Chapter Text
“It’s bitter.”
The aroma of the tea had been warm and inviting, but the taste turned sour on her tongue. From the sloped edge of the roof a breeze blew a solitary maple leaf into a languid, drifting spiral down—landing atop the teacup like a slender red hand.
“Maybe that’ll improve the flavour?” Kantarou offered, but Youko frowned away his playfulness.
The leaf hung on the lip of the cup, trembled, and dipped into the steaming water. Youko watched impassively as it dyed a progressive brown. It was hardly a waste, she thought: there would be more tea in the future, and perhaps it would taste better. At the same time, she felt a twinge of pain in her chest; as she took that first sip she realised that she had grown all too used to the impoverished blandness that dwelt in her cup day to day, morning to morning. Perhaps, she thought, she had fooled herself by believing it could ever taste as sweet as she dreamed.
A staccato rap at the door disrupted the afternoon calm. “I’ll get it,” Kantarou said, placing a hand for a moment on Youko’s tense shoulder. There was an apologetic look in his eyes, and she wondered: for what? It was, after all, only tea.
She lost herself staring into the veins of the maple leaf and the still water, until Kantarou’s voice broke through her reverie—someone was asking for her.
With one last look at the back garden—and a thought to how she’d have to thoroughly rake it of leaves before the evening rain came—she set aside her cup and stood to her feet. Perhaps Mrs. Kimura from down the street needed some fabric, or had some spare rice for their dinner; such were the small, ordinary things she came to expect in the small and ordinary world she inhabited and loved for what little it was.
The face at the door was one she had never expected to see again. His dark eyes were wet but his lips broke into an unbidden smile at the sight of Youko—as though he’d thought she had disappeared somewhere forever in the past.
Youko frowned, and wisely Kantarou slipped back into the house, leaving the two alone save for the murmuring gossip of the birds.
“You don’t need to concern yourself with me anymore—I’m a youkai, and our kind don’t mix,” she said, flatly, even as her fingers fidgeted together behind her back and her chest tightened.
Yoshio dropped to his knees, leaning upon the threshold of the door. “I’m sorry for hurting you. When you left I thought I would rebuild Fushimi-ya in Kyoto, but it’s been a struggle. The market is different there, less Western and more traditional, and—I lost my inspiration.”
Her tender heart skipped a beat and her eyes went wide—she had, for a day or two, entertained the whimsical idea that he would come running back, or that she would meet him by perfect happenstance in the street. When this fantasy failed to materialise, the image of him faded at the edges in her mind, like an old photograph, archived away in some dusty drawer never to be let out again to see the sun. She resolved that, as humans tended to, he moved on. Their worlds seemed irreconcilable after what he suffered from the curse of that snake, and yet—and yet…
“It’s very far away,” Youko said, stepping back—letting him come to her, if it was her he really wanted. “Kantarou talked a few times about wanting to visit, but to live there…”
“I’ve leased the family estate in Nakano and sold the old storefront. The house I have in Kyoto is small and it’s right in the middle of the city, but the air is clearer there, and even if it’s not Tokyo, there are always things going on—festivals, you name it, and lots of buyers for Fushimi-ya kimono. I just need a model, and someone to help with the designs.”
“Are you sure I’d really be helpful to you?” She clasped her hands together, as though in prayer. “And, you said you hated youkai… I don’t want to remind you of how you suffered because your family made a deal with one before…”
There was a resoluteness in his eyes she had seen once before—the night he gave her a glimpse into a future she never before imagined for herself, and the night it unravelled before her like cloth unwound from a loose thread. The bitter aftertaste of Kantarou’s tea lingered on her tongue. The life of a kitsune was fated to be a lonely one, or so went all the old stories.
“It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s you. I love you, Youko, and I want you to be my wife.”
“Ah…” She drew her hand over her mouth, her cheeks flushing red.
Maple leaves fell like gentle red raindrops around them, and one settled on Yoshio’s outstretched palm. He rose up, slowly and steadily, and with all the confidence of a man who saw his destiny before him he held Youko’s hand and placed with infinite gentleness the leaf that had chosen him upon it. She could feel his warmth flowing into her through his delicate hands, a welcome contrast to the crisp autumn air; he closed her fingers over the maple leaf and she closed her eyes and the rest was like something out of the ecstasy of dreams. His lips brushed hers; his arms wrapped about her; she knew, in this impulsive moment, what it meant not just to be content, but to be happy. In all her solitary centuries, how many times had such an opportunity passed her by? And how many more times—if she did not, at last, grasp her future and demand that ever-elusive happiness from it?
It wasn’t until their lips parted that she looked out at the open gate that yawned wide onto the street and trembled, eyes wide, at the thought that someone may have seen them in their illicit embrace—he had best marry her and soon, she thought, if this was the nature of his love.
Yoshio asked her if she was okay with moving to Kyoto for him, and she said yes with her eyes welling up further with each word—and told him, fingertips brushing his arms so much as decorum allowed, that she could be ready tomorrow if he just gave her time to pack her few belongings and say her goodbyes to a life she thought would last forever. There was a loneliness in parting from the familiar, but she knew it would be lonelier to be without him.
He pulled her aside, away from any peering eyes from within or without, nearly tumbling into a bush, Youko letting herself fall into his arms. They parted with one last discreet kiss, and Youko felt as though she were walking on clouds, nearly forgetting to slip off her sandals before she turned back into the house to bring the news to Kantarou and Haruka.
Kantarou held her tighter than he ever had, and congratulated her, his red eyes bright with cheer. It felt different, and she would later recall it as the first time she could think of when he looked at her as a dear friend and, perhaps, an equal. Haruka, arms crossed, stood like a shadow against the wall, his expression betraying his uncertainty. Youko glanced up to him over Kantarou’s shoulder—slightly damp from her tears—with a look that sought his approval, and he broke, for once, his old silence.
“You will find happiness, one way or another.” He closed his eyes, and Youko saw the faintest trace of a smile come to his lips—or was it a trick of the light?
She went to the veranda at the back of the house where her tea, no longer hot with steam, sat patiently waiting for her where she had left it like a tiny offering. She sat there and took a long look at the trees and the walls of the Ichinomiya household, all she had ever known for so many years. A part of her heart would always remain there, she knew, and the hope that grew in her as she imagined her life with Yoshio was marked with one black brushstroke of pain as she wished she had spent more time in peace and calm here. She had always imagined that her endless everyday life with Kantarou and Haruka would remain just so: unchanging as the waxing and waning of the moon. How many memories were there left to make between the three of them?
Youko breathed in deeply, and set the teacup again in her pale hands. Life, too, had its phases, and like the tide one could struggle against it or embrace it. So long as she lived there could always be something new, just over the far horizon.
In her absence, a second leaf had fallen into the cup, and Youko resisted the urge to pluck them out. Instead she brought the cup to her lips, still aching from his kisses, and drank fully what nature had unexpectedly given her.
Her eyes lit up.
“It’s sweet.”