I. A Woman More Sacred Than the Emperor

In the Umarl Empire, there is a woman ranked above the emperor himself. She is called the "Kôkun" — a living deity. Legend says she can perceive all things through fragrance, understanding the condition of everything in the world. She lives in the Kôkun Palace, receives the worship of ten thousand, and is the embodiment of the empire's sacred order. No one dares disrespect her; no one dares defy her will, because to do so is to blaspheme the divine.

But she knows one thing: she cannot "hear" anything at all. She is only a breathing idol.

II. How a Myth Is Made

The empire's official narrative goes like this: in ancient times, when the founder-emperor was young, he strayed into the divine realm and rescued a young woman — the "Kôkun" — imprisoned by a demon. The Kôkun returned with the emperor to the human world, bringing the miraculous Ohalre rice. Under her protection, the empire flourished. Ever since, successive "Kôkuns" have been selected by the empire, installed in the Kôkun Palace, and worshipped as living deities.

This myth has a crucial political function: it anchors the empire's legitimacy in a sacred existence that transcends secular power. The emperor's authority can be questioned; the army's violence can be resisted; but a "living deity's" protection cannot be challenged in secular language. You are not opposing a policy — you are blaspheming the divine.

The previous essay analyzed how Ohalre rice controls people's bodies through abundance — your land is transformed, your survival is bound to the system. The Kôkun institution operates at a level above this: it controls the cognitive framework. When people believe a sacred existence is protecting the empire, every imperial arrangement automatically acquires moral legitimacy. Questioning the empire is questioning the divine — and questioning the divine means placing oneself in opposition to all of society.

III. The Hollow Living God

The story reveals a shocking truth: after the first, every successive Kôkun lacked any real olfactory ability. The first Kôkun genuinely possessed extraordinary perception — she could "hear" the chemical language of plants and insects through scent. But every young woman chosen as "Kôkun" after her was the result of political calculation. They were selected not for any special capacity, but for beauty, family background, and the empire's need for a living idol to sustain the myth's persuasive force.

The current Kôkun is named Orie. She is a beautiful young woman, installed in the Kôkun Palace, receiving worship, embodying the empire's sacred order. But she knows she perceives nothing.

What does this mean? It means the identity of "Kôkun" was designed from the start to be a position independent of any specific person. It does not need you to actually possess some capacity — it only needs your body to occupy the position, keeping the myth in motion. Your thoughts, your feelings, your gifts — all are irrelevant. What matters is that you wear the costume and sit in the chair, so the people can see "the living deity still lives."

In the empire's system, the Kôkun is the most exalted existence — worshipped by ten thousand, receiving the highest offerings. But precisely because of this, she is also the person most completely stripped of selfhood in the entire empire. An ordinary tributary farmer can at least decide what to eat today and where to go tomorrow. His life is bound to Ohalre rice, but in the daily interstices he still has some space that is his own. The Kôkun? Her every movement is prescribed; every public appearance is a carefully arranged ritual; she cannot even have a private emotional life — how could someone worshipped as a living deity fall in love with a mere mortal?

The higher the identity, the heavier the shackles. The more that is given, the more that is taken away.

IV. Orie's Dilemma

Orie is not naive. She knows she is a tool. She knows the entire Kôkun myth is humanly constructed. But this clarity has not given her freedom — on the contrary, it has made her situation more painful.

Because she simultaneously knows that the Kôkun's existence is genuinely necessary for the empire's stability. People need to believe that a sacred presence protects them. If the truth about the Kôkun were exposed — that every Kôkun after the first was not a genuine "living deity," that none possessed the capacity to perceive all things — the empire's entire legitimacy narrative would collapse overnight. And in the chaos of collapse, the first to die would always be the most ordinary people.

So Orie chose to cooperate. She plays her role well, maintaining a myth she knows to be a lie. She does this not from attachment to status, but because she is unwilling to let the cost of collapse fall on innocent people.

You clearly know you are maintaining a false system. You also know this system is in some way harming everyone — including yourself. But you simultaneously know that violently dismantling the system without any alternative in place will cause even greater harm.

Uehashi does not write simple good-versus-evil opposition. In her stories, the most difficult choices are not between good and bad, but finding the least-bad path between two forms of imperfection.

V. Mashû: The Awakened Insider

There is another figure worth attention: Mashû. He is an imperial inspector from a powerful political family. His family are beneficiaries and guardians of the imperial system. But Mashû's personal experiences have led him to doubt the existing order. He rescues Aisha and her brother, arranges for Aisha to go to the Reia Farm, and later facilitates her contact with the current Kôkun.

What makes Mashû interesting is this: he is a person of the system, enjoying all the comforts the system provides, while simultaneously doing things within the system that could subvert it. He has not jumped out to cry "overthrow the empire!" because he knows that would be both useless and dangerous. What he chose was to operate in the system's interstices, using his position and resources to create conditions for change.

This role is not unfamiliar in the real world. They are not revolutionaries, nor purely compliant, but people walking a tightrope between the two. Their operational space is extremely limited; every step might be seen as a "dangerous act of defying the authorities." But without their work on the inside, external forces for change find no foothold.

There is also a suppressed feeling between Mashû and Orie — a love between a living deity and a Kôkun emissary, which the empire's rules do not permit. This feeling is itself a silent protest against the system: two people who have had their individuality erased by the system still finding something of their own in genuine human connection.

VI. When Uniqueness Is Abstracted Into Institution

To consolidate its rule, the empire adapted the first Kôkun's true origins into a beautiful myth. But stripped of its external garb, the first Kôkun's story is quite a different one. She did genuinely possess extraordinary perception. But she was not a god descended from heaven — she was an individual drawn into imperial politics because of her special ability. What the empire valued was not her as a person, but what her ability could be used to accomplish. So she was given the identity of "living deity" — a symbol far larger than any individual person.

A representative operating pattern: when a system discovers an individual possesses unique value, it does not respect that uniqueness itself. Instead, it abstracts it into an institutionalizable function and builds a whole apparatus of ritual and narrative around that function. In this process, the specific person — her feelings, her limitations, her suffering — is dissolved into the grand narrative of "institutional need."

Every Kôkun after the first proved one thing: what the empire needed was never the capacity itself, only the story about that capacity. As long as the story held, as long as people still believed, who actually sat in that position was completely irrelevant.

Perhaps this is the coldest dissection of any form of idol worship — what is worshipped is not you as a person, but the position you represent. The moment you leave that position, you are nothing. And as long as the position exists, whoever sits in it is the same.

VII. A Fifteen-Year-Old Variable

Then Aisha appeared. Like the first Kôkun, Aisha was born with extraordinary olfactory perception — she could "hear" the chemical language through which plants and insects communicate through scent. She called this gift "the voice of fragrance."

The imperial system suddenly faced an unexpected variable: a person who genuinely possessed the first Kôkun's abilities. By imperial logic, this should be good news — finally, a "real" Kôkun. But in practice, Aisha's existence was the greatest threat to the entire Kôkun institution.

Because once her genuine abilities were made public, it would mean every Kôkun across all those generations had been false. The fabricated nature of the entire myth would be exposed. The legitimacy narrative the empire had carefully maintained for countless generations would collapse overnight.

Aisha was an impossible paradox for the empire: she was simultaneously the thing the system most needed (a genuine Kôkun) and the thing the system most feared (proof that all previous Kôkuns were false).

What a system most fears is often not its enemies. It is the moment when its own promises are genuinely fulfilled.