Volume 1A, Opening

Volume 1A, Opening

Recently, a certain thought came to Asama whenever she left for work.

It occurred to her as she prepared for the spring academy festival, the first school festival since she had entered the second year.

…I wonder if it would be okay for me to join a band and play music up on the stage…

She was the successor to the Asama Shrine and she played gagaku as a part of her work there.

Gagaku was normal.

It was part of what was required of her.

She felt music offered up to her god was divine and incredibly meaningful.

So in the past, she had thought of any other music as removed from the rules set by her god and thus impure.

That showed her awareness that she was the successor to the Asama Shrine.

But the god her friend worshipped was extremely liberal when it came to song, dance, and music. They were both Shinto gods, but that friend had shown her singing and dancing that was unrestrained yet not impure.

She had found it amazing.

Also, her friends from other nations could freely play music with instruments and rules Asama knew nothing about.

And she lived on an aerial city ship known as the Musashi, so she travelled around the different nations of the Far East. Each time she saw the state of another nation’s music or how they sought out music, she was filled with silent surprise.

She may have had her god’s rules, but most of the world existed outside of those rules.

This was not limited to music. She also saw it in art, cooking, clothing, and customs.

But Asama had gagaku, so the conflicting music of other nations and other gods felt strange to her.

But which one of them was truly strange?

Once she and her friends had entered middle school, their heights and body shapes had changed. Differences had appeared in their interests and use of makeup.

She had realized on a few occasions that she could be a little strict.

“I really am strict…or meaninglessly diligent…”

She understood that she could be conservative in order to preserve her proper lifestyle as a shrine maiden.

By maintaining her normal life and her normal self, she could maintain most of what it meant to be a shrine maiden. But…

“Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

She even sighed.

If it had been about clothes, she would have given up because having clothes made cost money. She did not need to borrow money for clothes because her shrine maiden outfit was popular enough already. As for cooking…

…Yes, I would gain weight. Everyone knows the best foods make you gain weight. And art requires specific tools. I guess music is the same in that regard, but…

Everyone listened to music, so it was something other than fashion and hobbies that anyone could talk about.

In middle school, a lot of people had started working part-time afterschool and they quickly gained an environment in which to listen to music.

Asama could make music with her gagaku, but the popular music seemed “strange” to her.

The shrine had plenty of musical instruments. Those instruments were made to interfere with ether, so they were all amazingly extraordinary products that could not be used for normal purposes. She had not realized that until she brought one to middle school and caused a huge commotion.

However, she had never played a pop song. She knew she could, but she had not.

She had protected her gagaku. It was her job and it was important to her god, so she had ignored all else.

But three things had helped change her mind in high school.

First, non-gagaku music was played at the high school festival even though it was officially known as a gagaku festival. The Asama Shrine had to manage the Musashi’s ether, so she had attended the festival.

Second, her familiarity with gagaku from her work at the shrine had given her an excellent understanding of the musical scale and methods of playing string instruments, so she could produce exactly the sounds she wanted.

And third, at the end of her first year, he had told her something while she cleaned up after the year-end music festival.

“Are you ever gonna play in a band like that?”

…What am I supposed to do about this?

What had she said back then?

Had it been: “No, I have my work at the shrine.”

Or had it been: “P-pop songs and gagaku are completely different.”

No, maybe it had been: “I-I couldn’t even if I tried.”

…I feel like it might have been all of them.

She sighed in her heart and had another thought.

…I do want to try it, but there are so many problems there.

For example:

“I would have to find some other band members, but I’m so bad about taking action on my own…”

She wished her class could force her into it or that he would drag her into it like usual, but reality was not that convenient.

So Asama ended up watching her classmates and upperclassmen getting ready while she stayed in her usual spot as the “supervisor”.

This was her usual self and the usual scene.

Nothing was going to change like this, but…

“I don’t really have a choice.”

Her life was never going to change on this aerial city ship.

They would continue to live “like always” as they flew above the provisionally ruled Far East.

…Yeah.

And once more, she arrived at the preparation site.

“Now, then.”

She breathed in and spoke to begin her normal, set-in-stone life.

“Asama Shrine will now perform the ether tuning for Theatre Ship Tanigawa Castle!”