"Thank you so much..."
"You really saved us..."
"O-oh, it's fine. Looking after Tacchan is what a fiancée's supposed to do..."
So spoke Yasutaka and Mōha, foreheads pressed to the tatami of the tavern floor in apology, with Mani-hime trying to make them stop.
At the grilled meat house Jojo's Bizarre Garden, Yasutaka bowed and scraped before he'd even touched his rice.
And truth be told, if Mani-hime and the others hadn't shown up this time, he'd have ended up as dinner for the Kuzuyo himself.
Granny Moon, meanwhile, piled a heap of scallions onto her beef tongue and set it sizzling on the grill.
"Mm! Delicious!"
She hadn't the faintest interest in Yasutaka's groveling.
As for Shinnosuke and the rest, they'd turned in the panda's severed head for a tidy reward and gone off to enjoy themselves, insisting no thanks were necessary.
Be that as it may, Mani-hime turned to the two apologizers with a troubled look.
"That's enough now. We've got good grilled meat in front of us, so let's eat, shall we?"
"Yeah."
"Right."
The two of them pulled themselves together and got down to the business of eating.
All four gathered around the little charcoal brazier set atop the table, sizzling away.
"Here's your lamb and pork!"
"Ah, finally."
"Mōha really does love his lamb..."
"Where I'm from, back in Arabia, this is the standard fare."
Granny Moon, hearing him grumble this, asked,
"You eat pork too? I hear folks over there can't stand the stuff."
"That's the Ara Sect's teaching. Eat it, and you're barred from paradise, so they say."
Saying this, Mōha dipped his lamb in sauce and ate.
Now, the Ara Sect is something rather like Islam, incidentally.
Strictly speaking it's closer to some obscure offshoot of Buddhism that merely resembles it, so I beg your pardon for the loose comparison.
"Oh, sorry, could I get some rice too?"
"Ah, me too."
"Right, who all wants some?"
Zip! Zip! Zip! Zip!
Every hand shot up at once.
"Four bowls of rice, please."
"Coming right up."
Mani-hime placed the order with the waiter, calm as ever.
Two hours later...
"Well, that hit the spot..."
Having eaten his fill and settled his stomach, Yasutaka let out a breath and took a sip of barley beer from his cup, when Mani-hime asked him with a puzzled look,
"Say...is what happened today an everyday sort of thing for you?"
"Hmm...a bit unusual, I'd say?"
"Yeah..."
The two of them fell to thinking over the day's events once more.
"It's true that wherever a swarm of Kuzuyo pops up, you often find some Nue-type you've never seen before..."
"But you don't usually get one that strong..."
Hearing this, Mani-hime's expression turned puzzled.
"There aren't strong Nue-type Monsters?"
Mōha answered her question.
"Right. Since they start out as Kuzuyo, a newborn Nue-type hasn't settled into any real fighting style yet, so it's not usually much of a threat. They're born pretty often, but they get eaten by other yokai or taken down easily enough, so nothing to write home about."
"Shinnosuke's already dealt with a freshly-born one himself, come to think of it."
Truth be told, this happens all the time. What made today unusual was running into such a strong one.
Yasutaka spoke around the toothpick clenched in his teeth, sucking air through it.
"Something like Dan Lizard is only strong because it was born a Nue-type and then survived a long, long time, breeding and surviving over and over. A Nue-type that's strong right from birth? That's rare."
"Between Mikan the other day and Sugar Man today, having monsters that strong just show up out of nowhere like this, that's unusual."
The truly frightening thing about Nue-types is that they survive and breed.
Given enough years, they accumulate experience, grow cunning, and become all the more troublesome.
Yasutaka thought it over for a moment, then murmured,
"What if...somebody's out there raising Nue like that on purpose..."
"Is that...even something that happens?"
"It happens."
"You said that so easily."
Mani-hime looked at him a little suspiciously for answering so fast, but Granny Moon stepped in to explain.
"Recall the iron old man yokai at the Sky Tree yesterday, did you not?"
"Oh, right, there was one..."
"Kuzuyo themselves are fairly easy to catch, so this old woman must confess, plenty of folk breed Nue on purpose just to farm resources that way..."
Truth be told, this happens all the time too.
"For instance, feed one both a Ruby and a Sapphire at once, and you get a Nue born carrying both. Raise a creature like that, and you'll harvest a steady supply of Rubies and Sapphires, quite a fortune to be made. But mind you, the Nue born this way isn't always weak, this old woman must confess...sometimes what hatches out is a beast well beyond what any human could ever hope to handle."
"I see..."
Mani-hime found herself convinced by Granny Moon's words.
"If it was born that way, that would explain the strength we saw..."
"And bred under all the right conditions to boot..."
Both Yasutaka and Mōha nodded along, having felt that strength firsthand.
"So, Taka, what do you make of it? Who d'you figure is raising them?"
"...The Demon King, maybe? The old guy at the Inspection Ground in North Town mentioned it, that rumor about the Demon King coming back. Wonder if it's true."
"You mean that thing's somewhere nearby?"
Mōha's face soured into a scowl.