Chapter 22: The Truth Buried Beneath.
I returned home after spending the day with the investigators.
My head was full. The shrine. The tablets. Yamatsuchi-Ushi. Nijie. The elder's careful words. The shopkeeper's fear. The weight of everything I had learned pressed down on me like a stone.
I went straight to bed.
I didn't mean to sleep. I just closed my eyes for a moment. But the moment stretched, and the exhaustion took over, and when I opened my eyes again, the light had shifted and the house smelled of food.
I sat up.
Hinata was in the kitchen.
She was already busy preparing lunch. She stood on her stool, the same stool she always used, her small hands moving with the quiet competence I had come to know. She had made herself at home—opening cabinets, finding ingredients, arranging everything on the counter.
She glanced over her shoulder when she heard me stir.
"Good afternoon, Hikaru-san," she said. "You slept a long time."
"I was tired."
"You're always tired." She turned back to the pot. "I'm making lunch."
I walked over and looked at what she was doing.
"What are you making?"
"Rice. And soup. And vegetables." She pointed at each item in turn. "And something special."
"What's the special thing?"
She paused. Her brow furrowed.
"I forgot the name," she said. "But it has eggs. And sugar. And it's supposed to be sweet."
"You mean tamagoyaki?"
"Yes! That's it."
"You're making tamagoyaki?"
"I'm making something like it." She picked up a jar and peered inside. "I might have used the wrong ingredient."
"What did you use?"
She held up the jar. "Salt."
I laughed. "Tamagoyaki uses sugar, not salt."
Hinata looked at the jar. Then at the pot. Then at me.
"Oh," she said.
"It's fine. We'll eat it anyway."
She nodded, satisfied. "Okay."
We sat down and ate together.
The tamagoyaki was salty. The rice was slightly undercooked. The soup was a little too thick.
It was one of the best meals I had eaten in weeks.
For a little while, I forgot about everything. About the villagers' suspicious behavior. I just sat with Hinata, eating her imperfect food, listening to her chatter about the cat and the bird's nest and the dream she had about flying over the mountains.
I found myself wishing that ordinary days could last a little longer.
A knock interrupted us.
"I'll get it," I said.
When I opened the door, Aiko stood outside with her notebook tucked beneath one arm. She looked as though she had discovered something important.
"Hikaru! Are you busy?"
I glanced back at the table.
"Just having lunch."
"Sorry to interrupt, but I think we've found someone who might be able to help us."
I stepped aside to let her in.
"Who?"
"An elderly woman named Michiko. She lives on the other side of the village. Her family has kept old stories for generations, and she says she remembers hearing about the Nijie and Yamatsuchi-Ushi from her grandmother."
I felt the uneasiness in my stomach return.
"The Nijie?"
"Yes. She agreed to talk to us."
Aiko glanced at the table.
"Have you eaten?"
"Yes," I said.
Hinata looked down at her plate.
"Not very successfully," she muttered.
Aiko looked between us.
I decided not to explain.
"We should go," I said.
***
Michiko lived in a small, old house near the outskirts of Ubunores.
The path leading to it was narrow, bordered by grass that had grown almost as high as my knees. The house itself was weathered but well maintained. A row of potted plants stood beside the entrance, and a small wind chime hung beneath the eaves.
An elderly woman opened the door before we could knock a second time.
"You must be the people who called earlier," she said.
Aiko bowed politely.
"Thank you for agreeing to speak with us."
Michiko returned the bow and invited us inside.
The house smelled faintly of wood, tea, and dried herbs. Old photographs lined one wall, their subjects frozen in time. Some showed families standing outside houses that no longer existed. Others showed groups of villagers gathered at festivals, their faces too small and indistinct to identify.
Michiko brought us tea before settling into a chair.
"You said you wanted to ask about the old stories," she began.
"That's right," Aiko said. She opened her notebook. "We've been researching the shrine in the mountains. We found some old tablets and carvings that don't seem to match the stories people tell today."
Michiko's gaze moved toward the window.
"The shrine..."
She was quiet for a moment.
"My grandmother used to talk about it."
"What did she say?" Kenji asked.
"Not very much. She was already old when I was a child, and she didn't always remember things clearly. Sometimes she'd tell the same story twice, but the details would be different."
Michiko gave a small, apologetic smile.
"I can't promise that everything I remember is accurate."
"That's all right," Aiko assured her. "Even fragments might help."
Michiko nodded.
"According to my grandmother, there was once a god associated with the mountain. The villagers believed it watched over the land and kept things in balance. They offered rice, sake, and prayers at the shrine."
"Do you know the god's name?" Aiko asked.
Michiko frowned thoughtfully.
"I'm afraid I don't remember one. My grandmother might have known it, but she usually just called it the mountain god."
She folded her hands in her lap.
"She said the earth was quiet in those days. Or perhaps she meant that people believed it was quiet because the god was watching over them. It's difficult to know what she meant now."
I looked at Aiko. She made a note without interrupting.
"And the Nijie?" she asked.
At the name, Michiko's expression changed slightly.
"Those were the little figures in the old stories, weren't they?"
"You've heard of them?" Takeshi asked.
"Only from my grandmother."
Michiko looked toward the photographs on the wall as though she might find the answer among them.
"She called them the Rainbow Painters. She said they served the being at the shrine, though I don't remember whether she meant they were its servants or messengers. The stories weren't consistent."
"What were they supposed to do?" I asked.
"Paint rainbows, apparently."
Michiko smiled faintly at the memory.
"Children liked those stories. My grandmother said children would run outside after the rain, hoping to see a rainbow and perhaps catch a glimpse of the little painters."
I imagined small figures with brushes moving across the sky, leaving bright colors in their wake.
It was difficult to reconcile that image with the uneasiness I had felt beneath the shrine.
"Did people worship the Nijie?" Aiko asked.
"I don't know. I don't remember my grandmother saying they were worshipped. I think people were fond of them."
Michiko paused.
"Then, at some point, they disappeared from the stories."
"Disappeared?" Takeshi repeated.
"That's how my grandmother described it. She said the rainbows continued to appear, but the Nijie were no longer spoken of. At least, not in the stories she heard when she was older."
"Did she explain why?"
Michiko shook her head.
"She told me that something had happened, but she never explained what. Perhaps she didn't know. Perhaps I was too young to understand what she meant."
Aiko leaned forward slightly.
"Do you remember anything else? A conflict, a disaster, or something that might have happened at the shrine?"
"No. I'm sorry."
Michiko seemed genuinely troubled by the question.
"I wish I could tell you more."
Aiko reassured her that she had already helped us.
But I couldn't stop thinking about what Michiko had said.
The rainbows remained.
The Nijie did not.
What could make people stop speaking about something that had once brought joy to their children?
And why had the carvings survived when the stories had not?
Aiko turned to the subject of Yamatsuchi-Ushi.
"Have you heard that name before?"
Michiko nodded slowly.
"That one, yes. My grandmother told me about it more often."
"Was it the enormous bull said to live beneath the mountain?"
"That's how she described it."
Michiko lifted her teacup, took a small sip, and continued.
"She said it slept beneath the earth. When it moved, the ground trembled. Sometimes there were landslides, and sometimes people lost their homes."
"Did she say it caused earthquakes?" Kenji asked.
"Perhaps. I remember her saying that the mountain would shake when the bull stirred. I don't know whether people believed it caused every tremor or only the great ones."
She set her cup down.
"According to the stories, the villagers rang bells and made offerings at the shrine. They wanted to keep the bull asleep."
"Did they believe it was evil?" I asked.
Michiko considered the question.
"Not exactly. My grandmother never described it as a creature that hated people. It was dangerous because of what happened when it moved. Whether it was angry, or simply sleeping, I couldn't tell you."
Aiko wrote something in her notebook.
That was different from the accounts we had found online. Those versions described Yamatsuchi-Ushi as a destructive monster, a creature that brought disaster wherever it went.
The old tablets had suggested something else: a being whose presence was tied to the stability of the land.
Perhaps the stories had changed.
But why?
"Did people continue making offerings?" Aiko asked.
"I couldn't say. My grandmother spoke as if those ceremonies belonged to a very distant past. By the time I was born, no one I knew went to the shrine."
"Do you know when the ceremonies stopped?"
"No."
Michiko lowered her eyes.
"I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, aren't I?"
"Not at all," Aiko said gently. "We're trying to understand a history that very few people seem to remember."
Michiko nodded, though she still looked apologetic.
Then, after a moment, she spoke again.
"There was another story. I don't know if it belongs with the others."
Aiko stopped writing.
"What story?"
"The mushrooms."
Michiko explained that certain mushrooms grew deep in the forest. According to the stories, they sometimes glowed in the darkness.
People believed the glow could be seen only by those who possessed a special gift.
"I remember my grandmother calling them trials," Michiko said. "Though I don't know if that was their original name. Perhaps the name came later."
"What happened during these trials?" Takeshi asked.
"People took the children into the forest and asked them whether they could see the light."
"All the children?"
"I don't know. Perhaps only certain families participated at first. My grandmother's stories were unclear."
Michiko rubbed her thumb against the edge of her cup.
"She said some children could see the glow, while others couldn't. At first, people believed those who could see it possessed a gift. But as time passed, some began to fear those who couldn't see it, or those who claimed to see something different."
"Why?" I asked.
"Fear, I suppose."
Michiko said it without conviction, as if she were repeating an answer she had heard but never understood.
"When people don't understand something, they sometimes begin to suspect one another. They wonder whether someone is lying, whether someone is different, whether something is wrong."
She paused.
"My grandmother said that people eventually began to ask whether the children in their own homes were truly their children."
The room seemed to grow quieter.
Aiko's pen rested motionless above the page.
"Do you mean changelings?" she asked.
Michiko looked up.
"Yes. Torikae-ko. Children who had supposedly been exchanged for something else."
"Did the villagers believe the mushroom trials could identify them?"
"Some must have. Otherwise, I don't understand why the stories continued."
Michiko's voice had become softer.
"Some accounts said the trials were necessary to protect families. Others said they were cruel and that innocent children suffered because their parents were afraid."
"Did children die?" Kenji asked.
Michiko nodded once.
"That is what the stories say."
She looked down at her hands.
"Some were accused of being changelings. Some were treated as though they were no longer human. I don't know how many died, or what actually happened to them."
For a moment, nobody spoke.
I thought of the child-sized footprints at the shrine, stopping abruptly in the dirt.
I thought of the small statues hidden behind the building.
And I remembered the prayer plaque, its weathered characters barely legible beneath the moss.
Forgive.
Children.
Remember.
"Did your grandmother believe the children really were changelings?" I asked.
Michiko shook her head.
"She never gave me a clear answer. Sometimes she said the villagers believed they were protecting themselves. Other times, she sounded as though she thought they had done something terrible."
She drew a slow breath.
"She told me that people could become so frightened of being deceived that they stopped trusting the people they loved."
I felt a chill pass through me.
"Did she say the mountain god had anything to do with it?" Aiko asked.
"Some people blamed the god. Others blamed spirits, or the mushrooms, or the fear itself. The stories changed depending on who told them."
Michiko looked genuinely frustrated now.
"I wish I could give you a single explanation. But there wasn't one. Not in the stories I heard."
Aiko closed her notebook halfway.
"Do you know whether anyone wrote these accounts down?"
"Not that I know of. My grandmother told them to me. I remember some of her words, but I can't tell you which parts came from her grandmother and which parts she added herself."
She looked at us in turn.
"These stories have been passed from one person to another for a very long time. Perhaps some things were forgotten naturally. Perhaps some people chose not to speak about them."
She hesitated.
"But I wouldn't want you to think I know which is true."
"We understand," Aiko said.
And I believed her.
Michiko wasn't hiding a complete history from us. She was holding a handful of memories, some clear and others blurred by time. She could tell us what she had heard, but she couldn't tell us what those stories meant.
We thanked her for her time.
Before we left, she walked us to the door.
"If you find something more about the shrine," she said, "I hope you'll let me know."
Aiko promised that we would.
I glanced back at Michiko before stepping outside. She stood in the doorway, one hand resting against the frame, watching us leave.
She looked like someone who had just remembered a story she had spent a lifetime trying to forget.
Or perhaps I was imagining that.
***
We walked back toward the village in silence.
The afternoon sun stretched our shadows across the road. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, followed by the sound of a door closing.
Ordinary village sounds.
Yet everything seemed different now.
Aiko was the first to speak.
"We have several accounts, but none of them gives us the whole picture."
"An old mountain religion," Kenji said. "A creature beneath the earth. Offerings meant to keep it asleep."
"And the Nijie," Takeshi added. "A group of beings that seem to have disappeared from the surviving stories."
Aiko nodded.
"Then there's the mushroom trial and the changeling accusations. We don't know when they began, how they were connected to the shrine, or whether the stories originally belonged together."
"Could the mushroom story have been added later?" I asked.
"Certainly," Aiko replied. "Or an older practice might have been given a different meaning over time. We don't have enough evidence to say."
She glanced toward the mountain.
"What troubles me is how much has disappeared. We found the carvings, the tablets, and the references to the Nijie. Yet the modern stories barely acknowledge any of it."
"Maybe people simply stopped believing in them," Kenji suggested.
"That could explain why the stories faded," Aiko said. "But it doesn't explain why the surviving versions contradict one another so completely. And it doesn't tell us why certain details survived in the shrine while others vanished from the stories people tell today."
Takeshi adjusted the strap of his camera bag.
"Someone could have changed the stories."
"Someone could have," Aiko agreed. "But we shouldn't assume that until we have evidence."
I listened to their discussion, but my thoughts kept returning to the same fragments.
The Nijie had been beloved by children.
The villagers had once made offerings to something beneath the mountain.
Later, they had become afraid of children they believed might not truly belong to their families.
And somewhere along the way, people had begun to forget.
I tried to imagine how those things could fit together.
I couldn't.
Perhaps they were separate stories that had become tangled over generations. Perhaps there was a connection we had not yet discovered.
But the more I thought about the shrine, the less I believed that everything we had found was a coincidence.
The records were incomplete. The stories contradicted one another. Names had disappeared, while fragments of old beliefs remained hidden in places most villagers no longer visited.
It felt as though we were looking at the remains of something that had been broken apart.
Not simply forgotten.
Broken apart.
I glanced toward the mountain.
Its slopes were quiet beneath the afternoon sky. From where we stood, I couldn't see the shrine, only the trees that concealed it.
Yet I remembered the carvings beneath the floorboards. The little figures holding their brushes. The faded words on the tablets. The strange sensation that had followed me when we discovered them, as if the mountain itself had been listening.
I couldn't explain that feeling.
I didn't know whether the Nijie had ever existed, whether Yamatsuchi-Ushi slept beneath the earth, or whether the stories of the changeling children were nothing more than the terrible consequences of human fear.
But I knew one thing.
We hadn't found the whole story.
Perhaps no single person in Ubunores remembered it anymore. Perhaps the truth had been passed down in fragments until even those fragments had lost their original meaning.
Or perhaps someone had wanted it that way.
I couldn't prove it.
Not yet.
But the pieces were still there.
Waiting beneath the dust, the moss, and the silence of a village that had learned not to ask too many questions.
And I had the uneasy feeling that we were finally beginning to find them.
