月と花
Moon and Flowers


---I suppose it's fine, really.
With something convenient like cell phones, I imagine they can contact each other, but I might as well check.

Kei: That's right... Uzuki-san. I met Kei-kun, you know.

Sakuya: Huh? "Kei met Kei" you say? What absurdity're you talking about now?

Kei: Sakuya-san, you can just be quiet.

Sakuya: Right, right. And?

Kei: You know, Uzuki-san, the one you were asking about.

Sakuya: Uh-oh, don't tell me you got yourself a man, now?

Kei: Come on, I'm telling you to be quiet, Sakuya-san!

Kei: Uzuki-san, let's go over there.

Uzuki: Ah, okay......

Kei: Stay right there, Sakuya-san. This is a private conversation between girls, okay?

Sakuya: "Between girls," huh? You have some nerve......

Kei: There, let's go, Uzuki-san.

I pull Uzuki-san's hand, and we shift our position to the edge of the hot spring. *zabu zabu*

Kei: And so, Uzuki-san...

Uzuki: Yeah...... Kei-san, you've met that man?

Thus Uzuki-san narrows her eyes, and with a slightly pained face, returns the question.
......I'm not blushing or anything, am I?

Kei: But, why refer to him that way...... (TN: "Yatsu" is a slightly vulgar third-person pronoun.)

Uzuki: If you fail to make a distinction, though Sakuya-san isn't here, problems will arise like before. Am I wrong?

Kei: Well, that's right...... I guess.

Of course, if you're talking to the person in question, as long as they don't talk about themselves in the third-person like a child, there wouldn't be confusion, though involving a third party might make things difficult.
On the other hand, referring to Kei-kun as "Senba-kun" with Uzuki-san might be strange......
In the end, if Uzuki-san calls him "that man" and I call him "Kei-kun" it would work out, but......
Somehow I'm dissatisfied.

Kei: Could we at least settle on "he"?

Uzuki: Don't worry. "That man" is good enough for him. (TN: This is quite difficult... For the sake of avoiding being redundant, Uzuki will address him in mere third person.)

Uzuki: So, Kei-san, where did you meet him? Did you talk to him? He didn't do anything strange to you, did he?

Kei: Wai- Uzuki-san, wait a moment! We can just... talk in turn, so don't say so much at once.

Thanks to Youko-chan, I'm used to such interrogations, but I wouldn't have thought one would come from the composed Uzuki-san......

Kei: Umm, the place I met him was in front of the Ohashirasama. The big Enju tree.

Uzuki: ......That place...... is supposed to be sacred ground.

Kei: Yeah. I was gently chased out.

Uzuki: ............

Uzuki-san's face becomes yet more pained.

Kei: Uuu, I guess it really was bad for me to go there, huh?

Uzuki: ............

Kei: Ahaha... and then, Kei-kun told me a great deal about the Enju tree being used as the Ohashirasama.

Kei: When I asked, "why put 'oni' in the name of such a beautiful tree?" he said that "oni" refers to the souls of the dead.

Uzuki: Is that the limit of his explanation?

Kei: Also, something about butterflies being the carriage of dead souls, or the shape of the souls themselves......

Uzuki: ............

Kei: Is there something else? To me, it seemed like the kind of trivia that revolutionizes your world-view, though.

Uzuki: There is. For information about oni pertaining to "Enju," an explanation of the Chinese "ki" reading might be enough, but pertaining to oni, it is not......

Uzuki: ......There are things he found difficult to explain to you, or perhaps, obscured from you.

Kei: Eh?

Uzuki: As for that information tied to the borrowed character, "ki," the explanation for the Japanese "oni" is not there, am I right?

Kei: But, I would know at least that much. I have a long history as a Japanese person.

Kei: It was... that, right? The ones that appear in "Momotarou" or "Issunboushi," wearing the tiger pelt pants. (TN: Ancient Japanese short stories with appearances by the typical oni that are essentially ogres as we know them. Large, formidable, ugly, and vicious.)

Though the thought looping through my head isn't Momotarou, but the famous parody song "Funikuri Funikura." (TN: Evidently a parody of an old Italian song from the 1880's. The parody centers on oni pants.)

Uzuki: That's the generally accepted image in world society. So, in that version of "oni," is there any origin for the tie to the "ki" reading, then?

Kei: Eh!?

A common feature between agehachou and tiger pelt pants...

Kei: Yellow and black?

This isn't road construction.

Uzuki: Kei-san, in the kanji for "kaku-reru" (to hide) you not only have the reading "in," but also "on," right?

Kei: Ah, yeah, umm, like "kougionmitsu"...... right? (TN: A secret detective for the bakufu period. Kei simply uses it as an example for the 'on' reading.)

Uzuki: Right. The word you said just now, "onmitsu" - shinobi - are an existence close to oni.

Kei: Eh? Ninja are oni?

I don't understand how the conversation flew there.
At any rate, the ninja standard is black clothes. A gaudy combination like black and yellow - ah, weren't tiger pelts an adornment for bamboo forests?
As I tilt my head inquisitively, Uzuki-san gives a look to say "just... listen until the end" and continues.

Uzuki: It is theorized that "oni" comes from a linguistic corruption of that 'on,' you see.

Uzuki: "Those who exist in hiding are things undesired, ergo to be named 'on'---"

Uzuki: --- thus it is written in our country's first kanji encyclopedia, "Wamyoushou".

Umm......

Kei: So it's not "hiding from oni," but "oni hide"?

Answer a question and gain another. This world is certainly full of mysteries.

Uzuki: The reverse, Kei-san. The orders are reversed. The ones that recognize something as oni, name it oni, and shove it into the template called oni are humans. Humans create oni.

Uzuki: That's why oni don't hide, but are hidden, made to hide. Those that must be hidden become oni. That is the origin of "oni".

Kei: Origin?

Sakuya: That's right, the origin- so, what kind of deadpan conversation are you two having?

Kei: Ah!? Sakuya-san, I told you not to come over here!

Sakuya: Maybe you did. But for journalism, you have to keep your ears strained at all times, you know.

Kei: ......Uzuki-san, let's ignore her.

Sakuya: Have you always been this cold?

Kei: You reap what you sow.

Uzuki: Well, bathing too long hurts the skin, so for haste's sake, let's draw the conclusion.

Uzuki: Regarding the origin for connecting "oni" and "ki," when something is classified "oni," they leave the world of humans and join the ranks of the dead.

Uzuki: When one of the dead remains in this present world, in an unchanged form, that is-

Kei: -a ghost?

Uzuki: That's right. To become an "oni" often means to become a "ki" as well.

Sakuya: Even now, if you accept a death notice, that person joins the dead. Even for missing people, after seven years pass, they're classified deceased.

Kei: I see......

Thinking on it now, for ninja or spies, their nationality is erased to hide their origins in case they're caught, right?

Uzuki: And this is in reverse, but, in the case of death for a noble, people also use the euphemism "okakure ni natta", right? (TN: Literal meaning - "gone into hiding.")

Kei: Ah, "kaku-reru"......

Uzuki: Further, no matter how circumstances pan out, oni is also used as a term for anything nonhuman that brings humanity harm--

In the midst of the steam, Uzuki-san rises.

Uzuki: --like that man.

Continue...