Thank Goodness No One's Here...
Tsushima Kana was a shrine maiden in service to Amaterasu.
Amaterasu stood foremost among the Three Noble Gods. To attend her, and to wield her power, was the longing of every shrine maiden alive. Not only the maidens of the Shrine, but those who served out among ordinary people, counted it a glory merely to set foot on Amaterasu's Divine Soil. As for what it meant to govern that ground and carry out her work there, the honor was so plain that saying it aloud was a waste of breath.
Onodera Io had looked down even on the Shrine Priest and stood at the very summit of that power. In the Shrine, not a single person dared slight a maiden of Amaterasu, and even the prime minister of Japan had to pour sweat in their presence.
Hard days, those were.
Even so, a maiden of Amaterasu was not a thing just anyone could become.
At the Shrine, candidates to serve the Three Noble Gods were chosen while they were still infants, educated, and drilled until divine inspiration took root and the barest foundation was laid. The money sunk into that labor alone ran past tens of millions of dollars—and that was the cost of a single child. Set it against hundreds, against thousands, and one could raise Tokyo Tower out of cash and still fall short.
Nor did the spending buy a matching return.
When a maiden turned fifteen, under the Shrine Priest's charge, the Three Noble Gods selected the fit few from among the candidates. Only one who passed the most exhausting and brutal trial of all—the trial of the sun goddess—could formally become a maiden of Amaterasu.
Susanoo's trial and Tsukuyomi's were cruel enough in their own right. Minds collapsed. Idiots and madmen came out of them past counting. The Three Noble Gods did not choose people lightly. Death would have been the kinder mercy.
And yet Susanoo and Tsukuyomi produced at least one maiden every year. A maiden of Amaterasu appeared once in ten years, if she appeared at all.
A seat one ought not even glance toward without talent and grinding effort. That was the seat Tsushima Kana occupied.
The fruit had been sweet...
Kana remembered the day she was chosen as Amaterasu's maiden. Seniors celebrating. Peers sick with envy. Power brimming over, confidence shooting into the sky. In that moment she had been certain the world turned around her.
A road of flowers had opened...
The instant the name Amaterasu was set before the word maiden, power followed of its own accord. A few flicks of the hand, and attendants bowed their heads. The other maidens turned eyes of reverence on her. The pleasure of destroying, with a single sentence, the pack that had tormented her in her candidate days had been sweet past bearing.
A life in which no one looked down on her. Kana came to understand how very much a life like that could give.
I understood, then, why the Great Shrine Maiden had clung so hard to power.
There had been a time when even Kana disliked the Great Shrine Maiden's graft and rot. Onodera Io was greedy and lecherous, unable to restrain her appetite—hardly a match for so exalted an office. Without her particular gift for politics, and without the symbol of being Amaterasu's Great Shrine Maiden, it would have been no surprise if she had been driven out long before.
But once the power was mine, I understood. This thing whips human greed into a frenzy. Gods or whatever else—I'll stay on top until the very end...
Onodera Io was probably what came of failing to govern that hunger and letting it run wild.
Fwoooosh.
"Lady Pele. How many times have I told you not to burn the trash just because taking it out is a bother? The scorched smell stays in the living room."
"Then burn the smell, too."
"Setting fire to every little thing you don't feel like dealing with isn't good either. Trash goes in the bin. Do you understand?"
"You're the one who asks me to burn the food scraps..."
"Food waste is fine. It's filthy."
"So it's all right to use a goddess as a disposal plant?"
"That much is allowed, isn't it?"
Kana planted a hand on her hip and said it without a shred of shame. Pele let out a long sigh.
"Somehow you were less of a nuisance when you'd lost your mind. Back then you just did the work in silence..."
"Enough complaining. Please get up. I have to clean."
"...Nowhere to go. Nowhere at all."
Pele scratched her stomach and rose from the sofa. The picture was identical to a salaryman in his fifties.
"Look at this dust. When did it pile up again?"
Dust: the cleaner's eternal enemy. It never went down easy.
Kana took her hand off the vacuum. Her fingers tangled through the empty air, knotting a seal.
Float
The trigger-word left her lips. A thin yellow light wrapped the furniture in the living room, and the pieces rose as if a ghost had taken hold of them, drifting gently off the floor.
Kana looked thoroughly pleased with herself.
"Do it enough and you get the hang of it. I cut the cost nearly in half from last time."
Lifting an object into the air was something an ordinary shrine maiden could do, and the Kana of before could have raised dozens without trouble. Now, with barely the strength to lift one, she had lifted several. The precision, and the way she portioned out her power, would have been impossible for her old self.
"Hm-hm-hmm."
It was an achievement well worth praising, and still Kana only hummed as she cleaned the living room—every corner spotless, the ceiling gone over, the window frames wiped. Where her hands could not reach, she spent her power without hesitation. Only when beads of sweat had gathered on her brow did the cleaning come to an end.
"Whew. The hallway next?"
Kana rubbed at her shoulder and snapped her fingers. The furniture drifting in the air returned to its places in neat order, then settled with a soft whump. The dust that rose made her face crumple.
"Honestly. Why didn't Lady Amaterasu grant me a cleaning power?"
The place she had just finished cleaning was dirty again, and she spat the complaint at the god she served. Had the shrine maidens seen it, shock would not have been enough; they would have fainted. An Amaterasu maiden cleaning someone else's house was already past belief, and then to grumble that she had not been given a power for housework—the depth of that sin could not be measured.
Kana could not have cared less.
A maiden of Amaterasu? In this house, a title like that carried no weight at all.
A goddess who did not fall short of Amaterasu herself lay around watching television. A mercenary who could slaughter three Great Shrine Maidens if they came at him together practiced the sword in the yard. A sinner condemned by Heaven sat meek and still. An immortal and a Heavenly Tiger came and went, and a transcendent of Life lived next door.
Among everyone she had seen in this house, there was not a single weak person. Count the young master and the lady next door, and there were far, far too many who would smile while they killed her.
Lady Pele. The truth is, I liked it better when I was out of my mind, too.
Every step was thin ice. She could already see the future in which one moment of displeasure turned her into cuts of meat. When she had been mad, she had not suffered the stress of nerves wound too tight. Her mind had been fixed on a single point; she had not even been aware that she was under stress.
The old days were better. The old days...
Kana sighed like a woman who had already finished living. If she was honest, she wanted to run. Stay tangled with this den of devils, and her life would vanish like chaff.
But if I run? Where do I go then?
Back to Japan? Would the Shrine Priest really leave untouched a Kana who had been loyal to the Great Shrine Maiden? Before that—would the gods leave her be? The instant she set foot in Japan, heaven's punishment would come pouring down. Her flesh would vanish without a cell remaining, and her soul, never granted even hell, would suffer under a god for eternity.
Better to have her body ruined by every torture there was, be passed around as a plaything for a few years, and then be dumped in a brothel. At least that was a human way of punishing someone.
Or a clean death would be fine, too.
If they would simply order her to cut her own belly open, and not even grant her a second to end it, there could be no greater mercy.
"What are you doing?"
"Hic!"
The voice at her back startled a hiccup out of her.
"Y-you're h-h-home?"
"I don't believe I went anywhere..."
"R-right, of course. You hardly sh-show yourself, so I m-must have been m-mistaken."
The words tangled. She bit her tongue between them and somehow dragged the sentence to its end.
D-don't look at me!!!
Kana screamed it on the inside. The one she feared more than any god—the master of the house, the phantom thief—was gazing at her without expression.
"Are you unwell? You're sweating..."
"Eek! Th-this is sweat from cleaning hard, so you don't need to worry about me!!!"
"I see. Thank you, for always cleaning my house."
"It's only what I'm supposed to do!"
Somebody save me!
"If anything is uncomfortable, please tell me whenever you like."
"I'm perfectly fine, this is comfortable for me, discomfort is out of the question."
"Understood. Then please keep cleaning diligently."
The phantom thief vanished from before her eyes without a sound.
"Hah. Hah."
Kana clutched at her chest and let the breath out.
"Thank god. He bought it..."
Her bladder had not burst. An encouraging result. Her panties, however, were damp. Kana slipped a hand through the gap in her hakama and brushed them.
"And why are you showing up again..."
It was not the smell of ammonia. It was a woman's scent, and Kana's face crumpled as if she might cry.
"I haven't developed some bizarre kink, have I...?"
If she had, every day from here on would be dreadful.
"...Hah. I'll just finish the cleaning."
Murmuring it in resignation, Kana took up the vacuum and the mop.
"Eek!"
The voice came out of nowhere. Kana startled so hard she dropped to the floor.
"W-who is this?"
Was the phantom thief playing a trick on her? Kana's head whipped around like a madwoman's.
"Shrine Priest Tsukumi?!"
Kana jumped higher than she had for the phantom thief.
Don't tell me he's come to execute me himself?!
"Y-yes...?"
"But why ask me...?"
As far as she knew, they already had a separate means of contact. Why set that aside and insist on going through her?
"Y-yes. I'll... manage it somehow."
"Yes..."
The voice ringing through her skull cut off with a snap.
"Wh-what just happened..."
The Shrine Priest, speaking to her himself. What a nightmare.
Shhhhh...
"Ah..."
Warm.
"Thank goodness no one's here..."
Kana stared at the puddle spreading beneath her and murmured it, hollow.