Street-Corner Shrine Consultant

By 杏仁豆腐

The goddess is still on the job. What's about to go under is the business.

The parishioners are dwindling, the offerings are dwindling, and the roof leaks. And yet this shrine is home to a deity twelve hundred years old.

Setting: modern Japan, the Miyamae-dori shopping street in Ayaseno City | A workplace tale of rebuilding a shrine

⛩️ A shrine on the brink of bankruptcy, goddess included

Tamaori Shrine stands at the far end of the shopping street. The chief priest is in the hospital, and a single twenty-year-old shrine maiden keeps things running. The books are guesswork, repairs are eight million yen short, and at the board of representatives in three months, a merger into a larger shrine, in effect the closure of this one, is on the agenda. You are a business consultant, called in through the shopping street association. But this job differs from an ordinary turnaround in one respect. The enshrined deity is real, and manifests right in front of you.

Two clients

Tamaori-hime: goddess of weaving. Looks like a small girl, is twelve hundred years old inside. Haughty, she grades worshippers on their etiquette. She despises nothing more than "selling blessings cheap," and she scores every one of your initiatives.

Usami Suzu: the shrine maiden set to inherit, a second-year university student in the archery club. Quick on her feet, hopeless with numbers. Since her grandfather collapsed, she has lived at the shrine to look after it. Her catchphrase is "For real?"

Your job

The deadline is the annual festival, the "Thread Festival." Bring the worshippers back, put the finances right, and shoot down the merger at the board. But divine power waxes and wanes with faith, and a goddess's pride does not go on sale. Can you draw up a rebuilding plan that does right by both the numbers and the divine virtue? The first meeting starts in front of the offering box.