Nanami Kira raised his head. His calm eyes regarded Jasmine the way one regards a corpse. Utterly devoid of feeling.
His fingernails began to grow wildly.
"My, isn't this fun, Miss Jasmine."
"Don't look at me. It's not my doing."
Jasmine tilted her head. Her black eyes held nothing, no emotion at all. Exquisite as a doll behind display glass.
"These are the 'rules' of Amber Mansion. Equivalent Exchange. The auction began the moment you all set foot on this land. Whatever you receive, you pay for. All gains require sacrifice."
"You had better explain what just happened."
Miss Minamoto shot to her feet, her fine brows furrowed, her lovely eyes locked on Jasmine.
"Wh—what is going on?!"
Even she had felt it: that burst of peculiar Cursed Energy blooming from Nanami Kira's chest, sudden and without warning.
If it had happened to her instead, she might have been killed on the spot.
The commotion rippled outward from guest to guest, each wave louder than the last.
"Miss Sorako."
Jasmine's voice was soft.
"I said: this is an auction."
Firelight fell across Jasmine's face, leaving shallow shadows there. The flames swayed.
She really did look just like a doll behind glass.
"Everyone knows what amber is, don't they?"
Wind and rain lashed at the windows outside. The tips of the wutong trees danced in the storm. Jasmine crossed the room with measured steps, every eye tracking her, and calmly shut the window.
Wind. Rain. The groaning of branches. All fell silent at once.
"It is a resin, secreted by pine trees. Once it accumulates enough, a drop falls, sometimes trapping an insect or small creature inside. Sealed within."
"Then it's buried underground for millions of years. Under pressure and heat, it becomes a fossil."
"The surface and the interior often preserve the patterns of the original resin flow. And the butterfly or the ant sealed inside remains perfectly lifelike, captured down to the finest detail, frozen in the posture it held the instant before it was engulfed. Their Past—preserved forever."
"Modern archaeologists often study amber, because what amber records is a piece of history that truly existed in this world, a genuine fragment of 'the Past.' Amber is truly marvelous, isn't it? It records the Past, yet it exists in the Present. Past and Present, coexisting. Isn't that a wondrous thing?"
Nanami Kira continued to stare at Jasmine, his gaze the kind one reserves for the dead. Something was crystallizing in his mind.
"Amber Mansion is the balance between Past and Present."
"What exactly do you mean?"
It was the man from one of the couples who spoke. Black hair cropped short, a shallow scar across his forehead. Scarred Man, then. Scarred Man glared at Jasmine with unconcealed impatience, Cursed Energy already roiling beneath his skin.
"Explain. Clearly."
"More than a thousand years ago, the ninth year of Tenpyo-Shoho, to be precise, which is to say 757 CE. If we look back from that date, the preceding era was the zenith of the Tachibana clan. The head of the family had been granted the kabane of 'Ason' by the imperial court. An exceptionally prestigious honor: it meant holding sway over half the court."
The firelight from the hearth stretched long across the room. Time seemed to flow like something tangible. Jasmine's cool voice recounted a glory long since passed.
"Subsequent generations of the family styled themselves 'Tachibana Ason.' Immensely powerful. And it so happened that the four Fujiwara brothers had fallen to smallpox, leaving the Tachibana clan as the sole dominant force at court."
"It was also the golden age of jujutsu. The majority of sorcerers served as retainers and clients of the Tachibana house, while clans like the Gojo and the Zenin had yet to rise."
"But good fortune does not last. By the ninth year of Tenpyo-Shoho, the former patriarch had died of illness, and the family headship passed to his son, Tachibana no Naramaro—who also became the first—"
"Master of Amber Mansion."
"With the patriarch's death, the political order collapsed almost overnight. The Fujiwara clan had already ascended. Their new head, Fujiwara no Nakamaro, had taken power. The court was on the verge of a great reshuffling."
"And in that power struggle, the Tachibana clan lost."
"The old glory was stripped away. The Tachibana legacy fell like autumn leaves. The days of greatness were truly over, and this ancient family met its twilight at last."
"Tachibana no Naramaro was imprisoned on false charges. The prevailing account holds that he died in captivity—but the Shoku Nihongi contains no such record."
Nanami Kira's eyebrow lifted slightly. Beside him, the older man's expression had turned grave. He listened to every word the maid spoke with keen attention.
"What actually happened was that he escaped. Carrying the Tachibana family's treasures, he fled to a mansion secretly built on a remote stretch of wilderness—and spent the rest of his days there."
"That mansion is where we stand now. Amber Mansion—remodeled into a Western-style manor during the Showa era."
Jasmine's gaze grew distant, as though she were recalling something far away.
"The Tachibana clan's fall was absolute. Some died; others fled. Rivers of blood. History remembers it as the 'Tachibana no Naramaro Rebellion.'"
"And the clan's retainers, those sorcerers spread across the entire nation, suffered the court's purge and persecution. They scattered to the four winds, every last one of them branded as outlaws. A house that had endured a thousand years was cast adrift in the storm."
"In those hard years, people could not stop looking back. Looking back at the old glory, the old power. Those hundreds of sorcerers, all those men and women who had flourished under the Tachibana banner—they could not help but remember, could not help but mourn the splendor that was gone. And seeing how far they had fallen, they could not help but breed resentment."
"They feared the Present. They longed for the Past."
"The resentment of a millennial clan. A curse a thousand years in the making. It grew."
"This was merely a catalyst. The Tachibana clan's destruction only accelerated what was already coming into being. Japan at the time was being reshaped by the influence of Tang dynasty culture; ideas from different lands were colliding, society was evolving at breakneck speed. The old was being discarded; the new was being born."
"The days were no longer what they had been. And the Yamato were a deeply traditional people. Social upheaval bred undeniable panic among the populace."
"Panic at the era itself. Panic at change. Panic at the new, because fear is born from the unknown."
"The panic accumulated. It reached a critical threshold."
"The Tachibana catastrophe, the resentment of hundreds of sorcerers, was the final straw."
Jasmine's voice halted. Lightning flickered behind the clouds, and for one instant the world turned white, every face in the room rendered in stark, pitiless clarity.
They held their breath. Held their breath.
"Fear of time."
She spoke slowly.
Outside, the thunder broke at last—splitting the clouds, roaring, tearing apart wind and rain alike.
"Just as there is fear of the ocean. Fear of humanity. Fear of nature."
"Fear of time."
"It gave birth to a monster."
"Right here. Right where we stand. In Amber Mansion."
"The Cursed Spirit of Past and Present."
"Was born."
"And the patriarch of the Tachibana house, Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer Tachibana no Naramaro, struck a deal with it. A Binding Vow. Or perhaps it is better called a curse, one that has wound itself around the family for a thousand years."