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The moment that Byakuren is sealed, the second she crosses her arms over her chest and smiles her painfully calm and accepting smile, you think back to the moment your nonexistent life was saved.
You still remember it, even now: a dark shadow drifting above you, blocking the light out, cutting off your reflection swaying in the deep-sea currents. Your ghost heart, shaking with the anticipation, doesn’t seem to want to listen to the part of you that clings to humanity. No, you say, no, there are people there, you want to stop sinking ships, this could be the first ship you let pass, the first time you watch as the hull slides through the water unbroken, the last time you watch someone drown wearing the desperate, broken face you did. This could be the end of your solitary, drenched existence, you could let go, you could peel your fingers from the grip of attachments and rest.
You think this, as you rise above the water and catch a glimpse of Byakuren. Standing at the helm of the ship, her hair wavy and falling over her shoulders, purple fading into brown, her hands gripping the railings, you can see her-- peaceful, commanding, a presence you marvel at. You’ve heard of her, heard the drowning sailors say her name, and have felt that presence just by the way they speak of her-- but she is so much more real now, so present. She spots you, and looks at you as you float up to her level, your ladle tight in your left hand. You expect her to run, to curse, to tell the crew-- but it is only her, and she does not run. She simply watches you, as you fill the ladle with seawater.
She’s not afraid, and the part of you that wants only to sink the ship is filled with frustration. This isn’t supposed to happen, you think, she’s supposed to be scared, supposed to scream as the bow breaks and her feet are swept from the deck and water fills her lungs. But the other part of you (suppressed, yes, but very much existent) wants to swim away. To spare her. There is something so composed, so transcendent there. You don’t want to erase it.
A smile, calm and soothing, ready for anything, spreads her face. She opens her arms to you.
You sink the ship.
She goes down with nothing but a gasp, as the hull breaks and floods, the overwhelming spray of salt washes over you as you bring the towering ship down to splinters and wood. You feel your eyes dripping with tears, but you’re not sure how you can tell them apart from the sea, and you see her body hit the water.
You don’t look. You turn away, hiding your face-- there is something about her that makes you feel so achingly human, and it’s terrifying. How long has it been? How long, sinking ships mercilessly and repeatedly, like a youkai, or a machine? There is pain in it, in the silence of the ocean, as Byakuren’s body sinks like a stone behind you, quietly and slowly, nothing more than the creaking of waterlogged wood.
And then, a light in the benthos, radiating up from nowhere, from the depths of the ocean you are bound to-- you turn around, startled, and watch as something takes form from the ragged remains of the ship you just destroyed, something gleaming and familiar. Your mouth falls open, disbelief soaking your senses, it can’t be, that ship is, how did she know, how could anyone--
Rising from the deep, glimmering, the Palanquin Ship surfaces before your eyes, Byakuren very much alive and standing there at the helm. A surge of something bright and painful-- light? life?-- overcomes your head. You emerge from the sea, floating, halfway curled inwards, your clothes dripping with endless seawater. Byakuren looks into your eyes, full of stinging tears.
She holds out her hand.
“Minamitsu Murasa, would you like to join me, and captain this ship?”
You shiver. The sun is so warm-- the sea here has gotten so cold. Drifting toward her, you reach out your hand, translucent and trembling.
“Yes,” you answer, more a breath than a word. A prayer. “Yes.”
Byakuren takes your hand, pulling you in over the railing, and your legs give out when they make contact with the deck. You fall into her, shaking, sobbing. She brings you closer to her, combing her fingers through your short, dripping hair, embracing your half-solid form without reserve or pretense. The warmth she shares with you is surreal, something human that you have missed, that you have forgotten ever feeling, and you sink further into her, collapsing, as she kneels on the deck and wraps you up in her arms.
You swear, right then and there, that when you are strong enough, you will protect her.
A few days in, your hands have finally faded back into semi-corporeality, and the sun beating down upon your back is exquisite. You still have nightmares-- you did, the first day back, when you slept in the bed you once adored. In your dreams you sank five ships, one after the other, dragging them down with an anchor and a twisted, broken smile. It wasn’t you that you looked at, from afar; that person’s eyes were a different color. That person’s eyes were red.
You cough, lean over the wheel, and throw up water. Your ghost body has started to settle into reality, and the water that you breathed as a phantom is coming out from your lungs little by little. The sea air is sweet-- it tastes crisp and salty, free and vigorous. Byakuren waltzes by, somewhat carefree on the deck, barefoot and taking every sensation in. She is so present; you notice this wherever you go, always savoring everything and then letting it go, unbound and uncharted. You wonder if Buddhists are supposed to be like this; she certainly seems in tune with everything, and only holds on to experiences for fleeting moments, burning them into her eyes before releasing them like scarves into the air.
Byakuren taps you on the shoulder. “Are you sick? You’ve been coughing up water, so I was worried...”
“I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to happen,” you shrug, and wipe your mouth with the sleeve of your shirt. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me, Hijiri.”
“I hope so,” she nods. “If anything’s wrong, come tell me, okay?”
You nod, and set your hands back on the polished wood wheel before a sudden shadow blocks the sun and you start, letting go and looking around in confusion.
“Oh no! Unzaaaan, don’t go startling the captain like that!” comes a high, chiming voice from above you. You look up-- your vision is obscured by a pink cloud, and a girl wearing a veil over her head drops down from over it. A nyuudou? Whatever the case, the girl walks toward you with a bright smile on her face. She waves, and the ground drops from underneath you.
“I’m so sorry! He’s not usually like this... Unzan, let’s meet the new face!” She waves the nyuudou over, which curls around her protectively. “I’m Ichirin! Kumoi Ichirin, and this is my guardian, Unzan!”
“I...” You find yourself at a temporary loss for words. She is blinding-- her voice high and cloud-clearing, she breaks apart the walls around your heart, the hesitation you feel suddenly gone. “I’m Minamitsu. Murasa. Captain Murasa.”
“It’s really, really nice to meet you! I heard about Byakuren coming to see you, and I got excited since she’s got me all swept up too and I’ve been traveling around for a while, but I’ve never really been at sea before... I’m really glad you’re here! You gotta meet the rest of us, when we get to land I’ll introduce you...”
Unzan blinks, and then sweeps upwards, tugging Ichirin along. “Oh noooo,” she yells. “I’ll be right back! I’m sorry, Murasa!” You hear her bickering about something as the nyuudou takes off, Ichirin riding on his shoulders, and you sigh.
She’s the sun, you think dimly, and blink the brightness out from your eyes. It’s almost hard to look at her directly. Her voice made you lighter, her gaze freed your feet from their chains. You find yourself wanting to search for her, to chase after her, to bring her sunshine back to you.
On the journey back towards land, you and Ichirin share your secrets, stories and shadows. She skitters from the window of the crew cabins out to where you’re steering the ship, bringing with her storybooks and sketchbooks and the lightness of her being. You dip your toes in moonlight seawater as she looks out with you onto the stars-- they shine with a light you can barely remember, since you were always too far down to see them, but out here on the open sea there’s nothing to block them from you. She shows you constellations, sketches them out on paper, then on the backs of your hands.
She tells you how she met Unzan. How she came across him in a field picking flowers, countered his attempt to eat her (“He didn’t know any better,” she explains, waving her hands, “he didn’t know me!”) and then stuck with him afterward, becoming somewhat of a daughter and a caretaker. She tells you how she became a youkai-- slowly, with no resistance or input, and didn’t seem to mind. She tells you that she wasn’t born with this body-- for a while she was raised as a boy, but was really a girl for as long as she knew, and since her human parents weren’t very kind to her, she told all her problems to Unzan and became much more confident and free as the girl she always was. You tell her you’ve never really felt like a girl and tend to lean masculine, that being a ghost was much lighter than being a girl with a body and growing pains, and she listens to you, rests her hand on your wrist. You tell her about drowning, about looking up at the surface of the water as you fell below it, watching the lights on your beloved ship sputter out in the storm. Halfway through, you start crying, and she pulls you in, cradling your smaller form in her arms, kissing your forehead and telling you that you’re here now, you don’t have to feel like you’re drowning.
One night you feel something warm and light well up in your chest, and she figures it out before you do. Her hands interlace with yours, the smile on her face winking out any possible doubt, and you lean over and kiss her. Her geta sandal falls into the water below, and she does nothing but giggle into your lips and let it go as the ship sails directly west, as your arms lock around her waist and she drapes her hands over your shoulders. Her heart beats fast and warm against your chest, and you swear that she has started your own long-dead pulse as she presses into you and smiles.
In your chest, a single flower blooms.
Arriving at port, you meet Byakuren’s other two followers: Nazrin, a tiny mouse youkai with a bit of an attitude and a love for treasure hunting, and her master Shou, a tall and warm monk, wearing a decorative lotus and fiddling with a jeweled pagoda. Shou talks somewhat roughly, but it’s kind of heartwarming, and Nazrin sits on her shoulder as she waves her hands around. Ichirin laughs, Byakuren takes both of Shou’s hands in hers, and you move in closer to Ichirin and walk forward, into the backwoods of the small shrine town.
Things go awry soon after that; Ichirin comes with you to the shrine, where you are confronted by five angry villagers waving their pitchforks and brandishing ofuda at you. Byakuren runs into you on the beach, where you’ve retreated after Ichirin and Unzan scared them off, and you’re trembling as you tell her the news: they heard about it, they saw you with me, and they’re going to seal you away. Ichirin holds you close, presses her hand against your cheek, and Byakuren crouches down to move your hair back off your tear-stained face.
“It’s okay, Murasa,” she says, calm and poised as ever. “I’ll talk to them, I won’t let them hurt you.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” you blurt out, doubling over yourself as Byakuren walks away with Shou and Nazrin in tow. You look at Ichirin; the light has disappeared from her face, replaced with welling eyes and an expression of worry, and you kiss her before she can say anything-- if she can’t stay positive now, no one will.
At the shrine Byakuren stands, bowing her head as she is beaten with words of hatred and anger. Ichirin screams, the din of the crowd drowning out her pleas, and Nazrin collapses in on herself and cries as Byakuren is roughly tugged up to the shrine steps. You kick and shout against Shou’s restraints as you threaten curses and death, struggling to break free, to give them a sound beating, to kill every one of them. Bile rises in your throat as Byakuren’s eyes fill with tears and she drops her chin to her chest, patient, waiting. Shou holds you back, but soon she is wrenched away, and a sealing charm sticks hard to the back of your neck as you find yourself being gripped and restrained, with none of Shou’s warmth or cautiousness. Byakuren lets the villagers walk her up the steps. You scream, so hard you feel the reverberations in your head. Ichirin reaches for your hand.
You take it.
The chaos overwhelms you, but it at least gives you time to see Byakuren’s peaceful, sad half-smile as she crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry,” she calls out, to you, to Ichirin, to everyone. “I’m sorry. Please find your way.” You grip Ichirin’s hand so hard you feel like your bones are coming apart. “Please,” Byakuren’s voice fades, “please forgive me.”
“Any last words, youkai?”
The crowd goes silent.
“Tell my brother I’ll come to meet him soon,” she whispers, her voice wavering and falling apart. Then, she leans her head back, and breathes. “And please, spare my friends.”
You close your eyes, squeeze them shut, but Ichirin digs her fingernail into your hand, as if to say, you can’t look away now, and as you watch helplessly, Byakuren Hijiri, savior of your world, is sealed away.
You open your eyes to a darkness not unlike the bottom of the sea. It’s cold, the sound of water flowing through the caves is deafening, but there’s something-- someone warm next to you, a hand that hasn’t left you. You reach your hand out, and it rests on the soft skin of a familiar face, a gentleness that you can’t forget, not even after a thousand years.
Ichirin.
“Now what?” you ask, and the echoes of it on the underground walls are like stakes in your chest.
“Now,” she breathes, “now, we wait.”
“For how long?”
“Who knows,” Ichirin says. Her voice is sad, but there’s a hint of hope in it, a glimmer of sunlight, where the sea and the sky meet.
And in the darkness, without a word, she pulls you towards her, presses her lips to yours. After all this time, she knows exactly where to find you.