The miko let us sleep in her house and the next morning, when we woke up, I decided to talk to her.

“When we walked around we only found burned villages, what happened?”

“The Guardian Deity was angered by the people’s foolishness and burned the daimyo’s lands. He dared saying that the oracle about a traveller from the distant lands beyond the mist was false and that the temple’s priests were saying nonsense.” She said that and started crying again.

[So, the local god just burned everything because the landowner thought the priests were saying nonsense… What a nice and friendly guy he must be.]

After the miko calmed down I asked about the traveller.

“Was there any description of the traveller?”

“Ye-yes! The traveller is a fox… blue eyes… white fur… and… grey tips on the ears and tails… Erhm… sorry, traveller-sama…” When she started recalling what the oracle was about, she suddenly understood what happened and smiled apologetically.

“So, now what?”

“I AM SORRY!” She misunderstood what I meant and immediately prostrated.

“Miko-san, can you stop doing that and tell me what I should do?” I tried to be gentle but considering that I felt cold gazes, I sounded a bit sarcastic here. I just wonder how those 4 can understand anything just by my intonation.

“Y-yes!”

Retelling long speech of hiccups and crying in short, I was summoned here by the local god to do something and now I should go to the summit of a mountain and pray at the temple’s altar. Sounds simple enough.

The actual mountain-steps climbing was much harder than it should sound. Even with my strong physical capabilities that was hard. I climbed to the top only after two hours of constant jumping and climbing. And the miko said that she does visit that altar every 3 days!

When I arrived to the altar I clapped my hands and started praying, then everything went dark.

When I opened my eyes I was in a crazy place which surely rejects the existence of physics and logic.

I am standing on the ground completely covered with sakura petals, the occasional grass and bushes also appear to be pink. There are many trees around me but yes, they are all sakura. I hoped that in the background there will be something normal but all that I found were flying mountains, yes, flying mountains. Their tops were covered in the same pink trees and grass but at least their bottoms had some green plants. From some of the mountains were coming waterfalls.

The sky was even more unrealistic than what I saw before, it was looking as if it was painted with a brush. Even the sun was looking as if it was just painted. I can clearly see the clouds but they are also painted.

Around me I can see some structures, mostly torii gates and some small houses in the distance. I walked to the largest of the houses.

Everything was beautifully placed, painted or ornamented. Whoever lives here at least has some sort of an artistic inspiration for landscape planning. And also some pragmatic planning, because it was easy to get to any place from any part of their garden, as well as it was clear where one is going and to what house.

I lightly knocked the paper wall of the large house and said:

“Sorry for intrusion.” After that I opened the door and entered.

“Welcome, kid.” A child-like voice responded to me, when I looked in front of me, I saw two figures.

I am not that stupid as to provoke the Gods so I prostrated and said:

“I am Fuji, I was summoned here.”

“Yes, I know. That is nice that you decided to pretend to be a good guest. Come here.” The same childish voice answered.

When I finally sat in front of the Gods I was able to properly see them.

To my left, on a large pile of pillows was a small child, sitting, lying or just doing whatever. She is even smaller than me. She has a brash expression and I can clearly see that she doesn’t even consider me to be an equal. Her hair and eyes are brown and she is kitsune, with 1 tail rarely wagged from one side to another.

To my right another person, she is sitting in seiza on a bamboo mat. She is surely an adult considering her well-formed deck superstructure. She is also a kitsune and has black hair with green eyes. Unlike the other fox, she just sits there and rarely spares me a glance. She shows the apathetic face.

“So, are you done with looking at us?” The loli-fox showed a smug smile and poked the onee-san’s cheek with her finger.

“Yes. Let’s get to the business.”

“Well, considering how much you tried to get here this majestic Akagi-sama lets you to choose what you want, kid.” The loli smiled at me and kept poking her companion who showed no change to her expression.

“I want to become a god!” I said that to her with joking expression.

“Good for you, kid, now… Listen to what Akagi-sama says.” The loli smiled like a devil.