/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45099713
(2/2)
“… like a good-tempered horse, stays stoic and tame; and content with daily food and clothing, announces quietly that he will remain still for some time…” The apparent monk chanted.
He had arrived in the mob of morning traffic at some point, using the cover of the crowd’s hustle and bustle to make his little spot before any of us could notice, and by the time we did, Goro had already made his place.
“Ran-sama…” A quiet voice said, tugging at my robe.
It was one of the workers at the HSE, a small tanuki, although lacking in the boldness and ill manners of her kin. I squatted next to her so that she could whisper into my ear.
“Goro-san is a kind person. He isn’t dangerous but…” she trailed off, trying to find the words. “…he looks different.”
I patted the girl’s head. “I’m sure he’s just a little confused, why don’t you go back inside hm? I believe Takane may have some work for you.”
The tanuki bowed and quickly scurried away.
Carefully I went back to my observations. The man was wearing an ancient, but well-kept, Buddhist robe although the branching, angular patterns sowed in white along the cuffs seemed irregular. His left hand resembled a mannequin, but seemed entirely functional despite that as if it was just another part of his body, unimportant then. On his neck were visible bruises and a few bite marks, probably Youkai? Was this an act of revenge?
What made analysis difficult was the thick, ominous presence of the energies that were pouring out of that bracelet of his. Like a single powerful light causes a photo to be over-exposed the malignant energies flooded my spiritual senses so that I could hardly see the man’s spiritual being.
What I could observe were the faces that seemed to inhabit each bead. Their expressions were indifferent, and the subject of their observation would rapidly and erratically change. I watched as one face tracked a merchant, then a bird, then a light particle, and finally a sound. Sometimes the faces would even disappear for a moment, perhaps tracking something that couldn’t be perceived normally?
My brain was working overtime trying to collect, aggregate, and analyze the faces behavior, including how long they observed a subject, categories of objects and phenomena they observed, pairs of objects they transitioned between, the transition time between different objects, which bead face observed what…
It would take decades for even someone as analytically powered as I am to discern their pattern, if any.
But for a fleeting moment, a fraction of a second so small most people wouldn’t even perceive it, I saw a face observe the HSE for longer than it had then it had previously.
Goro was calculating a firing solution.
“…To what the soul may be compared which is a predator to the defenses of the jovial…”