Chapter 20 "…It's, you?!"

The key marked with "Summer Oil" made this bronze metal device suddenly become hot.

Combined with the previous experience description, although there are some discrepancies, all the key words added together are enough to make the homeowner's name come to mind.

Is that you, Geto?

Jiang Lai paused, but finally took it in a normal manner without showing any extra expression.

The landlady naturally didn't notice Jiang Lai's momentary hesitation, but Mr. Ghost, who was floating on the side, seemed to glance at him intentionally or unintentionally.

The landlord lady who handed over the keys seemed to have let go of her worries, and the smile on her face became even gentler:

"Then I'll be relieved. Please take care of their house while you're renting it," she said. "I'll call you back the half of the rent this afternoon."

"Well, no rush." ​​Jiang Lai nodded and said.

"I don't know how the kid is doing now, whether he has found his parents or is getting along well with his friends." The landlady sighed and muttered to herself, "When will he come home?"

Jiang Lai didn't know how to respond, so he just blinked lightly.

The beige sunlight shining in from the window fell on the old man's silver hair, coating it with a layer of shimmering golden light.

Time has worn away her appearance, but it has not changed her kindness. Just because of a neighborly friendship and a simple promise, she has been able to take care of the house for so long.

——Perhaps I am looking forward to witnessing that all stories can have a perfect ending.

"I'm going to trouble you in the future," said the landlady.

Jiang Lai looked down at the key, held it in his hand, looked up and smiled, "Okay, don't worry. I will take good care of the house."

——

After the conversation, it suddenly started to rain and snow. Fortunately, the service of this store was very good, and each stranded customer was given an indigo long-handled umbrella.

Guests just need to return the umbrella within two weeks, or if they want to keep it, they just need to pay the cost.

Jiang Lai has not yet fully refined his abilities, and mainly because he does not want to be too conspicuous in the crowd. So he naturally took the indigo long-handled umbrella handed to him by the clerk, prepared to go out to play with the umbrella, and planned to return it the next time he passed by here.

On the way home, Jiang Lai kept thinking.

At present, 99% of the residents upstairs are from Takeshi's family.

In the original work, Kagome, who held the idea of ​​"protecting the weak and all ordinary people", experienced all kinds of darkness in reality and the ugliness of human nature, as well as the death of his sorcerer friends during his high school years. The righteousness he once adhered to in his heart gradually collapsed amid repeated self-doubt.

Pain and confusion slowly fermented, and when he witnessed with his own eyes the ignorant villagers in a remote village abusing a little girl with the talent of a sorcerer, the last straw that broke the camel's back finally fell.

——The shaky absolute justice of protecting all the weak has evolved into another extreme of [killing all ordinary monkeys and creating a world where only sorcerers exist].

In order to prove his righteousness (or perhaps to cut off his own retreat), when he was in college, after slaughtering the entire village, he even turned back and killed his ordinary parents...

Jiang Lai raised his eyes and looked into the distance.

But this is obviously not the case. The turning point of the new series occurred when he was in junior high school - his parents disappeared early.

At that time, Xia Yujie, who had just entered junior high school, was still young and did not have the complicated and extreme ideas that he later had. Even if he had the ability, it was impossible for him to suddenly attack his parents and pretend to be missing after killing them.

Moreover, if Geto Suguru really did that at such a young age, the people in the world of magic would surely discover the murderer from the residual magic power and would not give him the opportunity to enter a technical high school to further learn how to make friends.

So here, the mysterious disappearance of the parents should have nothing to do with Geto Suguru, but there must be other reasons.

Every year in the world of curses, there are mysterious deaths and disappearances, and cursed spirits are usually behind them. The disappearance of Geto's parents may also be due to the attack of cursed spirits.

However, in the whole incident, there is a character that does not exist in the original novel - Jiang Lai remembered the regulatory committee mentioned by the landlord just now.

After Geto's parents went missing, the supervisory board contacted and funded Geto's living and schooling.

On the surface, this is a very touching social help. But thinking deeper, I always feel that the regulation came too coincidentally and too timely (as if it was planned).

Moreover, the regulatory commission is nominally responsible for supervising products. When did it become so concerned about children involved in accidents?

Of course, perhaps it is because of Geto's talent as a sorcerer that the regulatory committee related to the sorcery world has long been paying attention to him and protecting every young sorcerer.

——But according to Shin's riddle "snakes and rats live in the same nest", if there is a cursed spiritual power behind this, it seems wrong to protect it.

Anyway, he still felt that this regulatory agency... had some problems. It seemed that it had targeted Geto Suguru and was manipulating a series of things.

I don’t know what exactly Kagome Takeru is thinking here (and is he still alive now?).

Jiang Lai exhaled, organized his thoughts in his mind, and glanced at Mr. Ghost floating beside him.

Fushiguro didn't say anything else like "Kill him and get a pay cut." Except for a few hums, it was silent the whole time.

Noticing Jiang Lai's gaze, the floating ghost turned his head and said lazily, "Why, do you have any ideas?"

"What do you think?" Jiang Lai asked back.

Because of the sudden rain and snow, the sky was dark and there were not many people on the road, so Jiang Lai could chat with the ghosts around him naturally without worrying about being regarded as a mental patient.

"Well, I have seen a kid named Geto before." Fushiguro Shiori said leisurely, stroking his chin, "I have a deep impression of him."

"Really?" Jiang Lai was not surprised.

After all, according to the original plot, the opponent should have died in that mission, so it must have left a really deep impression on him (what a hell joke).

Fushiguro Shigeki's left hand, which was wrapped in a bandage, curled up the fingers slightly, then stretched them out again. He half-raised his head, squinted his eyes, and chuckled in an ambiguous way: "...After listening to this story from the past today, I suddenly understood something that happened a long time ago."

Jiang Lai put one hand in his pocket and walked forward: "I'd like to hear the details." Although he said so, according to previous practice, the other party would most likely not elaborate.

The behavior of keeping secrets half-hidden, suspenseful and without explanation should be strongly condemned!!

While Jiang Lai was amusing himself by scrolling through emojis, Mr. Ghost beside him actually continued to speak.

Fushiguro Shier pulled the corner of his scarred lips and laughed softly: "... Turns out he is also a jinx who has been targeted for a long time."

This sentence contained a lot of information, but Jiang Lai noticed the key point. He paused slightly and said, "Also?"

His brown eyes turned toward the soul beside him, concentrated seriousness and inquiry immersed in them.

But before Jiang Lai could ask anything, a loud noise suddenly came from the alley on the side, which immediately attracted their attention!

Jiang Lai looked over subconsciously and saw a huge and strange one-eyed curse spirit with six arms lurking in the narrow alley, its sharp claws seemed to drip with corrosive venom.

Before he could react for a moment, Mr. Ghost beside him had already rushed over!

"!?" Jiang Lai was shocked by Fushiguro Shige's unexpected behavior, and then he looked closely at the familiar black-haired, sea-urchin-headed boy under the curse spirit.

——It’s Fushiguro Megumi!

At this moment, Fushiguro Megumi was leaning against the wall, protecting an unconscious child in his arms. The summoned shikigami temporarily blocked the cursed spirit's attack, barely stopping the huge impact.

It didn't look like he was on a mission, but rather he encountered a cursed spirit unexpectedly and attacked it on the spur of the moment! He didn't even have time to open his tent.

This cursed spirit was quite powerful and had some intelligence. It deliberately took the blow from the injured shikigami, then aimed at the child and attacked.

Fushiguro Megumi calmly saw the intention of the cursed spirit, and prepared to make another seal to summon another shikigami before the cursed spirit got close.

However, the one-eyed cursed spirit's long poisonous claws suddenly shot out, striking at him through the air like a sharp arrow!

Fushiguro Megumi: “!?”

At such a speed, it was impossible to summon him in time, so Fushiguro Megumi had to use her own body to protect the child in her arms first.

The expected pain did not come, and the arrow claw that was right in front of him suddenly stopped in mid-air.

Fushiguro Megumi was stunned for a moment.

The next second, those poisonous sharp claws suddenly reversed direction and attacked the cursed spirit!

The cursed spirit that was pierced let out an ear-shattering scream, and then its six long hands were suddenly tied up by some invisible unknown force, and then it was thrown into the air and fell heavily deep in the alley!

Fushiguro Megumi took this opportunity to summon a new shikigami, and the two combined to deal a fatal blow to the cursed spirit, exorcising it on the spot!

The cursed spirit's final wail dissipated in the air. Fushiguro Megumi placed the unconscious child against the wall, staggered to his feet, and wiped the blood from his forehead.

The rain and snow mixed with the sticky blood on his forehead, and the dizziness from the impact. Fushiguro Megumi could only barely see the figure standing in the distance with an umbrella. He tried to calm his breath and spoke first: "Thank you... cough cough cough..."

He still had doubts in his mind. Regarding the long-distance control... a space-type technique? It seemed to me...

The man put down his hand and walked closer.

As the distance shortened and her spirit recovered, Fushiguro Megumi gradually saw who the visitor was.

"...It's, you?!" He stared in astonishment at the black-haired young man who appeared again, his deep blue eyes slightly widened.

Jiang Lai turned his head and smiled faintly, then he put away his indigo long-handled umbrella.

The falling rain and snow magically floated beside the man and fell to both sides with the slight movement of his hands.

The black-haired young man raised the tip of his folded long-handled umbrella, looked toward the alley wall diagonally above, and spoke slowly, "Friends over there...won't you come out for a moment?"