There are No Gods Here

Their surprise drifted in the air as disbelief stained their faces. The temple was not the decrepit structure they were expecting, but instead an intricate piece of architecture astoundingly in perfect condition. As if it was not even a few days old. The stone beneath their feet, hardly visible through the overgrowth and at times even unstable just a few steps prior, was now glimmering with vitality. As were the stone pillars that lined either side of the walkway ahead of them. The momiji trees, with their elegant maroon shaded leaves, were beautifully swaying with the faint breeze wafting through the air. To the group’s left was a fountain, its water crystal clear as it flowed from the mouth of a green-eyed stone serpent and into the basin below, sending ripples throughout its surface that were just as graceful as the aura that bathed the group of friends.

“What the hell is going on?” Toyo asked, as everyone else struggled to put their confused thoughts into words.

“Shifting his glasses up the bridge of his nose again, Fukai replied, “The family that owns the temple must still have someone who cleans the premises.”

With the impossible situation before her being too out of the ordinary to accept, Akari reasoned with Fukai’s thin explanation, using it like an anchor back to her senses. She quickly snapped back to her usual self and continued forward without hesitation. “Aren’t temples essentially cemeteries?” she stated, “if the owners are really spiritual, they’d want to maintain the place so as not to upset the spirits.”

Glancing at her reflection in the flowing water, Toyo on the other hand couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the place was simply off putting.

As they approached the temple doors, Akari tentatively pushed it ajar and leaned her head inside, panning her eyes across the ancient artifact plastered interior. Her eyes glistening brighter than the glowing reflections emanating from within. Kuro then slipped his phone from his pocket and began waving it around like a mine sweeper.

“What are you doing?” Toyo asked, tipping herself over to try and get a glimpse of the screen.

“It’s a frequency measuring app,” Kuro informed, “Fukai made me install it since cavemen like him only carry flip phones.”

“You know those things are probably fake, right?” she lamented, but simply shook her head as he continued to scour his surroundings.

“Didn’t your family used to run one of these, Toyo?” Kuro asked as he yearned his neck over Akari and Fukai, wavering his phone back and forth through the temple doors. “It’s a shrine,” she corrected, “and I don’t really know anything about it.”

Baddum!

Their intrigue getting the best of them, Akari and Fukai tumbled through the doorway, putting everybody on alert. Akari’s bag flew from her grip, sliding further inside with its contents leaving a trail behind it. The expressions on their faces were like stone, their thoughts spinning as they contemplated what would befall them for so carelessly disregarding cultural customs.

Whack!

Kuro smacked his open palm on top of his brother’s head, fed-up with him and Akari’s overeagerness. “What if someone catches us!” he berated as the two crawled their way back to their feet.

Still mesmerized by the temple itself, Toyo found herself ignoring the mayhem in front of her as she continued to look at the surrounding environment. Until her eyes caught onto something poking out from around the corner of the temple.

“There’s a cat here,” she told to the group, but too preoccupied with their infighting, neither of them took note of Toyo making her way after the feline.

Following behind as it scurried further and further towards the back of the temple, she was then met by a field of burial stones. All lined up perfectly in rows. As pristine as they were, Toyo couldn’t help but notice that the tombstone designs were not the typical haka she was familiar with. In fact, the names written on it, although in kanji, were names that seemed foreign to her. At times even illegible.

Cropping it up to her lack of knowledge on how to read the uncommon kanji, she continued to make her way to the back, where she would come across a small shrine standing in the center of a separate open field. Finding the placement unusual, Toyo glanced over her shoulder, fixating herself to call out to her friends, but soon figuring it to be a pain, she proceeded to walk ahead instead.

Eyeing the cat roaming around the base of the shrine, it then leapt up onto the wooden fixture, grazing the side of its face onto a stone statue within the shrine itself. Toyo was unfamiliar with which god it was representing, as its design was something she’d never seen before. Bringing her to believe that Kanmu-mura, or at least the mountain itself, may have been home to a long-forgotten community that once worshipped a deity that has since faded away with time. But as she took another glance around, she began to think that perhaps there were still people keeping the community alive and well.

Leaning her face closer to the shrine, she eyed its craftsmanship. It too, not looking more than a few days old. Is upkeep this good even possible? She silently wondered, an uneasy feeling filling her stomach. She then noticed a wooden plank with something written on it placed behind the statue within the shrine, cascaded in shadow. Trying to get a better look, she leaned in as close as possible, only to be startled by the cat suddenly darting out of the shrine.

Watching it as it pranced off towards the surrounding trees, Toyo’s heart would skip a beat again when an unfamiliar voice called out to her.

“There’s no god here.”

Anxiety and fear flooding her veins, she panned her eyes over towards a man standing before her. His face was aged and unkempt, and his eyes blind. Overcome with shock, she couldn’t find the will to open her mouth, no matter how hard she tried to call to her friends. As she shifted her foot to the side, ready to make a run for it, so too did the old man.

Stopping dead in her tracks, the man’s right hand caught the corner of her eye. A bloodied katana, reflecting the thin rays of the sun passing through the forest trees stifled her mind. With reality striking her, Toyo lost all sense of thought as her body began to move on its own. But as she planted one foot in front of the other in her attempt to escape, she soon found herself colliding with the ground beneath her.

Her body grew numb, and her vision blurry. Her mind began to spiral. But as her eyes rolled back in her head, a final feeling of acceptance began to overcome her.

Am I dying?