While wondering what on earth her grandmother had done, Shino came to a halt too.
You could vaguely see a bamboo grove in the fog ahead of them.
“This bamboo grove…should be the right place.” Tamaki said.
Those were some ambiguous words from someone who said they’d guide them.
“What do you mean should be?” Kiba asked.
“Well, in a nutshell, nobody’s ever met him.”
“Then how do you know this is where he lives?”
“Please take a look at this,” Tamaki indicated a pair of stone monuments that were erected ahead of the bamboo grove.
Seeing the rotted rope that was wrapped around the stone monuments, Shino murmured: “Traveller’s Guardian Deities.”
“That’s correct.” Temaki said, “People come here and place an offering, things like vegetables and the like, near the statue. When they come back the next day, the offerings will be gone, and a small container of honey or honey wine will be in its place. And so, we call the person who leaves honey, whoever they are, the ‘beekeeper’.”
“Why hasn’t anyone tried to go see him…?” Kiba asked, looking incredibly surprised. “Normally, wouldn’t you be curious about what kind of a guy he is?”
Well, that certainly was what you would think. ‘Normally’.
But, this was Soraku.
The possibility that whoever lived here wasn’t someone upright was 200% percent. As long as that person did their business properly under the watch of the cats, then nobody would care whether they were a traveller or a fugitive.
“As you can tell by the Traveller’s Guardian Deities, these are sacred grounds. But the people who live in Soraku don’t bother looking around. We have no business here after all.” Tamaki said with a laugh.
The fact that the beekeeper was living on sacred grounds didn’t seem to be something upsetting.
As expected, the people of Soraku have a unique way of thinking that’s a little bit different than others.
“But we do have business here, you know…” Kiba said, “We can’t just sit around in a daze for who knows how many days while waiting for our offerings to be exchanged with honeywine.”
“Either way, you jerks won’t be able to find it, meow. Even cats get lost in that bamboo grove, meow.” Momo gave a sadistic laugh.
He’d thought the cat had finally decided to say something worthwhile only for something like that to come out of its mouth.
But Kiba wasn’t perturbed.
“We’re shinobi. We won’t get lost.” He directed the words at Momo, and then turned to walk towards the bamboo groves shrouded in mist.