Hinako Shimizu's voice echoed through the main hall, lingering long after she spoke.
For a moment, the vast hall held nothing but the reverberation of her single voice.
Everyone else stood frozen like wooden puppets, staring blankly at the Giant of Light who had suddenly broken in.
Behind their snow-white fox masks, faces stiffened, eyes fixed rigid in their sockets, not daring to shift, not even daring to blink.
It seemed that the slightest movement might see them crushed like ants beneath that silver giant.
Tsuneki Hisayuki stood at the very front of the crowd, no more than twenty meters from the towering silver figure.
He tilted his head back, staring up at those golden eyes, at the unfamiliar Giant of Light, his lips parting and closing, closing and parting, without a single word managing to escape.
He could feel Hinako's presence within it.
The girl he had written letters to for ten years before finally gathering the courage to propose.
And yet this was the form she now stood before him in.
A silver giant twenty meters tall, its steel body banded in silver and crimson, and those golden eyes looking down on him without a trace of warmth.
The balance between them — who held power, who acted and who was acted upon — had completely reversed.
Tsuneki Hisayuki couldn't adjust to the change fast enough. He stood with his mouth hanging open, like a fish flung up onto dry land.
"Not going to answer?"
Hinako Shimizu looked down at Tsuneki Hisayuki, her golden eyes sharpening, like two invisible blades aimed straight at the man frozen in place.
"Or is it, Hisayuki, that you deceived me. Or perhaps — you kept the truth from me."
She questioned him coldly.
The voice rolled through the hall, pressing down until no one could draw breath.
Tsuneki Hisayuki couldn't answer. He didn't know how to answer.
Say he hadn't deceived her? But all of it was true. Say he hadn't known? But he'd known from the very beginning. Say he'd been forced into it too? But he was still the one standing here.
All to marry Hinako. All to make her his bride. All to give her happiness — or so he'd told himself.
The fox spirit's demands, the rite's every step, everything Hinako had given up — all of it had seemed like a footnote, in the end.
"Enough!"
A sharp cry rang out from the direction of the altar.
Everyone turned toward the sound to see the priest — robed in black and white Shinto vestments, an aura of malice coiling around him — stride forward. A black eboshi cap sat on his head, and in his hand he gripped a kagura suzu wound with talismans. Each step landed heavy, as though he meant to stamp down the fear filling the hall with the sound of his own footfalls — or perhaps just to steel his own nerve.
He tilted his head up toward the silver giant, straightened his spine, and spoke, his voice sharp and severe.
"Daughter of the Shimizu house!"
The Tsuneki family head deliberately pitched his voice higher. Behind his fox mask his eyes were cold as blades, and though panic churned beneath the surface at the giant's overwhelming pressure, he forced onto his face the dignity of a clan leader, gripping the kagura suzu until his knuckles whitened, trying to use rank and family law to smother the situation before him.
"You are already a bride of our Toshiyuki house — how dare you burst into our family's sacred ground in such a form, showing such disrespect to your husband's family? Is this how the Shimizu house raises its daughters — without manners, without regard for their elders? What is the meaning of this?!"
He paused, then, his tone quickening, pressed on.
"Ultraseven, is it? An Ultraman's power exists to protect humanity, to fight monsters and invaders from the stars. And now what — you mean to turn that power against your own kind, to meddle in the private affairs of our Toshiyuki household? How curious. A warrior of light, wasting his strength on a marital dispute. Frankly, it's laughable."
He narrowed his eyes, the corner of his mouth curling into a smile that never reached beyond the muscles of his face.
He was twisting the matter deliberately into a mere family quarrel, trying to seize the moral high ground of custom and propriety, so that Hinako Shimizu would have nothing left to argue against.
After all, an Ultraman was supposed to be reasonable.
A decent man could be tricked by decency itself, and a good man could be made to stand and take the bullet.
The masked clan members exchanged glances in secret — some let out a quiet breath of relief, others even straightened their backs.
The family head's words made sense, didn't they? However powerful an Ultraman might be, surely he had no business meddling in someone's marriage.
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?!"
Igarashi Sakuko rose upright from the palm of Hinako's hand, planted her hands on her hips, and shouted furiously down at the crowd below.
"A family dispute?! Don't make me laugh. What about the girls you manipulated, the girls you spirited away, the girls you offered up to your fox spirit? Are they part of your family dispute too? Do you people think I don't exist?"
Veins stood out on Igarashi Sakuko's forehead; her fury was nothing short of volcanic.
She, the victim herself, was standing right here, and these bastards had the nerve to lie through their teeth in broad daylight! Did they think she was already dead?
"Of course an Ultraman's power isn't meant to hurt humans! I don't need you to remind me of that!"
Hinako Shimizu spoke as well. In her golden eyes, the light suddenly flared brighter, and the particles of light drifting around her body grew restless, like lightning gathering before a storm.
She hadn't done anything yet, and still the pressure bearing down on everyone hit like a landslide. Several of the fox-masked figures in the front row instinctively staggered half a step back; some collapsed where they stood.
"But you — you used the fox spirit's power to seize innocent women, to offer them up as sacrifices to your so-called god. How is that any different from harming a human being?!"
Her voice rolled through the hall, rattling the hanging blinds until they rustled.
"If that's true, then using this power to destroy every one of you would not be a wrong use of it at all!!"
The muscles in the Tsuneki family head's face twitched slightly.
But he quickly steadied his expression, drew a deep breath, and straightened his spine again.
"Heh..."
There was a deliberate, practiced calm woven into that laugh, as if he were mocking a naive youngster.
"Sacrifices? Spirited away?"
He shook his head, tapping his cypress fan lightly against his palm.
"A country girl, through and through — you don't even understand the basic principles of the Way of the Gods."
He lifted his head, staring straight at the silver giant through the eye-holes of his mask.
"Let me ask you — do you know that upon this land, every inch of soil has a spirit that guards it? Mountains have their mountain gods, waters their water gods, villages their tutelary earth-gods, households their ancestral clan-gods. People offer their faith to these spirits, praying for the land's abundance and for protection over their lives."
His voice rose steadily, taking on the solemn cadence of a sermon.
"And that faith, in turn, lends the spirits strength. With strength, the spirits can offer greater protection to their people. The bond between man and god is essential to the prosperity of both. This is a truth passed down since ancient times — the very foundation this land stands on."
He paused, a glint of sharpness flashing across his clouded eyes.
"For a lowly human, to form a bond with such a spirit, to be chosen as a spirit's bride — what honor is that? What blessing? Even to call it the fortune of three lifetimes would understate it. Every woman who has married into the Tsuneki family ought to be grateful for her good fortune. Such a miracle — by rights, they shouldn't even deserve it."
His voice echoed through the hall, carrying a certainty that brooked no argument.
The people in their snow-white fox masks straightened their backs once more. The family head's words seemed to have given them courage.
What talk of harm — for a mortal woman to marry into the Tsuneki family was plainly her own good fortune.
Igarashi Sakuko couldn't help clicking her tongue.
She knew a little about this — myths like this existed the world over, humans marrying gods or spirits, stories like it were never in short supply anywhere, symbols of the bond between the divine and the mortal.
"Do you look down on humanity?"
Just then, a voice suddenly rang out.
It didn't come from the silver giant's mouth — it came from somewhere deeper within that towering body, from some more distant place, deep and solemn, more sacred even than a god's own voice.
That voice did not belong to Hinako Shimizu.
The expression on the Tsuneki family head's face froze.
The silver giant leaned forward slightly, its golden eyes gazing down at him from above — no anger in that gaze, no killing intent, only a stillness so absolute it was terrifying in itself.
And that very stillness was more frightening than any threat could ever be.
"Are you speaking with contempt of the humans I love?"
The voice rang out again, and every single word landed on the family head's chest like a falling mountain.
The family head's pupils shrank violently.
"You — you are..."
His voice began to tremble.
"Ul-Ultraseven..."
He murmured the name, all the confidence from a moment ago drained completely from his voice.
It was him! It was really him!
Everyone realized it at once — that Giant of Light out of legend had truly become one in mind and body with Hinako Shimizu, and was speaking to them now through that very body!
The family head's legs went weak beneath him; he very nearly dropped to his knees.
But he didn't dare kneel. Not with the whole clan watching. He was the head of the clan, the one who served the gods — he could not kneel.
He clenched his teeth, forced himself to stand steady, drew several ragged breaths, and managed to force out words.
"Ultra... Ultraseven, this is — this is all a misunderstanding..."
He twisted the corners of his mouth into something that looked worse than crying.
"I never meant to look down on humanity... never... what I said just now was about the coexistence of man and god, about mutual prosperity through the bond between the two..."
His voice grew lower and lower, shaking harder and harder, until the final words were all but squeezed out from between his clenched teeth.
The hall fell into dead silence.
The people in their snow-white fox masks were now utterly stunned. Watching their family head reduced to this wretched state, watching the silent silver giant before them, a bone-deep chill crept up their spines, as if ice water had been poured straight through them.
Only moments ago the family head had thundered questions with righteous fury — now he cowered like a rat before a cat.
Was this — was this really their once untouchable family head?
And yet, somehow, they also thought — it made perfect sense.
After all, that was an Ultraman. And not just any Ultraman — Ultraseven, who would do anything at all for the sake of humanity.
Amamiya Rin's voice rang out once more.
The voice remained low, but it carried a certainty that allowed for no argument.
"Even so, that doesn't mean a god can use its power to force a woman into marriage against her will. I don't accept that kind of conduct."
The color drained further from the family head's face.
"If the fox spirit has truly committed evil against humans — if the Tsuneki family has truly used marriage as a means of offering human women as sacrifices to the fox spirit—"
The voice paused.
"Then that is exactly the kind of situation an Ultraman's power exists for."
Each word fell like a hammer striking every heart in the hall.
The family head opened his mouth, wanting to say something, wanting to argue, but the words all caught in his throat — not one of them would come out.
"Toshiyuki. Hisayuki."
At that moment, Hinako Shimizu's voice rose again.
It was calmer now than before — but beneath that calm lay something far more terrifying.
It was the resolve of someone who had already made up her mind, and would not waver again.
Her golden eyes bore straight into Tsuneki Hisayuki.
"Please answer my question directly."
she said.
"Did the fox spirit truly seize innocent women? Did the Tsuneki family truly treat their wives as sacrifices?"
"Answer me directly."
Those golden eyes blazed with light, leaving Tsuneki Hisayuki nowhere to hide.
Tsuneki Hisayuki stayed silent. He said nothing.
The others opened their mouths as if to speak, but in the end, not one of them answered.
Under that gaze, any excuse would have sounded pathetic, even laughable.
And their silence was the clearest answer of all.
"I suppose there's no need to ask further, then."
The silver giant slowly straightened, her golden eyes sweeping across everyone in the hall.
The trembling clan members. The priest frozen in place. And Tsuneki Hisayuki, standing at the very front, who had never once spoken.
Her right arm rose slightly, the silver palm catching a cold gleam in the candlelight.
Light began to gather in her palm.
At the sight, the legs of every clan member there began to give way.
Someone finally lost their footing and stumbled backward into a pillar. Someone else clutched desperately at the sleeve of the person beside them, begging for a scrap of courage. Behind their masks, lips moved soundlessly — whether in prayer or in pleading, no one could say.
The Tsuneki family head gripped the kagura suzu tighter in his hand, and the talismans on it began to rustle, stirring though there was no wind.
Behind him, the fox-shaped spirit tablet on the altar began to tremble faintly, as though something inside it were stirring awake.
In that instant, the air itself seemed to freeze solid.
"Hinako..."
A hoarse voice broke the silence.
Tsuneki Hisayuki had finally spoken. He tilted his head back, staring up at the silver giant before him, his eyes brimming with far too many emotions to name.
His lips moved, as if he still had more to say.
But in the next instant, his face twisted violently.
"Hisayuki?!"
Hinako Shimizu's pupils contracted, a wave of instinctive alarm washing through her.
Tsuneki Hisayuki's body suddenly arched, as if some invisible hand had seized him from within and wrenched. His hands clawed at his own chest, a groan tearing from his throat, choked down to the very edge of endurance.
"Ugh... ah...!"
That was not a human sound!
Mixed into it was something inhuman and sharp-edged — like the shriek of a fox, like the howl of a beast, and beneath it all, still, a thread of trembling human pain.
His arms twisted at impossible angles, bones piercing through the skin at the elbows, flesh and white bone-shards exposed to the open air — but what tore through was not a human arm at all. It was a fox's paw, covered in red fur.
"Nngh... aaah!!"
His back arched violently, the spine writhing beneath the skin as though something inside were clawing desperately to break free. His clothes tore apart, revealing the body beneath, swelling and twisting into some new shape.
Red fur, like living flame, was erupting wildly from beneath his skin.
His face began to distort — his jaw thrusting forward, the bridge of his nose collapsing and then rising again, his ears stretching upward into points. Those once-gentle eyes were being slowly consumed by a beast's slit pupils.
It was a fox. A crimson fox.
____
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