Chapter Text
Stepping through the door was a mistake.
Or at least you consider it to be one. It consumes you in waves of uncomfortable heat and nausea as you protrude through it, causing you to stumble over the moist dirt floor that replaced the roots under your feet.
Gathering your bearings, you take time to breathe in the atmosphere around you, seeing the tops of normal trees and cloudy sky now visible to you. The forest is dense, with the narrow man-made pathway the only thing guiding your next steps.
You look down at the path. Footprints. All of varying sizes, shapes, prints; different ways of walking and of pace. It's strange how clearly the soft soil tracks and remembers those before you. Maybe a little too well. Did these people know their path would be documented? Imprinted into the Earth? Would they have changed anything if they did? Will you? Some run, some walk, some seemed to stray off, their steps never seemingly returning to the path.
"stop getting distracted. rip your pathetic gaze from others." a little voice reverberates through your skull and you ultimately listen to it. When has listening to the voices ever gone wrong for anyone right?
Does it sound like you? Does it sound like a cacophony of voices? Do you truly know what you sound like?
Who has time to think about that shit anyways.
You take your first few steps onward and focus on the woods engulfing you. The trees are thick and dark, would be pitch black if not for the sun fighting against the clouds. The loneliness you can't seem to shake the feeling of eyes surrounding you, piercing the darkness of the canopy and forest and into your soul. Your desperate attempts to ignore it only prove to fuel the anxiety rising in your body. You frantically whip your head around but ultimately find nothing after your little outburst.
"can't handle the stress? pathetic. loser." the little voice echoes once more. It's only your second time hearing it and you're growing sick of it already.
You continue forward, this time your steps a little wider and rushed. This forest seems to close in on you, pressing on your chest and forcing your breaths to come out shallow and quick.
You started to run. When did you start? You don't know, but it doesn't matter, as the trees begin to thin out the more distance you gain.
Finally the trees break, and you find yourself at the top of a steep downward climb, the path down decorated with overhanging vines and trees, tori gates guiding you forward. Hesitantly, you take a step down, the path dusted with dirt over worn wooden planks.
Compared to the forest, the hike down was peaceful. The perfectly spaced steps making your journey mindless and strangely serene.
You let your thought wander, thinking about where you were, what you were doing, why you were here. It was clear you were meant to be. It was clear others were on this path too. So why wander alone?
You stumbled slightly when you realized the steep trek down slowly curved into the start of a shrine, warped and adapted to accommodate for the steep mountain side. How high up were you? Why weren't you cold?
You tentatively step into the shrine walls, unsure of the manners or rules there are, feeling like a turtle without it's shell. Vulnerable, out in the open, with no where to turn it's back. Finally, you reach a turn in the shrine, a break off that leads to a small zen garden attached to the mountain side. Koi fish swim through small ponds, connected by shallow rivers, as the land is coated in carefully raked sand. Lily pads on the water bloom healthily and abundantly, the flowers each at their own stages of life.
In the middle, perfectly poised and statuesque, stands a lady embodying the delicate gracefulness of a water lily. She turns to look at you, her face covered by a mask custom-made to fit her face, the mouth holding a small needle and the design of the mask covered in hand-painted lilies.
As you stand outside the garden she simply turns her head your way, still smoking her traditional smoking pipe, adorned in green jade and dusted in fine gold powder, a tassel hanging freely at the end and positioned elegantly in between her fingers.
After snapping out of your awestrucken trance, you take one uncertain step into the garden, your foot landing on the path leading up to her. Before you can drag your other foot to follow, she's infront of you, smoking pipe gone and instead taking the needle held in the masks mouth and pricking you with it.
She steps back, carefully watching the blood trickle down the needle, almost studying it. However, there is no change to the liquid. She looks back at you as she cleans the needle on her fine attire, a hanfu that gives her a wispy floating effect whenever she moved, making her look like as if she was nothing but a hazy memory.
Across the dress you can see the small blood streak on her beige sleeve, her torso wrapped securely in green fabric with a soft pink band around the dead center. The rest of the design follows her theme of lilies as she makes her way back to her initial position, taking out the smoking pipe and attending to the garden.
You feel as if you've already overstayed your welcome, her nature wasn't hostile it was just, dismissive as if that infintesimal prick told her all she needed to know. Carefully, you retract your foot and continue down the path.
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A soft breeze breaks you from your easy descent, the reddish leaves from the trees falling around you and drawing your attention to the clearing at the base of the mountain.
There, you see the main part of the shrine, and in the center, guarding a wall covered hurriedly in talisman, stands another lady, her attire more strict and form-fitting. It's red and has a pattern that resembles the cascading leaves around them. At her side is a sheathed katana, the handle wrapped in branches that bud with red petals. Her arms are crossed and she's visibly stiffened since you entered her field of view.
Again, not a very warm welcome.
You look around the shrine, taking in it's signs of aging and decay. The wood making up the shrine walls is soft from natural rot and rain, and the leaves have made an even coat on the floor, waiting for the wind to sweep them away.
The shrine the guardian keeps behind her however seems well maintained, the stone making up the pillars polished and clean compared to its surroundings, but finally, your eyes begin to focus more on the door behind her.
It's edges are red, whatever liquid it was splattered and absorbed into the wood, and theres no handle to be seen, although most of the door is coated in talisman. The more you focus the more you feel the guardians eyes narrow in on you, and before you know it she's already next to you. Next to you.. and.. grabbing you?!
She leads you to a side exit of the shrine and roughly shoves you out, before coldly turning her back and assuming her stance infront of the door she was containing yet again.
You're frozen in shock on the ground, the dirt beneath you sinking a bit as a result from your weight.
An old man sits by the shrine exit, nothing extraordinary about him. Frankly, he's the weirdest thing you've seen yet.
"The shrine does not discriminate against curious souls, but she, she is not afraid to show the limits."
The old man turns his attention to a cup of steaming tea in his hands and takes a sip, humming a tune to a song you can't quite name.
You dust yourself off and look at the path you've fallen on.
The only way to go forward is to keep going.
However, the trek you made down the mountain seems to be for nothing, since the foreseeable path curves away from the shrine and up the mountain side yet again.
"tough luck, isn't it? Having all your efforts be for nothing? Having your hard worked shoved away, like you before that door? Doesn't it anger you?" the voice starts again, causing you to scoff at It's obvious instigating, but you know deep down,
the only way to go forward is to keep going.