“’Small curse,’ is it... aha, perhaps that is an improvement from last year.”
There are a small number of familiar shrines hidden throughout Sector oo4, and he has largely avoided them up until now. Even today, as people gather to pray and leave offerings for fortune in the New Year (in smaller numbers than back in Japan, he notes, which isn’t strange considering how diverse the city’s population is), Bansai hasn’t gone in to offer anything of his own. He has neither the need nor the right to be asking any kind of god for help.
Assuming there even are gods in a world like this. Did he have a reason to visit a shrine at all...? It was only the chance to hear a reminder of home that drew him to this place.
But, there could be no harm in drawing omikuji while he was here. The shrine attendant had offered to take away the unlucky paper to stop the curse from finding him, but he insisted on keeping it. He folds it neatly and puts it in his pocket like it’s an important note.
One moment, he is walking back along the snow-covered path, and the next he freezes, struck by an otherworldly presence. A song as intricate yet simple as life itself, played in a time and on an instrument that defies any comparison he could make to human art... its beauty is staggering, yet oddly comforting.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something that glows warmly. Then he turns, and there he sees a wolf, sheer white as sunlight reflected off the snow, walking in the opposite direction.
It seems impossible, that an animal could be the source of such music, but that is the only conclusion Bansai can come to.
“W... Wait—” he calls after the wolf, hurrying to follow it.