She sighs softly. She knows…she knows there isn’t a curse…
But aside from knowing Hanyuu isn’t to blame for any of the deaths or disappearances, she must admit, she still knows frighteningly little about her mysterious adversary. She has no idea who would want to kill her or why, and who if they’re even related to the former - is instigating these strange deaths in order to suit their own needs.
She racks her brain, but just comes up frustrated. She wants to be able to turn to Satoshi and explain it all away, bring him back down to Earth, but she can’t. She doesn’t have any proof.
“Mii…what if the curse…isn’t real…?” she gently offers the idea, as if dipping a toe into a pond to check its temperature before deciding if it’s too cold to swim in.
The idea that the curse is manmade has at least been thrown around quite a bit - Detective Oishi in particular has made sure no shortage of suspicions had been cast on the tale’s validity. The idea that someone or maybe even several someones in the village had made up the curse for their own gain - protected by the ideological idea that Oyashiro-sama carried out these killings for divine purposes…
Many didn’t want to believe such a theory could be true, but more than a few had cast doubt in the idea of this curse ever since it had come to light in discussion. To this point, not many officials had ever spoken on the matter, allowing it remain ambiguous to suit their needs.
But Rika was different, she was a Furude - the shrine maiden, even. To even suggest such a thing, she knew the impact that could have - she knows that Satoshi would note the significance of that.
He doesn’t know what to say.
The greater part of Satoshi knows that if he were to disappear, it wouldn’t be by the hands of anything like a demon. The entire village is entrenched in the fear and worship of Oyashiro-sama, and that’s the very reason that he and his family have been so miserable; he’s always thought, with varying degrees of conviction, that if he were to disappear, it would be at the hands of the villagers. Oyashiro-sama gives the order, and the villagers act together, becoming his hands in the physical world— that was what Satoshi had thought. There was no reason to doubt something like that would occur, and in the dim vision he’d had of his demise, that was how it would play out.
Less otherworldly than all the legends of demons crawling out of the swamp to spirit rule-breakers away in the dead of night, but final and inescapable all the same.
Now, the Furude shrine maiden herself -- the supposed incarnation of their guardian deity -- is suggesting that all of that... isn’t real? She isn’t claiming that nothing will happen, because if that were true, she wouldn’t be doing this; she wouldn’t be trying to prevent what will happen. If she isn’t lying, and the curse really isn’t real, then...
Then... If it isn’t a curse, what is it?
“I... I don’t understand,” is all he manages at first. Agitation, without form and without a name, creeps its fingers across his neck; he can feel it prickle, a soft itch that isn’t quite enough to make him release his grip on the iron bars. “What are you saying? What else could it be--?”
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