Although Jiuyuan wanted to refute his mother at the first moment - "I am a boy."

But Izanami certainly doesn't care about such a small problem. After all, gender and race are just shackles that bind mortals. They are not human beings from the day they are born. Even the human concepts of good and evil are learned by imitating others. For Kuen, this is not a problem.

Rather, the most important thing is - just to like it.

It is more urgent to clarify the relationship.

"These two are my friends, Lady Izanami." Kuen glanced at his mother helplessly, then changed the subject and handed the item to Miss Kozanagi over, "Sorry to have kept you waiting for so long."

Xiao Zhong looked at Jiu Yuan and the people beside him curiously, and asked sideways: "Are they the people who assist you?"

Gojo Satoru immediately pushed Geto's shoulder and pushed him out, "This is his job."

Kagome Geto who was pushed out: “……?”

Kuen: "No, Miss Kozanaka, the relationship between us is not like the one between you and the Five Paths Wheel King... and he is not my assistant officer either."

After all, this isn't his job! ?

"If you must say, it's probably a position like assistant or subordinate?"

Xiaozhong: “…It seems like there is no difference?”

Gojo Satoru: “Pfft.”

After bidding farewell to Miss Xiaozhong, Jiuyuan, out of hospitality, picked out some local specialties from his collection.

He gave Gojo Satoru a substitute doll made of straw, "Wear this close to your body for three days, then you can find a place to put it away. It can be used to save your life once."

Gojo Satoru took the straw figurine out of curiosity, and heard Kuen continue, "You have to pull out a strand of hair and stuff it in."

Summer Oil: ...Really? No matter how you look at it, it looks like a cursed item!

Next, it was the normal work process, and Kagome followed the goddess Izanami on his journey to hell for judgment.

Gojo Satoru waved outside the door, "We'll come pick you up later, Jay. Good luck on the exam—"

He deliberately held his hands in front of his face and spoke in the tone of a parent sending his child to take the college entrance examination, then watched Geto Suguru walk through the closed door holding Izanami's note.

"But, didn't they say it only takes a moment?" Gojo Satoru turned to Kuen beside him, "Are there many steps involved?"

"No matter what, it's a complete experience of hell. You have to go through the virtual hell built by my mother and the hell staff. There will be some sequelae after one round." Jiuyuan was not very worried about Xia Yujie. He came here well prepared, and he was not a child anymore. He would definitely be able to bear the consequences by himself.

"While we're waiting, do you want to go visit the simple hell with me?"

Gojo Satoru was eager to try: "Is that the one you mentioned before where you only need to queue up to pull out your tongue?"

"Yes, there are many offerings placed there..." Jiuyuan thought for a second and said, "If you are lucky, you can get some food... Oh, sorry, I forgot you are still alive."

Gojo Satoru: "I know this - if the living eat the food of Hades, they can't return to the living world, right?"

Jiuyuan nodded, "Yes, Mr. Gojo, please follow me carefully. Although we are in a safe working area, there may be accidents. After all, there are many unrestrained gods and ghosts who can come and go freely in hell."

"Hmm - what if they are attracted by my charm and want to keep me in hell? Wouldn't that be dangerous?" Gojo Satoru said this without showing any nervousness. "So gods often come to hell?"

"There are eight million gods in Japan," Kuen explained as they walked out of the main hall. "So there must be a lot of lesser gods, in other words, the lowest level of the civil service..."

When Jiuyuan said this, he thought to himself: Am I not the son of the unspoken rules?

Gojo Satoru said “Eh…” as a sigh.

As soon as they entered the hall, Gojo Satoru saw a long queue.

Gojo Satoru: "...Are these the dead waiting to have their tongues pulled out? Ugh, the music playing next to them is really unpleasant."

That's right. We've been saying that friendship lasts forever, but it makes people feel uncomfortable to hear it in this situation.

Kuen: "Just think of it as hell humor."

In addition, what is even more eye-catching is the offerings piled up like a small mountain next to it. In addition to various common fruits and foods, modernization also represents some offerings that make people feel out of place - such as bear biscuits, snacks that only children would give.

But this also represents the intentions of the deceased's family members. The more this is the case, the more it shows that the family members are doing their best.

“There are always too many offerings here,” Jiuyuan said. “It’s always troublesome to deal with them.”

Gojo Satoru asked curiously, "Will you eat all of these?"

"There have been cases where it was distributed as welfare in the past..." He lowered his voice, "but the types of offerings were too diverse and it was not always possible to arrange them properly. In the end, they still had to be disposed of. This was actually a waste."

Although he said this, he still walked behind the curtain where the deceased couldn't see him, found a box of chocolate-filled bear cookies from the offerings that were already being distributed, and started eating them.

"Eh? Well, this food can't be taken away casually--" A ghost nearby saw Jiuyuan picking up the food as if no one was around, and just as he was about to go up to remind him, he was stopped by another little ghost next to him who was about the same height.

"Idiot, this is Master Kuen!"

Jiu Yuan, who had already opened the biscuit, looked at the two little kids.

Gojo Satoru: "... Even hell employs child laborers. This is too dark."

Jiuyuan took a bite of the biscuit and said, "No, it's just that their race is little ghosts, and they are all adult ghosts." Then he said to the black and white little ghosts, "You are Eggplant and Tanggua, right?"

Tanggua who was named: "I am Tanggua, this guy is Eggplant... Do you know us?"

Jiuyuan looked at Qiezi and thought, it's you! You're the one who turned the decoration of my mom's door into a spiritual pollution!

He felt like a child who had not been home for a long time and accidentally met the culprit who made a telephone fraud against his mother.

complex.

But Izanami herself seemed to agree with that...

"I know. I heard it from the goddess Izanami." He said to the eggplant next to him, "You are amazing... You are really creative."

Eggplant's eyes lit up, then he shook his head a little embarrassedly, and then he took out a box of dry bear cookies from the pile of offerings next to him and handed it to Jiuyuan.

"Master Jiuyuan, this is the new melon-flavored bear biscuit."

Jiuyuan: “…”

This child has a very simple personality.

He put the food back with a helpless look on his face, indicating that he didn't need it anymore.

Tang Gua: "Master Jiuyuan, do you have anything to do today? Our work here has been completed. Is there anything you need our help with?"

Kuen: "I'm just here to show my friends around hell." He pulled Gojo Satoru's sleeve and pulled him forward, "This is a living person."

"Well, this is a hellish ghost story." Eggplant responded.

Gojo Satoru: "What is a hellish ghost story?"

Eggplant raised a finger and said, "It's like this—"

Then he told a story about a taxi in hell, the Halo Taxi, that actually picked up a living person outside the gate of Hades. Finally, after the woman was locked inside, she actually knocked on the door and shouted, "I'm still alive! Let me out!"

Eggplant: “Isn’t it scary?”

Gojo Satoru: “…”

As a living person, he really has a problem understanding hell ghost stories.

Gojo Satoru couldn't eat, and Kuen couldn't just let him watch him eat, so he said, "Let's go see what the work is like inside."

He led Gojo Satoru behind a white curtain, past the fence that held the dead, and into the room where he was "working".

He drew aside the curtain and heard a clear "Ah" from inside.

Gojo Satoru saw a white rabbit sitting on a high chair, holding a pair of pliers.

...Wait, rabbit?

"Ah." Rabbit's voice was as sweet as a girl's. "Could this be, Master Jiuyuan?"

"Good afternoon, Miss Mustard." Jiuyuan looked at the box of biscuits in his hand and almost blurted out "Do you want some biscuits?" But he thought that rabbits can't eat it, so he held back and said, "My friend is very interested in the simple hell, so I'll take him to visit it."

Miss Rabbit bowed and greeted Gojo Satoru, who was surprised and said, "Miss Mustard Seed...? Hello."

Then he lowered his head and asked Jiuyuan: "Is it the rabbit in the story of Kacha Kacha Mountain?"

Just as Kuen just nodded, Miss Mustard violently pulled out the dead man's tongue.

Gojo Satoru: “…”

Although I heard from Jiuyuan that the tongue will grow back soon...but it is still quite shocking to see it from the front.

"Then I won't disturb you from work." Jiuyuan, the social expert, said, "If Miss Mustard is free recently, you can go to the goddess Izanami to play."

Then, he went out with Gojo Satoru, taking the half-eaten bag of Teddy Bear Cookies.

Although it was a pity that he couldn't take photos, Gojo Satoru also saw a lot of interesting things with him.

Jiuyuan also thoughtfully bought him some souvenirs from hell, including a snapdragon toy that could make sounds. Gojo Satoru said he would take it back to give to his classmates at technical high school, so he simply bought more at once and also bought some for the children in Kyoto.

Gojo Satoru: "Just say this can be used to ward off evil."

Jiuyuan: “…” Maybe this thing can really ward off evil spirits.

After walking around for a while, the goddess Izanami sent him a message, telling Kagome Ken that the trial work here had been completed.

So the two of them walked back slowly, and happened to meet the ghost light on the way to work.

"Hello." Jiuyuan naturally would not pretend not to see it. After a simple greeting, two little girls suddenly appeared behind Guizu.

They grabbed the corner of Gui Deng's clothes and looked at Jiu Yuan in front of them curiously.

"stare--"

"…Are these your children?" Jiuyuan looked at Guideng, then at the two children who looked nothing like him.

No, the aura seems to be closer to that of a monster.

It shouldn't be during the time when he ran away from home that Gui Deng suddenly got married and had children.

"These two children are Zashiki-warashi." Hozuki was used to this kind of question. He led the two children to him and said, "Please introduce yourselves."

"I do have a child at home..." Jiu Yuan almost wanted to touch their heads instinctively, but fortunately stopped, "He's an apprentice divine envoy."

Kizuki looked at him and said, "I haven't congratulated you on having your own shrine yet, but you'll be busy from now on, right?"

When talking about work, Jiu Yuan looked away: "...Yes."

"Although these two children usually follow me, I also have a lot of work, so most of the time they play together." Hozuki rubbed the top of the girl's head, "If the shrine of Lord Kuen is open to them, I think they will be very happy."

"I have quite a few children there." Kuen thought to himself. In addition to his own newly born messenger of God, Odonosuke, there were several other children in Oda Sakunosuke's family.

After all, Yinyin is different from those children. He is a real non-human. It would be great if he could play with Zashiki-warashi.

Thinking of this, he bent down, conjured up two things that looked like tickets in his hands and handed them to them.

"If you want to come to my shrine, use these two pieces of paper."

The two cute little girls looked at each other and said to him, "Thank you." "Thank you."

Then he ran away.

When they returned to Izanami Palace, Gojo Satoru asked curiously, "Are those two children Zashiki-warashi? They are quite different from what I imagined, and I didn't expect them to be twins."

"Well, the modern version of the myth has also evolved many times..."

Jiuyuan didn't say the other sentence: "Besides, everyone will quietly change their appearance."

He felt that he had to leave Gojo Satoru a last bit of room for imagination.

At this moment, Xia Yujie was sitting on the tatami next to the main hall. There were some dark circles under his eyes, and he looked as if he had been devastated and haggard.

"Ah, Jay, you look like you've been staying up all night for a week." Gojo Satoru complained to him unceremoniously.

Xia Yujie tapped his forehead with his finger, "... After all, I went to the hell trial, so this is normal, right?"

Jiuyuan: "No, it's better to say that you have recovered very well, beyond my imagination."

Geto Suguru just smiled and said nothing. Only he himself knew how difficult it was to describe this experience. But before he left, the goddess Izanami told him -

"This is just a simulation. If you were to reincarnate as a human, you would have to repeat these punishments all over again."

"But since you want to draw a clear line between yourself and your past self, and want to become more useful than your past self, don't forget this pain from now on. It will make you more unbreakable."

In order to relax, Jiuyuan decided to find a water mirror from his collection that could reflect everything.

Then we will bring up the scene of the noose being tortured for everyone to watch, just for entertainment.

"Wait, let me adjust it...I haven't used this thing for a long time."

Jiuyuan is like that poor kid who has to work hard to fix the TV when he invites his friends home and the TV screen suddenly goes awry.

After struggling in front of the water mirror for a long time, and even after the remaining bear cookies had been eaten by Geto, the image finally appeared in the water mirror.

It would be fine if this didn't happen, but once it happened, I discovered that -

"...Where is this?"

Jiuyuan felt a little confused. The screen was showing a picture of Geto Suguru with seams on his head. He even felt a sense of 'long time no see'.

He turned the mirror towards the other two people, and they looked back.

"It's the noose... He got out of hell?"

"No, that's impossible." Jiuyuan said, "He is suffering in agony."

Then, they heard the other party saying that they had already set up a "tent" in Shibuya, and the next step was to seal Gojo Satoru with the Hell Gate.

Not only that, the screen also shows the cursed spirits that have been completely resolved by them.

Kuen and Geto looked at Gojo Satoru together, and Gojo Satoru, who was the "victim" of the noose plan, touched his nose and said, "...I'm sure they are all dead."

Hearing their movements, Izanami, who was about to go out, glanced over.

"...This mirror sometimes doesn't work well and will connect to other worlds. Just readjust the frequency."

She pushed the door open and walked out - it was said that she had an appointment with Miss Lilith today.

Seeing that the Gojo Satoru in the mirror was about to go on a date, the Gojo Satoru here complained: "What is this? It's like watching myself play other game lines."

Especially after having passed this level here, it always feels very subtle when looking at it again.

Here, watching his body being used as a tool by the noose again, Geto Suguru didn't feel comfortable either.

The Gojo Satoru in the water mirror has already entered the "tent" and mixed with a large number of ordinary people.

Jiu Yuan pondered for two seconds, held the edge of the mirror with one hand, and then tried to put his other hand in——

…actually went in.

He pulled his hand out and looked at Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru. Then, an idea suddenly occurred to him and he took out two masks, one black and one white, from the warehouse and placed them in front of them.

"——Do you want to go into that world together?"