TAKASAKI, GUNMA, JAPAN
AUGUST 24TH
Today I was doing something quite different than usual, first of all, I was away from home alone with Tamamo, secondly, I wasn't in any trouble, and thirdly, I was even enjoying this day as I was taking a much-deserved rest, just telling myself. The beginning of the story? a simple one, Inspector Yamamoto had asked for several days off and decided to use them to go on vacation with his granddaughter, but as he thought it would be boring for Haru to go with just the two of them, they invited us to come along. And since I had promised to help him cover up his affair with the Yakuza, I agreed to help him get rid of his granddaughter's suspicions.
Right now we were at the Yuuna Onsen rotenburo to Ryokan, an open-air bathhouse quite close to Mount Haruna, a popular tourist destination in the region called Ikaho. Despite being somewhat old, founded in the 19th century, to Tamamo's eyes this place had been created yesterday.
The hotel despite being high class, was quite empty of guests, so there were not many people using the various facilities. And after Tama was quite insistent about wanting to use the hot springs, I ended up agreeing after checking that no one else was there. Despite the way I usually dress or my complete lack of any underwear, being completely naked in front of others is not something I like. But once inside I simply sat comfortably next to Tamamo and laid my head on her shoulder.
For a grand total of 2 full minutes before Haru came to bother as usual. She followed me at a distance and noticed how I entered the hot spring and stealthily prepared to sneak in so that I wouldn't run away, much like the last time this happened on the trip to Ueno Dam. She approached us and began to speak, or rather to launch a brutal barrage of questions to try to satisfy her curiosity.
"Gosh Elise, for being a tomboy girl your body doesn't help you at all."
"I barely even know how to look at you even though we're friends."
"Are your breasts really real? They can't possibly be natural."
"They have to be fake, there's no other way." Said the annoying girl as she entered the water.
I open my eyes and notice Haru looking straight at me, quite concentrated trying to find some clue to help him solve her last question. This made me feel quite uncomfortable, so I turned around to see the rest of the scenery and turn my back to Haru.
"Do you really think I would go to a doctor for anything other than a serious injury?"
"Well, you are right, if I were you I would try to go as little as possible near the hospital and avoid more questions about fox ears and tails"
"....."
"So another question!"
"Why do you hate men so much?"
"Any specific reason? Same as Lisa?"
"What? No, I don't"
"I don't hate men, I just don't like them, that's all."
"That I haven't told you before?"
"But that's too general"
"I'm sure there's something else behind it, one can't just hate something for no reason"
"Why don't you like them? Can you give me a concrete reason?"
"If I give you a reason would you leave me alone then?"
"I don't like them because they are ugly, that's it, are you happy with your answer?"
"But that's too vague, it could be anything."
"What exactly do you find ugly about them?"
"Damn it, Haru, I don't want to talk about it."
"Everything looks ugly to me ok, their body, their face, the shape they have, the bottom part"
"Leave it at that"
"So you think they're ugly, interesting."
"You know, I think maybe you could be bisexual."
"Maybe you just haven't found the right guy, one that you consider attractive."
"What if one day you do find one that you like?"
"Stop right there, don't decide for me what I like and what I don't like"
"I don't like boys at all, period, no negotiations"
"Even if there was one who looked like a girl, still the answer is still a clear no."
"Haru, could you leave Elise alone?"
"She has been under a lot of pressure lately and came here wanting to rest."
"Please don't keep bothering her about the subject" even Tamamo spoke so that she would leave me alone.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do anything wrong."
"I just wanted to know why and see if I could help in any way, that's all."
"Speaking of which, what about you Tamamo?"
"Do you hate men too?"
"I don't hate men"
"And unlike Elise, I don't feel uncomfortable around them."
".... "
"I just love Elise, simple as that."
"If I were a man or a woman I wouldn't have changed anything."
"Well, what if Elise had been a man? What would you imagine her to be like?"
"That's an interesting question, let me see"
"..."
"Well first of all it would certainly be brave"
"..."
"Then his family is not very tall so he was still small, just not as small."
"Also it's not that hard, there's still Leon, his other brother, so I imagine they would be relatively similar right?"
"..."
"Although for some reason I imagine him to have a rather masculine face, if he had a baby face I wouldn't mind either."
"Even if it were less graceful in terms of beauty"
"...."
"And to finish for some reason I can't help thinking that he would have a face full of wounds, a scar from a cut ? or a burn too."
"...."
"Maybe even bald from these burns"
"Bald? come on, that's already too much!"
"My father was bald, before he died"
"Oh, I'm sorry"
"I didn't mean to ...."
"..."
"I really screwed up...."
"..."
"I just wanted to help you with something."
"Help? with what?"
"The same way you did with Lisa?"
"The only way you can help is by doing nothing."
"...."
"...."
"Look I don't want to sound rude okay"
"I just want to sit here and do nothing and try to get some sleep."
"It's been years since I've visited a hot spring and I want to enjoy it now that I can."
"Really? You've visited hot springs before?"
"I thought you had never been in Japan before?"
"If you've been to hot springs before then why are you so shy about being naked?"
"That's weird, especially coming from you and how you usually dress"
"Come on, hot springs are not something exclusive to Japan."
"In my home country, hot springs are just as much loved by everyone as they are here."
"Although, of course, there are several differences"
"First of all, no one goes naked to bathe in them."
"Although they are also called hot springs, they are more like simple recreational pools but with hot water."
"Everyone goes in swimsuits, men and women together in the same pools, water slides, deep places for swimming."
"From my point of view, the Japanese are the weird ones in the hot springs."
"Although I don't know who I am to talk about it, because I behave the same as you do here, I prefer to just lie down, look at the sky, and fall asleep until they take me out because they are going to close the place."
"Falling asleep in the hot springs?"
"Are you sure? "
"You are exaggerating, there is no one strong enough to resist so long."
"I am not exaggerating, from 9 in the morning until 11 at night inside the hot springs."
"In fact, there was a place in the Miravalles Volcano that we used to go to all the time, almost nobody went there so it was usually empty."
"It is my favorite place on this planet by far."
"My father and the owner were friends, so one time they let us stay the whole night."
"24 hours in the hot springs"
"When we got home I still felt like I was underwater when I went to bed"
"Really? You really put up with that much"
"Well you're not human so maybe that's it"
"...."
"Can I ask you another question?"
"Exactly how many are you dating at the same time? Are you going to pick one to marry or do you plan on keeping them all?"
"What do the girls think of your strange relationship with the others?"
"Agh, Haru, please stop!"
"I'm not going to answer anymore."
"In fact, why am I the only one getting questions?"
"It's time for you to answer some too."
"How about your family, you already know enough about mine, what about you?"
"Well, I don't know what you want to know"
"My family is pretty normal, no superpowers or supernatural beings."
"In any case, the most surprising would be my grandfather, I'm sure you know him, they talk about him a lot on TV lately"
"...."
"Apart from him there were my parents, but they are no longer here."
"...."
"They died earlier this year in a traffic accident."
"Near here now that I think about it, on the lake road at the foot of Mount Haruna."
"...."
"When that happened, what really surprised me was that I didn't feel anything."
"They were hardly ever at home, so it wasn't so different after that."
"...."
"But with my grandfather, for him, it was quite different"
"He was extremely angry with what happened, he was angry with the police, calling them useless with their job"
"He was convinced that they had been murdered for some reason, but no matter when they looked, they would not find anything"
"I think what happened was what made him decide to go back to Japan and accept the job as an investigator for the police...."
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"..."
"At that time, I stayed with my aunt and uncle, but when he came back he decided to take care of me and ease the burden on my aunt and uncle."
"Oh my, I didn't expect this to go that way."
"You know, if you didn't want to respond you could have just said so."
"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable that way."
"Don't worry, take it as payment for bothering you so much with my questions."
"Actually what bothers me is the fact that it doesn't bother me."
"...."
"She was my mother, she gave me life, and yet here I am, casually talking as if it wasn't me who happened to me."
"Well, I don't know what happened between you and her, so I can't comment on your situation."
"Although, if you feel that something was missing in your life, you don't have to feel guilty for hating your parents either."
"....."
"I once knew a girl who hated her parents to death."
"And it was quite justified really, those two bastards worked hard to make that girl's life a real misery."
"The two of them drove her to the point where the poor thing just wanted to die as soon as possible after finishing her job, she didn't care about anything else"
"..."
"Every child deserves a father, but not every father deserves a child."
"Sometimes fathers are just terrible people."
"Did that really happen? And who is it?"
"Is it Lisa? or Levia?"
"Neither of them"
"Her name was Nanami, or at least that was the nickname I gave her."
"The truth is that I never knew what her real name was, she hated her parents so much that she didn't want to use the name they gave her"
"...."
"She died, but for a completely different reason."
"Sadly before her bloody father did."
"Nanami?"
"That's funny, I think it's the first time you mentioned that name"
"Was she someone special to you? It seems like you cared a lot about her because of the way you mentioned her name"
"It's a subject I don't like to talk about, even less than that about men."
"Well, if I may mention as I see it"
"I think that you Haru, you just weren't close to them enough for various reasons."
"But that doesn't mean that you hated them, maybe you weren't as close to them as you would have liked, but that doesn't mean that things were bad between you."
"Although of course, I am speaking from ignorance, maybe you do have something in your heart that prevents you from forgiving them for some reason."
"Whatever the situation is, don't feel guilty that your heart is not feeling what others think you should be feeling." Said Tamamo, despite her silence all this time.
After all that and enjoying the hot springs for quite some time, the truth is that after touching those topics, the truth is that the atmosphere declined a little, so Tamamo suggested that we go to the game room and hang out with something more fun as a group. So we got up from there and went to the dressing room to get our clothes, but it was there in that little oversight of mine to go all together that another embarrassing scene was triggered.
"Wait a moment!"
"Something here is missing!"
"A thief!"
"Someone snuck in here and stole from us!"
"A pervert has taken some panties from the locker room!"
"What, really?" Tamamo said worriedly.
(Oh no!)
"Yes look, here"
"Right on Elise's clothes."
"Just look at this mess"
"It caught my attention so I started to check and that's how I realized what happened!"
"Someone stole Elise's panties!"
"We need to talk to the administration and find the culprit!"
"Ah, Haru..... just...... let it go like this"
"No.... is no big deal....."
"What? Of course not!"
"There is a pervert in this place and we have to find him and make him pay!"
"When I find out I'm going to destroy his entire social life by exposing him to the public!"
"Oh my!" exclaimed Tamamo knowing the background of what was happening.
"Haru... please... don't make it harder than it already is..."
"Just .... let it go ....."
"I... can go on... with nothing..."
"Of course not!"
"I'm not going to leave a friend at the mercy of a low-life, mindless degenerate scumbag!"
"Haru......"
"Don't worry, I have a plan!"
"I'll go back to the room first and get you some more panties from your luggage."
"You just tell me where you keep them."
"I'll be quick, I'll bring them to you in a couple of minutes, you can go back to the hot springs in the meantime if you want."
"Haru... I.... not...."
"I... no...."
"I'll let my grandfather know while I'm at it."
"With his help, we can close the hotel!"
"No one gets in and no one gets out! We'll have the perverted thief locked up!"
"Then it'll only be a matter of time before we find him and bring him to justice!"
"It'll be on the front page of the newspapers!"
"Inspector Yamamoto saves the day again, degenerate revealed to the public so that everyone will forever remember who he is and remember him forever!"
"He will regret all his life for what he did!"
"Tamamo, I can't take it anymore, help me with this, make her stop"
"Please, I can't speak it out loud, I don't have the strength." I said as I looked at Tamamo, almost in tears, I didn't know what to do anymore.
"Ahem, ahem"
"Ah, Haru, I think the propositions you are making are a bit overheated and hasty due to the different circumstances present at the moment."
"Well, if we analyze it objectively and carefully, we can corroborate with the pieces of evidence that your hypothesis of what happened is a little deviated from the reality of what happened on this particular occasion."
"For this reason, I propose that we should leave such topics of little interest for our friendly conversation that we are having in the face of such a painful and embarrassing situation."
"Rather, before hastily concluding that it was theft, we should consider an explanation that might be closer to what might have happened"
"Elise has always been a person a little different from the rest, she is someone strong and brave, someone, who likes freedom, and that also includes her particular way of dressing so different from the rest"
"To her, due to her voluptuous body so different from the usual, she prefers clothes that make her feel comfortable"
"That's why, although she finds it hard to say it to the public because she doesn't like to bother others with her own problems that she considers small in the face of the large scale of all the things that happen in the world, she has taken the free and conscious decision not to be bound to the regulations established by the society in terms of clothing"
"This is due to the fact that our little friend here present has special properties such as the back of her body, which is particularly plump and spatially large with elevated proportions"
"So in the face of this handicap, she has been cornered into having to use desperate creative solutions and make a few choices in order to be able to continue having a relatively normal life as she is unable to find clothes that do justice to her sculpted body in a comfortable and pleasing way"
"And it is for these reasons discussed above that such an underwear thief is nothing more than a fictitious work that never existed in the first place"
"Wait what? I didn't understand anything you said." Said the completely confused girl
"Elise has such a big fat ass that she ends up breaking them all the time, so she has given up and simply decided not to use any of them anymore and be free" Tamamo said as stoically as possible while trying to hide her face with her hand fan.
"Tamamo!"
"The idea was not to say it directly!" I shouted in panic and embarrassment.
"Well, it was either that or get in the newspaper."
"I just picked the weakest poison."
"Wait, is that for real?"
"You really don't wear it? at all!?"
"I thought you wore something like those magazine models, and that's why it was hard to see it all the time"
"...."
"Wait, but you always wear a skirt or those weird revealing clothes, or the super erotic mini shorts that you never close!"
"Also all the underboob clothes you usually wear!"
"...."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Ah, this is awkward, yeah, it sure must be hard to live with your body."
"I'm so sorry, I won't bother you again, I swear!"
"...."
"Although if it makes you feel any better, you're doing a good job of trying not to let anyone notice."
"I don't want to hear that"
"Just leave me alone, don't bother me."
"They're my preferences, okay? I don't want to be judged by them."
"Do you know how hard it is to get clothes for me? It's quite expensive, and they always keep asking questions on why these measures"
"...."
"...."
"And the mini shorts are the closest thing to underwear I have after I removed the fabric on the side parts"
"Geez, so in the end if you learned anything from the glass girl it was that"
"Just shut up, that's an order!"
"You are not my parents to give me orders!"
"Maybe you're capable of giving orders to your pet slaves, but as far as I know I don't have any of those collars!"
"So fuck you!"
"Besides, I'm not the pervert, little commando girl!"
"Stop it, both of you!"
"The walls are pretty thin, you know! Everyone is listening to you!"
......
The three of us stopped what we were doing. I felt my skin completely freeze as my head felt hot and dizzy. Haru recoiled in fright and covered her mouth, and Tamamo was even surprised to hear it. The voice came from the other side of the wall, in the men's section, and it was Haru's old grandfather who spoke loudly in annoyance.
After several suicide attempts on my part. Tamamo gave me the strength I needed to go out and face my problems and gave me a bag to cover my face forever from shame. We went to the Ryokan Arcade to try to help me forget everything that had happened.
The place was quite equipped, arcade machines, old arcade games, Ping Pong table, even a candy store nearby, there was everything, although it was quite empty, there was only one man sleeping in the back while using a massage chair. Haru made the mistake of challenging me to a game of ping pong, and well, let's just say I played competitively every day. So we each put each other in our place and played with a lot of excitement. In fact with so much excitement I unintentionally hit the ball so hard that it went flying and ended up hitting the man in the massage chair, so I went to apologize to him and pick it up, the man had not even flinched from the blow and ignored my apology.
At the event it seemed a little strange to me, something seemed out of place, so I approached him to check if he was all right. I took his hand and checked his pulse, no need to. After checking, I told Tamamo to take Haru back to the room and get him something to eat. And to call Inspector Yamamoto while I was at it, as I wanted to talk to him as soon as possible.
Tamamo, as always good at picking up and reading between the lines realized what I really wanted to say and without asking any questions did what I asked him to do quickly, I meanwhile was looking around the room trying to memorize as much as possible. Shortly after the old man arrived, clearly asking why I had called him, he surely knew something was wrong if I wanted to talk to him out of the blue for no apparent reason, so he went right ahead and asked what was going on. I just pointed to the man in the massage chair. The inspector approached him, noticed the same thing I did and sighed, he knew he would have to work again tonight.
"Elise, could you stop killing people for at least one day?"
"Wait a minute! It wasn't me this time!"
"He was already like this when I got here!"
"What if we let it go for today? I'm on vacation"
"You've already touched the body, plus they'll find out anyway in about 3 hours, is in a very public area"
"Agh, damn, I had a reservation for the spa at 6pm."
"I wonder if they'll let me reschedule for tomorrow?"
The inspector, understandably against his will, went to the hotel desk to tell them to call the police and lock the hotel entrance and the arcade. I stayed behind to make sure no one touched the crime scene. It looks like we just stumbled upon a mystery as to what happened.