I don’t know how long I stared up at the statue. My brain kept going around in a very small loop- It looked exactly like the hooded figure that grabbed me and sent me to the Tower. On the other hand, all I saw of that… person was a pale, boney hand, and a load of black robes that piled up into a hood on his? head. So this could be a statue of any freak in a black robe.

Who was worshiped. And apparently protected travelers from a hungry mountain.

Miyuki and Rikka both bowed deeply to the statue, then went and lit some incense.

“Rikka? Can you tell me about this… being?”

“He is called Lord Welcome.”

I staggered. Rikka kept going.

“He was a great sage, one who cultivated his character as much as his knowledge of the arts and classics. However, he also knew the cruelty of the world, and how much worse the cruelty of Hell was. He also saw the Hollow People, and it was he who said they must be sent to Hell as soon as they are found. Not to punish them, because they would learn nothing from punishment. They must be killed to protect those who still live, and to give the Hollow People a chance to be redeemed.”

She paused for an uncomfortably long period. “I am a follower of Lord Welcome.”

Ah. What?

“Why is he called Lord Welcome?”

“Because that is what he always says when people meet him- “Wellcome! Wellcome!”” She smiled slightly.

“He has become the guardian of those who travel dark paths and fight against hidden evils. Who sacrifice themselves to make others safer. As he did.”

“He… sacrificed himself?”

“Yes. He said that his teachings had taken root, and others were following in his footsteps. He no longer had to kill the Hollow People and those who cloak vile deeds in darkness. They would be killed by others. There was a job only he could do.”

“Which was?”

“Saving those damned in Hell. Lord Welcome teaches that existence itself is pain, and that the greater we indulge in our desires, the more pain we suffer. It is the duty of the wise and righteous to relieve suffering and reduce harm. And none suffer more than those in Hell.”

“So he went to Hell to… get out the sinners he sent there?”

“What would be the point of that? Lord Welcome descended to Hell to convert the sinners. To teach them and redeem their souls. The demons too- they embody suffering. All must be healed, all must be saved and returned to joyful oblivion.”

I slowly shook my head, trying to make sense of it all.

“He went to Hell to chant prayers and teach sermons on virtue, slowly converting the damned. When demons and sinners attack, he uses his iron talisman to suppress them. When he finds children or other innocents who have fallen into Hell through some accident or evil act, he protects them within his robe. Keeping them safe and healing them with his prayers.”

I could see it. It couldn’t be the same black hood. It was a local God who just happened to also dress in black robes that completely covered his thin body. All except for his boney, nigh-skeletal, hands.

The words “No, really, you worship this creepy dude who is plainly evil?” clawed at the back of my teeth. Practically prying open my mouth, desperately trying to escape.

She saw my face and, to my surprise, laughed.

“It’s the robes, isn’t it? And the hands.”

“Well. Yes.”

“It’s a disguise. The hands are made, famously, from corpse wax and willow branches.”

Rikka continued while I was glitching out.

“You see, he is a monster himself.”

Can… can my summons screw with me? I am certain Versai can, but Rikka’s a Four Star. Is this a scripted bit?

“Yes, he is a sort of cannibal ghost. He would create illusions of a comfortable little home, and set it over a deep hole. If a lone traveler passed at night, he would create lights inside the illusion and invite them in. “Welcome, welcome!”

It has to be a scripted event. It just has to.

“Once they were trapped in the pit, they starved to death and he fed off their hunger and pain. Until one day, a wandering saint came by. Lord Welcome invited him in, and to his shock, the saint walked into the illusion, sat on a chair made of light and happily ate the food on the table.”

“Presumably while a terribly confused ghost stared at him.”

“No, Lord Welcome was also called to the table, and he ate too. Simple stuff- buns, rice, vegetables. But for the first time, he could really taste them. He felt not just full but satisfied. He asked the saint how this was possible, and the saint said it was the power of God.”

I’d swear there was some kind of vocal distortion when she said ‘God’, but since I clearly heard her say ‘God,’ it must have been an echo.

“With God all things are possible?”

“Yes, exactly! God can fill any hunger, and the food he has prepared is righteousness! The plates are before us, and all we have to do is stretch out our hands and eat.”

“And so he was converted, and changed over to a life of virtue.”

Rikka nodded, her voice becoming soft. “It’s a story that… connects for a lot of us here on the mountain.”

It didn’t click for me. I figured it would eventually.

“So. Monsters and Hollow People avoid this place because of the suppressive power of Lord Welcome.”

“Monsters and demons, yes, Hollow People, no. They know neither shame nor fear.”

I shook my head and lit my own stick of incense. Just in case.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Could the hood and robes just be a coincidence? Not a lot of aesthetic distance between a Dementor and a Nazghul. Lots of things have creepy hands and all encompassing black hoods. The story rang a bell, but not a very loud one. I looked at the little charm I thought was a Jizo on Miyuki’s belt.

“Miyuki, is that little charm related to Lord Welcome?”

She shook her head, then nodded, then wiggled her hand a little and refused to elaborate. I looked over at Rikka, who just shrugged.

Ah, there we are. That’s the level of interactive storytelling I’m used to.

I looked around the temple once more, just to see if there was something I missed. There really wasn’t. It was one big room.

“Where do the priests sleep?”

“There aren’t any.” Rikka shrugged. “Locals look after this place, when there is time.”

“And the incense? That’s not cheap, if I remember right.”

“It isn’t. We should put a donation of rune bones in the jar for the makers. Again, a gift from us mountain folk. It takes a huge amount of ingredients to make a single stick of incense, a huge amount of time, and no small amount of skill.”

“Who makes it?”

“A woman named Yoko. She is Mrs. Hungry’s daughter.”

Ding! Now we have the full set on the table. Now… how to rope them in?

“Do you happen to know where they live?”

“I do not.”

Whelp. Guess that’s that. On to the next thing.

“Rache, Rikka, use one order time to scout. You are looking for the Heartless Clearing and wherever Mrs. Hungry and Yoko live. Ask at the Inn if necessary- someone there may know.”

“Chromed Lightning!”

Rikka’s bark got lost in Rache’s joyful shout. I was really curious to see the kind of place Rache came from. I mean, cavalry aesthetic meets ghost rider? Hell yes! But also, I have some concerns.

I walked back out onto the porch. It was less quiet than I expected. The wind in the trees was surprisingly loud, crickets are really loud it turns out, and there were the occasional yips and howls coming from things in the woods. What quiet countryside life? It was as loud as the city!

I reflected for a minute. I reluctantly admitted that it was still quieter than some places.

Active building sites, for example, or when dance crews come with their boomboxes and put on a show inside a moving subway car. Or the sound of hundreds of cars all hitting the horn when someone blocks an intersection for two tenths of a second. Or the sound of someone pounding on your neighbor’s door, yelling to be let in just when you were starting to relax and settle into your evening. Louder than the people fighting population decline in the apartment above you at ten at night, but quieter when they do it at three in the morning.

“Tower Master? Are you alright?”

“No.” My voice was muffled, my face buried in my hands. “No, I am not okay. Give me a minute.”

I let the feelings ride me. That disconnect between what should have been and what was. I liked living in New York. It wasn’t where I should have been born. I wasn’t built for 3-D life. But if I couldn’t live in anime, and Japan wasn’t on the cards, New York was as good a third place as I could imagine. You can be whatever or whoever in New York. Nobody cares.

It’s not a bad thing, people not caring. Everyone gets that wrong. It’s about keeping yourself sane.

It sounds cold, and maybe it is, but it’s the only way you can live piled on top of each other like that. You hear about people in other places talking about how other people just need to mind their own business. These people, the ones yapping? Never mind their own business. In New York, you live that. You have to. You go insane otherwise. Too much mental pressure from all the lives around you.

You can’t care about strangers. You can’t go out without that armor sealed up. You check the energy and oxygen meters before you go out the door, mind them when you hit the subway, track their fall while you shop, and make sure you have enough for the trip home. Every social interaction knocks off a big chunk. Every unexpected noise. Every car that can’t believe you didn’t let them merge in after the light turned red. All take your oxygen and energy levels down.

Are you getting stabbed in an alley? Sucks man. City is a lot safer than it used to be. You’re just unlucky. Call the cops? About what? I didn’t see a damned thing.

Actually, you wouldn’t even notice the stabbing. Your brain just learns to not look. It’s much easier than not seeing.

I loved New York. Almost nobody looked twice at me, and even fewer saw me. And I didn’t have to see them. They didn’t have to be real to me the way Naruto was, or Frieren, or Ichigo, Luffy, Shinji…

I lived in a swamp of parasocial relationships, educated enough to know what was happening to me, and Millenial enough not to care. Or Gen Z or something, I don’t know. I was happy, or happy enough. And now I’m here.

I let the emotions run over me. Sitting with them. Then I pulled myself back together. People were counting on me. How long had I been screaming at Shinji to just get in the goddamn robot? Too long not to man up and do it my-damn-self.

I looked up at Rache. “It is at least arguable that Attack on Titan is a Mech Anime.”

“Sorry Boss?”

“Me too. Rikka, when just about everything is a shadow, how do you choose which shadow to pop out of?”

“There are always degrees of darkness, My Lord.” She emerged from a particularly deep shadow under a pine tree.

“You’d know better than me. What did you guys find?”

“Can’t say I found a clearing, boss, but I did find more primo wood. Some mighty clean and sweet water too. Woods are crawling with banditos. Gonna have to tread mighty quietly if you want to slip past ‘em.

“Rikka?”

“I found Mrs. Hungry.”

Mrs. Hungry and her daughter lived in a shack. The shack was in a cleared stretch of the woods. You had dense pine, then brush, then a wave of tall grass, then the shack.

It was a nicer shack than I would have expected. Bordering on cottage, I’d say. Small, with a thatched roof, shutters over the small windows and a door of crude planks. What elevated the whole thing was the outbuildings.

There was a worktable and bench covered by a bark roof, a solid looking well, a decent sized shed, several large gardens, racks for purposes unknown, and a fair number of shrubs that were clearly being cultivated. The whole thing was wrapped in a split-rail fence. On the inside of the fence was an attempt at civilization. On the outside was the tall grass, and danger.

It looked cared for. Like the person living there was still striving. Curiously, it didn’t scream ‘trap’ or ‘predator’ either. But then, what good trap would?

The rail fence felt off. It was out of the aesthetic. Like a cowboy hat in a bowl of miso soup. Versai was reaching to swing open the gate when I reached out to stop her.

“Don’t. Just wait.”

“Why?”

“They see us. Give them a moment to make up their mind.”

“Yes, but… why?”

Because I vividly remember my uncle getting drunk one Thanksgiving and describing a breach of social etiquette he committed when going on a bachelor party weekend in the Ozarks. He capped off the story by stripping off his shirt right at the dinner table and showing off the fingertip wide bullet scar left in the front of his shoulder, and the much wider hole left in the back.

You don’t just go up to the front door. You wait at the edge of the property for them to see you and invite you in. I have no reason to think the same rules apply here, but if there is one thing I have plenty of, it’s time. Time, and paranoia.

Time passed. I can’t be more precise than that. We waited and it seemed like a damned long while. A falling leaf caught my eye, and when I looked back, Mrs. Hungry was standing next to the door of the hut.

Versai moved for the gate again, and again, I raised my hand to stop her. I nodded politely at Mrs. Hungry, and waited.

Mrs. Hungry didn’t move. Her long, stringy hair fell in front of her face. I still didn’t really know what she looked like. Old, and not “Oh, what a sweet old grandma” old. Something about her said that she had never once been squeamish about blood. She didn’t move an inch, didn’t say a word. She just waited. Watching us.

Some time later the door opened and a cute teenage girl walked out. She… I don’t know what was going on with how she was dressed. She had on geta, those tall wooden sandals you see in some period anime. A long green robe kept the chill out. She had long blue-black hair that she held up on top of her head with a wooden pin, and the rest trimmed to bangs hanging down over her eyes. She also had a little netsuke on the belt of her robe- the same little Jizo that Miyuki now sported.

“Momma says you aren’t from around here.”

“That’s true.”

“Momma also says that you are trouble, but you are polite trouble.”

“Well, that’s probably true too. At least, I’m trying to be polite. Not always sure I’m getting it right.”

Yoko tilted her head to one side, considering that. Then nodded. “Probably counts.”

I smiled a business introduction smile. “We haven’t been introduced. My name is-”

She started gently shaking her head. “No, no thank you.”

“Pardon?”

“I don’t want your name.”

“Why?”

“Because you are going to die soon. Momma says that strangers on the mountain all die. If I know you, I’ll have to carve you a funeral tablet. So let’s keep on being strangers.”

My mouth twitched uncontrollably. “Don’t want to burn incense for me?”

She violently shook her head now. “Look at the state of my garden. I’m barely able to keep the temple incense in stock. The dead get some burning pine needles or something.”

Well, that’s cheery. “Need any help with your garden?”

“Yes.”

“Can I help you with your garden?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I tried smiling again. It hadn’t helped so far, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

“Because you are going to die soon. Very soon. Almost immediately.”

I blinked at her in confusion. Then swore and spun around. “UP AND AT ‘EM! Versai, cover me! Everyone else, find the threats!”

I yanked my knife out, looking desperately for where I needed to stick it. My head thrashed from side to side, but I wasn’t seeing anyone in need of a tracheotomy. Miyuki, on the other hand-

“Miyuki sees the snake hidden in the grass!”

Her bow snapped out, and lodged in something. I couldn’t see it- it really was hidden in the tall grass at the edge of the trees. Whatever it was she hit, she didn’t manage to kill it one shot. It started thrashing around, screaming. Then the arrow started its own high pitched keening. The noise. God, the noise! The ululation and the sliding tones, like a fire alarm and a penny whistle were doing unspeakable things to a theremin in the middle of a nightmarish slaughterhouse.

The sound scared the Hell out of me. And I wasn’t alone. From out of the tall grass, demons bolted out of cover. Monstrous cats, deer with fangs and claws, inky black imps that came up only knee high but were dripping with a purple mucus that screamed poison. They ran off, but they didn’t run far.

Since the ambush failed, they opted to just use numbers. There were twenty of them, six of us. They clearly liked those odds.

“See? You are not going to be any help to my garden at all.”