the pair seem to stumble upon jin more than they encounter him, drifting from the unnerving hiss and scratch and sway of a forest at night to silhouettes wavering against the cloying oil sheen off the lanterns.

with the lamps lit, jin begins to chant, words of a cleanliness he is no longer expected to possess, to deities he is not addressing.

"南無妙法蓮華経 —"

his gaze flickers from the burnt head of the incense stick crumbling to the two now haunting his peripheral, tracing the nature of this intrusion; jin doesn't sigh so much as let his entire face weigh with an exhausted grace.

"—it's fine."

it comes pointed, the heaviness in his mouth suggesting otherwise; even if he hasn't protested outright.

"it's more of a rite. ...i'm uncertain of the rites for the spirits or ghosts here. but i've heard a way to pacify them is to honor their home."

mint frost ana fell

☉

the noon sun, pale and diffuse in early afternoon, stabs his nape, prickles the ledge of his shoulder. his leafeon tips too close to him — pitches like the arc of a rusting pendulum, then catches its footing. fatigue seizes them all, as if they do not know how this strange heat began, nor how they intend to end it.

This heat sinks into his skin like teeth; grips him in an uncharacteristic bout of lethargy that finds him while he takes a respite, standing for a while at the verge of the sea. blades of kelp tease his calves wet as he wanders; water darkens the silk of his pants in the outgoing of this last tide. on its return, jin feels a seeping confusion: white and red, a sudden wash of stark black, and then the collapse — a resonant p l u n k in the briny shallows.

panic seizes his leafeon and grips until its dancing futilely in the damp sands along the shoreline as if in mute search for a sign of rescue.

Martín del Mar

☉

there is little reprieve from the palpable tensions between rocket and the league, not even in sanctuaries. not even here. it happens beneath a canopy of trees, deep and old and resonant the way forests tend to be.

his steps do not waver. quieting in the cold mulch, jin appraises what lays before him like a poor revelation: split stone steps, torn vermilion lanterns, broken tori crested by cruel, white moonlight. the shrine seethes. the fall of velvet-soft petals of the sakura like a taunt.

jin has done quiet work in trying to restore the slightest echo of its ancient withered standard with little ceremony. perhaps, it's more ritual.

his shadow is thrust out to the left; lighting another lantern casts it too far right and sliding the bowl of incense into place extends it leaving nowhere for his light to go but to enmesh with the dark of the trees.

there's the faint shine of something, as someone turns, and steps into his periphery.

open mission

☉