Chapter 11 - Communications

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”

- Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings. 

Morning arrived with the unwelcome discovery that the two kami were gone, or at least that was what the strange Matsunaga Heita told Shimon when he questioned him about the previous night.

The barracks chamber looked much as it had before exhaustion finally dragged them into sleep. Pale light filtered through the paper screens, bedding lay scattered across the floor. Nothing crouched beside the offerings now, nor did anything impossible hang among the ceiling beams. If some invisible presence remained in the room, the other warrior appeared unable to find it.

The biochip agreed, although its agreement on supernatural matters had become considerably less reassuring with every passing day.

[PASSIVE MONITORING ACTIVE]

Sleep Quality: PoorMuscular Recovery: AcceleratedStress Response: ModerateUnknown Carrier Signal: Low / IntermittentMultiple-source interference: Not presently detected

“They left?” Shimon asked quietly.

The odd man sat nearby fastening the cords of his armor, his restless fingers moving with familiar care despite the fatigue gathered around his eyes. Heita glanced toward the household altar before tightening a knot and giving a reluctant nod.

“Before dawn,” he said curtly.

“What were they?”

“Two kami.”

“I know what you called them, but what were they?” the young man insisted.

Matsunaga's fingers moved to the scar beneath his chin, worrying at it for a moment before he answered. “Then you know as much as I do.”

That was nowhere near enough, but Shimon knew he would not be able to get anything more from him. Around them, the other hunters had begun rising and preparing for the day. The young castle retainer Fujita Kenzaburō inspected the damage to his armor from the previous night's hunt, while the broad-shouldered Seki Jūzō sat with his back against the wall and retied the cloth over the claw mark across his forearm.

Tarō appeared carrying two bowls of rice and soup with the proprietary confidence of a man who had apparently conquered the kitchens on their behalf.

“Eat,” the surviving Kume instructed, passing one bowl across. “The scholars want us after breakfast.”

Jūzō looked up at him. “They always want us after we have done something unpleasant.”

“They want Kagawa most,” someone added.

Seki glanced up from his arm. The missing top of his left ear gave his square face a permanently battered appearance, though his expression remained as unimpressed as ever. “They will need more paper to fill his record.”

The scarred, one-eyed warrior was not present to hear the remark, which probably explained why Seki was able to voice his true opinion.

Still, despite everything, they had killed three yōma and returned without losing a hunter, which represented an unquestionable success. Under the circumstances, he supposed that he should probably concentrate on his achievements rather than worrying about one of their more troublesome team members.

***

The young scholar Abe Chikanori had indeed brought more paper.

By the time Shimon entered the concealed council chamber, the room had begun to resemble the headquarters of a criminal investigation, though no one in this age would have understood the comparison. Sheets covered the walls and much of the available floor. Maps had been marked with circles identifying disappearances, disturbed graves, abandoned houses, and reported sightings, while sketches of yōma stood beside increasingly detailed notes recording their size, behavior, smell, wounds, feeding habits, weather conditions, and the number of witnesses whose testimony the scholars considered reliable.

At the center of the room sat Aya.

The young miko had exchanged the white kosode and red hakama Shimon associated with her shrine duties for subdued clothing better suited to long hours spent working with ink. Her dark hair was bound neatly behind her, and several brushes rested beside bowls of pigment, water, and a stack of heavy paper.

One large sheet before her showed the previous night's battle.

Shimon stopped to examine it. The scene possessed the flattened, stylized perspective common to the artwork of the period, yet the details were surprisingly accurate. The cave mouth opened beneath crooked trees, while three Grey Feeders moved across the clearing with their long arms, distorted joints, and divided jaws reconstructed from the descriptions supplied by the hunters.

Kurobane dominated one side of the image in a violent burst of black and rust-red feathers, his jaws fixed upon a yōma while the scarred mounted warrior cut downward from the saddle. The painting flattered Kagawa considerably by omitting the fact that his charge had almost destroyed the formation.

On the other side, Shimon recognized himself principally by his height and the enormous sword raised above one shoulder. Heita's naginata hooked around the neck of the creature beneath him.

“Your left foot was farther back,” Abe remarked from behind him.

Shimon glanced over his shoulder. “What?”

“In the final cut,” the narrow-faced scholar clarified, tapping the lower part of the image with his bamboo pointer. “Aya drew it as you described, but Matsunaga insists your left foot was farther back.”

The warrior with the scar on his chin sat against the opposite wall and nodded with complete seriousness.

Shimon looked between the attentive scholar and Heita. “You remember where my foot was while a yōma was trying to eat us?”

“I remember many useless things when frightened,” the spiritually sensitive warrior returned somberly.

“That may be the most useful thing about you,” Seki snorted in disbelief from nearby.

The shrine maiden lowered her brush, though not before Shimon caught the slight movement at the corner of her mouth.

Abe gestured toward the painting. “The purpose is not beauty. We require something that a man who cannot read can recognize. If a hunter sees this creature on a road, in a field, or entering his house, he should know what other men learned before him.”

Shimon returned his attention to the picture and understood more clearly what the scholars were attempting. It was a primitive form of forensic reconstruction: separate witnesses provided their accounts, Abe and the long-bearded Kuze compared them for inconsistencies, and Aya transformed the agreed testimony into vaguely useful to a farmer, hunter, soldier, or village headman who possessed neither letters nor the luxury of prolonged study.

“You are very good,” Shimon told her.

Aya looked up, a quizzical expression on her face.

The compliment escaped before he could wrap it in the proper degree of formality, and he quickly corrected himself with a small bow. “Your painting, I mean. It resembles them much more closely than I expected anyone could manage from descriptions alone.”

The young shrine maiden regarded him for a moment before a hint of mischief entered her expression. “That sounds almost as though you expected me to fail, Ayanokouji-sama.”

“No. I meant that—”

The look in her eyes informed him that she was teasing him.

Shimon wished Tarō were close enough that he could direct some of the resulting embarrassment toward him, but the older spearman had already been taken into the adjoining room with members of the other cell.

Aya lowered her gaze toward the page again, concealing a small smile as she cleaned the tip of her brush. “Thank you. Abe-sama makes certain I correct anything that pleases the eye more than it resembles the witness’s account.”

“Artists improve things,” the narrow-faced scholar grumbled. “Witnesses improve themselves for posterity. Between the two, truth has many enemies.”

“I have never improved you, Abe-sama,” the young miko returned mildly.

The elder scholar Kuze Sōtei coughed into his sleeve, his long beard shifting over his chest while ink-darkened fingers settled more carefully upon his papers.

Shimon noticed Aya's eyes move briefly toward him before returning to her work, and an unwelcome memory of Tarō's advice at the shrine immediately surfaced.

She has looked at you twice, he remembered. Annoying man.

The questioning began soon afterward. The hunters were separated where practical and brought through the encounter step by step. The younger scholar wanted to know as many details as possible.

Kagawa's decision to charge received particular attention.

When the one-eyed rider finally entered, he defended the choice with all the confidence Shimon had expected. “The creature was exposed,” the dinosaur rider maintained.

“It was beside another creature,” Abe reminded him.

“Kurobane had the first.”

“The formation had been ordered to hold.”

Kagawa's remaining eye narrowed. “I saw an opportunity.”

The senior retainer Nagai Morichika sat near the rear of the chamber with two clerks beside him. The powerful man had listened without interruption until then, his posture as precise as it had been in Lord Satomi's audience hall, but now his gaze rose from the notes.

“And created another opportunity for the enemy,” the commanding man corrected with measured calm.

The one-eyed samurai fell silent, while Abe continued writing with obvious satisfaction.

The debrief occupied most of the morning. Aya altered the painting repeatedly as the separate accounts refined it, moving Kurobane farther forward, changing the angle of Tarō's spear, widening Shimon's stance, and enlarging a fallen cedar until the picture became an uncomfortable approximation of memory rather than merely an illustration.

That gave Shimon an idea. “Aya-dono.”

Her brush paused above the paper.

“I have something else I would like you to draw.”

Abe immediately looked interested. “Another yōma?”

“No.”

Heita's head snapped toward him.

Shimon continued before the pale warrior could find an excuse to leave. “Matsunaga sees things.”

The strange samurai's face tightened.

Seki glanced toward him. “Most of us do.”

“Things the rest of us cannot,” Ayanokouji amended.

Now the room's attention settled upon Heita. The naginata fighter folded his arms and regarded Shimon with the betrayed indignation of a man whose private affliction had just been placed on public display.

Shimon raised one hand. “They already know you saw the third Grey Feeder before most of us did.”

Abe leaned forward eagerly. “What else do you see?”

Matsunaga closed his eyes for a moment. “You are a terrible man, Ayanokouji.”

“That has been mentioned recently,” the young, narrow faced scholar insisted.

Nagai's expression sharpened. “What has Matsunaga seen?”

Shimon hesitated. Involving Aya had seemed sensible because she possessed the skill required to turn Heita's descriptions he might be able to analyze. Informing the senior retainer of every interaction with the thing attached to him was another matter entirely.

“The things at the altar this morning,” he answered carefully. “And other things around shrines.”

Heita opened one eye, perhaps surprised that Shimon had chosen not to reveal more.

The commanding man studied both warriors before looking toward the young artist. “Can you draw what Matsunaga describes?”

“If he can describe it clearly enough,” Aya replied.

“I can,” the strange warrior conceded reluctantly.

“Then do so.”

Shimon cleared his throat. “There are some details I would prefer not discussed here.”

The room grew noticeably quieter as Nagai regarded him with the calm expression the new samurai had learned to fear considerably more than anger.

“The shrine may be better,” the young man added quickly. “Noritsuna-sama should hear them.”

The senior retainer considered that suggestion for several breaths before giving a single nod. “Take Matsunaga. Report anything useful, and do not decide for yourself what I would consider useful.”

That final warning was undoubtedly directed at Shimon.

Aya rinsed her brush in clean water. “I will be at the shrine this afternoon.”

As she looked toward him, a trace of pleasure from the earlier compliment still lingered in her expression.

***

Chief Priest Imbe Noritsuna's residence stood behind the shrine buildings, separated from the public approach by a low fence.

Shimon arrived with Heita shortly after midday and was shown through to a narrow veranda overlooking the priest's garden. The space was modest in size but beautifully ordered, with flat stones crossing pale gravel toward a pond fed by a narrow channel of running water. Carp moved beneath the surface in slow flashes of white, orange, and gold, while a carefully trained pine leaned toward a weathered stone lantern. Irises and low shrubs softened the edge of the water, and moss filled the shaded spaces between the stones.

Near the far side of the garden, a bamboo pipe slowly filled from the channel until the weight of the water tipped it forward. The pipe emptied, returned, and struck a stone with a hollow knock. Shimon recognized the device after studying it for a moment. It was a classical shishi-odoshi.

Chief Priest Noritsuna received them without ceremony, having exchanged the white and pale-blue robes Shimon knew from the shrine rituals for simpler clothing. He had not previously considered Aya's resemblance to her father very closely, but it became obvious in the quieter surroundings. Both possessed the same attentive eyes and the same habit of becoming completely still when something caught their interest.

“My daughter tells me you wish to make pictures of invisible things,” the shrine priest remarked as they settled upon the veranda.

Heita looked toward Shimon, but the displaced young samurai declined responsibility through silence.

Aya joined them shortly afterward carrying an elegant tea set.

The service that followed was not the elaborate ceremonial performance Shimon associated with celebrated tea masters or museum demonstrations. It was smaller and more domestic, yet every movement remained deliberate. The dark-haired young woman placed the utensils in order, handled the cloth with practiced precision, cleaned what required cleaning, and measured the powdered tea before adding the heated water.

Shimon became profoundly grateful for Fumi's lessons.

The widow who had helped with their etiquette training had spent several afternoons teaching both him and Tarō enough basic chanoyu that neither would disgrace Nagai's household if a superior ever placed a bowl before them. At the time, Shimon had regarded the instruction as an elaborate method of discovering new ways to sit incorrectly. Now every small correction returned with unexpected usefulness: Do not seize the bowl. Admire without staring. Turn it. Drink slowly.

Avoid making some idiotic remark about caffeine.

Heita accepted his bowl first and drank with an almost intense concentration while Aya prepared one for Shimon.

She placed it before him and raised her eyes.

“Thank you,” he offered politely.

The young miko inclined her head before returning her attention to the utensils.

Her hands were graceful, but Shimon found himself noticing that the grace was not merely ornamental. It was practical. He had watched those same fingers prepare protective charms, take testimony, reconstruct monsters from frightened descriptions, and record details which might later save the lives of men carrying swords. Aya was educated according to the needs of this world, and her knowledge gave her an important place within the strange venture Nagai had assembled around the yōma.

The thought led somewhere his mind had no sensible reason to go. She was not a modern woman. Immediately, Shimon realized the stupidity of the observation. Aya was simply a woman who did not live in his century. There was nothing incomplete about her because she had never used a smartphone, ridden a train, or complained about subscription services.

He watched her prepare another bowl and wondered what she would look like in modern clothing. Something elegant, perhaps. She would probably walk through Ginza without looking especially out of place, provided no one explained that she had been born several centuries too early.

What music would she like? Classical seemed too obvious. Jazz might suit her. Perhaps the recently revitalized city pop. Then his imagination became actively unhelpful and began testing different modern subcultures against her.

Elegant Gothic Lolita might almost work. There was something about the elaborate formality and femininity he could imagine suiting her. Gyaru? Absolutely not.

The mental image of the poised shrine maiden with bleached hair, impossible fingernails, and a smartphone buried beneath dangling charms was so profoundly wrong that Shimon nearly smiled into his tea.

Aya noticed. “Is something amusing?” she inquired, studying him over the utensils.

“No.”

Heita looked across at him even as the young woman raised one eyebrow.

“The tea is very good,” Shimon pivoted.

“That was not what I asked,” she returned, perfect politeness unable to conceal the amusement warming her voice.

Shimon drank rather than answer. And, when he lowered the bowl, she was still watching him. Their eyes met for another heartbeat before she looked away, a slight smile appearing at the corner of her mouth.

Something uncomfortable and pleasant moved through Shimon's chest. He, however, attributed it firmly to the tea.

Across the veranda, Noritsuna had developed a sudden and apparently profound interest in his garden.

Once the utensils had been cleared away, Aya returned with paper and brushes.

“Which one first?” she asked.

Shimon looked toward the tight-faced warrior beside him. “The two from the altar.”

Heita rubbed his palms together before settling opposite her. “They were not shaped like men.”

The shrine maiden prepared the brush. “What were they shaped like?”

“One was smaller.”

“How much smaller?”

Matsunaga raised one hand to indicate the height. “Perhaps this high while sitting.”

The first light lines appeared.

“It had arms?” Aya prompted.

“Yes, but too long and very thin. Its body was covered in something like hair, except the hair moved when nothing else did.”

Her brush worked across the page. “A face?”

The scarred warrior frowned at the memory. “A mask, perhaps, or a face that looked like one. White, with a long nose.”

Aya added the shape before glancing up. “And the eyes?”

“Three.”

Her brush stopped. “Three, you say?”

“Two where eyes should be, and another above them,” the spiritually attuned samurai nodded.

Shimon watched the image develop into something crouched with its knees drawn toward a narrow body. Long arms reached downward beside it, while shifting hair or fur surrounded an elongated pale face marked by three dark eyes.

Heita shook his head. “The arms are wrong. Longer.”

The young artist corrected them.

“The fingers?”

“More joints.”

Another alteration followed, and the spiritually sensitive warrior leaned closer before finally giving a reluctant nod.

“Yes. Almost,” the warrior admitted.

The second kami proved considerably harder. According to Heita, it had been taller while sitting within approximately the same amount of space. Its body folded in ways he struggled to describe, while thin branch-like structures grew from either side of its head. It possessed no mouth and only one eye, yet that eye had remained fixed upon Shimon until sometime before dawn.

Aya made three attempts before Matsunaga finally pointed toward the last.

“That is close.”

“Only close?” she said, exasperated.

The restless fingers touched the scar beneath his chin again. “I do not know whether brush and paper can be exact in replicating the shape of spirit.”

Shimon understood the difficulty. Perspective depended upon geometry, and Heita appeared to be describing things whose relationship with ordinary geometry was uncertain at best.

“Capture both images and build approximate three-dimensional models from Heita's descriptions. Mark all uncertain proportions,” he ordered silently.

[VISUAL ARCHIVE CREATED]

Reference: ALTAR ENTITY AReference: ALTAR ENTITY BSource reliability: Single witnessSpatial reconstruction confidence: LowAR projection available

“Overlay them approximately where he saw them.”

Two translucent figures appeared at the edge of Shimon's vision. Then, he mentally placed the remembered altar several paces across the veranda, and the reconstructed forms settled around the imaginary location. One crouched low before it, while the other folded upward behind the first in a shape which seemed to occupy more room than the physical space should have permitted.

They were not real. They were models assembled by his chip from Aya's paintings and Heita's testimony. Shimon understood that perfectly well, but his body reacted anyway.

[STRESS RESPONSE ELEVATED]

“Wonderful,” he muttered in English under his breath.

Aya looked up. “What is?”

“Nothing.”

The young miko turned toward Matsunaga. “Does he often say strange things?”

“Constantly,” Heita replied with quiet satisfaction.

Shimon gave the strange warrior an injured look, while Noritsuna's expression suggested that the priest found the exchange more entertaining than propriety allowed.

Aya placed the completed paintings aside. “And the other?”

The change in Heita was immediate. Whatever small amusement had entered his face disappeared, and Shimon felt his own mood follow it.

“The thing you saw around me,” the young samurai clarified.

The scarred warrior remained silent for several moments before drawing a slow breath. The instructions came in their maddening detail. 

Following his words, the artist began overlapping the limbs, allowing some to remain solid while others divided into half-formed shadows. Each ended in something curved that was not quite a claw, not quite a sickle, and not quite a hand.

“The body was wrong,” the spiritually sensitive warrior continued, his voice becoming quieter as the picture improved. “Like an animal that had learned the shape of a man by watching one from far away.”

Shimon's stomach tightened.

Aya studied the half-finished form. “What sort of animal?”

“I do not know.”

“Four-legged?”

“Sometimes.”

Even Noritsuna shifted at that answer.

“Make the back longer,” Heita instructed. “The shoulders higher and the head lower.”

The young artist obeyed before asking, “What did the face look like?”

Matsunaga fell silent. Shimon remembered the weight against his chest in the inn, the impossible pressure bending the air above him, and the terrible warmth entering his skull while words arrived without sound.

I am your friend.

Then came the memory of the shrine, sharper and considerably worse, where his own hand had moved without permission and a brush had created a seal Noritsuna had never taught him.

“I did not see the face properly until the shrine,” Heita finally admitted.

Aya waited.

“It passed through Ayanokouji.”

Her dark eyes moved toward Shimon.

“What did you see?”

The young man looked haunted. “One eye.”

Shimon stopped breathing for a heartbeat as the brush completed the eye and its monstrous pupil. Recognition came before conscious thought. It was not exact, because a reconstruction filtered through another man's sight and then through an artist's hand could never be exact, but Shimon knew the eye.

The thing that had touched him after Yae Ikazuchi. His Spirit Break. The thing that had spoken to him through darkness. The thing that claimed it could open a road home.

Aya added the final strokes and leaned back to study her work.

The creature crouched behind the painted Shimon like a stain of darkness that was not meant to be. Its numerous limbs extended around, dividing wherever they overlapped, while a eye looked down from a face otherwise swallowed by darkness.

A shudder moved through Shimon before he could stop it, and the miko noticed.

“You know this one,” she observed softly, and it was not phrased as a question.

“I have felt it,” Shimon admitted.

Noritsuna's expression changed, while Heita turned toward him sharply.

“Before the shrine,” the young samurai continued. “At night. I thought it was a dream at first.”

The priest leaned forward. “What did it do?”

“It held me down.”

The remembered pressure made Shimon's shoulders tighten.

“It spoke.”

Aya's brush remained motionless between her fingers.

“What did it say?” Noritsuna pressed.

Shimon looked at the painted eye. “That it was my friend.”

For several moments, the only sounds came from water moving through the garden and the hollow knock of the bamboo pipe striking stone.

The shrine priest moved closer to the painting without touching it. “And at the shrine?”

“It helped me… learn something,” Ayanokouji said in a tremulous voice.

Noritsuna studied the image. “If Matsunaga has represented its presence correctly, this is no minor household kami, nor some wandering spirit sustained by a forgotten roadside offering. Powerful beings gather around places, lineages, vows, disasters, rivers, mountains, and war. Something of this strength is unlikely to attach itself to one man without purpose.”

Shimon disliked almost every part of that explanation. “What purpose?”

The older priest regarded him patiently. “If I understood the purposes of great kami, Ayanokouji-san, I would be a considerably more important priest.”

Aya lowered her face, but Shimon caught the hint of amusement before she did.

He returned his attention to the picture, willing his biochip to store it.

[VISUAL ARCHIVE CREATED]

Designation: Unknown EntityReference confidence: ModerateSources: Direct cognitive event / witness reconstructionAR projection available

The designation bothered him. Unknown Entity. The thing had helped him, but Shimon knew that nothing in this world truly came for free.

It had given him the Closed Gate, or at least forced the ability upon him. It had intervened when the yōma nearly killed him in the forest. Most importantly, it claimed that it possessed the means to return him home. Perhaps it had brought him here in the first place… Still, classification mattered.

“Change designation.”

[AWAITING DESIGNATION]

Shimon stared into the monstrous eye.

“The Entity. Just Entity”

[CONFIRM]

“Confirm.”

[CLASSIFICATION UPDATED]

THE ENTITY

Behavioral assessment: Unknown / Potentially hostilePrior actions include unauthorized motor control and cognitive intrusion.Prior actions also include provision of anomalous ability and claimed assistance.Recommendation: Maintain caution.

Shimon agreed entirely with his technological companion.

Logically, he could not simply decide that the Entity was an enemy because it frightened him. If it possessed the power to return him home, refusing contact without understanding its goals would be foolish. Shimon had spent much of his professional career assessing uncertain information, calculating risk, and avoiding decisions based entirely upon instinct. The Entity had helped him, and it had called itself his friend. Reason demanded that he at least consider the possibility.

Something deeper than reason answered immediately.

No.

The objection came from his stomach, his spine, and the remembered terror of lying helpless while something moved his body. He looked away from the painting.

Aya was watching him again, and this time there was no amusement in her expression.

***

Shimon returned home before sunset and discovered that investigating supernatural beings was considerably easier than composing a thank-you note to a young woman.

Kiyo found him sitting before several sheets of paper and naturally assumed Ueda Sōan had assigned more correspondence.

“No,” Shimon replied when she asked.

The housekeeper looked over the abandoned sheets. “Then what are you writing?”

“A note of thanks.”

“To whom?”

Shimon hesitated half a heartbeat too long and Kiyo's expression changed immediately. 

“No.” Shimon closed his eyes. “You have the same expression Tarō gets.”

“Woman?” she inquired, her interest sharpening.

Shimon considered lying, remembered that Kiyo ran his household and would almost certainly know the truth before the ink dried, and surrendered.

“Noritsuna Aya.”

“The shrine maiden? The priest’s daughter?”

“Yes, the one and the same,” he was forced to admit.

The woman's smile broadened, causing Shimon to regret honesty at once.

“This is not what you think.”

Kiyo arranged the edge of one discarded sheet with unnecessary care. Genbei crossed the courtyard beyond the open doors carrying split wood. The grizzled servant saw his wife's expression, and altered direction without a word. He was, in short, a wise man.

Shimon possessed enough disposable income now that buying a gift did not create a serious financial problem, but deciding what was appropriate required considerably more thought. Flowers felt too direct, clothing was insane, and jewelry was too heavy in its intent.

His housekeeper eventually suggested good paper.

Aya consumed large quantities of it during the council meetings, and unlike something merely decorative, fine paper possessed an obvious practical value. Shimon added a small, well-made ink cake from a merchant near the castle whose goods his calligraphy instructor had once grudgingly described as acceptable.

The note proved considerably harder. His first attempt sounded like correspondence addressed to an official. The second resembled a military report, while according to Kiyo the third could have been written to an elderly uncle.

However, with his chip analyzing context, and ffter several more attempts, he finally produced something that did not seem likely to humiliate him immediately.

Aya-dono,

Your brush gave shape to things my own eyes could not perceive, and for that I am grateful. I was equally honored by the grace with which you received us beneath your father's roof. The movement of your brush and the manner of your tea seemed to share the same quality: neither stroke nor gesture was wasted.

Please accept these small things for whatever truths your hand next gives form.

Ayanokouji Shimon

He read it once and decided it was too much. Then he read it again and decided that perhaps it was not. Shimon folded the sheet according to Ueda Sōan's instruction, wrapped the paper and ink carefully, and tied the small parcel.

Kiyo appeared almost immediately, and the housekeeper accepted the package with both hands, maintaining an expression of exaggerated innocence.

“Have someone take it to the shrine tomorrow,” he ordered, surprised at the authority that was seeded in his voice.

“As Ayanokouji-sama commands,” she replied, bowing with considerably more satisfaction than the simple task justified.