Red Data Girl - Series 1 & 2

The First Makeup - 16

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Red Data Girl: The First Makeup
By Noriko Ogiwara
A Translation

Notes on this week’s piece:

TRIGGER WARNING. In this piece, Mayura explains how to make a shikigami. It contains animal cruelty. If this upsets you, please be careful!
The Bridge of Revival is a small bridge in Kyoto with a long past. Here’s some history on it. And here’s some information on Abe no Seimei, the man Izumiko connects to it.

Red Data Girl: The First Makeup
By Noriko Ogiwara
Chapter 3: Manatsu
Part 2 (1 of 2)

Izumiko and Mayura sat next to each other as they watched a TV drama on a laptop.

There was a television with a big screen in the dorm lobby and the students were allowed to use it until bedtime. However, the battle over which channel to watch was a pain and many students preferred to stay in their rooms and watch their programs there. Mayura occasionally watched a popular drama in their room, apparently unwilling to be one of the people who couldn’t join in on the classroom discussion surrounding it.

Lately, it had helped Izumiko join in conversations as well. Now she was being included in the discussions between the girls in Class C. It was also fun to talk to Mayura about lighthearted topics after not seeing her for part of the day.

Sometimes, the two of them were too formal with each other in their own room and it was difficult to start conversations. When either of them were afraid of making a mistake and upsetting the other as a result, it became hard to breath in such a small room. But on this particular day Izumiko brought up the topic from lunch as soon as the drama had ended. 

“I’ve been wondering. How are shikigami and spirits different?”

“Huh? Why are you asking something like that so suddenly?”

Mayura laughed, but it really was something that Izumiko had been wanting to ask for a while now.

“You said today that a shikigami is something inside of you, right? A spirit must be something like that too. Are they something that isn’t really there, but we can sense inside of us?”

The atmosphere of the room had changed significantly. Mayura looked at Izumiko.

“Izumiko, have you ever seen a spirit?”

“Yes. I saw one last year.”

She explained what had happened to her on the mountain during her third year of middle school.

“At first I thought he was a normal classmate. I thought I’d known him since elementary school. And everyone else in the grade said that about him too. But we were actually wrong. He was a student whose name wasn’t even on the class roster. He had just added himself to the group.”

“Was he a house spirit?”

This was something Izumiko already knew about.

“Sagara thought the same thing. When I gave the spirit a souvenir from our class trip, he suddenly cursed me and I realized what he really was. He let us go without any major problems, but if we had dealt with it badly, we probably would have died. It seems like he’s gone now.”

Obviously, Izumiko did not mention that she had been the one who had created Wamiya, the spirit of Mt. Tamakura, nor did she say that she had caused the attack. There was certainly a part of her that did not want Mayura to see her in a bad light. Still, Mayura had listened attentively and seemed sympathetic to what Izumiko had wanted to say.

“Even though the spirit tried to kill you, you were still kind to it?”

“Of course. But I can’t say I wasn’t scared. Still, I think I’m the reason he cursed us. I thought it would be nice if there was a student who noticed me in my class and he showed up.”