The Winter of the Ubume
An LLS Production
参: 冬ごもり
❅Yuuri
Viktor's sudden announcement of staying for the long term needed us, at the very least, to inform the local land god. I awoke at four, long before it was even safe for humans to walk in the world again, and pulled on my running clothes. Mum caught me passing by the main entrance.
"You're going to visit the Atariûni Shrine, right?" She pushed a box of fresh mackerel into my hands. One fin twitched – for how long more, I did not know. "Bring this along. The gods look favourably along with the generosity of our gifts."
Hauling part of the day's catch easily, I set off to visit the shrine for Viktor. It was necessary; not because Viktor was going to be a resident of the place, but to prevent him from getting eaten.
Hasetsu is a coastal town by the sea, so the local gods are mainly gods of the sea and sailing, like the Sumiyoshi-sanjin. Of course, they often stay at their main shrines in the main capitals of the world. There is an auxiliary shrine dedicated to Tenjin close to the schools – more than one student had prayed there the day before exams. The lesser kami, part of the Yaôyorozu which were more accessible to the attuned like my family, were tucked away close to East Hasetsu, and that was where I set out to.
The shrine I sought was prefaced by a torii of grey stone, set back again a copse of pine trees and other conifers amidst the older huts of the shrine-keepers. Moss grew over its top, and it lacked the accoutrements of shimenawa ropes and shide paper streamers that seemed to dominate the better-kept shrines. I bowed before entering through the gate, ran through it up the left of the approach-way as per etiquette. Misogi was performed quickly, chilling my hands with partially melted snow before I did all the steps of praying really, really hard; tossing in a ten yen coin, ringing the bell, bow twice, clap hand twice, bow once more.
A male voice intoned: "Are you so desperate for help, that-"
"-you need to go through the steps of worship so thoroughly-" joined a female voice,
"-human boy?" They finished.
I sighed in relief, and bowed. "It's been a while. Atarime-hiko-sama, Unihime-sama."
"...Yuuri? Yuuri's back! Which generation is it now?" The female voice turned less strict.
"The second, Unihime-sama," I answered. "Mum asked me to bring the mackerel."
"Oh, it's the Katsuki boy." The male voice within the shrine mellowed. "Oi, get up! Kurogane, Shirogane!"
Two koma inu twitched into being. It was hard to describe using words; one moment the shrine was unattended, and the next moment it was like the statues at the shrine gate had moved in on either side of me. They started to move the box to the back, the honden.
"Hiruko's such a good girl," Unihime agreed. As one of the two enshrined land gods of the Atariûni Shrine, Unihime was always more partial to girls.
"Oh? So who was it who was complaining when Toshiya-kun's boy went off to America?"
"I- it can't be helped! Atarime-hiko you idiot! Maybe it helps that you literally don't have a brain!"
"Huh? I'm not the one who has only one opening for both food and sh-"
"Ah, um..." I felt awkward just standing outside and listening as their bickering escalated. In the night where the strange and the magical reigned supreme, it was the only time that the shrine's enshrined gods could be audible – and visible, though it was kind of taboo to look upon any god in their true form. "Can I come back later? I actually came with a request-"
A thump sounded. "Of course~" Unihime's voice echoed within the shrine. "Don't pay attention to the Atari idiot, tell us."
Something shuffled within. "Damn you, Unihime... using your test is cheating..."
"You're a squid, so chopping you up for calamari is fine!"
"Ah, there's a Russian man staying in our inn for a long time, probably for months," I explained quickly. "His name is Viktor Nikiforov, and... he might not go to the mountains, but just in case, could you keep an eye out for him? Otherwise... he might be eaten. I don't want... that..."
"I see. Because most of the guests at Yū-topia Akatsuki tend to leave pretty quickly," Unihime finished my words. "He came here to be your coach, right?"
"Ah?!" I floundered. "I- I don't know..."
Atarime-hiko hummed as he butted in. "Yuuri. He's not another folklorist, right?"
"No!"
"Exorcist?"
"No!"
"Onmyoji?"
"Definitely not! He's from Russia!"
Atarime-hiko guffawed. "Exorcists from outside have always come in to try to eliminate us. Ah, I remember when the gods of foreign lands came in from the west, from the Imperial courts of Kara. And then we have Benzaiten and the rest now, don't we?!"1
"Atarime-hiko-sama, I don't understand what you're saying..." I coughed, trying not to sound too lost at his recollection of things that had taken place centuries before. "So, you'll keep him safe from yōkai, right? He's famous in the human world, but the yōkai wouldn't know him..."
"Ah, anything for our Katsuki boy." Atarime-hiko sighed. "Your Russian coach had better train you well to take on the world! That performance was disgraceful!"
"Y- You saw that, Atarime-hiko-sama?!" I started.
Shushing noises failed to conceal that the gods and familiars of the Atariûni Shrine were hiding something. "Unihime-sama too?!"
She sounded awkward. "Uh..."
"Toshiya told us when we asked why they were hanging banners of your face about," Atarime-hiko replied, matter-of-fact as the solar rays pierced the dark canopy. "Don't worry, the ground hardens after the rain.2 There's still a chance for you humans, right?"
"Uh, yes... I don't need to be possessed with good fortune, so please don't," I pleaded.
"Don't worry!" Unihime exclaimed. "Even if you fail a million more times, you can be our shrine's priest!"
"Uh, I didn't take the exam-"
"Yuuri." Unihime admonished. "Don't you know that divine luck comes to a human possessed by a divine spirit? You would be the strongest priest around! Strange winds have stirred, so working for us is for the best."
"Eh?" I blinked. "Is it related to the freak snowstorm yesterday? Isn't that a coincidence?"
"That coincidence was inevitable," Atarime-hiko replied. "Your companion was faithful unto the end."
"...Vicchan?" I asked. "Yes. He was already cremated and buried when I came back. Yes... he was my best friend." What's he got to do with this, I wanted to ask.
Unihime's words gave me pause. "Which is the problem."
"We cannot speak much." Atarime-hiko spoke. "There have been two coincidences. The incident of the dog in the night-time was one. The arrival of the human Viktor, is the other. Coincidences have a way of playing to the inevitable."
I started in surprise. There was nothing I could see in the haiden next to the offering box, even as the sun's rays grew stronger and false dawn was spreading already. "...I don't... understand. Please tell me, Unihime-sama. I don't know!"
"Vicchan will show you the way, if you truly wish to know." Unihime finished as dawn was upon us.
As the morning light fills the shadows, unknown things no longer lurk. Strange shapes no longer hide among the trees. Mysterious voices no longer rise, from within the confines of the Atariûni Shrine.
Once again, the world is safe for humans.
Having achieved my aim but gained more questions for my trouble, I walked away from the shrine and tried to figure out what Atarime-hiko and Unihime had meant. Spirits place great emphasis on what the human world called a butterfly effect – a butterfly flaps its wings, and halfway across the world there's a tornado in America.
I had lived in Detroit, Michigan, for my training, but now and then I had heard about rink-mates who visited their parents in another state of America and were upheld or delayed by tornado season. Sometimes the disaster itself would visit Detroit, and the rink would be closed or reinforced and everyone made to stay in until the damage was done and things could be cleaned up. My point was, the coincidence involved was minimal; it was quotidian entropy, like the chance of an earthquake in Japan. There was nothing involved; just bad luck.
For a spirit, coincidence is inevitable. Although, there were the rules of the yōkai world to consider. I suppose if you lived forever between worlds like the yōkai did, luck and destiny would seem to be the greatest obsession to give meaning to an otherwise long and unfulfilled life.
The snowstorm.
Viktor.
Vicchan.
Vicchan will show you the way.
"Vicchan's place?" Mum repeated when, upon returning to Yū-topia Akatsuki, I asked for Vicchan's final resting place. "Ah, it's at the cemetery. Yuuri, I know it's sad, but Vicchan was an old dog, you know."
I plastered on a fake smile. "I know. It's... just... I wanted to see where he is. And... how he is."
I stepped out with a wrapped shovel, walking the straight road down from Yū-topia before I turned left, to the mountain road that followed up the Matsuura river. A few more twists and turns led me to the improvised pet cemetery within a pine forest, where my late pet lay. Digging was hard work, but I found the little urn where Vicchan's... Vicchan...
"I'm sorry, Vicchan," I prayed, and broke the seal before looking at the collection of bones.
It was right now that I felt incredibly dumb. How would I know what to find? I didn't have forensic expertise, or any deeper expertise to figure out what was Unihime talking about.
Viktor's arrival and Vicchan's death were simply coincidences. That was it.
Having come this far, I picked and laid out all the bones carefully.
I frowned.
Much as I don't know what was missing, I was pretty sure I could recognise a skull, and it wasn't there – not even a smear of powder or a tooth.
Dad was manning the counter and talking to a man in a business suit when I came in, toting the urn along my hip. "Welcome back, Yuuri!" The smile dropped as he spotted the urn, but he could not mention it in front of a stranger. "Tanaka-san, this is my son, Yuuri. Yuuri, this is Tanaka-san. He's a persistent developer who keeps trying to buy Yū-topia Akatsuki."
"I told Katsuki-san many times that running an inn at his age is too strenuous," the man smirked at me, offering his card at my direction. "It's our first time meeting, Katsuki-kun."
"Ah, hello, Tanaka-san," I bowed out of politeness, frazzled though I was. "Please excuse me."
"Careful not to tote that macabre thing around," Tanaka-san sneered as I ran to the kitchen in the back. I found Mari-neechan on her break, which was when I dropped the urn in front of her.
"Mari-neechan," I sniffed, trying to hold back my tears. "W- Where is V- Vicchan's head?"
❆Viktor
Yuuri has been distracted since one morning three days ago. His jogging apparently took him into a forest and up a mountain – wow! – and then somehow he'd brought back a jar. Makkachin is worried, but my newest protégé has been avoiding my pet between his exercise routine, ballet lessons and helping out at Yū-topia Akatsuki – if possible at all.
Did I make a wrong choice in banning him from all pork cutlet bowls until he got his weight down? Was this depression deeper than I thought?
I chose his next workout in the shadow of a square building on top of a hill that overlooked the whole town. There, in the shade of the much-vaunted cherry blossom trees of the Japanese spring, I started a conversation about his love life.
He reacted predictably. That is, with flailing and too much Japanese to transcribe. It took Makkachin barking at the square building, at which Yuuri's face twitched and just turned... well, much like his loss at the Grand Prix final.
"Do you have a pet?" I asked him.
Yuuri frowned in Makkachin's direction. "...to," he swallowed. "Used to."
"Your first pet?"
"A... poodle."
"My favourite breed!" I exclaimed. "What's his name? Why haven't I seen him around?"
"Vicchan. He died."
…
..
.
Ah.
"I'm sorry for your loss," I honestly told Yuuri. Makkachin was the latest in a series of curly-haired pets, but that did not mean that I did not mourn for my late companions. "It's... hard to bid one's faithful companion farewell."
"...he was old, and it was a while ago." Yuuri muttered, but curled in on himself and refused to say any more.
Too familiar with the grief of a pet owner, I instead turned my attention to Hasetsu. For Yuuri to come here, back to his roots, mourning his companion... it was the right choice not to let Yuuri skate for now, I told myself. Skating too much did not solve anything when my first poodle died, and it would not solve Yuuri's problem now. It is only in the grieving that Yuuri could continue.
As his... coach... I would be here for him.
So I plastered on a smile, wiped my face, and asked Yuuri about something. Anything, about Hasetsu, what it meant for him, what kind of happy memories he had made with Vicchan. And then, as Yuuri let go of the physical burden of his weight, perhaps, just perhaps, he would begin to let go of his sorrow.
Though, maybe I shouldn't have posted on Instagram that picture of me with Hasetsu Castle in the background directly afterwards... to Yuuri's parents, prostite!
Critiquez, s'il vous plaît !
1 Buddhism has been practised in Japan since its official introduction in 552 AD according to the Nihon Shoki. The introduction of new religions in Japan, though, tended to be antagonistic to then-mainstream society first until it was entrenched – Buddhism itself was regarded as strange and the Buddhist pantheon or 'kami of foreign lands' were blamed for plagues. The monk Nichiren was also exiled for irritating the Kamakura shoguns. Benzaiten is a syncretic entity with both a Buddhist and a Shinto side.
2 雨降って地固まる: a Japanese saying equal to 'adversity builds character'.
