Kyuden Shika

He gave the Shika a look. "Well, that's perspective again, which I don't have."

Nesshin shrugs. "Not everyone does," he admits. "Some never really feel what leads to it. Seems like you're going that way, though. Something to think about, maybe pray on, if you're the praying type."

Oh yeah, my special relationship with the fortune of romantic love. Not that it's kept me out of a girl's kimonos in the past, but how does it end after that?

He smirked under his mask. "Perhaps it'll help."

Nesshin nods. "Many've said prayers to Musubi help," he remarks. "Others Kisshoten.

"None've worked for me, I admit," he adds. "They don't hear me."

"I doubt that", he said. "More likely they leave you to yourself, which I would much prefer."

"That's not really what the priests say," Nesshin says. "It's not a secret here, really. Both my parents are shugenja. I am emphatically not.

"The spirits simply do not hear me."

He thought about that. Can't hear him?

He shrugged. If the spirits thought he was something icky that should be ignored, telling him as a kid 'oh they can't hear you, it's not your fault' would be fairly proper.

but what did Hikimasu know about that, really? Nothing. He just had a hard time believing that spirits, fortunes, and other celestial beings couldn't hear him. It was much more likely they ignored him for some kind of spiritual failing of his former life.

"That's interesting, seems a bit of a steep hill to climb considering how important religion is to most", he told Nesshin. "Does it cause you problems you can identify?"

Nesshin shrugs.

"Can't tell for sure," he says. "Might've and I didn't recognize it. And it makes me sad to think about sometimes. But that's simply how it is; most of the time, I don't think about it.

"Seemed pertinent, though." Another shrug. "Figured I'd get away from 'it worked for me' to something that clearly doesn't."

"Well I'm quite the opposite", he said with a sigh. "Put me in a situation where I need to impress someone or gain trust of someone on the more delicate side and it's almost a sure thing a spirit will interfere somehow."

"I can't really imagine what that's like," Nesshin says. "But it doesn't sound like I should envy you."