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In the village, the new year celebrations are not extravagant. The Kuze women, the former handmaidens, ring the bell at the lower temple, but if there's any bell-ringing done up at the Engraving Shrine, only the Kuze women know about it. Among the lay people, there are sweets for the children, a meagre feast for the adults, and more work for the women cleaning out their houses than it's worth.
That's where Kaname finds Reika when he calls on her: busily sweeping the wooden hall, with her hair pinned back and her sleeves tied up out of the way. For once she looks dismayed to see him.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, her cheeks flushed. "I'm not fit to see anyone."
"A matter of opinion, but I'm not staying. I just wanted to ask if you'd meet me tonight, after your family visits the shrine. In the usual place, near midnight?"
She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, flustered. "For the bell-ringing?"
"Sort of. It's a surprise."
Reika frowns, but before she can reply, her little brother comes traipsing in from outside, leaving a trail of half-melted snow along the hallway Reika's just swept, and Kaname uses the ensuing scolding as cover to slip away.
He almost expects Reika not to meet him after all – she seemed harried and in a bad mood – but just as he's about to go alone, he sees her toiling up the hill between the houses. The night is bitterly cold, but clear, as he hoped it would be. Reika looks down at the two lanterns he's holding, then up at him, questioningly.
"Do you mind walking a little further?" he asks.
"No, it'll warm me up." Her eyes are bright, the lanterns reflected in each like golden stars. When he hands one to her, their fingers touch, and she smiles.
He leads the way, and they climb in comfortable silence. It's one of the things he likes about Reika: that she knows when to talk and when talking would spoil things, and that she doesn't mind when he is quiet.
They come out into a clear space, high on the mountainside. The slopes are sheer and rocky here, dangerous to walk, but during the day it's possible to look out over the whole valley, all the way to the horizon. Kaname still remembers the first time he saw it, exploring in the woods; it made him dizzy. At night, under the stars, it has become a ghost-land, all blue mist and shadow.
He has timed it just right. As Reika is looking down, taking it all in, the many temple bells in the towns below begin to ring, solemn and unhurried, the sound drifting up to them with an effect of eerie wonder that has as much power over Kaname now as it did the first time he heard it, seven years ago. Since then he's always tried to be in this place at midnight on the new year, when the night is clear enough.
It goes on and on, and they say nothing: silent as the bells count up the sins of the world, and silent when the silence plunges back. At some point Reika has slipped her hand through Kaname's, and even when it's, neither of them move for a long time.
He says, "I wanted to show it to you – "
And she turns to him and says, "Don't go. Don't go."
Kaname doesn't know how to answer. He can't think what she's talking about. "What do you mean?"
"I just know. You're leaving."
"No, that's not it. I brought you here to say..." It's harder than he thought, harder still with her watching him like that. "I want to be... with you. I want us to be together. If you'd accept – "
She stays looking up at him, without saying anything. He wants to kiss her, but doesn't dare. Instead he reaches into his obi.
"I want to give you this. I've had these earrings since I was an infant, and I – I'd like you to take this as my promise, that one day..." He wishes she'd say something, anything, rather than letting him stumble on like this. He puts the earring in her hand, closes her cold fingers around it. "Will you take it?"
The moment she waits before answering is the longest of his life. Then she inclines her head, and even smiles a little. "Yes."
The freezing wind is nothing. He is warm all through, warm as if with a fire. Now that she's accepted, he part of his mind feels determined to embarrass itself by pouring out all the confessions he couldn't manage to say before. Instead, he asks, "Why did you think I was leaving?"
"I don't know. When I heard all those bells, it made me think of all the people outside the mountain, and somehow that made me think how hard it must be, not to know for sure where you came from."
Again, Kaname is silent, but for a different reason this time: rather than coming out of nowhere, her words strike him to the bone. She's right that it's been on his mind, but until now he never considered that he might find answers by leaving the mountain. He always assumed his family were the poorest sort of farmer from another village on the mountain, but the earrings seem to argue against that. Confused, he turns away.
"I was thinking about it all," Reika goes on, "and listening to the bells, and I had this – vision, or – a picture in my mind, of you going away, and me waiting here, or somewhere like here – somewhere cold, where I could hear all the sin and sorrow in the world." She smiles up at him. "But I was probably only tired and imagining things. I'm glad."
Lost in thought, Kaname says nothing. They walk back in silence.