Rainbow

3. Admiration

It was a really nasty, burning feeling.

Like a hot bath. As soon as you're immersed in it, it gets painful, torrid, you want to go out somewhere in the cold. But once you get used to it, you're already divinely pleased.

The feeling, which the demon considered wrong and didn't even understand its source, became narcotic, and now Douma was addicted to it.

Ren, a grim-faced clumsy, turned out to be a well-read and intelligent girl. She was familiar with many songs, poems and stories, and not only Japanese. She also knew English a little, her father's language, and often had been using it, swearing with especially meticulous followers, in particular men. It had been scaring the hell out of them. The old ladies also sometimes heard this foreign whisper and even complained to rainbow-eyed, but he only laughed, explaining that Fujiwara, being his close assistant, "took over from him a wonderful gift and receives messages from the Gods".

It was good enough for him. He listened with enjoyment to everything the brown-haired telling about. After all, he wasn't silly himself. But some of the legends and tunes that his wife remembered weren't known even to him.

The most fascinating and incredible detail was that the lassie knew more than ten thousand hieroglyphs. While not every educated man could boast of this. By the way, Douma knew, of course, more. Only if he had centuries to study all the depths of Japanese, then when in the usual twenty years, of which more than half were spent in illnesses, had a girl manage to do this?

Surely, this fact created a funnel of thoughts in the blond's mind. Ren herself added fuel to the fire, once specifying for some reason that her mom wasn't too smart. Excellent, mother is an ordinary peasant who could teach her daughter only the basic structure of speech, father — a stranger who doesn't understand a word himself...

"I studied by myself from the books that my grandparents had while I could get out of bed," the hazel-eyed explained. "And heard something from the villagers. But most of the writing was learned after the age of fifteen."

"While you... was traveling?" oni guessed.

Stopping off, Quincy just nodded briefly.

The Upper Rank 2 couldn't decide which he liked better — listening to native folklore from the lips of the bride or something brought by her father from London. Although he didn't understand the foreign language, it seemed to him very melodious. Even though Ren had a terrible accent. Fortunately, no one knew about it.

He also loved, either in mockery, or in reality, to call her by her real surname. However, he spoke a little incorrectly — "Kinsey". At first, the lass was very angry at the rainbow-eyed for this, but then unsuccessfully began to teach him how to pronounce the cherished word correctly.

""Qu-incy", like "Do-uma", only the opposite and softer," suffering she pressed her hand to forehead, averting her gaze. "That's why I changed my last name."

In general, now the demon didn't have a single reason to joke over the chosen one.

He could only beware for her.

Her past was too hazy. And not only that. Fujiwara's whole person seemed more and more secretly even when some truth about her was revealing. It was the mystery girl, a ball of tangled snakes that was difficult to get close to. Douma even allowed the idea that Ren was some kind of yokai, but for a spirit or an ephemeral being she was still simple.

Perhaps turning her into oni would help put everything in its place. After all, the appearance, weapons and powers usually always accurately indicate the true identity of the creature. But even in this case the blond doubted that such a method would help. For example, there is no way to understand the meaning of the Akaza's Techniques. Besides — use such a radical method just because the girl's tongue is not untied? Perhaps, here it would be possible to cope without breaking the plan...