Tokyo Psychic

Page 293

One is her secretary, bound by a soul contract to eternity, and the other is the manager of the divine sword who will always be loyal to her... It is only natural that her attitude towards them should exceed the concept of "privacy" in human understanding... After all, in an objective sense, Akira Kurusu has no privacy in front of them, so it is better to be generous, which will make the girls' already full level of goodwill rise even higher.

Especially the rain.

The girl had lived in that abandoned shrine for far too long, and finally encountered the first swordsman who could truly recognize her as his master, so her affection for him naturally increased rapidly.

If a romance system existed in real life like those in visual novels, you'd probably see romance numbers constantly popping up above Cong Yu's head...

Upon seeing Akira Kurusu's face, a "+5" immediately appeared above her head, boosting her favorability rating.

Upon hearing Akira Kurusu speak, another "+5" favorability rating popped up above her head.

Chatting with Akira Kurusu, the numbers above her head keep increasing by "+1+1+1..."

When Lai Qixiao fell asleep and he was playing games with her in the velvet room, the numbers were increasing at a rate that was almost invisible to the naked eye...

Of course, all of the above are assumptions; in reality, there are no game effects related to a favorability system.

Cong Yu's affection for Kurusu Akira cannot be quantified by numbers.

......

Before leaving Impression Space.

Akira Kurishi went back to the velvet room as she always did.

It was still that extravagant private jet.

However, a sword rack had appeared at the very front of the desk, and on it sat Murasame, which Akira Kurusu had brought from the Hoori Shrine...

Whenever you enter the velvet room with a knife, it moves there by itself.

This can be seen as a sign that Cong Yu is gradually regaining his divine power.

However, she had very little control over the velvet room. To avoid accidentally causing damage, she did little more than walk around like a maid with a broom or rag and put the divine knife back in its place with a flick of her finger.

After all, as the manager of Congyu Maru, it's very easy for him to order his "main body" around.

Cong Yu is actually very good at and enjoys taking care of people, which can be considered a result of the upbringing she was born into.

Although her time as the "God of Swords" for a thousand years had suppressed her humanity, living in the Velvet Room for a while seemed to have allowed her to rediscover those distant, almost forgotten feelings, and thus she became engrossed in the daily routine of serving tea and water to Akira Kurusu.

How should I put it... She appears lively and cute, with a constant chatter, but her inner personality is actually as gentle and soft as a textbook example of a Yamato Nadeshiko.

Cong Yu was very interested in everything modern, and spent time being taught by Ravenda in the velvet room.

She not only learned how to use a range of electronic devices, how to read comics and light novels, but also...

How to maintain a close, distant relationship with your owner.

Akira Kurusu glanced at the bookshelf next to the sofa.

The bookshelf was full of "interesting materials" that Ravenda had carefully selected for Cong Yu.

The first column contains pure love campus romance doujinshi.

The second column contains pure love stories about humans and ghosts.

The third column includes the types mentioned above, but with the addition of various strange little toys to assist in the process.

The fourth column has surprisingly become a multi-female lead collaboration mode...

Akira Lai vaguely remembered that when she was reading next to the sofa last week, the book on the sofa was "5 Centimeters Per Second".

If Velvet Room were an adult-oriented SLG game, then Cong Yu would definitely have both "sexual desire" and "affection" slots above his head.

And now they should all be fully fed with experience items by Lavenda...

As Lai Qixiao sat down on the sofa, she looked at the girl in ancient costume beside her with a face as pink as a peach blossom and felt the softness and warmth emanating from her. She felt apologetic in her heart.

Dear members of the Phantom Thieves, I might not be able to return on time...

Fortunately, there was a tool in the Velvet Room to control the flow of time. Lavenda found a small piece of paper and used it to fix the hourglass that was slowly turning upside down in the corner of the desk.

Lai Qixiao finally breathed a sigh of relief, letting Cong Yu push him down onto the sofa.

Cong Yu was originally a very shy person, but after many days of hands-on guidance from Ravenda, she has gradually come to understand this act of service and is trying to experience the joy in it.

In addition, she's been constantly fed items by Lavender, just accumulating them without using them, so she's already in a state of extreme hunger.

It's like a Wuju Master Yi who's farmed up to six items in the jungle suddenly encountering an Ashe without Flash in the river...

This is truly a fierce and relentless offensive.

Lavenda climbed onto the desk, pressed her slender legs tightly together, pressed down on her skirt with her small hands, and stared intently at the battle unfolding on the sofa.

(There will be an extra chapter tonight, featuring Homura Akemi, Madoka Kaname, Kokoro Tsurumaki, and Aine Chihaya. It should be quite long. If you're interested, you can check it out tomorrow morning.)

275. Haruhi Suzumiya has disappeared (original version)

"Lavenda".

"Ah."

"I have something to ask you."

Lying in the secretary's arms, the phantom thief gazed wistfully at her flawless, beautiful face, feeling the intense, bright golden gaze of her eyes, as warm as the sun. He then slowly spoke, "Was what I did... considered damaging cultural relics?"

Lavenda couldn't understand Akira Kurusu's thought process for a moment.

But she quickly realized that Muramaru was a divine sword that had been worshipped as a sacred object in the Kansai region a thousand years ago.

As the manager of the divine sword, Murakumo should be considered a "historical relic" along with Murakumo Maru. If it is removed from the shrine's worship, it should be displayed in a museum in Kyoto.

Logically speaking, Akira Kurusu's actions are no different from appropriating a mirror that an ancient daimyo once placed on an altar and worshipped by generations of people, and then using it as a personal item in his own bathroom... Moreover, he not only appropriated artifacts related to divine authority and faith, but also did something far more egregious than graffiti or engraving on them...

Although using the terms "graffiti" and "engraving" might make the whole process seem more lewd and decadent...

Ravenda raised her little hand and gently patted Lai Qixiao's forehead. "You're daydreaming, Mr. Trickster..." Ever since the two of them defeated Aldabait in the previous world, she rarely called Lai Qixiao "Trickster".

Whenever Ravenda uses this title, it means that Akira Kurusu is doing something not so good.

Lai Qixiao then belatedly realized that Cong Yu, completely naked, was lying in his arms.

He looked down and saw the slender girl, her face flushed and tears welling in her eyes, looking at him with shame and embarrassment...

Clearly, Cong Yu had heard all of Lai Qixiao's thoughts about "possession" and "destruction of cultural relics" as his inner voice.

If the option to escape had been available, Cong Yu would have already put on her clothes and fled.

But in the velvet room, she couldn't go anywhere. She could only cower like an ostrich, suppressing her feelings of shame and indignation, and curl up in Akira's arms.

Although Murakumo himself knew that the truth was similar to what Akira Kurusu was imagining, Murakumo-maru, who should have been enshrined as a god, was kidnapped from the shrine by a thief, and the manager living inside the divine sword even had a marital affair with him...

But when someone actually explained things clearly, it became a source of shame that the girl, whose thoughts and values ​​were somewhat outdated, could not bear at all.

After all, in Cong Yu's view, these things should only be done after marriage.

Cong Yu never imagined that she would recognize a master, nor did she imagine that "serving" would mean that she would be criticized by the residents of that era as "impure" and "a woman of the night".

Fortunately... her social circle can indeed be reduced to just Akira Kurusu and Lavenda.

This made Cong Yu secretly breathe a sigh of relief, and then she bit Lai Qixiao's arm with a particularly resentful look.

After calming down a bit, and remembering that all the girls in the Phantom Thieves had ambiguous relationships with Akira Kurusu, Cong Yu felt even more relaxed.

The time for intimate moments is finite. Even though Lavenda can manipulate the flow of time using the facilities in the Velvet Room, this privilege cannot be used indiscriminately. Excessive interference with time might cause the Velvet Room to drift away from the Sea of ​​Hearts due to a distorted perception of time...

Lai Xixiao had already helped Cong Yu to his feet; he was now going back to reality.

Ravenda turned her head to look at the owner of the room.

“Please be careful,” she cautioned in an incredibly beautiful voice. “We have verified all the truths, and the closer we get to the end of all possibilities, the more cautious we should be.”

Akira Kurusu was enveloped in light, which eventually transformed into his summer clothes from before he entered the Impression Space. "Perhaps I'm already starting to get tired of this endless farce."

"That witch from Mitakihara must be even more fed up with the cycle of time than you are."

......

Ravenda's voice was swallowed up by the barrier of cognition as the door closed.

The phantom thief returns to reality, surrounded by his friends who are completely unaware of his departure...

However, the girls' expressions changed slightly after he appeared.

Their mutual understanding was enough for them to sense that Akira Kurusu had done something bad during the passage of time that she hadn't been aware of.

But no one took the initiative to ask Akira Kurusu.

If necessary, Akira Kurusu will proactively inform them.

Since Akira Lai didn't explain, it means that these secrets weren't so important that they all needed to know them.

She felt a little sad because Akira Kurusu was secretly doing "bad things," after all, no one wants their favorite boy to have something to hide.

However, both Toyokawa Shoko and Anwa Subaru took Kurusu Akira's thoughts into account, so they took the initiative to try to understand his predicament.

Only Shioka Kotone scoffed, seemingly just waiting to kick Kurusu Akira onto the tatami mat in the bedroom after they got back to the guesthouse, then straddle him and give him a good beating.

The sun was blazing, as if someone's ace Pokémon had summoned a bright, sunny day. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, the hottest time of the day. The concrete pavement of the street seemed to be melting, and you could feel the heat seeping into your shoes as you stepped on it.

The Phantom Thieves travel by car to the high school where Iori Rina once studied.

Although it's not yet the start of the school year, an investigation revealed that the girls who had bullied Izuru were all attending summer tutoring classes organized by the school.

Compared to Tokyo, smaller cities like Kumamoto don't have as much competition from cram schools, so schools can organize various extra-fee educational programs on their own...

What they had to do was use the opportunity of visiting and learning to gather information at the cram school.

This task absolutely cannot be given to Akira Kurusu, after all, his appearance as a woman is too outstanding, and he is also a very famous person, so he would be easily recognized.

Toyokawa Shoko is also unsuitable. As she grows up, her noble air as a young lady becomes more and more pronounced, to the point that she can be distinguished from ordinary people of the same age as a different species.

An and Subaru, on the other hand, have an innate stage presence and camera presence, making it clear at a glance that this girl was born for the big screen.

After much deliberation, they had no choice but to entrust this arduous task to Shiomi Kotone and... Metath.

After all, you can't expect Wakaba Mutsu to do this kind of negotiation work.

Meanwhile, Mottis inherited the unwanted talent of "performance" from Mutsuka Wakaba.

After hesitating for a while in front of the university gates, Shiomi Kotone set off with Metathia.

......

"Xiao, are they really okay?"

An and Mao stood on tiptoe, watching the two girls walk away.

The phantom thief sighed and said, "Don't worry, Shiomi-senpai is best at communication."

An and Subaru were physically weaker than the other girls, and were naturally quite hot. Their rosy faces were covered in sweat. She quickly squatted down and hid in Akira Kurusu's shadow, no longer making a sound.

Toyokawa Shoko stood guard from the side.

Suddenly, ripples from the Impression Space, which all three could clearly perceive, spread throughout the school gate—

Everyone looked over and saw a pale pigeon flapping its wings in the sunlight, seemingly startled by Shiomi's koto music, and fleeing into the distance in a panic.

Akira Kurishi looked in the direction the white dove had gone, her expression becoming slightly serious.

That's where Jingqin's family lives...

......

at the same time.

In the Cognitive Science Technology Application Department of the Toyokawa Group in Tokyo.

A man dressed as a psychologist suddenly ran out of the laboratory.

The lab director, who was anxiously waiting in the corridor as if urging labor, grabbed his shoulder in surprise and delight.

"Mr. Maruki! What were the final test results?!"

Maruki Takuto was much calmer than he had imagined, as if all of this had already been calculated thousands of times.

"Thanks to the samples of 'subconscious polymers' that the Phantom Thieves brought back from the Space of Impressions, I have successfully completed the development of the artificial Persona..."

Maruki Takuto pushed up his glasses and used perfunctory words to brush off the ordinary person in front of him who had only a superficial understanding of cognitive science.

The "Phantom Thieves" he was referring to were, of course, the group led by Ryuji Sakamoto who spent their days running around the Space of Mementos for "rehabilitation."

Compared to the phantom thieves of the present timeline who are either on vacation or fighting evil gods, these teenagers who desperately need a lot of Persona battles to recover are obviously more suitable to accept his commission.

Thanks to this, the remains of the slain evil gods scattered throughout the Impression Space were collected in the laboratory and used by Maruki Takuto to repair his Persona, which was derived from the Holy Grail of Aldabit...