Chapter 10 first quarter

The slope of this narrow alley is still as steep. Machida City is located in the west of the Tama Hills, and there are many slopes in this area.After walking out of Naruse Station on the Yokohama Line, I walked uphill for 20 minutes, and my legs were no longer able to move. I stopped in front of the two-story apartment "Green House".There are five white doors on the first floor, and the door of Room 101 on the far left is pasted with a black pressure gram board, on which it is written in gold fine print: This is an office run by my old classmate Mabi Shosuke. Ten months ago, with his special ability, he solved the mystery of the supernatural phenomenon I experienced in Fukushima Prefecture. The scene at that time is still fresh in my memory.After that, as long as I have time, I will come here from time to time.The purpose can be roughly divided into three main reasons.Firstly, to listen to my respected friend talk about all kinds of anecdotes in a relaxed tone; secondly, to see his assistant Kitami Rin; finally, to drink her special recipe coffee of "Nishikawa Coffee Beans".

Today, however, it serves a different purpose.Like most of the people who opened the door of this firm, I came to Mabi with the intention of entrusting him with work. "—Huh? Michio-san?" Looking back, Rin was pushing his bicycle up the ramp.She was wearing a white duffel coat and cotton trousers, with a supermarket bag on her wrist, squinting in the cold wind.In autumn, the hair grows longer than the shoulders. "Ah, Miss Kitami, good morning." "It's not early, it's already past twelve o'clock." Rin smiled and parked her bicycle in the parking lot.

"Have you had lunch yet? I'm going to cook soba noodles later, do you want to eat it together?" I ate breakfast late, and I wasn't hungry at all, but I didn't want to miss Rin's cooking.I smiled at her all over my face.She seemed to have misunderstood, and said to me: "It's really hard for a man to live alone." She cast a sympathetic look at me. Together we went to the porch of the apartment. "What's the matter today?" "It's rare to have serious business today, are you really free?" "The teacher just finished a big job, and the next period of time will be relatively free."

Although Rin calls Mabe "teacher", they are not actually a master-student relationship.Rin country likes to catch insects very much when he was young. Zhenbei is a classmate of her sister who is seven years away from her, and he feels like her brother. Therefore, Rin often asks him the names of the insects he catches and how to raise them.Mabi, who memorized the entire Gakuken Insect Illustrated Book at the time, answered her questions correctly every time—Rin called him "sensei" without knowing it.This habit has continued to this day. Rin's older sister later married Mabi, but I haven't met her.Because she has passed away, I will never see her.This is exactly the reason why the firm was established with the wonderful name of "Spiritual Phenomenon Search Institute".Mabi, who lost his beloved wife in a car accident, wanted to see her again, so he opened this office.I heard these things from Rin for the first time during the journey ten months ago. The heart-wrenching feeling at that time is still hard to forget.

"I am back." Rin pushed open the door of Room 101, and I looked through her back, and found a tall man with his arms folded on the leather sofa in the corner of the floor-covered living room.As soon as he turned his head, he let out a strange "Oh!" "What a coincidence, it happens to be glued to the end of the road, Kitami, did you buy double-sided tape for me?" "Yes, I bought it——teacher, what are you going to use it for?" Rin took out the black double-sided tape with the price tag on it from the supermarket bag and handed it to Mabi. "What is it for? Kitami, isn't it to solve your doubts?"

Mabe stood up from the sofa, walked quickly into the studio, and came out with scissors in one hand. "Didn't you ask me before, 'What does the swastika originally mean'?" "—Ah!" Rin snapped his fingers.Then she turned to me and explained, "The last time I was walking around, an old lady asked me for directions, said she wanted to go to a temple—I forgot the name of the temple—and showed me a map. I immediately told her the location of the monastery, but then a question arose. Don’t all the maps use the swastika to represent the monastery?” Oh, it turned out to be the swastika.

"I see. But what does the mark on this map have to do with the double-sided tape?" "Uh, I don't know about that..." "Daowei, come here." Mabi cut off the double-sided tape in front of the coffee table and called me over.As soon as I walked by, he told me to take off my coat. "You don't move." Saying that, Mabe stood up, tore off the paper behind the double-sided tape that had been cut into sections, and stuck it on the chest of my sportswear. "--what?" "Don't worry about it." A few seconds later, a swastika was pasted on my chest with black double-sided tape.

"Kitami, this is the origin of the swastika." Mabi put his hands on my shoulders and turned me in Rin's direction. "It is said that Vishnu, one of the three major gods of Hinduism together with Shiva and Brahma, has chest hair like this. Is it disgusting? But this shape is rare and precious, symbolizing auspicious gathering The meaning of "和", "力" and "万" in Chinese characters all come from this word - after Buddhism absorbed Hinduism, this image was widely used in the production of Buddha statues and temple buildings. Japan uses this symbol on the map Upper stands for monastery. The word is also known as auspicious joy spin, read swastika in Sanskrit.”

After a quick explanation, Mabi wrote swastika in the air with his finger. "It turns out that there is such an origin." Looking at my chest, Rin couldn't help saying that with admiration. I was furious that he was treating me like a dummy to explain the chest hair, but hearing Mabe mention the word "Buddha statue" reminded me of the purpose of my trip. "Buddha statue - Zhenbei, I have something to discuss with you today." "No matter how big it is, we can talk about it after eating the noodles. See Kita, I will trouble you for lunch." Rin said "Okay" and walked into the kitchen.

"I'm going to sprinkle a lot of chopped green onions to cover the noodles." Saying that, Mabe sat down on the sofa.Strongly aware that he didn't take me seriously, I snorted and squinted at him.I was thinking of some sharp words to ridicule him, but when Zhenbi reached out to motion me to sit on the sofa, I nodded vigorously, and then sat down.Then, when I frowned, showing sharp eyes, and was about to speak again, Jinbi asked me, "Do you want green onions?" I craned my neck and said to the kitchen, "I want less green onions. " Twenty minutes later. We each ate up our noodles, and Mabi and I washed the dishes, and when they were on the dish rack, Rin had already made coffee for three.

We sat down at the coffee table again.I still don't know what coffee beans are mixed in the special recipe of "Nishikawa Coffee Beans", which is very bitter and has almost no sour taste, and it is still delicious. "Ah, now is not the time to rest. Mabe, I have something to show you." I took out a stack of photos from the pocket of my coat that had been left on the sofa, and handed over thirty photos tied up with rubber bands to Mabi who was sitting across from me. "I took this picture three days ago, on November 22." "Ah, you seem to have mentioned it before. It seems that your cousin is going to get married? Or not?" "I didn't say he didn't want to get married—anyway, the photos of the first half of the wedding are not the point, so you don't have to worry about it. I hope you're looking at the photos of the second half." "Where is it, oh..." Zhenbei flipped through the stack of photos on his lap.The first half is a photo of my relative's wedding. Actually, I wanted him to see it, but I didn't expect that Mabe really didn't care at all, and put those photos in the corner of the table. "Oh, so you went to the Buddha workshop." He looked at every photo in the second half with interest. "Oh, the studio is huge, and the number of Buddha statues is amazing. There are Sakyamuni Buddha, Amitabha Buddha, Manjushri and Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, Xukong Zang and Fukong Rensuo—huh?" He stopped suddenly.I got up and looked around, and found that he was looking at the photo of Avalokitesvara.It is the last work of Ryuzo Nirazawa, who disappeared 20 years ago, and it is currently placed deep in the storage. "It's simply ingenious." Really prepared to whisper.Rin also looked at the photo with his head, and made a sound of exclamation. "It's so shocking, and I feel this way just looking at the photos." "Actually, my coming here today is also related to this Buddha statue." I sat up straight on the sofa.However, what Mabi said next surprised me from the bottom of my heart. "I know it even if you don't tell me." "Uh……" I looked at him in surprise, and Rin, who was sitting next to Mabi, looked at his face in confusion. "The matter you want to discuss with me should be like this—you went to a certain Buddha-making workshop for interviews in order to help the thriller novels, and visited the working conditions of the workshop. When taking photos of Buddha statues, this thousand-handed Avalokitesvara has cast a terrible curse on you." "curse……" "Yes, because of this curse, your chest—" Mabe raised his hand and pointed at my chest, "grow such disgusting chest hair!" "Chest hair..." "Daowei, look, this hand of Avalokitesvara." I obediently looked down at the photo. "This holding in His hand is the same shape as your chest hair." Indeed, among the countless hands, one of them holds a swastika. "This is the unique holding of Avalokitesvara, called Baoyin. Because you are cursed by this Avalokitesvara, you will grow such terrible chest hair." "That's right. No, no, it's not my chest hair at all, it's you—" Only then did I realize that I had been tricked by him.But I'm also stupid, and I didn't even take off the double-sided tape on my chest. "Listen to me carefully, now is not the time to joke." Then, I told Zhenbei exactly what happened in Ruixiang's room.

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