The temple is soaked in gold again. Evening sunlight slants through the paper screens, scattering itself across the floorboards like liquid fire. Dust drifts lazily in the beams, turning the air into something almost sacred. I sit cross-legged near the open veranda, chin resting on my palm, listening.

There it is again — her voice.

Kotoha hums softly as she rocks her child beneath the camellia tree. The petals fall around her like bits of snow, brushing her hair, catching in the folds of her kimono. She doesn’t notice. She never does. Her song is simple, a lullaby without words, full of warmth she doesn’t even realize she gives off.

Strange creature, that one.

I watch the way her fingers move — gentle, deliberate, as if the baby might shatter if she breathed too hard. The scent of her skin mixes with the incense drifting from inside: sandalwood and lotus and something faintly sweet, like steamed rice. A human smell. A living smell. It fills the air in a way that makes my chest ache. Not with feeling — I don’t have those — but with… pressure. Like something’s trying to bloom in a place where nothing’s ever grown.

The wind picks up. Her song falters, just slightly, and she glances over her shoulder — her eyes meeting mine.

Ah. There it is. That soft, startled smile.

She bows her head politely before returning to her lullaby, unaware that she’s become my favorite evening entertainment. It’s been a month since she stumbled into my temple — drenched, trembling, clutching her baby as the rain turned the world gray. I still remember the way her voice cracked when she begged me to save her. The men who followed her were loud, ugly things. Their blood steamed on the cold stones when I tore them open.

She screamed then, too. But afterward… she thanked me.

No one’s ever thanked me before.

The cultists here never really see me. They look at the rainbow in my eyes and call it divine. They look at the white of my hair and whisper of purity. They kneel, weep, and ask for mercy I’ve never had. I smile, because smiling makes them cry harder. Always has. Even when I was small — before the demon blood, before Muzan, before eternity — people were already building temples in my name. I didn’t understand their devotion, only the noise of it. The constant sobbing. The way their faces twisted when I told them not to cry because I couldn’t feel sad for them.

Mother cried, too, the night she killed Father. I remember that smell — sweet poison and blood. I thought it would never wash out of the tatami. I remember wondering how long the body would take to cool.

And now here I am, decades later, listening to another woman hum to her child under a red evening sky. Humans really don’t change much, do they? Fragile things — all warmth and fear and fleeting breath.

Still, there’s something different about her. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t beg. She looks at me like I’m… human.

That’s almost funny. Almost.

I shift slightly, resting my chin in my hand again, watching as a petal lands on her shoulder. She looks up, catches my eye, and laughs — a soft, unguarded sound. It echoes through the courtyard, brushing the edges of my mind like a memory I can’t quite recall.

I smile back, wide and cheerful, the kind that makes my followers tremble. But Kotoha just laughs again.

How interesting.

“Ahh~ You really are something else, Kotoha,” I murmur, voice low, almost fond. “You make this temple feel… lively.”

The baby stirs, cooing softly, and she hushes him with another gentle song. I lean back, the floor cool beneath my palms, and close my eyes.