/jp/ - Otaku Culture

The girl—woman? Child…?—in the mirror stares back at me with owlish eyes and a stiff posture, sitting down like a gingerbread biscuit that’d stayed too long in the oven. Her rare skin is white as dough, and, unlike the usual red and white condiments, the baker has used blue and white for her clothes, starry patterns and half-done constellations on the blue of her skirt and the middle of the sleeveless shirt, her detached sleeves also embroidered in cosmic over deep lazuli. Shoes of black and high socks of white majorly stood out, hair undone with the lack of a clover hairpin and the Hakurei bands… Change, inevitable.

A confusing feeling echoed inside as I gazed at the uniform of the Moriyan shrine gripping to my flesh—a nearly perfect fit. Irony sears the exposed skin with how wrong and… right this feels.

The Hakurei God’s blessing resonates inside of me—I share it with Youkai of all things—and the malnourished seed of Mima’s faith, small yet existent, writhes… and here I am, wearing another Goddesses outfit. Kanako touches her chin as she measures me up for the umpteenth time, making sure nothing was out of place and I was presentable, a contrast compared to how mighty she displayed herself around the other young mikos. But that’s expected. Those mikos wear their emotions on their sleeves—Sanae is busy taking care of them and their traumas, as Suwako-sama told me before she left to attend some type of meeting she didn't elaborate on with a tengu—but I… “Something wrong, my girl?” Kanako-sama asks, hands resting on my shoulders as she stands behind me, the reflection on the mirror a sobering view: she towers over me both in width, stature and poise, incarnate fury of the sky, yet with a venerable truth in her red eyes. Everything ‘her’ is enough to make one hold their breaths to the point it burns… and burn it does, the Whispering Decay enveloping my taste buds with the remembrance of me laid on the ground and about to be butchered like a pig.

I feel small. “I-It’s nothing, Kanako-sama.” She doesn’t buy my muttered words. Aunn, a little ways behind, watched the exchange with a frown while some dolls replicated Kanako-sama’s movements on her wild mane of green.

She paces away, towards the mountain of neatly organized clothes and accessories of all types—stars spanning the whole rainbow, clips, pins, and barrettes. An entire room dedicated to beautifying the face and features… If I had been born from Sanae, I doubt this feeling of non-belonging would be pestering me—and breathes. “If you don’t feel comfortable in my shrine’s outfit, I can get you something else.” There’s an edge to that voice—the same edge's been there since she came to fetch me from ‘my’ room, a gaze I’ve seen my entire life and can easily recognize.

She's withholding a secret.

“No, it’s fine; I just… am thinking about what I’ll do next.”

Kanako-sama pauses briefly, silence besides the dolls’ erratic and excited movements growing, but one that lasts until she returns with a—a-a pink headband?! A shock-pink laden with imagery of flowers and a cartoonish white cat, probably from the Outside World. “Any ideas in this cute little head of yours? Though you should stay around here to rest from the festival.” She speaks lightheartedly, posing the pink abomination over my forehead; her eyes squint, and, gladly, before I can say one word, she tosses it away and goes to fetch something else… hopefully something more tasteful.

But that doesn’t matter. An idea born from the festering wound in my heart—even rubbish can grow life, no matter if such life is mold—swirls in my head, spiky in execution and brimming with guilt like an overflowing basin, yet… It’s something I need—must—do. Kanako-sama returns and even before the words leave me, her gentle digits combing my hair to test if the pin she holds would suit, I can see her reflected eyes narrowing.

No sense in hiding; she knows something’s up.

My hands press firmly on the white skirt, heart throbs, and I say with a soft tremble: “I want to visit Kasen-nee.”

The effect is immediate, and the view of a true goddess stiffening like a statue is… disturbing. I knew it’d be bad from the moment the idea popped up, loaded with guilt and stark mental imagery of lust, but the way she just stops, mirrored eyes widening for but a moment before squinting into a knife’s edge, cold and unfeeling—or maybe feeling too much—makes my stomach churn with dread and a desire to throw up, the justification unable to leave me as, before any of us could say anything, Aunn yelled, stressed: “W-What?! Why?!”

“Yes, Hana—why exactly would you want to visit our enemy?” There’s another question hidden beneath the surface of her intonation, and I swallowed dryly the jarring, exhaustive rage that sprung up: why do I need to explain myself to her?

Such rage shut down with the mere sound of ‘enemy’.

Kasen-nee isn’t an enemy! She’s a victim to all this, like Father and me…

… Someone I took advantage of and raped.