[story] that's the way it is ~結び~
author: REI (rei_kurasaki)
email: ravenberg_shien [at] hotmail.com
The girl sees him sitting by the side of the road, just a little after where you cross the wooden bridge that leads into Edo, on the side where the river flows strong and cool even in summer.
He’s wearing a large straw hat and sitting under the shady wisteria tree, his back to the O-tone river, and she notices the crowd before she really sees him. He has woodblock prints laid out in front of him in neat separate piles, some of fashionable kabuki actors, others of the hyakki-yako, others of obakemono. She notices his hands before she sees his face; pale and steady; they taper off into elegant ends. They do not look like a samurai’s hands, nor do they look like farmer hands.
Is the lady interested in buying a print?, he asks, and she looks down into his face.
He has narrow eyes the colour of running water, and hair as dark as night pulled into a loose bun - tendrils of black against pale cheeks, like butterfly wings in summer. Oh, he can’t be human, she thinks; no human could look so unearthly, so like the kabuki actors she has so long wished to see.
Yes please, she replies automatically and picks up the stack of hyakki-yako prints, do you take coins?
She plays the koto because her father insisted that it would be more appropriate for a lady to learn such an instrument. Secretly, her second brother taught her the flute and bought her one carved out of white smooth stone. Ivory, he said, but she didn’t know what ivory was - it was just another one of his odd trinkets that he brought back after mingling with the merchants by the bay.
She keeps the prints inside a large lacquer box, together with the white stone flute and tries not to think why she even bought the prints. She has no interest in ghosts or monsters, but maybe, she thinks, maybe she bought it because of the wanderer’s liquid eyes.
Her family is wealthy, with ties that stretch back all the way into the Momoyama period and her father and brothers serve in the Imperial Guards. She will be married to a distant relation in the Imperial family once she reaches eight and ten of age. This autumn is an early time to be married, she thinks with a hint of childish anger, but she bows her head and accepts her father’s words with closed lips, just as she is expected to.
She’s expected to do many things, but she isn’t sure if she can accomplish all of them.
One week later, she sees the mysterious wanderer again, still sitting at the same spot. You do not have a room for the night?, she asks.
I do not need a room, he answers in polite keigo, and I do not have any more prints of ghosts to offer you, unfortunately. What a strange man, the girl thinks, a strange man with sad eyes and beautiful words.
When she leaves, he bows low and deep; that disturbs her for some reason.
That night, she wakes up in the middle of the night with the impression that someone was in her room. Heartbeats later, the lantern of the watchman floats by eerily; it is the hour of the ox. The time when the ghosts and spirits came out to play, her grandmother always told her.
She tries not to think about the stack of woodblock prints in her drawer; just before she slips into her dreams, she thinks maybe there was someone sitting beside her.
Two days later, she sees him again.
Who are you waiting for?, she asks.
Nobody, he replies and smiles.
Oh, she answers, slightly disappointed, then why are you still here?
The wind blows through the bamboo forest behind them and a flock of water birds bursts into the clearing, skimming on water that shimmers like a cold mirror. Their cackles catch on the wind and spiral up the sky to where Haya-tsu-mujo no Kami is waiting with opened arms.
Because I’m waiting, he says and lowers his eyes.
She does not understand him.
Will what you’re waiting for come?
Yes.
Maybe the one you’re waiting for won’t come, she says, as she swings her legs out and dips them briefly in cool clear water. She came again today, with her bamboo umbrella and a small weave basket of rice balls.
The young lady might be mistaken, he replies, the edges of his lips curling up like cat whiskers.
But you’ve been here so long, wouldn’t they have come already?
Perhaps they do not know that I am here, he offers as a placating answer.
Then they might not come.
He bows his head again, as if the large straw hat carried the weight of the universe and his lips curls slowly under the shadow.
I just need to be patient.
There is someone in her room tonight.
She feels, rather than sees, the shadow fly over the low grass and pass the frail shoji doors. It stops for a brief moment (she could hear the clack clack of the bamboo water spout outside) before vanishing. It came into her room. It watched her sleep.
The next morning, she takes out the prints and studies them closely - she can see demons of all sorts; faceless demons, women demons whose legs taper off into smoke, demons whose faces are contorted with pain and hate and humanity, demons who resemble swords, demons who resemble nothing at all.
Her brother calls from outside of her door and she puts the prints aside. Today, she will meet her husband-to-be - today, she will not be able to see the strange wanderer.
She wonders what it is like to wander.
There is a saying that the elders used to say, while they shook their heads and let you look at their wisdom in their eyes. Occasionally, they would look away, sad, that you disregarded their words so easily, like kicking dust into the wind.
A fish is still a fish under miso or salt.
You didn’t get it then, but you’re starting to get it now, now when you’re being pushed down so hard and quick that you can’t breathe.
You can’t breathe.
Her eldest brother has fought before, in the marshes of Kyoto, where he disappeared for fifty days and forty-nine nights and no one knew if he was alive or dead. He came back in clothes of pristine white and deep blue, blue like the ocean that her second brother liked to tell her about, and an enigmatic smile that curved like a blade. His sword was clean and polished - sometimes though, when she sat and watched the sword, she thought she could smell blood and hear screams.
She asked, once, what was it like? And her brother smiled, a smile devoid of emotion and warmth; he didn’t resemble the brother that had left, he didn’t smell right, he didn’t feel right. This brother didn’t seem to feel, this brother wasn’t the brother she knew and grew up with, who held her hand when she fell down, who beat up the children who bullied her and pulled her hair and called her names.
Somehow, her brother never came back from Kyoto.
It’s been exactly four weeks and five days since he arrived. She knows this because on the back of the prints, she has the scratches marked down, a sort of timetable. She estimates that when he does leave, he will leave without a word. One day, she will go to the river and find that there will be no one there - no familiar figure under a large straw hat, no faint curving smile, no gentle words. There will be nothing except rustling grass and the cackles of water birds.
She’s used to people leaving. Her mother died when she was still a child; it was her retainer who brought her up, taught her all the skills that a lady would need. It was her brothers who protected her from the outside world; her eldest brother was gone now, and her second brother would soon follow - the call of the sea would entice and lure him out and he would never come back. It was her father who plotted her destiny and her fate; he would leave once she married into the Yoshikuni family.
It’s okay. It’s okay.
It must be nice to wander, she says.
Today, there are no paper umbrellas, no basket of rice, no noisy water-birds. Today, the skies are dark and gloomy and the wind is angry, it swirls across the water and rips up the rushes as they bend and weep and cry for mercy.
He doesn’t say anything; then again she doesn’t expect him to.
She stops going to the river after that, and shuts herself at home. Her koto is wrapped in thick brocade for the final move to her husband-to-be’s home, her kimonos have all been sent over - all that’s left are a precious few, those she will bring at a later date. Her flute is set on the floor, crisp paper prints thrown messily in the corner. Her brother’s sword lies in the middle of the room, neatly tied and waiting patiently.
She will leave tonight, while birds and humans are asleep, while ghosts come out to play.
The spot on the floor is growing. There is a lantern next to her; flickering illuminations flashing weird lengthening shadows across the floor. She feels for the young girl who will come in tomorrow - by then the blood would have seeped into the wooden floor and her body would be cold and stiff, propped up pathetically against the wall, a blood-smeared sword in her hands. The pain in her middle is slowing down to a dull throb, and she watches as the watchman’s lantern bobs past, disembodied voice announcing the hour of the ox.
Something is outside her door.
There is a sense of familiarity in the curved straw hat and the narrow eyes. He kneels next to her and takes her hand away from the handle. His hands are warm, her hands are cold. She chokes back a laugh.
Will you leave with me? he says.
She wonders how she ever thought his eyes were dark; they have a faint golden sheen that she never noticed before.
What will you do with a dead body?, she asks.
He strokes her hand, calmly, as if the wound was not there and as if the floor under him was not red and slick and cool.
I’ve been waiting for you, he says.
The pain in her stomach is going away; perhaps this is what it feels like to die, she thinks thickly. She doesn’t answer, instead coughs up blood. It splatters on her kimono, red on white. It splatters on his hand. He smiles again, and fangs indent his lower lip.
Come with me, he says again. He’s patient, and he’s waiting. She doesn’t know who he’s waiting for.
You have a tail, she says dreamily with her eyes closed, blood on her lips.
His lips curve into a half-moon and he kisses her cold fingers.
I love you.
The next morning, the maid finds an empty room with a red splattered wall, a floor stained with blood and a discarded sword - there is a set of scored marks on the floor, eight even lines dug deep into the wood, as if an animal has mauled it. She drops the tray and does not feel the ceramic shatter across her feet. Instead she screams and flees for her master’s room. The flute is broken, the paper prints torn.
Her second brother picks up the broken pieces of the flute and keeps them in a box in his room. When he leaves the family two months later to board a ship heading for the New World, he takes the box along with him.
He never comes back.
the end
email: ravenberg_shien [at] hotmail.com
The girl sees him sitting by the side of the road, just a little after where you cross the wooden bridge that leads into Edo, on the side where the river flows strong and cool even in summer.
He’s wearing a large straw hat and sitting under the shady wisteria tree, his back to the O-tone river, and she notices the crowd before she really sees him. He has woodblock prints laid out in front of him in neat separate piles, some of fashionable kabuki actors, others of the hyakki-yako, others of obakemono. She notices his hands before she sees his face; pale and steady; they taper off into elegant ends. They do not look like a samurai’s hands, nor do they look like farmer hands.
Is the lady interested in buying a print?, he asks, and she looks down into his face.
He has narrow eyes the colour of running water, and hair as dark as night pulled into a loose bun - tendrils of black against pale cheeks, like butterfly wings in summer. Oh, he can’t be human, she thinks; no human could look so unearthly, so like the kabuki actors she has so long wished to see.
Yes please, she replies automatically and picks up the stack of hyakki-yako prints, do you take coins?
She plays the koto because her father insisted that it would be more appropriate for a lady to learn such an instrument. Secretly, her second brother taught her the flute and bought her one carved out of white smooth stone. Ivory, he said, but she didn’t know what ivory was - it was just another one of his odd trinkets that he brought back after mingling with the merchants by the bay.
She keeps the prints inside a large lacquer box, together with the white stone flute and tries not to think why she even bought the prints. She has no interest in ghosts or monsters, but maybe, she thinks, maybe she bought it because of the wanderer’s liquid eyes.
Her family is wealthy, with ties that stretch back all the way into the Momoyama period and her father and brothers serve in the Imperial Guards. She will be married to a distant relation in the Imperial family once she reaches eight and ten of age. This autumn is an early time to be married, she thinks with a hint of childish anger, but she bows her head and accepts her father’s words with closed lips, just as she is expected to.
She’s expected to do many things, but she isn’t sure if she can accomplish all of them.
One week later, she sees the mysterious wanderer again, still sitting at the same spot. You do not have a room for the night?, she asks.
I do not need a room, he answers in polite keigo, and I do not have any more prints of ghosts to offer you, unfortunately. What a strange man, the girl thinks, a strange man with sad eyes and beautiful words.
When she leaves, he bows low and deep; that disturbs her for some reason.
That night, she wakes up in the middle of the night with the impression that someone was in her room. Heartbeats later, the lantern of the watchman floats by eerily; it is the hour of the ox. The time when the ghosts and spirits came out to play, her grandmother always told her.
She tries not to think about the stack of woodblock prints in her drawer; just before she slips into her dreams, she thinks maybe there was someone sitting beside her.
Two days later, she sees him again.
Who are you waiting for?, she asks.
Nobody, he replies and smiles.
Oh, she answers, slightly disappointed, then why are you still here?
The wind blows through the bamboo forest behind them and a flock of water birds bursts into the clearing, skimming on water that shimmers like a cold mirror. Their cackles catch on the wind and spiral up the sky to where Haya-tsu-mujo no Kami is waiting with opened arms.
Because I’m waiting, he says and lowers his eyes.
She does not understand him.
Will what you’re waiting for come?
Yes.
Maybe the one you’re waiting for won’t come, she says, as she swings her legs out and dips them briefly in cool clear water. She came again today, with her bamboo umbrella and a small weave basket of rice balls.
The young lady might be mistaken, he replies, the edges of his lips curling up like cat whiskers.
But you’ve been here so long, wouldn’t they have come already?
Perhaps they do not know that I am here, he offers as a placating answer.
Then they might not come.
He bows his head again, as if the large straw hat carried the weight of the universe and his lips curls slowly under the shadow.
I just need to be patient.
There is someone in her room tonight.
She feels, rather than sees, the shadow fly over the low grass and pass the frail shoji doors. It stops for a brief moment (she could hear the clack clack of the bamboo water spout outside) before vanishing. It came into her room. It watched her sleep.
The next morning, she takes out the prints and studies them closely - she can see demons of all sorts; faceless demons, women demons whose legs taper off into smoke, demons whose faces are contorted with pain and hate and humanity, demons who resemble swords, demons who resemble nothing at all.
Her brother calls from outside of her door and she puts the prints aside. Today, she will meet her husband-to-be - today, she will not be able to see the strange wanderer.
She wonders what it is like to wander.
There is a saying that the elders used to say, while they shook their heads and let you look at their wisdom in their eyes. Occasionally, they would look away, sad, that you disregarded their words so easily, like kicking dust into the wind.
A fish is still a fish under miso or salt.
You didn’t get it then, but you’re starting to get it now, now when you’re being pushed down so hard and quick that you can’t breathe.
You can’t breathe.
Her eldest brother has fought before, in the marshes of Kyoto, where he disappeared for fifty days and forty-nine nights and no one knew if he was alive or dead. He came back in clothes of pristine white and deep blue, blue like the ocean that her second brother liked to tell her about, and an enigmatic smile that curved like a blade. His sword was clean and polished - sometimes though, when she sat and watched the sword, she thought she could smell blood and hear screams.
She asked, once, what was it like? And her brother smiled, a smile devoid of emotion and warmth; he didn’t resemble the brother that had left, he didn’t smell right, he didn’t feel right. This brother didn’t seem to feel, this brother wasn’t the brother she knew and grew up with, who held her hand when she fell down, who beat up the children who bullied her and pulled her hair and called her names.
Somehow, her brother never came back from Kyoto.
It’s been exactly four weeks and five days since he arrived. She knows this because on the back of the prints, she has the scratches marked down, a sort of timetable. She estimates that when he does leave, he will leave without a word. One day, she will go to the river and find that there will be no one there - no familiar figure under a large straw hat, no faint curving smile, no gentle words. There will be nothing except rustling grass and the cackles of water birds.
She’s used to people leaving. Her mother died when she was still a child; it was her retainer who brought her up, taught her all the skills that a lady would need. It was her brothers who protected her from the outside world; her eldest brother was gone now, and her second brother would soon follow - the call of the sea would entice and lure him out and he would never come back. It was her father who plotted her destiny and her fate; he would leave once she married into the Yoshikuni family.
It’s okay. It’s okay.
It must be nice to wander, she says.
Today, there are no paper umbrellas, no basket of rice, no noisy water-birds. Today, the skies are dark and gloomy and the wind is angry, it swirls across the water and rips up the rushes as they bend and weep and cry for mercy.
He doesn’t say anything; then again she doesn’t expect him to.
She stops going to the river after that, and shuts herself at home. Her koto is wrapped in thick brocade for the final move to her husband-to-be’s home, her kimonos have all been sent over - all that’s left are a precious few, those she will bring at a later date. Her flute is set on the floor, crisp paper prints thrown messily in the corner. Her brother’s sword lies in the middle of the room, neatly tied and waiting patiently.
She will leave tonight, while birds and humans are asleep, while ghosts come out to play.
The spot on the floor is growing. There is a lantern next to her; flickering illuminations flashing weird lengthening shadows across the floor. She feels for the young girl who will come in tomorrow - by then the blood would have seeped into the wooden floor and her body would be cold and stiff, propped up pathetically against the wall, a blood-smeared sword in her hands. The pain in her middle is slowing down to a dull throb, and she watches as the watchman’s lantern bobs past, disembodied voice announcing the hour of the ox.
Something is outside her door.
There is a sense of familiarity in the curved straw hat and the narrow eyes. He kneels next to her and takes her hand away from the handle. His hands are warm, her hands are cold. She chokes back a laugh.
Will you leave with me? he says.
She wonders how she ever thought his eyes were dark; they have a faint golden sheen that she never noticed before.
What will you do with a dead body?, she asks.
He strokes her hand, calmly, as if the wound was not there and as if the floor under him was not red and slick and cool.
I’ve been waiting for you, he says.
The pain in her stomach is going away; perhaps this is what it feels like to die, she thinks thickly. She doesn’t answer, instead coughs up blood. It splatters on her kimono, red on white. It splatters on his hand. He smiles again, and fangs indent his lower lip.
Come with me, he says again. He’s patient, and he’s waiting. She doesn’t know who he’s waiting for.
You have a tail, she says dreamily with her eyes closed, blood on her lips.
His lips curve into a half-moon and he kisses her cold fingers.
I love you.
The next morning, the maid finds an empty room with a red splattered wall, a floor stained with blood and a discarded sword - there is a set of scored marks on the floor, eight even lines dug deep into the wood, as if an animal has mauled it. She drops the tray and does not feel the ceramic shatter across her feet. Instead she screams and flees for her master’s room. The flute is broken, the paper prints torn.
Her second brother picks up the broken pieces of the flute and keeps them in a box in his room. When he leaves the family two months later to board a ship heading for the New World, he takes the box along with him.
He never comes back.
the end