Snake in Worm's Clothing 3 (Patreon)

Snake in Worm’s Clothing 3 - or ‘This feels familiar, and yet Shinji does get some Ws against Zouken’ (Fateverse, Shinji!SI)

A month has passed, things have been mostly fine.

I wouldn’t say that the time to worry has already come or passed, but things were still fairly tense at my temporary job. Garan no Dou was still a business that had habitual clients.

Many wanted simple things like checking for ‘ghosts’ or silly shit like that, others were women that had been previous customers but were looking to ‘chat in private’ with Touko and the rest were cases which would bring Touko out of her office and into doing some legitimate work.

We wouldn’t be leaving the place for nothing during this last circumstance, with Touko being quite specific on ‘keeping all windows and doors closed’ while she was out. While that order may spell doom when pushed on kids our age, Sakura and I never once thought of doing that.

Sakura due to her docility, while me for… well, being me.

Cleaning, combing around any items that had been left around and even handling the moving of paperwork that Touko would have to sign- I was doing my part like Sakura was.

As a ‘mini-secretary’, Sakura learned how to take note of phone calls, appointments, and other elements which Touko would usually bash her skull on a wall about. She was quite good at this, mostly due to the fact she was young, but extremely perceptive.

Plus many clients tended to give her ‘safe’ candy and… some of the women would give me quite the awkward looks. Nothing would happen- after all, Touko was enough of a dominant lesbian to curb any kinky bitches trying to put their hands on my beloved butt.

Despite what may sound like an overall lovely first month, the first week had my blood pressure spike up when I got mail from Risei Kotomine. For a very brief moment, I thought that Tokiomi was on my ass for this but… the old priest had questions, many of which were conveyed through him by Tokiomi himself but some also coming from…

Rin?

Sakura was quite interested in them, especially when the questions were aimed at her for the most part. It was mostly simple stuff, but it allowed me to pretty much establish a safety blanket for the two of us.

As expected, Tokiomi was not looking forward to regaining Sakura. The politics he embarked on and the mental thought put behind his unwillingness to train her to avoid a schism in the family kept him from doing so.

Was Sakura upsetted by this? Immensely so, but she found solace in knowing she could still exchange letters with her sister- on the sole condition that they would not speak of magical training.

The letters would be sent and received at the church in Fuyuki, the one place Zouken had no grip on due to the holiness of the place. Ever since what happened with our departure, Risei had been convinced to set up a boundary field to keep individuals with ‘tainted souls’ out of the church’s perimeter.

This pretty much cucked Zouken’s chance of ever besieging the place for any relevant item there in the near and distant future.

The other event that made the seemingly monotonous month take a rather wild turn was something that mattered to me today as I was given a ‘fetch quest’ by Touko. It wasn’t the first one and it wasn’t the second.

I have been going out solo four times, two of which saw me visiting Misaki Town. Since this was the Fateverse, I didn’t have to worry about the Tsukihime plotline- but Kara no Kyoukai was still happening there to some extent, and I ended up finding someone during my second visit that I wasn’t expecting to ‘save’.

Asagami Fujino came close to risking big time when I first met her.

I was finishing the commission of passing by some ‘incense’ to an old lady that lived in town when I found her distractedly strolling towards her destination, going to fetch her own medicine as she made a solo walk outside of her private school.

Thugs had noticed this and, with me being her size and the girl being that fragile-looking, I had to make a bit of a first impression. Fujino was quite the slow-reaction kind of young woman, so, when she found her left hand captured by my right one and she was suddenly pulled around in a wild goose chase in town until we eluded our chasers, she barely registered what happened.

“Good, the criminals are… gone,” I remarked, releasing her palm and taking a moment to catch my breath. “Are you alright, Neesan?”

The plum-haired girl frowned. “I am… but… what did you just do? What do you mean with… criminals?”

Slow-spoken and yet catching up with her thoughts and emotions as she started to hyperventilate a bit.

“Two big men, they were looking at you weird, Neesan and… I know that look. Which is why I want to ask if you have someone to walk with you from now on or you might end up hurt.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t… I could ask.”

“That’s good to know. Well, I should get going or-”

Before I could let her be and not get involved in her story, she suddenly reached out to grasp my shoulder and stop me. I turned, a confused look on my face.

“Y-Yes?”

“...Why did you do that?”

“Hm?”

“Why did you… save me?” Fujino inquired properly. “Why did you help?”

I offered a sheepish look. “You remind me of my Imouto, Neesan. She has the same hair color and she can be quite ditzy at times. She is also very strong within but very shy and an introvert. Which is why I know you should really rely on someone to keep you company while you’re out or you may get cornered and hurt. Okay?”

Fujino nodded. “Yes and… thank you.”

I smiled. “I am Shinji.”

“Fujino.”

That day, we became a mix of acquaintances and friends. For a while we didn’t met each other, but then, as today came and I managed to get the exchange with more incense for the old woman, I finally encountered her again.

This time, however, she wasn’t alone. Perhaps taking my advice to heart or mentioning it to some of the teachers in charge of this who agreed with that notion, Fujino now was being accompanied by-

“Wait, this is the kid that helped you last time? He doesn’t look much.”

I want to say this is a cheaper Rin because she literally had Rin’s appearance once she struck early adulthood but- Kokutou Azaka was different. She was a siscon. And a bratty one at that.

“Well, when I told you that you needed someone else around, I wasn’t exactly expecting a brat to tag along, Neesan.”

Azaka looked horrified and furious. “I am no brat, you brat! I am older than you!”

“And louder, and more childish and more tsundere and-”

“I-I- That’s stupid! You are stupid!”

I shook my head and then smiled at Fujino. “So, you have not faced any issue in that regard, Neesan?”

“I have not,” Fujino said, smiling tinily. “How are you, Shinji-kun?”

“Oh, I am well. Next time I planned to bring Saku-chan too since she doesn’t believe you two look alike.”

“Heh? And who is that, your little girlfriend?”

“My sister,” I rebuked flatly at Azaka’s cheeky question and… frowned harshly at her tiny blush. “And no, I don’t see her beyond my beloved Imouto, so keep that pervy look out of that face you have.”

The shocked look was brief, with the tsundere ready to charge up back at me before Fujino reminded her that it was time to go. After greeting each other one last time, we parted ways and… I was done for today.

It was time for me to leave, take a break and-

A car suddenly pulled over in front of me right as I tried to cross the road.

Two men jumped out of the rear seats, with one fully tackling me on the ground before yanking me back to the car while the other helped by pressing some cloth with chloroform against my face. I recognized the smell, and the chemical compound took a while to fully kick in.

I could barely fight off the feeling of losing control and… then I felt my will to survive falter into a need to sleep. I was unconscious, my mind going numb at the absurdity of this situation, thinking this was some sort of random kidnapping from the local gangster but…

Those pretty and deadly eyes were far worse than any creepy option I could conjure out of that scenario.

Especially since there were a lot of corpses and blood littering the ground around me, leaving me and a certain Shiki as the only living beings in that unfamiliar room. Said Shiki merely staring at me with her Mystic Eyes of Deadly Perception with incredible confusion and… not in a murderous way.

Yep, my Shinji luck is still around and… what the hell just happened?

—---------d-d-d-d—----

AN

Next time, Shinji understands the full scope of his bad luck… at the very least, he is not in a completely unreliable situation as he can trust himself with his newest but extremely unreliable Pre-Mikiya Ryougi Shiki as an ally. Or enemy. Depends on how next time goes~.