Chapter 19

Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka

May 12, 2013

11:06 A.M.

Ohta Ichigo

“Thank heaven,” Major Suzumoto mumbled tiredly to himself as I told him about the decision that I and my wife had made.

“Major, there’s something else.”

Kurumi trailed off beside me as the weary faces of everyone in the tent, Major Suzumoto among them, turned in her direction.

“What is it?” Major Suzumoto asked.

“Because of the dangers to our daughter’s life in cooperating with the Self Defense Forces, we strongly feel there should be some compensation given to our family. Who should we talk with regarding such matters?”

“Most probably the same person the Self Defense Forces are supposed to be taking orders from at this moment,” Major Suzumoto instantly replied. “The problem is no one knows who that is right this moment.”

Several seconds went by before I realized I...had no knowledge on the topic beyond knowing it was about the line of succession of the Japanese Government.

“Major, how exactly does the Japanese Government’s line of succession work?” I slowly asked, wary of not getting an answer from the weary man. That was why it was a surprise when he started explaining in a strangely joyful manner.

“It goes like this. Prime Minister Abe will choose certain members of the Cabinet to act as Temporary Prime Minister should Abe get incapacitated to perform his job. Abe is also the one who determines the order of who is in line first. Understand?”

I nodded to indicate I understand. And I heard Kurumi beside me reply that she understood.

“Now as far as I know the ones Abe chose to be in the line of succession are the following, in order from first to last. Finance Minister Taro Aso, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, Justice Minister Tanigaki Sadakazu, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira and Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara.”

“And you had absolutely no information on what happened to all of them?” I asked.

Major Suzumoto slowly shook his head.

“That’s not my job. Military Intelligence Command is all about unifying all the necessary information for the Ground Self Defense Forces to operate according to a chosen strategy, and collecting and translating foreign military literature. You should instead ask the Security Bureau of the National Police Agency if you want their locations.”

Kurumi and I immediately looked at each other as soon as Suzumoto finished saying that. And after a couple of seconds of silence, Kurumi broke eye contact with me and looked at Suzumoto.

“Major, may I request something of you for the time that you make contact with the current person in charge of leading Japan?”

“Is it about the compensation you said earlier?”

“Yes. If ever you get in touch with the person who is now in charge of leading Japan, I request that they be informed about our request for compensation.”

“I will. However the likelihood of them listening is proportional to how much your daughter does for the Self Defense Forces. I’m sorry to ask but how soon can she start...fortune telling for us?”

“As soon as you get back to the police station,” Kurumi instantly replied. “Please remember that my daughter has a lot of broken ribs, and the medical advice given was that she should not move as much as possible until the bones heal.”

“Oh. Bother,” Suzumoto murmured as he and every other Self Defense Force officer and NCO in the tent looked at one of their colleagues.

This colleague was the oldest Self Defense Forces member in the tent, in both the unkindness that time had given to his looks and his demeanor. He was also a member of the medical corps, judging by the white armband with the red cross symbol on his right arm.

And then I stared as I saw the rank on his shoulder.

It was the three golden cherry blossoms and two bars of a Colonel, two ranks above a Major.

After a second or so of thought I decided I’ll ask Suzumoto later, figuring that this wasn’t the right time and that there must be a long story behind this.

“What the kid said was advice given by my people," the Colonel said."I’m also strongly recommending the same thing for the girl."

Suzumoto nodded to himself after hearing that, and then he spoke.

“If that’s your verdict then I will follow it, sir. Now...say, do we have a spare radio? Communicating via courier or walking to the police station for every single prediction is going to put a serious cramp in our operations.”

“Sir,” one of the NCO’s in the tent answered. “We can’t spare any radio, we need them all, and we only have a limited amount of charge for their batteries due to the lack of electricity. And even if we were to give them one, I highly doubt they know how to operate it properly. I propose that we do something else, sir.”

“Go on Sergeant.”

“I propose that we move our headquarters, and everything else, into the town. Sir.”

Suzumoto opened his mouth to reply, and then he closed it as he saw me and Kurumi. Then he opened his mouth again.

"Sergeant Mori, there are logical reasons why I had us establish our headquarters and barracks in this place. But before I discuss that,” Suzumoto suddenly turned towards me and my wife.

“Ichigo, I'll send someone to the police station later this day. You two can go now."

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Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka

May 12, 2013

11:07 A.M.

Ikeda Kurumi

Recognizing the dismissal for what it was, Ichigo and I quickly said our farewells to Major Suzumoto and walked out of the tent’s entrance into the heat of the noontime sun, and onto the parking lot full of tents and parked vehicles Ichigo introduced as the Type 96 APC and Type 87 RCV.

Once we had taken several steps away I looked back at the olive green colored tent, and saw the flaps serving as the doors of the tent getting closed by one of the Self Defense Forces officers inside the tent.

“Ichigo, what was that?” I asked as I stopped walking so we could talk properly. And in the same time Ichigo had taken two steps forward before I had finished saying my words.

“Probably a disagreement about strategy," My fiance replied as he turned around and faced me. "Something we don’t have to concern ourselves with.”

“But if Ao is going to be a consultant for the Self Defense Forces...”

“There is no way anyone in the Self Defense Forces will involve a four year old girl in that kind of stuff,” my fiance confidently said. And then he looked to my right and tried to change the topic with a question.

“Kurumi, want to go and see what they are doing over there?"

"It’s only Izanami, Krauncha and a lot of Self Defense Forces personnel gathered around a table with assembled and disassembled rifles on it. There’s nothing interesting in that for me. We still have to visit our parents, remember?”

During the few seconds of silence before Ichigo replied, he stared downward. Not exactly at my lower body, but blankly looking at the ground that I just happened to be blocking the line of sight to with my hips.

“...just...give me some extra time. Please?”

‘Oh’

I looked around to see if anyone was looking in our direction. Seeing no one was doing so, I quickly stepped forward and gave my boyfriend a hug which he quickly returned.

“Ichigo, I can’t assure you that Father will become better with time,” I softly spoke into his ear.“But what I can assure you is that I’ll do my best to always be there by your side.”

After a few more seconds passed Ichigo whispered his thanks to me, and gave me a kiss to the cheek. And then we jerked in surprise as moans of despair and dismay rang through the air.

A quick search revealed that the source was the huge group of people gathered around the table with rifles. Said group was getting smaller as Self Defense Forces personnel walked away with dismayed faces towards the various tents and vehicles inside the parking lot.

“Ok. Now I really want to know what’s going on,” Ichigo commented as we let go of each other upon seeing many of the walkers giving us looks.

“Then lead on, dear,” I said to him.

Within half a minute we have arrived at the table, which by that time only had Izanami, who was still wearing the same attire that she had on Onogoro and was not disguising her natural looks, Krauncha wearing a plain white, long sleeved shirt, an interesting kind of pajamas that I had never seen before and all his golden ornaments, and three sad faced Self Defense Forces personnel in military fatigues around it.

“Good morning Izanami. Krauncha,” I greeted the two with a nod. Beside me, I heard Ichigo greet the Self Defense Forces personnel.

Everyone greeted me and Ichigo back in reply, and then silence fell again as they stared at the objects on the table.

“What’s happening here?”Ichigo asked while looking at the table with a puzzled look on his face.

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Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka

May 12, 2013

11:08 A.M.

Ohta Ichigo

I saw a fully assembled Type 89 rifle laid on the table, with a disassembled Type 89 to its left and right.

The disassembled set to the right of the Type 89was exactly how I remembered a Type 89’s various parts should look like. A black polymer butt stock and lower receiver assembly. Black colored upper receiver made of stamped steel. A barrel, colored black by a special forging process and the various parts of the action, all of them shining in the sunlight.

The disassembled set on the left of the assembled Type 89...

“We were trying to help these two create Type 89 rifles via magical means to replace all the rifles lost yesterday,” one of the three Self Defense Forces personnel around the table replied to my question earlier.

“Lost yesterday...the flying magma?”

The only reason I could think of for why an assault rifle would be considered lost considering yesterday’s events was if it had been stolen or it had been destroyed.

I don’t think the Skinchangers wanted the rifles. They had their bolt action rifles, and they were somehow winning with those against most of the world’s military powers. So the most probable conclusion was that they were destroyed, and the flying magma was the most likely culprit for the destruction.

“Yes. If they weren’t buried under still hot and solidified magma, then the damaged rifles would have solidified magma inside the receivers, which would have badly damaged all the internal parts. As an armorer of the Evaluation Support Unit, I declare all those poor guns too damaged to use again.”

“And that is the result?” I asked while looking at the disassembled set beside the Type 89.

The upper receiver and all the parts that belong to it were colored in various shades of grey, as opposed to the all black of the ordinary Type 89.The lower receiver, on the other hand, was made of a bronze colored metal that seemed to be twice as thick as the ordinary Type 89 lower receiver. And the handguards and the butt stock were made of wood.

“I’m just as surprised as you are kid,” the armorer stated. “Mr. Krauncha, could you please explain what you did here?”

“Sure. For the lower receiver I used gunmetal bronze because I’m not confident using the steels I know of for any structural frame that thin. I also used wood in place of steel and plastic for the stock and the handguard because of the same reason. As for the upper receiver, the action and all the screws, I used the various steels and irons involved in creating the metal parts of a ‘Smellie’ rifle for the analogues of said parts in the Type 89.”

“And those are?” the armorer asked in a skeptical manner. He was promptly surprised by the torrent of information that came out of Krauncha’s mouth.

“BSS51 Wrought Iron, both grades A and B. Three different kinds of black cast steel. Black mild steel, mild steel, black rolled cast steel, steel with 1 percent carbon and point 2 percent manganese and silicon and very little others , bright cold drawn mild steel, crucible steel, bright cold rolled cast and bright cold rolled mild. Any problems?”

Due to a lack of knowledge on the subject, all I could tell from what Krauncha said was that he replaced the stamped steel and polymer with wood and whatever steel the internal parts of a Type 89 was made of with various other kinds of steel I had never known about before.

“...why did you change the metallurgy of the Type 89 for your copy?” The armorer asked as he looked at Krauncha’s disassembled copy of the Type 89 with an uneasy, worried look on his face that was mirrored by his two companions.

“Because I’m a musician by trade –wait! I’m not finished explaining,” Krauncha said as the armorer was about to react to his words.

Once the armorer calmed down Krauncha continued talking.

“As a divine musician of the Sanatana Dharma, I’m expected to be competent in woodworking, leatherworking, weaving, animal processing and goldworking because knowledge of those skills are needed to create classical Indian musical instruments by hand and magic. Metalworking outside of gold is mostly outside of my expertise, and I’m ignorant on how plastics are made, so I can’t completely copy the Type 89.”

“And yet you mentioned several different types of steel.”

“I did say the word 'mostly,' you know?"

The unimpressed look the armorer and his two fellow Self Defense Forces personnel gave Krauncha made the Indian man sigh and explain further.

"I gained my knowledge of those steels from my part time job as a workman at Rifle Factory Ishapore, from 1909 to 1919. During those ten years I was able to watch every stage of the fabrication of a Short Magazine Lee Enfield Mark Three rifle.”

‘Oh. So that’s where ‘Smellie’ came from. SMLE the acronym.’

After several moments passed, during which the armorer and his companions just stared at Krauncha, the armorer finally asked Krauncha a question that visibly took the Indian man aback.

"Well...are you a qualified gunsmith, Mr. Krauncha?"

“Which definition of gunsmith? The original one or the watered down one used nowadays?”

"The original one?" the armorer answered after a few moments of thought.

"Tvastar, the god of craftsmen in India, told me he would officially certify me as a gunsmith when I pass his test. That test is to craft a gun from raw materials without using magic,” Krauncha proudly stated.

"So you're still an apprentice gunsmith?"

"Almost graduated apprentice gunsmith."

After a moment of nodding in reply to Krauncha's words, the armorer and his companions went into a huddle and discussed something quietly.The huddle ended after a couple of minutes, and then the armorer started assembling Krauncha’s Type 89.

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The armorer had finished assembling the copy Krauncha made. And it looked...functional.

The armorer pulled back the bolt and then gently let it go back to its normal place, and then tested out the balance of the weapon.

"What do you think?" Krauncha asked with a smile on his face.

"It's heavier than a normal Type 89," the armorer grumbled. "Thankfully you didn't wreck the balance with your improvisation."

"If the balance changes then use the bipod. Isn't that what that thing is for?" Krauncha retorted.

Before the armorer managed to reply Izanami spoke up, reminding everyone that she was standing there all this time.

"Pardon me. May I ask how sorely needed is making the composition of the magical copy of your weapon be exactly the same as your weapon itself? Because if an exact copy is what was required, I have an idea I could try.”

The armorer said it was sorely needed with a big, wide smile while Krauncha looked a bit disgruntled. That was quickly followed by Izanami saying she needed to touch the weapon, and then stepping forward to place both her hands on the rifle.

Izanami then quickly closed her eyes, and then she and the rifle started to have this soft, whitish aura around them.

“I am Izanami, mother of islands and gods. I will this weapon to twist and shed into the weapon made out of my children."

The soft whitish glow around the Type 89 intensified into an eye searing white after she finished saying those words. Several seconds later the magical glow around Izanami and the rifle quickly faded away, followed by Izanami stepping away from the rifle with a smile.

"It became lighter," the armorer commented as he again tested the balance of the Type 89 in his hands while inspecting it. "Did you turn the bronze into steel?"

"Not just that. I made all the metal in Mr. Krauncha's gun become exactly the same as the gun he copied it from."

"And you did it in the most harmful way possible, you idiot," Krauncha suddenly commented sarcastically from the side, surprising the goddess and making everyone else glare at his rudeness. "Really? Making metal twist and shed into another kind of metal instead of dispelling and then materializing? Isn’t that a dumbed down explanation of why radiation happens, oh idiot creator goddess?”

A few seconds of silence passed after those words, during which Kurumi and I tightly held each other’s hands while the armorer's companions backed away from the pale looking armorer, all because of the fear of anything nuclear instilled into us by the Japanese educational system.

“Mr. Krauncha,” Izanami timidly replied. “By radiation...do you mean this strange light?”

Izanami cupped her hands in front of her...cupping nothing but air. But the casual question that Krauncha let out of his mouth next proved my thoughts wrong.

"You absorbed all the radiation into your own body?”

“Yes.“

“...and how will you dispose of it? Mind you, radiation is all kinds of slippery.”

“Uhm...I can ask my daughter to take it. She is the goddess of the biggest source of this strange light in the world.”

“Izanami, are you talking about Amaterasu?” My wife asked from beside me. The question made me remember that the biggest source of radiation on Earth is the Sun. And Amaterasu was the goddess of the sun...one of the deities of the sun in the world.

Upon seeing Izanami’s nod, Krauncha exclaimed that all was well and no harm was done. He then turned towards the still pale-faced armorer and asked when the armorer wants the two of them to start producing rifles.

“I...on second thought your modified Type 89 rifle’s balance is within tolerable limits. You are also right when you said we could just use the bipod, right guys?” The armorer asked his two companions.

“We just need to have it tested out at a shooting range,” one of the companions, now revealed to me as another armorer,said.

“And once we are satisfied with it, then you can proceed to magically create hundreds of modified Type 89’s for us – wait. All the magical copies will be exactly the same as this one, right?” the other one of the companions, which I presume is yet another armorer, asked.

“Down to the atomic level,” Krauncha boasted.

The third armorer exchanged looks with the other two armorers. Then they shrugged and then turned back to Krauncha and Izanami with smiles on their faces.

“Mrs. Izanami, we sincerely thank you for your cooperation with the Evaluation Support Unit.” the third armorer said. “We hope that in the future we could have more opportunities for cooperation with each other.”

Having said that, the armorer turned to Krauncha, and then asked him to follow them.

I quickly remembered that I wanted to ask what those pajamas are called, so I can research them later.

"Hey Krauncha! What do you call those pajamas you are wearing?!" I yelled before he can get far enough.

The Indian man looked back at me, down at his pajamas, and then back at me with an incredulous look on his face.

"This isn't a pajama! This is a dhoti! Do some research, idiot!"

After promptly informing me, he turned around and walked away.

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Road to Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka

May 12, 2013

11:21 A.M.

Ikeda Kurumi

I sighed as I walked down the mostly deserted road towards the town hall, Izanami beside me and my boyfriend on her other side.

“It’s not about Yomi, Izanami. It’s about the radiation,” I explained to the depressed goddess. “We Japanese...have a peculiar relationship with anything related to nuclear energy.”

“Look,” Ichigo suddenly added in from the other side of Izanami. “I know you’re sad about being left out of the whole magical rifle factory scheme after that deal with the radiation. But it already happened. Move on and remember not to do anything that will make radiation next time.”

“Why did you do what you did and not...what did Krauncha said Ichigo? Dispel and materialize?”

“Dispel and materialize,” my fiance confirmed.

Izanami took a deep breath and then explained.

“It's partly because I wasn’t thinking. And partly because of my nature as a member of a pantheon.”

“What does being a member of a pantheon have to do with what happened?” I asked, and tried to apply what I learned from her lecture back in her magical copy the Stone Age era Nu Island. “Isn’t pantheon only a particular subcategory of the High Magic category of magic users?”

“It is. But part of being a magic user in the pantheon category is that they are constrained in several ways by the stories and the beliefs that are told about us. As an example, me. Disregard what was believed of me before my husband's worshippers came to Japan and concentrate on what was told of me in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. What was I in the two works that made permanent what I was in the minds of the Japanese?"

Several seconds passed of embarrassed silence passed before Ichigo and I explained the Japanese Educational system's treatment of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.

We high school students only encounter Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki in one of two ways in modern times, in large part because of how tied up the two books were with the military government of World War Two that the two literary works were considered...not important to learn by everyone after the war.

One of the ways was through our Japanese History classes, wherein we don't read the contents of the books, but only had to memorize what year and era and who wrote those books. The other was through the Kobun or Ancient Japanese Texts course and the Kanbun or Chinese Style courses offered in High School, wherein...

We didn't have the heart to tell her how much the two of us and most people our age dislike those two courses.

"Then how do you two...how does every Japanese even know who I was if they didn't know anything about the insides of those two works?" Izanami almost wailed at us.

Several moments passed before I got the courage to confess that we learned about her through Pop culture.

“By Pop culture...are you referring to TV shows?” Izanami asked.

“Not only that, but manga and console games,” Ichigo added.

“Don’t forget Light novels and Novels,” I reminded.

“...tell me what you know?”

“You’re Izanagi’s wife and...uh...sister,” Ichigo finished awkwardly.

Ichigo's answer surprised me, since I didn't know that. It also embarrassed me on Izanami's behalf, because my fiance just accused her of committing incest.

“I am Izanagi's wife. The sister part came about from people trying to explain then justify where the first human got his wife from. The reasoning was that if the gods who created the first man are practitioners of incest or committed incest first, then the first human has an excuse to have sex with his sister and have children with her. And those children would also have an excuse justifying them having sex with each other to make more children, and so on and so forth until there are enough humans that incest wasn't a necessity to increase the numbers of humans," Izanami explained.

Several seconds passed in which both Ichigo and I digested the interesting and disturbing information she had just given us, before Izanami asked if we knew anything more about her.

"You're the mother of a lot of gods and islands," I said.

"All thirty six of them," Izanami replied with a sad smile.

As my boyfriend coughed at the number of children Izanami said she had with Izanagi, I...whimpered.

I still remember when I gave birth to my daughter. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my entire life. And here beside me was a woman who went through that thirty six times.

"You're also the first known being to die in Japanese mythology," Ichigo added, reminding me again of how I almost died while giving birth to Ao.

“What happened after I died?”

“You went to Yomi,” I replied, remembering that part about Izanami through pop culture osmosis.

“As what? Am I the ruler of Yomi or am I an inhabitant of Yomi?” Izanami asked.

“...ruler?” I replied in uncertainty.

The way she asked that question implied something happened in the background of the myth that I don’t remember.

“No I wasn’t. I was merely the latest and most unusual arrival to the underworld of my husband’s people at the time. Yomi was...the practice of deifying dead humans into gods came from my husband’s people. Yomi was full of humans worshipped into gods, who insisted – “

Izanami suddenly stopped talking, and walking,while letting out a long sigh. This prompted me and Ichigo to also stop walking after a few more steps and look back at the goddess, who was massaging the temples of her head with both hands while her eyes were closed.

“Pardon me Kurumi, Ichigo. It appears I am still sore about the results of political arguments from thousands of years ago.”

“Is how you became the ruler of Yomi also political in nature?” Ichigo asked.

Izanami looked up and nodded. Then she started walking again, and we walked by her side.

“So now we have established that I gave birth to gods and islands, and have become the ruler of the land of the dead. Now I ask you, what kind of powers should I naturally possess based on myth? What kind of power should I instinctually be using according to myth?”

I instantly saw what Izanami was trying to tell us. And I saw Ichigo realize it at the same time as me. However...expounding, putting it into words was hard.

“I gave birth to the islands of Japan, so I’m the mother of all the Japanese islands. And since children listen to their mothers, if I ask them to do something, they will try to do it. But that’s for when I’m feeling too lazy to use my own magic on the soil and uplifted crust that I gave birth to. What happened earlier is just me using my magic on the soil and uplifted crust I gave birth to, in the manner which was most familiar and natural to me.”

Her words managed to demolish the block that was blocking us from expounding on what we realized by giving us a pattern to use.

“You gave birth to several gods, so you yourself are a goddess of either life or magic,” my fiance said, in the same manner as when he is happily answering a question given by our teacher.

“And since you’re the goddess of Yomi, you’re also a goddess of death,” I added in the same manner and sentiment.

We then noticed Izanami smiling awkwardly at Ichigo.

“Izanami?” Ichigo asked.

“Ichigo...the only reason why gods also use the term magic for many things they do is because the line between magic and religion is very, very blurry. But to call a deity a god of magic? It’s...somewhere between rude and unforgivable insult.”

Ichigo didn’t ask why calling a god a god of magic was insulting. He instantly apologized, and me along with him to convince kind hearted Izanami to forgive him.

Izanami herself quickly said she forgives him, and explained that she understands most people in the world don’t understand the difference. She even told us that eight years ago the Kannushi of the shrine where she worked as a part time miko—the very shrine on Nu island that is dedicated to herself and her husband—called her a goddess of magic with no knowledge about how it was to be used in relation to gods.

Unfortunately that was while her son Hiruko, more commonly known as Ebisu nowadays, and his wife Waka-ush were on a family visit to see Izanami. Ebisu instantly tried to punch the surprised old Kannushi in the face while Izanami and Waka-ush held him back.

“It was so, so embarrassing. Hiruko only calmed down after Waka-ush kissed him and never let go off for half an hour, leaving me to explain the issue to Mr. Hiro and his family.”

“I commiserate with you,” Ichigo –

I gave my boyfriend a wide eyed glare for those words. Ichigo repeatedly blinked back at me with befuddlement on his face. And then he silently mouthed the word ‘parents’ at me, and then pointed at me and then himself while repeating that word.

I huffed and looked back down the road, to see the Oyama Town Hall, Subashiri Branch in sight.

“Well...moving on,” Izanami meekly said in an effort to make the awkward atmosphere go away. “From the Kojiki's point of view I’m more of a goddess of creation rather than life, since my children aren't just alive. They are also islands and gods and goddesses of natural phenomena, physical geographical features, and buildings at the same time...do you two still understand my explanation?"

"Easily enough," I replied.

"Just go on," Ichigo encouraged Izanami.

"As a goddess of creation, I...creation isn’t about making silly little things like guns or houses. Or money or cellphones. Although I can create all of that given enough understanding and information.”

”Then what is it about?” I asked while having this feeling that her reply would be something to remember for the rest of my life.

“Islands, mountains, plains, and seas. Fire, trees, wind...Kami-umi and Kuni-umi wasn’t over. They had never been over. I could continue all that right this moment...it’s just...I don’t know how many humans would survive if I go at it full blast.”

‘Oh. Something to remember indeed.’

"How about Yomi? Did Kurumi guess it right or wrong?"

"She was right. I’m also the goddess of death because of Yomi. Death as a concept means decay, or entropy.”

Upon seeing us nod in understanding, Izanami continued.

“So in summation, I am most instinctually inclined to use magic that makes the target decay in any manner, magic that affects the soil and the crust of this planet, and magic that gives life and personalities to concepts.”

Several seconds passed after Izanami’s summation, before Ichigo commented that she could have just explained the magic that she was most inclined to use and then explain why she was most inclined to use them.

Izanami’s answer was to look away from him with an embarrassed face and explain that she was only trying to do it in the same way as the TV show Adventures with Dora.

I snorted. And then I started giggling as I remembered childhood memories of morning spent watching the Japanese language version of Dora the Explorer while Mama was doing chores around the house.