Myon led Ichi up the mountain to the other side of the village in the night. Most of the buildings in the village were in a valley below the mountain, plains of architecture extended with rice paddys to the forest's edge where Ichi killed the Mountain Lord.
The mountain was blanketed in trees. Ichi stepped carefully up narrow stone steps behind Myon's white outfit, keeping an eye on her like a lighthouse when sailing home on the sea.
The trees closed in around them. The steps grew more and more cracks. Weed overgrowth and shattered statues spotted the sides of the steps. As they passed through the trees, a vast mansion with a shrine hidden behind glass in the center opening appeared before them. Ichi thought of the tall many windowed victorian england architecture he saw online. The western mansion enclosed the shrine. As if the shrine was the main attraction to an amusement park. It looked out of place, like a mall kiosk where they hawk goods. A glass to floor wall blocked them from walking straight into the dilapidated shrine. Myon paused in front of it. Around them, a dying garden spread out, filled with overgrowth.
"This is Rikya's place." Myon said.
Ichi shivered as he looked at the shrine. The frayed dark wood was lit from above inside the mansion, twisted and old, he could smell the damp moldy smell from it even outside beyond the glass. A huge twisted rope encircled the entire shrine. Ichi thought that those ropes were seals to keep out bad spirits. Putting it around a shrine didn't fit.
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"This is a bad idea, isn't it?" Ichi heard himself say out loud. He didn't realize he was speaking until he stopped speaking.
Myon put a hand on Ichi's shoulder, pulling him close.
"This is a terrible idea."
Ichi sighed, staring at the shrine, he knocked on the glass. It slid open, pulling back from the center of the tap of his fist in a circle, giving him a generous semicircle to enter in from when the glass stopped expanding.
Ichi crossed into the building, realizing there was no place to take off his shoes. He turned as he felt that Myon wasn't following. Myon stood there in the moonlight, smiled, and then waved seeing him off. Myon turned around and stood there as the glass closed behind her. Ichi faced the shrine. Putting one foot in front of the other he trudged towards it. A forboding sense overcame his entire body as he got close, the pit of his stomach felt like it dropped to the ground and lit on fire.
"It's just a little girl." Ichi chanted to himself. "It's just Rikya."
Since his track record with the rest of the girls hadn't turned out well Ichi figured that any village like this wouldn't have a single normal person. Ichi was wrong about that, too, there was Satou at school, after all. Someone needed to handle the finances that the seer's council accrued. Not that Ichi knew that.
What Ichi did know, as Rikya appeared before him in a flash of pink light on the steps of the shrine, that this was definitely-
"Magical Witch Rikya!" Rikya cheered, in a cute voice wearing a witch costume complete with a long floppy hat.
This was definitely the wrong place to go. Ichi murmured a saying his mom told him as he looked at Rikya.
"One hundred years of doing wrong won't bring a single year of doing right. One hundred bad ideas may blossom into a single decent one."