Misery (Himeko Soryuu)
| Misery (Himeko Soryuu) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 16 August 2023 |
| Location: | Soryuu Shrine |
| Synopsis: | CW: Animal death, fear, despair, graphic descriptions, past child death. "Hey... Why can't anyone see me...?" |
| Cast of Characters: | Pyrite |
Himeko Soryuu watched her mother be killed while hugging her own ghost.
Her mother promised she'd be safe and sound, but all that awaited Himeko was absolute horror.
War is Hell.
One hundred years of war is one hundred years in Hell.
Himeko, who died at the age of ten, was witness to that entire century.
The dark things that wormed their way into her back, eating away at her Light a little at a time, fed on the death, misery, pain, and despair of that era, while she hid in her shrine, covering her ears and closing her eyes and wishing that her mother would come save her and that all the things outside would just go away.
Her mind broke over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over--
Eventually, all that was left of her was pieces. Her sense of reality vanished.
A ghost can be many things: a memory, a dream, a wish. As she blocked out the world, bombarded by the agony of a century of human suffering, eventually she lost the capacity to perceive it.
She had, unknowingly, set a Boundary around the forgotten Soryuu Shrine. She was a Haunting apparition, and now the limits of her Haunt had been defined.
Another hundred years passed.
Then another.
Then another.
The entire time, Himeko sat alone, occasionally being host to animals passing through or people seeking shelter. She sat and she waited and she watched the world change before her eyes.
Fire bombings of Tokyo brought chaos, pain, and death. Another war, another Hell. She sat there with the flames of burning buildings and burning people reflecting in her red eyes. She watched the flames grow closer, bright and hot and alive, and reached out to them reflexively, raising a spectral hand as if she could reach them from within her little hutch.
They extinguished by her will. She felt... Something from that. Not enough to restore awareness or consciousness, but enough to fuel the impulse to reach out again. Again, and again, and again, she killed the fires.
Eventually, those fleeing the flames who were lucky enough to be nearby hid out in the Soryuu Shrine. It was one of the only places that wasn't burning. As flames died as if some spirit or god was warding them off, prayers were offered up to the shoddy shrine's kami.
It was a shrine dedicated to dead gods and long-fled spirits, and had been claimed by Yomi after Izanagi's revival. The land of the dead had lost their goddess, and that void was where the shadows gathered, pouring in hungrily, seeking a replacement. Himeko had been offered up as that replacement, by her own mother.
So, in essence, these frightened, exhausted, desperate, burned, injured, grieving, and crying people were praying to Himeko Soryuu. Those prayers, those wishes, coiled around her, and gave her greater power. Power to keep smoke and cinders away from the hill where her shrine was located, power enough to save even more people, who gathered at that one safe point in all of Tokyo. She killed, and she killed, and she killed the fires, and she was worshipped for her killing.
The shadowed hands buried in the little ghost's back writhed as they fed on those wishes and supplications. They bent her spectral body like a limp doll, arching her back, moving her around, trying to puppet her soul and make her feed on the refugees as well.
Himeko woke up.
She did not feed on these desperate people, these supplicants who prayed to her -- or rather to the long-gone kami of the shrine. In a way, she was becoming a kami in that moment, thanks to the number and intensity of the prayers. She acted accordingly, as kami have throughout Japanese history, nature spirits who give succor in times of crisis.
She made sure that the hill, and the shrine atop it, remained safe and sound.
After World War II, after a long period of reconstruction, the Soryuu Shrine was rebuilt, cleaned up, expanded, and the hill it was atop had steps built into it, and foliage planted, and people came regularly to pray to and thank her. She had priests and shrine maidens and a small following thanks to the stories of the 'Miracle of the Soryuu Shrine'. Her family name was recognized. She was loved.
Then the surroundings were modernized into a neighborhood, where the families and descendants of those she had saved began to live. Her worship dwindled, even if the traditions were kept. With them, her power faded as well. The shadows had developed an appetite, and that appetite did not lessen with the shrinkage of sustenance. They began to writhe again, and dig in, deeper and deeper, in an attempt to finally kill the Soryuu kami's Light.
Some people came to the shrine to pray, and Himeko tried to call out to them. But she had no voice.
She stood and walked in front of them, but there was nothing of her to be seen.
Children passed by on the road at the base of the hill on their way to school, and Himeko tried desperately to summon them to her, so she could talk to somebody, finally, after hundreds of years.
Sometimes, they seemed to hear her, but when they looked up, and saw her ghostly image, they quickly ran away.
Over time, the Soryuu Shrine became known for being haunted, and the visitors decreased even more.
As Himeko's despair grew, so did the influence of the shadows.
Some ducks landed in a rain puddle that had accumulated on the temple grounds, and Himeko attempted to pet them, just to have some kind of physical contact with something. The ones that did not instinctively sense the danger and flee lost the strength to fly away, and fluttered helplessly on the ground. Others became so weak they could no longer swim, and they drowned in that shallow puddle.
When one of the few shrine maidens who still came to see Himeko came upon the scene of a half dozen dead birds, with no visible sign of injury, she cleaned up the mess but was too frightened to come back again, no matter how much Himeko cried and tried to tell the girl she hadn't meant to, that it was an accident... But it was too late.
Eventually... Eventually, as decades passed, the broken pieces of a girl who had almost become a kami and escaped the grasp of Yomi, looked up from where she knelt in isolation, eyes empty of any human consciousness, with shadowed hands grasping around her Light and squeezing it dry.
She asked a single question.
"Hey... Who am I, anyway?"
