Chapter 164 - "I'll Explain As We Drink..."

"Do you have plans for the holiday break?" Fumio asks.

"Why are you asking? You want to spend it together with me?" Kotone chuckles with a tease.

"You me want to?" Fumio asks in feign seriousness.

"U-uh…" Kotone is stunned.

"Hah. I just asked because I thought you were at Nerima relaxing, and not… enforcing justice." Fumio chuckles.

"How's your elixir control by the way?" He asks.

"Pretty good. Why?" Kotone frowns, confused by the sudden change of subjects.

"Okay. I'm thinking about your brother's training with the sixteen poses that Boss modified for the non superiori." Fumio reveals his intention.

"... you wanna start it during the break…" Kotone understands.

"Yes. And I was hoping you can also start teaching my sister. She was also very busy with work to make new friends, so maybe it will be nice if she gets to know you while training." Fumio nods.

"Oh, I would love to make friends with her but… do you think Kichirou-san will be okay with it?" Kotone is not sure of Fumio's plan.

"He approved it. It was even Boss who suggested to tell her that you are my friend and a fellow demon hunter and that you have the ability to strengthen her powers." Fumio explains.

"Haaa…" Kotone sighs as she gives Fumio an apologetic look.

"… I've not studied the modified poses yet, so… I'm not prepared to teach her. My attention was… on a few things. I'm sorry."

"That's fine." Fumio shrugs.

"It was just an idea anyway. Besides, you haven't spent that much time with your brother, I'm guessing?" He asks.

"Yeah. That's why I've already booked a week-long stay with him in a nice hot spring resort in Kyoto." Kotone shares.

"That's nice…" Fumio nods. "He probably never spent a week outside a city."

"How about you? Was training your sister really just an idea?" Kotone asks.

"You got me. It was plan A." Fumio admits.

"But Plan B is, I'll take her to somewhere warm… the Philippines maybe." He smiles.

"Ugh. How nice it must be for you English-speaking jerks." Kotone rolls her eyes in jealousy.

"Wait a minute. Don't tell me all you did with Yoshiko was train together? You never learned to speak another language from her?" Fumio asks.

"Like I said, I was focused on other things. Learning a new language is the last thing on my mind." Kotone reiterates.

"But that's a good idea. She speaks what? English, Korean, and Mandarin if I'm not wrong." She lists the idea on the back of her mind.

"With your enhanced brain, plus boss' different tea leaves, it'll be easy for you. I myself might actually ask Ahdem-san or Havvah-san to teach me Arabic or Farsi." Fumio approves.

"That's nice…" Yoshiko comments as she joins the two at their table.

"Yoshiko! What are you doing here?" Kotone is surprised by the woman's appearance.

"Fumio-san called me…" Yoshiko shakes her communication at Kotone before pocketing it.

"My gosh… We stand out a lot, huh?" She looks around the fancy bar's patrons looking at her and her kimono before taking a seat beside Kotone.

"Ooh…" She impressed by the comfort of the leather seat.

"At least we're not in a f*ckin club." Fumio chuckles.

"Drink? My treat." He offers as he takes the attention of one of the servers.

"S-sure." Yoshiko looks at the senior disciple she barely spends time with, a bit taken aback by his hospitality.

After adding more drinks to the table, Yoshiko and Kotone look at Fumio in inquiry, knowing that he is not the type to treat them to some drinks just for hanging out.

"You have something to tell us." Kotone says.

"Yes. From boss." Fumio nods.

"Yeah. Where is he, by the way? And where did he take the children?" Yoshiko asks.

"What? When did this happen?!" Kotone almost shrieks in surprise. She left the hill for Nerima the day before for her vacation so she is hearing about this for the first time.

"Yeah. That happened." Yoshiko nods helplessly. She spent the first minutes of daylight in worry as she did not find the children in their house.

"On a nice trip." Fumio says.

"I heard the same from Akane-san and Yori-san." Yoshiko says.

Her worry in the morning was relieved by a bit when Akane and Yori, who were about to leave the hill for their vacation, reported to her that Red took the children away for a trip.

"But where are they exactly?" She asks Fumio for clarification, not really trusting Red entirely.

"Somewhere warm…" Fumio reports.

"Not somewhere 'hot'?" Yoshiko asks in worry.

"He's what?" Kotone asks the two, lost in the conversation.

"Putting them through hell training? I hope not." Fumio shrugs.

"Is this why he asked all of us to take a break? So, we can't stop him?" Kotone does not even want to imagine the children bathing under Xoz'gekal's flames.

"That's true… He also closed the treasure dimension to us since a week ago. He must be planning something." Yoshiko says in suspicion.

"He is planning something, but not because of what you two are thinking." Fumio shakes his head.

He knows that the two's cut off access to the treasure dimension is because Red has been using it to hop in and out of Australia.

Fumio pulls out his communication token, activates its illusion hologram feature, and plays a video on it that was sent by Red.

Kotone and Yoshiko see the illusion hologram display a white sand beach and sparkling blue waters beyond it. 

Taishiro and Kanon are building a sand castle with their spiritual energies while the rest of the children are playing water with each other in the crystal blue waters.

"They look like they're having fun, no?" Fumio asks.

Kotone and Yoshiko continue to watch the hologram video in relief.

"Boss hasn't been spending time with the children recently. He hardly joins them for breakfast anymore." Fumio says before turning off the video.

"I can't believe he didn't bring you along. Wanna spend the vacation with me and my brother?" Kotone asks Yoshiko.

Yoshiko after all, just like the children, do not have relatives or even friends she is close enough with to spend the holidays with. 

"I'm okay. I already have plans." Yoshiko is grateful of Kotone's offer.

"Anyway. Sensei actually asked me what I'll do for the holidays a few days ago. I told him that I'm going spend it on the orphanage. Buy the children some gifts or cook them some warm meals, or something. Maybe that's why he didn't invite me." She explains.

"Wow… We have a saint here… Mother Yoshiko." Fumio teases.

"My ass." Yoshiko scoffs, but she is pleased with Fumio's teasing.

"Saint? Right… You should have seen her in our demon prison raids." Kotone teases too.

"Compared to the people I've hurt… possibly even killed… I am a saint." Yoshiko playfully pinches Kotone's arm.

"Ow… Sorry." Kotone rubs her stinging arm.

"…" Fumio cannot believe what he just heard Yoshiko say. Her casual tone about accidentally killing people especially stuns him. But thinking about the lives that she saved, the woman's words is entirely acceptable to him.

"Anyway." He pulls out two Black Sapphire Storage Rings from his pocket and lays them on the table, each for his fellow disciples.

"What's this?" Kotone asks as she picks it up and wears it on her thumb.

Yoshiko does the same as she appreciates the beauty of the black gem on the ring, and the intricately carved lines on its silver band.

"Storage rings." Fumio says.

This prompts the two ladies to infuse spiritual energy on their rings.

The two are immediately surprised shortly after.

Their old storage rings are embedded with multiple gemstones and they can only store one type of object in each gemstone. If they accidentally store different types of objects in one gemstone, they would have to empty out the contents of it so they can sort the objects out again.

Their new storage rings however, offers better features.

First, a visual display of the storage ring's pocket dimension appears in their visions. They figure that it is so as they see that in a corner of the visual display is what look like bottles upon bottles of milkshakes, and only takes a small fraction of the entire space.

"Only the wearer of the ring can see what you are seeing." Fumio explains.

"That's a relief." Kotone nods in relief.

"You can move them around with your spiritual energy." Fumio proceeds to instruct them.

The two ladies again are impressed by their new storage rings' Second feature.

With just a thread of their spiritual energy, they can move things around the ring's pocket dimension.

"You still have demon cores in your watches, right? Try storing them in it." Fumio instructs them once again.

"…" The two ladies find the instruction ridiculous at first, but they do it anyway.

Not long after, "I-it works.", they feel the demon cores under their watches disappear into their storage rings, stunning them.

The Third feature of their new rings, is that it has an infinitely higher energy limit compared to their old rings.

Unlike their old rings that can only store limited numbers of spiritual fruits due to the fruits' high spiritual energy content, their new rings can even store demon cores which contain even more energy.

Yoshiko is the first one to get used to the features and she is ready to move on.

"What is this huge blue crystal thing?" Yoshiko asks, seeing the pile of filled Infinite Spiritual Energy Crystals in the visual display.

"Those are Boss' seconds gifts to you two." Fumio introduces the objects.

"Please, take one of them out." He starts instructing the two how to use the crystals.

A minute later, Kotone and Yoshiko look at the now pink-colored baseball sized Infinite Spiritual Energy Crystals in their grasps, that were once blue.

"Wow…"

"Yeah…"

They still cannot believe that they just absorbed rich spiritual energy from the things in their hands, and they eye the truckload's more of it that remain in their rings.

"Be careful not to break them, or soak them in water." Fumio breaks them out of their gazes on their rings.

"They're nothing but rock salts once they're empty." He concludes.

"Okay." The two store the used crystals in their storage rings immediately hearing the warning.

"Those things are not free, so please use them sparingly." Fumio is amused at the two's reactions to the Infinite Spiritual Energy Crystals, understanding how the two feels.

" 'Not free.'? So, we can 'buy' them?" Yoshiko asks.

"That's right." Fumio nods. "And you can only buy them from Boss."

"How much?" Kotone asks.

"To buy the amount of what is currently inside your rings, you will need to give him one treasure fragment." Fumio says.

"…" The ladies are stunned.

"That's... fair, I guess? But. Where do we even find treasure fragments?" Kotone deflates.

"And Sensei knows that… He must be teasing us." Yoshiko shakes her head.

"It's like those drug people getting someone addicted to a drug, and getting that new addict to be their cash cow." She scoffs helplessly.

"Wait. That's a bad analogy. We can't be cash cows if we don't even know how to earn cash." She corrects herself. 

"That's actually an 'okay' analogy." Fumio chuckles.

"How so?" Yoshiko asks. 

"Boss can make treasure fragments find you two instead. There's your cash to use for your drugs." Fumio says.

Seeing how the two changed since the first time he met them, he is confident that the two will even be more ruthless than he is when it comes to gathering treasure fragments.

"But how can we do that when only him can activate treasure fragments?" Kotone asks in confusion. 

"We have a long night ahead. I'll explain as we drink.." Fumio takes a bottle of hard liquor from the table and opens it.