When Miyauchi Hikage woke up again, it was to Miyauchi Renge calling him by his bedside with her beloved recorder.
Miyauchi Hikage glanced at the time; it was already almost past ten o'clock.
There were several missed calls from Nanami Kento on his phone, followed by a few messages from him.
It seemed that when he was testing his abilities this morning, he had indeed consumed a lot of energy.
If he had simply chosen a direction, quickly observed the surroundings, and then teleported, the consumption of magic power and energy would not have been much.
But this morning, he had maintained this full-map ability for several minutes, then continuously adjusted his observation angle, all while constantly receiving and processing the large amount of information being transmitted into his brain. It was indeed quite tiring.
No wonder the full-map effect of the Card Master's skill only lasted for at most 10 seconds in the game.
Miyauchi Hikage thought as he sat up, rubbing his eyes and gently stroking his little sister's head.
After maintaining Hamon breathing for a month, if nothing else, Renge's demeanor was much more stable than in the anime.
He checked Nanami Kento's messages while asking Renge.
"Renge, is something wrong?"
Miyauchi Renge put down her recorder and pointed downstairs for Miyauchi Hikage. "We have guests. Dad asked me to wake you up, Nii-chan."
Guests?
Miyauchi Hikage wasn't surprised by this. It should be Honma Meiko and her parents driving over from the neighboring Chichibu City.
His parents had mentioned two days ago that they would be coming to Asahigaoka to thank the people who had saved their daughter back then.
Thinking of this, Miyauchi Hikage changed his clothes and returned Nanami Kento's call, chatting briefly.
Nanami Kento's side should have already investigated Kanoe Yuuko's situation, but he still agreed to the filming. He also told him that he could try to start with the chairman of that academy's board to learn more.
He could tell that Nanami Kento seemed to want him to do something but didn't state it explicitly.
He just said that if he encountered any problems, he could call him, and he would arrange for nearby professionals to come and help handle it.
"Does he think Kanoe Yuuko's vengeful spirit isn't very dangerous, so he wants me to use this for practice?" Miyauchi Hikage muttered, then called Itou Kaiji.
After getting up and having breakfast, Itou Kaiji had driven off alone to investigate the rumors about Kanoe Yuuko, but his solo investigation didn't seem to have made any progress yet.
"But, isn't it a bit too hasty to go directly to the school's chairman? Will she be willing to see me?" Itou Kaiji sounded troubled on the other end of the phone; he didn't have much confidence.
"You can first say you're from Asahigaoka, then show her Nanami-san's business card to let her know we are online bloggers with official support. We want to share the tragedy from half a century ago with more people. If she's still unwilling to see you after that, then just wander around the vicinity for a while and see if you can find any other insiders. If all else fails, we'll talk about it when you come back tonight."
After arranging things for Itou Kaiji, Miyauchi Hikage finally went downstairs with Miyauchi Renge, who had been watching him with eager eyes.
Four guests were now sitting in the living room, and his parents were sitting beside them, chatting warmly with the guests.
Miyauchi Hikage recognized two of them as Honma Meiko's parents. After their daughter was out of danger, they had come to Asahigaoka with a large pile of gifts to thank them in person.
Of the other two, one was Honma Meiko, and the other should be her younger brother.
Miyauchi Hikage first focused his gaze on Honma Meiko.
With the naked eye, one could only see a somewhat frail-looking girl.
But in Miyauchi Hikage's eyes, her physical problem seemed to be not so simple.
Because around Honma Meiko, there seemed to be a layer of faint, dark yin energy that could only be seen with careful observation.
It was a bit like a curse, but the power seemed to be slightly different.
If it were the previous Miyauchi Hikage, he would probably only be able to see this much.
But after obtaining card magic and the ability to glimpse a thread of fate, Miyauchi Hikage could see more.
There seemed to be a thin, invisible thread connected to the layer of yin energy on Honma Meiko.
This was probably the main reason why, even after 7 or 8 years since she fell into the water, her health still hadn't improved.
And the direction this thread was connected to seemed to point towards the direction where she fell into the water.
Was there some youkai or vengeful spirit on that mountain, or was there some other reason?
And would the unstable space on the mountain have any effect on Honma Meiko?
After all, the range of the unstable space on the mountain was quite large, with a tendency to spread over a ten-kilometer area in the mountains.
The only thing Miyauchi Hikage could be sure of was that there was definitely something wrong with the mountain where Honma Meiko had almost drowned years ago.
If Miyauchi Hikage and the others hadn't been there five years ago, Honma Meiko would have naturally drowned according to the original story.
Then, after five or six years, during a summer when her friends from back then were in high school, she would reappear before them in the form of a ghost.
And she would appear as a 16 or 17-year-old girl.
To be able to grow up after becoming a ghost should not be an easy feat.
After all, at the moment of death, a person's soul is basically fixed.
Unless there is external intervention, even if a deceased soul becomes a ghost, at most it would regress to a younger age based on life experiences. It would be very difficult to continue growing after death.
Kanoe Yuuko had been wandering in the school for half a century, and she still looked the same as she did in her youth.
So there must be some reason for this.
However, whether there was a curse or something else in that mountain, and whether Honma Meiko's condition would change due to this spatial disturbance, was not something Miyauchi Hikage could judge now.
As he was thinking, Miyauchi Hikage's parents coughed a few times, telling him not to keep staring at the girl.
"Hikage, this is Honma Meiko, the girl you and the others helped save before. Now that her health has improved a little this year, she came over to thank you and the others from back then in person."
Only then did Miyauchi Hikage nod slightly at her and give a friendly greeting.
And Honma Meiko also gave him a shy, grateful smile.
Although she had seen photos of Miyauchi Hikage and the others in the group a few times, seeing him in person for the first time was clearly a different feeling.
She was now a little conflicted about whether to demonstrate her Hamon breathing in front of Miyauchi Hikage later.
And then ask him to help her design a breathing method that was more suitable for her.
After all, her health was already poor, and her aptitude for Hamon wasn't great either. Even after investing all the reading value she gained every day into her Hamon proficiency, her month-plus of practice had only allowed her to interact with others more normally.
She still seemed to be a long way from being able to live a completely normal life.
If she could get Miyauchi Hikage's help to point out the problems with her breathing rhythm, she should be able to recover her health faster and no longer need to make her parents worry about her.
But she was too embarrassed to bring it up now, feeling that it would be a bit too deliberate if she took the initiative to ask. Therefore, a look of conflict appeared on her face.
Miyauchi Hikage, on the other hand, could roughly guess her intentions, so he didn't do anything, just simply asked about her health and her life over the years.
Overall, compared to the changes in their expressions, their verbal communication was still quite stilted.
However, this subtle feeling was very keenly perceived by Miyauchi Hikari, who was watching from the side.
She was very sensitive to this kind of feeling. After just watching for a few minutes, she could see that the girl had a lot she wanted to say to Miyauchi Hikage but was too embarrassed to say it.
And she had also gone on the spring outing five years ago.
Although she had forgotten the specific process, she still had a very deep impression of Miyauchi Hikage giving first aid to the little girl who had been rescued.
At that time, Koshigaya Komari, who was only nine years old, had blushed at the sight and had even secretly asked her on the way back if Miyauchi Hikage was trying to be like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, trying to wake the girl up with a kiss.
And at that time, she and Fujimiya Konomi had even fooled Koshigaya Komari, almost making her try to pretend to be asleep in her own home.
But these two should have only met for the second time in all these years, right?
It should be the first time that Honma Meiko had seen Miyauchi Hikage while she was conscious.
But why did her little brother keep staring at the girl's face just now, and the way this Honma Meiko looked at her little brother was also a bit strange? Could this be the so-called "love at first sight"?
Does her little brother like this type of girl?
She sized up this Honma Meiko.
She was very pretty. It was said that her mother was European, which is why she inherited this silver hair.
But wasn't her body a bit too weak? After just an hour's car ride, she already looked a little tired.
And this was already an improvement. Miyauchi Hikari didn't even know how she had survived the past few years.
Faced with such a girl, Miyauchi Hikari felt sympathy, but if she were to really become her sister-in-law, she would still be a little hesitant.
But what would happen in the end still depended on her little brother's thoughts.
After sitting in the living room for a while, the parents on both sides also found that their children seemed to only be communicating with their eyes in the presence of adults. So, it was Miyauchi Hikage's father who told him to take them upstairs to rest for a while, and after lunch, he would take them to visit a few other families.
After the young people went upstairs together, the atmosphere of their conversation naturally became much more relaxed, and Miyauchi Hikage also successfully unlocked her nickname, "Menma."
But because Miyauchi Hikage had Renge and Hikari with him, and Honma Meiko had her younger brother accompanying her, many topics were naturally not easy to talk about. They basically just chatted about her situation over the years.
Miyauchi Hikage actually didn't know much about these things.
Because he was familiar with the Menma who had drowned, returned to the human world as a ghost, and finally disappeared after fulfilling her wish.
His appearance had changed her fate, and now this strange "thread" had appeared on her body, connecting her to something unknown, leading to her frail appearance.
As for Menma herself, she had only briefly mentioned in the group that she had been saved by the residents of Asahigaoka when she drowned, and had not mentioned her situation over the past five years in detail, probably feeling that there was no need to talk about these things in the group.
Soon, Miyauchi Hikage found out what he wanted to know.
When she was first saved, for the first few months, she just felt weak and could no longer run around with others like before, but attending school normally was not a big problem.
But in the winter, after being bedridden for a few days due to a cold, her health never recovered.
Even when she went to the hospital for check-ups, they couldn't find the cause, only saying that it might be a side effect of the drowning.
In the following years, she even went to school less and less, and could only study at home.
Occasionally, her friends from childhood would come over to help her with her homework. After being held back a year, she got into a high school with a pretty good atmosphere and was relatively close to home this year.
And now, by adjusting her physical condition with the Hamon breathing from the diary, she could now go to school a few days a week, meeting the school's attendance requirements. It was clear that she was quite satisfied with her current life and was completely unaware that there were other problems with her body.
Was it because it wasn't fatal, so the diary hadn't issued any warnings about it?
Miyauchi Hikage thought to himself.
However, when she mentioned her childhood friends, from the expression on her face, it could be seen that the relationship between her friends had indeed become much more distant due to time.
Although it wasn't like the original anime where the group fell apart and drifted away after Menma's death, they had hardly gathered together in the last one or two years.
Even when they came to visit her, it was almost always alone or in pairs of one or two.
But this was also a situation that was bound to happen with growth.
Childhood playmates, with the passage of time, gradually find their new goals, thus slowly leaving their original group to meet more new friends and experience a new life.
In the anime, it was because of the appearance of a supernatural being like Menma's "ghost" that the friends who had never forgotten her were reunited.
And in this world, they might feel some guilt about Menma's drowning, but Menma was, after all, still alive and well.
Although they could still maintain their friendship with Menma, the friendship among the others was not so stable.
Under such circumstances, it might not be difficult to get them to gather together again.
But to make their relationship return to the level it was before the drowning would probably be even more difficult than in the anime.
But the Menma before him was not the Menma he was familiar with from his past life.
After being bedridden for so many years, this girl's mind was naturally much more mature and stronger than in the anime.
At least now, it seemed that although this Menma was a little regretful that her childhood friends were drifting apart, she was not too attached to this matter.
Of course, besides Miyauchi Hikage asking about Menma's situation over the past five years, Menma was also very interested in the situation here in Asahigaoka.
Chichibu City was not far from Asahigaoka, and many people around her would come to this internet-famous village to visit and check in on weekends.
And after learning that Miyauchi Hikage was also a character in a certain work, Honma Meiko, feeling that the distance between the two had been shortened a lot, also started paying attention to the videos Miyauchi Hikage had filmed before.
"When I watch those horror videos you filmed, Miyauchi-kun, because I'm a little scared, I usually call my younger brother Satoshi over to watch with me."
As Menma said this, her brother, Honma Satoshi, was a little surprised.
"Eh, the videos you've been watching recently, sister, were all filmed by Miyauchi onii-chan?"
It was only at this moment that Honma Meiko realized with some embarrassment that she seemed to have accidentally let the cat out of the bag.
She only knew that those videos were filmed by Miyauchi Hikage because of the girls in the group who were close to him. She had completely ignored the fact that Miyauchi Hikage had never appeared in these videos himself, nor had he ever mentioned these things on his own account.
How should she explain this to Miyauchi Hikage?
Just when Honma Meiko didn't know how to smooth things over, Miyauchi Hikage casually waved his hand and proactively covered for her. "Although I only recently linked my account to Asahigaoka Media, and I'm the only one from Asahigaoka filming videos in Tokyo, I didn't expect your observation skills to be so sharp. You guys found out so quickly."
As he said this, Miyauchi Hikage looked at the Honma siblings and extended an invitation. "If you're not in a hurry to go back this afternoon, I can also take you to see the nearby filming sets."