The first thing Tsubaki does when she moves to a new town is find all the local shrines. The sacred grounds serve as at least a slight deterrent to some of the nastier things she can see. (No one else can see these things. To them, youkai are just old stories. To her, they are a constant reality.) Tsubaki's moved around a lot since her parents died. She stays with various relatives for six or eight months, until they get tired of her jumping at nothing and talking to thin air. She's a weird girl, an attention seeker, a pathological liar, and the warm feeling of charity will hold up only so long before the weight of her strangeness batters it down. She's... gotten used to it, by now. She doesn't try to make friends, tries to keep to herself, stay quiet, eke out just a little more duration to her current stay.
She's moved to this area quite recently, and so is presently engaged in her customary project. This time is a little more urgent, as the monsters chasing her are angrier than usual, shouting something about a name before chasing after with vicious intent pouring off like a venomous mist. One may forgive Tsubaki, then, for failing to notice the binding rope demarcating the boundary of this small forest shrine until her frantic run causes her to trip over it, sending her tumbling into a fall in front of the shrine and snapping the rope in the process.
