"Haah!"
Genta panted heavily, clutching a square stone with a circular hole through its center. Excitedly, he said, "Hurry up and look at what I found!"
"Genta, you're being way too unfair!"
Ayumi followed behind him, sounding slightly aggrieved. "Everyone found that stone together!"
Genta burst out laughing.
Mitsuhiko, who had run over behind them, took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Being the slightly more mature one, he explained, "We saw a koi carp in the pond just now. We were about to catch it when we noticed this stone soaking in the water."
As he spoke, he snatched the stone from Genta's hands. "There are so many Chinese characters inside this stone, and none of us can recognize them all, so we wanted to bring it over for Brother Fujino to take a look..."
"I see..."
Fujino frowned. "You picked it up from a pond, and there was even a koi carp with it. Don't tell me you found something ridiculous?"
"Like 'Are kings and generals born to their station?,' 'The Azure Sky is Dead,' 'The Yellow Sky Shall Rise,' 'The year is Jiazi,' or 'Great fortune for all under heaven'? When you found it, aside from the auspicious koi carp, was there perhaps a white-furred fox nearby yelling something like 'Great Chu will rise' and 'Chen Sheng will be king'?"
The moment he thought of a stone picked up from a pond, Fujino could not help thinking of those things.
If it said "By the Mandate of Heaven, may it endure forever and prosper," that would be interesting.
You've really made things hard for me...
Wouldn't this call for a round of "Emperor Dog Thief dies today; tomorrow the throne comes to my house"?
"Huh?"
The children looked utterly bewildered, clearly unable to understand what