Other countries were located outside of Izumo. Each one had a ruler called a Great Protector who governed autonomously, and the chiefs of each province ranked below them. But it was the household of the chief of each province who actually protected the villagers. They repelled invaders from other lands seeking territory and resources, fought off pirates who attacked settlements, defended people against damage from natural disasters, and held a number of ceremonies to purify evil spirits that arose throughout the land. These included rituals to calm fallen gods that spread misfortune.
The Kaizaka March that Misao had mentioned earlier was one of those ceremonies. The ritual was performed by marching around with a paper lantern at a set location. It sounded simple when put into words, but it was much more complicated than that.
The Kaizaka March is far and away the scariest ceremony I’ve been asked to perform.
Ceremonies were not just limited to Kaki Province—they were held frequently in other lands as well. Now that she thought about it, they had similarities to the many festivals held throughout Japan, but they were very different in nature. You weren’t going to see anything fun like night stalls or fireworks at a ceremony in Kaki Province.
“Lord Kuroashi, do you know the origins of the Kaizaka March? All I know is that it’s a ritual to soothe a fallen god,” Yae said, looking down at Kuroashi as she plucked loquat fruits from a tree she found along the road.
Kuroashi was a beast who Yae had encountered many years ago when she performed the Kaizaka March for the first time. She wasn’t sure of the reason, but ever since then, he appeared at unexpected times and hung around her.
Even after nearly a decade, she was unsure if he was a simple spirit, a divine beast…or maybe even some kind of divine messenger. That reminded her, when she first met him, he was enshrouded in an eerie and scary aura reminiscent of a monster. That aura had thinned gradually over the years, and it felt like he had regained his sense of reason as it did so.
“I wish you could speak, Lord Kuroashi… We get along so well now, it’s a shame I can’t know what you’re thinking,” Yae said regretfully, holding down her long hair as it blew about in the wind. It kept flapping in her face, and she regretted not tying it back with a cord.
Yae’s black hair extended down to her waist. The moisture in the air on rainy days caused it to swell, and dry weather made it expand like a clump of seaweed; it was a real pain. She often wished she could tell her hair to just chill out.
“I want to talk with you, Lord Kuroashi. Do you want to spend some time practicing the human tongue?” she asked with an encouraging smile and raised fists, but Kuroashi just looked at her coldly.
This large tiger was very intelligent, even by human standards. He clearly understood Yae’s words even without being able to speak.
“Oh, come on… That’s the look of a tiger who wouldn’t want to speak to me even if he could. I’m offended… You should be nicer to me.” She continued to speak fruitlessly to the indifferent Kuroashi until she arrived at her house.
Yae’s home was located in the middle of a terraced field. The outside was a whiskey bottle that was covered in vines and moss. That wasn’t some metaphor—it was literally a bottle from a famous Japanese whiskey brand enlarged to the size of a house. The bottle was an elongated oval shape with a flat silhouette. Yae had enjoyed this whiskey on occasion in her previous life. Her favorite snacks to eat with it were vegetable sticks and blue cheese. Cheese and beer existed in this world as well, but they tasted very different from how Yae remembered them.
What a fantastical sight…, she thought, admiring it. But she also felt a faint loneliness. Yae was still much more familiar with her previous world and the things in it. That feeling hadn’t faded at all. This world isn’t necessarily in an entirely different dimension, though.
Yae guessed that this world was either Japan’s ancient past or one of its possible distant futures, and that conjecture was directly related to this kind of fantastical sight. Items like beer bottles, eating utensils, cars, power poles, and other everyday objects from her previous world could be found abandoned all throughout the land of Kaki Province. The people of this world called these items mysteriums.
Most mysteriums had been enlarged to the size of dinosaurs. Some items saw a bigger change in size than others, and the laws that determined the degree to which they grew were unclear. Kaki Province was said to have an especially large amount of mysteriums. As a result, some people, especially those born as uroko like Yae, would gladly use mysteriums that were empty on the inside as homes or storehouses. It was quite convenient. The majority of mysteriums were familiar items from their past lives, so uroko weren’t wary of them like other people were. Yae had never been outside of Izumo, but she figured these kinds of relics could be found everywhere.
But suddenly, a thought occurred to Yae that ran contrary to her theory about a past or future Japan. Maybe this was a totally different dimension, but just like how oceans and rivers carried illegally dumped trash to faraway places, things from Japan occasionally crossed a barrier and ended up flowing here. That wasn’t impossible.
It doesn’t really matter which is true… I can’t return to my original world anyway. No matter how much she missed it, she had accepted that she would never be able to return. She understood that in her heart. Yae sighed deeply, and Kuroashi looked up at her with a dubious expression.
The “Whiskey House” Yae had chosen for her home was made of glass, and a large portion of the bottle’s neck was missing. The top half of it was wrapped in dense vines. The body of the bottle was covered in cracks, and small scratches accumulated with the passage of time, creating a white cloudiness that made it impossible to see through from the outside. She didn’t have to worry about the bottle breaking, either—growing to this size had naturally made it thicker, giving it the impact resistance of tempered glass. And she had packed the missing portion of the neck with building stones.
Yae entered the house. She had fitted out a part where there was a hole and installed a wooden door there. The interior was long and elliptical, just like the shape of the bottle. She had about thirty-three square meters of space.
The loosely curving wall was covered with handmade tiles. She had wooden shelves and a dresser. She had put boards across the floor to make it flat. Thick fabrics were spread out on the floor in the center, on top of which was a crescent-shaped hammock that she used as her bed.
Through a folding door on the left side of the house was a stove and a small water well with a hand pump. She had removed the glass on the bottom of the bottle before placing boards over that part of the floor, so it was a level lower than her living space. Her privy and bathroom were located farther back on the other side, behind a partition.
Kuroashi walked in as if he owned the place and sprawled out on a floor cushion Yae had finished knitting the other day.
“Wait, Lord Kuroashi. We need to clean the mud off your paws.”