Chapter 21: Situation Management
“Phew…”
After changing into my pajamas, I lay down on the bed, holding my stomach that was a little too full.
“Rachel, today was fun!”
Leaf was in a good mood and was flying around on the bed.
“That’s right, Leaf and I made a lot of friends today.”
After dinner with everyone today, they asked us to continue having tea parties and dinner parties together, and we were declared friends.
“From now on, I don’t have to hide in front of Jun, Nice, and Sana, right? It’s okay to talk, right?”
Leaf asked excitedly, her eyes sparkling.
“Well, after ‘that incident’ happened at my family’s mansion, it would have been better to keep the existence of Leaf, the spirit of that tree, a secret, but there was no point in hiding it here… I’m sorry Leaf, for making you feel uncomfortable up until now.”
“That’s fine, from now on I can go out in public without being limited to Jun and the others, right?”
I think it will be fine, but I wonder… I feel bad for Leaf, but will we have to apply to the school like a pet?
“Well, for now, let’s talk to Emma tomorrow morning. We may have to report it to the school.”
“Really? But I can talk to Emma now, I’m so happy~♪”
Leaf flies around making noises, then settles down on her own sapling and yawns. She must have been tired from all the excitement of flying around.
I close my eyes too, and my thoughts race.
A lot had happened yesterday, and a lot has happened today too. Taking all of that into account, I think I need to sort out the current situation with the information I have now.
First of all, this world is without a doubt the same as the world of the otome game that existed in Reiko’s world in her previous life. And whether or not events will occur according to that story will depend on the occurrence of Lady Martina’s harassment yesterday, so this is also without a doubt.
And then there’s the next problem. That ‘thing’ that seems to have possessed Reiko in her previous life is also possessing me, Rachel, in this world. The reason I say it seems like it possessed Reiko in her previous life is because I myself am an ‘invisible’ person, I have no psychic powers, and I have never seen ‘that thing’ face to face.
The me of my previous life, Reiko, understood from the time I was a small child that I was aware of things that I was not normal. Many inexplicable things happened around me, and many unfortunate events happened to the people around me. At first, I thought it was just me pulling a prank, but before long, things started happening that were impossible for a young girl like me to cause, and people started to find me creepy and avoid me.
My mother was the only one who cared about me and worried about me. At first, she also thought I was pulling a prank to get attention, as is typical of children, and she was kind enough to patiently explain to me about goodness and morality in an easy-to-understand way. However, when inexplicable things started happening that didn’t seem like pranks, she began to rely on spiritual things and started taking me around temples and shrines. However, whenever we went to a temple, the monk would barricade himself in the main hall and not see me, and whenever we went to a shrine, the chief priest would throw salt on me before I could pass through the torii gate.
In this situation, my mother, who was financially well off at the time, sought out a private psychic. When the psychic met me for the first time, he looked pale and frightened, but he listened to what my mother and I had to say.
“It’s not possible to do anything right now. We’ll make arrangements, so please come back in a week.”
So my mother and I went back home and visited the psychic again a week later. However, no matter how many times we rang the doorbell, there was no response. My mother was worried and put her hands on the front door. She probably intended to open the door a little and call out to her from inside. Before she could call out, she screamed and immediately covered my view. I later heard that the psychic had died in a strange way in the hallway leading to the front door, and had changed completely.
So my mother and I had no one to rely on, and no one came near us any more.
Then I met someone. It was a classmate from when I entered junior high school. When that classmate met me for the first time, she had the same reaction as the psychic. I knew right away.
‘This person can see…’
We didn’t exchange a single word, but we understood what kind of being we were. After that, that classmate avoided me as much as possible. I also avoided my classmate so that she wouldn’t end up like the psychic. However, one day, we were alone at class. I suddenly called out to that classmate. Perhaps I was tempted at that moment.
“Hey, you can see it, right?”
However, she didn’t look me in the eye, and wouldn’t open her mouth. But I continued speaking.
“You know, I know that something is possessing me, but I can’t see or hear it myself… so I want to know what kind of person is possessing me, and why they are possessing me.”
I tried to speak to her, not expecting anything to happen, but she turned pale and blurted out to me.
“You! Do you think that the thing possessing you is a ‘person’!?”
“What?! It’s not a ‘person’? Then it’s some kind of beast or something?”
The unexpected words raised further questions for me.
“…No, it’s not in the shape of a beast, nor is it formless… It has a ‘human’ shape, but… A personality… I can’t see the personality…”
“What do you mean, it has a ‘human’ shape, but you can’t see its personality? I don’t know who it is or where it’s from, but aren’t I possessed by the spirit of a deceased person who has a grudge against my family?”
I’ve been possessed since I was old enough to understand, so I thought it was someone with a deep grudge against my family.
“What’s possessing you is not something that can be explained by just a dead human… If it had a personality, even if it had a grudge, I could talk to it and maybe even persuade it… But yours has no personality… So, let alone persuade it, I can’t even talk to it… At this point, it looks like malice, or rather, like a concept that embodies evil itself…”
I was used to the unfortunate and incomprehensible situations I’d been in, but my classmate’s desperate explanation made my blood run cold.
“Why… Why is such a frightening thing possessing me…”
“…Cordyceps sinensis…”
“Huh?”
“It’s probably something like Cordyceps sinensis…”
She turns away from me and tells me.
“Cordyceps sinensis is… a plant that parasitizes living insects, right? So I’m the one being parasitized? So it’s growing by sucking nutrients from me?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I think that’s probably it…”
She looks down apologetically and says.
“But I don’t feel weak or weak, you know? I’m perfectly healthy…”
“It’s not as simple as sucking up life force… I think it’s probably sucking up happiness and hope for life.”
I’m shocked by what she says. She was right on the money. I was only 13 years old, but I had lost the happiness of living and hope for the future because I had been watching the misfortune of the people around me. There were times when I even thought it would be better if I didn’t exist.
Anyway, my mother… I couldn’t bear to see my mother becoming unhappy.
“Hey! Please! This thing that’s possessing me…”
“Stop it! Don’t say any more!”
She loudly cuts me off in the middle of what I’m saying.
“That thing… doesn’t show any mercy to those who are hostile or have the potential to become hostile… so please, don’t even hint at that possibility… don’t kill me…”
She bows her head to me as if praying. I’m at a loss for words at the sight of her.
“That thing, you see, doesn’t have a personality, but it does have intelligence… and it’s cunning too… so it shows no mercy to those who are hostile to it and you, its host… I’m sure it’s been that way up until now, right?”
It’s true, I’ve never been injured or harmed by anyone until now. Whenever someone threatened to harm me, even if it was just a child’s prank, some misfortune would immediately happen to the other person.
“Until it grows to its full potential, it will continue to suck happiness and hope from you… So until it grows to its full potential, it will continue to protect itself and you, its host… Well, even if it’s not the type of protection its host wants… But when it grows to its full potential and all of its chains are cut…”
“Chains? What are chains?”
“Ah, so you can’t see it yourself…”
As she says this, she starts drawing something on a piece of paper. Then she throws the finished paper away.
I picked up the paper and saw a messily scribbled picture. A girl, probably me, and a black humanoid figure hanging over her, with chains attached all over its arms, neck, and so on. And the most distinctive thing about it is the face, with no eyes or nose, just a wide, grinning mouth.
It’s a scribbled picture that looks like a child’s drawing, but it still conveys a sense of eeriness.
“When this thing…when this thing grows to its full potential and breaks the chains, what will happen to me…?”
“Well, wouldn’t it be easier to just die?”
She said just that.
TN: In this context, 冬虫夏草 (Cordyceps sinensis) symbolizes a parasitic evil entity that possesses someone like a fungus infecting a host. It gradually takes control of the person, consuming their will and identity, leaving them a mere vessel. The entity, much like the fungus, lacks a personality or reason, acting as pure malevolent force, driven only by its instinct to corrupt and destroy, making it impossible to reason with or remove through conventional means.
