The story
Fiction and adapted settings written by Akitsora Gaming for this title, including invented dialogue and events. This is not a historical or folklore reference. The rules and specification tables define the gameplay and math.
Chochin wa, saigo no hitotsu ga tomoru made matsuri de wa nai.
— It is not a festival until the last lantern is lit. An old saying on the approach
I. One night a year
The shrine at the foot of the hill is quiet for most of the year. Moss on the steps, frost on the coins in the offering box, and visitors who clap twice, say something they never say out loud, and leave.
What keeps the place is not the god but the god's attendants. They take in what people wish for, fold the wishes away one by one, and wait for a particular night.
It is the shortest night of summer. After dark the stone lanterns along the approach light themselves, one after another, all the way down to the torii. When the last one catches, the attendants come down the steps in summer yukata — because tonight they are not collecting wishes. Tonight they are running stalls.
II. The attendants
The maneki-neko takes the top of the approach, one paw raised above her head. She has held that paw up all year; tonight it means there is still room over here. The gold koban at her chest is polished bright, and the bright part is exactly the shape of a palm.
The shiba guards the shrine gate. It is the only thing he does all year, so he has turned it into a grin. On festival night he guards nothing at all — he sits in front of his stall and smiles at everyone who passes, his curled tail sweeping paper scraps off the stones.
The kitsune wears her fox mask pushed up onto her forehead. A messenger of Inari does not need a mask to recognise people; the mask is so that people can recognise her. Masks are what she sells — a whole row of them, and every time one goes she paints another. They are all her own face.
The tanuki holds a sake flask with his straw hat pulled low. He is the only stallholder on the approach who runs a tab, and the only one who cannot keep one. The money he conjures turns back into leaves by morning, but morning is a long way off.
III. The stalls
Everything a festival sells is small. A paper lantern, a goldfish in a scoop, cotton candy, a wind chime, three dango on a skewer — small enough to break, melt, be eaten or be forgotten by the next morning.
People buy them anyway, because what they are buying is not the thing. It is a small piece of evidence that they were here tonight.
One of anything is nothing. 8 or more of the same thing along the same approach is a crowd — and they do not have to be side by side, or at the same stall.
Only the wind chime survives until winter. That is why it is always the first thing to sell out, and why the tanuki forgets to stock more of them every single year.
IV. The lantern girl and the konpeitō
At the far end of the approach stands a fox girl in a dark blue yukata, carrying a lantern bigger than her own face. She calls out to nobody. She simply holds the lantern a little higher so the people walking the last stretch can see the path.
The old story says the god eats konpeitō. That is why the sugar left at the shrine is never there in the morning, and why the fox girl always has a few in her lantern. She tilts it, the sugar spills out, and whoever catches a piece has tonight's luck multiplied by the number written on it.
The sugar does not gather in your pocket. On an ordinary night it counts only for the instant it falls — ×2 to ×20, caught is caught, and anything you miss rolls into a crack between the paving stones and is gone.
V. The uchiwa girl and the fireworks
Under the torii stands the other one, holding a round paper fan. She sells nothing all evening. She waits — for the sky to be dark enough, the crowd thick enough, the laughter loud enough — and then she sweeps the fan upward, and a firework opens.
One firework is for the people. 4 of them open at once and it is not for the people any more — it is for the god. The god looks up, and the festival moves from the approach down to the river and becomes the fireworks night: for the next 15 rounds the sky never goes dark again.
One thing there is unlike any other night: the sky remembers every firework it has opened. The fox girl's sugar no longer counts only as it falls — the numbers stack, ×2 to ×500, one piece on top of the last, until the final blossom fades. 3 more opening before the sky goes dark adds another 5 rounds, and nothing already stacked is given back. The brightest moment of the whole festival is never the first one.
VI. Closing down
Before dawn the lanterns go out one by one, in exactly the reverse of the order they lit — starting at the torii, ending with the one by the shrine gate. The stalls fold away, the yukata are folded with them, and the attendants climb back up the steps to spend another year taking in what people wish for.
One piece of konpeitō is left on the stone stairs, and nobody picks it up. It waits there while the moss grows back and the coins frost over, all the way to the shortest night of the next summer.