The light of dawn had barely begun to seep through the paper screens. Sumika sat before the mirror. To be precise, she had been sitting there for more than ten minutes. She neither looked at nor looked away from her reflection—merely held herself before it, suspended in that strange equipoise. The amber glow of the oil lamp illuminated her right cheek. That cheek was flushed. （...When did my face become like this?） The heat from kneeling on the stone pavement lingered still, refusing to fade. The remnant of a night in which she had received, through her own skin, the weight of a hundred years' solitude—a heaviness that had worn even anger to silence. She could not wipe it away. It would not disappear. Her gaze fell naturally to her hands. In her left hand, white cloth was clutched. The torn edge of a sleeve. She looked at the right sleeve of her kimono. The hem was gone, severed at the root. A garment of pure silk, bearing the Ayasugi family crest. Had anyone asked her how this had come to pass, Sumika could not have answered. She must not answer. （How could I explain it? If Ojusu saw. If Father learned...） She began to think, then stopped midway. She hid the white cloth gently inside the hem of her kimono. She could not bring herself to discard it. Why, she did not know. She simply could not let it go. Beyond the paper screens, the world grew gradually lighter. A single bird called in the distance. Sumika drew a small breath and rose to her feet. ━━━ On the third floor of the Unsoku Tower, the shelves related to the shrine had accumulated a thin layer of dust. Watching for the moment when Tachibana Ojusu departed for her morning herbal bath, Sumika climbed the ladder. The space between shelves was narrow; even she, small of stature, had to crouch. Her glasses nearly caught on the shelf's edge; she steadied them with one hand while her fingers traced the spines of books with the other. It did not take long to find the documents extending from the Genwa period's great sealing. The Ayasugi family library was organized with systematic precision. Tachibana Ojusu—the elderly disciple who had managed the Unsoku Tower since before Sumika's birth, who could recite the location of every volume on every shelf, seventy-three years old—performed her work with meticulous care. She returned to the desk by the window, three volumes in her arms. The first was a record of ceremonies, its contents austere. It documented, in flat and emotionless script, the incident of the second-generation Ayasugi patriarch, Ayasugi Kiyotane, nearly causing the great yokai of the imperial capital's spiritual veins to run wild—and the first use of the keystone sealing technique, the forbidden art by which powerful yokai are fixed as living wedges to stabilize the veins. The handwriting was meticulous, bearing no trace of feeling. She opened the second volume. Her eyes stopped on a particular page. It was a notation in the hand of the previous patriarch. Vermillion ink had been written in thin lines beside the original characters in black. "Cause to function as a ritual implement; control emotional expression through sealing procedures." Only one line. Sumika read it three times. What her sensitivity had received on the stone pavement last night—the weight of a hundred years' solitude, the silence that had worn even anger to nothing—aligned with this single line. A ritual implement. The words crushed something within her chest. A sensation like nausea crawled up from the depths of her stomach. （It says emotional expression is to be controlled through sealing procedures.） In other words, the previous patriarch had known that emotions existed. He had known, and he had controlled them. To treat it as a tool. A brush lay on the desk. Sumika picked it up and attempted to write something in the margins of the old book, then stopped. She could find no words that belonged there. Yet she could not close the page either. The thought of that single line disappearing into invisibility was unbearable. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Ojusu was returning. Sumika quickly returned the old books to the shelf, removed her glasses, then replaced them. As if nothing had happened, she spread out practice paper for drawing spirit talismans. "Still at your studies?" Ojusu's voice remained unchanged—flat. Not from absence of feeling, but from having no need to express it. That was the kind of flatness it was. Sumika's sensitivity had long since read it as the resignation of years. "Yes." Sumika's own voice emerged flatly as well. ━━━ In the afternoon, the gravel of the Crane-Song Garden lay white and dry. The practice grounds for spirit-sealing arts—the Crane-Song Garden, a forty-tsubo expanse of gravel to the east of the main house, with spirit-sealing pillars at each corner marking the boundary of the training barrier—held Sumika at its center. She held a single talisman horizontally in both hands, preparing to form the sealing gesture. This was the third attempt. The first had scattered in the wind. The second had burned. The third was now. She steadied her breathing. She maintained composure. She constructed the talisman's spell-form in her mind. She formed the gesture. A faint light began to gather at Sumika's fingertips— "Your center of gravity is too far back." The voice came on the wind. The light at Sumika's fingertips scattered. The voice had come from beyond the garden, from the direction of the shrine. Sumika's sensitivity grasped the location of the presence instantly. She had sensed last night that it could manifest on the ground within a fifty-meter radius of the forbidden shrine. From the direction of the voice, it seemed to be at the very edge of the shrine's boundary. She let the failed talisman fall onto the gravel. The vermillion ink seeped into the sand. （I was criticized.） Something rose within Sumika. The words from the old book still remained in her chest. "Cause to function as a ritual implement." "Control emotional expression through sealing procedures." That string of characters collided with the voice just now in a strange way. Sumika turned toward the shrine. "If you offer criticism of the art, does that not mean you recognize me as a practitioner?" Her words came quickly. When emotion rose, her speech quickened—an old habit. She regretted it the moment she finished, but could not take it back. Silence followed. "...Presumptuous, for a sorcerer's daughter." Something mingled with the coldness in the voice. The faintest hint of mockery. Not contempt—or rather, something different, something thinner, yet bearing a definite warmth. "You were rummaging through the library this morning, were you not?" Sumika lost the words to respond. （He knew.） "Was it written that I am a ritual implement? In the previous patriarch's hand?" The voice was flat. It took the form of a question, but sought no answer. It merely confirmed. What had happened a hundred years ago. "It was written." Sumika answered quietly. Silence again. This time it was long. The gravel in the garden shifted slightly in the wind. The spirit-sealing pillars at the four corners flickered with the faintest light. "Then," "...I think you have the right to be angry." Her voice was unexpectedly earnest. She was surprised at the genuine tone that emerged. "You have the right to be angry. To hate. To direct it at someone. Even at me, if you wish." From the direction of the shrine, the presence shifted. Sumika's sensitivity caught the change. Not shock followed by immediate suppression—but a different kind of movement. As if a door, somewhere, were opening. "...You are a strange girl." Then the presence vanished. It was abrupt. Before Sumika could think "he fled," that emptiness reached her chest. She had wanted to say more—would have welcomed being shouted at—and that desire rose before anger itself. （What was I expecting?） Meanwhile, from behind the shrubbery at the garden's corner, one of the servants peeked out. Seeing Sumika raise her voice alone in the gravel garden, confusion bloomed across their face—the young mistress arguing with the empty air. They withdrew hastily before their eyes could meet. Sumika had noticed. （...From the outside, I must look completely strange.） For some reason, she felt like laughing. Though she could not. ━━━ At night, at the desk by the window on the second floor of the Unsoku Tower, Sumika read the old book with a single oil lamp beside her. Her chestnut eyes, behind her glasses, traced the pages. Whether the content entered her mind or not was unclear—the exchange from midday lingered somewhere still. Suddenly, her gaze shifted to the window. In the mist, there was a trembling of golden light. Sumika did not move. One second. Two seconds. The light wavered. It did not fade. It simply existed there—a golden trembling. Sumika took up the oil lamp and stood at the window. Lowering her voice toward the night garden, she spoke. "Were you watching?" There was no reply. Only the trembling of golden light in the mist moved, quietly, once. That was all. Sumika remained with her hand on the window frame, gazing into the garden's darkness. She could not turn her gaze away. It was only after some time had passed that she noticed her fingers holding the lamp were trembling. Not from cold. The night air was indeed chill, but this trembling was of a different kind. Silence accumulated. Minutes passed with neither speaking. That silence was not rejection—Sumika's sensitivity told her this, quietly yet with certainty. The presence beyond the mist did not withdraw. It simply remained. Something beat quietly in her chest. Regularly, yet at a speed for which she had no name. （This silence is not rejection—it is saying that.） The moment that realization came, an inexplicable pain shot through her chest's center. Pain and warmth arose in the same place, simultaneously. She could not distinguish which was which. It was Sumika who extinguished the lamp's flame first. ━━━ In the deep of night, a dream came. The viewpoint was not her own. A winter field. Grass white with frost, sky low and heavy, light absent. Sumika was only the viewpoint; she had no body. Or rather, her body's sensations belonged to someone else. Multiple curse-talismans detonated at once. Light spread—a light mixing crimson and white, spreading across the winter field like flame. Within that light, silver-white hair. Attempting to flee. But surrounded. Talismans adhered one after another. Spell-forms bit into skin. Chains cut into arms. That searing pain ran through Sumika's own skin. Though it was a dream, it was undeniably there. A burning agony spread from arms to shoulders, from shoulders through the entire body. And when that pain subsided, what remained was—darkness. A long darkness and silence alone continued. How long this lasted, the dream could not measure. Only that it was long. Endlessly long. That silence was not "habituation"—Sumika's sensitivity functioned even in dreams—beneath habituation, heat still remained. But at the bottom of this silence lay not heat, but the residue of pain worn smooth, emptied of all warmth. She woke. Her cheeks were wet. Sumika gazed at the ceiling. A dark ceiling. The oil lamp's flame was extinguished. Night still held sway. In her chest's center, there was something inexplicable. Not sympathy. Sympathy would be a sensation more external than this. This was—deeper within. In the very depths of her chest, in a place without name. （That person was alone for a hundred years.） That recognition was not understanding. What she had known as knowledge and what she had received through her skin in the dream carried utterly different weight. When she closed her eyes, golden eyes floated before her. Those eyes that had gazed at some distant place while kneeling on the stone pavement. An impulse arose—to be near. To be b