Chapter 62: Tōkigan (Part 6)
As Ōgami Yōsuke began to recount the legend of Tōkigan once more, the lively, speculative discussion in the room subsided into a tense, expectant silence.
Junko and Kana settled back, their expressions a mixture of excitement and a new, more profound apprehension. Takada, however, crossed his arms, his brow furrowed in deep concentration, listening intently to every word, clearly preparing to offer his own grand theories and insights once the story was finished.
What surprised Ōgami Yōsuke, however, was that Yomikawa Tsuko also seemed to be listening with a new seriousness, her usual cold, almost bored detachment replaced by a focused intensity, as if the ancient, bloody legend had finally, genuinely, captured her interest.
“Returning to the village,” Ōgami began, his voice low and steady, a storyteller weaving a web of impending doom, “Tōkigan unveiled the doll he and the god had created together. It was a breathtakingly, almost unnaturally lifelike female doll, whom Tōkigan, in a moment of inspired creation, named Aoi-jō.”
“Aoi-jō’s beauty was said to be extraordinary, her skin as white and pure as freshly fallen snow. The villagers were completely, utterly captivated, showering her with the most extravagant, flowery praise.”
“But what truly shocked the villagers, what sent a tremor of awe and fear through their simple community, was that Aoi-jō, despite being a doll, could move with a fluid, seamless grace. Her walk, the way she bowed her head, the gentle, elegant bend of her waist – everything was as natural as a normal human’s, showing none of the stiff, awkward, uncanny movements one would expect from a mere automaton.”
“In the face of their adulation, Aoi-jō responded to each person with a perfect politeness. Her smile was like a warm spring breeze, natural and inviting. Her movements were as graceful and elegant as a nobleman’s daughter, her voice as clear and melodious as a nightingale’s song.”
“In this isolated, forgotten village, Aoi-jō was like a celestial maiden, a goddess who had suddenly, miraculously appeared among them. Men and women alike were utterly enchanted by her.”
“In the days that followed, Aoi-jō proved to be a great and tirelessly efficient help to Tōkigan and his wife. She could learn complex skills with an astonishing, inhuman speed – cooking, weaving, sewing. She was always full of a boundless, inexhaustible energy and stamina, never once complaining, no matter how much work there was to be done.”
“The villagers were incredibly, almost sinfully envious of Tōkigan. Not only did he now possess such a beautiful and capable doll, but he also had a gentle and virtuous wife.”
“With Aoi-jō’s arrival, Takehime, Tōkigan’s wife, became a devoted, reclusive homemaker. She rarely left the house and almost never met with outsiders, leaving all external affairs, all interactions with the village, to Tōkigan and the ever-perfect Aoi-jō. The three of them lived a life that was the envy of the entire village, a constant topic of happy, and sometimes resentful, gossip.”
“Until one day, the village landlord, a man of considerable wealth and influence, consumed with a burning envy for Aoi-jō’s otherworldly beauty, summoned Tōkigan to his manor. He begged him, no, he demanded, that Tōkigan, no matter the cost, create another doll exactly like her, for his own private enjoyment.”
“Tōkigan, his pride and ambition now fully awakened, readily agreed to the landlord’s request. He instructed the landlord to prepare the necessary… sacrifice… while he himself gathered the other, more mundane materials. Once everything was ready, he worked for ten days and ten nights in a secret, locked room in the landlord’s house and produced a doll that was, in every respect, identical to the original Aoi-jō.”
“The landlord was ecstatic. He gave Tōkigan a small fortune in gold as a reward, and then, it was said, spent his days and nights enjoying the… company… of the doll in his home. Word of this strange, and to some, deeply unsettling arrangement soon spread throughout the village. And the other villagers, hearing the tale, became tempted.”
“Soon, a second villager, a wealthy merchant, came to Tōkigan with a similar request.”
“And then, a third…”
“Unlike the powerful landlord, the ordinary villagers had no way to prepare the… necessary sacrifices. And they could only rely on Tōkigan to provide the costly materials for the dolls themselves.”
“To repay the villagers for their earlier kindness, and perhaps, to further hone his own new, god-like skills, Tōkigan generously agreed to all their requests. He only asked that, in return, the villagers help him prepare a boat, as he planned to take his wife and his newfound fame and travel to the main island of Honshu after he had finished making the dolls.”
“The villagers, their minds filled with dreams of their own perfect, tireless companions, happily, eagerly agreed.”
“In the short span of the next year, Tōkigan, working with a feverish, manic intensity, successfully created twenty-one new dolls for the villagers. Among them were eleven strong, handsome male dolls and ten beautiful female dolls, all modeled after the original, perfect Aoi-jō.”
“Of course, during this time, there were many more failures in creation than successes. But the villagers, in their eagerness, simply buried the failed, half-finished, and some said, vaguely unsettling products hastily, in unmarked graves, and prepared new materials for Tōkigan to start again.”
“In total, Tōkigan had now created twenty-three dolls. One was Aoi-jō, the original, made with the help of the god. The remaining twenty-two were evenly split between male and female.”
“But not all the dolls, it was soon discovered, were as gentle and compliant in nature as the original Aoi-jō.”
“During that year, incidents of discord, arguments, and even violent physical fights between the dolls and their new owners became frighteningly frequent. The doll owners, their initial delight turning to a growing unease, gathered to discuss the problem. They decided to go together, as a group, to ask Tōkigan how to make their dolls obey their commands, before he left for Honshu.”
“One morning, the twenty-one doll owners, all except the landlord, who was, it seemed, perfectly content with his own doll, went together to visit Tōkigan’s house.”
“And that,” Ōgami said, his voice dropping to a low, ominous whisper, “is when the true tragedy began.”
“The doll owners discovered Tōkigan, brutally, almost ritualistically murdered in his own home.”
“And there, standing in a widening pool of her creator’s blood, was Aoi-jō. A blood-stained knife was clutched in her delicate hand, and a gentle, serene, beatific smile was on her beautiful face, as she calmly, and with a chilling precision, explained to them the three sacred, and now catastrophically broken taboos of the dolls.”
“She told them that Tōkigan had died because he, in his arrogance and greed, had violated the first and most important taboo. And she warned them, her voice as sweet and melodious as ever, that if they, the new doll owners, wished to continue living happily with their own beautiful, lifelike dolls, they must prepare the necessary sacrifices. Quickly.”
“Terrified, the doll owners scattered, fleeing in a blind panic.”
“But after returning to the relative safety of their own homes, the gruesome, bloody image of Tōkigan’s death haunted them. They all came to the same, grim conclusion. They could not simply wait for their own turn to come.”
“And so, the twenty-one doll owners decided to band together, to form a secret society, and to conduct a ‘hunt’ in the dead of night. They would stop only when they had gathered enough sacrifices to appease their monstrous and now terrifyingly sentient creations.”
“First, they restrained their own dolls, locking them away in cellars and attics, to prevent being murdered in their sleep. Then, under the cover of darkness, they began their grim, desperate hunt, according to their bloody, meticulous plan.”
“For the next several nights, innocent villagers, their own friends and neighbors, died in the darkness, taken as sacrifices.”
“An atmosphere of thick, choking suspicion, of neighbor turning against neighbor, began to poison the once-peaceful village.”
“But alas, the doll owners’ desperate, brutal actions were still one step too late.”
“On the seventh night after Tōkigan’s body was discovered, six of the doll owners were found murdered in their own locked homes, killed by their own dolls, for their failure to provide a timely sacrifice. Their dolls, which had been so carefully restrained, had also mysteriously and impossibly vanished.”
“The remaining fifteen owners, now in a state of pure, abject terror, decided to accelerate their preparations. They had, between them, already gathered seven sacrifices. Six of their own had been brutally killed. Therefore, they calculated, they needed to gather the remaining eight sacrifices within the next three days. They drew up a list of names, a death warrant for eight of their unsuspecting neighbors.”
“Their plan was simple and brutal: kill three people on the first night, three on the second, and two on the final night.”
“But once again, the unexpected, the impossible occurred. On the first night of their new, accelerated plan, a total of five people were killed.”
“Two of the dead, who were not on their list, were doll owners. They had, according to the group’s own grim ledger, already offered their sacrifices. They should have been safe. Yet now, they were dead.”
“It was not until the other, terrified doll owners discovered blood-stained bronze mirrors in the dead men’s homes that they understood the horrifying reason.”
“These two had been killed for violating the second taboo. Of the fifteen doll owners, only thirteen remained.”
“But the hunt continued. That night, another five people died. Three were designated sacrifices, and two were doll owners.”
“On the final, bloody day, seven more people died. Two were sacrifices, and five were doll owners.”
“In the end, only six of the original twenty-one doll owners were still alive. And the number of missing and presumably rogue dolls, including the original Aoi-jō, had reached sixteen.”
“And just as these six remaining, traumatized doll owners thought they were finally safe, that they had paid the bloody price, that they could live out the rest of their miserable lives in peace with their beautiful and now sated dolls, the bitter, terrifying, and entirely unforeseen consequences of violating the third, and final, taboo finally arrived.”
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