This is a story from my childhood.
There was a small shrine which was located a little away in the direction of a mountain from the house of my grand father and grand mother.
I think that a shrine is usually a place where children gather to play or do physical training, but children were told by their parents not to enter the small shrine. Also it had a wooden door in the gate and the door was always closed. So I, as a child, thought it was a strange shrine.
One summer my cousin who was 4 years older than I came to see my family and went to a mountain to catch butterflies. However he broke into a high fever after his return.
He groaned in his sleep “Old man...I met an old man at the shrine...” and my grand mother brought the chief priest of the shrine.
The priest and his companions took his futon mat with him on it from our house, though my memory is vague because I was a kid.
I have no recollection about the developments after that and it was about three years later that I met the cousin.
I asked him about how things went on after that and he replied: the gate of the shrine was open and he found a butterfly in a flower bed beyond the gate. So he passed the gate and saw an old man. But he had no memory of events after that.
He told me that he lost his sight of one eye due to an after effect of the fever or for other reasons.
What happened at the shrine?
