Shikigami Selection (2)
Not long after the searing agony, I was moved to new quarters.
Moved, if one wanted to be polite about it. In truth I was pushed aside. Before, I had lived in an annex not far from the main house; my new lodging was a small room in a remote corner of the family grounds. A place where the sun, when it came at all, was gone again by midday.
The wet nurses who had come with me dwindled as well. Three became one, and even that one was lukewarm about her duties. Fair enough. The hands that had once tended a valued direct descendant now found themselves saddled with a useless infant.
The family said nothing. That silence, though, spoke more clearly than any words. How they treated a bloodline that could not command spiritual power was written plain in a single set of rooms. Defects go in the corner, where they belong.
I had expected as much. It was exactly the measure of the Eoryeong Family I had known from the books. I did not feel especially sorry for myself. I had been alone since my previous life. What was one more cramped corner room?
And so I spent my days staring at the ceiling of a chamber that grew colder by the hour.
And yet.
"Hwiun."
Mother kept coming.
Even after my quarters were shoved into the corner. Even into that room where the wet nurse had gone half-hearted. Only Mother opened the door and came in without fail—more often than before, as if she meant to make up with her own footsteps for the hands that had fallen away.
"How are you today? You haven't been suffering, sleeping in the cold like this?"
Mother frowned as she took in the chill of the corner room. Then she laid out the bedding she had brought with her own hands, added charcoal to the cold brazier, and tucked the collar of my blanket again and again. None of it was work for the mistress of the house. A maidservant would have done. She did it herself anyway.
When a child's standing changes, affection usually cools with it. By the family's own measure, clinging to a defective son only cheapens one's own standing. That is how people live. Keeping a distance is the clever thing.
This woman went the other way entirely. The further her child was pushed out, the more often she came, and the closer she drew.
"……"
I looked up at her in silence.
Something itched, faintly, somewhere in my chest. An unfamiliar sensation—one I had never known across my entire previous life. In that glass world where anything I reached for shattered, no one had ever stayed at my side for long.
I did not especially want to put a name to it.
In this cold room, shoved into a corner where the sun lasted only half a day, those footsteps that never failed to come…
…were not so bad.
Then, a few days later, something changed.
Mother came in carrying something she did not usually bring.
A small box. A black case finished in lacquer. She held it with such care that one might have thought it contained treasure. She set it down by my pillow and slowly opened the lid.
Inside was incense.
A few dark pieces of fragrant wood—ordinary finger-length chips, to the casual eye. And yet…
…Huh?
The moment I saw them, strength gathered in my eyes of its own accord.
To eyes that saw spiritual force, those chips of wood looked different. This was no common incense. Around each piece of wood hung a cool, orderly aura—smoothing intervals, laying grain neat and even. A quality I knew far too well.
It was the energy of the Gye Family.
This… was made by the Gye Family.
Gooseflesh rose along my arms. The problem was not merely that it came from the Gye. If my hazy memory served, this was something only a fraction of the Gye Family could produce in the whole of the Heian age—an exceedingly rare incense that briefly laid clashing energies even and still. The method was so exacting that securing even a handful was said to be like plucking stars from the sky.
And it was sitting by the pillow of this corner room.
Even for the Eoryeong Family… how did she get this?
My mind raced. However high the Eoryeong Family stood among the great houses, obtaining a Gye Family article of this caliber—when the two lines were natural opposites—was another matter entirely. One would have to hold out a hand to a rival house and pay whatever price they named. I could not even begin to guess what a single handful had cost.
Mother picked up one chip of wood and gently laid it on the brazier.
A thin thread of smoke rose.
"They say if you burn this, your body will ease a little."
Her voice was calm. She said nothing of what she had paid to obtain it.
As the smoke filled the room, my body truly changed.
The place beneath my solar plexus that had stayed raw and bristling ever since the searing pain settled, soft and slow. The sense of my eyes and spiritual power snarling at each other eased as the incense laid itself gently between them. It did not undo the conflict—only for a little while pressed the space between them even, so the two would not collide.
…Well now.
My head swam.
While this incense lasted, I could touch my spiritual power without my eyes carving so savagely through it. The opposition was buffered. Of course, once the incense burned out the bristling would return, and this was no fundamental cure. Still…
I could use this brief window.
I steadied my breath. Aiming for the moment when the incense smoke hung thickest, I carefully felt for the ember beneath my solar plexus. Spiritual power. And then, as I always had, I quietly set against it the eyes of my previous life.
With that old sense of measuring distances.
This time, nothing tore.
While the incense held the opposition down, my eyes did not cut through the spiritual power—they lit the path instead. Which grain it wanted to follow, where it needed to join so it would not catch. The intervals and gaps stood clear. Once I could see them, I only had to follow and connect. Smoothly, without obstruction.
…It works.
My heart hammered.
At this age, accumulating spiritual power was ordinarily impossible. What could a soft infant whose spiritual veins had not even matured hope to do? And yet I was building it while watching the path of spiritual force with my eyes—seeing in plain light the road others spent a lifetime groping after by feel. In the gap the incense held open between opposites.
What had been poison became medicine for the first time.
From that day on, I accumulated spiritual power in every stretch of time the incense lasted.
After Mother left and set a single chip of incense in place, until the smoke was gone—half a watch if short, an hour at most. I wasted not a single breath of that window. Watching the path with my eyes, joining spiritual power, joining it again.
The incense dwindled quickly. Whenever the case ran low, Mother somehow obtained more. Each time her face grew a little more haggard, but the incense box was never empty.
How long that went on, I could not say.
Then one night, in the midst of joining spiritual power through the incense smoke, it happened.
A soft snap—and the scattered threads of spiritual force gathered into a single strand and began to turn. The small ember beneath my solar plexus took on its proper shape for the first time and quietly began to revolve.
My spiritual veins had opened for the first time.
In the Eoryeong Family they called it Spirit Initiation—the first gate of spiritual power. The first step by which one at last earned the right to keep a shikigami at one's side.
A threshold others did not cross before six or seven years of age at the earliest. I had crossed it in this small body, leaning on a single kind of incense and using my eyes.
……This is the beginning.
Inside the cradle, I clenched a tiny fist.
The road ahead was still impossibly long. The incense was only a stopgap; when it ran out the bristling would return, and nothing at the root had been solved. Still… there was no law that said I had to die. I had found one strand of a path for building spiritual power with the eyes that had once been poison.
I had thought I would die before I ever set anything at my side. Now, thankfully, I had taken the first step.
"Hwiun. Let me see—today…"
The next day Mother opened the door again, a new incense case in her arms.
As always she added charcoal to the brazier, set a chip of incense in place, and tucked my blanket collar—then, as if some thought had struck her, she looked at me quietly.
"Hwiun."
She hesitated a little before she asked.
"The weather has eased a bit today… Would you like to go out with Mother and take a little air?"
Outside. A walk, she meant.
The first request she had made since I had been shut in this corner room. The woman who had always stayed indoors was asking me to go out with her.
I looked up at her face—the face grown haggard from hunting incense, and yet smiling carefully as she watched me.
"Uku! Kyaka!"
My arms and legs flailed of their own accord. Yes. Let's go. All that came out of my mouth was babble, but I had never been more eager.
"……"
Mother's eyes went round for a moment. Then…
"……Heh."
She laughed softly. A faint color of life returned at last to her thin face.
"All right. Let's go, my son."
…Let no one misunderstand.
Had I thrown my heart wide open to Mother? No. I was not that easy a person. A body that had spent a lifetime alone was not so poorly made as to hand over affection the moment it was treated warmly.
Only.
I knew that incense was no ordinary thing. She had held out a hand to a rival house, paid every price they named, and grown haggard obtaining more each time the case emptied. I could not begin to guess what that price had been, or what she had pared away from herself to keep it filled.
Having received that much, following along cheerfully for a single walk…
Was that not the least of what one owed?
…Yes. Exactly that much. Duty. Return.
Nothing more.
Watching Mother smile so brightly as she scooped up my thrashing self, I deliberately drew that line once more.
And while I was at it, I pretended not to notice that the line had grown a little fainter than before.
So several years passed.
Leaning on the incense, watching the path with my eyes, I steadily accumulated spiritual power. In every brief window while the incense burned, I wasted not a single breath. Slowly—but without ever stopping.
It was not all smooth. On days the incense ran out the searing pain returned without fail, and I spent nights soaked in cold sweat. Even so Mother's incense case was never empty, and I took one step after another leaning on that smoke. One step more.
By the age when others were only just opening their spiritual veins, I had already reached a place they could not even measure.
For a defect in a corner room, I had come rather far.
And so the year I turned seven arrived.
That day, too, I was refining spiritual power in the incense smoke when a commotion rose outside.
Footsteps unlike the usual ones. Heavy, formal steps—the sort of person who rarely set foot in this remote corner room. Presently the door opened and a man who looked to be a family steward came in, bowed his head to Mother, and delivered some message.
At first I let it wash past. Any news that reached this corner room, I thought, could only be the obvious sort.
Then the words that left the steward's mouth were these:
"……The young master has been summoned to the Spirit Selection Rite."
…What?
I nearly lost my hold on the spiritual power I was refining.
The Spirit Selection Rite. I had heard of it. The Eoryeong Family's rite of passage, performed as a matter of course in the year a child of the blood turned seven. The place where one first met the shikigami that would stand at one's side. One of the family's oldest ceremonies, to which every child of that age—direct line or collateral—was summoned without exception.
But wait.
Me?
Who was it that had shut me in a corner room for being unable to command spiritual power? Who had cut my standing for being a defect? And now they meant to call me to the rite where one first met a shikigami?
……What did he say?
My head swam.
Me? This defect? Invited to the Spirit Selection Rite…
"……"
The steward delivered the message and said nothing more. He only bowed and withdrew. Not a word of explanation as to why even a defect like me had been called.
Only the incense smoke wavered thinly in the room.
I stared blankly up at that smoke and felt my mind turn at speed.
There was something here. That much was certain.
It might simply be formality—called by custom and nothing more. But was this family warm enough to spare a defect even for the sake of form? No. By the Eoryeong measure there were more than enough excuses not to call me. And yet they had…
…Something strange is afoot.
In the cooling corner room, I slowly narrowed my eyes.
I blinked once.