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Aller à la ligne C'était le premier jour point
Elle venait de loin point
Open paragraph It was the first day period
She had come from a far period
– Dictée, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
It's not so different from home, she'd told him after her first four months. They each get a futon, which they are responsible for keeping clean and setting away. They sleep eight to a room (all boys, or all girls). In each room there is an alcove with a tall, many-drawered chest. Each student has a drawer for personal effects.
"Almost all of that is different," Toushirou had pointed out, and she hadn't even told him about the talon through Kanisawa-senpai's torso. She still hasn't.
Hinamori keeps letterhead in her drawer. With this letterhead, she has written nearly five years' worth of letters to Junrinan, all unanswered, and several dozen copies of her resume. She has earned a dozen interviews. Nothing formal at this stage, but everyone knows you cannot wait until your final exams if you are to stand out amongst the graduates. She has interviewed with the 5th Division nine times.
Beneath the letterhead, Hinamori keeps one seashell. (She'd lent Abarai letterhead once. He'd failed to buy the regulation size. Actually, he'd failed to buy any size at all. "Honestly, this is Kanashiro's fault," he'd said, his only elaboration the way his fingers danced over the lockboxes. "Did she sell it by the seashore?" he'd enunciated, when he saw the shell.)
Hinamori has never seen the sea.
—
At the Hatsubara Inn, halfway between home and home, the other thirteen guests are all men. They are all tall, and all in black shihakushou. The hostess looks at them, and looks at her, and says, pleasantly, "Ah, yes. I recall you reserved our private room, miss."
Hinamori had not. She could never have afforded it. The hostess's hands are warm and soft when they hand her the room marker, clasped over Hinamori's like a protective clamshell. Her eyes are kind but serious. There is no additional charge. But now Hinamori feels small, conspicuous in her uniform, red like a spider lily.
The hostess brings Hinamori's dinner to her room, committed fully to the pretense, but the room is private only in one direction. The thirteen shinigami are loud and drunk in ways that reverberate through the shouji. They're headed to Junrinan, too.
Hinamori lies awake past midnight, and imagines herself asleep in the 5th Division barracks. She'd been told the barracks are not that different from the Academy. They each get a futon, which they are responsible for keeping clean and setting away. They sleep sixteen to a room, all soldiers. ("When you graduate, you lose your gender," Kanisawa-senpai had joked, the night before that field test. It's actually the only thing she'd ever said to Hinamori.)
Hinamori imagines herself at home. She and Grandmother and Toushirou will share a futon. It will be cramped—she splays out tonight, arms and legs brushing against the cool outer reaches of her thick, private-room futon—and she will ask, "Are you awake, Shiro-chan?" but he won't be, he never is. She will wish she could wrap her arms around him and she won't, not when he's already asleep and she is unanswerable, because he hates that. She wants to hold and be held. She will hold straight and still, and wish.
The thirteen shinigami are troubadours, though Hinamori knew that. They always are this time of year. They practice long into the night.
—
Hinamori arrives in the village so early in the morning it's still dark, her path lit only by the gleam of white frost under moonlight. It is not a reasonable hour to slip into a home, much less a futon, so Hinamori wanders. Her feet ache, her stomach clenches around its emptiness, her fingers stiffen with cold. She tries to keep them warm, flipping the seashell from one to the next just like Abarai had taught her.
It had been this cold, probably, the day they'd found the shell. She and Toushirou had gone out to the mountains. Hinamori doesn't remember now how long ago this was, but it had been a rain year, the mountain sloughing down wherever there were bare patches—scars left by fire, or Hollows, or mystery. Someone had been caught in a mudslide. Hinamori only remembers helping with the recovery mission, inasmuch as there were anything they could have done to help. They were children. She and Toushirou had fetched water, held torches. No one was recovered.
Hinamori knows now that no one could have been. Rukongai does not hold onto bodies.
There is a body lying in the alleyway, bundled beyond recognition, though its feet are bare. Hinamori can't tell if its toes are black with frostbite, or only dirty.
As a girl, she'd been taught to look away from these—the ghost's ghosts. Souls caught in the latticework, too old and faded to really live here yet unable to die and cross over. With five years of Academy behind her, Hinamori doesn't think she can look away anymore.
With five years of Academy behind her, she can't do anything.
She is not permitted to carry her sword outside of official Academy business, nor is she allowed to draw it without the express permission of a superior. And even if she could, what would she do? Slit its throat? It would be an execution. She is enrolled in a one-term civics elective that will begin after the new year, the title of which is "What is to be done?" It will be taught by a guest lecturer from the Gotei 13's 12th Division. That is all she has.
Hinamori drapes her cloak over the body, careful to tuck its edges around the feet, knowing that all this will mean is Grandmother having to give her another one. Grandmother is always giving.
("Does it remind you of home?" Kira asks of the shell. Hinamori uses it as a paperweight when she writes her letters, large and neat. Of the three of them, Hinamori is the only one who ever "goes" home. Kira is occasionally called home, but otherwise avoids it. Abarai claims there's a bounty on his head back home, and seems proud of this.)
The shell is not from home. It had come down with the landslide, like a skeleton from afar. Hinamori had known the ocean from stories, known tsunami from stories, and together she and Toushirou had hypothesized that it had come from very far, indeed. It's almost painful to remember; they'd pursued the story of this shell so avidly—even Toushirou, who sometimes seems like he goes out of his way to be interested in as little as possible—and they'd wondered about the sea and the shell's long journey and what lay beyond the forbidden crest of their mountains and all of this, they'd done together. And then she'd left.
("It reminds me that I'm here," Hinamori tells Kira.)
—
"You were supposed to be here yesterday."
Hinamori startles. "Shiro-chan! Why are you awake?" she squeaks.
There are hours to sunrise, but she didn't think she could walk anymore. She'd wait in the courtyard, she resolved. She'd wake them in the morning.
"Because you were supposed to be here yesterday," says Toushirou. He looks at her, then disappears inside. He has a quilt in his arms when he returns. "Granny is asleep," he says, closing the door behind him. "You should probably be quieter."
Hinamori buries her face in the warm smell of the quilt before wrapping it around her shoulders. "I overslept," she lies.
She doesn't explain the troubadours, whom they'll deal with soon enough. She doesn't explain all the time she'd spent waiting for them to wake up and leave the inn first, because she didn't want them at her back. She doesn't explain all the time they'd spent stopped to drink and laugh, Hinamori stuck behind them. She doesn't explain that she'd masked her reiatsu so well not one of them had noticed when she finally resolved to pass them.
"But how did you know I was coming today? Or yesterday, I guess." Hinamori hadn't even known she was coming yesterday. The Academy has years and months and days, but Junrinan does not—or at least, not the same ones. It wasn't until she'd seen the troubadours she knew she'd guessed right.
"We went to see your examination results," says Toushirou. "Then Granny did the math. She knows you take the post-examination practicals, too."
Hinamori's eyes widen. "You and Grandmother… went all the way out there for that?"
The Academy posts its class rankings outside its gates on a great, fortress-like wall, designating how far you've risen or fallen as a result of the most recent examination. Whether this is to inspire them to achieve, to advertise them to passersby, or because Hidaka in the administration office enjoyed woodcarving too much, was a subject of popular debate amongst Hinamori's classmates. Kira has always maintained that in the past, when wars were more common, they'd update boards like these to keep track of the names of the dead. The Academy was only recycling.
Hinamori thinks of the walk, and the Hatsubara Inn, and Grandmother and Toushirou alone on a snake of long, long road.
"And to visit Jidanbou," he adds, though the only thing this clarifies is that Hinamori does not know what Jidanbou is, or why it would be visited. It's been five years since she left, and it seems that even Junrinan changes.
"But you didn't visit me?" She doesn't want it to sound accusatory, but Hinamori has never felt—well, she's not sure what she feels. She tightens her hold on the edges of the quilt.
Toushirou shrugs. "We have a lot of time, but you don't. We can wait."
His tone is not accusatory, but the guilt flushes her cheeks. She has classmates who take the intersession to practice katas, to invent internships within the Seireitei—doing books, or inventory, or scrivening. Sometimes when she wakes up in Junrinan for the nth day of more of the same, she wishes she were them. A day later she'll wake up wondering how she'll ever leave Junrinan again, without feeling like she is making a huge mistake.
This wasn't how she'd wanted to come home. She'd wanted to come running. She'd wanted Grandmother to wave, and for Toushirou's eyes to light up. In her mind it's sunny, if chilly, and the first thing that happens between them is joy.
Instead she is tired, she is cold, and it is dark. They're talking like she's been gone for a lifetime, but also like she never left, like she hasn't only just now returned. It's all very perfunctory. She could say I really missed you, but she wants Toushirou to believe that she's okay.
(Why wouldn't that be okay? To miss someone.)
"Aren't you cold?" she asks instead, opening one side of the quilt like a wing.
Toushirou stiffens. "Uh, yes." He hadn't entirely thought through their waiting outside. He'd only thought of her.
He dips under the quilt beside her. It's cold again.
"You wrote you probably wouldn't come back in the spring," Toushirou says. "And I imagine not the summer or winter, either, then. You'll be preparing."
Hinamori doesn't say anything. She's hoping for an apprenticeship her sixth year, like Hisagi-senpai had had. She'd spend the year with the Gotei, unseated, and return for her exit exams seasoned by real work experience. After graduation, those selected for service in the Gotei would immediately begin initiation training. The Gotei does not have terms, nor holiday breaks, and leave is not typically granted during the first five years of service.
("This is really because of the nobles who enlist," according to Kira. "To ensure they're not splitting their attention between their duties as shinigami and their duties at home. You have to make a choice."
Abarai squints. "But isn't Kuchiki-taichou literally—"
"Yes, well," Kira continues, "There are nobles and there are Nobles. Big brains, I guess. Not like the rest of us.")
"Is it difficult?" Toushirou asks.
Right now is difficult.
He continues, "It seems like they'd want everyone they spent all this time training."
Oh, her letter. He's talking about her letter still. (He's talking to her letter.)
"Not everyone has the aptitude," Hinamori says. "Sometimes it's a kindness to be declined. If they accepted everyone, it could get them killed. It could get other people killed."
Hinamori has shikai, more or less. It's what put her third from the top of her class during the last examination. She has more than aptitude. But as her sixth year draws near, Hinamori thinks often about Kanisawa-senpai. Sometimes the story of Kanisawa Hotaru is told as a tragedy; though most times these days, she is only a cautionary tale—about not being ready enough, about staying humble, staying vigilant. Never is she genuinely considered lost potential. She was only a student.
"The kind of shinigami that come around here aren't exactly overflowing with aptitude," Toushirou huffs. "And you work harder than them."
She does.
"Do you remember that shell we found?" Hinamori says suddenly.
She can feel Toushirou shift away from her. She's changing the subject.
She's not.
—
In her letters, Captain Aizen is her calligraphy teacher. And it's true—he is, among other things. Hinamori does not know how to explain these other things to Toushirou. But Toushirou knows that she likes art, and maybe this makes Captain Aizen legible.
Hinamori has never been able to explain this to her classmates either. She and Kira wandered past an understanding once—they'd really seen each other's hearts for one frantic, sleep-deprived moment. But then Kira had turned away abruptly, a bony hand floating to his lips as though they'd been on the cusp of a kiss.
Here is a truth: Hinamori needs to join the 5th Division. She feels this need like a hunger—that first hunger, when the sensation had been new and inexplicable and terrifying. There are thirteen divisions in the Gotei, yet there is only one.
("It would be an honor to serve in any," Kira professes, though he's been practicing his amicability. This sentiment may only be practice, too.
Abarai is more strategic. For years, he's been trading Academy rumors for Gotei ones every time the upperclassmen come back to host a tutorial. At the Academy they teach that being a shinigami is being a shinigami, but Abarai's intel suggests that out in the real world, being a shinigami is thirteen different things, at least. Abarai has a Top 4.)
Hinamori has only one.
It feels shameful to admit this. Too presumptuous, maybe. Too obsessive. Too honest. Many of the women at the Academy are there for the education, but not the employment. Their families will not let them forget their manners in favor of ambition. Fewer than ten percent will even try to enlist.
"Ambition is not something you need to fear," Captain Aizen tells her, when Hinamori expresses an interest in furthering her calligraphic studies beyond the weekly tutorial. Captain Aizen often reacts to her propositions with something like bemusement. In this moment she understands that he has given her permission to be ambitious. He has reminded her that she hasn't been ambitious yet.
His attention humbles her. It is always clear that he is speaking to her as a captain, from that same distant place he'd brought with him the night Kanisawa-senpai died. They are not equals, and she has far to go. Hinamori finds this honest and motivating.
One night, while painting the character for "ocean," Hinamori tells Captain Aizen about her shell. She tells him about the mudslide, and about Toushirou, and about the forbidden crest of the mountain, its easern side, the tsunami they'd imagined. She tells Captain Aizen that the shell had come from afar, and she has kept it with her all this time. It's the thing that reminds her of home because it did not come from home. She too has come from afar. She intends this story as her ambition writ boldly.
"Tell me about home," says Captain Aizen, disinterested but not unkind.
She tells him about Toushirou, and the festival she is going home for. "Is Aizen-taichou familiar with the shinigami troubadours who tour Rukongai?" she asks. She tells him everything.
"Did you know that all of Soul Society was ocean once?" Captain Aizen says near the end of their lesson, drawing his brush over paper so fluidly it's as though the ink moves with an ocean current. "I'm reminded of your shell that found itself in a mountain forest."
It feels ambitious to imagine such an ocean. Rukongai, underwater. The Academy, pelagic and cavernous. "I wonder—" Hinamori starts, but stops herself. She wonders what it was like. She wonders what changed. She wonders where the water went.
"I wonder what we will become next," she revises. She tries to fill her brush with all her yearning.
Captain Aizen touches the shoulder of her writing arm, her sword arm. He says, "Well-drawn."
—
"I try not to talk too much about Aizen-taichou. I know you've never met him," Hinamori says. "But I thought it was an interesting story."
Toushirou coughs. "Was that trying?"
—
Hinamori wakes from an incredible and indescribable loneliness, cold and hollow. The dream does not attach to memory, but she can guess. Whenever she dreams about her final year, two figures tend to find her; and when it is not Captain Aizen, it is always Kanisawa-senpai. Hinamori has no stories to offer Kaniswa-senpai's memory, nothing with which to charm or banish her. Hinamori dreams of exams and apprenticeships, and Kanisawa-senpai watches.
For the first time, Hinamori wonders who Kanisawa-senpai had had at home. Who was left behind.
Toushirou is still asleep against her, and she welcomes the weight of him, the tidal lap of his head against her shoulder as his breath rolls in and out. She misses the feeling of being this close to someone. She misses the assurance that she could always come back to this. Because she'll be leaving, won't she—she will journey even further afar. Hinamori closes her eyes again and thinks of the ocean that Soul Society was, and the mystery of what it will become. She resolves to love that. She resolves to relish in the warmth of Toushirou against her, even if it's only for tonight.
When she moves, ice cracks from her clothing. Her surprise puffs from her mouth white and ghost-like.
—
The troubadours from the Hatsubara Inn stumble into the village several hours after dawn, by which point the streets are already filled. At year's end in Junrinan, the streets glut with origin stories—puppets four shaku tall wander through the village, each propelled by three puppeteers dressed all in black, faces all dark nothing.
The puppets generally patrol in sets, each caught in a particular moment of a particular tale. Some of the tales are house tales, raunchy romances or tales of disgraced cuckolds. Most of them are older than love, and tell stories of how the mountains and rivers and Junrinan came to be. All of them end in death. Death is, after all, both Rukongai's beginning and end.
Most of the puppets look like souls, albeit in finer clothing than even Junrinan tends to see, their ceramic bodies ensconced in layers on layers of silk. Some of them have ayakashi faces, though, and of course there are always the Hollows, with their fake puppet faces hidden behind yet another mask. The shinigami troubadours bring shinigami puppets.
The shinigami troubadours do a lot of wailing—impersonating souls in need of rescue, and officers of the Gotei 13 shouting "HANBANTAI! HANBANTAI!" as they execute these rescues.
They are from the Half Division, the lead puppet announces, the most prestigious division of the 13. But wait! Are there only 13? His Vice Captain begins to count on his fingers, and the other soon joins in. The puppets have three fingers per hand, and can only count to 12.
Captain Aizen said he was familiar with the shinigami troubadours, and professed to enjoy their antics. Hinamori found it very honorable that Captain Aizen could be the object of such minstrelsy and feel no insult. But the children in Junrinan tended to love the shinigami shows, too, more than any of the others. Find the shinigami in Junrinan, and find the crowds.
Toushirou has no fondness for anything on display today.
"They’re not real," she assures him, the way she does every year.
"Obviously," he says, glaring, mad. They still scare him, then. "That’s the problem."
He’s not looking at the puppet, but at the three figures that animate it. They make the puppet cock its head. Its arms beckon.
To Toushirou's credit, the surest way to attract a puppet's attention is to show reticence. They tend to bow at Hinamori, then loom over him, masks wavering hairs' breadths from his face. They close around him like vultures, before breaking away in a cackling flurry and reassembling elsewhere mid-tale, as though this were a story they'd always been telling.
"They choose this," Toushirou grumbles. All the puppeteers—they choose the play-acting, the cruel revelry, as though the puppet gives them permission. And then they enjoy it. Toushirou finds the idea both incomprehensible and entirely expected, because of course they do. It's just how it is.
To Toushirou's eternal dismay, this festival lasts several days. Junrinan has acquired many stories. The shinigami troubadours, too, are always eager to tell more. After all, they have ruled beneficently for thousands on thousands of years.
("Oh. Them," said Kira, the first time Hinamori mentioned Junrinan's year-end festival. He'd been morose. The Hanbantai Players were a popular opening act where he was from, too. His version involves a great banquet and several hours of sitting, beginning with the Players and devolving into ever-longer and more arcane histrionic acts, showcasing this or that traditional theatre art. Kira is surprised to hear, however, that they are puppets in Junrinan. Local color, he supposes, to make their stories feel more organic to the place. And in Inuzuri?
"Very local, very colorful," says Abarai. The shinigami troubadours don't exactly come around.)
It's easier to see the shinigami troubadours for what they are, once Junrinan is not the only thing you know. Fables are instructive, and what their stories tell are the stories of the Seireitei—the heart of Soul Society, and the culture. This is the realm of shinigami. The souls of Rukongai are only passing through. No one in Junrinan ever used to call it "Rukongai," though lately now they do. Junrinan changes sometimes, too.
This all was ocean once, Hinamori thinks. And that story is older than all of us.
Once, when Hinamori was a girl, the shinigami troubadours had been dispatched outside the festival season. There'd been a spate of suicides in Junrinan, souls walking into the forests to find their deaths. She'd heard rumors that they were not alone in this, that in other districts this was happening, too. Because if this was the dark side of the mirror, then why linger? Would it not be better to be immediately reborn someplace real?
No, a very beautiful shinigami puppet had whispered. Your lives here are precious, too. But when one of Hinamori's neighbors—Inuzuka Senichiro, ever an intellectual—had approached the black-clad players with questions afterward, the shinigami had been mealy-mouthed. "Well, it messes with the math," he said. Then, "I'm sorry, the stories stand on their own. We don't take follow-ups. We are artists. This is art."
—
Toushirou reemerges from the crowd with two cups of tea in hand. It's still warm when he offers her one, but it surfaces a feeling Hinamori hasn't been able to shake all day. That morning, when she'd woken. The ice.
She wonders if he knows. If he feels a hunger growing.
They've always eaten; contrary to the Academy's popular belief, the souls of Rukongai do eat, or at least the ones in Junrinan. It is a great and very common pastime. In fact, it was not until quite late that Hinamori had realized that not everyone's meals had need behind them. Rice feeds reiryoku, and reiryoku ambition.
The night was cold enough to make its own frost, but not like that.
Hinamori waffles. There's a chance that his reiryoku won't ever grow beyond what it is now, just like Grandmother's. Grandmother possesses just enough spiritual pressure to make a fortuneteller's living off it—to feed children for whom rice is not a luxury. She is the oldest in the village, of those who aren't ghost's ghosts. Maybe Toushirou could be like her. He holds his cup exactly the way Grandmother does.
She must be making a face, because he scowls back at her. "Don't tell me you'll miss this. I'm sure the Seireitei has its own terrible festivals."
When Hinamori says nothing, Toushirou continues, more seriously, "You shouldn't feel bad about leaving. We'll wait."
Hinamori's hand vanishes into the sleeve of her kimono. She dances the shell over her knuckles. She asks, "Do you want to? Wait, I mean."
Maybe it's a stupid question. Not once in five years has Toushirou ever suggested that he might join her. Five years of letters he's clearly memorized, and not once. She knows he doesn't want to go.
Maybe she's made a huge mistake, because he may not have a choice. Junrinan does not always wait. Five years of letters, and she's told him everything and nothing. She'd written with the hope she'd make him happy, not prepared. But then, maybe he is more prepared than she will ever be.
Toushirou stares down one of the shinigami troubadours as he scuffles past. The troubadour is dragging his puppet on his own, his companions nowhere in sight. Captain Hanban's head and arms hang limply.
"This Aizen guy," Toushirou says, taking another sip of his tea. "He inspires you?"
Hinamori nods. She stares at the leaf fragments at the bottom of her cup. There are futures written in them, somewhere.
"Because he has good handwriting." Toushirou peers up at her wittingly, and oh, she could smack him.
"Because Aizen-taichou taught us all how to do the same," Hinamori specifies.
Toushirou looks thoughtful for a moment, then nods.
They don't speak for a long time. With the sun beginning to set, the puppets aren't telling stories anymore. They've begun to wander, moved by drunkenness or independent spirit, soliciting kan from anyone who seems wont to give it. By dusk, the stories are well past having broken apart. There will be more come morning.
When their cups are empty and the night chill is setting in again, Toushirou says, "You're not happy."
Hinamori's mouth flies open. "That's not true! I love coming to visit you!"
Toushirou's eyes widen. "I didn't say you weren't happy here," he clarifies quickly. "You just don't seem happy. You're worried about all these things—" Probably he caught the waver in her voice, but Hinamori is already caught in the memory of their closeness beneath the quilt, the ease of him against her, the reassurance of another heart beating close by. I really miss you—
"This feels self-evident," he hedges. He looks like he wants to say more and he looks like he doesn't want to say more. It should already be as obvious to her as it is to him.
He sighs. Finally, he says, "You have all these goals. That seems admirable. And the way you talk about your friends—they seem inspired by you, too."
When Hinamori meets his eyes, she sees something new in him, or at least something she hadn't understood before: If she asks him to come, he will follow. All she'd have to do is ask.
Toushirou is not done. "Whatever Aizen is to you. If you want to be the same as him, or something like that. Then you should know that you already inspire people. Don't be unhappy thinking something stupid like you'll never match up."
She can't.
She can't ever ask, because she can also look at him and also know he doesn't want to go. She prays he never has to. That forest was ocean once. That shell was at the bottom of that sea.
Hinamori can see the tension begin to creep into his eyes. He has no idea if this was the right thing to say to her, and her silence keeps him guessing. He looks on the brink of trying something else. What can he tell her? Where is her happiness?
Toushirou does not have time to be surprised. She grabs his hand and takes off running. She pulls him homeward, home where Grandmother will be waving, where the last of the sun is waiting in the rafters, where the thing that happens between them is joy.
"Come with me!" Hinamori shouts. It is time to go home, if only just for tonight.
—
Captain Aizen asks about the festival, and then about the puppets. Hinamori tells him that in the Forest Story, a brother and sister die together. In the Rock Story, they die apart. In the Rain Story, it’s a father and child. Not even strangers are safe (the Mountain Story). The Marching Story is a march toward death, and the House Story begins and ends there, too. In the Winter story, two lovers kill each other.
"Does Aizen-taichou ever write stories?" Hinamori asks. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, brush poised over the blank scroll before her.
Captain Aizen smiles. He says, "Sometimes, yes."
May I write words more naked than flesh,
stronger than bone, more resilient than
sinew, sensitive than nerve
– Sappho (in the epigraph to Dictee)