tokyo creator

Extra Chapter 314.12 Four Seasons Box Garden
Tamaki Yumiko's consciousness was as hazy as lying in bed in the morning.

She was aware of only one sound.

……

--despair.

……

--despair.

……

... huh huh huh...

--despair.

Gradually, before and after the crisp "ta" sound, the faint sound of pouring water gradually became clearer...

In Tamaki Yumiko's still vague consciousness, there was also a picture of a bamboo tube turned over after being filled with running water and tapping the bluestone.

I see, this sound comes from that kind of thing... the "Tian Shui" that is often placed in the courtyard...

Tamaki Yumiko was relieved because she got the answer.

--Um?Why a Japanese garden?Isn't it the National Theatre?

But she was startled again immediately.

Memories were suddenly evoked, flooding in like sea water.She suddenly remembered everything like waking up from a sweet dream: the last moment, before "falling asleep", she should have been exploring the "Endless Tower" with Ayano, and planned to use the "endless" witch power to break open it. That space——

Suddenly, a scream from a very close distance penetrated the fog and entered her mind, instantly confusing Yumiko's memories.

It’s Ayano’s voice!This time, Yumiko woke up completely.

She tried her best to open her eyelids and saw the blond hair shaking in front of her eyes - and the touch also told her that Ayano was in her arms, holding her tightly.

——The next moment, beyond Ayano's head, the scene behind hit Yumiko's eyes, making her almost unable to help screaming in fear.

In front of the two of them, three steps away, there was a pile of objects.

At first glance, it is the outline.Three, four, five spherical objects are piled up there.

But at another glance, the details rushed into the skull like a knife, and stabbed all the way down the spinal cord, making Yumiko Tamaki's teeth chatter and tremble.

—that was the head.

At the foot of the bright stone lantern, there were five bloody heads, two on top and three on the bottom, forming a pile.

The body in his arms was falling heavily.

Ayano no longer screamed, but held her clothes in vain with both hands, but her strength gradually lost, and she fell deeper and deeper.

Tamaki Yumiko realized that Ayano was fainting.

This situation gave her courage and calmness.

If Ayano loses consciousness, then she must protect the two people by herself.Therefore, you must not faint too, Yumiko!

Tamaki Yumiko hugged Ayano tightly, cheering herself up in her heart, and forcing herself to take a deep breath: "Calm down, calm down!!"

At this time, Ayano actually held on.

She gritted her teeth and slowly supported herself, but she still lay on Yumiko's shoulder and didn't dare to look back.

"Yu, Yumiko..." she asked tremblingly, "I, I dare not look... is that, is, a human head?"

Tamaki Yumiko bravely took a closer look, but calmed down: "No."

"Ah?" Ayano was stunned, and her shaking stopped.

Yumiko finally saw it clearly at this time: "It's not a human head, it's five... stone sculpture heads piled up."

"Ah?" Ayano also raised her head from Yumiko's arms and looked back.

"——It's the head of the Jizo statue." Yumiko finally confirmed.

"……It really is."

The stone heads of five Ksitigarbha statues are stacked together.It is crooked, covered with a large piece of fallen leaves to cover many details, and the surface of the stone statue is also covered with a large piece of red paint that attracts imagination.That's why at first glance, it's so scary.

The two trembling girls finally separated and let out a long sigh of relief.

Then Tamaki Yumiko realized that what she was standing on was white sand.

She finally got around to looking around.

This is a Japanese-style garden that can be called "vast" and covers a large area.The gate and the farthest wall are hundreds of meters away.

Entering from the gate, the main road leads to the Sukiya-style main house in the distance, dividing the entire courtyard into two distinct parts from the middle.

On the west side is the grand dry landscape garden with open space and freehand white sand.On the east side is a small but complete tea garden. Inside the deep greenery, there are stone lanterns, stone pagodas, water bowls, bamboo fences, gates, gates, and bridges. Japanese-style garden elements are exquisitely matched.

The current location of Yumiko and Ayano is at the southeast corner of the courtyard, by the pond in the corner of the tea garden.

Along the diagonal, Yumiko looked towards the northwest corner of the courtyard.

Opposite the Karesansui Garden, there is an unexpected... building that is not included in ordinary Japanese gardens.

A blacksmith's workshop.

The door was open, and there was no one inside except for a roaring fire.

At this time, Ayano's exclamation came from the side again.

"Yumiko, come and see this!!"

So Tamaki Yumiko walked over, followed Ayano's guidance, bent down and looked out from the tiles inlaid on the wall of the courtyard——

There is no such thing as "outside the courtyard".

——The entire courtyard is actually located alone in the void.

There is only a ring made of broken bricks, which is slowly rotating around the entire courtyard like the rings of Saturn.Apart from this, even if you look further away, there is nothing else in this gray void.

Yumiko stood up straight again and looked at each other with Ayano.

"This is... what place?"

Yumiko reasoned using detective thinking: "You can be sure that it is not your stage, nor is it my stage."

"Is not this nonsensical!"

"Uh, what I mean is...because it's not Ayano's, and it's not mine, so it can only be Saya, right?" Yumiko paused, then confirmed a little, "This should be Saya's." stage'."

She raised her head and looked at the sky.

In the gray sky of the "courtyard", the aurora slowly flows and changes with the silhouettes of various specious figures.

Yumiko could feel that the empty sky surrounding the courtyard was like a painting, a curtain.And from behind that curtain in the sky... came the "gaze".

She was familiar with this feeling.On her own stage, she felt a similar gaze.Later she realized that it was herself.

That was Yumiko after becoming a "witch", looking at herself who was still a "human".

So Yumiko mustered up her courage and shouted towards the false sky: "Saya——!!"

……

Nothing happened.There is not a trace of fluctuation in the spiritual vision in the sky.

Ayano on the side rolled her eyes.

Yumiko crossed her fingers awkwardly: "Let's go, let's go! Saya must be busy with other things! Let's go find her directly!"

So the two of them walked through the white sand and walked towards the main road in the middle of the courtyard.But the moment Yumiko stepped onto the main road - the sky suddenly changed.

In the sudden darkness, only a white curtain covered her face, making Yumiko feel suffocated for an instant.

"Ah——!! What's going on!" Ayano screamed again.

Yumiko wiped her face hurriedly, and it took her a moment to realize what had happened - the courtyard suddenly changed.

The gray sky above, glowing with auroras, was gone.Instead, it was a winter night that was so dark that no stars or moon could be seen. It was like an inverted abyss, and thick snowflakes were falling down one after another.

What hit us was a thick blizzard.

——No, it's not just the weather, but more like the passage of time in the garden.

Yumiko Tamaki stared blankly at the depth of her ankles, and then turned to look at the way behind her - the water dried up, the branches were bare, and the spring scene just now turned into a winter garden in one step.

"What kind of moody stage is this..." Ayano muttered.

Yumiko knew, and Ayano also understood what was going on - probably, this is the characteristic of Saya's stage,

"What do we do next?" Ayano asked again.

Tamaki Yumiko looked around the ever-changing courtyard again: the roof of the main house not far away was covered with a thick layer of snow, but there was no light in the house, like a huge black monster.

Only the forge further away, the furnace inside still gave off the only warm light.

"Then... let's go there?" After hesitating for a moment, Yumiko instinctively decided to walk towards the only light there.

The snow is still falling silently, there is no cold wind, only a cold that quietly penetrates into the bone marrow.

For a moment, the only sound in the whole world was the "creaking" sound of the two girls' footsteps on the snow.

But at a certain moment, suddenly, the sound of treading on the snow came from behind the two of them.

Yumiko turned around in surprise and saw two figures appearing on the main road near the gate without warning.

One behind the other, one is older and the other is younger, looking like a pair of master and servant.

A young woman wearing a Western-style coat and riding boots walked quickly in front, followed by a fourteen-year-old or fifteen-year-old girl wearing a Japanese-style official uniform.

When the two got closer, Yumiko discovered that the girl servant was holding a baby in her arms.

"Excuse me-" Yumiko started to say hello.

But those two people continued to rush towards them as if they didn't see them at all.

Ayano wanted to escape, but the snow blocked her footsteps.By accident, she screamed and fell down.Yumiko instinctively reached out to help.

But the strange woman did not shy away and continued to rush forward - and then, she "passed" directly through Ayano and Yumiko's bodies like a ghost.

Next, there was the girl servant holding the baby.

Yumiko pulled Ayano, and the two looked at the master and servant going away in confusion.

"Is it a phantom?" "It should be..."

The two looked at each other and whispered uncertainly.

But now, the phantom or something won't cause any fuss...

Yumiko turned her head and glanced at the phantom pair of master and servant again, and said quickly: "They are also going to the forging workshop, let's follow them quickly!"

So the two hurriedly trudged through the snow, and finally followed the pair of phantoms to the door of the forging workshop.

Suddenly, a man's wild laughter came from the entrance of the workshop.

In the workshop that was empty just now, a haggard but excited knife maker suddenly appeared.

The girl servant held the baby and huddled carefully in a corner of the workshop.The young woman argued fiercely with the craftsman.

Yumiko and Ayano stood aside, listening intently to their conversation.

As she listened, Yumiko's face gradually turned ugly: "Although I don't know who the person is, he is really an irritating man..."

Ayano suddenly said: "Ah, I understand——"

When Yumiko's attention was drawn and she looked over, she said with a proud expression: "I know who Yukinoshita is."

Seeing Ayano's "come and praise me" look, Yumiko hurriedly rubbed her head: "Ah, Ayano is really amazing! So - what's going on?"

"Don't rub my head, I won't grow taller!" Although she protested loudly, Ayano still showed a satisfied look.

She thought for a while, sorted out her thoughts, and then said, "That's right, my father likes to collect swords."

"Once, when he was chatting with a knifemaker he was friends with, I was also there, so I happened to hear about something."

"...To put it simply, it's a story about the last son of a swordsmith family that originally had a long history but later declined. He wanted to revive the family business, but he became obsessed with it."

So, Ayano recounted the outline of the tragedy in a few words, then looked at the two people in the field and said: "The swordsmith's last name is very distinctive, so I was quite impressed... Later, when I met Saya, I also wondered why her last name sounded familiar to me."

"That's right. The man we see now should be the swordsmith in the story, Saya's father."

"After all, his behavior is quite consistent with what I heard about the incident..."

Yumiko murmured: "Then Saya..."

"It should be that baby."

The two people's eyes turned back to the field.

——Lara.

The craftsman's silly smile condensed instantly and turned into a look of horror.

Because the knife in his hand suddenly burst.

The fragments scratched the swordsmith's hands, dripping with blood.But as if he didn't dare to accept the reality, he held the sword that no longer existed in his hands but still maintained the posture of holding the embryo, and screamed like a beast.

Then, the furious craftsman pushed his sister away and rushed towards the servant holding the baby, about to swing the fragment in his hand towards the baby.

--"Wow!"

At this moment, the baby cried again.Accompanied by the crying of the baby, the swordsmith's hands were hit hard by an unknown force again, and two clouds of blood mist burst out.

Then——the man seemed to have suddenly figured out something and laughed long and hard.

On the side, Ayano repeated the last two words of the swordsmith: "...Xue Tetsu."

"Well, it's true, that's what happened. Because I also remember the name of that knife, because... well, it sounds nice."

Her tone was also a little complicated.

As if the movie had ended, all the phantoms in the workshop quickly disappeared, leaving only the warm fire.

The two girls stayed where they were, silent and motionless.

In the end, it was Yumiko who suppressed her emotions first and cheered up: "Let's go, let's go look elsewhere... Since this is definitely Saya's 'stage', then she must be here."

(End of this chapter)