"Mikage, I need your help with something..."

Hello. My name is Sora Momozono.

"Dad, the loan sharks broke a window again," my twin sister Nanami told our father as she patched up the window again.

"Are you making your payments on time?" I asked as I cooked our dinner.

"Don't worry, Nanami, Sora!" Dad told us. "Daddy's going to win big at the races and pay them back all at once!"

"You're gambling again?" I sighed annoyed by his antics.

"OH NO! THIS MONTH'S FOOD MONEY IS GONE!" Nanami shouted.

I live with my twin sister and father in a really old apartment.

"I'll strike it rich, Nanami! Sora!"

"Dad, you're such a loser!"

We're barely managing to survive while Nanami and I support a father with a gambling problem. Nanami and I can't do much for lunch and we must make do with rice.

"What's with your lunch?" Nanami's lunch was taken from her desk. "Hey, everyone, look! Momozono only has rice for lunch!"

"So sad!"

"How pathetic!"

Even though we suffer every day... someday...

"Your new name is broke-nami!" I snatched the lunch box back from our classmate's hands before giving it back to Nanami.

"Leave her alone," the man paled.

Someday we'll be able to spend our days smiling. At least that's what we thought...

"We're home!" Nanami called out to our dad.

"Dad, did you replace the glass in the window yet?" I asked him, but when we finally looked into our home it was empty. "Dad?"

...until that day.

Someone banged on the door behind us.

"Mr. Momozono. Please open the door." I turned and opened the door as Nanami went to the table to pick up a note. "The court is enforcing your eviction. Where's your father?" Nanami handed me the note and my eyes widened.

I'm going on a trip.

Sorry.

Don't look for me.

-Dad

"What? What? What on earth is going on?!"

That night found us in the park sitting on a bench.

"Th... This is really bad..." I sighed sinking towards the ground.

"THAT BLOODY BASTARD!" Nanami shouted out. "How can a grown man run away from home, leaving us debts and his daughters behind?!"

"Obviously not that hard," I said looking down at my hands in my lap sadly. Dad was all we had left...

"We were kicked out of the apartment. Where are we going to live?!" Nanami asked before her stomach growled. "I'm hungry..."

"Don't worry, Nanami," I tried assuring her. "I'm sure we'll find something."

"How?" she asked me. "We're homeless, have no relatives, and no money. What should we do?" We heard a dog barking and a man crying out.

"Noooo!" I looked towards the noise before going there with Nanami behind me. "Somebody! Please make that dog go away!" I looked to see a dog barking at a man in a tree. Nanami and I shooed away the dog before the man climbed down the tree.

"Are you all right?" Nanami asked him.

"Excuse me, I don't like dogs..."

"Yeah, we noticed that," I told him. "This is my first time back here in a long time, but a dog barked at me right away... heh heh. It looks like the residents don't welcome me... Do you live here too?" he asked us.

"Us?" I asked him before looking down.

"Yes... but... we don't have a place to live anymore..." Nanami told him before telling him about our recent troubles. What a strange man. Does he have problems too?

"I see... your father ran away from home... You must really hate him for that." The man started crying and Nanami laughed at him while I just sighed.

"Well, he's always been trouble," Nanami told him.

"I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but I ran away too," he told us. "It's been decades now. I wonder how everyone's doing. Tomoe will attack me as soon as I get home." Tomoe? Is that his wife or partner or something?

"Still you're lucky to have a home to go back to," I told him thinking about all those years ago when home felt warm and protected.

"Sora, Nanami... I'll give you my home," he told us and I stared at him shocked as he got off the bench and stood in front of us. "I can't leave it unattended forever. If you two live there, it'll take a load off my shoulders. And... you are much better suited to be the master of that house than I am." He kissed Nanami's forehead and he placed his hand on my head before handing me a map. "Go to the place on this map. Tell them Mikage sent you and everyone will welcome you as their new masters." Their new masters?

"Should we go?" Nanami asked me and I nodded.

"Where else can we go?" I asked her.

We made our way to the place on the map to see a shrine.

"We follow that guy's directions and end up... at a haunted shrine..." I sighed as Nanami dropped to her hands and knees.

"This is what it means to "add insult to injury"," Nanami said. "I will never trust grown-ups again."

"Mikage-sama." I looked around when we heard a voice calling for the guy we'd met. "Welcome back, Mikage-sama." Strange blue fire appeared before us and we screamed in fear. "Oh, Mikage-sama."

"Please wait, Mikage-sama!" We ran into the shrine, thinking we'd be safe as we slammed the door shut.

"Mikage." We froze and turned to the voice to see someone in a kimono. "It's been a while, Mikage. Where've you been all this time? You made me take care of your house for twenty years!" A... Yokai... "I'll kill ya!" The Yokai started to attack us and we screamed.

"No... We're... not Mikage!" He froze and the three of us all stared at each other.

"Onikiri! Kotetsu!"

"Yes, Tomoe-dono," one of the voices from before answered.

"These are not Mikage," Tomoe told the spirits. They suddenly transformed into two people who looked like kids wearing kimonos and masks.

"How can that be?" the one with the female mask asked. "But she has the mark of the Tochigami-sama on her forehead." I looked at Nanami's forehead and saw a slight glow. Was that from Mikage's kiss?

"And I can sense Mikage-sama's aura coming from her, slightly," the one with the man's mask said.

"But she's not Mikage," Tomoe told the floating pair. What are these things? "Hey, women." I looked from my twin to Tomoe who was now sitting between the spirits. "Who the hell are you?" Did we wander into a Yokai shrine?!

"He said he'd give you his house?" Tomoe asked us after we told them the story.

"We told him we had nowhere to live and he told us to come here," Nanami told him as I handed him the map Mikage had given us.

"Yes, this horrible handwriting is Mikage's," Tomoe said looking at it. "The man you met is the Tochigami of this land."

"So he's a Yokai too?!" Nanami asked and I hit her head gently.

"He said Tochigami, not Yokai," I corrected her.

"And this is the shrine of the Tochigami," Tomoe continued as if we hadn't spoken at all. "He gave you his position as master of this shrine. That means he also made you the new Tochigami." She's the Tochigami now?! If that's true then that would explain why Nanami could see them, but why can I?

"Well, congratulations!" the female masked one said. "Our Tochigami-sama has returned to the shrine!"

"We must prepare a feast!" the other one said.

"Wait!" Nanami started protesting. "I can't-"

"Please have them, Nanami-sama," one of the spirits told her holding up fish and other food for her to eat. We hadn't eaten since that morning and the food looked delicious.

"So she's a kami now?" Tomoe asked gripping her chin between his fingers. I slapped his hand away from her face and stood between them. "And this one can see us? What can two shabby girls like you two do?! Counting offerings and weeding the garden is about all you're good for! I will not accept her!"

"Tomoe-dono! But Mikage-sama recommended her," the female masked one said.

"We don't need her. Throw them out!" Tomoe ordered.

"You're being pretty rude considering your master is the one who told us to come here!" I yelled at him.

"No one would give offerings at a ruined shrine like this!" Nanami yelled at him. "I refuse to become a Tochigami!"

"Nanami!" I scolded before seeing the look on Tomoe's face.

"Come, come, please do not say that," the male masked spirit said. "We all welcome Nanami-sama!"

"If that woman is staying here, I'm leaving," Tomoe told them.

"Tomoe-dono?!"

"I'm Mikaga's Shinshi. I will not serve that woman. Ask a stray dog to take my place." He disappeared in a cloud of smoke and I sighed. This is so strange. I hope it'll make sense when we wake up.

I woke up to Nanami's yawning and sitting up, pulling the covers away from both of us.

"I had a good night's sleep," she yawned and I stretched, still laying down. "Huh? Where are we?" I opened my eyes and looked around. Are we in that shrine still? "I feel like I had lots of dreams... But I don't remember."

"Good morning, Nanami-sama. Sora-sama." I sat up and saw the two small spirits kneeling before us, well Nanami. "It is time for work."

"We will first begin by purifying the garden. We drive out all impurities so evil spirits cannot enter," they told us.

"Let us sweep the dead leaves."

"I haven't said anything about becoming a Tochigami," Nanami reminded them.

"How can you say that?!" they asked appalled at her words.

"Tomoe-dono has left..."

"So Nanami-sama is the only one who can protect this shrine!"

"Uh... all right..."

"Hey... what are your names?" I asked them finally.

"I'm Onikiri," the female mask said.

"And I'm Kotetsu," the other added. Well, at least we'll know their names now.

"We are the Onigiwarashi who serve this shrine!" Kotetsu said.

"You may ask us anything!" Onikiri added.

"And the guy we met yesterday...?" I said.

"Tomoe-dono is the Shinshi who serves Makage-sama," Onikiri told me. "He used to be a wile fox, but Mikage-sama decided to have Tomoe-dono serve him, instead of the usual Komainu guard dogs because Mikage-sama does not like dogs."

"Yes, we learned that last night," I mumbled. Of course, that wasn't all we learned...

"Sora-sama!" I turned around to see the two spirits from before. I'd been getting ready for bed and was standing in my pants and a tank top. "You have the mark of the great Omikami!"

"Omikami?" I asked them.

"The great goddess Amaterasu-sama was Miakage-sama's dearest friend, but she disappeared some years ago."

"How does a goddess disappear?" I asked them.

"We don't know. We only know that one day she was at her shrine and the next she was gone," they told me.

This is so weird. How did I get the mark of an Omikami, let alone Amaterasu-omikami... I helped Nanami with the chores around the shrine for some time until we had to separate. While she stayed inside to take care of the shrine itself, I went outside to weed the garden. I wasn't aware of what I was doing really until I cut myself.

"Ow..." I put my finger in my mouth.

"You're taking all this time just to weed the garden?" I turned to see Tomoe standing behind me. "You and that girl are totally useless."

"What do you want?" I asked him going back to the garden. "Didn't you leave because you were unhappy with what your master requested. My sister and I are busy taking care of your home."

"Your sister won't make it as a Tochigami," he told me. "You two must have run away from home. Why don't you go back before you fail?"

"We didn't run away. Our father ran away to escape his debts and we were evicted from our home. If we leave we have nowhere else to go," I told him. He was silent for a moment before he spoke again.

"It's none of my business."

"Then why'd you ask?!" I shouted at him.

"Sora, try not to touch the things in the shrine." What a jerk...

I joined Nanami as Onikiri and Kotetsu dropped books in front of her.

"I've had enough," she sighed as I picked up one of the books.

"This is twenty years worth of prayers," Onikiri told her.

"Twenty years?!" Nanami shouted picking up a book. The handwriting is so beautiful.

"Tomoe-dono wrote them down," Kotetsu told us and I looked at them shocked. "He wanted Mikage-sama to look at them when he returned because Tochigami-sama left, the number of worshippers greatly deceased, but because Tomoe-dono managed the shrine worshippers do sometimes visit."

"Tomoe... did..." I said

"The duties we had Nanami-sama and Sora-sama performed today..."

"...were all done by Tomoe-dono himself," the spirits told us. Is that why they didn't help? Because Tomoe did all this instead of them?

"The shrine is in really bad shape, but it was very clean," Nanami said as I looked through the book in my hand. These prayers are so detailed. I can only imagine Tomoe writing down all the prayers of what few worshippers they still had.

"Do you understand now, Nanami-sama? Nanami-sama needs Tomoe-dono! Come, come, let us go get-"

"Will you let us stay just one more night?" Nanami asked the pair behind us. "I can't be a kamisama... I'm just an ordinary high school student. I don't have any special powers. I'm really sorry." Nanami bowed to the pair as they stared at her. Will we really be able to apologize to him tomorrow? We should, even if he is a jerk.