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It takes the shape of roots; digging in the tree’s blue shade, using hands and knees, tasting copper and smelling wood, he finds one and then so many he gets lost in their number. Some crumble in his fingers, as if awaiting death to finally, finally become part of the earth. Others seem so strong, eternal, older than the tree’s leaves and younger than its trunk... He has to make another hole next to this one, because he cannot reach any deeper.
The boy whispers names under his breath. He has all the characteristics of war written on his pale face – fear and anger, hunger and hope, despair, loss. Fever-induced dreams make him shiver and shake and call out names of people she knows are long dead. She spends the night at his side, refreshing his worried brow with cold water when the heat inflaming his blood makes him choke back sobs, hugging him to envelop him with her warmth when he shakes so much she can hear his bones clatter.
Sometimes he takes her hands as if in a hurry to protect her; other times he grips her forearm like any child would his mother’s.
His breath deepens as dawn breaks. He’s tired. She is too, but the sight of his disheveled white hair, of the dark bruising on his cheeks, awakens something in her heart, and she stays, guarding him, covering him with more layers of blankets.
When he raises his head, lost in the deep hole of mud and roots, he sees that the tree does not hide the sun anymore; it seems older, rising itself with difficulty toward the sky, similar to a human spine. Its trunk is white or grey, flinching in the cold wind. The once strong roots crumble in his little hands to nourish a barren earth. He sits in the tree’s grave and watches the sun rise and fall.
His head is a hurricane. Open glued eyes and see a roof. There’s no hole in this one. It isn’t broken or burned down. He cannot move under the thousand covers piled over his body – it feels so warm he doesn’t even want to move. Right next to him, an old woman sleeps, still sitting. Her head lolls each time she inhales; one of her hands rests on her knees, worn and golden like a sunray. He feels so warm in this place.
He learns the sun’s precise trajectory in the sky; sleeps only when the moon is high. The tree’s life slows down, and then stops. He is alone in a gap, earth taking the form of creeping shadows. He gets up. Climbs up and gets out of the hole. In the cricket’s quiet song, he walks.
He wakes up again. This time the old woman is not there. He closes his eyes. He is so warm here.
The beauty and the beast. What a strange pair they make. She wonders which of them is the beauty, which of them is the beast. Maybe they’re both beasts. Maybe they’re both trying to find the beauty.
For weeks they sleep in the same room; not because there’s not enough place in the house, but because the need of hearing someone’s breathe is haunting them both. When his nightmares are too much she simply starts to talk, describes mundane things, life in Edo, the fur of the neighbor’s cat – she lulls him back to sleep with sweet nothings, because reality is really all he so desperately craves for. At some point he starts speaking too, depicts a tree’s shape, explains how leaves can change color when it is so cold your fingers start becoming blue. His descriptions are so incredibly precise she almost asks how much time he has spent just watching them, decomposing the sight, reflecting on each effect the wind could have, each smell the rotting leaves gave to the earth. She sleeps and dreams of trees and crows, of holes dug right next to a Fullmoon Maple.
It takes the shape of roots; they appear where he isn’t looking, under his foots, right under the sun’s nose and the moon’s eyes, replace old ones, settle deep inside the earth’s warm blanket.
It takes the shape of roots. Being lonely and suddenly feeling alive again, waking up in the middle of the night with someone’s presence under your roof.
Gintoki and Otose sleep. Intertwined dreams of re-opening a bar, of being part of reality, of mundane life are created right there. They take the shape of roots.