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What was it I encountered on the road home at dusk? A god, or rather— a monster?
The summer of 2026. Soy was spending his summer on a trip in Osaka. It was meant to be a long-needed getaway from the internet, but it hardly qualified as sufficient rest. His trip was bar after bar, spending after spending. Impulsive decisions piled one after another.
“So? What brings you to Osaka?”
A glass clicked beside Soy, but he was too dazed to look at the person talking to him. Was it a man’s voice, a woman’s? He wasn’t attentive enough to register. With flushed cheeks on auto-pilot, he mumbled a response.
“Because… Japan’s hot in the summer… and the drinks here are good…”
“Really? No reason?”
Why was this person asking that? Was it that unbelievable Soy closed his eyes and threw a dart?
And why was this topic making his vision start to blur?
Soy nudged his glass away from him, before burying his head in his arms on the table. The puffed sleeves of his bomber jacket comforted him like a cushion.
“Uhk… what time is it…?”
“Hm, about 6:50. It’s still early.”
“Bro, whatever… Just pass me the bill.”
“You need a ride?”
“Psssh my hotel’s not far. I can walk.”
Without ever knowing their name, Soy parted ways with the stranger from the bar.
His sneakers carried him down the stone path. It was about twilight, with the sky dyed in its limited multi-hue gradient. Beneath it, people roamed the streets, chatting and laughing. There was a group of high schoolers giggling late into the day, and stressed office workers walking without stopping. A homeless man sat motionless on the side, while an old lady pushing a cart of snacks rushed by.
Dusk. Such a short window of time. It’s so fleeting, anything that happens within that window feels like a separate reality. Its own isolated bubble.
Soy experienced that severance in reality. At some point after 7PM, everyone else on the street disappeared. The cart lady was gone, and so were the troublesome high schoolers. It was only Soy on that road.
Until it wasn’t.
For whatever reason, Soy found his eyes transfixed on the electric pole about 10 feet in front of him. He stopped walking to stare at it.
It felt like something was there. Not someone, a person he could call out to… But something he had no concept of. There was a mystical presence beyond his understanding. Beyond mortality. So he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t call out to it.
Then what should he do? Surely he could at least take a closer look.
But when he finally resolved to do that much, dusk released its hold on reality. Soy was back in the real world, where he nearly bumped into the motionless homeless man on the road. Where he heard high school girls laughing at him. Dusk had ended.
“…”
Plain old paranoid Soy. He continued walking to his hotel.
Ever since summer started, Soy felt as though he’d just woken from a long dream. It was one where instead of living in his usual unnotable house, he spent his days in a large Japanese style mansion. He got the feeling he spent less time on his phone there, and spoke a lot with the others living with him. Maybe that was what inspired his Japan trip. He wondered how his mind was able to conjure an image that vivid, considering he wasn’t particularly familiar with Japanese culture.
It was also one of those dreams that, even when unable to recall a single detail, felt profoundly life-changing. It was a roller coaster of emotions, although he couldn’t remember what emotions. There was something deeply etched, branded into him, in a place he couldn’t see. It was one of those dreams that felt like a movie— beginning, middle, and finale. Including a whole resolution and moral at the end, Soy wished he could recollect that resolving moral. But he couldn’t.
He was sure it was something impactful. If he could remember, he might become a different person. But in his mind, in its place, was only a forest of fog.
That frustrated him, and he laid in bed most of the morning failing to remember. Which didn’t help the case for his headache at all.
Soy probably should’ve rested that day, but seeing as he was only in Osaka for a short time, he wanted to make the most of it. The AC filled the background with white noise as he slipped on a baggy black T-shirt.
While speaking to the locals yesterday, one of them mentioned a local deity said to heal tumors. Soy figured he’d visit their shrine. Maybe the deity or the fresh air could do something about his headache.
It was the middle of the day, but the shrine grounds were scarcely populated. There were a few people here and there, but clearly it wasn’t rush hour. He heard the people’s mumblings among the cicada’s buzzing.
Soy was a little lost after arriving on the shrine grounds. When he looked it up, Shintoism wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that made much sense for a foreigner to participate in. So he found himself standing off to the side in the shade of a tree, observing the people.
He saw a woman walking back and forth between two marked rocks, looking wholly committed despite the heat. She seemed to be wishing for something. He fanned himself while watching her.
It reminded Soy of a story he heard before. Apparently, in a certain Shinto shrine, there were two rocks that people walked back and forth one hundred times as they prayed. There was a name for this, but he couldn’t be bothered to remember what it was called.
Where did he hear this story? Soy wondered if it was referring to this shrine. In that case, he probably heard it from one of the locals yesterday.
Soy turned to leave. Only a few steps later, he got the same feeling as yesterday. From the corner of his eye, he was transfixed on what stood behind the tree.
He saw a figure. Covered in shadow, concealing itself. No amount of shadow could hide the bright green kariginu. Something about those clothes brought a pang to Soy’s chest.
Before he realized it, the real world slipped away once more.
“… Soy-san.”
“It… spoke?”
Soy was frozen.
“Oya? Am I not welcome in my own shrine now that I’ve lost my holiness?”
“At any rate… If all I look like is a shadow to you, then it seems you’ve returned to your own time without problem, huh.”
That green kariginu should’ve brought a sense of ease. It should have indicated comfort and safety. Soy didn’t know what kind of person he associated with a green kariginu, but it resurfaced images of the warm memories from his dream.
“Soy-san. Come back to me.”
Yet the green kariginu in front of him was emanating anything but warmth. It was odd and off kilter. It was not human, its unnatural nature clashing jarringly with the tranquil shrine backdrop.
Like looking into a void. Something warped that brought disarray and disharmony onto this quiet summer.
It was a phantom.
“Soy-san. Aruji.”
‘Aru… ji?’
Normally, being referred to with such an esteemed title would have Soy grinning, puffing his chest with pride. That’s right— “Master,” “my liege,” “your Highness,” “Aruji,”— were all names he thought friend and foe should call him by. Of course, no one ever did.
This should’ve been his first time hearing it, and yet, those words with that breathy voice carried a sense of déjà vu. It was familiar, but he always remembered it sounding more sweet than that.
It could’ve been the summer heat getting to him. Every instinct told Soy to run. With an exponentially exacerbating headache, he bolted out.
This time, Soy would really take this day to rest.
The throbbing in his forehead wouldn’t stop, and was worse than before. It intensified when he looked at bright lights, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw a flash of purple pupils staring back at him. Soy settled for curling up completely buried under the darkness of his blanket, with just his phone in hand.
It stunk underneath the blanket since Soy woke up drenched in sweat earlier that morning. Not wanting to worsen his pain, he sucked it up and decided he’d get up to shower whenever it felt better.
“…”
After being curled up like that for an unknown number of minutes, he adjusted his position and laid on his back, staying completely covered. He was gradually getting used to the pain through chronic repetition.
He lifted the blanket just enough to create a tiny air hole. Yeah, the AC coming through was nice and cool. But with that window right next to his bed, it was still too bright. He closed the air pocket in his blanket and returned to darkness.
Soy opened Twitter without thinking much. The timeline was having trouble loading.
“Damn this hotel wi-fi, for real.”
Impatient, he rapidly clicked the tabs around the bottom, but none of them seemed to work. None of them, except for of course, the direct messages tab.
Soy’s DMs were always full. He wrote controversial takes and argued with internet strangers with the intent of pissing them off, so his DMs were an endless sea of “kill yourself,” and other flattering comments. Soy wondered if rage-baiting someone could relieve his headache just a little. Instead of picking from his list of usual victims, Soy opened the “message requests” tab for a fresh picking.
He haphazardly scrolled through bots and boring requests. His finger stopped at a request that was sandwiched between two porn bots. It looked like any another bot, with a default profile picture and the message just containing an image. What caused Soy to pause was the name “Ishikirimaru” and the account handle “@aruji_no_ishikinji.”
Soy felt compelled to read it out loud.
“Ishi… kinji…”
He tightened his hand around his head. As he thought, there was something familiar about the way it rolled off his tongue.
Soy opened the DM, to see a picture of the shrine he visited yesterday. Without thinking, he accepted it. A new message appeared.
Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shine, or
Ishikiri-san. It’s roughly 2700 years
old, and is known for a deity that
cuts tumors.
no shit i went there yesterday
whaddya want
The sacred sword enshrined there
is called ‘Ishikirimaru.'
why ur whole account dedicated
to it is this shrine your fetish or
something
You were here yesterday.
you sure come to that place to
jack off every day huh
Soy-san.
im hot right
Soy-san.
wut
There are 2 Ishikirimarus in this
time now.
Though you can’t recognize me
anymore, can you?
Soy paused, staring at the message.
Soy-san.
Come again.
No way dude.
lmfao you like me that much?
That’s a no.
i didnt say no
He did think it, though.
Soy-san. Look outside your
window.
“…”
Why was Soy trembling? Was his headache actually that bad? And it was getting hot under the blanket, too. Soy’s clothes were all soaked, sticking to his skin in a way that made him feel trapped, and he was panting hot gasps of air. His heart rate accelerated, pounding off-time to the throbbing in his head.
Dealing with threatening messages like this was usually exciting for him, but Soy wasn’t enjoying the thrill. For once, he was actually in a vulnerable position. He couldn’t derive an ounce of amusement from this interaction at all. He felt a pit in his stomach— nausea.
After staring at the message for a bit, Soy finally admitted to himself that what he felt was fear. Fine, no biggie. People get scared all the time. He wasn’t a wuss for this. He was only scared because he was sick. He was confused. Delirious.
Therefore he should close his eyes. He was about to shut his phone off, when another message appeared. An image.
“… Huh.”
It was a picture of blanket-buried Soy through his window. The photo must’ve been taken pressed right up to the window with how close the photo was… although Soy’s room was on the 7th story.
He heard a knock on the door.
“…”
It’s me.
Aren’t you going to open it?
You trust me.
why would i wanna see your
ugly face
You’ll feel better once you
see my face. I’m sure you
will.
ill call the cops
The people of this time can’t see me.
By the way,
Neither of the entrances to this room have been opened.
But the AC has been off for a while, hasn’t it?
“?!”
Soy launched himself upright. He couldn’t get the blanket off his eyes before suddenly being gripped forcefully from the waist.
“I’ve got you, Soy-san.”
Something was embracing him from the outside. It was the same entity as yesterday, and the day before.
Sweating under that iron grip, Soy struggled to escape the blanket. That darkness was a sheet of safety, but now it became a container of hot, suffocating air. The room was warmer than he could stand without the AC, and he felt his mind grow lighter with each second.
Soy threw his arms outward. Still under the blanket. He rapidly kicked his legs. Still trapped under the blanket. It was as though the blanket lost all edges, becoming an infinite and inescapable sheet. Soy’s only option was to beg.
“H-hah… hey, you fuck— if you keep me like this I… can’t… breathe…”
“Let’s go home like this.”
“Ah, didn’t… you… want me to see your face…?”
“…”
Suddenly, the darkness was pulled from Soy’s eyes.
“Gah!”
The light rushing in was overwhelming, but now he had fresh air.
“Hah… Hah…”
It took him a few minutes. A series of sharp inhales, gasps, hiccups, sniffles, and embarrassing whines he tried to suppress. After catching his breath, he slowly turned his head to the creature.
He couldn’t see the face. There was the green kariginu he was expecting, and he could make out straight short brunette hair, but the place the figure’s face should’ve been was blacked out.
The shadow lifted a hand towards Soy’s cheek.
“Oya? Soy-san, you cried.”
It wiped a tear off Soy’s cheek gently. Soy’s warm body, oozing in sweat, flinched at the cold fingertips. Even if there was no face, he felt the entity grin. It was gaining a sick sort of pleasure from this.
He suddenly felt uncomfortable, with the monster sitting on the bed behind him. If it was any shorter, he’d probably feel it breathing down his heated neck.
“You’re… not gonna do anything to me, are you?”
“I’m no longer a god. Without a master, I’m not even a weapon. I’m just a ghost, aren’t I?” It tightened its grip. “So what do you think I will do?”
Soy didn’t know how to respond. But those ominous words made him uneasy.
“… Let go.”
“Soy-san.”
“Let go.”
“I’ll bring you home.”
“I said let go— mph?!”
Soy’s mouth was covered by the being’s hand. Soy flailed and struggled out of its grip, but its larger frame was too strong.
Soy used everything inside him to bite down on the hand clogging his airway. There was no reaction from the spirit other than a husky, greedy chuckle.
“I’ve told you time and time again, Soy-san, that having a calm and collected mind is key.”
It almost sounded like a parent with its smooth chiding.
“So don’t resist. I’ll never let you leave… From now on, you’ll be my Soy-san.”