Maria-sama ga Miteru Volume 31 Chapter 14

March ∆ (Sat.u.r.day)

Today, I went to a shrine to the G.o.d Inari with my pet.i.t soeur, Touko.

The other day, while I was chatting with her, the conversation turned to New Years shrine visits. When I told her I had visited a local Inari shrine with my brother Yuuki, and had wished for my then-strained relations.h.i.+p with Touko to be reconciled, she insisted that we should visit the shrine to give thanks.

I'd heard from my brother that if your wish is granted then you're supposed to take an offering of deep-fried tofu when you give thanks, but since I'd also wished for my loved ones to stay healthy all year, I thought it should be okay for me to go towards the end of the year, or maybe even the beginning of next year.

Even though I said the visit would have been in vain if my mother then became sick, we agreed to go on Sat.u.r.day. So after school, on the way home, we headed towards the shrine.

Yuuki drew a map to the shrine for me, so we found our way there quite easily. I wasn't all that familiar with the neighborhood from the New Years shrine visit, so it felt like I was visiting for the first time.

Touko and I stood side-by-side as we visited the shrine, then returned home holding hands.

After school on Sat.u.r.day, when Touko appeared in front of my cla.s.sroom, she was carrying a box. It was about the size of a residential first-aid kit. But it wasn't made of wood, the casing looked to be nylon or some similar material.

"What's this?"

I asked, and Touko answered.

"A cooler box. To avoid misfortune, and to keep the smell from escaping."

"What's inside?"

Then Touko looked at me with a "You still don't know?" look on her face.

"You mentioned an offering of deep-fried tofu, right?"

As Touko spoke, she opened the lid and showed it to me. It did indeed contain deep-fried tofu. There were three or four of the plastic packs that you might buy at a supermarket. Surrounding those were ice packs, to keep it cool.

"&h.e.l.lip; You're well prepared."

"Well, it saves us time compared to buying it on the way there. And I wasn't really sure if there were any stores near your house, onee-sama."

My, what a capable pet.i.t soeur. - If someone gets a compliment like that, they probably wouldn't take it the wrong way. I wanted to see her giggle and graciously accept, saying "It's all thanks to you," but it didn't look like that was going to happen.

"Hold on a minute."

Leaving her with that, I hurried to the school office on the first floor.

"Umm, onee-sama."

Thanks to my overly thoughtful pet.i.t soeur, my work had unexpectedly increased. I flew to the sole payphone that students were allowed to use and dialed my home phone number.

"Ah, mom? Have you bought the deep-fried tofu?"

Like Touko had said, up until yesterday we'd agreed that we'd stop at a supermarket on the way there and buy some deep-fried tofu. But then my mother had said that she was going shopping in the afternoon, so I asked her to buy some. That was this morning. Of course, I did it to save time.

"Ahh, I guess so. No, that's not it. Touko brought some. Yeah, yeah. Thanks."

Since mom answered the phone, it meant she was home. Since she was home, then she had obviously finished shopping. And it goes without saying, a wonderful mother like mine wouldn't have forgotten to buy my deep-fried tofu. Thankfully, she said to take Touko's to the shrine and that we'd eat ours at home.

When I hung up the phone and turned around, Touko was standing there like a ghost.

"Uwah."

"&h.e.l.lip; You were prepared too, onee-sama."

She almost sounded bitter when she said, "With the tofu." It looks like she'd caught on to what had happened.

"It's okay, don't worry about it. My family loves deep-fried tofu."

I hastily sought to smooth things over, but had nothing to follow through with. A family that loves deep-fried tofu, what's up with that? It would have been better to say that we loved it with sus.h.i.+ or curry.

"Anyway, let's go. Otherwise our efforts to save time will have been for nothing."

I cheerfully headed towards the shoe-box area. Touko said, "Mmm," and followed after me, looking morose.

The mix-up with the deep-fried tofu wasn't Touko's mistake, it was because we were both trying too hard to be considerate. We got along too well, could be another way to put it. But, as a generally competent girl, she looked so delicate when she wasn't capable of doing something well. Her depressed look was adorable (and not in a pitiful way).

Touko quickly perked up again. By not fussing over her while she was pouting, she must have thought I was taking her needs into consideration. Courageous (I think that fits).

"Speaking of recipes with deep-fried tofu, it's used in inari-zus.h.i.+, where it's wrapped around sus.h.i.+, right?"

While on the bus, Touko raised this topic of conversation.

"And there's kinchaku - you make a pouch of deep-fried tofu and fill it with things like mochi rice cakes, and have it as part of an oden stew."

As someone who claimed to be from a family that loves deep-fried tofu, it was only right that I should know a lot of dishes that use it.

"And when minced it goes well with miso soup, or a rice dish, and you can make a nice broth out of it."

"Ah, at our house we bake it in the oven until it's crispy, then grate it and use it as a condiment."

"A condiment?"

Touko was really getting into this. Which reminded me that when she came to my house, and she ate some of my mom's homemade cooking, she was asking questions about the ingredients, how it was prepared, all those sorts of things. Maybe she often cooked at her home.

"Like j.a.panese ginger, or white spring onions, or crumbled nori seaweed. You have it when it's piping hot, with soy-sauce or noodle broth or the like."

So I explained it enthusiastically.

"That sounds good."

"My dad really likes it. He says it's great as a snack with alcohol."

"My father rarely drinks in the evening. But it sounds like it would go well as a side dish with dinner."

That's great. Touko had been able to receive something useful to her.

Now, while all this was going on, the bus arrived at M station and we transferred buses, got off at my stop and headed towards the f.u.kuzawa residence. At first we'd been planning to go straight to the shrine, but then we decided to stop in at home and drop off our school bags, since my house is closer to the bus stop than the shrine.

"I'm back."

Instead of my mom, it was my younger brother Yuuki who came out to greet us in the entrance.

"Welcome back. Oh, Touko-chan, please come inside."

Although, strictly speaking, it wasn't that he came out to greet us, but that he'd just arrived home himself.

He must have caught the bus before ours, which we'd just missed.

"Gokigenyou. Pardon my intrusion."

My real-life younger brother and my school-life younger sister exchanged greetings. It was a somewhat strange feeling.

"Yumi, here."

Yuuki waved a piece of paper torn out of a notebook. When I looked at it up close, I saw that it was the map showing the roads to take to the Inari shrine that he'd drawn.

"I go to all the effort of drawing it for you, and you forget to get it from the entrance."

He said, self importantly.

"No way, I left it there because I know how to get to the shrine."

That was a lie. I'd inadvertently forgotten to pick it up on the way out. And I hadn't even realized that I'd forgotten until just now.

"Then I'll look after this piece of paper. Onee-sama, please guide us to the shrine using just your memory."

As she spoke, Touko took the paper from Yuuki. Oooh, that girl is so cheeky. So it'd be a complete loss of face for me as an onee-sama if I didn't valiantly struggle forward alone.

"Something smells good."

Just as Yuuki's nose was twitching, mom appeared in the entry.

"Welcome home. I was just making lunch, sorry for keeping you waiting."

That's my mom for you. She'd obviously been wondering what to use the deep-fried tofu for, and the first thing that must have popped into her head was inari-zus.h.i.+.

Honestly, I was really hungry, but it would have been inexcusable for us to eat deep-fried tofu before we made an offering of it at the Inari shrine, so we decided to go there first. When we informed mom of this, she wrapped up six pieces of sus.h.i.+ for us to take along.

Jumping forward to the ending, I wasn't able to guide Touko to the Inari shrine. Annoyingly, I had to let the map wielding Touko lead me there. There are a lot of narrow alleys in that neighborhood, and if you're off by one street then you end up in a completely different area. As though you've been tricked by a fox. Because it's in such a hard-to-find spot, I'd only recently become aware of its existence, even though it's in my neighborhood.

"Oh -, here, here."

I remembered the red torii archway, standing alone in the middle of a residential area. Along with its accompanying trees, it felt a little out of place. The impression I got was different to my previous visit here - probably because back then the red torii and the trees blended into the background more because of the darkness.

"Come on, Touko."

I took hold of Touko's arm, as though finding this place had all been my own achievement, and we walked through the torii.

"What should we do with this?"

Touko asked, indicating the plastic wrapping around the deep-fried tofu that she took out of her cooler box.

"The plastic, ah, good question."

Should we take it out of the plastic wrapping, or was it fine the way it was? I was completely clueless about the proper etiquette.

"I guess foxes could tear the wrapping."

"Our neighbor's dog can tear candy wrapping open. So can crows."

"Alley cats can get into plastic bags too, that's why you have to cover the garbage bags with netting on bin day."

"Speaking of garbage, this neighborhood is strict on separating out the trash, isn't it?"

"I suppose. Although from a different point-of-view, it's like putting food sc.r.a.ps in a plastic bag."

"How about we leave it on top of a tissue. Since paper comes from trees originally."

"But aren't they tough to decompose, which is why you can't flush them down the toilet?"

"&h.e.l.lip; I guess so."

We then spent another five minutes humming and hawing over what we should do. The plan we eventually decided on was to use a fallen leaf as a plate. There were a number of pretty leaves of the right size scattered around the shrine, so we took one of them, unwrapped the deep-fried tofu and placed it as an offering. Yep, that somehow seemed right. Much better than the plastic wrapping with "Deep-fried Tofu" written on it in large letters.

After wiping our hands clean on a handkerchief, we clapped and prayed at the shrine.

'Thanks to you, I was able to reconcile with Touko,' I earnestly reported.

After that, we ate the inari-zus.h.i.+ under the shade of the trees. Touko praised mom's cooking, saying it was very good. Best of all, it suited her tastes.

"I wonder what we should do about the deep-fried tofu. If we leave it as is, it'll go bad."

I vocalized the thought I'd just had.

"If we leave it like that, it'll be gone soon."

Touko said.

"Why?"

"Because the G.o.d's familiars will eat it."

"Huh?"

"It's like when you scatter beans for the setsubun festival, they're gone before you know it, right? That kind of thing."

I see, perhaps that's how it is. Just as I was about to agree with her, Touko smiled.

"On the way here, we pa.s.sed a number of cats, right? And there's crows about too."

And sparrows, and ants, they were all familiars.

At any rate, I thought I'd come back in a week's time and check on the deep-fried tofu. If it was still there, then I'd take it home and put it with the other household sc.r.a.ps to be thrown out on garbage day. Despite Touko's a.s.sertion that it definitely wouldn't be around.

As we were walking back to my house, Touko said:

"I heard this from a cla.s.smate, but from time to time they have racc.o.o.ns around here."

"Huh? A racc.o.o.n might eat the fox's favorite food!?"

Because they were sticky from the inari-zus.h.i.+ juices, we walked home without holding hands.