Welcome to Underground True/Healing Heroine (9 Years Old)
Part 2
Using my psychokinesis, I"ll make a cylindrical path for the dart to head straight to the dartboard. I"ll also use my psychokinesis to make a shield over the entire dartboard, except for the exact center. Of course, Kaburagi-san"s dart is excluded from the shield. And then! With my darts covered by my psychokinesis as well, I"ll be able to throw them at a speed of 12 Mach! The dart will hit the center of the board instantly! Shock waves will surge through the cylindrical path!
Naturally, Kaburagi-san"s dart will fall to pieces.
Hahahahaha, Kaburagi-san, you fool! This will be beyond the limit of your reflexes! It"ll be smashed at such a speed that even time-stop won"t be fast enough to save it! Watch as your dart becomes nothing more than fine powder! If you can fix it by stopping time, then by all means, please fix it!
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Kaburagi-san stared at her dart, which had been transformed into nothing but powdered remains. As one would expect, she became upset.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, just a minute, my dart broke into pieces, right? You definitely used your psychokinesis, you"re disqualified, disqualified!"
"I didn"t use my psychokinesis. It"s because I have such an incredible throwing arm, you know?"
"*Eh~*…"
I had Kaburagi-san"s head1 with miscellaneous excuses. Excuses at the level of an average elementary-school student are effective, because a smart person will defeat you in an argument over theory.
"Alright, fine. Let me measure the physical strength of that "incredible throwing arm" then."
"Go ahead!"
Kaburagi-san let out a sigh as though she had given up, then threw her second dart. She carelessly threw her dart and it barely hit the edge of the dartboard. Did she actually give up?
"I won."
I said to Kaburagi-san. She replied,
"What are you saying? Can"t you see my dart stuck in the center?"
"Huh!?"
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When I checked the dart stuck in the middle of the dartboard, it wasn"t my blue dart that was stuck there, but Kaburagi-san"s red dart. Did she secretly switch them out? But that"s meaningless, since I"m recording this. If she stopped time to switch them out, then I can just watch it to check.
It"s all over if her cheating comes to light… at least that"s what I thought. But when I watched the video, both the dart that was pulverized and the dart thrown at Mach speed were red from the beginning.
"What!?"
d.a.m.nit, I was had. She had already secretly switched them out before I even threw the Mach speed one! I thought it was my own dart, so I ended up smashing Kaburagi-san"s dart with her own dart. Was she only pretending to be upset when she saw her dart smashed into tiny pieces? The smartphone is only recording the dartboard. Even if she did swap them out the moment I took a throwing stance, there"s no evidence. I was careless. According to the rules, "The winner is the person who gets their dart to hit the target closest to the center". It doesn"t matter who threw which dart.
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It"s the last throw. With this, the winner will be decided.
What should I do? Should I pull her dart out of the center using my psychokinesis… no, no, that"s way too obvious. There isn"t even any wind, it"s impossible that the dart would just fall out. And since I"m filming this, swapping them out also isn"t an option.
What should I do?
Are there any good options?
⋯⋯⋯.
Is it really that easy? It"ll take some manual labor.
Before I threw my dart, I used my psychokinesis to cause an earthquake. It was only a small earthquake, about a level 3 on the seismic intensity scale2, but the vibration caused only Kaburagi-san"s dart that was stuck in the middle of the board to fall off. Kaburagi-san"s reaction was delayed because she quickly hid under the table the moment things began to shake.
When the earthquake stopped a few seconds later, Kaburagi-san, before doing anything else, immediately threw a dart. The dart that I officially threw dropped, making the only darts stuck in the dartboard my blue ones. There"s no question, it"s undoubtedly my victory. Why, it"s as if the unexpected natural disaster was somehow on my side!
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Kaburagi-san, who had crawled out from under the table, seemed to have guessed the results on the dartboard. She brandished her magic wand and protested furiously.
"Was that you cheating? Should we watch the news to confirm it? There wasn"t even an earthquake bulletin posted, you know!"
"The earthquake occurred directly under the Kaburagi house. It"s epicenter is approximately 1m deep. There"s no need to worry about a tsunami being caused by this earthquake."
I involuntarily explained it, and Kaburagi-san tried to hold back from laughing. But once she started laughing, she couldn"t stop, and her laughter leaked out even though she was trying to hold back by putting her hand against her mouth. I seemed to have hit a "bull"s-eye".
After a while, Kaburagi-san"s laughing fit settled down, and she spoke while wiping tears from her eyes.
"It can"t be helped then. I got a good laugh out of it, so it"s fine if Sago-san wins this time."
Good, it"s settled then. The new Amaterasu member after Shoutkun is a 9 year-old girl from Brazil; Igubadi-NgunMugu-chan!
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Igubadi-NgunMugu-chan, 9 years old. Nickname: Ig. She"s a little girl that lives in an orphanage in the remote countryside of Brazil. She was welcomed into the family of the orphanage when she was two years old and the previous director found her shivering under a tree in the nearby outskirts of the village and decided to take her in. It seems that her name was given to her by the previous director, who was like a parent to her and gave her the name based on the ethnic minority they were from.
It seems that she had a good life there with the other orphans the previous director picked up, but then, before her very eyes, the previous director succ.u.mbed to a chronic disease and died. Management of the orphanage was then handed over to current director, who is a very mean person.
In the seven years since then, Ig-chan has been a constant target of bullying at the orphanage. She"s been locked up in a small room, not given enough to eat or any sort of education, etc. She"s also forced by the director to be a "play companion" for the other children. No, she"s more like their toy. From the start, Ig-chan was smaller and weaker than the other children her age, and she doesn"t have enough willpower or a method to fight back against the violence of the other children, who are allowed to do so by the director, so Ig-chan is very frightened.
It"s probably due to the guidance of Buddha or "the truth of fire" that – when I decided to search for a suitable Nenrikin transplant target by spreading my psychokinesis all over the world – Ig-chan awakened healing abilities. Gaia3 is asking me to save Ig-chan. However, even though she"s being abused, Ig-chan still technically belongs to the orphanage. I can"t just go ahead and forcibly abduct her. Although it would be impossible for them to give chase if I abducted her via psychokinesis, nothing good would come out of doing a frontal attack. It"s not good to fight crime illegally.
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I flew to Brazil by plane in order to rescue Ig-chan. I travelled by taxi and train, freely used my psychokinesis to move at high speed when no one was around, and arrived from j.a.pan at the orphanage where Ig-chan was living at in one day. Even though a visit from a j.a.panese person was unexpected, the current director welcomed me. Outwardly, she appeared to be a kind obasan. Undercover as someone who loved the Brazil countryside and planned to move there sometime soon, I effectively "greeted" them by handing out cash, food, and new clothes. In addition, while the official language of Brazil is Portuguese, which I can"t speak, the current director had learned English, so there were no problems in communicating.
Because I offered to provide cash support to the orphanage, when I said I wanted to take custody of Ig-chan because I saw her peeking through the window with a timid expression and liked her at first glance, the director readily agreed. I think it was a good investment. At least now she"ll have a nice new home.
Guided by the pleased director, I went towards the small room where Ig-chan had been confined. I went inside, and gently picked up the small, frail body that was shaking with fright in a corner of the room. Ig-chan hadn"t even been given one single blanket, so her body was cold. Nevertheless, as I held her in my arms, I could definitely feel her heartbeat.
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I only knew Ig-chan"s personal history through a week"s worth of gathering information with my psychokinesis. However, when I actually held her in my arms, I could feel an excessive amount of love welling up in my heart. Such a small body, imprisoned in that tiny room, with no one who would be their friend. Ig-chan has been doing her best to hang on.
From now on, I"ll be by her side. She"ll have a new family. The initial purpose was to get someone with healing abilities, but even if she doesn"t develop her healing abilities at all from now on, that"s fine too.
"It"s alright, you"re safe now."
I said it in j.a.panese, even though Ig-chan wouldn"t be able to understand it. Still, the intention will get through. Ig-chan shed tears from eyes that had long ago lost their light and clung to my arm with her frail body. I was angry enough that I ended up using my psychokinesis to slap the cheek of the director every second, but that was after I left the orphanage.
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And so, the tragic heroine, Igubadi-NgunMugu-chan (female, 9 years old) a proud primate of the common marmoset species4, a small palm-sized monkey ⸻ safely became the newest member of Amaterasu.
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Author"s Note: "In the usual template, there"s a bishoujo who blindly devotes herself to the "boss" and I think that needs to be added as soon as possible, you know?" Since people were asking for it, I put out the character they wanted. I"m a model author who responds faithfully to their readers" opinions. Compliments are also nice!
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Footnotes:
1: 頭を抱える (atama no kakaeru) = I had the head. Expression meaning "to be at wit"s end".
2: The j.a.panese seismic intensity scale goes from level 1: weak to level 7: devastation.
3: Gaia = ancient Greek G.o.ddess of Earth ⇒ Wikipedia: Gaia
4: Yes, Ig is a monkey. Info on common marmosets ⇒ Wikipedia: Common Marmoset