Watching Cocolia's words on the screen — a question that landed like a curse — Shin could feel the entire chat go strange all at once.
The Great Witch didn't respond.
She simply sat quietly on the sofa. The white-stockinged feet that had been swaying gently a moment ago went still. The whole of her fell into silence.
Shin knew this kind of hypothetical was like tearing open a wound and pouring salt into it — directed at a witch who had only just chosen to set down her hatred and accept the nature of her own people.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: @Acting Sovereign of Anti-Entropy
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: That was a bit too vicious, don't you think? No one in this chat has done anything to you, and you're a mother yourself — saying something like that is essentially cursing someone else's child…
[System Message: Group member [Acting Sovereign of Anti-Entropy] has been muted for 30 days by Admin [Many-Headed Monster].]
Shin had been about to say something in the Great Witch's defense — but someone else had moved faster.
[Many-Headed Monster](Admin): Too noisy.
[Many-Headed Monster](Admin): Those who don't listen are not needed here.
With those words from the admin — who had barely made her presence felt until now — the suffocating pressure that had settled over the chat eased, just slightly.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: ?
Though Shin still had a nagging feeling something was off about this admin. Please don't turn out to be some supreme Many-Headed Monster hiding a thousand different personalities behind a thousand different masks.
And please, spare us the yandere variety of that — that would be genuinely terrifying.
Kaguya seemed to breathe out in relief too, and quickly stepped in to smooth things over:
[Moon Princess]: Phew. It seems our new member's emotional intelligence still needs some work. A little enforced quiet is probably good for everyone.
[Moon Princess]: @Spreading Witch Factors — Great Witch, don't let what she said get to you. That kind of extreme hypothetical in a chat like ours is usually just a flag being planted — we don't have to take the bait~
A flag being planted…
Shin suddenly realized: if the Great Witch had taken the bait, that flag would have been aimed squarely at him.
Which meant, in a roundabout way, the Many-Headed Monster had just saved his life.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: Mm, I'm fine.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: I will protect Shaya. Always.
Shin read it from the side, warmth spreading quietly through him.
He gave the Great Witch's foot — still slightly tense — an absent little squeeze, earning him a mildly reproachful look in return. And with that, the atmosphere of the manor settled back into its usual easy warmth.
Fifteen days passed in a blink.
Over those two weeks, life on Witch Island — now with the house arrest lifted — was quiet and full in equal measure.
Shin would occasionally sit down with the Great Witch to work through the finer details of their future "revenge" plans, though more of his time went toward guiding Meruru on how to more effectively apply her healing magic — naturally, in the privacy of his bedroom.
And as for the double-act he and the Great Witch had been playing across the two accounts — [Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being] running commentary on [Spreading Witch Factors]'s every move — Shin had grown more comfortable with it by the day.
He had to admit: having a secret alt account in a group chat that could serve as your own personal hype-man was genuinely satisfying. The things you could do — steering conversation, playing the impartial observer while commenting on yourself — were numerous, and while there were certainly shadier applications, he hadn't needed any of those yet.
On this particular day, Shin opened the chat as usual, intending to check whether Cocolia was still in mute or whether the Many-Headed Monster had let her out of the timeout corner yet.
Truth be told, he was actually curious about the Many-Headed Monster. He wouldn't mind finding some way to earn her goodwill and get a visit to her world — Witch Island was genuinely lacking in basic amenities that modern Tokyo could have stocked in an afternoon.
He had barely opened the chat, however, before Kaguya's messages were flooding in.
[Moon Princess]: Help! Is anyone there?!
[Moon Princess]: I'm going stir-crazy in here! I'm growing roots!
[Moon Princess]: There's not even a portable charger in this bamboo, those crusty old fossils in the Lunar Capital have absolutely zero sense of compassion!
Shin stared at the screen, thoroughly confused.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: Princess, what on earth is all this about?
[Moon Princess]: Waahh, [Aspiring], you finally showed up!
[Moon Princess]: Didn't I mention a few days ago that the surveillance around me had been removed? I thought they were finally letting me out for some air — but instead, they went ahead and banished me to the mortal world!
There's a "deity exiled to the human realm" stage to this?
[Moon Princess]: Those old fogeys won't forgive me for secretly taking the forbidden elixir — and they're accusing me of colluding with outsiders to destabilize the Lunar Capital's government, so they kicked me out of the moon and down to the mortal world without so much as a word of warning!
[Moon Princess]: And that's still the tolerable part — the truly unacceptable part is that they sealed me inside a bamboo stalk! An absolutely tiny, cramped bamboo stalk!
[Moon Princess]: Can you imagine? Me, the princess of the Lunar Capital, currently buried in the dirt like a bamboo shoot, just waiting for some old bamboo-cutter to come along and save the day!
Shin's eye twitched.
This storyline… why did it sound so familiar?
Wasn't this the opening of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter? And more to the point — Kaguya, how do you already know an old man (Taketori no Miyakkomaro) is coming to rescue you?
Actually, Shin had sensed something was off about Kaguya for a while. Her vibe had always been slightly misaligned from the other chat members — like someone who knew a little bit about everything. She was giving off the energy of a person who'd just returned from wandering ten thousand worlds and knew how everyone's stories ended.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: …In a certain sense, Moon Princess, your predicament really does have a kind of sweeping mythological grandeur about it.
[Moon Princess]: Mythological grandeur my foot!
[Moon Princess]: I can only communicate with the outside world through this group chat right now — if that old man doesn't show up today, two straight days without games or episodic drama will have me convinced I'm literally evolving into a bamboo spirit!
Just as Kaguya was typing out her complaints, a system message suddenly bloomed in the center of the chat.
[System Message: The threshold for group upgrade basic task completions has been reached. The Special Task is now officially announced!]
[Special Task (Anecdote Type): Legend of the Non-Human — The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter]
[Task Description: What has been called a "Legend" is a non-human existence acknowledged by the world itself. Together, these legends form the earliest foundation of the ten thousand worlds — but now, a variable has appeared that could alter this particular foundation.
Group members are requested to assist [Moon Princess] in guiding this "Anecdote" to its ideal conclusion.]
[Task Rules: This is a group task executed in rotating cycles. Every 15 days, two group members (or their designated proxies) will be randomly selected and entered into the instance.]
[Task Difficulty: D++ to B+++ (fluctuates with task progress and the choices of those executing it).]
[Current selection: [Queen of Britain], [Spreading Witch Factors].]
The chat went briefly, completely quiet.
Kaguya was the first to react.
[Moon Princess]:What?!
[Moon Princess]: This Special Task… is here to rescue me? This is absolutely textbook quest design, like something straight out of a storybook!
[Moon Princess]: But wait — this is basically a guaranteed clear! With Great Witch and Morgan lending their aid, an Anecdote set in the mortal world like mine is basically a walkthrough with eyes closed, isn't it?
Shin looked at the "randomly selected" on his screen and felt his brow crease.
The Great Witch and Morgan?
[Queen of Britain]: Another Anecdote task… but this one feels different from the last. For a group upgrade mission from Lv.3 to Lv.4, it's still playing out a legendary script set in the mortal world.
As a Morgan from the Lostbelt who can observe the panoramic history of Proper Human History, her knowledge of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter was hardly surprising.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: If I may ask, Morgan — what was your previous Anecdote task?
Shin was curious, partly because even the Great Witch had only joined the chat about a year ago and clearly didn't have much background on this either.
[Queen of Britain]: It was "Splitting the Mountain to Save Mother."
[Queen of Britain]: The mission required rescuing a mother trapped beneath the western sacred peak of Shenzhou. I wasn't there myself — I heard it recounted by Lady Marika, as I had no part in it.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: ?
To be continued…
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