Rita sipped her black tea as she chatted with the beautiful cross-dressing shrine maiden before her about the village and its gods. Hieda Fumio didn't know the answers to many of her questions, and there were some things he didn't want to talk about, but Rita didn't press him.
Still, between what she had learned from Hieda Fumio and the information in her memories, Rita had pieced together a general picture.
This village... Several hundred years ago, before outside civilization had reached this place, an unnamed plague swept through it, claiming the lives of many young men and bringing the village to the brink of extinction. It was said to be the work of a plague god, a curse from the god of darkness. No one knew why this god of darkness and plague had cursed the village's men. Perhaps it was because of the deity enshrined at the village shrine?
In any case, from then on, the plague god became a source of terror in the souls of the village's young men. To stop the plague god from claiming their lives and spare the village from losing all its men, the villagers prayed to the deity enshrined at the shrine, begging for the village's lineage to continue.
After that, under the deity's guidance, the boys in the village were raised in girls' clothes and taught girls' manners to help them escape the plague.
The most basic rule of life was that boys couldn't even be allowed to see girls, so the village had carried on the custom into the modern day. Over the centuries, the boys had grown used to wearing girls' clothes and acting like girls. They even felt like girls inside. In particular, after drinking the spiritual spring water bestowed by the village deity, they gained the