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ED: LonelyMatter
Part 3
“Whoa! There are a ton of people here!”
“Yeah, you’re right!”
I nodded at Ryo’s words.
Today, we had all come to Kagurazaka-san’s shrine for our first visit of the year.
Last time, we came with an impurity attached to us after encountering a demon, and it was cleansed. Back then, I don’t think there were many visitors.
Now, however, it was bustling with worshippers. If I let my guard down even a little, I’d probably get lost.
As I was thinking that, I heard Lexia-san and the others’ voices.
“Wow! There are so many people!”
“Le-Lexia… I guess I really shouldn’t take this off. It’s hard to move around.”
“No way! We all matched on purpose!”
I shifted my gaze to Lexia-san and the others and saw that the girls were dressed in bright, festive furisode kimonos.
“That’s right, Luna-san! They look absolutely perfect on you!”
“I-is that right…? But still…”
“Rin-chan looks great in her furisode, too!”
“You look great in yours, too, Kaede.”
As I admired everyone’s colorful furisode outfits, Lexia-san came running over to me.
“Yuuya-sama, what do you think? Beautiful, right?”
“Huh!? Y-yes, everyone looks absolutely beautiful.”
Though I felt embarrassed, I voiced my honest opinion. The girls didn’t seem to mind at all.
Then, Merl looked toward the offering box within the shrine grounds.
“I think we put money in there to make a wish for the whole year, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Let’s get in line to pray first.”
With that, we joined the line to worship.
For some reason, Yukine was standing next to me with her hands pressed together.
“May I encounter good occult things again this year.”
“Yukine-chan, you haven’t put your offering in yet!? What do you mean by ‘encounter occult things’?”
Ignoring Yukine, who had already started praying to the gods, Ryo and Shingo-kun were discussing what to wish for.
“Hey, what are you wishing for?”
“L-let’s see… Maybe something like getting good seats for my favorite idol’s concert?”
“Ah, that makes sense! Live tickets are really hard to get these days, aren’t they?” Ryo replied.
“Does everyone make a different wish every year?”
When I casually asked that question, Kaori spoke up.
“Hmm… I make the same wish every year, but… I wonder how others do it.”
“Hmmm… I might change mine depending on the shrine. This one’s famous for matchmaking, right? So, this time, I’ll probably make a wish about love.”
“Oh! That makes sense!”
Kaori nodded vigorously at Kaede’s words.
“I don’t really have anything set in stone. I just make wishes based on how I feel at the time.”
“Me too.”
“Same here.”
“M-me too.”
“Huh… Everyone thinks differently, doesn’t it?”
After listening to everyone, Lexia-san murmured with apparent admiration, “Everyone has different ways of thinking, doesn’t it?”
“By the way, Yuuya, have you decided what you’ll wish for?” Ryo asked me.
“Me? I’ll wish for health and peace.”
“O-oh? That sounds pretty earnest…”
Ryo muttered this as he saw me staring off into the distance.
Well, of course. It’s earnest.
If I were to ask a god for something, I’d want it to be about things beyond my control.
One of those things was health.
I could manage my physical condition, but it was not perfect. I never know what or when an illness might strike.
That was precisely why I wanted to ask a god for health.
The second thing was “peace.” This was what I wanted most right now.
Honestly, I’d been caught up in way too many troubles lately. Please, just give me some peace!
As I was thinking about this, Lexia-san and the others started seriously considering what they should wish for.
“Since this is a matchmaking shrine, I guess there’s only one thing we should wish for…”
“Hmmm… Should I pray about love, or should I pray for Lexia to behave?”
“Decided. I just want us to keep having fun together.”
“So you’ve decided on your wish, too, Yuti? I wonder what I should ask for.”
Yuti seemed to have a similar wish to mine, while the others hadn’t decided yet.
As we stood in line to worship, it was finally our turn.
I had explained the procedure beforehand, and everyone had observed the people in front of them, so Lexia-san and the others seemed to know the proper etiquette.
After each of us tossed our offerings into the box, we began our prayers according to custom.
“May everyone stay healthy and live peacefully this year…”
That was the moment I prayed.
“No way, isn’t it…”
“Huh?”
A woman’s voice came from somewhere.
Wh-what? That voice just now… Wait, did she just say “no way”?
I stood there, bewildered by the unexpected situation. Ryo and the others, who had already finished their prayers, looked at me curiously.
“Yuuya, what’s up?”
“Huh? Ah, no, it’s nothing!”
“Oh, okay! Well, then. Next up, let’s all draw omikuji!”
[T/N: Fortune slips that you draw at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan. They are small paper slips that contain a random fortune. They can range from great luck to bad luck.]
Still feeling somewhat unsettled, we moved over to the omikuji corner.
But seriously, what was that voice just now? Ugh, what a bad omen at the start of the new year!
Upon arriving at the fortune-drawing corner, Lexia-san and the others stared intently at the container holding the fortunes.
“This time, I’m definitely going to draw a proper fortune!”
“True, last time I drew a fortune, it said something completely incomprehensible…”
“Th-this time, it should be fine, right?”
“I-I wonder…”
“Actually, after that, I looked into what omikuji are supposed to be like. But it seems that time was abnormal. So this time should definitely be fine.”
The last time we were allowed to draw omikuji, the ones drawn by Lexia-san, Luna, Kaori, Kaede, Merl, and me said things that were impossible under normal circumstances.
Wait, did Merl actually look up omikuji after that?
As we pondered that, we remembered that there were plenty of other customers around. We quickly drew our omikuji to avoid getting in the way and then moved to a slightly less crowded spot.
Then, we each opened the omikuji we had drawn.
“Oh, I got a great fortune!”
“Wow, lucky you!”
Ryo, who had opened his first, had apparently gotten a great fortune.
He started reading the contents with a smug look.
“Hehehe, pretty good, huh? The message is, ‘You haven’t grown at all since last time.’ That’s way too harsh, isn’t it!?”
“Y-you’re right. Even though it’s a great fortune… How does it even know about last time?”
Shingo-kun was right. It was weird for the omikuji to mention “last time.”
Was god really watching over us? I mean, I’d already fought an actual god, so I knew they existed.
Then maybe that woman’s voice earlier was…
“Um, mine is… Good fortune. It says, ‘Idol fandom is great, but romance is wonderful, too.’ Huh, that hits way too close to home.”
“Wait, how did it even know you were interested in idol fandom?”
We all nodded at Ryo’s calm retort.
Yeah, definitely. The gods were watching us, right?
After that, Rin, Yuti, and Yukine checked their omikuji in turn.
“Oh, I got ‘great fortune’ too. ‘Despite everything, you’re getting closer, and things are looking good. Keep it up,’” Rin read.
“Good fortune… ‘Nice, nice! Your heart is slowly starting to move!’ Still as cryptic as ever.”
“Minor fortune. What… ‘Occult matters are not my specialty.’ Seriously?”
As each of us reacted with mixed emotions to our fortunes, Lexia-san and the others finally checked theirs.
“All right, here goes… Heave-ho!”
“So, how’d yours turn out?”
“…‘There’s nothing more enjoyable than a one-sided love you watch from the sidelines’?”
“Ah, mine’s the same!”
“M-mine too…”
“So, just like last time, we all drew omikuji with the same message on them.”
As expected, all of Lexia-san’s and the others’ omikuji were identical and didn’t mention any specific fortune.
With that, it seemed certain that my omikuji wasn’t ordinary either.
I steeled myself and checked the contents of my omikuji.
And then…
“Don’t you think the fun part of a romantic comedy is when you actually start dating?”
It was practically asking me to agree with it!
Of course, there was no mention of fortune.
A moment of silence fell between us.
“Well, yeah. We already knew these omikuji were weird last time.”
“Y-yeah, I guess…”
As Ryo said, complaining wouldn’t do any good.
We gave up on pondering the omikuji’s content and headed to tie it up when a nearby ema corner caught our eye.
Lexia-san asked promptly.
“What’s that?”
“Ema. You write your wish on one of those wooden plaques, and it’s supposed to come true.”
“What? That sounds wonderful! Let’s all do it!”
“Yeah, that sounds fun.”
“I’ve never written an ema before.”
“Me neither. But, as members of the Occult Research Club, I’m curious just how effective ema really are.”
“If omikuji are that powerful, then ema must be seriously effective.”
And so, we all bought ema and started writing our wishes with pens.
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now she feels guilty wow just wow
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Thanks for the chapter
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That shrine deity is treating Yuuya like the main character in a romantic comedy. 😑
She seems to have already sidelined Lexia and the others. 😓
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thanks for the chapter 👍
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Definitely… That deity is asking everyone to take the step forward, before gets too late and somebody else goes taking it for them (message for the girls).
Then, for Yuuya basically is saying he has to accept their feelings from whoever asks him to date out.
If all comes out to a “harem ending”, the real Q is, who goes first, but if not…
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Thanks for the update.
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