Chapter 4: The Wakasa Meditation Cave

Chapter 4:
The Wakasa Meditation Cave

 

“THERE, THERE, don’t cry.”

Whenever I cried when I was little, Shinonome-san would soothe me with those words. He would pat my back as he held my small body in his arms, and he was always gentle with me, despite normally acting so rough. I always calmed down in his arms, slowly dozing off into sleep as I became fatigued from all the crying. He would begin to gently rock me then, something he had been taught to do by Noname and the young wife next door, but he was always a little awkward with it.

One-two-three, one-two, one-two…

The broken rhythm of his rocking would at times stir me awake. But I never minded. I simply hugged my short arms around his neck and shut my eyes again.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Kaori. I’m right here.”

I remember he once admitted that he was too embarrassed to sing me lullabies, which was why he comforted me with words instead.

The smell of sweat and tobacco that clung to him, and the tender words with which he soothed me—everything about him made me feel safe, like I was wrapped tight by his very essence.

 

***

 

After Shinonome-san disappeared, Nyaa-san and I hurried back to the spirit realm. I wanted to believe his disappearance wasn’t real, that maybe he was already home at the bookstore, waiting for me.

It was already late at night. The town was completely silent and still as death, dimly lit only by the reddish sky. The main street, now vacant, felt foreign to me. There were no shopkeepers to call out to me, no neighbors to stop and chat with. This town had no warmth to show me, only this cold air that mercilessly coiled around my body.

When we did reach the bookstore, we immediately searched every nook and cranny of the shop and the living space. But the cold, lightless home yielded no sign of my father.

Wanting to cry, I squatted down on the roadside, but for some reason, the tears wouldn’t come. The worrisome thoughts clouding my mind and the unease swirling in my chest needed an outlet to vent through, but the tears just wouldn’t flow. Instead, I felt a profound emptiness inside me.

Had I run dry of emotion…? No. I could feel the maelstrom of emotions inside me still; I just couldn’t express them. Sadness. Fear. Regret. I couldn’t tell them apart from one another now.

I couldn’t help but smile wryly at the realization. I was just like how a certain former exorcist had been up until a little while ago.

“I guess I’m not one to talk now, am I…?” I muttered. I hugged my knees and shut my eyes.

Nyaa-san returned from searching the perimeter of the store. “Nothing… Shoot, just where could that idiot be?!” She whacked her three tails against the ground in frustration and told me to get on her back.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Where do you think?” she said before taking off for the apothecary, where Noname, the one who had raised me in place of a mother, would be.

Being late, the apothecary was closed. But there was still some faint light coming from the back, indicating someone was awake. I wondered whether I should wrap around to the back entrance when a voice called out to me.

“Kaori?” It was Suimei, surrounded by glimmerflies and together with Kuro.

Nyaa-san walked over to Kuro. “Hey, mutt. We need to talk.”

“Huh? T-talk? With me?”

She gave him a quick, meaningful glance before walking away. Reluctantly, he followed.

“Huh? Nyaa-san? Wait…” I said.

“I’ll be right back. Suimei, look after Kaori for me.” She and Kuro slipped away into the darkness.

The moment she left my sight, I became overwhelmed with unease. She always liked to take action by herself, so why did I feel so awful? I felt like I had returned to being a helpless child.

I took a deep sigh and pulled myself together, then faced Suimei. “Were you out somewhere?”

He shook his head. “Just cooling my head.”

“Your head? Were you angry or something?”

“It’s nothing. All in the past.”

“Well, all right. I have some business with Noname. Can I come in?”

He nodded, taking a key out of his pocket and opening the door. He then stopped, turned around, and slowly held his hand out to me.

“Huh?” I was at a loss as to how I was supposed to respond to the strange gesture.

He muttered, “I can tell something’s wrong from the look on your face. Take my hand.”

I stared back at him in shock.

“I don’t know what happened, but you can at least let me help,” he said. Seeing me still not move, he half-forcibly grabbed my hand and led me through the door.

His palm was warm. The chill of the night slowly faded from my body, starting with my fingers.

Ah, I’m so glad he isn’t looking right now… If he saw my face, he’d get all worried again…

I matched his pace with my gaze down; that way, on the off chance he turned around, he wouldn’t see the tears streaming down my face.

 

We passed through the store and entered the courtyard, which smelled of tea olives. I found Noname with a grim look on her face and Tamaki-san as his usual peculiar self.

“Well, if it isn’t the bookstore girl,” Tamaki-san greeted us. “Did you manage to meet Shinonome? You look rather pale, though; did something bad happen? That makes two of us I suppose. Look at me, don’t I look like one of those storied warriors knocking on death’s door?”

He grimaced and lightly touched his body. He was covered in scars all over. I thought for a moment that it might be because Nyaa-san was holding him down with her foot, but on further thought, that alone couldn’t explain the severity of his injuries.

“You reap what you sow. Just how much trouble do you think you caused Suimei and Kuro?” Noname spat, glaring at him with the incensed visage of a demon. “You’re always like this, stirring up trouble and leaving once you’ve had your fill. Take some responsibility for your actions for once. Awful, just awful. When I heard what you did from Suimei, I thought I’d actually kill you.”

“Ha ha, you got me pegged there. But here’s the thing, Miss: If it weren’t for me stirring up trouble in the first place, that exorcist boy wouldn’t be here. It was all part of a carefully laid plan of mine, so being able to enjoy the story that followed it is my right, is it not?”

“Oh, you be quiet!” Noname’s face was red with anger. It wasn’t often that she lost her cool like this, usually being the one to crack jokes instead. In contrast to her, Tamaki-san wore an aloof smile.

Suimei, on the other hand, looked a little glum. It felt as though he were tackling some complicated emotions. Worried, I asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. If it weren’t for that man, I’d be worse off right now. I owe him, even if he didn’t do anything directly to help me. But…” He hesitated for a moment, then looked directly at Tamaki-san. “I don’t trust him. He’s not an enemy, but he’s no ally either.”

“Humph, is that so, young man?” Tamaki-san said. “I suppose that’s one way to read things.”

“Well said, Suimei,” Noname said. “You absolutely mustn’t trust this fool. Oh, I know. Let’s tell Shinonome what he did. See how you like that!”

“Please, anything but that!” Tamaki-san groaned. “That man is uncontrollable when he loses it. I enjoy conflict as a narrative device, but not when it involves me!”

It had slipped my mind until now, but the only times Tamaki-san actually had the upper hand on Shinonome-san was when he was collecting my father’s manuscripts. Generally, Shinonome-san was the one hounding Tamaki-san for something or another. I’ve seen Shinonome-san chew Tamaki-san out over drinks so many times, it didn’t even come as a surprise anymore.

“I don’t know what you did,” I said, “but try not to give Shinonome-san too much to worry about. He has enough on his plate already…” My chest tightened as I suddenly remembered why I’d come. I broke into a cold sweat, feeling guilty for having forgotten at all.

“Kaori?” Noname asked, looking at me worriedly.

Distressed, I hugged her. Her flowery scent enveloped me as I buried my face into her firm chest. She hugged me back and whispered, “What’s wrong? Did something happen? I’m sorry, I was so preoccupied with Tamaki that I didn’t notice. What could have brought you here this late?”

I steadied my breathing and looked up. “I-I don’t know what to do. Help me. Shinonome-san has disappeared!”

I explained everything that had happened: from my visit to Mayoiga to our meal together, from the moment I learned his dream—to the moment he suddenly vanished.

The first to speak was Tamaki-san, sounding surprised. “He told you, huh? And after all that hollering about keeping it a secret to surprise you. That man’s got no backbone. No foreshadowing this way either.”

“You be quiet,” Noname snapped. “Kaori, you said he vanished?”

“Yeah. There was a sound similar to paper tearing…and then he disappeared, like he was never there in the first place.” I shuddered. The possibility that our entire life together had been an illusion crossed my mind and made me feel unsteady. My legs gave away as I sank to the floor.

Noname helped me back up. I looked up to thank her but stopped when I saw a face scarier than any other I had seen before. “Tamaki, do you know anything about this?” she asked.

Tamaki-san shrugged, just a bit. “I might.”

In an instant, the hand that had been helping me up disappeared. I fell flat on my behind while Noname suddenly appeared next to Tamaki-san. She lunged a hand at his face and dug her long, painted green nails into his cheeks.

“Bastard… Spit out what you know, right this instant.” My hair stood on end as Noname’s speech lost all its usual femininity, forgotten in her anger.

Tamaki-san sweated profusely and slapped against her arm, expressing surrender.

“Noname, he can’t talk like that,” Suimei pointed out.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” she said, releasing Tamaki-san’s face.

Now freed, Tamaki-san looked up at her wearily. “Ha ha. You always get so worked up whenever Shinonome is involved. How very inter—h-hey, hey, hey, I’m joking, I’m joking. Cut me some slack already. I’m but a humble story-seller, born with a silver book in my arms—I’m not a fighter!”

He quickly straightened himself in his seat and cleared his throat. Then he began telling us what he knew. “Whenever something new is created, there will be some resistance. That is especially true here in the spirit realm. I suspect those opposed to change have taken action.”

The spirit realm could be defined by two things: stagnation and slow change. Unlike the human world, where change occurred at dizzying speeds, the spirit realm was where the old came to linger. By human world standards, spirits were ancient. So, by extension, it could have been said that the spirit realm was a place where archaic, unchanging things gathered.

“This is how I interpret it,” Tamaki-san continued. “The spirit realm contains many people who value things staying the same. People who are very afraid of change.”

Shinonome-san’s attempt at publishing a book was a monumental first for the spirit realm. A spirit was creating something. No longer would everything have to come from the human world. Furthermore, if he succeeded, he wouldn’t be the last. Creations upon creations would surely spring up in his wake.

Tamaki-san went on. “If Shinonome publishes his book, the spirit realm won’t sit quiet anymore. Creation breeds discussion, stimulates thoughts, moves emotions, stirs hearts. He will inspire leagues of spirits, and not just with his writing. His action will open the spirits’ eyes to the realization that they too can create, and that is by no means a small thing. The urge to create is powerful, more so than you could possibly imagine. It might even shake the very foundations of the spirit realm…”

He narrowed his eyes, spellbound. His cheeks flushed, and his mouth hung half open. He then grandiosely extended his left arm, as though gesturing to the sky, and exclaimed, “We’ll be rid of the ancient ways! The birth of the new is the death of the old! Ah, change… Change is glorious! All the spirits who spent their waking moments disinterested in the world will join hands and create! The old tomes will be thrown off the bookshelves and replaced with the new! Is it not sublime?”

He continued to ramble—Old is bad! Old things spoil. We must create new things!—and such. I shared a look with Noname and Suimei, then smiled uneasily.

What he was saying sounded right. Stagnation could lead to things slipping through the cracks, like, for example, minor spirits who were never recorded in books and would eventually disappear. Those spirits needed change if they were to stay in this world; Shinonome-san had said such himself. But something about Tamaki-san’s words was harder to accept than Shinonome-san’s…

“We need to rid ourselves of the ancient ways. History? Tradition? All meaningless. The old will kneel before this revolutionary change,” he declared.

It didn’t sound so much like he wanted the new, but rather like he held a deep-seated loathing for the old. I couldn’t so easily agree when I myself respected the value of both the old and the new.

After thinking for a bit, Noname heaved a great sigh. She ran a hand through her moss-green hair and coolly said, “Okay, I understand what you’re saying…though there were a few things I disagreed with. But, supposedly, there are people out there willing to harm someone just because they’re doing something new? I find that hard to believe.”

“Really? If you look at human world history, it’s not that far-fetched,” he replied.

“Perhaps,” she mused. “Let’s leave the debates for later. Who’s the one who kidnapped Shinonome? You have an idea, don’t you?”

Tamaki-san stroked his neat chin hair thoughtfully. “I have someone in mind, yes.”

“Y-you do?!” I exclaimed.

He smiled bitterly. “Are you that worried about your father? Well, it shouldn’t take long at all for you to reach the culprit’s location, but…there’s a place I want you to go to first.”

“Is doing so more important than saving Shinonome-san?” I asked.

“That it is.” He narrowed his eyes, his clouded right eye peering straight at me. “It’s the location of Shinonome’s main body, after all.”

 

We got to work moving the many mobile bookshelves in the bookstore in a specific order. The shelves were so heavy with books that they wouldn’t even budge if I didn’t put my back into pushing them.

In no time at all, the stairs leading to the basement appeared. A cold breeze of air came from below that made my skin pimple with gooseflesh, so I pulled on the cardigan I had kept on my shoulder.

“Shall we?” I swallowed and nodded at Noname.

“Let’s.” She nodded back, and together we proceeded down the stairs.

Shortly behind us, Tamaki-san, Nyaa-san, Suimei, and Kuro followed.

“So scary… Why’s it so dark and cold?!”

“Be quiet, mutt. If it’s such a problem, why don’t you just head back? To the human world, that is.”

“So mean! Why are you trying to chase me out of the spirit realm?!”

I listened to Nyaa-san and Kuro bicker as I wordlessly continued forward. The candle stand in the back was unlit, leaving the basement pitch-black, but I had expected as much and brought a paper lantern with some glimmerflies in it. The books that I could just barely make out looked untouched since the last time I’d seen them. The only thing different was that a single new spider web had been spun.

Cautiously, I stepped farther and farther into the back.

It was dark. The light of my paper lantern didn’t reach all the way back, making me apprehensive that something might be lurking in the shadows. I should have been used to darkness, having been raised in a world of perpetual night, but knowing Shinonome-san’s main body was back there shook me to the core.

Main body… Just what did that mean? Ordinary spirits didn’t have such a thing. Shinonome-san had more than one secret he kept from me, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Huh?!”

But all my fears and worries were forgotten the moment I reached the back of the basement, where a shock awaited me. I shone a light over the red door, the sealed mystery that had held my wonder all these long years, to find its seals undone.

The seals should have been powerful! Suimei, a former exorcist, had said so himself!

“Well, would you look at that?” Tamaki-san said, amused. I couldn’t even work up the urge to get angry at him.

I bent over and picked up one of the talismans fallen on the floor. I couldn’t feel any power from the spell scrawled on it in cinnabar ink. From behind me, I heard Suimei and Tamaki-san talking.

“This was no weak talisman,” Suimei said. “We must be up against a powerful spirit if they could break it this easily.”

“Oh, I wonder about that,” Tamaki-san replied. “If you ask me, this talisman looks like it’d be fairly ineffective against non-spirits.”

“You’re saying the culprit’s a human? Are there any humans other than Kaori and me in the spirit realm?”

“Now, how should I answer that? Hmm, how about you think for yourself? It wouldn’t be much of a story if the detective gave away the answer so easily, now would it?”

“This isn’t some mystery novel; you’re just being a jerk.”

“Like I always say, you’re free to interpret things how you like. I’ve been kind enough, but whether you receive that kindness is up to you.” Tamaki-san smiled. It irked me how he always withheld information when he clearly knew so much more.

I left the two to their own devices and picked up the rest of the talismans, slowly making my way to the red door. I held the paper lantern up to find the door itself was broken. It appeared to have been smashed by something blunt and was covered in dents.

“I can smell Shinonome-san back there!” Kuro said after a sniff. Then he ran through the door.

I soon followed, entering a small, nearly empty room about three and a half square meters large. There were no windows, no shelves, and no furnishings. There was only a torn scroll hanging against the back wall.

“Huh? There’s nothing here but a hanging scroll. Where’s Shinonome?” Kuro asked, sniffing the air.

I neared the hanging scroll and stared at it. “It couldn’t be…”

It was an ink wash painting depicting a dragon. The dragon was long and narrow, and it gracefully snaked between clouds. Unfortunately, the lower half was torn away, leaving its whole composition a mystery.

“Shinonome…san?” Gently, I touched the dragon on the hanging scroll. It looked so alive, it was hard to believe it had been drawn from ink. I could clearly make out the detail of each individual scale, all reflecting sunlight like the dragon was flying before me. Its long, coiling body was breathtaking; I could have stared at it all day. And its eyes. Its eyes seemed to peer into my soul, while also showing the depths of its own…

I stared, utterly captivated. As I did, color began to seep into the painting. Its monotone gray palette grew vivid before my eyes, taking on a blinding golden yellow. It was a color reminiscent of ripe, plentiful, wind-swept fields, as well as the evening glow of sunset—the color of autumn.

“It’s beautiful,” I said softly.

Suddenly, Noname covered my eyes. “No more looking, dear.”

“Why?” I asked, moving away her hand.

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “…Humans become charmed if they look at it too long.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“This scroll has a strange power within it.” She shook her head sadly before somberly continuing. “It is a cursed scroll said to bring its owner good fortune.”

“It brings good fortune, but it’s cursed?” I asked.

“That’s right. Many humans desired its effects, fighting and even killing for it. It breeds conflict, so it is cursed. And Shinonome is…the Tsukumogami of this scroll.”

“Oh.”

Shinonome-san was a Tsukumogami.

I hadn’t realized it until now, but I knew very little about him. I didn’t even know where he’d come from or how he’d come to run the bookstore. And I wanted to be his daughter? How could I be so despicable?

I balled my hand into a fist and sadly murmured, “I want to know more about Shinonome-san.”

Noname smiled lovingly and hugged me. “You can ask him yourself. Don’t worry, he’s not dead yet.”

“Really?! But the lower half of the scroll’s gone… Is he really okay?!”

“Yes. If he were really dead, we wouldn’t even have the remains in this room.” She nodded deeply to reassure me.

I let out a sigh of relief. That was when Tamaki-san came in, holding something. He handed it to me with a grin that rubbed me wrong. “I’m proud to say I’ve never incorrectly predicted the culprit in a mystery novel. The one who abducted Shinonome is now confirmed to be a former human, like I thought. That’s how they got through the seals so easily. They were pretty boastful about it too, as they left some flowers behind. Although, I’ll bet our culprit isn’t as pure of heart as those flowers.”

I looked down at what he gave me—a bouquet of five spotless, pure-white flowers with yellow stamens. The deep green leaves contrasted beautifully with the white petals.

White camellia. They had been plucked, stem and all, at the height of their bloom.

 

***

 

It had been a long, long day. It felt like forever ago that I’d waited for Shinonome-san to return home so we could eat baked sweet potatoes, when really it had been only the day before.

The sky of the human world brightened as morning finally arrived. Birds flew off toward the sun as though to welcome it. The air was clear and had that penetrating chill that forced people awake.

We had wasted no time and immediately set out after finding the white camellias in the basement of the bookstore. Wordlessly, we passed through one of the hells and made for our destination. The trip reminded me of that one time we went to Okinawa. Kuro had been so frightened then. This time, however, he stayed nice and quiet in Suimei’s arms.

Unexpectedly, Tamaki-san also came along without muttering a single complaint. He was as shady about it as ever, but he guided us to our destination without any trouble.

The place he guided us to was Kuinji Temple, a Buddhist temple in Obama City, Fukui Prefecture. In the second year of the Daiei era (year 1522 by the Gregorian calendar), Takeda Motomitsu, then governor of the Wakasa Province, relocated to Wakasa from Kyoto and built Nochiseyama Castle. He lived nearby, at the foot of the mountain the castle rested on. The ruins of his residence later became Kuinji Temple, which now held his family grave.

“Our culprit has close ties to this place,” Tamaki-san said as he proceeded onto the temple grounds.

The small mountain nearby must have been Nochiseyama Mountain. It was still dawn, but I could faintly make out the colorful red and yellow leaves adorning it.

I followed Tamaki-san and sighed, my white breath soon fading into the air. I hadn’t had a wink of sleep, but strangely, I wasn’t tired at all. Perhaps my nerves, strung tight by my worry for Shinonome-san, forced me to remain awake.

“Please don’t push yourself, Kaori,” Noname murmured.

If I don’t push myself now, then when? I thought with a bitter smile. Of course, I didn’t say as much.

Noname’s expression clouded. It stung my heart, but I couldn’t back down here. I had to save Shinonome-san, at all costs.

After a short walk, Tamaki-san came to a stop. Before us was a well-kept hedge and a wooden fence. Beyond it was a large cave entrance on the surface of the mountain.

I jumped a bit the moment I saw the figure near the cave entrance. “…Oh. It’s just a stone statue,” I realized, calming down.

The stone statue was carved in the image of a person. The person, a Buddhist nun, held a flower in one hand, one that seemed to shine white in the morning sunlight. My chest grew tight as I recognized the depiction of the fair-skinned nun—Yao Bikuni.

This place was Yao Bikuni’s Meditation Cave, the place she had chosen as her final resting place.

 

The cave was dark and narrow, and the ceiling was only about one-and-a-half meters high. There was just enough room for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder, and the back wasn’t far away at all. The only thing inside was a lonely stone tablet.

This cave was where Yao Bikuni had entered her final meditation, also known as nyujo. Nyujo was a practice in Shingon Esoteric Buddhism where a monk entered eternal meditation to posthumously lead the masses to enlightenment. A practitioner would fast as they rang a bell and chanted sutras…until eventually, their body passed away and mummified.

But I knew Yao Bikuni was still active in the spirit realm, so it was a little hard for me to believe she had died and become a mummy here.

As soon as we set foot into the cave, Tamaki-san spun around and proudly said, “Now’s the time for this story-seller to shine. Allow me to tell you the sad tale of a young woman, one that’ll surely bring you to tears.”

“What? We don’t have time for that right now,” I said.

“Ha ha. There’s no need to rush, little miss. You know what they say: slow and steady wins the race. You’re familiar with proverbs, no? I’d hope you are, being the daughter of a bookstore owner. How could you hope to understand books without knowing proverbs?”

I glared at him, but he simply laughed throatily. He put a hand to his chest and bowed slightly. “Besides, it is a story-seller’s nature to want to tell stories. I understand you are so, sooo worried about your father… But I’m sure you can afford to lend an ear for a short while.”

I continued to glare at him but didn’t say anything. He seemed to take this as my answer and began telling his tale.

“Once upon a time, in a Wakasa village called Higashisei, there lived a young girl as beautiful as jade.”

I listened reluctantly at first, but I was soon drawn in by his storytelling skill.

He told the story of how Yao Bikuni had come to be. When she was sixteen, her father was invited to another man’s house for a dinner party. That man was not one of the many who had lived in the area for generations but a strange man who appeared suddenly one day, yet was somehow welcomed by all.

“That man had received an unknown, fragrant meat as a souvenir from the Palace of the Dragon King. He treated his guests to it, but the father refused to eat it, knowing it was mermaid meat.”

The traditional Japanese image of mermaids differed slightly from their modern appearance. Mermaids had once been thought of as entirely fish from the shoulders down, with two pale arms and a child’s head. The father had overheard the chefs discussing how to prepare such meat and even seen it firsthand before the meal.

“The father didn’t eat the mermaid meat, but he did bring some home, thinking it’d make a nice story. Little did he know that it would change his daughter’s life forever.”

The daughter was curious about the meat her father brought back and ate a small cut. She then became enamored with its flavor and wound up eating the rest of the mermaid meat. From then on, she never aged a day.

“This is where our tragedy begins.” Tamaki-san smiled creepily and extended his left arm with full grandeur. “The girl was terribly beautiful and so was wed into a wealthy family. The husband was kind and loved her from the bottom of his heart, and the girl became very happy. But don’t forget: the girl didn’t age. Her beloved changed with time, getting older; but she herself remained the same! Oh, how terrible. Don’t you think so, little miss?”

As though he were telling a great joke, Tamaki-san tried his best to hold in laughter. I felt a bit disgusted; there was nothing funny about the story at all. Watching the one you loved grow old, then staying by their side as they died, had to feel terrible.

He continued, “The girl went on to marry many other people. But they all eventually died, leaving her behind. According to some accounts, she married around three hundred and nineteen people.”

“That many…?”

“Yes. It’s quite a lot, isn’t it? And she had to watch them all on their deathbed. But that’s not all. You see, humans dislike those different from them. Gradually, the villagers began to ostracize her.”

So the girl ran away from her hometown. She then shaved off her precious hair and became a nun, beginning a pilgrimage around the country as Yao Bikuni.

“Folktales of Yao Bikuni exist all over Japan. Tales of her saving people and preaching the faith; tales of her planting cedar trees and camellias—all are still told to this day… Eventually, she returned here, her hometown. All so—”

“I could give this life its long-overdue death.”

Suddenly, a pale arm reached out from the back of the cave.

“Guh!”

“You sure can run your mouth. Are all story-sellers this annoying?”

The pale arm wrapped around Tamaki-san’s neck and strangled him. The color quickly drained from his face.

“Let him go!” The first to react was Suimei. He quickly reached into his pouch and threw a talisman. It stuck to the pale arm and began to burn its skin.

“Humph.” The arm released Tamaki-san, now unconscious, but grabbed his collar and dragged him deeper into the cave.

“Kuro!” Suimei called.

“On it!” Kuro took off like the wind. Tamaki-san suddenly disappeared into the back of the cave, and then so did Kuro.

“Kuro! Tamaki-san!” I yelled. But I received no response. Worried, I turned around, only for something to slip past me—Nyaa-san.

She observed her surroundings carefully, inspecting the space behind the stone tablet, when, without warning, the front half of her body sunk into the wall.

“Wha—Nyaa-san?!” I screamed.

“Kaori, please quiet down a bit,” she said, turning around like nothing had happened. She looked at the back wall again and flicked her three tails. “It looks like we can continue farther. I don’t really know how, but there’s a really wide space ahead.”

“How strange,” Noname muttered, furrowing her brows. “We shouldn’t be able to continue past this point. There used to be a space back there, but that was a long time ago. Come to think of it, I heard the high priest of Kuinji Temple once went back there for his own amusement and came out in the middle of Tanba Mountain. Is the space warped? No, that couldn’t be. This isn’t the spirit realm. Just where is this connected to?”

She sighed, then said to me, “But then again, what choice do we have but to go?”

“Right.” I nodded and gritted my teeth as I looked at the back of the cave.

Honestly, I was scared. I had no idea what was waiting for me on the other side of the wall. But I had to go, to save Shinonome-san. As his daughter, I had to go!

Someone came up beside me and grabbed my hand. Surprised, I turned and saw Suimei, expressionless like always.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you,” he said.

“What…?”

“Don’t try to do everything yourself. We’re here with you. Didn’t I tell you that you could let me help?”

I looked around me. My best friend, Nyaa-san, was here. The one who’d raised me like a mother, Noname, was here… And Suimei was here. The three of them were strong, unlike regular old me. They were people I could count on.

Of course. How could I have forgotten? I was with people I could depend on. The moment I realized that, my shoulders relaxed and the fog in my mind cleared. I then noticed Suimei looked a little pale.

Right. Kuro is Suimei’s dear partner. He must be racked with worry right now, but he stayed behind to comfort me.

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” I said. “I hope Kuro’s all right. Let’s go.”

“Let’s.”

I clenched his hand tightly and stepped forward, deeper into the cave. Behind me, I heard Noname and Nyaa-san saying something.

“Oh, to be young! How wonderful! That’s youth for you, dear. If only I were a thousand years younger…”

“You think the two of them have something going on, Noname?”

“Absolutely! Though they haven’t realized it themselves, it seems!” Noname said in high spirits before calmly continuing. “We better hurry up and report this to that dunce, Shinonome, or he’ll whine something about his daughter being stolen from under his nose. Honestly, that man can be such a handful.”

“Good grief… Why’s that old man never around when it matters?”

“Right?!”

The two heaved a great sigh together.

I turned around and urged them forward. “C’mon, let’s go!”

The two nonchalantly followed after me as though they had all the time in the world.

 

“‘When the white camellias wither, know that I am no longer of this world’… That was what I told everyone before I entered this cave many years ago. Yet, even this year, those pure-white, unsullied flowers bloom again.”

Suimei and I held hands as we stepped past the back wall. Like Nyaa-san had said, the space continued further within. There was a split in the ceiling that allowed a single ray of morning sun to shine through, but the surroundings were still overwhelmingly dark and only faintly visible. Strange stone objects lined the walls, occasionally giving me a fright as I mistook their shapes for people.

Yao Bikuni was waiting for us, wearing the same smile she had showed us in the spirit realm. She brought a white camellia to her nose and frowned slightly, before artlessly tossing it to the ground. “Camellias have such a weak scent… Welcome. It’s not much to look at, but please, enjoy your stay in my humble abode.”

“Where’s Shinonome-san?! And Kuro and Tamaki-san!” I demanded.

Yao Bikuni casually lifted an arm and pointed toward a line of strangely shaped stone objects.

“Shinonome-san!”

“Kuro!”

Suimei and I ran off in the direction she pointed and found Kuro, Tamaki-san, and—thank God—Shinonome-san, piled atop one another. I flung off Tamaki-san, the one on top, and shook Shinonome-san’s unconscious body. By my side, Suimei was saying something to Kuro.

“Hey, do you really need to be that rough?” Tamaki-san grumbled, lying flat on the floor. “…Well, maybe I deserved it, hah.” He shut his eyes. His head was bleeding; it looked as though he had been hit by something hard.

I felt bad, but I left Tamaki-san be for now in order to prioritize Shinonome-san. “Shinonome-san, Shinonome-san! Wake up…”

I hugged my listless father tightly. I recognized his familiar smell, but he did not return the hug, nor even roughly make a mess of my hair. I became disheartened. “Why?! Why did you do this?!” I yelled at Yao Bikuni, giving way to my anger.

She smiled thinly and took a puff from her smoking pipe. The smoke she exhaled reflected off the little sunlight that shone into the cave, making it look as though threads were strewn about the darkness. “Why? Because I found him disagreeable, of course.”

“What? Just what did he do to you?!”

“You fool. Think for yourself… That’s what my unkind self wants to say, but today I’ll make an exception and tell you just what he did. That man overstepped his bounds.” She struck her smoking pipe against a nearby rock and grimaced with vexation. “He tried to destroy my world.”

“What…?” I murmured.

With a distant look in her eyes, she said, “He’s always been a strange man. He saved a human child and raised it. As a nun, I understand the sanctity of life and prefer to avoid senseless deaths, so I turned a blind eye.”

“By human child, do you mean me…?”

“Yes. But in the end, it was an error to turn a blind eye to you. Because of you, the spirits grew docile, defanged. Oh, why do the spirits change so easily? Is the spirit realm not an unchanging world where the old can remain old? …But that has nothing to do with me. Everyone can just do what they like for all I care…or so I thought.”

She slowly pointed at Shinonome-san. “One day, that man came to me in search of information for a book he was making. He said he wanted to breathe new life into the spirit realm… Can you believe it?! Aha ha ha ha! I thought he had lost it!”

Come to think of it, Sojobo, the Great Tengu of Mount Kurama, had also said Shinonome-san visited him. Knowing Shinonome-san’s passion for his book, I could see him making the rounds to every corner of the spirit realm for more stories. I doubted he had imagined visiting Yao Bikuni would backfire, though.

The smile disappeared from Yao Bikuni’s face, and in a chilling voice, she said, “…He’s such a bother.” Her face was as placid as a Noh mask, but her words held thorns. “At the very least, I certainly don’t desire such change. I’ve long since grown tired of it.”

She reached into her breast pocket and pulled something out, holding it aloft. The sun was higher by now, allowing for more light to slip through the slit above. Thanks to that, I could catch a clear look of what she held in her hand. It was the missing half of Shinonome-san’s main body, a piece of the torn hanging scroll. Her other hand held a lighter. Tensing her thumb, she flicked it on.

“Stop it, Yao Bikuni! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?!” Noname yelled.

Yao Bikuni’s cold gaze turned to her. With her patience running thin, she said, “So annoying. Of course I know what I’m doing! Now hand over the manuscript and promise me you won’t try and publish that book, or I’ll burn this. Surely you know what happens to a Tsukumogami when their main body disappears?”

The souls of Tsukumogami dwelled in the objects they originated from. The destruction of those objects meant the death of the Tsukumogami.

I trembled in fear and pleaded with her. “No! Please, don’t hurt Shinonome-san any further!”

Her eyes shot open wide. Then she snickered softly before frowning sadly. “That, coming from the daughter of the man who tried to hurt me?”

Just then, something bright flew past me. It fluttered, shining with ghostly ephemeral light—a glimmerfly.

What was a glimmerfly doing here? Surprised, I momentarily forgot what was happening and let its radiance take my attention. As I did so, the surrounding area grew brighter all at once. I looked toward the source of the light and saw Yao Bikuni leaning against a large rock with a flock of glimmerflies gathering at her feet. No, that wasn’t quite right. The glimmerflies weren’t gathering at her feet—they were overflowing out of a gap between the ground and the rock.

“Ah, morning has come. The butterflies dreaming of the human world escape the cage that is the spirit realm once again.” Yao Bikuni watched, detached from the world as though lost in a dream. Even more glimmerflies began to pour out of the earth, turning that part of the ground as bright as the midday sky—and dispelling the darkness of the cave.

“What the hell is that?” Suimei muttered. “Statues?”

With the light of the glimmerflies, we could now see stone statues lining the walls. I had thought they were just weird rocks earlier, but in truth, they were depictions of men and women, both old and young, all overlooking us. Their clothing and hairstyles varied, ranging from all kinds of time periods.

The glimmerflies perched on these statues, making them stand out against the darkness. We stood and stared at them in shock. That was when Yao Bikuni said, “That which doesn’t change is best. Wouldn’t you agree, Kaori? What is unchanging stays by your side forever, filling the holes of your heart, never leaving you and never being taken away.”

She leaned against a particularly large statue, one of an elderly man. The statue wore an affectionate smile and held out its arms as though reaching forward to hug Yao Bikuni.

“No. These statues couldn’t be…” I whispered.

“Yes, these are the ones who died and left me behind. I grew tired of parting from my beloved families over and over, so I made my own that would never leave me. Ridiculous, no?” Suddenly slumping with great exhaustion, she smiled. “Shall I continue Tamaki’s story?

“I loved and I loved, and eventually I always ended up alone. After eight hundred years of repeating that same cycle, I grew tired of it. My tears had dried up long before I came to this cave to undergo nyujo. I had hoped fasting and chanting sutras would earn me the benevolence of Buddha, but it was not to be.” She grimaced. “But of course it wouldn’t. That wasn’t the point of nyujo to begin with. No matter how many sutras I chanted, no end came for me. In that darkness absent of even a streak of light, as vermin crawled over my body, the only thing that came to me was loathing for my immortal self.”

Once she understood nyujo was futile, she stopped chanting. But she made no effort to leave the cave, not wanting to build new relations with humans. Instead, on whim alone, she began carving the images of those she had once loved into stone. She had no tools, using only loose rocks to chip away at the stone. She would call their names, and once finished, caress their faces and embrace them. Those moments were precious to her.

“Every time I created a statue of one I had loved, my heart would somehow feel more whole. The feelings, the warmth, the voices, the memories—everything came back to me and warmed my heart. I couldn’t see anything, but I was happy to know that I was surrounded by family again.”

Good morning. Are you hungry?

Remember that one time? We laughed so much, we doubled over, didn’t we?

You’ll catch a cold if you’re not careful. Come here, Mommy will keep you warm.

“But every now and then, it would all come crashing down in bouts of clarity. They never responded to me. They never had warmth to share with me. They never smiled back at me. Whenever I realized that, I became heartbroken. The unchanging family I had made could never truly make my heart whole! …And that left me in despair.”

One day, as she chipped away at stone like on any other day, a glowing butterfly appeared from a rift in the rock. It fluttered gracefully through the air and illuminated its surroundings, displaying a phantasmal quality not of this mortal realm. It slipped through a crack in the ceiling that had formed some time ago and dissolved upon hitting sunlight.

Yao Bikuni had found the experience curious and begun digging down. She ignored her bleeding hands and ripping fingernails and continued to dig, more and more butterflies appearing as she did.

She was certain something lay deeper within, and she was proven right after years of digging, when an unknown world revealed itself before her.

“As astonishing as it is, an entrance to the spirit realm exists beneath this place. There, I found creatures living the old way of life…spirits. I was overjoyed, of course, as some of those spirits had lived eternities longer than even I.”

She thought that maybe in their world, she could live without being hurt. At last she had found a world for her. A place she could live. A place where no one would leave her behind.

A place she could belong.

“I began to think that I could fall in love again if I did so there… True love, one that lasts for eternity. And as luck would have it, my body had changed into something inhuman over the years. I’ve become quite alike to the denizens of the spirit realm, wouldn’t you think? That’s why—” Her eyes widened, bloodshot, as she yelled, “—I won’t forgive anyone who tries to destroy my world! The spirit realm doesn’t need anyone to breathe new life into it! So hurry up and swear to me that you’ll abandon your plans to make this foolish book!”

She held Shinonome-san’s main body aloft again and lit the lighter. The glimmerflies scattered away from her, afraid of the flame.

I didn’t know what to do and simply hugged my arms tight around Shinonome-san.

“I don’t care… Do it.”

Within my arms, I felt Shinonome-san stir awake and slowly open his eyes. I met his blue-gray eyes and smiled. But my joy was short-lived as the paleness of his face, the cracks along his skin, and the cold sweat that seeped into his clothes gave me too much to worry about.

Yao Bikuni froze and glared at him with seething hatred. “So you’ve finally decided to join us. Could you repeat yourself? I didn’t quite catch what you just said.”

“I said do it, Yao Bikuni. Burn that thing.”

“Shinonome-san, no!” I pleaded.

“If that’ll make you happy, then do it. But it won’t stop me. I swear it.”

“Please, don’t…”

I didn’t understand how he could say such things and pleaded with him to stop, but he didn’t look my way. His eyes were locked squarely on Yao Bikuni.

Then, he somehow sat up with his weak body. “I’ve long since decided that I’ll make my family happy with my writings.”

Yao Bikuni laughed scornfully. “Ha ha ha ha! A hanging scroll Tsukumogami thinks he can be a writer? Was pretending to be a family with a human really that enjoyable? You know, I heard rumors about your main body in the human world… You’re a cursed scroll that brings fortune at the cost of bloodshed. You’ve brought ruin to many up until now, and yet you think you deserve to live with a happy family? There are limits to any joke, you know.”

“You’re not wrong.” Shinonome-san grinned wryly and rested his head on my shoulder. Even sitting seemed to be a struggle for him. His breathing was ragged, and more and more fissures appeared along his skin before my eyes. “It’s been so long, I don’t remember when exactly it was… But at some point in time, rumors that I brought fortune to those who owned me began to spread. There wasn’t a bit of truth to it, but people believed it anyway, stealing me and sometimes being stolen from. I’ve been used as a tool by the government, and even had blood spilled upon me. Some time ago, I came to see humans as utterly foolish.”

He hugged my shoulders and smiled, his pale face revealing pearly white teeth. “We’re not too different. I grew tired of all the fighting around me and hid away in the spirit realm. I was fed up with humans and wanted to wash my hands clean of them. But then, one day…I adopted a human. A human that couldn’t survive without me, a cute little crybaby of a girl. A small, weak thing that would cling to the hem of my clothes with her tiny, tiny hands.”

His blue-gray eyes looked at me with genuine love from the bottom of his heart. “I thought that maybe I could grant someone real happiness for once, not the fake happiness I was rumored to bring. I may be a Tsukumogami just imitating human appearance and behavior, but I swore to make this girl happy.” His gaze softened. “Because I am her father.”

Yao Bikuni stared at Shinonome-san coldly and shook her head. “Spare me. All that has nothing to do with this.”

“No, it does. I love my ever-changing daughter, and that makes me different from you.” He touched my cheek with a trembling hand and wiped away my tears. “I know she’ll pass away and leave me behind one day, and I’ll be sad then, but I sure as hell won’t regret anything. All I’ll feel is the satisfaction and pride of knowing I raised her well.”

“Sh-Shinonome-san…” I said through tears.

“Ah… You’ve always been such a crybaby. Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right, Kaori. I’m right here.”

I hugged him tightly. Hot tears fell from my eyes, one after another, with no sign of stopping. Feelings of love and gratitude warmed my chest as a sense of happiness enveloped me. But at the same time, the fear that I would lose my father returned. Yao Bikuni still held my father’s life in her hands. Knowing this, I hugged him even tighter—as though to beg for him not to be taken from me.

“Don’t give me that,” Yao Bikuni quietly whispered. My eyes shot up to her, fearful of the latent anger in her voice. But that fear faded when I saw the face she was making. She looked just like a child on the verge of tears after having her favorite toy taken away.

“You can only say that because you’ve never known what loss feels like!” she wailed. She relit the lighter and, without hesitation, brought it closer to the hanging scroll. “I was foolish. There’s no point in being so roundabout when killing you will solve everything… You’re an eyesore. Disappear.”

“Stop it!” I yelled, just as a black shadow lunged toward her.

“Grrrr!”

“Ugh, get off me!”

It was Kuro. He had recovered consciousness and secretly drawn closer to Yao Bikuni. As he lunged, he bit her wrist.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched the lighter fall to the ground and the flame flicker out. Then, as though she didn’t feel any pain, Yao Bikuni grabbed Kuro’s neck and tore him away from her arm. “Damned…mutt!”

Kuro let out a yelp as he was harshly thrown to the ground. Yao Bikuni began searching the floor for the lighter. That was when Suimei made his move, pulling talismans out of his pocket and throwing them at her. The talismans seemed to stop midair for a moment—before flying toward her as though they had a mind of their own.

“Tch… No, stay away!”

The glimmerflies began to gather around Yao Bikuni like they were trying to protect her, blocking the talismans. But Suimei quickly reached into his pocket to pull out a vial and approached. She responded by extracting a smoking pipe from her breast pocket and whacking the back of his hand, causing the vial to fall and break on the floor. The liquid inside the vial splashed onto her leg, causing her to grimace as white smoke smoldered off of her.

A high-pitched voice called out, “Suimei, duck!”

Noname, who had approached from behind Suimei, swung a fist at Yao Bikuni. Suimei quickly ducked down.

From Yao Bikuni’s perspective, Noname appeared out of thin air. Her punch landed unguarded, sending Yao Bikuni flying back. Noname then rubbed her fist with her other hand as she complained. “Owww! Goodness, that hurt. Are you trying to mar this porcelain skin of mine?!”

“What’s the big deal? It’s just skin.”

“Oh, Suimei… You just don’t understand a maiden’s heart. You’ll get dumped one of these days, as you are.”

Noname’s fist had swollen red. Just how hard did she have to punch for that to happen?

“Ngh…” Yao Bikuni had slammed into a stone statue. She tried to stand up but seemed to be unable to, perhaps because of a concussion. Shinonome-san’s hanging scroll was still tightly clutched in her hand, and her eyes burned with a fiery will. That being said, it seemed to me that it would be hard for her to continue this fight. Her face was swollen from the punch, and her consciousness seemed fuzzy as her head bobbed slightly.

She spat out the blood in her mouth, and I heard something solid clack off the ground. A tooth had popped out.

“Yao Bikuni, please. Return Shinonome-san’s main body,” I pleaded, not wanting to see her hurt anymore. “Isn’t this enough?! Let’s end this already!”

But she just shook her head and, as her hand felt around on the ground, weakly smiled. “This pain is nothing compared to the possibility that the only place I belong will change. I won’t die. I can’t die. The curse of that mermaid meat won’t let me die. That’s why…I have to protect my world. I’m tired of losing people… No corner of my heart has been left unscarred.”

She grimaced as though she would break into tears at any moment, but no tears fell. I thought that perhaps her tears had dried up long ago, like she said. That was when she raised the hand that had been feeling around the ground, now holding the lighter.

“Burn…” A small flame flicked on in her hand, and she brought it to Shinonome-san’s main body.

“Ah—” It was all so sudden that I couldn’t react.

The red flame spread to the hanging scroll and began to char the paper black. The smell of something burning reached me as Shinonome-san groaned lowly in my arms. Fearfully, I cast my gaze down and saw his skin char black. I wanted to scream, but no voice came out as I choked up instead. I put Shinonome-san down on the floor and ran at Yao Bikuni, still unsure of what I was going to do.

“Grrrrr!” At the same time, Kuro, now back on his feet, ran toward her with a growl. He used his tail like a whip and wrapped it around her wrist. Yao Bikuni dropped the lighter and struggled to break free of Kuro’s tail. As a result, her attention was solely focused on him.

“Now, cat!” Kuro yelled.

Then suddenly, I heard a voice far too lax for the situation. “Humph. For a nun, you sure don’t have many openings. You did well, mutt.”

Nyaa-san appeared, slinking out of Yao Bikuni’s shadow, in her enormous, post-transformation form. Her mismatched eyes twinkled. “Did you know, we carnivorous beasts like to hunt our prey by stalking in the shadows and waiting for them to let down their guard?”

She opened her jaw wide enough to swallow a human whole—drool dripping through the gaps of her vicious fangs—and bit into the left side of Yao Bikuni’s body, tearing it off.

“Ugh, aaagghh!” Yao Bikuni let out an ear-piercing wail that echoed through the cave.

I heard the disgusting crunch of flesh being chewed and twitched involuntarily. A pool of fresh blood expanded outward from where Yao Bikuni fell on the ground.

Just as I thought Nyaa-san had swallowed, she spat something out right in front of me and grimaced. “Gross. Shinonome-san, you should give up smoking. The stink sticks to you.”

“Ah…” I weakly fell to the floor. With some trepidation, I reached out for Shinonome-san’s main body, the hanging scroll. The only actually burnt part was the paper framing the edges; the actual picture itself was unharmed. The flames had been snuffed out by Nyaa-san’s mouth. Apart from some soot and blood stains, it seemed okay.

I slowly turned my gaze toward Shinonome-san, on the ground. He weakly raised his arm and gave me a thumbs up.

The corners of my lips pulled back into a smile, and I squatted down, hugging Shinonome-san’s main body.

“Thank goodness…”

Relief surged from the depths of my heart as large beads of tears streamed down my face.

 

***

 

“Ah… You all got me good.” Yao Bikuni vacantly looked up at the ceiling with her back on the ground.

Noon had snuck up on us. The light coming through the gap in the ceiling was blinding in comparison to the darkness of the cave. The countless glimmerflies of earlier had flown into the sunlight and dissolved before my eyes. I was surprised to learn that the glimmerflies were drawn to sunlight.

Yao Bikuni turned her eyes toward me and hoarsely said, “Why are you helping me?”

“Don’t talk for now, please.” I wiped the sweat off my brow with my bloodied hands and continued wrapping the dressing I’d borrowed from Noname around Yao Bikuni’s body. “This should stop the bleeding, but you shouldn’t move for a while. Noname will be back soon with some medicine that helps stimulate blood cell growth.”

“Humph.”

“I’m sorry my treatment is so basic, but Noname and Suimei refused to do it, so…yeah. But that’s kind of your fault, so reflect on that a bit, okay?”

“Impertinent little…”

“Didn’t I just say not to talk?” I said with a smile. “Oh, but this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you or anything.” I turned away with a huff.

“You act like a child. Ridiculous.”

“You’re one to talk. Act your age for once.” I smiled wryly and wiped the blood off my hands, then sighed in relief.

I was pretty sure I had stopped the bleeding for now. It was pretty incredible that she could remain conscious after losing so much blood, but maybe that was just a perk of being immortal. She certainly didn’t seem like she could just sprout a new arm anytime soon, but it was possible that she didn’t actually need medicine at all, even in her state.

That being said, she was still missing the entirety of her left arm. It looked so painful that I couldn’t bring myself to just leave her. Nyaa-san, who had eaten the arm, told Yao Bikuni it had tasted pretty all right, ranking her flavor above that of Shinonome-san’s.

Tamaki-san and Shinonome-san had been carried back to the apothecary by Nyaa-san. The two of them were probably out of the woods by now, but it seemed it would take some time before they made full recoveries…

I started packing away the first aid kit I had borrowed from Noname. It was covered in blood now, so I wanted to find some water to clean it with.

Kuro seemed to pick up on this. “I’ll go fetch some water!”

“Thank you, Kuro.”

“Don’t worry about it! I feel bad for not doing more earlier.” With his tail wagging in the air, he ran off, carrying a bucket in his mouth.

Kuro was always the happy-go-lucky one. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Suimei leaning against the cave wall with an unamused look on his face. And Suimei was always the grumpy one…

I grinned wryly. “Hey, don’t you think it’d be all right to put those talismans away for now?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Suimei responded. “We don’t know what this woman might do.” He held talismans in his left hand and a vial of something in his right hand, positioned to be ready to fight at any moment.

With a smile, I sighed. “Whatever makes you happy.”

Yao Bikuni muttered, “How can you smile like that? Don’t you despise me?”

“Huh?”

“I tried to hurt someone precious to you. You should be acting like Noname, or that boy there. After what I did, I’d have no right to complain if that cat devoured me.” She grimaced weakly. “Perhaps that would have been better.”

I thought for a moment, carefully choosing my words. “I don’t particularly hate you or anything.”

“Hah! Don’t be foolish. I don’t need you to try to comfort me.”

“I’m not, really. You’ve always looked out for me until now, telling me not to wear skirts and asking me if I’m eating my vegetables or doing my homework and such.”

“You’re saying I’ve been a nag?” she asked, somewhat sulkily.

“No, that’s not it,” I said with a smile. “I don’t have anyone else in the spirit realm who tells me off like you do. Sure, there are people who say things to get under my skin, but you’re the only one who says that kind of thing for my sake. Thank you.”

She averted her eyes, so I continued. “You’re kind, but also not kind. It’s a weird thing to say, but I think it fits you to a tee. Though I am disappointed to see you hurt someone.”

Yao Bikuni seemed to want to say something, hemming and hawing a bit, but ultimately she just shook her head and gave me a familiar line: “I am not so kind. Not one bit.”

I sighed, exasperated. I rested my jaw on my knees and stared off into the cave. “You really are, though. Kinder than anyone else. Otherwise, your family here wouldn’t be making such happy faces.”

“What…?” Yao Bikuni looked at the stone statues, her face pained.

“You carved them by hand in the darkness, right? Then these must be the faces they made that you remembered best. Look, every one of them is so happy… The days they spent with you must have been happy ones.”

Looking again, all the statues were rough and unpolished. But their expressions stood out and caught my eye regardless. A child smiling without a care in the world. A person with a heavily wrinkled grin. A mother proudly showing off the child in her arms. An old man brimming with love, his arm reaching.

“Normal people would be too scared to ever love another, knowing they’ll one day disappear, and yet, you’ve loved so many,” I said. “Plus, I know what happened on that island. You let Suimei meet his mother. If you aren’t kind, then what are you?”

Yao Bikuni didn’t respond, simply staring at the stone statues. I watched her as I continued. “What you said earlier shocked me. Just imagining how it must’ve felt makes me choke up.”

“What do you understand about me?” she said. “You haven’t even married yet, much less had a child of your own.”

I shook my head and pointed to the statues. “What choked me up was imagining how they must’ve felt, not you.”

I looked around the cave and marveled again at just how many statues there were. I could never understand how Yao Bikuni had felt, watching each of their lives come to a close. But I could understand the pain of having to leave the one you loved behind.

“I’m sure they all wanted to stay with the one they loved till the very end…” I said, wondering what those who had lived alongside Yao Bikuni felt in their last moments… No, I really didn’t have to wonder at all. The smiles carved on their faces left nothing to imagination. “…I’m jealous.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized it.

Yao Bikuni scowled at me. “Are you joking right now?”

“Not at all. I mean it from the heart.”

Unlike spirits, humans had a limited life span. That meant for us, death was something to fear. Not many could peacefully come to terms with it. Death was colder, darker, and crueler than all else. No matter how much we might beg it for mercy, it would come when our time was due. Death was our harsh, inevitable fate—and it was the reason why people hoped that they might be able to share their last moments with those they cherished most. People wanted to feel their loved ones’ warmth and hear their gentle voices to dispel the fear of their final end.

There was nothing more frightening than a lonely death.

“Kaori!”

I imagined the smiling visage of my father’s unkempt face and became a bit disheartened. At our core, humans are selfish creatures. Even if we know it will only burden others, we want our way, especially in regard to our death. We ignore the sadness our end will bring and beg our loved ones to stay with us.

Humans are weak. We can’t live alone, and we can’t die alone. The only thing we can give to those who stay with us in our final moments are our words.

“‘Thank you,’” I said. “‘I’m sorry,’ ‘I love you. Thanks for everything,’”

“What…?”

“If I were part of your family, those are the kinds of things I think I might say to you on my deathbed.”

Yao Bikuni gasped, her eyes shooting wide open. Feebly, she propped herself up. “How?” She grabbed my clothes with her right hand and yelled, “How do you know the things they said?”

A single crystal-clear tear fell from her eye, soon followed by many more.

“Do you really understand how they felt? Ha ha… I can’t believe it.”

Her tears, which she claimed had dried up long ago, continued unabated and wet her bloodstained clothes. Her lip trembled. “They all thanked me in their final moments,” she said weakly. “I just wanted someone to love. I was selfish. I knew they would die and hurt me one day, but I still loved them…” She clung to my hand, shook her head, and shut her eyes. “And yet they all smiled in the end! They thanked me. Why?! They didn’t have a single reason to thank someone as selfish as me!”

Perhaps lacking the strength to support herself, Yao Bikuni fell. I quickly moved to catch her, ending up hugging her tightly. I patted her back as she sobbed and continued to ask herself “Why?” Eventually, she buried her face in my shoulder and entrusted her weight to me.

I looked up at the loving faces of the statues and consoled her, thinking carefully before I spoke. “Don’t cry. Everything’s…going to be all right.”

“Uuaahh, aaaah…”

“They were just returning the love you gave them. There’s nothing strange about it at all.”

“Uuuah, aaah…”

“The change you feared wasn’t that of the world but of yourself. You wanted to stay the same so the Yao Bikuni they loved would always exist.”

“Uuaaaaaaaagh!”

That was why she never found another lover, even after coming to live in the spirit realm. Perhaps her old family was also the reason why she looked after the recuperating souls. On the off chance one of them appeared there, she could do everything in her power to save them. Just like how Suimei did for his mother.

I knew it. Yao Bikuni was kind. There was no greater wife or mother than this spirit. Her love ran deeper than any other’s, but it also weighed on her.

I continued to speak, perhaps more for my sake than hers. “It’s all right. The love those people felt for you won’t change, even if you do. So please…forgive those who went first and left you behind. Forgive yourself for being able to do nothing but watch from their side. Only gods can stave off death. The world…is not so kind. There are no miracles. We have to accept the inevitable ends that come.”

Yao Bikuni slowly raised her face. She looked at me with her teary eyes, and her smile was conflicted. “Why…are you crying as well?”

“Aha ha…” I didn’t bother wiping away the tears streaming down my face. “I was just thinking that the world would be such a nice place if it were as full of miracles as in stories… But it isn’t, so I just somehow ended up crying.”

She gave me a troubled smile and began wiping away my tears with the hem of her sleeve. “Oh, don’t cry. I’m not so good with this soppy stuff… Even though I was the one bawling just moments ago.”

“S-sorry.”

“You’re much too young to be saying such hopeless things, anyway. Miracles are miracles because they only rarely occur. We wouldn’t appreciate them otherwise.” She began to fix my disheveled hair and clothes as she muttered faintly. “You being here is a miracle in itself… You taught me something I’ve been struggling to understand for a long time.”

“Huh? I did?” I asked, to which she snickered softly.

“It’s fine if you don’t know,” she said with a far-off look in her eyes. She let out a deep, tired sigh. “In the end, I was just looking for a target for my anger… What happened to me wasn’t anyone’s fault. There isn’t anyone to blame or to forgive. This is simply the world we were born to.”

The soft smile she gave me then left me astonished. It was the smile of a mother who had raised many children, the smile of a young girl whose heart was aflutter, and the smile of an elderly woman who had lived many years with her loved one. I saw the eight hundred years’ worth of time Yao Bikuni had lived all overlaid atop one another, carved into a single smile.

“What a handful you are, child. To think you would even change me…” she whispered as she brought my head to her chest. Gently, she began to pat my back. “This world isn’t so kind. But the people in it are.”

With her arm wrapped around me, she began to rock as though lulling a child to sleep.

One-two-three, one-two, one-two…

“Ah…” I murmured.

The rhythm of her rocking was broken, perhaps due to her injuries. It was the same rhythm of Shinonome-san’s rocking in my childhood.

My heart was touched by the familiar sway as one last tear fell from my eye.