COMMON SENSE [常識]

MIKO [巫女]

【 A Miko is a shrine maiden at a Shinto shrine: it is often her job to keep a shrine clean and to sell charms as well as to aid Shinto priests during certain ceremonies. Miko also dance special ceremonial dances, and offer fortune telling. They must be unmarried virgins; however, if they wish, they can marry and become priestesses themselves. Miko are often younger relatives of Shinto priests, such as daughters or granddaughters. 】

...

For what it's worth, you had tried to convince your grandfather that the Shrine will go up in flames if you were to leave, but he was not buying it, or finding your humour all that amusing. All this talk of Kawakami's and their hidden power – an intimate and close relationship with the realm behind the veil – and here you are being pushed into the limelight, suddenly granted the task of exposing centuries worth of secrets. You're unsure what grandfather's goal is here, and frankly, you're too livid to find out. Not that he would tell you in the first place, anyway. His perpetually calm and collected manner had almost driven you insane a few times already, and to continue sitting by the dinner table and having to hear another "(Name), the Academy is most gracious to accept you. You should be grateful." is just too much to stomach.

Instead, you sit on the patio and marvel at the ink sky and thousands of stars, like shattered glass, glimmering within it. The night is endless and warm – end of spring always brings insufferable heatwaves – and you hug your knees and pull them closer to your body. A lifetime of working as a supplementary priestess and performing tasks from scrubbing the entire Shrine spotless to sacred cleansing of various objects; a lifetime of perfecting the kagura dance and telling futures for love-sick high schoolers; a lifetime of wearing nothing but a white kosode and red hakama and never needing to step out of the sacred grounds. All, seemingly, for nothing. Years of training to become a true priestess – annulled, now that you must attend school; your desperate wish to continue the Kawakami legacy and make your parents proud – destroyed, for if you wanted to reach your full potential, you'd stay here and study the secrets texts.

You feel so small against the vast sky, against the massive Shrine and the dark woods surrounding it.

You wonder what your mother and father would say, if they were here. You wonder if they still roam in the Shrine, watching over you silently, helplessly, unable to reassure you. You wonder if they approve of grandfather's plan to send you off and make you a hero instead of a priestess.

They had passed when you were too young to remember them. Pictures are the only thing proving their existence, old, dulled photographs of strangers and a baby in their arms, smiling, blissfully unaware of their grim fate. The greatest mediums to ever live snuffed out like candle light. In their wake they left only tangible emptiness and nothing more.

Soft breeze kisses the back of your neck and you don't think you have ever felt so absolutely alone. Opulent tears gather at the corners of your eyes, pain shooting through your heart like a needle. You hug tighter, desperate to be swallowed away.

日 —afternoon

You hate Musutafu. You have been here for a little less than a few hours and you already despise it with your whole being. It's loud, it's full of people, villains and heroes alike randomly show up to perform like it's the Kabuki theatre, and the lack of nature is simply appalling. Thank the Kamis, Sakayama is only an hour away, and while the commute via train is strenuous, you will endure it all the way till graduation. You refuse to spend a second longer here than needed.

Perhaps you have been a bit overdramatic with your self-titled "kicking out the Shrine", because you weren't kicked out and your duties would continue only with the added stress of homework, training, and social-life. You were tutored privately your whole life, and your only friends were other miko working for the Shrine because: one, you all had shared goals and interests, and two, the world outside the Shrine's gate left little to be desired, or so you had heard.