Shota is surrounded by monsters!

After she slung her bag back over her shoulder, she finally had a free hand and reached down to scratch Shota's stomach a few times.

"So comfortable, meow..."

"How does it feel? The feeling of being held in the arms of a beautiful human girl and having her belly stroked."

"Mmm...so comfortable, meow. To experience this twice in one night is just too...meow! What are you doing, meow!"

Senjougahara Hitagi simply grabbed Shota by the soft flesh of his neck with one hand and lifted him into the air, saying, "Personally speaking, I prefer to carry a cat like this. I wonder how it feels, Kousaka-kun?"

Shota had no choice but to use his tail to cover his private parts, and weakly waved his limbs, saying, "Put me down quickly."

"Someone's coming up ahead, don't make a sound, Kousaka-kun. Otherwise, it'll be a big problem if others find out you're an oddball."

"Meow~meow~"

Finally, Hitagi Senjougahara made sure to escort Shota to his doorstep, unlocked the door with her key, put the drinks he had bought in the refrigerator, and then prepared to leave.

"Wait, Senjougahara."

After changing his clothes, Shota dragged Mashiro, who was clinging to his feet and talking in her sleep, out of the room and said, "Here, take this back."

Battlefield initially looked at the clump of liquid on Shota's leg with some surprise and said, "This, is it Kousaka Mashiro?"

"Ah, oh, is this your first time seeing one? It's called a slime, and it really is this kind of gooey creature. This guy loses control of his body when he sleeps and turns back into this form."

Shota offered a somewhat awkward explanation, handing the envelope to Senjougahara and saying, "Here's your money back. Thanks to you, I sold some things today and made a small profit. Thank you."

"No, there's no need for friends to say thank you."

After Senjougahara accepted the money, she became quite interested in Mashiro. She poked the liquid with her finger and pulled it out, finding some traces still remaining on it.

Is it poisonous?

"No, Mashiro isn't poisonous. If you really want to describe her, she's like a natural juicer, isn't she? If you soak her in the bathtub, after a while you'll take her out and the whole bathtub will turn into juice."

"Judging from what Kousaka-kun said, it seems like he drinks it quite often?"

"No! Only this one, absolutely not!"

Shota righteously refuted Senjougahara's words.

"Is that so?" Senjougahara Hitagi waved her hand and said, "See you tomorrow, Kousaka-kun."

"Okay. See you at school tomorrow."

Image: "Senjougahara", Location: "Images/171503-27581.jpg"

Chapter 18. The World is Dangerous

Image: "Senjougahara", Location: "Images/172230-33878.jpg"

"Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring".

"It's morning already?"

Shota slapped the alarm clock to stop its shrill sound, rubbed his eyes, sat up in bed, and said, "Mashiro, get up."

"Glug glug glug".

Mashiro poked her head out of the cardboard box, holding a bottle of blueberry juice in her hand.

"Did they actually get up in the middle of the night and eat it all?"

Shota looked at the juice boxes scattered on the ground, shook his head helplessly, and said, "He's even more greedy than me. Let's go, time to wash up and get ready for school."

With that, he walked ahead towards the bathroom, and Mashiro followed him.

"Clap."

The door to the house opened again. Hitagi Senjougahara, wearing her school uniform, walked in through the door.

"Oh my god, he actually got up today. That surprised me."

Seeing Shota scratching his head with bleary eyes, Senjougahara Hitagi said with some surprise, "I thought you were going to sleep for at least a year. I didn't expect you to get up so soon."

"How could that be? I'm very self-disciplined." Shota waved his hand at the uninvited guest and said, "Wait, how do you have a key to my house?"

You mean this?

Senjougahara held up a key and showed it to Shota: "You just realized that? What a slow-witted monster."

“…” Shota yawned, not thinking too much about it, and just said, “Are you calling me to go to school? Wait a minute, I’ll brush my teeth and blow-dry my hair, 20 minutes.”

"Kousaka-kun," Senjougahara Hitagi said, looking at Shota who was about to enter the bathroom, "Don't you... know how long you've been asleep?"

"Huh? You came back at 12 o'clock yesterday, right? You slept for about seven hours."

"No, you slept for a full twenty-four and seven hours. So please don't think I'm here to wake you up for school; I'm just here to observe the living habits of this new species of creature."

"…………"

Shota turned around and looked at Mashiro, who was following behind him.

"Yesterday... it was too noisy... I turned it off. Ah..."

Mashiro yawned and offered an explanation.

How long can a Taotie sleep for? This is a question worth exploring. The longest Taotie slept in as a child was about three months. As long as it doesn't wake up from hunger, a Taotie can practically sleep for eternity. For the first thirty years of Shota's life, he spent most of his time sleeping on his father's back. After coming to Japan, his sleep time was indeed drastically reduced, so it's understandable that he occasionally felt the urge to catch up on sleep.

Unfortunately, the key depends on whether the teacher can understand it.

"If you encounter any difficulties in the future, please tell your teacher first. Okay? Kosaka-san, although I know it's tough for you to live alone after returning from abroad, and you're not used to life in Japan yet. But I hope this kind of unexcused absence from class won't happen again. Also, all the contact numbers are disconnected? If Senjougahara-san hadn't said she checked because it's close to your house, I would have called the police... There have been a lot of disappearances lately, and I don't want any of my classmates to mysteriously disappear, understand?"

"Understood, teacher."

Shota pulled Mashiro down with him.

"Good to know. Go back to class now."

Back in the classroom with Mashiro, after exchanging a few perfunctory greetings with his classmates, Shota slumped onto his desk and said to Mashiro with a hint of exasperation, "Don't turn off the alarm clock again, okay?"

"Ah."

Mashiro nodded, but she didn't seem to realize that she had done anything wrong.

It wasn't Shota's style to argue with a child who knew nothing. He turned his head and glanced at Hitagi Senjougahara, who was leaning against the window flipping through a book.

"What? Do you need me to provide a service to wake you up every morning?"

Noticing Shota's gaze, Senjougahara Hitagi turned around and said, "I can also make you breakfast while I'm at it. Interested?"

"……No."

Shota rejected Senjougahara's suggestion, then thought of something else and said, "Hey, Senjougahara, can you do me a favor?"

"Ok?"

lunch break.

"Oh my, the legendary fried noodle bread!"

Shota held the bread in his hands, took a satisfied breath of its aroma, and said to Senjougahara, who was eating her own lunchbox beside her, "Thank you so much."

"A monster...would be interested in human food?"

"Well, at least from my personal point of view, human food is still pretty good."

Shota took a bite of half a bread, chewed it once, and swallowed it directly, saying, "It's just too little and too expensive. It's not enough to fill me up, so I can only try it occasionally."

"is it?"

Senjougahara Hitagi nodded as if she understood, and said, "So you mainly eat your own kind of youkai? That's quite a perverse taste."

"The ones that eat the most are animals."

Shota explained, "Back in Europe, I ate whatever animals I saw, and occasionally I could knock out monsters and swallow them whole. But now in Japan, the urbanization rate is so high that there's hardly any wild game for me to eat."

"What about the seabed?"

Shota shuddered, as if recalling something unpleasant, and sighed, saying, "On the way to Japan, I tried to go into the sea to catch some food, but... those are real monsters in the ocean. If I hadn't run fast enough, I probably would have been eaten."

"Mmm, that's terrifying."

Mashiro shuddered as well; her journey across the ocean to Japan was hardly a pleasant memory. It was that experience that shaped Shota's current principle of keeping a low profile.

The monsters of the underwater world are mostly ancient beings that have slumbered for thousands of years. Unaffected by the ever-growing power of humanity, their strength far surpasses that of the monsters on land. Fortunately, those ambitious monsters have long since migrated to the land, and while the remaining ones aren't entirely without ambition, having already conquered three-quarters of the Earth's territory, they have no particular desire for land. Therefore, as long as humans don't provoke them, they live a peaceful life in the ocean.

"Kousaka-kun, are there many monsters in the place where we live?"

"You could say that. However, some monsters are invisible to the naked eye. And there are quite a few of them. Besides Mashiro and me, there's also the legendary Great Leader of Monsters at the school. But I suggest you don't associate with them."

Is there something there?

Senjougahara Hitagi pointed to a spot not far ahead.

"Ok?"

Shota looked in the direction she was pointing and saw a male ghost floating around there...

"When did a ghost appear? Wait, can you see it?"

Shota looked at Senjougahara Hitagi with some surprise. Only those with spiritual vision can see such spirit-type monsters—and having spiritual vision means that a person has the potential to become an exorcist or an onmyoji.

"Only a vague outline can be seen."

Hitagi Senjougahara tried to get a closer look at the ghost, but no matter what she did, she couldn't see its full appearance clearly.

"No way? You've been able to see these things since you were a child?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Shota knew that wasn't the case. If she could see spirits from a young age, she should have been used to their existence long ago and wouldn't have been so surprised to see her true form.

"Since I started to regain my weight, I could see some of it, but it seemed to get thicker every day."

"Why didn't you say so sooner?"

Shota knew that this was probably what they called "experience makes perfect." After being possessed by the heavy crab for so long, when he finally begged it to return his weight, he might have awakened a little bit of power that he shouldn't have awakened.

Hitagi Senjougahara did not answer Shota's question, but simply stared silently at the spot where the ghost was.

"You should know that irrational monsters love to attack people with spiritual power, especially people like you who have spiritual vision but no fighting ability."

Shota thought of the night before last when he saw her out late, and said to her, "Don't wander around outside at night. Otherwise, you'll easily get caught up in all sorts of trouble."

"Is that so?"

Senjougahara Hitagi seemed unconvinced, pulling out a utility knife and asking, "An attack?"

"Although some yokai are weak, like Natto-kun, who is even weaker than humans, most yokai are quite strange. They can't be hurt by physical attacks. Ah, troublesome."