In the blink of an eye, the ceremonial music, the chatter and laughter, the ringing of bronze bells — all of it vanished from his ears.
In their place came only the soft rustle of wind through leaves and branches, and beneath his feet, the damp, yielding give of mud.
The brightly lit Japanese-style worship hall was gone. In its place stretched a dirt country road, running off toward the horizon.
Clear water ran through the ditch beside the road, flowing down with the slope of the land toward paddies stretching beyond it, rows of freshly planted seedlings standing in neat lines. Farther still lay dense, verdant forest, rolling hills unbroken one after another, wrapped in a thin morning mist. To the north, half-hidden in that haze, the gray silhouette of a dam could just be made out — crouched among the mountains like some sleeping beast.
Amamiya Rin turned, sweeping his gaze around in every direction. Within a radius of several hundred meters, there wasn't a soul in sight. The guests who had surrounded him only a second earlier had vanished without a trace; Tomie was nowhere to be found, and not even a shadow of Igarashi Sakuko remained. He stood alone on the path beside the fields, the silence around him so complete that nothing broke it save the wind and the sound of his own breathing.
What was more, he couldn't reach any of the other Tomies. Every sense tied to Tomie had vanished cleanly, as though the Tomie Network no longer existed at all — the same as it had once been, back in the Dream World.
'A hidden world? Just me, alone? Is it because of my soul?'
Amamiya Rin murmured to himself, thoughtful, as he looked around.
Was it because his soul carried some particular quality — or his spirit, perhaps — that he'd been swept in the moment the Toshiyuki family's sacred domain opened? Hmm... maybe it was both.
But the real question was — this perfectly ordinary little village... was this really the so-called sacred domain?
Amamiya Rin studied the scenery, unable to confirm it either way. On the surface, this looked like nothing more than an ordinary rural village — and an enormous one, at that. What family's sacred domain encompassed not just a village, but an entire mountain range and a dam besides?
Shaking his head slightly, Rin pushed down his doubts, swept his eyes over his surroundings once more to confirm no threat lurked nearby, then set off down the dirt road toward the village.
After walking for roughly fifteen minutes, he crossed the deserted field paths, passing a half-collapsed stone lantern along the way. Down a side path beside the lantern lay a rock face overgrown with greenery, where several waist-high stone shrines sat nestled in shallow hollows — the kind of small wayside shrine common throughout the countryside.
Thick moss climbed over the shrines' roofs and outer walls, nearly smothering the stone's original texture and leaving only the vague outline of the peaked roofs visible. On the open ground to either side stood three or four stone fox statues.
The stone had been pitted and worn by wind and rain, and most of the statues were missing an ear or a broken-off tail. But around each fox's neck was tied a red kerchief.
Scattered across the ground were dozens of small white human-shaped figures, likely katashiro used in purification rites. Most were no bigger than a palm, their bone-white outlines standing out starkly against the dim greenery, strewn everywhere in dense clusters — carrying an indescribable wrongness.
'A fox spirit?'
At last, something that could be connected to the Toshiyuki family.
Rin examined the shrine and the fox statues carefully but found nothing out of the ordinary. They seemed to be the kind of common structure found all over the village.
After a moment of finding no clues, he simply kicked one over. Raw strength surged through his leg, snapping the nearest fox statue clean in half — its upper body flew three or four meters before slamming into the ground and rolling twice.
The other fox statues fared no better under his assault. He couldn't be sure whether they served any purpose, but if they belonged to an enemy's deity, then striking first seemed the wiser policy.
Having kicked apart several of the statues, Rin waited a moment. Nothing changed, so he turned and continued on down the dirt road.
As his footsteps faded into the distance, several pairs of ghostly green eyes flickered open in the shadows of the bushes beside the rubble.
The deeper he went into the village, the heavier the silence grew. There wasn't a single person to be seen anywhere.
Rin passed one traditional wooden house after another, peering through their windows and doors as he went, but found no sign of life inside any of them. The furniture sat neatly arranged, and on one living room table he even spotted unwashed bowls and chopsticks — as if someone had been living there mere minutes ago, only to vanish the instant he looked.
Suddenly, Rin's gaze fixed on something.
On a weathered mud wall beside the road hung a missing-person notice, long since faded and yellowed. Rainwater had blurred and torn most of the paper, but the writing was still just barely legible:
Name: Mayumi Suzutani. Clothing worn on the day of disappearance: a white blouse, a navy-blue skirt, and a scarf patterned with black water droplets.
The rest of the notice, detailing the circumstances of her disappearance, had been lost entirely to the torn paper, leaving only a smear of blurred ink.
'This place... could it be Ebisugaoka?'
Rin's brow furrowed, almost imperceptibly.
The fox shrine, the missing-person notice, everything he'd seen of the surroundings — every detail pointed to the same conclusion. This wasn't the Toshiyuki family's sacred domain, that hidden world named Tenzui. It looked instead like Igarashi Sakuko and Hinako Shimizu's hometown, the countryside village where fox-spirit worship ran deep.
Turning this over in his mind, Rin didn't press forward.
Something was off. A hidden world this vast couldn't possibly be explored on foot in any reasonable time.
He raised a hand to press against his chest, threads of pure white light spilling out between his fingers.
Jingle—!
Just as Rin was about to transform into Ultraseven, a crisp ringing of bells reached him from somewhere far off.
At the sound, his fingers stilled. He suppressed the urge to transform, listening carefully until he'd pinned down roughly where the ringing came from, then broke into a run toward it.
Winding through streets tangled like a maze, he spotted several figures come into view.
Outside an old-fashioned traditional sweet shop stood a dark wooden bench against the wall. Two teenagers in black stand-collar high school uniforms sat on it, while two more girls in sailor uniforms stood beside them — one with crisp shoulder-length hair, the other with low twin tails. That second girl was Igarashi Sakuko.
But this Igarashi Sakuko looked considerably younger than the one from the wedding banquet, her face still carrying the unshed roundness of childhood. Rin thought he could already guess what kind of world this was.
'Hinako, I don't have to pay back that five hundred yen I borrowed from you, right?'
Rin quickened his pace, catching the words from a distance as Igarashi Sakuko spoke to the girl seated on the bench.
The girl sat quietly, short-haired, wearing the same sailor uniform as Sakuko. At the sound of Sakuko's voice, her expression flickered with something like displeasure.
That girl... Hinako Shimizu? The bride from the wedding?
Rin's gaze snapped to her at once. At the wedding, her white kimono headdress had obscured most of her face, so it was only when Sakuko spoke her name that he recognized her.
If that was true, then the other boy and girl here were also guests at the wedding — friends of the bride, Hinako Shimizu?
'Sakuko, didn't you say you'd pay Hinako back with interest?'
The other, unidentified girl complained to Sakuko.
'I never said that. If you've got proof, show me the IOU.'
Igarashi Sakuko declared this with more bravado than actual logic behind it.
'Fine, then. From now on, whenever I lend you anything — even a single eraser — I'm making you sign an IOU.'
the girl said teasingly.
The group dissolved into laughter, their voices ringing through the empty streets with a vitality unique to youth — utterly out of place against the deathly stillness of the village.
Rin walked toward them, his boots making a faint sound against the gravel-strewn road.
Sakuko and the two other teens finally seemed to notice him as an outsider, turning mid-laugh to glance his way, curiosity plain on their faces.
Hinako Shimizu, however, was looking elsewhere, her expression blank, her eyes empty of anything at all.
Rin's footsteps stopped abruptly.
At that same instant, an overwhelming malice surged in from every direction. Every hair on Rin's body stood on end, and he instinctively followed Hinako's gaze. In the distance, the thin morning mist was churning visibly, thickening by the second — gray haze rolling in like an incoming tide, swallowing whole rows of houses, the sky darkening at an alarming rate.
'Sakuko?'
At the same moment, an uneasy voice called out beside him. He turned to look — Sakuko's laughter had cut off entirely, her face now blank with confusion and fear as she slowly raised both hands. On the back of one hand, a single red dot had appeared.
It was tiny, no bigger than a grain of rice, vivid red as freshly dripped blood.
But it wasn't blood. It was a flower.
Petals unfurled from that spot of red — one, two, three... In the blink of an eye, a thumb-sized red flower had bloomed fully, its slender petals curling outward to reveal the long, thin stamens at its center.
A red spider lily!
A second, a third, a tenth, a hundredth—!
Those garishly vivid red blossoms erupted from Igarashi Sakuko's skin as if forced out by some unseen power — from her neck, her cheeks, her forehead, blooming from every exposed inch of her body.
'...'
Sakuko's body shook uncontrollably. Her mouth opened, as if trying to cry out for help, eyes wide as she looked toward Rin from across the distance, one raised arm reaching out to him.
But it was already too late!
In an instant, layer upon layer of red spider lilies enveloped her body, and she collapsed to the ground, limp.
'Sakuko!!'
The short-haired girl's scream tore through the dim twilight air. She staggered back several steps, all color draining from her face. Hinako and the boy on the bench scrambled to their feet as well, staring at the cocoon of flowers on the ground, panic written across both their faces.
That was when everything changed.
All around them, from bare dirt, from cracks between paving stones, from every corner of every wall, countless tiny red shoots began pushing up through the ground.
One flower, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand... Red spider lilies bloomed in a frenzy, blanketing everything, layer upon layer of petals opening in a lurid, unnatural intensity — like a rolling sea of blood, spreading rapidly across the ground in every direction.
Wherever it passed, the ground's color vanished beneath that intense red, until even the air itself seemed stained crimson.
'No! No, please!'
'Hinako! Run!'
The unidentified girl let out a scream and bolted, while the boy, ashen-faced, grabbed Hinako's wrist and hauled her hard toward whatever direction the sea of flowers hadn't yet reached. Hinako stumbled at the sudden pull, only coming back to herself a beat later. She spared one long look at the fallen Igarashi Sakuko before following him on unsteady feet.
'Don't do anything rash!'
Rin's shout rang out like a great bell, its force cutting straight through the panicked screams.
But his attention wasn't on the fleeing teens. His eyes stayed locked on Sakuko, buried beneath layer after layer of red spider lilies, and without a moment's hesitation he charged straight into the surging sea of red.
At the same time, his left hand plunged into his coat and drew out a pair of red-and-silver glasses — his trigger item for the transformation. He fitted them over his eyes.
In that instant, pure, warm white light burst outward from his entire body, blazing like a sun suddenly risen, tearing apart the crimson gloom around him.
The light was gentle yet carried an inviolable sanctity. The moment the red spider lilies' clawing tendrils touched the edge of that white glow, their petals curled inward and went inert — no matter how the flood of blossoms surged, it couldn't advance another inch.
'Ultraseven!'
Rin roared the name.
Within the light, his form shot upward at tremendous speed, a sturdy silver-and-red body coalescing into shape. The Eye Slugger crowning his head gleamed with a cold, sharp light, and his golden hexagonal eyes lit with unyielding resolve. A vast, majestic presence radiated outward, filling the space around him.
Ultraseven had arrived, in full and magnificent form!
Facing the sea of blossoms surging at him from every direction, Rin flung both arms out horizontally at his sides. Overwhelming light-force gathered in his palms, humming with a deafening intensity.
Carrying that immense force, he swung his arms in a wide arc, whipping up visible vortices of air that converged steadily in front of him.
'Wide Shot!'
A blue-white, spiraling tornado blasted out from between his palms with a thunderous roar!
The howling beam swept across the entire street like a hurricane wrapped in thunder.
The instant the wildly spreading spider lilies and their writhing vines touched the beam, the violent spiral swept them up entirely and hurled them into the sky.
In just a few short seconds, the once all-consuming sea of red had been scoured clean by the Wide Shot — not even a single torn petal remained.
Yet the oppressive, darkened sky didn't brighten again. A thin haze still hung in the air, shrouding the houses in the distance.
Rin lowered his arms, his golden eyes sweeping across the deathly quiet village.
Though he'd wiped out every spider lily in one stroke, he could sense that the wrongness in the air hadn't faded at all — if anything, it had grown stronger.
It was the same sensation he'd felt when first passing from reality into this hidden world — that feeling had returned. It was as if he'd sunk into an even deeper layer of space... an inexplicable sense of déjà vu washed over him.
In the distance, the three fleeing teenagers had already frozen mid-stride, each of them rooted in place, staring slack-jawed at the ten-some-meter-tall Giant of Light before them, eyes filled with shock and bewilderment. The bone-deep terror from moments ago had been swept away entirely by this impossible sight, leaving nothing but an overwhelming sense of unreality — as if they were caught in some bizarre, fantastical dream.
'A dream... I must be dreaming, right?'
The short-haired girl murmured, dazed, before turning to the boy and Hinako beside her, her eyes pleading — hoping desperately that someone would step forward and confirm this comforting lie for her.
The sudden sea of spider lilies, the sudden appearance of a Giant of Light — none of it felt real.
'A dream... could it really be a dream?'
The boy looked equally dazed, though something like realization dawned on his face too.
It had to be a dream. It had to be — there was no way Ultraman could exist in reality! He must have forgotten to take his medication before bed and ended up having a strange dream.
'What are you two talking about? Rinko, Shu — calm down! There's no way this is a dream!'
Hinako finally snapped back to herself. She raised her own left arm and bit down on it hard, hard enough that the tooth marks welled with blood — the pain unmistakably real. She lifted her head and, in a voice thick with disbelief, argued back against her two friends.
'That was real... it was really Ultraman? Ultraseven?'
Even as she tried to convince herself, Hinako's own words were steeped in confusion.
After all, Ultraman was just a tokusatsu show. She was fifteen now, not some little kid — surely she could tell fiction from reality?
And yet the Giant of Light, born from tokusatsu fiction, had just appeared before her eyes — undeniably, unmistakably real!
Ultraman was real! The light was real! This was reality!
For a moment, the gloom she'd been carrying over pressure to marry dissolved almost entirely under the shock of it all.
Meanwhile, the blinding white light slowly receded. The towering giant's form shrank rapidly, until it settled into a silver-and-red body the height of an ordinary person.
Rin knelt slowly, his fingers reaching gently toward Igarashi Sakuko on the ground.
The instant his fingertips touched her neck, he sensed the one outcome he least wanted to accept.
There was no flicker of life whatsoever. Her heartbeat and breath had stopped completely, leaving only an empty shell still faintly tainted by the malice of the red spider lilies.
After a moment's thought, Rin raised his right hand. A gentle beam of Emerium Ray shot out toward Sakuko, enveloping her entire body.
The light-force gently seeped into every limb and joint, trying to repair the flesh eaten away by the spider lilies, to wake whatever vitality might remain.
But no matter how the light played over her, her body gave no response at all — a cold shell, like a stone that no warmth could reach.
Igarashi Sakuko was truly dead.
The light faded away. Rin rose to his feet, and white radiance flared around him once more, the silver-red Ultra form dissolving in the glow until he stood there again in human shape.
He stood beside Sakuko's body, eyes lowered to the girl's pale face on the ground, and let out a quiet sigh.
Barely half an hour ago, this same girl had stood flushed in the shrine courtyard, pointing at him and declaring with certainty that his secret — that he was Ultraman — had been found out. Not even fifteen minutes had passed, and now she was dead, dead right in front of him!
One of his own admirers had died before his very eyes, and he hadn't even realized how she'd been attacked!
A curse? Or something else entirely?
Rin didn't want to dwell on that just yet. There was a more pressing question demanding his attention.
'What will happen to the Igarashi Sakuko out there, in the real world?'
he murmured to himself.
If someone died in this sacred domain — a place only spirit and soul could enter — what would become of them back in reality?
He recalled what Mara Tomie had told him before — that Tenzui, this sacred domain, was suspected to be an otherworld accessible only to spirit and soul, and that any harm suffered here would affect only the spirit, leaving no mark on the physical body in reality.
But what if... someone actually died here? The Soul Reviver's Sword ought to be of use for that, surely?
Even Rin couldn't say for certain. This touched on matters of the soul, a field he knew relatively little about, and he had no real understanding of this so-called sacred domain — no way of knowing what happened to the soul and spirit of someone who died within it.
Not far off, now that the giant's form had vanished, Hinako, Rinko, and Shu edged cautiously closer. Traces of unspent terror still lingered on their faces, but the way they looked at Rin was brimming with awe — and an almost overwhelming curiosity.
'Um... excuse me, are you — are you Mr. Ultraseven? And... how is Sakuko?'
Hinako's voice came out thin as a mosquito's whine, trembling uncontrollably as she spoke with careful hesitance.
Sakuko had borrowed five hundred yen from her years ago and never paid it back, even weaseling out of her promise to repay it with interest — but in the end, this girl was still her best friend, someone she'd grown up with since childhood. Only one thought remained in her mind: please, let Sakuko be all right.
'She has no breath and no heartbeat left. I tried using the power of light to save her, but it was already too late.'
Rin turned and looked at Hinako, telling her the truth of Sakuko's condition without softening it.
'Wh— what? How could this be! How could Sakuko be dead?'
At the answer, Hinako looked as if she'd been struck by lightning, every drop of color draining from her face until it turned a ghastly white.
Her body swayed violently, and she staggered back half a step. It was only Shu's hand catching her that kept her upright, her face contorted with sheer refusal to believe it.
'Sakuko!'
Rinko's voice cracked, shaking uncontrollably. She stared fixedly at the figure on the ground, her lips trembling for a long moment without managing another word, her breath catching in her throat.
Shu's expression changed too. The hand steadying Hinako suddenly loosened, then clenched tight again, as he stared at Sakuko's body, his eyes full of horror and disbelief.
None of them could accept it — that their friend, who had been alive and well just a minute ago, joking around and bickering with them, could suddenly die right in front of them, with such utter suddenness.
____
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