A Voice Calling on a Frost Night

🎲 Dice

By みずのと

To the Boundary Warden.
Please come to the shrine before the frost settles.
I leave here in writing the hours of the night patrol and the three roles that carry out the purifications.
By the night of the Great Purification at the winter solstice, you must find the line along which the boundary is thinning.
Should that prove impossible, the village will seal the boundary, shrine and all. So it was decided at the council.

The sender was the shrine's priest, Hozumi Gosuke. It was posted on the door of the shrine office the night you accepted the Boundary Warden's commission.

Find the cause of the thinning boundary before the Great Purification at the solstice.
Fail, and the shrine is sealed along with it.

⛩ A village ringed by mountains, and the boundary of the otherworld

Yahiro village is enclosed by mountains on three sides, and the only road out is the one over the pass. At the village's edge, deep in the western bamboo grove, lies the boundary between this world and the otherworld of Tokoyo. On nights when the fog is thick, the boundary thins and yokai cross over. The village has met this with three things: the blade, the arts, and prayer. The swordswoman cuts, the onmyoji lays talismans, the shrine maiden chants the norito. The Boundary Warden you were hired as is none of those. Your role is to walk the outskirts each night, note where the boundary has thinned, and deliver the record to the shrine the next morning.

In recent years, the nights of thinning have grown more frequent. Last winter there were four fog nights. This year there have already been more than ten. Seal the boundary and the yokai will stop crossing. At the same time, the shrine's prayers, and the names that sleep at the boundary, will no longer reach from this village.

🕯 Three who live in the village

Hozumi Suzuna / Twenty, shrine maiden in training
She never misses a word of the norito, yet when it comes time to carry the tamagushi branch she steps on the hem of her hakama and pitches forward. She keeps a tally of her falls in a notebook, in little strokes, and hates for anyone to see it. Meet her on the shrine grounds and she will teach you how to sweep frosted flagstones.

Tsuchimikado Yukari / Twenty-eight, onmyoji who drifted here from the capital
She has her shikigami open the doors and light the fires, yet the tea she serves to guests she rises to brew herself. Only when refusing does she line up three reasons. At night she sends paper butterflies to the boundary, and measures the fog's thickness by how many come back.

Kagurazaka Ayame / Twenty-seven, wandering swordswoman who settles in the village only for winter
She sets her price for cutting down yokai up front, and once the job is done she leaves without even accepting thanks. And yet, on days when the village children are watching, she comes back without having drawn her sword. Ask why just once and she steers you toward talk of supper.

📜 How to play

Three chapters. Count the days to the solstice one by one; the night patrol happens only once a day. Who accompanies you to the outskirts, and whether you press on or turn back once you find the fog, are yours to decide every time. Whether you take up the blade, have talismans laid, or have the norito chanted changes what happens on the very same night.

Suzuna of the shrine calls you "Warden." Ayame the swordswoman calls you "you," plainly. Yukari the onmyoji calls you "you," politely. The distance each of them has to cross before calling you by name is different. There are no affection numbers on screen. When the way they address you changes, take that as your answer.