The Protagonist Always Wants to Find Someone to Commit Suicide With - Chapter 15

Orange-red clouds blanketed the horizon, resembling dye splashed carelessly across a canvas by a wild, uninhibited artist reckless and unbound, yet filled to the brim with a distinct kind of aesthetic beauty.

“It’s getting dark,” Dazai Osamu muttered to himself.

“Teacher… Dazai, should we go to the village over there to ask for lodging?” Tsubaki looked at Dazai Osamu with absolute caution. She was actually feeling rather guilty; she clearly wasn’t completely without a place to go, yet she had lied to Teacher Dazai, claiming she had to accompany him.

If such a massive lie were discovered, Teacher Dazai would definitely be very angry he might even drive her away. At the thought of this, Tsubaki panicked a bit. Messily tugging at her sleeve cuffs, she lowered her head.

Please don’t let him find out… she prayed silently in her heart. She didn’t want to return to that place; nobody there actually cared about her anyway.

“Encountering a settlement at a time like this is truly fortunate,” Dazai noted with surprise.

This area was supposed to be quite desolate. They had walked a great distance earlier without catching sight of a single village even agricultural lands were rare. He had originally been worrying about where they would rest tonight, but looking at it now, at least they wouldn’t have to sleep out in the wild.

“After running into Tsubaki, it looks like even my fortune parameters have turned better,” Dazai tightened the bandages wrapped across his hand. Glancing at Tsubaki’s somewhat at-a-loss demeanor, he unloosed a light laugh. “Let’s head over and take a look then.”

This was a highly peculiar, yet still relatively normal village.

Dozens of low wooden huts clustered together, appearing to have braved a mountain of years already. The sky clearly wasn’t that late yet, but their doors were all tightly shut, looking exactly as if they were guarding against some entity.

This wasn’t a peaceful era; bandit groups running rampant to commit crimes were everywhere, so this was likely to guard against those people.

“Excuse me—” Before Dazai could even begin knocking, a middle-aged woman slid a door open, eyeing the two of them with an absolute look of alert.

“May we request to stay for the night here?” Dazai pressed his hands against Tsubaki’s shoulders, pulling her before his frame. “It’s getting dark; I hold zero issues myself, but I ultimately cannot let a child this lovely sleep outside.”

“…” The woman who first emerged offered zero words. From the surrounding huts, several individuals also sequentially opened their doors stealthily to poke their heads out, whispering low syllables about something.

“Looks like they don’t harbor much trust toward us,” using his peripheral vision to scan the perimeter, Dazai noted to his system. “Do I look remarkably like a bandit?” He unloosed a helpless sigh.

System: “Your appearance doesn’t look like one, but you are a mafioso indeed.”

“…”

“Teacher, I hold zero issues. As long as Teacher is present, I won’t be terrified even outside,” the constantly head-lowered Tsubaki suddenly voiced out.

She cast a somewhat repulsive sidelong glance toward those young girls who were staring at Dazai. An inexplicable wave of irritation surged deep within her core, blending with an unvoiceable emotion that left her feeling intensely uncomfortable.

“Truly a well-behaved child,” Dazai extended a hand to pet her head.

“However, we must still request your person to take us in,” Dazai looked toward that middle-aged woman, smiling. “I neglected to execute a self-introduction moments ago; my name is Dazai Osamu—an exorcist traveling through this land.”

With that voiced, to verify his words, he even symbolically fished out two white paper charms from his pocket. These had been taken from Natori Shuuichi before, and currently happened to serve a perfect purpose.

The system questioned him: “If you are holding those charms, they should possess absolute zero efficacy, right?”

It flatly refused to believe a minor paper charm of this metric could survive inside Dazai’s anomalous capability one that couldn’t even be obstructed by a barrier.

“Mm,” Dazai held absolute zero intention of countering its text, responding with total righteousness: “If I am holding them, they should indeed possess zero efficacy.”

System: “Then you still claim to be an exorcist? If you cannot utilize charms, what are you going to use to exorcise monsters?”

Dazai unloosed total astonishment: “I naturally cannot exorcise monsters I am hoodwinking them anyway.” He voiced these words with absolute confidence, looking exactly as if he weren’t fabricating a lie, but rather performing a matter of total course.

System: “…” As long as you’re delighted.

Binding with this garbage host for a third universe left it feeling his brain tracks were thoroughly non-normal.

“If your person permits our lodging here, we can provide assistance to eliminate certain yokai if an opportunity manifests,” Dazai bowed toward the villagers with total gentlemanly grace. This movement was executed with immense elegance, looking exactly like the ripples birthed when a fingertip grazes clean water, leaving a person exceptionally comfortable. Even that attire of his far too bizarre for this era turned considerably normal on its heels.

“Turned out to be a Lord Exorcist?” several individuals nearby covered their faces in shock, before clustering together to execute low-voiced deliberations.

“Please grant forgiveness for our previous rudeness,” this time the middle-aged woman finally abandoned the alert focus she used to scan him, dropping her hands down before her frame with an apologetic air. “Recently, this perimeter hasn’t been peaceful.”

“We can comprehend,” Dazai responded.

Exorcists mostly received a fair metric of education, and plenty even emerged from illustrious clans; every movement and gesture leaked a noble aura that couldn’t be disregarded. Dazai’s temperament caused the villagers to negate the possibility of him being a bandit how could a person this highly refined and well-mannered be a detestable stray marauder?

Not only that, Dazai’s exterior appearance carried an immense metric of fraudulent deception too. Plenty of those who took exorcism as a trade preferred eccentric garments; the villagers naturally wouldn’t drill down into his clothing style. Paired with a genuine priestess beside his frame, the credibility index appeared remarkably high.

…

“Is Teacher Dazai an exorcist?” The exact split second they stepped inside the room, Tsubaki open her eyes wide to track Dazai Osamu. She was still vexed over the previous parameters, but by comparison, the parameter of Dazai being an exorcist shocked her far more.

Her current capability wasn’t particularly potent yet, but she could loosely gauge the strength of a human’s spiritual energy. From the split second they encountered each other, she could perceive that Dazai’s frame held absolute zero traces of spiritual energy.

Tsubaki blinked her eyes, her past-the-shoulder black hair draping submissively near her ear, the white fabric of her garment cascading across the wooden floorboards along with her sitting movement. Before Dazai, she constantly struck a highly well-behaved image.

“No,” Dazai answered. He followed up to append with an absolute straight face: “I am a magician~”

System: My host’s brain tracks are highly likely diseased.

“A magician?” Tsubaki asked in confusion. “What is that?” Within the parameters of her knowledge, a term of this nature held zero existence.

“Shh—” Dazai drew close to her side, speaking in a feather-light tone: “Do not permit alternative individuals to catch awareness of this matter.”

“Eh?”

“My magic…” Dazai sat down to clasp Tsubaki’s hand. “Perceived it?”

Tsubaki originally failed to decrypt his meaning, but executing a meticulous perception moments later, she discovered she completely couldn’t feel the spiritual energy across her frame anymore. Her own spiritual energy… was sealed away?!

Out of sheer astonishment, she un-consciously parted her mouth.

She had interacted with Dazai’s touch before, but at that juncture, her focus was completely warped by the memories surging from the burning ruins; combined with her own manipulation of spiritual energy remaining un-practiced, she had actually failed to catch it completely.

Is this… magic?

“Because magic is a highly mysterious item, you must absolutely refrain from telling others~” Dazai tracked the young girl beside him.

“…” Is it a highly crucial item? Tsubaki froze for a brief fraction. Teacher Dazai had actually shared an item this crucial with her person. Teacher Dazai actually harbored this deep of a trust toward herself? Yet she had clearly fabricated a lie toward him before. What to perform herself…

She flung the ball of tangled tracks inside her brain to one side, tracking Dazai’s eyes with absolute earnestness: “Tsubaki will definitely assist Teacher in guarding this secret.”

The system silently watched its host hoodwinking an under-age young girl. Coldness.jpg

It genuinely couldn’t comprehend its host; how bored must he be to fabricate a plot line of this nature. But the split second it scanned Tsubaki’s favorability parameter, it silently closed its mouth.

Tsubaki’s favorability parameter toward Dazai Osamu: 95.

If parameters permitted, the system would definitely lunge out to interrogate Tsubaki where is your sinister villain persona?? Aren’t you a dark priestess? How did you get captured this easily?

Oh, that phrase shouldn’t be voiced; that garbage host highly likely hadn’t even mentally evaluated capturing her from the start.

The system pent up for a long duration before managing to assemble an appropriate phrase: “Aren’t you terrified that once she discovers the truth in the future, the ship will overturn?”

“Mm?” Dazai feigned total ignorance regarding what it was voicing.

“…”

“I didn’t fabricate a lie toward her anyway,” he sat cross-legged across the tatami mats. “If this capability caught the awareness of others, things would truly turn into a massive hassle.”

System: “…” I unexpectedly hold zero words to counter.

“What exactly do you intend to perform?” it asked Dazai. The system truly couldn’t decrypt why he kept a villain supporting female character near his frame.

At the very start, it assumed Dazai Osamu was likely executing preparations for the future capture of Naraku, but afterward it constantly felt that farming Tsubaki’s favorability held absolute zero grand utility toward capturing Naraku regardless.

“Mm?”

“Your person ought to remain the most clear on it anyway,” the darkness deep within Dazai’s eyes sank down a fraction, his voice carrying zero fluctuating motion. “I am currently keeping up my diligent efforts to act as a good person.”

He pressed his voice exceptionally low, casually scanning the partitioned alcove where Tsubaki was situated.

The system birthed an anomalous feeling out of nowhere that something wasn’t right. Dazai didn’t require voicing words aloud to communicate with it, yet currently he had intentionally spoken out loud… why exactly was that?