"Too bad—back then, Leo hadn't yet learned the Leo Kick. The Slit-Mouthed Woman charged him with her scissors, crazy fast, and Leo couldn't dodge, so he got knocked down."
Kenta said this with regret.
"He got knocked down?!"
The children clustered around all sucked in a cold breath at once, the excitement on their faces turning to worry.
"So did Ultraman Leo die?"
One boy hurriedly asked.
"Of course not!"
Kenta immediately shot back.
"How could an Ultraman die that easily?! He's a Giant of Light! He just... um... temporarily lost his fighting strength! And then Ultraseven stepped in!"
"Ultraseven?"
"That's right! It was Ultra Seven—he'd been holding down the rear the whole time. He's got this super amazing gun, bang! bang!—two shots and he drove the Slit-Mouthed Woman back!"
Before Michina had even finished speaking, another boy corrected her.
"It's the MAC Pistol!"
"The MAC Pistol?"
Michina wore a puzzled expression.
Was that gun even a pistol?
Being a girl, Michina wasn't all that familiar with Ultraman.
Hearing that boy rattle off a term that sounded so technical, she didn't argue.
"And then? What happened after the Slit-Mouthed Woman was driven back?"
The mood grew even more heated.
"And then..."
Kenta lowered his voice, building up a tense atmosphere.
"The Slit-Mouthed Woman grabbed Teacher Sekiguchi as a hostage! She threatened Ultraseven!"
"Whoa——"
"So what did he do?"
"Ultraseven wasn't scared one bit!"
Kenta declared loudly.
"He just stood there, pointed his Ultra Staff at the Slit-Mouthed Woman, and then... whoosh! He shot forward like a bolt of lightning! Squelch! It stabbed right into the Slit-Mouthed Woman's eye! And the Slit-Mouthed Woman dropped!"
At these words, the children let out excited gasps one after another, as if they'd witnessed that decisive blow with their own eyes.
"But... didn't the teacher say it was a masked good Samaritan who helped out last night? Was it really an Ultraman?"
A girl wearing glasses asked timidly.
"Don't be silly—how could some good Samaritan possibly beat a monster?"
Kenta rolled his eyes and retorted with complete self-assurance.
"I guess that's true."
The girl scratched her head and nodded, half-understanding.
This explanation won everyone's agreement too—compared to a masked good Samaritan, an Ultraman fighting a monster naturally fit the children's romantic imaginations far better.
Just then, another boy glanced left and right, dropped his voice even lower, and said mysteriously, "What's more... we heard a secret too."
"A secret!"
The children asked in unison, their eyes shining brighter.
"They say the Slit-Mouthed Woman is looking for her child. And it's right here at our Shimokitazawa Elementary School—a sixth-grader!"
Kenta blurted out first.
"What?!"
"Are you serious?"
"Monsters can have children too?"
"Who is it? Do you know the name?"
The children erupted in an instant, their gazes drifting involuntarily across the faces of their classmates in the room, charged with a morbid, curious excitement.
The rumor now had a concrete target—a peer, someone right beside them—and the feeling was both thrilling and unsettling.
"I don't know the name," Kenta analyzed with an air of utter seriousness, "but I heard the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child has the character 'Ma' in their name. Didn't the Slit-Mouthed Woman attack Maaiko a few days ago? That's the reason."
Before he'd finished speaking, there came a loud "clatter" from the back row of the classroom.
"Don't talk nonsense!"
A crisp, anger-laced voice cut off Kenta's reasoning. A girl seated in the back row shot to her feet and berated him furiously.
"It's all groundless talk, utter rubbish! How does Maaiko being attacked suddenly mean she's connected to the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child?"
Publicly rebutted, Kenta found his pride a little wounded. He stiffened his neck and hollered, "I'm not making it up! Oh, right! Wasn't it you, Mamiko, who almost got into trouble when the Slit-Mouthed Woman first set her sights on someone? Maybe you're the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child!"
The baseless accusation made Mamiko so angry her eyes rimmed red, and the looks several children gave Mamiko instantly changed, taking on a heartfelt suspicion.
"Stop talking nonsense, Kenta!"
Michina knit her brows and said unhappily.
"Mamiko's right—everything you said is just baseless conjecture. It's not even certain the Slit-Mouthed Woman has a child. Last night the police officer mentioned it too: the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child shouldn't be twelve years old. And even if the Slit-Mouthed Woman did have a child, nobody ever said the name has the character 'Ma' in it."
Kenta said indignantly, "Maybe it takes the Slit-Mouthed Woman three years to have a child! And everyone the Slit-Mouthed Woman attacked has the character 'Ma' in their name—how do you know I'm wrong?"
The rumor did not subside because of Mamiko and Michina's rebuttals. On the contrary, because Michina hadn't denied the reality of the Ultraman, the unverifiable details rolled along with the rumor, snowballing bigger and bigger.
Especially once the rumor latched onto a specific name, the speed at which it took root was astonishing.
Between classes, in the hallways, on the playground, in the restrooms... talk could be heard all over Shimokitazawa Elementary School.
"Did you hear? Last night an Ultraman came to the school and knocked down a monster called the Slit-Mouthed Woman!"
"I know! Teacher Sekiguchi was killed by the Slit-Mouthed Woman. Good thing the Ultraman was there, or everyone in the school would've been slaughtered!"
"Did something like that really happen?"
"It did! My house is right near the school. An ambulance came yesterday, and I heard the Victory Team showed up too and hauled the Slit-Mouthed Woman away!"
"I bet you don't know—that Taniguchi Mamiko in sixth grade is the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child..."
"Are you serious? No wonder the Slit-Mouthed Woman keeps hanging around the school!"
"I always thought Mamiko was weird—turns out she's the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child!"
...
The versions multiplied, and the details grew ever more bizarre, yet all of it was nothing but groundless speculation.
In the children's collective imagination—fearful and excited all at once—the Slit-Mouthed Woman incident was gradually painted over with a convincing veneer.
Some of the children began to deliberately avoid Mamiko, as though she carried something ominous about her.
Mamiko could feel that deliberate exclusion and prying.
Before she knew it, the identity of "the Slit-Mouthed Woman's child" had become an invisible label stuck onto her.
"A bunch of idiots... believing every rumor the wind carries."
On the way home from school, Mamiko fumed inwardly, struggling to make herself look indifferent.
"Let them say whatever they want. None of it's true anyway—Mom and I have nothing to do with that monster at all. School is just like this: the moment anything happens, people start spreading rumors and smearing others. So boring it's unbearable."
Pushing open the front door, the familiar atmosphere dispelled the gloom in Mamiko's heart a little.
The afternoon sunlight slanted into the living room, drawing long patches of light across the floor.
"I'm home."
She called weakly toward the kitchen.
The faint sound of running water came from the kitchen.
Her mother stood with her back to her at the sink, washing something, her figure outlined into a silhouette by the light pouring in through the window, its edges somewhat blurred.
Hearing Mamiko's voice, her mother slowly turned her head around.
The backlight drowned her face in shadow, the details of her features completely indiscernible, leaving only a rough outline.
But Mamiko could sense it—her mother split open the corners of her mouth and showed her a smile.
"Welcome home, Mamiko."
____
👻🔥Here: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Naruto: Is it reasonable to beat up an Otsutsuki with Hamon, right?
We have set new community milestones:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for all readers