Poor Girl
I was standing where the light had fallen.
A tiny shrine by the pond. It was the place where I always took Shiro for walks.
A silent world where time had stopped. A world where only the gods could move.
Someone was there.
A girl in pajamas stood there alone, her shoulders trembling.
“Why...?”
It was Kinashi Sotoko.
At this hour, in a place like this, dressed like that… what happened to her?
I instinctively tried to run over to her, but right then, someone grabbed my wrist tightly.
“You are…”
When I turned around, standing there was Iyo no Kuni-gami,Got of Iyo.
A white blouse and a crimson skirt. The old-fashioned outfit somehow suited her perfectly.
She placed a finger to her lips and quietly led me behind the shrine.
“Soto-chan is crying. And dressed like that, too. We have to hear her out.”
Kuni-gami made a strange face.
“Yamazumi-san, are you close with Sotoko?”
“Maybe not super close yet, but she’s really nice to me.”
“That isn’t Sotoko.”
“Huh?”
“The one over there right now is a god wandering this world, carrying regrets from a far distant past.”
“You mean… a corrupted spirit?”
“Some people call it that.”
“I heard the god of Ishizuchi mention it. Something about a powerful one appearing today.”
“Yes. It appeared only moments ago.”
“Hey… what’s going to happen to Soto-chan? She’s such a bright and smart girl…”
Kuni-gami smiled softly.
“So Sotoko made herself a good friend after all. Just as the god of the Seto Sea predicted. Very well, Rin Yamazumi. I’ll tell you the story of that pitiful girl over there. The story people have told about her for centuries.”
It happened sixteen hundred years ago.There once was a princess so beautiful that people could hardly believe she was real.
The prince—her own older brother—fell in love with her, and eventually the two became lovers. But siblings of the same blood were never meant to be together.
After the former king died, the prince, who was supposed to inherit the throne, lost the support of the people.
When the people tried to make the prince’s younger brother the next king instead, the prince panicked and fled to a retainer’s house to prepare for war. But when his younger brother attacked, the retainer betrayed him. The prince was captured. And so he was exiled to Iyo.
But the princess left behind longed for him so desperately that she followed after him.
She somehow managed to reach the prince at last.
But in the end, the two took their own lives together.
I felt like I’d heard the story before. Maybe at some local children’s event when I was little.
“So that princess was reincarnated as Soto-chan?”
“Yes. Some people would call it possession. But the princess’s soul lives within Sotoko. Right now, memories from sixteen hundred years ago are awakening inside her.”
“So she’s remembering all those painful, heartbreaking memories…”
“Not just that.”
“Huh?”
“Do you know why the two of them chose death, Yamazumi-san?”
I couldn’t even imagine.
“They placed their hopes on another life. They wanted to be together someday without anyone condemning them for it.”
“No way…”
I covered my mouth without thinking.
“But reincarnation doesn’t work so conveniently. Age, place, circumstances… in a world this vast, for two separated souls to find each other again is almost a miracle.”
“Almost a miracle… that sounds hopeless…”
“In fact, the two of them were reincarnated over and over again throughout the centuries, and still never managed to meet.”
Emptiness. Despair. Resignation. It felt like all those emotions were crashing down on me at once.
“And even so… they were reborn again?”
“Yes.”
“But maybe this time they can meet. No—they definitely can. They’ve been searching for each other for over a thousand years. This time will be okay.”
Kuni-gami smiled.
“Yes. This time, they found each other.”
“They did? Wait… they met?”
Then why was she crying? Why was she standing there like that?
“Who do you think the other person is?”
The other person…? Soto-chan’s smile appeared in my mind. Her beautiful face lit up with a radiant grin. A hand reaching out to wipe at the corner of her mouth.
That person was—
That handsome guy.
The boy who always walked to school with her.
Soto-chan’s older brother.
“No way…”
I thought I saw Kuni-gami smile again.
“Yes. Exactly that.”
So that means…
The two who once suffered such a cruel fate because they had been born as brother and sister…were somehow born into the exact same relationship all over again?
How could that happen…?
That poor girl standing there with trembling shoulders—my eyes started to burn with tears.
“After sixteen hundred years, only to end up right back where they started… yeah, I guess anyone would finally think, give me a break already.”
After saying that, Iyo no Kuni-gami turned and called out, “Hey.”
Standing there behind us was Soto-chan’s older brother, his face lowered.
I stared at him in shock.
The handsome guy who always looked so calm now wore the expression of someone carrying every misery in the world on his shoulders.
I see… he feels the same pain Soto-chan does.
“You two really are unbelievably stubborn about each other’s feelings. Even after I went to the trouble of enshrining you.”
Kuni-gami’s unexpected words caught me off guard.
“I couldn’t suppress those feelings. No matter what, that one refused to give up.”
“So you decided to go along with it? You’re more dutiful than I thought.”
“I bear responsibility. Everything began because I could not restrain my own feelings.”
“Could you not phrase it so suggestively? That sounded way worse than you meant it.”
“Iyo no Kuni-gami… I no longer know what I should do. I’m prepared to spend this entire life alone together with her in this world. But… will that truly satisfy her?”
Prepared? Satisfy her?
The words felt strange to me. When I looked toward Kuni-gami, she gave a small laugh before turning a serious gaze toward the handsome boy.
“I’ve kept quiet about this until now, but people sometimes call souls like yours—souls reborn with lingering attachments—corruptions. Do you know why?”
“…”
“When two souls enter one human body, they end up stealing life from people close to them. Your current mother passed away, didn’t she? And your grandmother is gone now too.”
The boy, who had been staring at the ground, looked up at Kuni-gami in shock.
“Think back on your previous reincarnations too. The people close to you—the ones who cared about you most—must have disappeared one after another.”
“That can’t be…”
“The people whose lives were taken had lives of their own too. Things they cherished. Dreams they wanted to accomplish. As the god of Iyo, I do not interfere with what humans choose to do. Even if some commit terrible acts, even if they make foolish mistakes, those are human problems.”
Kuni-gami paused for a moment, then spoke firmly.
“But corruptions are different. If lingering feelings from the dead end up affecting the lives of others against their will, then as the god of Iyo, I cannot simply ignore it. That’s why I seek to let those souls rest peacefully.”
Soto-chan’s brother stayed silent for a while before finally muttering,
“Then that makes us no different from vengeful spirits.”
Iyo no Kuni-gami said nothing.
“So… are you saying I turned her into a vengeful spirit as well?”
Kuni-gami gave me an exhausted look, like she was saying good grief. Then she stared at me for a long moment before slowly nodding and telling Soto-chan’s brother something.
He jerked his head up in shock.
I was stunned too.
Because if what she said was true…
“That’s impossible…”
Kuni-gami only smiled softly.
The one hearing her words looked completely shaken. After arguing back and forth with her several times, he finally cried out:
“Even if that were true, I still have no right to love her!”
Unnecessary feelings stole everything from her.
They took away her honor, her status, her future—
and in the end, even her will to live… even her life itself, leaving her soul to wander.
To her, I have never been anything but a disaster.
As long as she stays with me, she can never be happy.
There’s no way someone like me has the right to love her.
The anguished cry of his soul echoed inside my head.
Silence filled the air.
But still…
“Soto-chan… she wanted another chance, didn’t she?”
Before I realized it, I was speaking my thoughts out loud.
“She believed the two of you could start over together. That’s why she was willing to stake everything on another life… even to the point of choosing death, right?”
I thought about the girl I’d just seen, standing there with trembling shoulders.
“That means she believed she could begin again with you. She did it because she trusted you, didn’t she?”
And yet—
if you say things like that, then Soto-chan is just too pitiful.
It makes the girl who believed in you look like an idiot.
You keep saying I ruined her life, I ruined her fate—but what, do you think Soto-chan’s some kind of puppet with no will of her own?
She has feelings too. She has her own choices.
I’ve seen the smile Soto-chan makes when she’s with you.
A smile she never shows anyone else.
A smile so bright it made me jealous.
That’s why I never once doubted you were her boyfriend.
Why do you think she smiles like that?
Back then, she hadn’t even regained those ancient memories yet.
Whether the past existed or not, she simply liked you.
Because being with you made her happy.
So what about you?
When you were with Soto-chan, were you miserable? Was she a burden?
That’s not true, is it?
You always look happy when you’re with her too.
Because being together makes you happy.
Then why not just be honest about your feelings?
You keep talking like you already know being together will only make her unhappy—
that’s cowardly.
You might think you’re saying it out of kindness, but that’s not kindness at all.
You’re just running away from Soto-chan’s honest feelings.
You decided to try again, didn’t you?
You chose to be reborn.
And now, after finally finding each other again—
right when your new life together is finally about to begin—
you’re going to get scared and run away?
What happened to your resolve to carve out your future together?
