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July 7th always arrived in Hasetsu to a sea of smiling faces. The Star Festival was celebrated when the summer finally won its battle against the ocean, leaving the nights warm and welcoming. The residents of Hasetsu trudged up the mountain to Kagami Shrine in their kimonos and yukatas, whispering to one another about fortunes and wishes, about the somen they could not wait to eat and stargaze, happy to see Hikoboshi and Orohime united once again.
It was a festival that Katsuki Yuuri naturally connected with love.
Each year, he would watch his mom and dad walk the pathway hand-in-hand, ready to write down their desires for the following year on pieces of paper and collect their fortunes. Each year, he would write his own wish on a piece of paper and tie it up in the shrine, hoping for it to come true. He had wished for katsudon for dinner one year (that was granted!), and a dog for another (which unfortunately was not, though his fortune said Curse that time), or that Mari would stop picking on him because he did ballet and figure skating. That wish too was granted.
This year, Yuuri had other ideas for his wish. He had not given up on a dog but… well, there were now other things to occupy an eleven year old mind. And the Star Festival was about love, after all! And Yuuri knew, without a doubt, that he was in love!
Yuuko Toyomura was two years Yuuri’s senior. She was graceful, she was talented, and she was everything that Yuuri hoped to be one day. It also helped that she was the most beautiful person Yuuri had ever seen. He did not need to listen to the warnings of Tanabata, that wishes that involved love would put the wisher to the test. And to bring such a wish to Kagami Shrine in particular was a dangerous game to play, as it was known that the kami up the mountain could be fickle and tricky.
But Yuuri knew his heart and knew it would not stray! The Tanabata wish would be the beginning of his efforts to woo the Madonna of the Ice Castle Hasetsu. So there was nothing to be afraid of.
Yuuri took the pen and paper, and then shielded them from view with the sleeve of his yukata. When he was certain no one would see, Yuuri finally wrote: “I wish for my idol to fall in love with me” then carried it carefully to the line of wishes and tied it up.
“What did you wish for Yuuri?” His mother asked him, but for the first time, Yuuri only smiled and said, “it’s a secret!”
That evening, Yuuri ate somen with his family, and he enjoyed the Tanabata fireworks, secure in the knowledge that as an eleven year old, he definitely understood love. And now all he would have to do was wait for the kami to answer his wish.
That night, the ocean protested against the warm summer night, sending a gust of chill to the top of Mount Kagami. Most of the wishes fluttered mindlessly in the breeze, but one single paper found itself unlodged and adrift: a paper that said I wish for my idol to fall in love with me. And so Yuuri’s wish found itself lodged in the rafter of the shrine, a wayward wish away from the kami’s notice, perhaps to be forgotten on a surprise ocean chill.
But the universe works in mysterious ways.
For the kami of Kagami Shrine, the Empress Jingū, found herself bored, and after she granted each of those Tanabata wishes, she resolved to take to the wind so she could see the world. She had earned it, she thought, and she would be back in no time. The people of Hasetsu would understand that even kami sometimes need a vacation.
So after she granted those wishes from her patrons’ hearts, Jingū hopped upon a leaf and waited for the breeze, and away she went on her own adventure.
The lonely piece of paper clung to the rafters, unnoticed and forgotten.
⚬❀⚬
Artwork by arom-antix
So it was that ten years passed in a blink. The thriving Hasetsu hot springs slowly fell into disrepair, one by one, as more exotic locales enticed away the tourists that served as the backbone of this corner of Kyūshū. It was as if the kami had abandoned the place.
The July after Yuuri’s wish, the lines of Tanabata wishes still rustled in the breeze, hope written in the words of every citizen. Three years after Yuuri’s wish, there was only a single line of papers. Seven years later, Hasetsu stopped directing its citizens to Kagame shrine for the festival, suggesting instead more practical places of worship. A few of the stubborn still made the trek up the mountain, but the flurry of wishes had become no greater than a trickle. It was also the year that Katsuki Yuuri finally left Japan, to seek his fortune as a figure skater and to say goodbye to Yuuko Toyomura, now Yuuko Nishigori.
When ten years had passed, Kagami Shrine was more relic than resort, with not even a single wish dangling from its strings for Tanabata. It wasn’t so much that the denizens lost faith in the Kagami Shrine, it was that Hasetsu slowly died around it.
While ten years to humans is a lifetime, to a goddess, ten years is nothing more than a vacation. A jaunt across the world to see the sights and eat the food and drink the drink. To visit her peers and share the stories and folklore. And Jingū spent this time well, chasing the sun with Sól, drinking the finest wine with Dionysus, and painting the sky blue with Hathor.
What a time it was! But in the end, Jingū could not wait to return home to Kagami. To be welcomed home by her loving patrons with gifts of Yobuko squid and abalone. To grant the prayers that had backlogged in her absence to…
“Oh.” Jingū stared at the dilapidated temple, with its peeling paint and rotting rafters. She scrunched her nose at the stale water that filled the basin and the moldy donation box. Ten years had passed in the blink of her eye, but so too had a lifetime to the humans she had meant to watch. “Uh oh.”
Jingū climbed upon her leaf and willed the breeze to carry her down the mountain. But the bustling streets she’d expected held only trickles of people. The murmurs of onsens brought to life by bathers were quiet. Even the giggles of children who used to scamper up the hill from the skating rink to the ninja house had quieted.
Was it the wrong time of year?
Well, that certainly played its part. Though the cold gusts of winter had been left behind, there was still a chill in the air. And although snow did not still dust the land, the sakura blossoms had only just started to open.
Jingū never had been one to keep proper track of things. Her year of adventures had become a decade, and her triumphant return on the eve of the Tanabata had been far more eve than she anticipated. So here she was, back at her run down shrine, traveling her run down domain, and wondering how this state of things might be undone.
“Well,” Jingū caught the vein of wind that had carried her down to the sea, and politely asked it to carry her back up the mountain. “Nothing to do about it except roll up my sleeves and get to work.”
At the sight of her shrine, she frowned. A goddess of her size and stature had no hope of replacing the wood. She needed her patrons to return to this place, to strip the paint and sweep the leaves, to clean the empty birds’ nests from the rafters and replace the rotted shingles, to…
Tattered white caught her eye, fluttering hopefully in the wind. Jingū sailed over and plucked it from its cage.
“Oh!”
This was not an ordinary piece of paper at all. For upon it was written in the uneven scrawl of a boy. And when Jingū heard the words of the wish in her mind, she smiled; she always did love to give a helping hand to those wishes—the ones that would have come true on their own. It was a long way from that Tanabata, a long way from her shrine to be revived, but she knew in her heart of hearts, that all would be renewed in time, wish by wish, starting with this one.
“Katsuki Yuuri, on my honor as the kami of this shrine, I will grant you your wish!”
⚬❀⚬
Yuuri had tried, he really had, to arrive at Hasetsu quietly. He did not want to talk about skating, or how he had grasped his dream so tightly in his hand that he’d crushed it.
World’s was in Tokyo that year. Yuuri was meant to be there, skating for Japan, against his idol, a man who did not even know his name.
Perhaps that was what drew him to Ice Castle that day. Because he couldn’t bear to watch Victor skate, with the weight of his own failures hanging over his head. So he put on his skates and he did what he always did when he felt lost: he skated. He skated for love of the ice, under the eyes of his old friend, he skated for redemption, and he skated to rekindle his bond with the ice.
And maybe too he skated as a prayer to Victor. To ask the kami if he could be given one more chance to skate on the same ice, and that this time, Victor would remember his name. But wishes could wait until the morning, when the disappointment was softer and the signs of Victor’s Worlds gold medal no longer echoed through his home (mostly thanks to Minako-sensei).
When Yuuri closed his eyes that night, while the sakura blossoms rained from the trees, he dreamed of festive music, of a jaunty dance, of electric blue eyes and a wild grin. “Okay,” the smile whispered, “after this season ends, I will come to Hasetsu and I will be your—”
But Yuuri never did see the end of his dream.
“Moshi moshi!” It was hard to tell if the sound ringing in Yuuri’s ears were chimes dancing in the wind or words. The jab against his cheek certainly was not the wind. “Moshi moshi!”
When Yuuri opened his eyes, he expected to see the small shining faces of Axel, Lutz and Loop; perhaps he had slept in later than usual?
What he did not expect was the sight he saw.
She wore a white kosode embroidered with roses, its roomy sleeves laced with blue ribbons. A jade crown fashioned like the clouds of the heavens adorned her head. She held a sword and there was a quiver of arrows upon her back. Her jet black hair cascaded down the front of her robes, intermingling with the vibrant red and blue patterns of the sashes that adorned it.
Such beauty and majesty like nothing Yuuri had ever seen!
And all in miniature, because this sight was no taller than the span of Yuuri’s fingers, balancing upon a maple red leaf, eyes sparkling with joy.
“Katsuki Yuuri, I found you!” The tiny goddess declared, for there could be no other explanation to the sight before Yuuri’s eyes. “I, Jingū, have come to you in your hour of need.”
“My…” Yuuri rubbed his eyes, convinced that he must still be in the throes of a dream. The Empress Jingū was the kami of Kagami Shrine, where he had celebrated so many Tanabata festivals and New Years.
But it was late March at the moment, and he had not so much as thought about that shrine since he had left Hasetsu five years prior.
“Your hour of need!” Jingū beamed. She dug into her robes and pulled out a tattered piece of paper, smoothing it out and clearing her throat. “I wish for my idol to fall in love with me. This is your wish, correct?”
At first the words did not feel familiar. Yuuri had made some foolish wishes in his youth, asking for things that no kami would ever grant. Things like immense skating talent without the hard work, the ability to speak to others with ease in spite of his anxiety, and finally the heart of—
“Oh no,” Yuuri gasped. Yes, that was his wish. A wish he made to steal away the heart of Yuuko Toyomura, the Madonna of Ice Castle Hasetsu. A heart that did not belong to him. At that moment, the panic set in; Yuuri shot up from bed. “No, no no no! Please no!”
“Now now now Yuuri-kun, that is no way to speak to a goddess!” Jingū huffed, then she tapped her finger against the paper which burst into stars. “I have only now returned from a journey. It does not do for a goddess to become rusty in her craft, so imagine my joy at finding this paper and seeing how easy it will be to grant this wish!”
“B-b-but…” Yuuri cried. To argue with a goddess leads only to misfortune, and Yuuri had already tested her patience, but there was nothing else to do. “Please, I beg you! This wish of mine was made when I was young and childish, I have no right to demand such a thing of—”
Yuuri could only yelp when a bolt of tiny lightning emanated from Jingū’s fingertips.
“I’m warning you, Katsuki Yuuri,” the goddess scolded. “I came here in a very good mood, and what is done is done! To be ungrateful is to disrespect the kami of Hasetsu, and you would not want that, now would you?”
Yuuri could not hold back now, feeling tears flowing from his eyes. He was a homewrecker now, tearing apart Yuuko and Takeshi’s precious fam—
“It was such an easy wish to grant too! It seems that he is already smitten! But now he’s in love.” Jingū puffed up. “Indeed, he is already on his way here!”
Yuuko was not a he.
I wish for my idol to fall in love with me.
There was only one idol who was also a he in Yuuri’s mind.
“No.” It could not possibly be.
“Yes!” Came the goddess’s answer. “You should go downstairs, I think I just heard a knock!”
When Yuuri sprinted out of the room, Jingū waited until she heard the scrapple of poodle claws on the floor and the high-pitched call of a mother to tend to a foreign guest who had settled himself into an onsen.
And then, in a flash, she waved her fingers and let the breeze carry her back up the mountain, back to Kagami Shrine. She could not help but smile at her luck at finding such a wonderful wish to grant.
After all, the best love stories are always the ones that would be written anyway, with or without the help of the gods.