Perhaps due to having driven Lady Bihin back into the stone monument, it was shockingly easy to return to the regular world. All they had to do was pass by the giant crimson pillar, just as they had done earlier. The scenery changed completely, and they wound up right back where they had been before Yae performed the ceremony.
Where will I live now? As Yae thought about her future, she sank into her worries like sinking into a swamp. She had declared to Kadaru that she would return home the moment the men from Miya Province rejected her, but they didn’t just reject her, they left her to die.
Yae’s pride was too strong to just return as if nothing had happened after being judged worthless. Marching carelessly back into the village would also cause problems for Kadaru, given his position. If she had simply gone and come back, perhaps after a divorce, he might have been able to use the situation to his advantage in future negotiations. But if it came to light that the people of Miya Province had left a marriage candidate for dead, and that candidate happened to be the chief’s daughter, even if not by blood, Kadaru would be forced to ask for some kind of compensation.
I can’t just go back. I can’t… The main purpose behind this exchange was to bring solidarity between the two provinces. Yae’s very existence could cause fissures in the other marriages. Kadaru would almost certainly prefer she stay dead. In that case, the men from Miya Province would be able to claim that they had tried to save her, but unfortunately, she was killed during the attack. The truth didn’t matter.
Yae felt new woes piling up in her heart like thick dust; it was suffocating. Just as in her previous life, she was an afterthought whom nobody wanted around. She wasn’t good enough for anybody. I thought I was going to make things better this time.
Arai led the silent Yae behind him as he walked skillfully through the mountain. The world had been shrouded in a dim light during the ceremony, but the sun shone brightly now that they had returned to the normal world. Yae’s eyes were overwhelmed by the light after such a long time in the darkness.
Arai was purposefully hiking through the trees, but he wasn’t heading for Kaki Province or for Miya Province. Two butterflies flew past them, circling each other in perfect harmony. Yae wondered if they were the same ones she had seen before. Perhaps because he noticed Yae absentmindedly gazing at them, Arai stopped and stood for a moment. But he resumed walking again almost immediately.
Eventually, the path grew rough and difficult for a woman to traverse, at which point Arai transformed into a large golden tiger, let Yae onto his back, and began to leap easily across the terrain. Yae was tasked with holding the black sword while Arai was in tiger form. It seemed as though they were cutting across Mount Yagi toward Mount Saeba, which was located on the opposite side from Mount Mebiro. Yae didn’t really feel like talking, but she had begun to wonder about their destination, so she relented and asked.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a spring this way.”
That wasn’t really an answer, and it only increased Yae’s discomfort.
After a little while longer, they arrived at a spring, just like Arai had said. The clear water reflected the sky, giving it a light-blue color, and a few thick, fallen trunks spanned the water, forming a sort of bridge. Just to the side of the bridge, a mysterium in the shape of a large bowl was embedded sideways into the bottom of the spring. About half of it was underwater. The inside of the bowl was vermilion, and the outside was the dark-brown color of burned tea leaves. It looked like it might originally have been patterned with golden origami cranes, but they had been all but worn away.
“I’m going to wash my sword,” the golden tiger said, dropping Yae off by the bank of the spring and reassuming his human form. He walked briskly along the fallen trunks bridging the water, then stopped about halfway…that is, directly in front of the bowl, and crouched. A green frog that had been resting nearby fled into the spring.
Yae waited a moment before she followed him onto the bridge, then sat down and hugged her knees. The giant bowl was deep, and the rim of its upper half draped over them like an awning.
It feels like we’re sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Yae remembered her days taking the bus as a high schooler and tapped her feet restlessly. Her unruly emotions steadily calmed down and were replaced by intense embarrassment. She had gone on a tirade in front of a man she had just met, shouting things he must have found incomprehensible. He probably thought she was insane. That’s what Yae would think if someone did that to her.
Unaware of the conflict raging in Yae’s mind, Arai unsheathed the black sword and dipped the naked blade into the water to begin washing it.
“A-are you sure it’s okay to wash it that way?!” Yae asked, startled. Arai’s actions ran totally counter to what she considered common sense.
“What sword could bathe itself in blood if it feared a little water?” Arai responded coldly with a quick glance at Yae.
That really wasn’t what she had been getting at. It must be a special kind of sword, Yae convinced herself.
“…Can I ask you some questions?” she ventured quietly once she had collected herself.
“About what, exactly?”
Yae was surprised; she had expected him to refuse.
“Were you Lady Bihin’s retainer or something like that?”
Arai had been sealed inside that dirty gray monument with Lady Bihin. That made Yae think he might have been a relative of hers or have some kind of special connection, but Arai turned to her with anger in his eyes.
“Huh?! Me, a retainer?! Don’t be absurd,” he spat furiously, swinging the blade to shake off the water and sheathing it. He plopped down roughly next to Yae, holding the sword in one hand. His violent motions shook the entire log beneath them.
Whoa, why is he sitting so close? He’s practically on top of me, Yae thought, flustered. Come to think of it, the black sword always clattered as soon as she left its side. It seemed to want to be next to her. Maybe that was a trait inherited from its owner.
“I told you I’m yours now, didn’t I? If I serve anyone, it’s you,” he corrected matter-of-factly, and Yae regained her composure.
“Uh. You said that earlier, but I have no idea what you mean.” On that note, she didn’t understand anything about what was going on. She had so many questions. “What exactly are you, Arai?”
That was the question she wanted answered the most. It was a serious question, but he responded with a blank “No idea.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t really know what I am. I might already be a shade… No, I’m closer to a fallen god.” He sounded totally unconcerned despite talking about himself.
There wasn’t a firm definition for what a fallen god was. If a shade came to be worshipped or enshrined, it would be treated as a fallen god, and strange beings the true nature of which no one understood were often called that as well. To Yae, a fallen god was anything that humans couldn’t handle and that needed to be sealed away.
“…But you still have your sense of self, don’t you?” Yae asked.
“For now,” Arai answered suggestively, turning to stare at her. “I’ve lost the greater part of myself, which has caused my true nature to warp considerably, but I do at least remember my name. Given that and my strong divine power, I figure I was probably a type of god.”
“H-huh…,” Yae said, having no idea what to say beyond that. He made potentially being a god sound so trivial.
“You’re the one who woke me. Don’t act like it’s not your problem.”
“Huh… Wait, what?” What did he mean by that? Yae was taken aback.
“Who do you think has been protecting you all this time? If not for me, you would have been eaten by some fallen god long ago.”
“I awoke you?!”
“You were so hopeless, always flubbing your lines and marching with your shoes still on…”
“Are you talking about when I performed ceremonies?” Flabbergasted, Yae bent toward Arai. “Hold on, are you also Lord Kuroashi?”
“Yes. He was a part of me,” Arai confirmed nonchalantly, and Yae fell silent. Kuroashi had begun appearing to her after she became the envoy for the ceremony.
“The golden tiger that was sealed in the monument is your true elebeast form, right?”
“Yep.”
“Does that make Lord Kuroashi a ‘shadow’ of your golden tiger form or something like that?”
Kuroashi didn’t have a shadow. If he was a “part” of Arai, that made Yae wonder if Kuroashi himself might have been the golden tiger’s shadow, separated from its owner.
“Well, it’s something like that, so sure, you can think of it that way,” Arai said, not giving her a clear answer.
“Why did you—er, a part of you, I guess… Why did Lord Kuroashi appear before me?”
That question seemed to make Arai tense up. Yae could feel a cold malice like the time he swung his sword at her head, and she gulped. Are his attempts to murder me and Lord Kuroashi’s appearance related? She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. He quickly suppressed his killing intent and offered a strained smile, but Yae was certain repeating the question would only provoke him again.
“…Is that sword also a part of you?” she asked to distract herself from the fear blooming in her chest.
“In a way, yes, but technically, it’s more of a possession,” he answered. A possession with a will of its own.
“…What about Lady Bihin?”
“Don’t you dare lump us together. That thing has nothing to do with me.” That was a relief to hear. Yae was really glad he had rejected that possibility. “I think… Whatever I was drifted here from another place like the mysteriums. I was probably worshipped somewhere,” Arai said carefully. Yae’s mind began to race as she watched him.