Episode 1 Beneath the Spring Light, the Sleeping Shrine Scene I — Dawn: The Kagura Estate
Spring, Taishō 14 (1925).
Cherry blossoms drifted through the air.
But these were not blossoms falling over city streets. They descended instead upon a vast private estate, over gardens so expansive that their far edge seemed to vanish from sight.
The main residence of the Kagura family—situated on the uplands of Tokyo's Yamanote outskirts—could hardly be called a mere residence at all. A three-story Western-style main house. Two traditional Japanese annexes. A teahouse. A separate library wing. And, farther in, an inner garden so secluded that human hands scarcely seemed to reach it. There were more than forty servants in service, along with dedicated gardeners, and a fountain imported from the West sent water glittering into the morning light.
Even among the grand mansions of the great zaibatsu families that had risen after the Meiji Restoration, this house belonged to another order entirely. It was not merely wealthy.
It was something closer to a fortress—built not simply to display power, but to guard something.
At the deepest end of that immense estate, in one of the Japanese annexes, there was a room.
A pale dawn seeped through the shōji screens.
Within a futon spread across the tatami, a boy opened his eyes.
Kagura Makoto. Sixteen years old.
The collar of his sleepwear had come slightly loose, revealing the fine line of his collarbone. Dark black hair lay scattered across his forehead, and his eyes, still half-shadowed by sleep, were deep and quiet.
They were not the sort of eyes one expected in a boy his age.
They were too clear—so clear, in fact, that it became difficult to tell what they were reflecting at all.
Makoto lay still for a while, gazing up at the ceiling in silence.
The estate was quiet.
It was always quiet.
Though there were more than forty servants on the grounds, none came to this annex at such an hour. That was the rule. Until the young master rang the bell himself, no one was permitted to enter this room.
Makoto sat up and slid the shōji open.
The garden stretched before him.
Cherry petals drifted through the morning mist. Beneath them, koi moved lazily across the pond, and farther off, the outline of the Western main house shimmered faintly through the haze.
It was beautiful.
Yet there was no admiration on Makoto's face. He saw this scene every day.
And he knew that within all this beauty, there was no one here but himself.
His parents were absent.
The head of the Kagura family was Kagura Kyōichirō. His wife was Kagura Chizuru.
The world seemed to know a great deal about the two of them—and at the same time, nothing at all.
What was known was this: the Kagura family was an old and distinguished house, one whose lineage stretched back to before Meiji. After the Restoration, under Kyōichirō, the family had forged direct ties with foreign capital in Britain, France, and Germany. London bankers knew his name. Parisian diplomats were said to correspond with him. Berlin industrialists in the arms trade were rumored to have made private arrangements with him.
Even within Japan, the great financial houses—Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo—did not speak lightly of the Kaguras. If powerful political figures sought a meeting with Kagura Kyōichirō, he granted only one a month.
And only if he wished to.
Yet the father Makoto knew was simply a man who came home three or four times a year, then shut himself away in his study.
His mother was little different.
She would occasionally return, stroke his hair once, smile at him, and disappear again.
There had been love in that smile. Of that, he had never doubted.
And yet, from the time he was small, he had sensed that behind it there was something else—something left unsaid.
He had asked once, when he was twelve.
"What is it that Father does?"
Kyōichirō had looked at him for a long moment, then answered:
"When the time comes for you to know, you will know."
After that, Makoto never asked again.
But neither did he ever forget.
That fleeting thing in his father's eyes that day—was it sorrow? Guilt? Or fear?
Even now, Makoto had no answer.
Scene II — Into the Mountain: The Forgotten Shrine
There was no school today.
Makoto finished breakfast: Western-style toast, jam, tea, boiled eggs—the modern tastes of the Taishō era had reached even this household.
He took a sip of tea and said to the servant beside him,
"I'm going out."
"Where will you be going, young master?"
"For a walk."
That was all.
The servants did not ask further questions.
Everyone in the estate knew that the young master sometimes vanished alone for hours at a time. But no one knew where he went. Or perhaps more accurately—they chose not to know.
The Kagura household had its unspoken rules.
Idle curiosity was not a trait that allowed one to survive here.
Makoto slipped out through a small gate at the rear of the estate.
The forest began there.
The Kagura lands were not limited to the residence itself. The entire woodland rising behind it belonged to the family. Land that did not appear on maps. It was even said that when the Meiji government conducted its land surveys, this entire district had been marked simply as: Survey Unnecessary.
Makoto climbed the mountain path.
There was no paving. Only stone, roots, and earth. The deeper one went into the woods, the thinner the light became. An ordinary person would have grown weary after thirty minutes, and after an hour would likely have turned back.
But Makoto did not dislike this path.
No—he liked it.
The deeper the forest became, the more the noise inside his head began to fade.
The looks he received at school.The whispers about his family.His father's and mother's constant absence.The strange reserve hidden beneath the servants' excessive courtesy.
The moment he entered the woods, all of it dissolved like thin mist.
After about an hour, he found the mouth of a cave between two rocks.
It was narrow—barely wide enough for a grown adult to squeeze through.
But once inside, the space opened.
There, within a natural hollow in the mountain, stood a shrine.
It was small. A single torii gate. A single worship hall.
That was all.
And yet, something about it was strange.
This place had clearly been built centuries ago—perhaps even earlier—and yet not a trace of moss clung to the torii. The wood of the shrine had not rotted. The sacred rope was unfrayed. It was as though time alone had passed this place by.
Makoto did not know what deity was enshrined there.
There was no record of it in the family documents.
He had once asked his father.
And once again, the answer had been the same.
"When the time comes for you to know..."
Nothing more.
Makoto stood before the shrine and brought his hands together.
He was not praying for anything.
He simply closed his eyes.
And then—he felt it.
Something filled this place.
It was not sound.It was not wind.And yet it was undeniably there.
A stillness that wrapped itself around his whole body, like sinking beneath deep water. His heartbeat slowed. His breathing deepened. His mind became clear.
Makoto had no name for this sensation.
He only knew that he had felt nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
And that every time he came here, the person who returned was, in some slight and indefinable way, different from the one who had arrived.
He sat there for a while.
A shaft of light descended through a crack in the ceiling of the cave and fell across the torii. Dust motes drifted slowly within it.
Makoto watched them for a long time.
Then he rose.
"...I should head back."
There was school tomorrow.
Scene III — Imperial Academy: A Gilded Cage
The next morning.
Imperial Academy.
The most prestigious school in Tokyo.
Its gates opened only to the children of the ruling classes—political dynasties, financial elites, military households, the great academic families of the empire.
Even the school gate itself was different: wrought iron in Western style, engraved with family crests. The grounds were modeled after European boarding schools. Red brick buildings, arched windows, a clock tower rising high above them.
It was the essence of Taishō modernity.
The students all wore the same black gakuran uniforms with brass buttons.
But what they wore beneath them—the shirts, the shoes, the watches, the fountain pens—spoke plainly of their lineage.
Here, identical uniforms did not mean equal rank.
Makoto passed through the gate.
At once, the atmosphere shifted.
You could not see it, but you could feel it.
The students' gazes gathered on him all at once. Murmurs spread like a ripple.
"That's Kagura.""He's alone again today...""What does that family even do? My father says he doesn't really know.""Don't talk about them so lightly. Better not to."
Makoto heard all of it.
He simply did not react.
These looks were familiar to him: curiosity, reverence, envy, fear.
When he was younger, they had unsettled him. Now he thought of them as little more than wind—something that brushed past and disappeared.
He walked down the corridor.
The brass buttons of his uniform glinted in the morning sun.
His uniform was the same as everyone else's.
Yet when a different person wore the same clothes, they did not look the same. His build was slender and long, his posture perfectly straight, his clothing immaculate.
And above all—his face.
Even in an all-boys' academy, it was enough to make people pause.
He was popular, certainly.
But not in the way that invited closeness.
He was admired from a distance.
Beautiful in a way that made approach feel impossible.
The students looked at him with admiration and awe, yet at the same time kept an instinctive distance. They could not have explained why.
He simply seemed like someone one ought not to step too near.
Someone who shone—and yet whose light was cold.
Makoto entered the classroom and took his seat.
By the window. Last row. A place bathed in sunlight.
It was the seat he had chosen for himself.
And no one ever tried to take it.
Scene IV — Truth Before the Blackboard
Second period: mathematics.
At the front of the classroom stood Professor Mori.
A graduate of the Imperial University and a scholar who had studied in Europe, he was known as one of the most demanding teachers in the academy. The students feared him. He had sharp eyes, silver-rimmed spectacles, and a severe, exacting air. In all the years since the school's founding, only a handful of students had ever received praise from him.
Professor Mori turned to the blackboard and began writing.
The chalk scraped on and on.
The problem spread across half the board.
One by one, the students' faces tightened.
This was no ordinary mathematics question. It was an applied problem in analysis—something closer to graduate-level work than anything suited to secondary students. Mori assigned such problems for one reason alone:
To teach them not to be arrogant. To remind them that no matter how illustrious their family names, before knowledge itself they were powerless.
Silence descended over the classroom.
"This is impossible...""Isn't this university material?""He's doing it again..."
A few quiet sighs. Heads lowered.
Professor Mori swept his gaze slowly across the room.
Exactly as expected.
No one raised a hand.
The corner of his mouth moved ever so slightly—not in satisfaction, but in confirmation.
So this, then, was their limit.
And then—
His gaze stopped.
At the very back of the room. By the window. A boy seated in the sunlight.
"Kagura."
The classroom froze.
Every eye turned toward Makoto.
"Come to the front and solve it."
Whispers broke out at once.
"What—him?""Even Kagura can't solve that, can he?""Is Mori trying to humiliate him?"
Makoto stood.
His expression did not change. There was no tension in him, no anxiety, no pride.
He simply rose and walked forward.
As he passed between the desks, the students on either side unconsciously drew back. Makoto either did not notice, or noticed and did not care.
He stopped before the board.
Picked up the chalk.
Professor Mori folded his arms and watched him, utterly certain.
There was no way the boy could solve it. Even Imperial University students would need thirty minutes to wrestle with such a question. No matter how gifted this student might be, a sixteen-year-old had limits—
The chalk began to move.
There was a sound.
Sharp. Steady. Rhythmic.
Makoto's hand never paused.
The equations flowed out in line after line, the method unfolding across the blackboard with a strange and effortless grace.
It was clean.
Precise.
Beautiful, even.
It looked less like mathematics than calligraphy.
The classroom held its breath.
Professor Mori's expression changed.
His arms dropped.
Behind the silver rims of his glasses, his eyes widened.
This was not merely a correct solution. The boy was not using any of the recent European methods Mori knew. He was solving it by his own route.
Shorter. More elegant.
Makoto wrote the final equals sign, set down the chalk, and turned back.
His face remained as blank as before.
There was no triumph in it. No display. No sense that he had done anything extraordinary.
There had been a problem.
He had solved it.
That was all.
Professor Mori stared at the board.
Ten seconds.Twenty.
A long silence.
Then, at last, he spoke.
"...It is correct."
A beat.
"No—more than correct."
His voice trembled.
A man who had stood at lecterns for twenty years, a man who had exchanged papers with some of Europe's greatest scholars, was staring at a sixteen-year-old's solution with a trembling voice.
"Incredible, Kagura... This method... it is unlike any approach I know. Where did you learn to do this?"
Makoto answered in the same calm tone as ever.
"I never learned it.It simply... appeared that way."
Silence.
Then the room burst into murmurs.
"What was that...?""It just appeared to him...?""Kagura really is on another level..."
Makoto returned to his seat by the window.
Sunlight.
And once more, he looked outside.
What lay reflected in his eyes was the sky.
And beyond that sky, faint and distant, the outline of the mountain he had visited that morning.
It felt as though the sensation he had encountered there still lingered at his fingertips.