/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Once Komachi had recovered from her bouts of tears, she had stepped back and I'd been able to take in her clothing more clearly. Clearly, she was off-duty, because apart from the t-shirt, she had what looked like a loose brown jacket tied about her waist with the sleeves trailing down, and below that was a long, flowing skirt in light blue with patterns of white, similar to what she had been wearing when I had first met her. The coin that she usually had wrapped around her waist had been replaced with one that hung from a simple chain around her neck. She wore sandals, but without the tabi that accompanied her work outfit. While I was taking her attire in, she noticed that I was also wearing a t-shirt that could only be from Lady Hecatia and started gushing all over again. "Th-That's the original design! The one that Lady Hecatia wears! She never produces any with that design because she said it was the most exclusive design! She made you three of those!?" I didn't know that it was a unique design or anything, but she hadn't asked me about designs when she had offered to make me the t-shirts. I said that she had offered to make me something new after she had found out that I had lost two of the t-shirts in circumstances that I was still unclear about.

Seriously, where did they go? Did Doctor Yagokoro have them? Why would she even take them? I just didn't understand.

Either way, Komachi was clearly rather shocked by the idea. "She - She's going to make you more? What did you do to make her like you so much!?" I was wondering that myself, to be honest. I didn't think I'd done anything particularly special in my 'date' with her, but here I was, wearing a t-shirt that she had custom made for me. And she'd even appeared in the dream world to give me advice. I seemed to be having a lot of conversations lately about people being nice to me, and it was looking like I might need to have another one with Lady Hecatia. I shrugged, eventually saying that Lady Hecatia had said that she liked me for whatever reason, so she was willing to do it if I owed her a favour. "Oh." Komachi said, her practically undisguised envy fading. "A favour? Hmm..." I frowned and asked her what the problem was. "Well, it's just...A favour to the goddess of Hell could be anything. She could ask you to be her representative in dealing with the Otherworlds, or she might just have you serve her after death." That wasn't necessarily how I wanted my afterlife to go, but I hoped that I'd have a long time to either negotiate with Lady Hecatia or come to terms with it, so I shrugged and told Komachi that I would have to deal with it when the time came.

That, it seemed, caught Lady Kasen's attention, and she looked up from her strange sake box. "You should really be considering hermit training, you know. Wouldn't you rather become a celestial and reside in the Heavens over being indebted to the goddess of Hell?" I wondered about that, because from what Tenshi had described, Heaven seemed a little...boring.

Komachi clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Should you really be telling someone that in front of a Shinigami?" She asked with a slight frown on her face. "I should really be trying to stop you from indoctrinating more people into hermit training, you know."

"You tell me that you're nothing but a ferryman every time you come here, Komachi." Lady Kasen said dryly. "It's a little late to be pulling the Shinigami card." Komachi did look away slightly at Lady Kasen's words, so I wondered just how often they'd had this conversation. I wandered over and sat back down at the table, taking another deep drink from my cup of sake. I hoped that this stuff wasn't as strong as whatever I had been served when Hearn had kidnapped me, though I was used to sake enough that I didn't devolve into a coughing fit like I had then. "Either way, I suspect that it'll be a while before he needs to worry about that. And even if the worst did come to pass, if Hecatia Lapislazuli likes him so much, I'm sure she'll treat him well." That was slightly promising, but we were still talking about my potential death, so I felt a strong desire to move the conversation along before my luck ended up turning it into a reality.