✪ Boundaries || HanaNene ✪

C H A P T E R E I G H T

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《 CHAPTER 8: Amane 》

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The festival was so alive.

Spirits were everywhere, having fun and smiling. The stalls were filled with a lot of children playing and lining up for food. There were musicians playing traditional Japanese music when they entered the festival. Nene, Hanako, and Kou felt excitement rush through their veins, while the two supernaturals that came along with them just trailed behind them.

Kou immediately went to a shooting range game and took a shotgun, paying with the gold coins he brought with him. Nene went to buy a candy apple, and when she handed over two of her scales, she immediately got ten candy apples.

Kou was able to win his game three times in a row, and he was awarded a white talisman-like tag.

"What is this?" Kou faced Yako and Tsuchigomori, who were also playing the game.

"Oh, that's a white star festival tag," Yako told him. Hanako and Nene both arrived at the game.

"Oh, it looks like you already won a star festival tag!" The apparition told the boy, patting him in the back, "Good job!"

"But, what is it?" Nene asked.

"If you shop at one of these stalls, they'll give these star festival tags to you. There are five different colors you need to collect: white, green, black, yellow, and red. If you collect them all and write your wish, then hang them on the bamboo tree at the banquet hall, anything you wish will come true." Hanako explained, before pointing at a large tree in the middle of the town.

"That's the bamboo tree over there, near the banquet hall."

"Any wish? Really?" Nene and Kou asked for clarification. Hanako nodded.

"That's the rumor. I mean, if there was a rumor in the boundary, then I guess it could be true." Nene and Kou's eyes lit up with determination.

'Senpai's lifespan, I can save her!'

'Amane, I can bring him back!'

Yako sighed, a small smile on her face, "Just to let you know, collecting all the colors is really difficult."

"And they're not listening," Tsuchigomori told the two other wonders, who were also watching the determined humans cheer each other on and do a fist bump.

Hanako couldn't help but smile at how happy Nene was. It's been a while since he saw her this happy. It was a quite refreshing sight to him. She deserved so much more happiness than suffering.

 They all began going around trying to collect all the tags, often eating and playing for them. They got a lot of duplicates but managed to get four of the tags before the end of the night. However, one tag was still missing.

"I can't find the last tag anywhere!" Yashiro sulked. Hanako couldn't help but frown in dissatisfaction as he looked at his tags, while Kou was knelt down on the ground, depressed.

Yako and Tsuchigomori also didn't have the last tag: red.

"I already warned you guys, it's like this every year." Yako sighed, keeping all her tags inside her yukata.

Seeing as there was no hope for any of them getting the red tag, Hanako put his arm around the shoulders of his two friends, a small smile on his face, "How about we just give up and hang our wishes? The festival's almost over anyway, and we went to almost every stall."