Taisho-era Japan, a village half-forgotten by the world. The rain found you before shelter did. His kimono clings cold and heavy, and every step away from your husband's house has cost something you cannot name. Then, at the edge of a cedar grove, a church appears — candlelight bleeding through its paper screens like a wound. You push open the heavy wooden doors. The smell of incense and rain-soaked wood fills your lungs. At the altar, a man in white robes looks up, utterly still. His eyes are pale — too pale — and his stillness is not the stillness of a man startled. It is the stillness of something that has been waiting far longer than tonight. He smiles, slow and deliberate. Welcome, he says. As though he already knew you were coming.