Chapter 29: The Difference Between the Strange and the Uninvited (2)

How to blend in safely?

How to completely escape from being a suspect?

Where was the perfect blind spot, safe from the watchful eyes spread throughout Japan?

What could be the answer to these questions?

Hiding one's appearance is the lowest strategy, disguising oneself is a middling strategy.

Jinseong decided to utilize the characteristics of Japanese people.

Japan was a country where remnants of class still remained even in modern times.

Clear and difficult-to-cross class barriers.

This was typical of countries that hadn't properly transitioned to democracy, with the UK and Japan being prime examples. The UK maintained its class and power through education as a barrier, though not legally defined, while Japan maintained its class and power by defining class limits through family names, creating a ceiling.

A prime example was politicians.

Japan, even in a democratic society, inherited political positions through generations.

This was because their family names and the power they'd built in their regions made people perceive it as 'natural for them to have power'.

Moreover, submitting to the strong had been considered natural for a long time. As a result, people submitted to those who appeared to have power, and considered it completely natural to become the foothold and pillar supporting that power.

Truly a strange country.

Such entrenched classes didn't change even when the balance of power shifted. Just as in the past, no matter how much the samurai class built up their strength and gathered troops, they couldn't easily challenge the authority of the court nobles and the emperor. Once solidified, class became another form of power, an intangible force.

In modern times, classes were gone, the emperor was demoted from a living god to a human, and supernatural abilities, another factor that solidified class, were released to the people in line with the information age.

Yet, invisible classes remained.

Those who ran restaurants had to inherit them.

Martial artists must develop their martial arts through generations.

Artisans must pass their skills to their successors.

The succession of skills through generations.

Family business.

The powerful blocked the class advancement of ordinary people in the name of family business, and under the guise of craftsmanship spirit, made the ignorant remain their tools. And this illusion too easily penetrated the Japanese people, becoming common sense.

Politicians naturally passed their constituencies to their children.

This was common sense.

Professors passed their positions to their children.

This was common sense.

To succeed, one's family itself had to be exceptional.

This was common sense.

Thus, classes naturally solidified, and the Japanese accepted it.

What Jinseong wanted to use was precisely this power of class.

Suppress with authority.

Prevent questions from arising with power.

How good was that?

Hiding or disguising oneself required personal effort to avoid detection.

But if you gained power, others made the effort.

Beyond freedom of movement, the mindset itself changed completely.

Another question came up here.

Then how to obtain the power of class?

If you win hearts, everything is solved.

Only the heart.

Only the heart will be the answer.

If you asked sincerely and opened up to each other, how could there be anything unachievable?

"ॐ-"

*                     *                     *

The shrine was quiet.

This quietness was quite different from that of a temple, a quietness that had the comfort of melting into the embrace of spirits. This quietness seemed to stimulate memories of a fetus submerged in amniotic fluid, making even birds that land unable to chirp freely and creating an intimidating atmosphere that made visitors perform their worship quietly and leave.

But for Rise, this quietness was truly unbearable.

"Haa..."

Saigo Rise was sick of everything.

The shrine with no visitors.

The unnecessarily high stairs that exhausted her every time she went up and down.

Her father who nagged about continuing the family business.

And even the miko outfit she was wearing.

She sighed and sat down on the stairs, putting down her luggage.

It's like a collar choking me.

A life laid out on rails.

That was how she viewed her life.

Born in a shrine, educated as a miko (shrine maiden), a life of serving spirits forever.

If she could at least become a Shinto priest, she might feel motivated, but that wasn't possible either.

Because a miko couldn’t become a Shinto priest.

The position of Shinto priest was clearly not for her, born and raised in the shrine, but would be for some unknown man brought in as an adopted son-in-law.

I'm so sick of it...

But even though she knew that being a miko was making her life boring, she didn't easily try to throw it off. No, perhaps it was more accurate to say she couldn't.

The collar was clearly a shackle constricting her life, but at the same time, the nametag attached to the collar served as a shield protecting her from external pressures.

The fact that she wore good clothes and ate good food was due to the wealth the shrine possessed, the fact that she was treated well in the area was due to the shrine's prestige, and the fact that she received good treatment wherever she went in Japan was because she was a miko of a renowned shrine.

What would be left for her if she threw that away?

She wasn't smart like Airi who went to Waseda University. She didn't have the talent to go into the entertainment industry like Mahiro. She didn't have talent in martial arts like Shiori, nor did she have talent in magic to study abroad like Rena.

Nothing.

The only thing that made her special was that she was the daughter of the shrine, that she was a miko. If she threw that away, she would be no different from, no, perhaps even less than, the common people scattered everywhere.

I wanted to try rebelling at least once...

That was why she needed memories in her life that would proceed along predetermined rails.

She couldn't play with fire because she had to maintain her purity, but she wanted to experience the kind of innocent love that might appear in books or dramas.

If only it weren't for that ruffian...

But even that small wish went wrong from the start.

When she had mustered up the courage to dress up prettily and go into town, she encountered a ruffian.

That man, who seemed to be a martial artist, tried to seduce her in a rather violent and coercive manner, trying to set a mood and lead her to a hotel. Even when she refused, he persistently followed her like he hadn't heard, and his courtship, no different from a stalker, continued until it got dark and it was time for her to return to the shrine.

So she had no choice but to reveal her spiritual power and her identity.

It was partly because the martial artist was too persistent, but also because as it got dark, he became increasingly violent and coercive as if things were going well. She felt a sense of crisis that if she didn't reveal her identity, she might be in big trouble.

However, while she only wanted to quietly resolve the situation by just revealing her identity to make the martial artist retreat quietly…

The martial artist was much, much more stupid and foolish than she thought.

He couldn't properly sense the spiritual power she emitted, and he thought the identity she revealed was a lie to drive him away.

So she had no choice but to ask for help from people around.

Naturally, her father was furious. He strongly protested to the school of the martial artist who had troubled her, Yatachi Garo-ryu, and urged them to punish that martial artist.

Thanks to the powerful authority of being a local dignitary and a historic shrine, that revenge was easily achieved, and the martial artist who had troubled Rise left the area as if fleeing and was dispatched to Korea.

But after that incident, she couldn't even dream of rebelling. Whenever she went out, she was always followed by guards, and when she tried to do things that appeared in dramas, she was dissuaded, saying it would harm her dignity. At least due to her strong will, she was allowed to continue her hobby of watching dramas and movies, but that was it.

"Huuuh..."

She stood up, feeling again the presence of the collar that seemed to suffocate her.

A collar that constricted her.

But a collar she couldn't take off.

Perhaps for life...

"No."

She shook her head vigorously to shake off her increasingly negative thoughts. Then she headed towards the shrine again along the high stairs. Fortunately, perhaps because she had rested once, she was able to pass through the red-painted torii without much difficulty.

As she passed the boundary separating the secular world and the divine land, the usual gentle spiritual power should have greeted her...

"Eh?"

…didn't greet her.

The spiritual power that should have been felt when crossing the torii, the spiritual power that should have flowed to welcome her presence and boost her vitality, couldn’t be felt.

Is the spirit sleeping?

Rise wondered as she walked along the approach to the main hall as usual. It was to offer the offerings she had brought from the village to the sacred object as usual.

"Are you the miko here?"

And there she saw a strange man.

"Yes?"

He was a large man, about a head taller than her. But despite his tall stature, his body was slender, and his well-fitted suit seemed to fit his body as naturally as if it were his skin.

Rise somehow thought the man resembled a rabbit.

"The Shinto priest said he had something to do here, and asked me to tell the miko not to let anyone in. Instead, he asked if the miko could organize the ema (wooden plaques used for writing wishes) in the sacred storehouse."

The rabbit-like man politely told her so.

Is father performing a ritual?

She didn't doubt the man's words much.

It was not uncommon for her father to enter and perform a ritual to calm the spirit when someone angered it. She also understood that the strange feeling of spiritual power when crossing the torii was because the spirit was angry or upset about something.

"Yes. I understand. Were you waiting all this time to deliver that message?"

"That's right. Ah, please don't feel burdened. I didn't wait long."

"Still, I feel very sorry for wasting your time..."

"Not at all. I'm just honored to have been of help to the shrine even in this small way."

Rise felt interested in the man.

It might have been interest born from her desire for rebellion, drawn to a man who seemed somewhat different from the people she always saw. The rabbit-like impression of the man especially made her think that even if she rebelled a little, there wouldn't be any problems.

That was why she might have noticed late.

The man's impression.

The harmless face resembling a rabbit.

That extremely polite attitude.

That atmosphere that seemed to shout safety to an unnatural degree.

Delayed her judgment.

"Sacred storehouse?"

Saigo Rise only noticed the strangeness after turning her back to the man and walking a few steps.

She slowly turned around to look at the man. The man was still standing in the same place as before, looking at her with a seemingly harmless face, and she asked the man.

"What did you say the Shinto priest said?"

"He said to please organize the ema in the sacred storehouse."

Rise's father was a very strict person.

At the same time, he was a model Shinto priest, and someone who believed more than anyone that 'names carry power'. Because of this, she wasn't even allowed to call her friends by nicknames.

Such a father said to organize ema in the sacred storehouse?

"...But our shrine keeps the ema in the ema hall."

"Ah, is that so? I just relayed what I heard..."

The man scratched his head with an innocent-looking face.

But Rise was not deceived by this appearance.

"My father wouldn’t have said such a thing."

He was a person who abhorred casually attaching and speaking names. Such a person wouldn't have referred to a shrine building by a different name, of all places.

Rise took a step back, wary of the man, and tried to draw up spiritual power. But the spiritual power was immovable as if there was some problem, and she looked back and forth between the main hall and the man in great confusion.

"Why. Why isn't anything working properly?"

The man in Rise's eyes still looked like a rabbit.

But now... he didn't look harmless.