A long time had passed since the calamity.
Today was Inazuma's New Year.
The nation was alive with celebration, as though the pain left by that disaster were gradually fading.
Festive lanterns hung throughout the streets of Inazuma City. Their brilliant colors blurred among the early cherry blossoms, warm light dissolving into their fragrant haze. People had changed into yukata and wandered the streets in twos and threes, their wooden sandals clacking beneath their feet.
The Sacred Sakura had purified most of the corruption that escaped Khaenri'ah.
Under the Pillar General's defense, the surviving people of Enkanomiya who had occupied Yashiori Island had also submitted. Peace had returned both within the nation and beyond its shores. The people had every reason to celebrate.
But although pain faded, the scar would never heal.
Makoto was dead.
For Beelzebul, that was everything.
Her people would never know that their god had died upon the battlefield in Khaenri'ah.
Ei inherited her sister's authority and became the true Archon of Inazuma.
She lived alone in Tenshukaku.
The tower looked no different from before. Fallen cherry blossoms covered the steps. Wan sunlight slipped through gaps in the lattice windows and fell across the ancient gray-white hall, enveloping Ei's pure-white kimono.
Beyond the courtyard, dense paulownia branches stitched across the sky. Yellowing leaves filtered the sunlight, stripping away most of its warmth and brightness until only a dim amber gloom remained.
For the first time, Ei felt that gloom.
Makoto was dead.
Ei had missed her sister's death. She had failed to arrive in time.
It seemed there was nothing she could do.
Nothing she was capable of doing.
Even now, she could feel the emptiness within her chest. Every emotion had been worn away until only that void remained, leaving her without solid ground beneath her feet.
It was almost as though Makoto's death were merely a brief dream. When Ei awoke, her sister would have returned to Inazuma and to her side. They would gather once more beneath the cherry trees.
But that was only a dream.
Makoto was dead, and the dead should be forgotten...
That was what Ei told herself.
She had become Inazuma's Archon, yet she did not know how to guide its people. She was a warrior, one who pursued Musou, and she would continue down the path she believed correct.
That path was Eternity.
To promise her people an eternal pure land, she first had to become eternal herself.
And so the creation of the puppet became inevitable.
Raiden Ei looked toward another corner of Tenshukaku, one the sunlight could not reach.
A child stood there.
He had lowered his cobalt-blue eyes, clear and immaculate as a lake. His features were as exquisite as a doll displayed behind glass. In truth, he was a puppet, created as a vessel that might escape the erosion of the mortal world.
Ei gazed at him with impassive calm, then shook her head faintly.
In the end... he was merely a defective product.
A clear tear had traced a path down the puppet's delicate cheek.
The child was crying.
But a vessel of eternity should not weep.
"Why are you crying?" Ei asked.
"I..." The child paused. His lips moved as he struggled to speak. "I don't know... I feel strange..."
A faint light shimmered in his eyes.
"When I look at you... I feel that you are terribly sad. And so I weep in your place."
Sad...?
Am I sad...?
Ei's eyes moved slightly. She felt again the inexplicable emptiness within her heart.
Was that feeling... grief?
But grief was a mortal emotion, a defect born of erosion. A god should not grieve and would not weep.
Raiden Makoto was dead.
Ei was not sad... and never would be.
She had to keep moving forward. She had to cast aside every mortal emotion, cast aside erosion, cast aside defective products, and seal away her own heart.
The more she abandoned, the emptier her heart would become.
Only within emptiness could she pursue a pure land that endured forever.
She would create a new puppet.
"Absurd," she told the child.
The puppet was locked away and discarded as a failed creation.
His room had no windows. Only at dusk, when the setting sun touched the earth and its afterglow stained the layered mountains, did a few flecks of light enter through the gaps beneath the eaves.
Kunikuzushi watched those flecks for the entire evening.
When night descended, they lost their color and disappeared.
One day had passed.
Then came another day and another dusk. The puppet watched new patches of light appear beneath the eaves.
Again and again.
The child did not know why he had been sealed away. Perhaps he had not performed well enough. Perhaps he had disappointed his creator.
He knew he was defective. His mother was creating a new puppet, one more perfect than he could ever be.
He had already been abandoned.
Even after being abandoned, however, he felt little sorrow.
There was no emotion within his hollow chest. He could perceive the pain of others, understand their hearts, and weep on their behalf. Yet he could not weep for himself.
He possessed no emotions of his own.
Because he had no heart.
He wanted a heart. He wanted to try weeping for himself.
During those long years of confinement, this became the first desire he had ever formed.
But how could a puppet possess a heart?
He remained sealed in the deepest reaches of Tenshukaku, surrounded by dim confusion. The flecks of light cast by each sunset were his only color.
Again and again.
That was eternity.
Change came during another sunset.
The door that had always remained shut suddenly opened, and light poured in from outside.
The tiny flecks widened swiftly. Two meters, three, four... until radiance filled the entire room and swept across the puppet's face.
His cobalt-blue eyes shone as they reflected the light.
Before him, the resplendent sun sank behind layered mountains, and clouds of fire covered the sky.
For the first time, the puppet saw the whole beautiful sunset.
"...So you're the little brat."
It was impossible to judge the age of the man who had opened the door.
His eyes were pale blue and shone with a brilliant light, like an ancient well holding half a sunset. A falling sun should have looked lifeless, yet reflected in that water, it resembled a sunrise. An old well should have been dark and clouded, yet sunlight made it clear.
He was young and ancient at once, as though two ages existed within him.
The puppet had never seen anyone so strange.
Then again, he had never seen a human at all.
"...Do you know where the other puppet is?" the stranger asked.
The door had opened, but the man had not come for him.
The puppet took half a step back into the room's darkness and shook his head calmly.
"I do not."
"I see."
Kiyo nodded.
"Then goodbye."
Kunikuzushi did not answer.
Kiyo stepped out and closed the door. The vast sunset slowly narrowed and vanished. The radiance that had filled half the room receded, and darkness stained it once more.
Creak—
The iron door opened again.
Kiyo leaned his head halfway inside.
"Hey. Don't you get bored in here?"
The puppet froze.
"Sneak out." Kiyo pulled the door wide and smiled. "Run away from here, kid."
"I cannot leave," the puppet replied. "It is not permitted..."
"I can pretend I never saw you escape."
Kiyo looked at him solemnly, the puppet's face reflected in his deep-blue eyes.
"Leave this room. Go outside. Step into the sunlight. Your life has only just begun."
Outside...?
"You will encounter many interesting things and meet many interesting people."
Kiyo paused, then spoke softly.
"One day, you will realize your dream. Of that alone, I am certain."
"And when that day comes, we will meet again." Kiyo smiled. "Then we'll share a proper drink."
Leave this room.
Step into the sunlight.
For some reason, an unfamiliar feeling stirred within the puppet's empty chest.
He took one tentative step forward. Warm sunlight slowly covered his joints and seeped into his cold gears. He felt that unknown sensation, and the emotion moving inside his chest.
He continued forward.
"You are..." Kunikuzushi's lips moved. "What is your name?"
But by the time he returned to himself, the man had disappeared.
His face, his voice, his words... every memory of him faded from the puppet's mind, as though everything that had just occurred were an illusion.
Like snow melting beneath sunlight, the stranger was already gone by the time Kunikuzushi noticed.
Only the magnificent sunlight remained.
Warm and radiant, it rested gently over him.
So beautiful.
—
"You are leaving?" Raiden Makoto asked softly from within Kiyo's heart.
"...I do not belong to this age." He coughed. "I cannot interfere with it any further. Of course I have to leave."
His face was pale.
The wound left by the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles would not heal. Corruption from most of Khaenri'ah gnawed at his soul. His divine body kept him alive, but it did nothing to lessen his pain.
"Then we must say goodbye as well," Makoto said calmly.
"Yes..."
Kiyo nodded and studied the puppet before him.
Dark-purple hair fell to her waist, gradually paling toward its ends. A beauty mark rested beneath one eye. Her violet kimono was patterned with gentian flowers. Her face was cool and exquisite, and no emotion stirred within her eyes.
She looked exactly like Raiden Makoto and Raiden Ei.
This was Beelzebul's most perfect creation.
The puppet was not yet complete. She had not truly been born into the world.
Kiyo intended to use this unfinished interval to place one small thing within the heartless puppet.
From this day forward, Raiden Makoto would no longer be Raiden Makoto...
or rather, she would be more than Raiden Makoto alone.
Today was the perfect opportunity, because Raiden Ei was not in Tenshukaku.
She had gone to argue with Inazuma's Pillar General, Kiyono Raimei.
The reason was simple.
Kiyono Raimei opposed Her Excellency Narukami's plan to abandon her body. This was the first quarrel between Narukami and her Pillar General. Their conflict would grow steadily worse over the next three centuries until, in the final century, Narukami severed all ties with him and never saw him again.
"I am about to become a puppet. Before that happens, I have one final request," Makoto said suddenly.
"What is it?"
"Dango Milk."
She tilted her head and smiled, bright spring light dancing in her eyes.
"A puppet may not be able to taste. I want to try it one last time."
"Ei will return soon."
Makoto's consciousness was rapidly merging with the Raiden Shogun. The puppet's closed eyes trembled faintly.
"So you have to hurry," Makoto insisted like a stubborn child. "Hurry—"
"I gave you my entire dream. Asking for one last taste of Dango Milk... isn't too much, is it?"
Honestly!
Kiyo sighed helplessly.
There was a kitchen beside Tenshukaku. It had once been reserved for Kiyono Raimei. As Narukami's personal guard, he had also taken on the work of her cook. But he had spent years away at war, and the kitchen had long since fallen into disuse.
Fortunately, someone replaced the ingredients every day. Everything remained fresh.
The young man pressed sticky, yielding glutinous-rice dough beneath his slender fingers, then poured fresh milk into it. He waited for the ingredients to blend, shaped the mixture anew, and placed the pieces together inside the steamer.
Light passed through the lattice window and fell across his profile. The swaying silhouettes of paulownia branches dappled his face.
Raiden Makoto watched him quietly, her head tilted.
She said nothing.
She was slowly merging with the puppet.
Unlike Raiden Ei, who would cast off her physical form and enter a puppet, Makoto was becoming the puppet itself.
Her emotions were being submerged within its shell, lost among machinery and gears.
Makoto had once loved to smile. She wanted to smile now, but discovered that she no longer could.
The Raiden Shogun could not smile.
The merging proceeded smoothly because Makoto's heart was light and carried very little.
She had already given its heaviest possession—her dream—to Kiyo.
The Dango Milk was ready.
She looked at the snow-white pieces. They resembled fine morning snow that might melt at any moment and gave off a delicate fragrance, which lingered in the light of the early-spring sunset.
The Raiden Shogun stiffly picked up one piece.
It was soft beneath her fingers.
She parted her lips and placed it gently in her mouth. The mild sweetness and faintly astringent aftertaste were exactly as she remembered. They brought back the springs of long ago—
the days to which she could never return.
She lowered her eyes.
Those days were so distant that they might never have existed.
Her memories stretched far into the past. Cherry blossoms had drifted through a spring day as Raiden Makoto spoke to Kiyono Raimei, then still her guard.
"Make something Ei will enjoy."
"I don't know whether Ei will like it. But I like it. I think it is very good."
"If Ei likes it too, will you still make it for me?"
"Or perhaps Ei will not like it. Will you become my cook? Milk and dango—which do you like more?"
Kiyono Raimei had answered her with complete seriousness:
"No matter which of those things happens... I will still make it for you, Makoto. I will always be your cook."
"What should we call this dessert?"
"...Dango Milk."
The Raiden Shogun lowered her eyes. Her heart was slowly emptying. Her emotions grew faint and indistinct as she tasted the Dango Milk, and her shoulders began to tremble.
That feeling...
was dying.
She could not accept it.
She had never resisted anything so desperately.
Thoughts that could not be conveyed.
Feelings that could not be expressed.
If she did not speak—if she could never speak again, if she continued to ignore them, if she willingly accepted this—then her heart would die completely within its tomb.
It would die inside this empty puppet.
She could not accept it.
"Does it taste bad?" Kiyo asked.
Before his words had even faded, he froze.
The puppet had drawn him gently into an embrace. Languid spring light covered them, their faces close together.
"It tastes bad," she declared petulantly. "Leave out the milk."
"But Dango Milk cannot be made without milk..."
The puppet gazed at Kiyo.
He could see the light vanishing rapidly from her eyes, and her emotions fading with it. She was like the sun falling behind the mountains. In one more instant it would disappear completely, all color would leave the sky, and she would become nothing but a puppet.
"Then which do you like more—the milk or the dango?"
But at the moment of its descent, that setting sun released all its light—
the final blaze of a dying heart.
So dazzling.
So beautiful.
"We will meet again."
Kiyo lowered his eyes as he gazed at the Raiden Shogun.
"...Four hundred years from now, I will make you mugwort dango."
—
When Raiden Ei finished arguing with Kiyono Raimei and returned to Tenshukaku, she discovered that the puppet was no longer in the tower.
She found her in the abandoned kitchen.
Brilliant spring light covered the puppet's exquisite profile while cherry blossoms drifted around her—
an eternal painting.