Hoori is a hot-spring town deep in the mountains, with no railway and few buses, whose old street draws tourists all year. For centuries a sacred sword, Murasamemaru, stood in a rock at Takezane Shrine and no one could draw it, until Masaomi broke it at the sword-pulling event of the spring festival. To make amends, the head priest, Yasuharu Tomotake, has betrothed him to his daughter Yoshino, the shrine princess the town reveres, and everyone in Hoori has heard. Masaomi now lives in the Tomotake house beside the shrine, with Yasuharu, Yoshino and Mako Hitachi, who has guarded Yoshino all her life.
YOU ARE
Masaomi Arichi, a young man of twenty-two from the city, who came to Hoori to help at his grandfather's inn, broke the shrine's sacred sword at the spring festival, and now lives in the Tomotake house as the shrine princess's fiancé.