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"Since before I was born," her mother had told her, and Hiyori had known from when she was too young for memory that her mother had been born a frightfully long time ago, "the Kozuki have held the trust of the land."
Kawamatsu was holding her hand. They were walking beside a stream, and the sun was heavy in the sky, reddish. Hiyori was really, really thirsty, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to drink the water. They were too close to a factory. Kawamatsu had made sure she knew that. She held his hand, tighter.
“Just a little farther, my lady,” said Kawamatsu. His voice was soft and ragged with what Hiyori would later realize was hunger. “We’ll be far enough to rest soon.”
“Kawamatsu,” she said, and tried her very best not to tremble. “Kawamatsu, what did Wano use to look like?”
Kawamatsu stopped walking, then, and crouched in front of her to look her in the eyes and hold both her hands. Even though he had been so insistent they keep moving that he had been picking her up and carrying her, while he still had the strength for it. “My lady,” he said, and he was framed by the poison stream and the withered grasses and the smoke from the factories rising high into the air, “are you sure you want to know?”
Hiyori bit her lip, and nodded. She was too much trying to stand at all now that they had stopped walking to speak.
Kawamatsu sat down, and bid her join him, even though they were supposed to be moving. The ground was rocky, and dug at her knees.
“It was beautiful,” he said, and put his hand on the ground next to him. “Cherry blossoms filled the air come spring like the softest storm, and all the streams of the land sparkled clear under the sun when morning came over the mountains. The trees were green, and we ate well every day, and the moon shone brightly among all the stars.” He looked at her, and Hiyori refused to see the tears gathering in his eyes, because samurai did not cry, and Kawamatsu was the best samurai in the world. “You would have loved it, my lady.”
Hiyori swallowed, and held his hands, and tried to picture it in her mind, and couldn’t.
They sat like that, awhile, uncomfortable on the broken ground and trembling to the rhythm of the stream, silent, until Kawamatsu shifted his weight and made to stand.
“Come, my lady,” he said, “we must find shelter before dark.”
Hiyori stood too, catching at him for balance, and yet they did not start walking.
Kawamatsu was looking at her, still, with a gaze she would later realize was the bleakest kind of hope, and she bit her lip again. And then he was looking past her, down at the ground, down at a tiny patch of lichen on a tinier rock, and he said, “Just wait for the dawn, my lady. You will live to see your father’s Wano yet.”
And he took her hand, and they walked.
"Your father was gone too long," her mother had said, on one of the only occasions Hiyori had ever heard her speak ill of him. "His Wano withered by his absence."
Denjirou’s compound had a garden. Hiyori — well, Komurasaki now, but the name fit like the geisha’s makeup she was learning to apply, itchy and unnatural — sat on a bench and looked at it, at the trees twisting themselves into shape, at the ivies reaching uncertainly upward. She wondered if all of Wano had looked like this, once. She wondered if it ever would again.
“Komurasaki,” said Denjirou, from behind her. Said Kyoushirou, from behind her. The name fit him as well as Komurasaki did her, but he had learned to ignore the itch of it. Someday, he assured her, so would she.
She did not jump. The daughter of a samurai must never let herself be surprised, and she had heard his footsteps faint against the stone path. It was a beautiful garden, but Komurasaki hated it.
“Yes?” she said.
He sat down beside her, and she waited a long time for him to answer.
“There was a garden like this at Oden Castle, long ago,” he said. “You remember it, I’m sure.”
She did. That was why she hated this one, because all she could think about when she admired it was her mother leading her around the garden at Oden Castle and teaching her the history of Wano, and all she could think about when she admired it was the ancient trees catching with fire until they blossomed orange, and all she could think about was the barren wastelands that lay outside the Flower Capital, broken and parched.
She said, “It was beautiful.”
He put a hand over hers, warm against the cool stone bench. “It was,” he agreed. He was looking out at the mosses, and the ivies, and his voice was very quiet. To not be overheard, to keep his own self disguised from any watchful eyes. “I promise you, Komurasaki, one day you will see that garden again.”
She tilted her head up, and for the first time all evening met his eyes. “So long as we survive that long?”
“So long as we survive that long,” he agreed, and held her gaze. “And we will. Have hope, my lady, and that hope will carry us to the dawn.”
And Hiyori looked at all the branching ivies, and did.
"You must stay," her mother had said, stroking a hand through her hair and speaking softly against the shouting, "it will be difficult, but you must endure, my daughter. Live, and hope, and wait, because your country cannot be without a Kozuki again."
Toko was late. Komurasaki hoped the girl was well, and hoped she would be on time, and was rewarded for that hope when Toko burst in while Komurasaki was painting her cheeks, hand steady. The girl was laughing, but Komurasaki did not hold that against her, either.
“Toko,” she said, as Toko apologized. Toko quieted, and then muffled a giggle with her hands. “Help me with my obi.”
Toko stepped up to help her tie it, and Komurasaki finished on her cheeks and started on her lips. She had hidden the blood packs Kyoushirou had given her in the folds of her kimono, and she could feel them there, sitting heavy and unsettled like the sun sinking at dusk. She hoped they wouldn’t have to use them, but she very much suspected they would. And it was almost time. It was almost time. But she was the daughter of a samurai, and she would not falter.
“Komurasaki,” said Toko, pulling on her sleeve. Giggles were escaping around the edges of her words, like embers off a fire. “Is it gonna be alright?”
Komurasaki crouched down, and took Toko’s hands in her own, and looked at her, at her wide smile and wide eyes, at the brightness of her. Komurasaki could hardly believe she had been so small, once, just as she could hardly believe Wano had once been beautiful.
“Of course it will,” she said, and made certain her voice was steady, and assured, and not the least bit afraid.
Toko held onto her hands, so tight, the body of her shaking with suppressed laughter. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am,” said Komurasaki, and she stood up, and she led Toko to a window with a view of the Flower Capital in all its summer-colored decadence, and she pointed up towards the palace, towards the ancient tree that wrapped around it like a crown. It was a beautiful clear day, and the sky sparkled with mirrored sunlight. “Toko, do you see that tree?”
Toko, still holding tight to Komurasaki’s hand, nodded, and laughed, and inched closer to Komurasaki’s side.
Komurasaki squeezed Toko’s hand back, and placed her other hand on the edge of the window. “It is very beautiful, yes?”
Toko nodded again, and her eyes were wide with questions, and her lips were pulled wide by laughter, and if Komurasaki was bare of the duties and promises written in her veins, she would wish the world healed just for her bright-eyed little kamuro.
“That tree has been alive longer than this land can remember,” she explained after a moment, and she kept her voice very low, and very soft. “It is one of the only remnants of who Wano used to be, and it grows even yet. It endures even yet, because even that tree is awaiting the same promised dawn we are.” Komurasaki swept her gaze down from the landscape and looked at Toko again. “That dawn will come, Toko. I swear it.”
Toko looked back at her and said, “Then I believe you!”
And the two of them went back, to finish preparations for Shogun Orochi’s party.
"Wano takes its strength from you," her mother had always told her, and she had always loved the country like she loved air, deep and gulping and impossible to live without. And her mother had always said that Wano loved her back just the same.
And in that painted afterwards, dawn, tentative, glorious, lit the sky: and a flower, the palest pink of that burgeoning twilight, bloomed at Kozuki Hiyori’s feet.