good knowledge of our weaknesses.

“Do not take me for a fool who would just attack a country’s Supreme G.o.d head on. So, please allow me to haze your mind and seal your ability to properly wield your powers! Bewitching and melting the hearts of statesmen is the nine-tailed fox’s specialty, after all!”

I remembered back to the time I had betrayed my mother, and she had inserted those drugs into my stomach.

A similar substance was gushing out from the Killing Stone Golem’s body.

Suddenly, I felt my consciousness slipping away, and my mind blanking.

“I have been waiting for this moment to come for so long.”

Tamamo-no-Mae’s words sunk into my mind as my consciousness continued to haze.

“It has been a mere ten years since I used Baron Samedi as a decoy and possessed you when you came to the town to play, hiding in your body.”

She was a complete parasite.

Had she really been nesting in my body for so long?

Escaping the detection of the other priestesses, of my mother, and even of my sarcoma…

And waiting for the perfect opportunity to surface…

“Waiting for the time when you might want to change the past.”

The sounds of the rock golem’s limbs cracking ceased, replaced by an ominous laugh.

“I was in a state of living death but was awoken by your wishes. I will implant myself into your immense power of the Supreme G.o.d, forcing it to obey my will in order to cast an alteration on the past.”

She could implant herself into spiritualists, and alter the past.

“Those are my abilities, but altering history requires no small amount of power. My own powers are in ruin, so it is impossible for me. If I do not channel the power of the Supreme G.o.d for my purposes, it would be exceedingly difficult.”

“Casting alterations… onto the past… changing history…”

I groaned.

“That’s taboo. That’s… you can’t do that…”

“Ke ke ke!”

Tamamo-no-Mae’s laughter cracked through the air, almost as if she had just heard a hilarious joke.

“Were you not listening? I am part of a sinister occult society! We commit crimes that would shock even crying children into silence. We do it because it is taboo and because we cannot! And do not forget, this is something you yourself wished for.”

Yes.

She had mentioned that her awakening was brought about by my own wishes.

In that case, what had been the trigger?

“Tsukuyomi Sasami, you are feeling regret. And regret is frustration at failures in the past. Normal human’s regret is meaningless and has not a single effect on the world. However, you possess the power of the Supreme G.o.d, which controls the laws of nature, the hearts of humans, and even the history of this land. When you feel regret, you warp the very fabric of time and s.p.a.ce, and can even alter the lines of history.”

I admit, I had some knowledge of things like this.

The alteration of history.

They say that history is written by the victors, who rewrite and stamp out any unflattering pieces of it.

For mere humans, that was all they could do.

For G.o.ds though… for the Supreme G.o.d… the alteration of history was more complete, more perfect.

The Supreme G.o.d could distort people’s memories and what was once strict reality.

So, the Supreme G.o.d could also warp history and revise the past.

Things that definitely happened would transform into fiction.

Everything else would be patched up so events remained consistent.

It was a terrifying power.

A power that could send chills down your spine.

“Sure, I regretted things.”

That was precisely why I tried so hard, so desperately to resist the urge of using that power.

“Back when I shut myself in that dark room all by myself, I thought about this a lot. Yeah, I regretted things. I betrayed mom. I broke my promise, and even though my mom had already died once, I couldn’t lay her back to rest peacefully. I was a terrible daughter. I’m probably the worst Tsukuyomi Priestess in history. But, that is still me.”

I clenched my teeth at the pain attacking my entire body as I glared at the stone monster in front of me.

“I ran from my duties and will definitely bring about the end of the Tsukuyomi bloodline. I betrayed my mom, betrayed my ancestors… but that is me! No matter how much we warp history, no matter how much we change the past, no matter how much the people in the world claim that what I did was right and just…”

I wouldn’t give myself into temptation, no matter how sweet.

I wouldn’t just erase what happened in the past.

These sins were my own to bear.

I may regret things, and it may hurt, but this betrayal was fully my own.

Something I myself committed.

Forgetting something like that would’ve been the most cruel thing of all.

“I would still never forgive myself.”

This was the only remaining way I had to pay my respects to my mother.

It was the last way a betrayer and liar like myself could show her my strength.

I would live on with these wounds.

I would live on, clenching my teeth at the weight of my sins.

I was a bit tired and taking a short rest right now…

But once my tears had run dry, I would stand back up and walk forward once again.

Walk forwards on this path.

“Hmmm.”

Tamamo-no-Mae seemed a bit bored.

“Quite the hypocrite you are. Or no, perhaps you are strong. Quite impressive then. I applaud you. They say that failure plants the seeds of success, but to wish to erase the past is quintessentially human! However, you won against temptation. Quite impressive, Tsukuyomi Sasami. However…”

The stone giant let out more poison gas, almost as if teasing me.

“What you want is of no concern here. You might yell and scream, but my powers allow me to force you to listen to me!”

The female fox laughed loudly, almost as if trampling down my opinions.

“The Killing Stone Golem never appeared here at this time before. Do you know what that means? It means the alteration of history has already begun! The minute you started to feel regret is the minute everything ended. I will use that regret, warp it, and then force history to be rewritten. Rewritten in a way that is convenient for me, of course.”

The Killing Stone Golem put more strength into its fingers.

I felt like I was being squeezed by a vice, and I heard my spine creaking.

–

“I will kill Tsukuyomi Juju right here and now.”

–

Tamamo-no-Mae lightly made that declaration.

“That is the goal of altering history this time. If I can kill Tsukuyomi Juju here, then Arahabaki’s natural enemy, the Tsukuyomi Shrine, will also weaken. We may then be able to save Her Highness, if only by a little.”

A bit of sadness mixed with her voice as she grew quiet.

“If Juju dies, then where do you think the power of the Supreme G.o.d will go? Their clan is bound by blood through incest, so the natural conclusion would be to her daughter. And, as you can see, I have taken full and complete custody of Tsukuyomi Sasami’s body.”

I glanced at the young me who was embedded into the head of the giant.

“We kill Juju, and we eliminate our greatest enemy. At the same time, we kidnap the young Sasami, who has just acquired the power of the Supreme G.o.d and bring her back to Arahabaki. It will be a simple task to brainwash a young, inexperienced girl like Sasami and make her into our ally. And so, Arahabaki will have defeated a great enemy, will have taken the power of the Supreme G.o.d for ourselves, and will immensely grow from it.”

Tamamo-no-Mae seemed to be having quite a bit of fun talking about her pipe dreams.

“Grow enough to conquer this entire planet.”

Was that the ultimate goal of Arahabaki?

Conquering the world… if she was being completely serious, then yes, they were definitely an evil organization.

“Are you a moron…?”

I finally managed to get out an insult, even as the giant’s fingers threatened to crush me.

“My mom was worked to death trying to manage this entire country.”

I felt tears begin to flow.

“And I… I’m at my limit just taking care of this small, single body of mine.”

They wanted me to manage the world…

Don’t make me laugh.

“And someone like you…! Someone like you, who’s only all smug because you used a nasty trick, what the h.e.l.l do you think you can do?! You think you can kill people?! You think you can bring an entire country to its knees?! You think you can control the world?!”

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

Tamamo-no-Mae almost looked like she had pity in her eyes as she spoke in a kind voice.

“In that case, please die, Ms. Hypocrite-Who-Tries-So-Hard. You certainly said plenty of nice-sounding things here, but if you are looking for praise, then you should seek it from the G.o.ds in heaven above after your soul pa.s.ses there.”

It was right after that.

I felt like I had been enveloped in an explosion, and my entire body shook from the impact.

Ahh, did the Killing Stone Golem finally crush my body?

Sorry, mom… I couldn’t keep myself alive…

That thought pa.s.sed through my mind… but if I really had died, why hadn’t my consciousness faded out by now?

I opened both my eyes.

–

“Hey there. Nice work.”
–

I saw Yagami Tsurugi, squatting and looking down at me with a laid-back look in her eyes.

“……?”

I didn’t understand what was going on, and could only stare back at her in utter confusion.

I was no longer in the back garden.

Instead, I was in a room that was already deeply etched into my memory.

I remembered the pattern on the flower pot in the corner.

The flickering flames of the hanging lanterns.

The charms lined up on the floor.

And the single futon laid out in the middle of the room… with my mother inside. My mother, who was approaching her death.

Yes, I remembered clearly now. This was the time of my mother’s death.

This was her deathbed, and after her body failed her, she died soon afterwards.

I remember standing to her side and sobbing.

This was a painful memory. No matter how many times I thought back to it, I ground my teeth at my own helplessness, at how I couldn’t do a single thing.

And now, I found myself right in the middle of that memory.

My cheeks were wet with my tears.

I was now in my younger body, wearing my priestess clothes, and I stared out in blank confusion.

And right next to me was someone who definitely should not have been here: Yagami Tsurugi.

She was in the same lab coat I often saw her in at school and looked like she didn’t really want to be here. She yawned.

“Hey, ‘sup? You okay? Alive and kicking?”

Tsurugi waved her hands in front of my eyes and called out.

I gulped and finally managed to squeeze some words out from my mouth.

“T-Tsurugi?”

“Yup. Can’t you recognize the cute Tsurugi-chan when you see her? Hmm, I guess you’re a bit curious what’s going on… let’s see… ugh, this is hard. Umm… geez, I’m pretty bad when it comes to teaching other people stuff.”

Then why the h.e.l.l are you a high school teacher?

–

“We do not have enough time to linger here idly.”

–

As Tsurugi began to groan with a difficult expression on her face, my mother somehow rose from her futon.

She was supposed to be in critical condition here… she was going to die soon.

“M-Mom?!”

“Yes. I am here.”

My mother nodded, her expression pained, before looking at me.

“Sasami, listen carefully. I cannot stay like this for long. Tamamo-no-Mae, One who Dances on the Scales, is a powerful G.o.d. She has also been preparing for this opportunity to exhibit her powers for a long time.”

“O-Okay…?”

I still was completely confused, so I couldn’t do anything but nod blankly.

My mother impatiently looked at me and spoke strictly.

“Hold yourself together, Sasami. In spiritual battles, it is always the one with a clouded mind that suffers defeat.”

That was certainly true.

That’s exactly why someone like me who was easily troubled and led astray was so useless.

“Listen to me. I will now use Tamamo-no-Mae’s powers for myself in order to return to the past. You cannot hope to resist her powers, but there is a silver lining here in that you are no longer alone. We will combine our powers and stand up against this taboo alteration of the past.”

“This woman… she was the one who poked a hole through your belly and shoved drugs in there, wasn’t she?”

Tsurugi was rudely pointing at my mother.

“When she did that, she also inserted her own vessel in there when you weren’t looking. So after she got beat to pieces by Tama and fell back into the Underworld, she used that vessel as a lifeline to come back to this world.”

Her vessel… so it was like how Tsurugi left the divine blade Ame-no-Murak.u.mo back in the human world so she could follow it back from the Underworld.

“I also cannot overly rely on my own abilities. There was always the possibility that I would fall back into the Underworld, and so I enacted that plan as a safety measure. Otherwise, I would not have recklessly caused injury to my daughter.”

I see. If she only had to drug me, she wouldn’t have needed to punch a hole into my stomach.

“So, was that why I got really really fat…?”

“Hm. Did you get fat?”

There was quite a bit of hope in my voice as I asked that question, and my mother fell into thought.

“Hm, that would be your mother’s fault, yes. I will provide a more detailed explanation later, but it is difficult to regulate things in your world from the Underworld. I had envisioned that my vessel would appear as more of a boil or a pimple…”

Boils and pimples are really ugly too, mom…

And seriously, I was so panicked from being so fat that I almost brought Tama’s arm down on myself to gouge out a part of my body.

“Ahh, thank goodness. It was mom’s fault… I thought I would stay like that forever… I even used the power of the Supreme G.o.d but couldn’t lose any weight at all, so I was going crazy.”

“Of course it would be a nuisance if my vessel were to be destroyed, so I implemented certain safety precautions there as well.”

Given her power, it wouldn’t be hard for my mother to erect a barrier around her vessel.

I might possess the power of the Supreme G.o.d, but my spiritual powers were still underdeveloped, so if my mother put two or three layers of protection onto something, it would take me quite a bit of time to break through.

“Also, please do not use the power of the Supreme G.o.d for something like ‘losing weight.’ The only reason my vessel swelled past what should have been just a boil is because you are too lazy. If you showed more restraint and resisted your own material desires more effectively this would have never happened.”

Ah, she’s angry at me.

But for some reason, hearing mom scold me like this… it made me really happy.

“At any rate, I followed the vessel which had been implanted into your body up from the underworld… but on the way, this one here interfered.”

My mother unhappily pointed at Tsurugi.

Tsurugi also seemed a bit astonished.

“You think I’d just let you run away from the Underworld over and over? I was also down there and was trying to get back when I had a run-in with this woman. Because of that, I could only get a random part of my powers back to the human world and I lost most of my memories too.”

Ahh, so that’s why Tsurugi was bugging out.

“But well, now we’re all here in this mess. So before we start killing each other again, let’s agree to a truce and join forces to deal with this Tamamo-no-Mae and her alteration of history.”

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

“Well, I’m pretty d.a.m.n exhausted though, and same with Juju here, so I don’t think we can do anything outrageous right now.”

“We cannot allow her to take over the world. Changing the past is an abominable act in the first place. Well, I suppose I do not have to tell you that.”

My mother looked at me and quietly mumbled.

“Your words to Tamamo-no-Mae were quite stirring. I am proud of you. I cannot say that I forgive you for what you have done to me, but if you are acting with your own sense of conviction, then I do not consider you a traitor.”

“Mom…”

I felt tears begin to leak out of my eyes, and I frantically tried to wipe them away.

I thought I would never be able to face my mother again.

Of course, she didn’t say she forgave me… but I felt a slight bit of weight ease off my shoulders.

“Well, looks like this is a good time for a parent-teacher conference.”

Tsurugi chuckled.

“So, it looks like mom here has her reasons, and so does Sasami. You two should have a long talk later and start trying to figure each other out. From there you should be able to come to your own understandings about each other. Get along, mother and daughter… watching family hurt family gets pretty boring.”

Tsurugi seemed a bit sad as she muttered that. But then she summed up the situation for us.

“Anyways, Tamamo-no-Mae uses regret, or any desires to change the past as a trigger for her powers. If we want to break her powers, we have to get rid of all those triggers.”

Tsurugi spoke seriously and ominously.

“However, to Tamamo-no-Mae’s surprise… well, to everyone’s surprise, we have the minds of three people mixed together in this bodily vessel now: Tsukuyomi Sasami, Tsukuyomi Juju, and myself, Yagami Tsurugi. Because of that, her powers have misfired a bit, and we can use that gap to go in and interfere.”

There was me, the original owner of this body.

There was my mother, who planted a vessel into my body in order to come back to the human world.

And there was Tsurugi, who was mixed up in everything after encountering my mother in the Underworld.

If we could eliminate our regret, or at least soothe it, then we could resist Tamamo-no-Mae’s power.

“I’m gonna use Tamamo-no-Mae’s power now, and we’ll slowly go backwards in time. If we try to interfere in past events we’ll end up altering the past, but if we just watch there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Tsurugi smiled teasingly.

“We can’t start over from a save point but we can at least look through all the game history logs and figure out what we can do from here on out. You two should aim for a happy end. Life isn’t as much of a s.h.i.t game as you might think.”

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) This thing actually exists, in the Tochigi prefecture at a hot spring resort.