Furosato nozei, the tax-deductible donations to municipalities, has repaid as cartons of fruits stacked in the corner of Shinde Inc.'s executive office.
The staff had packed the storeroom to the max. The delivery nightmare has ended. Yamato Takkyubin delivery service staff would have wondered if we were a wholesale market for fruits.
Kyoko and a few of my employees were standing in front of those cartons with their distribution plans on the clipboards. They were discussing which company should get what carton of fruits.
The human subsidiary companies are going to get a lion's share of juicy Japanese peaches, fuji apples, honeydew, and Kyoho grapes, which grew to the size of small plums.
Maybe some pineapples from Okinawa too. I could smell that slightly sourish sweet smell of it. Fruits are expensive and they considered gifts of fruits luxuries.
It cannot be helped. Our tax accountants advised us on several methods to reduce the corporation tax. Furosato nozei and generous donations to specific shrines with tax deductions are our choice. Always support the farmers who feed part of our food chain, and the gods who may be useful later.
Both methods came with far favorable returns. That was better than letting the government decide where they should spend the money.
Kyoko ran up to me.
"The financial year to date papers are here and here are the National Tax Agency forms for both personal and corporate filled up. Once you sign it, we can send it off." She handed me a stack of papers neatly clipped to a folder she snatched off her desk.
"Don't I love end of financial year tax filing?" Arahabaki appeared. "By the way, thanks for the big donation to my shrine."
"I am sure you did not come to chat about that donation." I folded my arms.
***
"Okay so you really need tax accountant for that to input all the lost income because of Covid-19 and what are you thinking when you are doing donating to my dad's old caretaker shrine for a tax deduction?" I glanced through the numbers.
Arahabaki was not only gaming in the Internet cafes. He had bought into them via human followers a few years ago. Before the pandemic hit, there was profit coming in.
Most of the 24 hour Internet cafes made their money off those who couldn't afford the apartment rental prices in Tokyo.
When the pandemic hit, all of those cafes had to shut down that side of the business and spend on coronavirus prevention measures imposed by the municipality. Pop went the weasel.
Still, the losses on the balance sheet just didn't look quite right as I looked through his cafes' past earnings. As a god, he was clueless since shrines don't pay taxes.
Influencing the National Tax Agency required a lot of power to control an entire department, filled with bureaucratic procedures. Something all gods try to avoid. Too complicated. Too messy.
"Nothing wrong, figured your old man could use some loving," he said.
Yeah. Since he filed those taxes, a chunk of them went into the caretaker shrine, a shrine with a 'bigger' god looking after dad's old hidden auxiliary shrine in Hirata, Izumo. That's where he was enshrined after sealing. It was decrepit from my last memory of it.
Brother's shrine didn't need any money. They enshrined his head on Mount Oe near Oinosaka Pass on Route 9, under the care of another god. Plenty of thrill seekers and silly youngsters would donate to him. Brainless birds of a feather flocking together.
"Why would you be interested in that old drunken womaniser?"
Arahabaki scowled and glared at me. It almost seemed like blind loyalty.
"You have no clue what your father is. Or what he has endured," Arahabaki said and added. "Like Daija, your father was a god."
"Since you think you know him better, tell me more about him." I looked away from my laptop and glared at him.
What nonsense. Father mentioned no godly status. If he was a god, I would not have sunk down as a yōkai.
"When they brought the skill of making iron from the main continent, down to Izumo province," he said. "That was the beginning of the end for the people your father had guarded and marked the end of many old gods."
This simply made little sense. For my entire yōkai childhood, the gods mocked father as an alcoholic womanizer who coveted another God's virgin. Humans still despised him as the eight headed snake, Yamata-no-Orochi. Each head was said to represent a catastrophe.
Still, my first memories of him were that of a handsome snake, and even in human form. He would regularly visit mother and I down by the fields next to the river, Hiikawa in Izumo province. My older brother was a half brother. In those days, it was nothing unusual for male humans, or yōkai, to have several partners.
"Can you remember your mother?" Arahabaki asked.
I shook my head.
"They got you as well." he shook his head. "They had assimilated Daija and you in their ways so much. The humans got your situation correct - the victor writes the history. Or in this case rewrites it."
"So you are proposing to eliminate furosato nozei to the shrines? Don't you have a shrine?"
"Who is your principal patron?"
"Tsukuyomi."
"With Tsukuyomi, go ahead. That one is also a very ancient god, much much older than I. His history is not the same as those myths. Another victim of the same damn history rewriting skills. Good thing is that he doesn't care. Bad thing is that he really doesn't care." Arahabaki chuckled in amusement.
"Even if Earth disappears, and the Sun vanishes, he will be still around. That much the Deity of Calamity told me about him."
This statement took aback me. "Then tell me about my father since you seem to know him."
"Tatara iron work - how much do you know of it?"
Over 1400 years ago, up on the mountains at the headway of Hiikawa in Izumo province, something odd had begun.
Humans would venture into those mountains and scrape away at the boulders, collecting the dust and sand which came with it. The large primeval trees were chopped down around the area making way for a clearing growing in size.
Like a bald spot, the clearings increased from one to several, much to the chagrin of the kodama, the tree spirits. The animal yōkai, along with their mortal counterparts, started fleeing the area.
"Tatara. That is the name of the traditional foot bellows which were used to stoke the charcoal and wood fueled fires of the furnaces to smelt iron sand. Watched the Studio Ghibli anime movie, Mononoke-Hime?"
The name sounded vaguely familiar. I was not the type who watched films but other yōkai took pleasure in human portrayals of them, including the over used kitsune. Studio Ghibli is still a favorite.
Mononoke was the other name for us, like Ayakashi. Once in a while, I might look at the imaginative garbage which the humans came up with.
"I think it is that story about a girl on a huge wolf spirit against a town who made iron?" I hazard a guess.
"PaaaaaaAAAAACHHHHINNNNKO!" Arahabaki yelled the name of those noisy metal pinball-like gaming parlors.
"Your dad is the version of Mononoke Hime. That is if we want to put it mildly."
Who? Dad? Fighting for the forests. A spark lit in my head. They blamed my father for the Hiikawa's floods and gradually all other mishaps. That was around the same time when the forests were being cleared for that growing human industry.
More men had arrived in droves to chip away at the mountains. As the lands were cleared of trees and their inhabitants, water channels appeared. A human settlement village appeared. Sannai was its name, and it grew.
Come to think of it, father used to grumble about an odd sediment which he had never seen dirtying the once pristine waters of Hiikawa. Then the flooding started down river. Crops of the others on the lower plains were destroyed. They also blamed my father for it.
"Don't tell me you had something to do with that film." I stared at him.
"Let's just say… gods can also influence… in dreams."
Did that all started from the iron works? I knew none of the human industries are friendly to nature. The original people had never engaged in anything more than hunting for what they needed.
It meant that the newly arrived humans had wrought those disasters upon their kind. Not my father.
"Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi...that famous sword said to be found in Yamata-no-Orochi. Think about it this way, if the heads were all cut off, why would you have eight serpents on you? Those represent the true power of Hiikawa - all of you, serpent yōkai survive as long as your rivers and lakes are abundant in water." Arahabaki smirked.
"And what of my mother? Is she human?"
"No, she isn't mortal, but she is gone from this world so that she could give you a chance for survival after your father was sealed," Arahabaki muttered. "Your older half brother was the heir but oh well, he was stupid enough to get his head lopped off over a pretty yōkai."
Mother. I could barely remember her. Before the power of the eight serpents was transferred to me, I was already in a rogue assassination business with other yōkai.
That business wasn't as big as Shinde Inc. Just a small time business female yōkai who enjoyed tormenting the target victim. And learning to run from onmyoji exorcists.
"Like dad, huh?" I coughed politely.
"Your father fought for a respectable cause. He may be a lot of things, but for those actions he took to protect that river, earn my utmost admiration. So much that he was my inspiration to wreck the heavens of those gods. Your brother was just a horny bastard who got screwed over by a yōkai who got her just deserts after. Nothing there to respect."
Arahabaki knew more about my family. Far more than he is letting on. Was I wrong about father? Then again, Nurarihyon's 'chance' meeting with Arahabaki may not such a coincidence at all.
"We detoured enough about your family's history. Now how about my finances?" He pointed at the papers in my hands.
"We have to get my accountant to look through. I don't think he minds since he is charging me based on how much he saw on the declared amounts on the financial sheets. Along with those darn charges on the subsidiaries." I said, as my hand reached out to the phone.