Chapter Text
Hikaru didn’t panic until he started to feel the flames licking the soles of his bare feet.
This is how mom and dad must have felt like. He thought.
He could see the blurred shadows of men dressed just like he was a few hours ago, the long and dark-colored habits with high turtle necks. They were just standing there, witnessing his last moments, while the only thing he could do was to try to stare right back at them. Even if he can’t see their faces clearly.
He made an effort to interlace his fingers, with his hands tied behind his back and slowly whispered to himself the prayer engraved in his mind:
“Let my hands be my own, let my breath belong to no god but the one that beats within my chest. I have knelt before fire and called it mercy. I have seen gods built from fear, and I will not pray to fear again.
Let no voice tell me what is sacred.
For I have seen holiness in the dust,
and grace in the way the dawn meets the land.
For I can be ash, and I can be light, and both are holy”.
His heart pounded harder as the flames reached up to his lower body, furious to consume him into nothingness. But Hikaru, being the stubborn man he had always been, never stopped holding his calmed gaze at those in front of him. He would never let them see him suffer again, he would make sure of that, even in his last breath.
…
Yoshiki walked up the worn stone steps toward the building in front of him with just a small worn suitcase in his hand. The place rose above him, massive and cold, its pointed towers cutting sharply into the gray sky. Arches framed the entrance, carved with rows of saints whose faces had been weathered smooth by time. Between them, the heavy wooden doors stood half open, their iron fittings dark with age. He turned around to see his family one last time before those heavy doors close behind him for a very long time.
His dad gave him a determined look and nodded, him mom placed her warm hand over Yoshiki’s shoulder, a smile on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. Yoshiki hugged his mom tightly, taking in the way her hair smelled, since he probably wasn’t going to see her in years to come. He felt someone tugging lightly on his pants and when he looked down, Yoshiki saw his sister Kaoru, pearl-like tears running down her cheeks. He crouched down to meet her height, kindly pathing her head and ruffling her short, straight hair. He leaned and whispered to her ear:
“I know we’ll see each other again, Kaoru. I promise.”
The little girl nodded vigorously and used the back of her hand to clean her eyes from the tears. Yoshiki stood up and went up the stone stairs with determination. The heavy wooden doors opened to reveal the figure of a man, dressed in a habit with religious symbols patterns all over the fabric. Yoshiki turned around one last time to wave at his family and finally disappeared inside the building.
Inside, the air was cool and dry. The chapel was dim, lit only by a few tall candles and the pale light of the mid-november sun slipping through thin stained glass windows. The vaulted ceiling wasn’t high, yet the arches gave the sense of being enclosed inside something ancient and unshakable. The smell of old wood, tallow, and incense filled the place. Yoshiki followed the man to a second pair of door that lead to the monastery itself.
The old priest led Yoshiki through the monastery in silence, only speaking to tell him to explain the rooms. The corridors were narrow, built of the same gray stone as the church outside, their walls rough and cold to the touch. A faint draft moved through them, carrying the smell of damp earth and burning tallow from the chapel. Their footsteps echoed against the flagstones, the sound fading into the stillness that seemed to hold the entire place together.
They passed the refectory first, a long hall with wooden tables laid out in strict rows. A single crucifix hung at the far end, blackened by smoke from the hearth. The room was empty now, except for the lingering scent of boiled grain and bread. Next came the kitchen, where a few brothers worked in silence, stirring pots over an open fire. Iron pots hung from soot-dark beams, and baskets of onions, dried herbs, and root vegetables filled the corners.
Beyond that was the scriptorium, a smaller room where daylight fell through narrow arched windows onto desks covered in parchment and ink. Quills rested in cups, and the faint scratch of writing could be heard from one of the monks bent over his work. The smell of ink and wax mixed with the colder air from outside.
The priest continued through another passage that opened into the cloister — a square courtyard enclosed by covered walkways. Arched openings revealed the gardens beyond, where late autumn had turned the leaves of the tall trees a deep orange and gold. A narrow stone bridge crossed over a small stream that divided the courtyard, leading to the far side of the monastery grounds. Yoshiki slowed his steps there, looking out at the soft light falling over the grass. The air smelled faintly of wet leaves and smoke from the chimneys.
They crossed the bridge and climbed a short stair to the dormitory. The priest pushed open a heavy wooden door to reveal a long, simple room lined with narrow beds. Each was covered with a coarse wool blanket, a small chest at its foot, and nothing else. There were no decorations, no color, only the pale light from a high window.
“This will be your place now,” the priest said quietly. His voice echoed against the bare walls. Yoshiki nodded, unsure whether to bow or speak. He stood in the doorway for a moment longer, listening to the faint ringing of the bell outside, the soft creak of the old timbers, and the quiet pulse of a life he would soon have to learn.
The old man walked out the room, closing the door behind him to give him space to set his few belongings inside the small chest by his bed. Yoshiki dropped to his new bed and huffed, the mattress sank under his weight as the opened the small suitcase and pulled out his old set of ink and pens, gift from his dad, two pair of black pants and his three extra shirts him mom had worked so hard last month to get him for this moment.
His parents had decided he would serve the church a few years ago and they were only waiting for the right time to send him there. They said it was the most honorable path for a son who wasn’t inheriting any kind family business since his father worked as a lumberjack in the forests north of their town, gone for days at a time felling timber for the nearby mills, while his mother cut hair in the front room of their house, while Kaoru ran around helping her sometimes. Since Yoshiki never showed the strength to carry on with his dad’s business, a quiet life, safe from war and poverty, where he could bring favor to the Tsujinaka name through devotion looked like the best option for him. His mother had spoken of peace, his father of duty. None of them really asked what he wanted to do with his life. So when he finally turned 16 and the church agreed to take him in, all Yoshiki could do was to bow his head and obey, as he always had. And since he had already agreed to this path, he thought he might as well do it right, setting his goal to become a high-ranked priest in the next few years.
He already had a head start because since his mom was from the capital and therefore had some grade of education, she had been teaching him how to read and write from a young age, something the higher-ups usually teach the new postulants in their first month is inside the monastery. Yoshiki had been able to pass that stage and directly become a novice by recommendation, now he had to start learning latin and prayers, do some chores around with the other novices, but most importantly, he wasn’t allowed to leave the monastery or see his family at all.
When Yoshiki finished placing his stuff as neatly as possible given the limited space available, he went out of the room, following the same steps he remembered from before, but backwards, until he reached that beautiful bridge with the extraordinary views of the fields. He rested his elbows on the stone railing and sighed, admiring how the fields seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon.
These were going to be long years, he thought to himself.
…
The seasons turned quietly within the monastery walls. Six years passed, marked by the same tolling bells and the same unchanging prayers. The rhythm of life there never faltered. Dawn brought the sound of chanting, dusk the slow silence of reflection. Yoshiki learned to move within that order gracefully.
He memorized the scriptures faster than most, and studied even harder to understand Latin as if it were his first tongue, and never once questioned a command from a higher-up. The Abbot favored him for his obedience, outstanding intelligence and discipline. In no time, his duties grew faster than expected for someone his age, he was trusted to read during mass, to assist in confession and to oversee novices who struggled with discipline, though he never really punished anyone for minor mistakes.
When the time came, they named him deacon. The robes he now had to wear, felt heavier on his shoulders than he imagined they would, from the quiet weight of expectation and the responsibility. Throughout all those years, he kept going, telling himself that this was the right path for him and that nothing else would fulfill him the way his duty did, though sometimes, Yoshiki would stay awake, staring at the white ceiling of the dorms, listening to the rhythmic breathing of his pairs and thinking about what life would look like for him outside of the monastery or feeling guilty because the faces of his family were slowly fading away from his memory, no matter how hard he had tried all this years to keep them fresh.
Who he missed the most was probably his sister Kaoru. He missed looking out the window and seeing the little girl playing around the grass, climbing trees or catching bugs. Now, Kaoru was supposed to be 15 years old and his parents were probably looking for a husband for her. He felt deeply sorry for not being able to see the woman Kaoru was turning into. Would she still look similar to what he could remember? Or would adolescence change her features completely? Yoshiki always kept her on his prayers, asking God for a good and gentle husband for her and a life without want.
Thanks to his position, he no longer had to do chores around the monastery, so Yoshiki loved to spend his free time inside the huge library. The monastery’s library was hidden behind a thick oak door at the far end of the east wing, where sunlight reached only for a few hours each morning. The room stretched long and narrow, lined on both sides with tall wooden shelves darkened by age and smoke from the lamps. The air was cool, heavy with the scent of wax, ink, and old parchment. A few narrow windows cut high into the stone walls, letting in a thin light that dust turned golden as it drifted through the air. From his years as a student, the library now felt like an extension of his room, he knew almost every aisle and how to quickly find the information he was looking for. But the interesting part was that there always seemed to be some hidden room inside the gigantic building that Yoshiki could still explore. It was some kind of hobby of his to find this new places, and today, he had found one.
It was this small, dusty room, hidden behind some awkwardly placed bookshelves where all the books placed there had no title written in their spines nor their covers. Yoshiki passes his finger through the wood, picking up the thick layer of dust, like the place hadn’t been cleaned in years. He would have to inform the Abbot about the poor state of the books there, but first, he was going to enjoy the reward of his discovery. Since non of the books had names on them, he chose randomly 5 of them, before heading outside to read them on one of the tables that had a window with sunlight close.
Yoshiki went through the first three by just eyeing their pages quickly. Nothing really caught his attention. The first one was a version of the Bible poorly translated to Latin, maybe an old writing practice from someone else that ended up lost inside the library and then misplaced there. The second one was, to his surprise, empty, except for the first page that had a cool drawing of a tree he had seen in the courtyards. He started to lose hope of finding anything interesting by the third book he opened, an old version of the cooking book they gave to the novices when they learned how to read, with simple recipes they had to prepare when they got assigned to kitchen duty, something Yoshiki did not miss at all.
Just to finish with this pointless task, he opened the fourth book. Inside, right in the first page and with questionable calligraphy it read: Indou Hikaru’s property. Do not read.
Indou Hikaru? There was no one with that name that Yoshiki knew of. And he always checked the records of new postulants entering the monastery, even those who entered a little before him or the ones that left the church every year. Maybe he just skipped that name in the list at some point and that’s why he couldn’t recognize him, or maybe the book was just too old.
It didn’t look like an official record or one of the copied manuscripts kept by the monks. It was personal.
Yoshiki ran his thumb over the blue, warn cover again, feeling the rough texture of the leather beneath the dust. Every instinct told him to put it back where he found it. Diaries weren’t meant to be read by strangers or anyone for that matter. But most importantly, no one was really allowed to have personal diaries inside the monastery, what they wrote needed to be supervised by a high-ranked priest constantly.
And yet, the thought of leaving it closed unsettled him. The name was unfamiliar, the warning childish in tone, almost defiant. Most monks wouldn’t dare write their own name on a cover, much less a warning like that. Whoever this Indou Hikaru had been, he clearly hadn’t followed the usual path.
Yoshiki looked around. The library was almost empty; only the sound of the wind pressed against the high windows. He hesitated a moment longer, then drew a slow breath, the kind that felt like it might carry consequences.
“Just a few lines”. He murmured to himself, as if saying it aloud would make it less of a trespass.
He turned the page.
I have decided to keep this record for myself. Not a confessional, not for the eyes of anyone but me. I suppose that already makes it a sin, and if so, may God forgive me later, when I’m bored enough to care.
We are taught curiosity is dangerous but, I think it’s the only thing keeping me alive inside this walls. That and the memory of my parents.
The others spend their days here repeating the same verses, as if words alone would keep the world from falling apart, not when they end up being part of the problem, even if they don’t plan to. I’ve seen this place molding kind should into monsters and I’ve seen the world burn. I saw the fire of our rage when I was a child, the smell of smoke and the pleading still stains my memory of them. But also a name: Nonuki-sama.
The church said it was a false god and a demon worshipped by the ignorants. I was told to forget it and to thank the Lord for saving me from damnation. But I can’t be sure about it now. I want to know who my parents called in their last moments alive and why was it more important than staying alive with me.
I want to know who Nonuki-sama is, or was. Here must be records, symbols or something outside. Perhaps in the old archives of the library or in the outside world. Still, if anyone finds out about the book, they’ll probably come after me but I need a place to document on my findings.
I know there’s still good will in this world, so stranger, if you found this book I highly recommend you to close it and leave it where you found it. You might not want to participate in my heresy.
Yoshiki slammed the book shut as the last paragraph suggested, driving some attention from the few monks there towards him, one of them even hushing him harshly. He smiled apologetically and quickly stood up to leave the library and head back to his room, nobody noticing the book hidden inside his habit.
As he walked fast pace, his heart was almost pounding out of his chest and he could feel the cold sweat running down his neck. He convinced himself it wasn’t exactly stealing from the library since the book probably didn’t even belong inside, but he couldn’t help the crippling anxiety of knowingly disobeying many of rules he had been following for now years. But curiosity ended up winning over responsibility as he hid the object inside his chest and under his shirts, with the rest of his belongings. Yoshiki had to sit in bed to finish processing all the new information he had just received.
The date on top of Indou’s first diary entry was almost 50 years ago, and from what Yoshiki could pick up from the small amount of personal information in the entry and the sophisticated words he used, was that Indou must have been around the same position as Yoshiki was right now on the church hierarchy, the only thing that could make his theory not plausible, was his crooked calligraphy, as if he held the pen weirdly while he was writing, something that most novices would correct with time, even before becoming monks.
Nonuki-sama.
The name didn’t ring any bells for him. During his studies, Yoshiki had been required to memorize lists of false gods, remnants of the old faiths that had lingered in rural towns before the Church’s reach had spread across the land. He remembered the basics about them: the sun spirits, the river mothers, the nameless idols carved from stone. Each had been stamped out, one by one, through the grace and guidance of the one true God by his brothers in the past.
But Nonuki-sama had never appeared in any of those records. Not in the compendiums of heresies, not in the scrolls that detailed the Church’s purges, not even in the warnings read to the novices. The name felt foreign on the tongue, as if it belonged to a world outside Yoshiki’s understanding.
Perhaps it was a minor cult, something so small and local that the Church hadn’t bothered to record it. Or perhaps it was older, from some distant land whose language had long since vanished. Still, the way Indou wrote about it stirred a quiet unease in him. There was a familiarity there, an echo of something forgotten, and the way he spoke about what supposedly happened to his parents uneased him more than any pagan name could.
“I saw the fire of our rage when I was a child, the smell of smoke and the pleading still stains my memory of them”. The description of fire unsettled Yoshiki, not only for its detail, but for what it implied. Indou wrote of it as something done to his family, yet in all his years of study, he had never encountered record of the church burning families for their beliefs. The text he read mentioned conversions, sermons and the grace of forgiveness but never fire or fear.
He laid in his bed, the old wood creaking slightly under his full weight. The dorms were empty and everyone was busy outside. Yoshiki told himself Indou Hikaru must have exaggerated to scare off those who would read his book in the first pages, but grief cold always twist the memory, and maybe he shouldn’t take every word written by a lost deacon as the absolute truth. And yet, a cold unease settled in him.
The church’s record was vast, but selective. Everybody knew that. It spoke of triumphs, of mercy and victory of light over darkness. If there had been fire, or even blood, that would have happened at least a hundred years ago, or the books would have said so. Fifty years could be a long period of time, but according to his knowledge, there hadn’t any major changes in the church in almost a century.
There were so many open questions left to answer about the whole situation. What was really happening right behind these same walls where he was now 50 years ago? Why wouldn’t the textbooks talk about this Nonuki-sama thing? Was Indou Hikaru even real? there was always the possibility that someone might have invented all this nonsense from boredom to trick him into believing everything was true. But there was also the chance that he might uncover some well hidden secret and Yoshiki was always up to the challenge of a good old investigation.
Maybe things wouldn’t be so boring for Yoshiki inside the monastery anymore.