Chapter 1: Desecration by Devotion
The air in the prayer hall was thick enough to taste. Sweet, cloying incense smoke coiled in the lamplight, catching in the back of the throat. Noritoshi knelt on the worn, slick boards, the familiar ache in his knees a grounding counterpoint to the verses slipping from his lips. His words were a low murmur, a thread of sound weaving through the silence and the groan of ancient wood.
A cold touch, feather-light, traced the inside of his thigh.
He didn’t startle. He just let the sacred words die in his mouth, his eyes still fixed on the cracked mirror of the altar. In its clouded surface, he saw the reflection of his own bowed shoulders, the white of his hakama. And behind him, a translucent blur of white and grey and jagged red.
Fingers, pale as moonlight and just as cold, crept higher beneath his robes. They found the knot of his fundoshi, working with a desperate, clumsy urgency.
"Kannushi-sama."
The voice was a breath against his hip. A whisper of sound that held more need than any sentence could. Noritoshi finally looked down.
Kai was there, as he always was, his form barely substantial. The ghost’s vacant black eyes were fixed on him, pleading. That long, pale tongue already glistened with a strange, slick fluid, a droplet of it clinging to his lower lip before falling, silent, onto the oiled floorboard. The black tear tracks down his cheeks looked fresh.
"Kai," Noritoshi said, his voice rough from disuse and chant. "Not now."
The ghost flinched, but didn’t retreat. His cold hand finally found skin, wrapping around the base of Noritoshi’s cock, which was, infuriatingly, already half-hard. A traitorous response from flesh that forgot its age. Kai’s head dipped, his long tongue dragging a wet, cold stripe up the length of him.
Noritoshi sucked in a sharp breath. The cold was a shock, then a perverse relief in the humid air. He felt his body respond fully, thickening in that chill grasp.
"Kannushi-sama," Kai whined, the pitch higher, strained. He said the title like a prayer and a curse all at once, his breath a frosty ghost against heated skin. He didn’t wait for permission. He never did. He opened his mouth, taking him in, the length of his tongue swirling.
It was obscene. Here, before the altar, with the eyes of forgotten kami likely upon them. Noritoshi’s hands, which had been resting on his thighs, clenched into fists. He should push him away. He had, before. Dozens of times. It never lasted. Kai would just appear later, in his sleeping quarters, a silent, weeping shape of need in the corner.
The guilt was a familiar stone in his gut. But so was the weariness. The loneliness of this mountain shrine, where the living visitors were few and the dead were… clingy.
Kai bobbed his head, a desperate rhythm. The strange liquid in his mouth wasn’t like saliva; it was slicker, cooler, with a faint mineral taste that Noritoshi had come to know. It dripped now, a steady trickle from the corner of Kai’s mouth, onto Noritoshi’s hakama. The ghost’s translucent throat worked, his black eyes screwed shut in concentration. One of his hands clutched at Noritoshi’s robe, the fabric slipping further off his own slender shoulder, revealing the pale line of his collarbone and the stark white of his burial kimono beneath.
"Enough," Noritoshi gasped, but it lacked force. His hips gave a minute, unwilling jerk upwards.
Kai moaned around him, the vibration wracking through Noritoshi’s core. The sound was swallowed, wet and desperate. Kai’s other hand crept between his own thin thighs, pressing against himself through the layers of silk, his body trembling.
This was the part where Noritoshi usually surrendered. Where he’d let his head fall back, let the sacrilege wash over him, pretend it was just another form of exhaustion. But the reflection in the altar mirror held him. He saw himself—an old man in priestly robes, being serviced by a weeping ghost. He saw the red ribbon on Kai’s ankle, a splash of color against his pale, bare foot. A token from a life forgotten.
A sudden, sharp frustration cut through the haze of pleasure.
He grabbed a fistful of Kai’s dark, insubstantial hair. Not to push him away, but to still him. To make him look up.
Kai’s eyes flew open, wide and black and swimming with more of those inky tears. They streaked through the grey accents on his cheeks. His mouth was still stretched, lips wet.
"Stop," Noritoshi said, clearer now.
Kai whimpered. The sound was a broken thing. "Kannushi… sama?" It was a question now, confused and hurt. His tongue retreated, lapping apologetically at the head.
"Why do you do this?" Noritoshi’s voice was low, strained. "What do you want from me that this gives you?"
Kai just stared. Understanding, when it came to Kai, was a fleeting thing. He seemed to operate on pure, chaotic emotion—loneliness manifest as physical hunger. He nuzzled into Noritoshi’s grip, his cold cheek against the priest’s hot thigh. A gesture of pathetic affection.
"I am not your anchor," Noritoshi muttered, more to himself. "I am not your salvation."
But his grip on Kai’s hair loosened. The ghost took it as an invitation, surging forward again, taking him deep, his throat working in a silent, choking sob. Noritoshi felt the climax building, a tight coil at the base of his spine. He fought it, shame warring with a deeper, more devastating emptiness.
He lost.
His release was a silent, violent shudder. He saw stars behind his eyelids, not divine, just biological. Kai drank it down greedily, a starving thing, before collapsing forward, his forehead pressing against Noritoshi’s stomach. His slender shoulders shook. The ghost was crying again, black tears soaking into the white priestly robes.
The hall was silent except for the pop of a lamp wick and Kai’s shuddering, soundless breaths. The incense smelled like decay.
Noritoshi sat there, spent, disgusted with himself. He looked at the top of Kai’s head, at the intricate layering of his kimono, the jagged red ruffles like torn flesh. He was a beautiful, broken thing. A responsibility Noritoshi had never asked for.
After a long while, Kai shifted. He looked up, his expression hollowed out, momentarily sated. He leaned in, pressing his cold, wet lips to Noritoshi’s jaw in a kiss that felt like a seal.
Then, he simply faded. Not with a pop, but like smoke unraveling in a draft. He was gone, leaving only a damp, cooling patch on Noritoshi’s robes and a faint, mineral scent in the air.
Noritoshi stayed on his knees. He adjusted his clothing with stiff, mechanical motions. He should purify himself. He should chant a prayer of atonement until his voice gave out.
Instead, he stared at the empty space where the ghost had been. The weight of the silence was immense. It was the weight of the mountains, of the empty offering box, of years stretching behind and ahead.
He wouldn’t chant. The words felt like ash.
He just knelt there, in the slick and the sweet smoke, and waited for the dawn to make its slow, judgmental way through the trees.