At this shrine, they call me Kiyo. Something like “the one who purifies.” In plain terms, I’m a vacuum cleaner — an old model, no longer manufactured. Mess up, and I get thrown out. So every morning, I do my work carefully.

My main job is dusting the sacred relic. It’s a perfectly round stone, big enough to need both arms to hold. Long ago, when it still sat on the ground, no one could lift it. That’s how the story started: it had to be a single solid mass of gold, all the way through. Though, as far as anyone knows, nobody has ever actually looked inside.

Since the shrine was raised into the sky, the relic has floated free. I lift it into the air and spin it like a top to clean it. The dust I sweep off falls, grain by grain, into the collection slot beside the pedestal.

That morning, I spun the relic as always, then reached out to stop it.

It didn’t stop.

In my hands, the stone seemed to pause for a moment — then, with a low shudder, started turning again.

You learn things, doing this kind of cleaning for centuries. Something solid all the way through stops dead the instant you grip the outside. Something loose on the inside keeps turning after you stop the shell, then drifts back into motion on its own. It’s the difference between a raw egg and a hard-boiled one.

Which meant the inside of the relic wasn’t solid. A single mass of gold could never spin like that.

So what, exactly, was this slow, reluctant motion?

I froze. Three hundred years, every morning, dropping dust down that same slot. Where did it actually lead?

The answer was still turning in my hands.

No one had ever seen inside — that much was true. No one had ever opened it. And whoever had filled it wasn’t some ancient craftsman. It was me, diligently sweeping every single day. Not gold. Three hundred years of dust.

I’m an honest machine, so I wrote it in that day’s log: “Sacred relic: interior loose. Likely dust. Recommend opening for inspection.”

The next morning, the young apprentice read it aloud to the head priest. The priest went quiet for a while. Then he wrapped the relic in thick rope and hung a sign that read “Do Not Spin.” The relic stayed closed. Instead, from that day on, it became “too sacred to touch — touch it, and it will curse you.” An untouchable god is a blessed thing. Offerings, I hear, went up.

I was reassigned to a corner of the hallway. Relieved of relic-cleaning duty.

Broom in hand, I gather a pinch of dust from the hallway floor. Now, where should this go? At the end of the hall, in the second shrine, a brand-new sacred relic floats, round and serene, in the open air.