Ballet on Glass

Respects

**

I could've sworn I saw the figure move.

I mean, my eyes may have landed on it for a mini-second, but I know what I saw.

It moved. The statue moved.

Or something behind it did.

I could swear it.

"Anna, aren't you coming?"

I hesitantly took my eyes off the statue and hurried after Momoko, both of us walking side by side to the torii gate of the Isonokami Shrine.

Momoko, a half-Japanese 23 year old that she was, was very keen on paying her respects to Shinto deities. Her father, Mr Asano, made sure she had done that since she was old enough to take instructions. He never forced her though, seeing as she always did it joyfully. Every single time.

Getting to the gate, Momoko bowed deeply and I mirrored the action beside her. As we began walking the narrow pathway to the side of the entrance where a small spring was situated, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Startled, I turned to take a look at the intrusive person, but found no one behind me.

Tiny, sand-sized goosebumps coated my forearm, and I rubbed them away while Momoko signalled me towards the spring.

"Okay. So what's we're about to do is called chouzuya. It's to purify your mouth and hands before visiting the gods."

"Sounds like a lot of unnecessary work," I say absentmindedly, my hands still working to dispel the goosebumps and a sudden chill in the air.

Momoko frowned and stared at me. "Focus, Anna. This is far from a joke. One wrong move and the gods will mark you."

My Christian mother would laugh at that. She'd first bash Momoko for ever believing there is more than one God. Then she'd begin to explain with a billion and one reasons why the practice of god worship is occultic.

I would laugh too...because Mum is an even bigger idiot for condemning her.

It wasn't like she was any better.

Shaking off the chill and the unsettling feeling away, I proceeded to do the chouzuya with Momoko. We got to the main hall and she rang the big, loud bell once. The trees surrounding us began swaying, their leaves dancing quite frantically from side to side.

"Ring it, then put a 5-yen coin in there."

And I did as she instructed.

Immediately after, I felt the hand on me again.

I jumped and searched frantically behind me, and surprise, surprise, there was nothing.

Momoko gave me a concerned look, and she probably thought I was getting jittery because of guilt. She hadn't wanted me to come on this trip with her because of how irritating my mother could get about religion. I insisted anyway.

I pat Momoko on her arm and smiled reassuringly. "I'm fine. Just the breeze, is all."

Momoko nodded. "We're almost done anyway."

She and I simultaneously performed the nirei nihakushu ichirei, two bows, two claps and one bow. We both said silent prayers too, but as Momoko bent her head slightly and tabled her matters before the gods, I scrunched my brows and wondered what on earth kept touching me.

Then as if it felt my confliction, the hand pressed against my shoulders. I tried not to shoot up and look behind me, and the presence took my non-panicked state as a sign to continue.

Thick, stump-like fingers with snake scales caught my eye from my periphery, and my breathing increased rapidly. A cockroach then ran hysterically over the chubby hands and settled right on a fingertip, its antennae facing me.

"Anna!"

I turned with tears in my eyes, and Momoko looked at me with eyebrows pulled low over her eyes in a frown. The frown disappeared once she noticed my disheveled state. Immediately, she told me to wrap up my prayer, something I couldn't even start in the first place, and we both rushed out the gate.

Just as we were bowing once again to the torii gate, I saw the hand on the bark of a large tree to my right.

But it wasn't just the hands this time.

The atrocity showed part of its face, white as death with a singular long dash right beneath its left eye. The cockroach ran over the scar as if trying to emphasise it.

When its blue, scaly lips began moving, all the hairs on my body stood the second I made out what it was saying.

A-N-N-A.