And also where he needed to recover his signet ring, which as explained was a necessary and versatile communication device. It would send letters and, apparently, if he upgraded it, make calls. To anyone, in any faction, which made it absolutely invaluable.
And so he stood on a rooftop, and he rested his hand over the center of his chest - where, he was given to understand, his starseed, the physical manifestation of his soul (and that was a hell of a concept to accept) sat - and he spoke words that bubbled to his lips with ease.
“I pledge my life and loyalty to Aokigahara, and to Saturn. Grant me your protection, so that I may grant you mine.”
The landscape around him shifted.
He had expected a forest, really. After all, that was what Aokigahara was on Earth.
He got one - of sorts.
Where he stood, on this, his first visit to his Wonder, was at the entrance to a clearing. A glance behind him revealed a path, lit by eerie purple lamplight - not too different from the lantern he held in his hand.
All around was an expansive forest, dark and mysterious and infinitely green.
And before him was a sprawling complex, with a few buildings he guessed were residences. At their center stood an elegant temple, as familiar to him as breathing. It was Shinto - blatantly, torii gate and all. But all of that was tucked forward, because the rest of the clearing’s expanse was filled with a sprawling, massive cemetery. It looked in disrepair, the result, he supposed, of a thousand years of disuse and lack of care. He would have to fix that, on a later visit.
Or at least begin to.
The visage of his Wonder, spread out before him, took his breath away.
Aokigahara took a few steps forward, marvelling in the sheer vastness of the place. Perhaps he should have been more uncomfortable, in what was obviously a resting place, but he couldn’t find it in him to be anything but swept away.
He moved closer to the gate, and bowed respectfully before it, then stepped off the center line to walk up the path to the shrine itself.
As soon as he crossed beyond the torii gate, a chill crawled up his spine. It was colder, there, than it had been before - and it felt, suddenly, like there were eyes on him. He narrowed his eyes, and looked around, but as expected, there was no one there. He frowned, but continued onward, and the cold chill passed with a step forward, but the feeling of being watched did not.
Absolutely bizarre.
He continued, off the center line of the path - this wasn’t a designated shrine, but it was built enough like one that it felt like the right thing to do, observing the same etiquette he would if he was petitioning a kami.
There was a proper chozubachi set up, but the water looked, and smelled, foul - he wrinkled his nose. There was no purification to be had from washing in that, and it would be another thing he would have to replace. So much to clean, so much to do, already.
He removed his hat, bowed, and then he felt a tug - he wasn’t sure where it came from, except within, and it urged him onward.
He was not here to petition, and it seemed he would not be allowed to do so.
Probably for the best, when he could only guess at what this shrine was dedicated to.
He mounted the steps, hat still held in hand, and stepped inside.
It felt strange - wrong, even - to enter a shrine. He was no priest, by any means, and he felt a distinct turn up in the sheerly creepy aura of the place.
He inhaled sharply. Perhaps as the Knight, he was as close to a priest as this place had. At least, he hoped so - it would be strange, he supposed, for the person magically tied to the place to not be able to access its central component.
The altar was in horrible disarray, and it felt even more wrong to leave it like that. So he took a breath and walked forward, setting his hat aside. He was glad for his gloves, so that he didn’t have to touch the likely-sacred objects on the altar bare-handed. There were candles knocked over, and broken pieces of what he suspected had once been ceramic plates. Those were carefully cleared, the candles straightened, and the whole thing generally dusted off a little to make it look more pleasant.
Dead center on the shrine, in front of the box that he suspected housed the shintai - which
he was not particularly inclined to touch right then - was a ring.
His ring, he was sure, when he picked it up. That was his signet, the thing he had come here for.
He slid it on his finger, and then, and only then, did he take a gloved hand and gently brush some of the accumulated dust off the shintai.
The box began to glow, and he took a startled step back. A pulsating orb of energy, about the size of a baseball, hovered over the box. It seemed to have a presence—like it was more than just a light.
His heart began to pound in his chest.
“What…are you?” He asked, and there were a million possibilities whirling in his mind - first and foremost that he had somehow disturbed the kami of the shrine, for which he was already formulating apologies.
It spoke in a voice that carried with it authority.
"I am the Code. I exist in everything, see everything. I observe the balance of everything. Light and dark. Order and Chaos. The universe cannot survive for long when the scales tip too heavily in one direction. It was the duty of your predecessors to protect The Code and spread it's words across the universe. This is your duty as well, the job of every knight.”
Aokigahara inhaled, and took a step back forward.
His guess of kami, he supposed, was not far off. This was indeed a powerful spirit, clearly housed at the shrine - perhaps even the focus of its “worship.” And it spoke of duty. A general duty, one of all Knights. That was not what he wanted - not all he wanted, at least. There had to be more.
“Why was I chosen as a Knight?” The question fell from his lips. It had nagged him since the day he had first found his lantern, since he had been swept into this strange world.
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The answer was simple, short, and it made Aokigahara frown. That was, he supposed, true in the most literal sense.
“What...is my duty, to this place?” Because given the opportunity to ask the source of his power for a purpose, for something to give himself to, it was almost necessary to ask.
“To serve those laid to eternal rest here before you join them.” The Code replied. Aokigahara wrinkled his nose, briefly. That seemed a grim purpose - but this was a vast burial ground, and it clearly needed care and tending.
Fine, he could serve the lost. Clean the shrine, purify it, replace the waters, weed the cemetery and clean the graves.
“Who is buried here?” There had to be a reason for a graveyard to be a Wonder, to require a magical protector. Surely not every grave in the heydey of the Knight order had been a magical place, that was simply ridiculous.
“Those foolish enough to die without making a name for themselves.” The Code informed him, with not even the slightest hint of emotion.
That felt wrong. Aokigahara could not tell where his abject certainty that was not the full answer came from, but he knew it was there. He bit his tongue rather than interrogate further, because antagonizing this “Code” seemed a poor idea. Arguing with it if it was truly the source of his power could, he worried briefly, result in being stripped of it. Especially since it did not at all seem pleased to have him as a Knight. One did not tell favored apprentices they were only chosen because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Something crawled up his back, a resurgence of the feeling of being watched, and it felt further that something was bearing down on him.
“Why does this place feel so...dark?” He asked the Code piece. Demanded of it, really, because it came out sharp and harsh. He considered apologizing, but so far the thing had demonstrated little emotion beyond haughty certainty.
The light pulsed, and for the first time, he picked up what felt like annoyance. “Would you expect a place of forgotten death to feel warm and welcoming?” It asked, and there definitely seemed to be irritation in the voice, now. “Though if this feeling bothers you so, maybe you do not have the stomach to take on your duty. You are weak. Perhaps you don't belong with the Brotherhood of Knights. Perhaps the Negaverse will coddle you.”
And then the light vanished, leaving Aokigahara to stew and rage at nothing.
“Come back here, you arrogant, puffed-up glowbug,” he demanded, as if that would somehow make it return, “and tell me again I need coddling by anyone.”
He wanted to shake the box to stir it back up, or perhaps to take it out of the temple and bury it and be done with the damnable thing forever, because surely he could find another shintai and rededicate the shrine - only the vaguest sense of piety and a fear of angering the thing and losing his Knighthood wholesale stopped him from doing so. Instead, he clenched and unclenched his fists, cold fury settling in.
Taiki Himura had never been coddled. He certainly wasn’t going to start asking for it now that he was Aokigahara Page of Saturn.
Obviously there was nothing else for him in the shrine, so he scooped up his hat and took a few calming breaths before turning to walk out. It had told him his duty was to serve those laid to rest - fine, he would show the damned thing he could do his duty, discomfort or no. He was glad, again, for his gloves, because he made his way to the graveyard proper and got down on his knees. The plants were mostly unfamiliar, but he could tell that some bore the look of weeds - and others did not. Those he suspected were weeds he wrapped a hand around and pulled, removing them and starting a pile next to him. He would bring up better gardening tools next time, but for the moment, he was content to turn his anger at the cryptic s**t he had been served into something productive.
‘Sakura would like this,’ he thought, idly. His ballerina half-sister did love her garden, and she might have enjoyed the labor and the guesswork of determining what was a weed and what was a beneficial or ornamental plant. As if he could determine flora from another planet that had been allowed to grow wild for a thousand years - but some obviously needed to be cleared, like anything growing up and around a headstone.
He wasn’t sure how long he worked - there was little way to tell time, here. There was also far too much cemetery for him to clean all of it in a single visit; it stretched on and on, hundreds of graves inscribed with scripts he could not even begin to read. But he finished a square of eight graves, leaving them looking cleaner and less overgrown, and that felt satisfying.
The Code, whatever it truly was, insisted he was unfit for his duty. He intended to prove it wrong.
