The night was half over. The moon had shifted. The light through the window had grown more slanted.
The bedchamber fell quiet.
Kikyō lay upon the bedding, her black hair spread around her like spilled ink. The hairpin remained at her temple, its dark crimson glow rising and falling within the black strands.
The white silk had been pulled back over her body, but the sash was not tied, and she had no strength to tie it.
Her eyes were half-open. Her dark pupils held no focus. Her breathing was extremely slow and shallow, like a lamp about to burn out.
Every part of her body felt weak. From fingertips to toes, from shoulders to waist, every inch felt as though it had been taken apart and reassembled. She lacked even the strength to lift a finger.
After the intensity receded, the stimulation of having scaled the peak still lingered on the surface, leaving her perception both dulled and sharpened at once,
Clearly exhausted beyond measure, yet acutely aware of every trace left upon her body.
Deeply satisfied.
Thoroughly and completely.
Yet truly exhausted.
Exhausted to the extreme.
She tried to move. Her entire body protested violently in unison.
So she gave up.
Shinji lay at her side. His right arm was beneath her neck. His left hand rested upon her waist.
He felt the closeness of their bodies, his breathing steady. His crimson demon eyes glowed faintly in the darkness. The golden ring rotated slowly.
He was watching her.
Kikyō sensed that gaze and turned her eyes toward him.
In the moonlight, his face was calm, his pale complexion especially clear in the night. He looked like a young warrior of sixteen or seventeen. Young and handsome.
His usual cold severity had melted entirely into tenderness for his beloved.
Only his eyes were too red.
Still not quite human.
But they were red in a way that was very beautiful. A color Kikyō greatly liked... or rather, anything on him, she liked.
"You're still holding back, Shinji."
The miko spoke. Her voice was soft and weak, but also filled to overflowing with thorough, complete happiness, so full it could not be contained, spilling over. So full it carried a certain softness.
This frail, delicate posture stirred Shinji's heart, and he nearly gave in to the urge to go again.
Fortunately, he restrained himself.
To Kikyō's words, Shinji did not deny it.
Because he had indeed reduced his strength.
From the midpoint onward, he had been gradually withdrawing, the full-force experience had only lasted the first portion. The rest, he had been controlling, restraining.
Because her body was protesting.
Even suppressed by reiryoku, the fatigue of the flesh did not lie.
"You're already very tired."
"I know."
Kikyō closed her eyes, then opened them. Her dark pupils were especially translucent in the moonlight.
"So... go to Yura."
To be honest, Kikyō had only just learned... that her beloved, her husband, was this... formidable.
In a sense, this was a happy trouble, was it not?
Silence.
"You haven't fully released. I can feel it."
Kikyō's voice had finally returned to calm.
"As your wife, this is all I can bear, but I will not let you suppress yourself. The rest, let someone who can bear it share it for me."
"Yura has a real body now. She can do what I cannot."
This was very rational.
Very Kikyō.
Even at a time like this, she could think things through clearly and divide them cleanly.
But—
"I refuse."
Shinji's answer was equally without hesitation.
Kikyō's lashes trembled.
"Not out of embarrassment. Not out of pity."
He pulled Kikyō into his arms, his chin resting on the crown of her head. Feeling the silk-like texture of the miko's smooth long hair, Shinji could not resist taking a deep breath with his living lungs, though there was no scent at all, it simply smelled good.
"What you said is very rational. But many things, I do not wish to be rational about at all."
"You are my wife. Tonight is our night, I will not leave your side at a time like this to go find someone else."
"Even if I don't fully release, it doesn't matter. It's not as if tonight is the only night."
After speaking, he paused.
"And besides, compared to all that, I have been thinking about another matter."
Kikyō leaned against him. Her breathing gradually regained its rhythm.
"Thinking about what?" she asked.
Shinji responded, "Your... lifespan."
The two words landed exceedingly lightly.
Yet Kikyō's body still stiffened faintly.
She could not possibly have failed to realize this. It was simply that, for her, there was still some time. And she was even more unwilling to dwell on it.
Yet it was also unavoidable.
Even the most ordinary demon's life could be measured in decades as a single year, centuries as a single cycle, ten or more times that of a mortal.
Daiyōkai were measured in millennia.
By comparison,
A human life, on the scale of a demon, was no more than a dream.
The Inu no Taishō, Tōga, had fallen in love with a human woman, how long had that woman lived in demon time?
An instant.
And then she had withered.
Faded.
Vanished into the dust of history.
Even her name was nearly forgotten.
When Tōga's remnant soul had spoken that name in the cleft of the underworld, his hand had seemed to want to grasp something, yet grasped nothing at all.
Shinji had seen that scene with his own eyes.
He did not want to one day make that same gesture.
He was a greedy ma.
No matter who or what, past, present, or future, he wanted it all.
Therefore.
"I have always been thinking about what to do."
He said, "I am a demon. I may live a very long time. Perhaps centuries. Perhaps longer. And you...."
His crimson demon eyes met her dark pupils.
"You are human, Kikyō."
Kikyō did not respond.
Her fingers rested against his chest, feeling the heartbeat of that heart where the Five Viscera and Five Elements cycled endlessly.
Very steady.
Very strong.
Every beat carried a vitality far beyond mortals.
And her own heartbeat, was much faster, and naturally much weaker.
"I've considered other methods before." Shinji continued. "Improving the Demon's Breath. Or passing on the Twelfth Transformation Māra in some way, but that path does not work."
Kikyō nodded faintly.
She knew.
Shinji had naturally told her as much.
The Twelfth Transformation Māra went without saying, it was very difficult to replicate. And the Breathing Techniques were also out.
A miko's reiryoku was, in essence, pure energy, the purest, most impurity-intolerant force between heaven and earth.
The Breathing Techniques circulated air, or rather, the vital breath. That was a mingling of pure and impure, mixed with other things, the ordinary vital breath of living beings.
To mix it into pure energy would not strengthen it, it would pollute that purity.
Shinji, having spent months at Kikyō's side, had long since realized this.
So that path, was dead.
But... he had, in truth, always had another path.
It was simply that the time had not yet come.
Now, the Kantō was stable. The northeast was pacified. Fourteen provinces submitted. The osore had arrived.
And another thing... would also arrive.
That was...
"Faith."
"What?"
Kikyō did not react immediately.
Then her beautiful eyes widened faintly.
She understood.
"You know I am a demon. But not only a demon."
He said, "I am also..."
"Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama."
Kikyō finished the sentence for him.
"Yes."
Shinji, embracing his own miko, revealed a faintly smug smile.
"I am also a Shintō shōshin of two provinces. The future convergence point of fourteen provinces' faith. The existence acknowledged by the great earth of the Kantō and the Sacred Tree, these titles are not merely names, Kikyō. They are real."
He raised his right hand. Five fingers spread. Palm facing upward.
An exceedingly faint golden light seeped from between his fingers, not demonic energy. Not reiryoku. But something older and more subtle than either.
The power of faith.
The offerings, prayers, and reverence of hundreds of thousands of people, converging within his body, coexisting with his demonic energy yet not merging with it.
Like the two sides of a coin.
One side—demon.
One side—god.
"I know that in the Shintō of this world, there exists a covenant between gods and humans...."
That was also what those god-buddha incarnations had displayed, the covenant between god and vessel, originating from the divine essence itself.
To bestow upon a mortal soul a na and a kotoba, a name and a command, elevating them into Takamagahara, the heavenly realm, from which the soul would become eternal.
But Shinji did not yet possess that ability.
He had claimed faith. He had obtained an orthodox position in Shintō. But his qualifications were still shallow.
By the definitions of Shintō, or of the world's various mythological systems, he could only be considered a kunitsukami, a terrestrial deity, not yet ascended to the so-called heavenly realm of Takamagahara.
Not yet a heavenly god.
He could not directly bestow na and kotoba upon a soul.
But, using this as a line of thought, he had conceived of another method...
"Not worship. Not service. But a true, eternal covenant that binds the very roots of two existences together."
Similar to marriage, yet more enduring than that.
Truly "eternal."
It was the complete entrustment of all faith upon a single human being.
A god....taking a "human" as wife.
Yes.
This was also why Shinji had held this marriage... and what he truly, urgently needed to resolve, his last worry.
And hearing these words, Kikyō's dark pupils widened faintly.
She had, in fact, heard of it.
In the oral teachings of her master, in those ancient documents carefully preserved, there had been exceedingly sparse records.
But those records were so vague as to be almost legend, because from ancient times to the present, examples of a god truly taking a miko as wife were so few as to be nearly nonexistent.
Because demons would impersonate gods.
Because false gods far outnumbered true ones.
Because gods capable of being formally recognized by Shintō were already rare, and among those rare true gods, those willing to enter a marriage covenant with a mortal miko....
Were even more unheard of.
But the one before her...
This demon.
This god.
He was real.
A god of two provinces.
Lord of fourteen.
Acknowledged by the great earth of the Kantō and the Sacred Tree.
Claimed by the Shikon no Tama.
The power of faith flowed within him as truth, the result of the spontaneous worship of hundreds of thousands now, and in the future, two million.
He was qualified.
"A god divides a single thread of his own existence and binds it into the miko's soul."
Shinji's voice slowed.
Every word was clear.
"It does not change your essence, you remain human. Your reiryoku remains pure. Your body remains a mortal shell. But time... will no longer touch you. As long as I live, you will not age."
Kikyō was silent for a long time.
Within the bedchamber, only the sound of their breathing remained.
And the faint rustle of the Sacred Tree's branches in the night wind beyond.
"...That is not absolute immortality? Not eternal regeneration?"
Kikyō confirmed this point.
Yet for some reason, she felt, instead, a sense of relief.
Relief that the traces of him left within her body would not vanish.
"No."
Shinji affirmed Kikyō's question.
"Because even I cannot achieve absolute immortality. You will still be wounded. Still bleed. Blades can kill you. Demons can kill you. Whether you survive depends on your own strength and mine."
"I can only promise that before I fall, before I die, I will not let you be harmed."
"But beyond that....."
"Only the years cannot kill you."