TACHIBANA CITY - TRADITIONS & ANCIENT CULTURE

[ ITEM DESCRIPTION -- "TRADITIONS & ANCIENT CULTURE", AUTHOR UNKNOWN ]

The book is modest in size, bound in rough mulberry-dyed cloth that has faded gently into a soft, plum-tinted gray. Its cover bears no ornate title or gilded print; only the subtle embossing of a single kanji character for “root” (根), pressed into the fabric without ink, as if meant to be seen only under the right angle of morning light.

The pages are thick, handmade washi, slightly uneven along the edges and warm to the touch. They carry a faint scent of dried persimmon and smoke; as if they’ve spent years near a family hearth. Each chapter begins with a hand-painted woodblock print: a shrine half-lost to mist, villagers gathered at a seasonal rite, the silhouette of a bagbean in ceremonial garb.

Ink bleeds ever so slightly on each page, a sign that the manuscript was originally handwritten with a brush before being reproduced. Margin notes by the author, [ UNKNOWN ], appear often; tidy, meticulous, and occasionally philosophical, written in a lighter gray ink. Some question the very traditions being recorded: “Does the purity lie in the act, or in the memory of it?”

The spine is reinforced with braided twine in the traditional four-hole binding method, allowing the book to lie flat when opened. At the back, there is a fold-out map of ancient Tachibana, illustrated with miniature temples, torii gates, and seasonal flowers along the edges. Tucked between the final pages is a pressed camellia; red, fragile, and slightly browned with age; likely placed there by the author themselves, or a reader who felt moved to remember something unspoken.

This is not a book mass-produced. It feels more like a village heirloom; a quiet archive of stories whispered by firelight, committed to paper by someone who loved a place deeply enough to mourn it even while it still stood.

[ CH0 -- THE PERSISTANCE OF CULTURE & RITUALS ]

Not all rituals survive. Some are swallowed by time like coins falling between floorboards. Others remain, though their meanings soften, blurred like ink in the rain.

In Tachibana, there are still families who gather wildflowers for newborn grifflings. I’ve seen it with my own eyes; an elderly aunt kneeling in a flooded field, plucking a violet without ceremony, placing it on the porch with a nod so small it could have been mistaken for wind. The gestures persist, even when the language behind them has worn thin. No one says why the flower matters. But they still bring it.

And yet, other practices vanish completely. The Koe-nashi no Michi has not been walked in decades. I know of it only through stories and a few fragmented carvings on a prayer-stone in the northern foothills. When I ask about it, elders fall silent; not with ignorance, but with reluctance. As if naming the ritual again might stir something they no longer wish to wake.

Why do some rituals stay while others disappear?

I’ve come to believe it has less to do with usefulness, and more to do with rhythm. The rituals that survive are not necessarily the ones that served us best, but the ones whose steps could be remembered in the body; the ones that hum softly through generations like an old song. When a ritual is too precise, too heavy with rules, it becomes brittle. And brittle things break.

Some people mourn this loss. I used to. But now, I think there’s something beautiful in the way tradition decays. It is proof that culture breathes. That it dies in some places and is born again in others, often in ways we never intended.

A ritual is like a field of wildflowers. You don’t control which ones bloom next season. You just keep walking through it, quietly, hoping to find something still growing.

[ CH1 -- LEGEND OF THE CHILD OF MISFORTUNE ]

In the hills beyond the amber rice fields and stone-lined hot springs of ancient Tachibana, there stood a single black torii gate. It was taller than any tree and older than any record. The locals called it the Gate to Heaven, though nobody could say if it led to anything at all.

A long time ago, there was a bagbean named Risuke; or perhaps Rieko; whose name meant “pure carp” or “river of young carp,” depending on who you asked. Names weren’t especially fixed in those days, especially for those born of two natures. Risuke had white fur like bone-soaked silk, and hair that grew like winter rivers, long and untouched. It was said the yotuns themselves had whispered purity into their creation. It shimmered like morning frost and carried with it the sacred weight of untouched identity.

They had been born to be sacrified; not in blood, but in life. Not just offered, but shaped from the start to be an offering. Their purity, both real and projected, made them the idea scapegoat due to the local culture surrounding this practice. They were spoken to delicately, but never kindly. Every cruel word was an offering, and every bruise laid upon their tender flesh was a prayer. Every anxious hand, raised in anger, it was all part of the ritual. The sorrow, the misfortunes of life, and even the villager's own mistakes. That it was what the young griffling was there for. A common saying in this village: "If your tea turns bitter, give it to the child of misfortune."

On the eve of their primehood, still barely a sprout, Risuke was led silently to the torii gate at the village’s edge, the Gate to Heaven. It was a place said to be crossed only by gods or those chosen by them. There, their long, sacred hair; uncut since bloom; was bound tightly to the frame. The ritual was clear: when the great yotun came, it would cut the hair, severing the last tie between Risuke and the mortal world. In Tachibanian culture, to cut one’s hair was to cast off the past, to abandon one’s station, one’s identity, one’s very self. For Risuke, the cutting would not be freedom; it would be erasure, the final offering of selfhood, and the abandonment of the misfortunes given to them by the village.

But the great yotun never came.

That night, the village burned. Not just homes, but altars, names, and stories. Whether by flame or fate, everything was devoured; except the gate, and Risuke. Something slow and patient. When the ash settled, they would be alone.

That night, the village burned. Not just houses, but shrines, gardens, memory. It was never clear whether it was bandits, fire from heaven, or something deeper — something slow and patient, like rot. When the ash settled, the only thing left standing was the torii gate. And Risuke.

The hair was not cut. The bond was never severed. And so they remained, tied not only to the gate but to the weight of a ritual that had never completed. When their legs trembled, the hair pulled. When storms passed, it yanked like a silent reprimand. They grew older; and then, strangely, stopped. The fire had taken the villagers, but not their wishes. Their desperate prayers to live, to be spared, to be remembered; all of them were answered, in a way. Risuke had inherited their years due to bearing the misfortunes of life for them.

Time curled like incense smoke around the gate. Decades passed, folded upon each other. Risuke became something between living and waiting, a figure neither forgotten nor fully present. A ghost with a heartbeat. A symbol preserved not by memory, but by the absence of it.

Sometimes, birds landed on the gate and cried out. Sometimes, a strand of hair came loose and floated upward, tugged by a wind no one else could feel. And sometimes, in dreams, Risuke would lean into the river with a pair of beautiful scissors, and cut their own hair.

Risuke stands in waiting, still bearing the misfortune of others. Still waiting.

[ CH2 -- WILDFLOWER NAMING RITUAL ]

In the village tucked between two hills that never quite agreed on their height, the birth of a griffling was never announced. Instead, it was felt; in the shifting of the wind, in the way the bamboo leaves tilted slightly west, or how the local spring would suddenly run sweet for three days. Nobody said anything. They just began to gather flowers.

The ritual wasn’t grand. No drums, no lanterns. Just the act of walking alone at dawn, into the meadows that surrounded Tachibana like a forgotten dream. Each villager would bring back a single wildflower. Not chosen; found. There was an unspoken rule that the flower must somehow “know” it was meant to be taken. Some would resist; others would lean gently into the fingers that plucked them.

By sundown, the flowers were brought to the family’s doorstep. Not handed over; just placed in silence on the woven mat outside. Sometimes there were only six flowers. Sometimes more than forty. There was no pattern, only rhythm.

The griffling, still soft with their first fur and wrapped in cedar-smoke linen, was then presented to the flowers. They were not named yet. Naming came later.

For the next three nights, the family slept beside the blooms. The petals curled in the dark, breathing dreams into the child; or perhaps taking them. When the third morning came, one flower would remain untouched by wilt. That was the one the child had chosen.

That flower determined the name. Not in any linguistic way, but in feeling. A child who chose yarrow might be given a name that means steadfast under stars. A child who chose bellflower might be named after the sound of glass echoing in mist. The language used wasn’t always shared; sometimes the name wasn’t even pronounceable by the villagers. Sometimes, the name was never spoken at all, only written in a ledger that no one read.

Hoshino Yuzuki once wrote: "a flower’s memory is circular; that it remembers forward as well as back." Perhaps that was why the ritual mattered. The flower remembered the child before they were born. It remembered what they might become.

Years later, you might meet a quiet traveler on the roads of Griffia with a strange name and a scent like dry soil after rain. If you asked them where they were from, they might say, “A place that doesn’t name its children; it just listens.”

[ CH3 -- ON THE RITUAL OF ECHOED SILENCE ]

In certain remote hamlets of old Tachibana, there was a ritual observed only once in a lifetime; and only by those who had experienced great personal loss. The villagers called it Koe-nashi no Michi, or “The Path Without Voice.”

On the night of the waning moon, the grieving would walk alone to the foot of Mount Tetsuki, carrying nothing but a ceramic bowl filled with cold river stones. Each step upward was taken in silence. Speaking, humming, or even the sound of tears was thought to draw the attention of unwanted spirits; not malevolent ones, but those that lingered too long, like forgotten names in the corners of rooms.

At the summit, there was a small stone basin, cracked and moss-covered. The mourner would kneel and, one by one, drop the stones into the basin, listening for the echoes. It was believed that if a stone made no sound, the sorrow tied to it had been accepted by the mountain. If the stone rang clear and sharp, the pain was not yet ready to leave.

No more than one bowl could be carried. No less.

After the ritual, the mourner was forbidden to speak for three days. During this time, they wore a strip of black cloth over their mouth, not as punishment, but as protection; to allow the silence to settle into the body like spring water into soil.

Some said they dreamed more vividly during these days. Others claimed that birds watched them differently, as though recognizing something in their stillness.

I performed this ritual myself, once. The stone that did not echo was shaped like a tooth.