The wedding ceremony was held in the main hall, at the center of the grand chamber.
The officiating priest, clad in a dark indigo kariginu, stepped slowly from the side door of the altar, a cypress fan in hand. Behind him followed four assistant priests bearing ritual batons, and eight white-robed shrine maidens carrying offering vessels.
The priest first performed the standard two bows, two claps, and one bow before the ancestral tablets of the Toshiyuki family. Then he turned, an oonusa hung with strips of white paper in hand, and began the first rite of the Shinto wedding ceremony: the Purification Rite.
Clear purification words flowed slowly through the hall of worship, accompanied by the ringing of bronze bells the shrine maidens shook — meant to sweep away every impurity and misfortune clinging to those present, and to pray for the ceremony's smooth passage.
Igarashi Sakuko and Amamiya Rin stood off to one side, watching Hinako Shimizu and Tsuneki Hisayuki before the altar. Igarashi Sakuko gave Amamiya Rin's sleeve a gentle tug.
"Did you see it? On Hinako, that..."
Igarashi Sakuko asked, her voice lowered, careful.
Amamiya Rin shook his head.
He didn't share Igarashi Sakuko's spirit-sight. To his eyes, Hinako Shimizu and Tsuneki Hisayuki looked perfectly ordinary.
"I saw it earlier — Hinako's face carries an ill omen, even on her wedding day. Her shadow's far too dark under the sunlight. That kind of deep shadow easily draws in ill fortune. I suspect... Hinako's already been possessed."
Igarashi Sakuko said, her expression grave, voice hushed.
"Possessed? By what?"
"It should be... the sacred tree?"
Igarashi Sakuko didn't sound entirely certain herself.
"Hmph! This isn't some detective game. Who cares what it is — see an enemy, just steamroll straight through it."
An impatient voice cut in beside them. Flesh-Mod Tomie stood at Amamiya Rin's right, arms crossed over her chest, her brow furrowed into deep creases. Her gaze swept past Amamiya Rin's body and landed on Igarashi Sakuko, carrying a trace of disdain and displeasure.
Igarashi Sakuko flinched, shrinking her neck timidly, her gaze skittering away — she didn't dare look Flesh-Mod Tomie in the eye.
Heaven only knew what Flesh-Mod Tomie looked like through her eyes.
"You're not wrong, exactly. But our first priority is figuring out how many humans are here, and how many hinin."
Amamiya Rin said, his expression unchanged, tone flat.
"Roughly seventy percent of the guests are hinin, thirty percent human. Ninety percent of the Toshiyuki family's servants and side-branch members are human, but most of the adult members of the cadet branches aren't human at all."
Mara Tomie stood soundlessly behind Amamiya Rin, ink-black hair spilling over her shoulders, the corners of her lips curved into a gentle, tender smile.
Igarashi Sakuko, still carefully gripping Amamiya Rin's sleeve, froze at the sudden voice from behind them and turned her head on reflex.
That single glance made her suck in a sharp breath, her fingertips digging hard into her palms.
In her eyes, a pair of jet-black demonic horns rose from the woman's head, coiled with winding crimson patterns, their bases fixed with gilded rings from which long golden tassels cascaded down her shoulders. Ink-black hair streaked with deep violet spread out like a raging tide, and a single vivid vermilion mark blazed between her brows.
Her face, breathtakingly beautiful, radiated a bewitching allure that could steal a soul at a glance. Her gilded eyes curved into crescents, a faint blush tinting their corners. Yet within that smiling gaze there was no trace of human warmth — only bottomless desire, obsession, and unyielding fixation.
Every thread of feeling she gave off carried a temptation that could drag a man into an eternal sea of lust, like an abyss that chose its prey and devoured it whole — wrapped, infuriatingly, in the most exquisite tenderness, so that even knowing the danger, one couldn't help but sink.
And yet, looking directly into those eyes, one could glimpse, deep within, a lucid calm utterly indifferent to a thousand lifetimes' worth of birth and death — as though she dwelled at the highest of all heights, looking down upon every good and evil, every love and hate, every life and death in the world. To her, all of it was nothing but dust, gone in an instant.
"Igarashi?"
Amamiya Rin's voice sounded at Igarashi Sakuko's ear, carrying a deep, resonant power — like the tolling of a bell in some ancient mountain temple, or the vast morning light breaking through endless darkness — driving straight into her scattering consciousness.
Igarashi Sakuko shuddered violently, as if wrenching herself free from drowning, gasping in great heaving breaths. Cold sweat ran down her forehead and cheeks, and the cloth across her back was already soaked through.
Almost by instinct she pressed herself against Amamiya Rin's side, hiding most of her body behind him, daring to show only half her face.
Igarashi Sakuko wasn't unworldly. Ukanomitama-no-Kami, the fox spirit, the sacred tree — none of these were ordinary spirits or gods. Even set against the ranks of Takamagahara, they counted among the truly formidable. But the woman before her now — the feeling she gave off was even more terrifying than the fox spirit!
"Don't just pop up out of nowhere and scare people. Come to think of it, what's going on with you? Did you learn some kind of invisibility trick?"
Flesh-Mod Tomie shot Mara Tomie a sidelong glance, impatience nearly spilling out of her voice.
"I didn't want anyone but Rin bothering me, so I used a little Hypnosis trick to lower my presence."
Mara Tomie's voice was soft and gentle, every word steeped in tender affection for Amamiya Rin.
"You — !"
The corner of Flesh-Mod Tomie's eye twitched. To think she could pull off something like that!
Amamiya Rin turned, facing Mara Tomie now standing right beside him, his expression as unruffled as ever.
"Did you learn anything?"
Mara Tomie's brief, mysterious disappearance earlier had been exactly this — using her technique to lower her presence, she'd gone off to gather information for Amamiya Rin, and to sort out how many humans here could be spared, how many hinin could simply be killed, and how many hinin might still be worth using.
"Personally, I don't think it'd be any great loss to wipe out everyone here, but by Rin's judgment, a fair portion of them still fall within the bounds of 'human.'"
Mara Tomie took half a step forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with Amamiya Rin, her gaze drifting idly over Hinako Shimizu, who stood bowed before the altar receiving her purification. Her voice was soft, like a lover's whisper against the ear.
"And beyond the ceremony you see on the surface, this wedding has another stage — a secret rite held within the Toshiyuki family's sacred domain. They peel off the bride's face, fit her with a fox mask, sever her right arm, graft on a fox's arm bone in its place, and brand the family crest into her back over the heart. Only then is the bride considered truly married into the Toshiyuki family."
"Hm?"
Even Amamiya Rin was startled.
This was a wedding? Was he sure it wasn't torture? Skinning, amputation, branding — what heavenly law had the brides of the Toshiyuki family broken? Was this some kind of joke?
"What are you talking about?! Hinako... Hinako's going to go through that?"
Igarashi Sakuko's eyes went wide, her face draining pale, her voice rising several degrees without her meaning it to.
She hadn't been able to control her volume, her startled question pitched noticeably higher than her usual voice — and it landed right in the lull between the purification words and the fading echo of the bells, standing out oddly in the hall of worship.
The guests nearby turned toward the sound. Several noble ladies close by frowned, covering their lips as they shot reproachful looks, clearly displeased that someone had spoken out of turn during so solemn a ceremony. A few men holding wine cups at a neighboring table broke off their murmured conversation, glancing over with open disdain.
Seated in the front row, Tsuneki Maaya had been keeping an eye on Amamiya Rin's side of the hall all along, and that raised voice reached her ears at once.
Her carefully drawn brows knit together immediately, her fingers tightening around her folding fan. The proper, composed smile she'd been wearing darkened, anger churning in her eyes.
Across several rows of guests, she glared at Igarashi Sakuko standing beside Amamiya Rin.
That country girl, who didn't know her place, actually daring to make a scene at the young master's wedding — if she'd known this would happen, she should've had the deranged little thing thrown out earlier.
Hinako Shimizu, still bowed before the altar receiving her purification, also caught that familiar voice.
Already unsettled, she was especially sensitive to that voice — the voice of the girl who'd borrowed 500 yen from her ten years ago and never paid it back. Her body, stiff as a puppet's until now, trembled almost imperceptibly.
Back then, for the already poor Shimizu family, for her, 500 yen had been no small sum. But no matter how many times she'd asked, that Sakuko never paid her back.
The stares coming from every direction pricked at her like fine needles, and Igarashi Sakuko went rigid all over.
She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth, snapping her mouth shut and swallowing the rest back down her throat, scrambling to shrink behind Amamiya Rin, hiding most of her body behind his back.
She might seem lively enough when talking with Amamiya Rin, but her autism wasn't something to joke about — she genuinely couldn't handle stares weighted with negative feeling.
Amamiya Rin, sensing the girl trembling behind him, shifted his body slightly to one side without any outward change, blocking most of the incoming stares. He lifted his eyes and swept them across the hall, meeting the crowd's gazes with a calm, steady look of his own.
People instinctively looked away from his eyes.
They couldn't have said why, exactly — they only felt that the young man standing there resembled some ancient, solemn Buddha statue, and it left them without the slightest urge to treat him lightly.
The guests all withdrew their stares and turned their attention back to the ceremony, as if the small interruption had never happened at all.
Igarashi Sakuko, huddled behind Amamiya Rin, carefully peeked her head out and found that all the stares that had set her skin crawling had vanished. Only then did she let out a breath of relief.
She looked up at Amamiya Rin's back — broad and reassuring, like a father's. No! Her own father, who'd abandoned the shrine to become an office worker, was nowhere near this magnificent. This was a giant — a Giant of Light, protecting humankind!
Igarashi Sakuko's eyes, as she looked at Amamiya Rin, brimmed with admiration and closeness, and for the moment she forgot the chaos of a moment ago entirely.
"What exactly is the situation?"
Amamiya Rin turned back and asked Mara Tomie in a low voice.
"A few elders from the cadet branches mentioned it to me while we were talking. The Toshiyuki family has a sacred domain called Tenzui. The Shinto ceremony out here is just for outsiders to see — the real wedding rite takes place within the sacred domain. That domain seems to be some kind of otherworld, a hidden world set apart from this one — only spirit and soul can enter it. So even if her face is peeled off, her arm severed, and the family crest branded on her, her physical body in the real world won't change at all... only her spirit will."
Mara Tomie explained what she'd learned to Amamiya Rin.
With a skill like Hypnosis, secrets that would otherwise take ages to piece together one by one became easy things to obtain.
"I thought this outing was just about wiping out hinin. I didn't expect it to be this serious a matter. A mere second-rate family, and yet they have an otherworld all their own?"
Amamiya Rin said, taken aback.
He'd come because of the human-skin furniture and clothing at that earlier banquet, intending to hunt down and kill every participant one by one. He hadn't expected the very first target to be of this magnitude.
Peeling off faces, though? So they actually had that kind of tradition — no wonder they'd taken part in a banquet like that.
"For the Toshiyuki family, it's merely a symbolic ceremony, marking the bride's true entry into the family. But of course, most of the Toshiyuki clan treat it as an entertaining show, each one of them looking forward to watching the bride writhe in agony."
Mara Tomie let out a soft laugh, a trace of idle mockery drifting through her eyes.
Amamiya Rin's expression darkened slightly.
So the Toshiyuki family, tied as they were to that human-skin banquet, were no benevolent family after all.
"But Tsuneki Maaya never mentioned any of this to me?"
"Because she's nothing but a decoration — a daughter who'll be married off sooner or later. Her parents and elder brother are already dead, and she and her sister were once cursed and nearly died themselves. In a family where women hold no real standing, she — along with the other women, and the cadet branches — has no right to set foot in the sacred domain."
Mara Tomie didn't bother slandering Tsuneki Maaya, who'd been clinging to Amamiya Rin earlier — she simply said it in a dismissive tone.
"And even those who do enter and leave the sacred domain, most of them don't get to keep their memories of it. Only clan members recognized by the fox spirit have that privilege."
"I see. Anything else?"
Amamiya Rin, looking thoughtful, pressed Mara Tomie further.
"That's all those men knew. As for the fox spirit, the sacrifice — the deeper secrets are things they only half-understood themselves. If you want to know more, you'll have to find the head of the Toshiyuki family."
Mara Tomie shook her head, saying it plainly.
"Enough talk. We're not here to solve a mystery — do we really need to know all that? When do we move? Just charge in, wipe out that fox spirit and every last piece of Toshiyuki trash, then save the bride. Done."
Flesh-Mod Tomie, already impatient from listening, clenched her fists, knuckles cracking softly.
"Honestly, even if you want to fight, don't you need to know where the enemy actually is first? Act rashly and you'll just be flailing around like a headless fly."
Watching Flesh-Mod Tomie, Mara Tomie shook her head slightly, feigning disappointment as she spoke.
That look on her face — like she was staring at someone dim-witted — set Flesh-Mod Tomie's temper flaring instantly.
Just then, the last clear ring of the bronze bells faded into silence. The priest, cypress fan in hand, bowed and announced in a loud, clear voice that the purification rites were complete.
"Here it comes."
Mara Tomie's expression turned serious, and she stopped needling Flesh-Mod Tomie.
Amamiya Rin's expression turned serious as well.
Except for a few, most people didn't notice it — within the warm golden halo of the candlelight, a nearly transparent mist was beginning to drift.
It was too faint, mingling with the flickering candlelight and the curling incense smoke, like nothing more than a shadow cast by the swaying flames — even the guests in the front row failed to notice it.
"Wait! Mr. Amamiya! Something feels...!"
Igarashi Sakuko, still gripping Amamiya Rin's sleeve, went rigid all over. Her spirit-sight had caught wind of something wrong too — in her eyes, capable of seeing through to the truth of things, the once-clear scene of the worship hall was becoming veiled in a hazy, gray shadow.
The world was beginning to overlap.
____
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