“You should join her,” Gengoro mutters. He has come up behind you; one hand seizes your hip so that you freeze. “This game isn’t supposed to have only one player. Or would that ruin it?” For the first time in years you feel the sharp edge of danger again—the bottomless shame, your powerlessness, the desire to damn survival and recover some of your pride. I’m angry all the time, she said—but there are no traces of it on her face now, eyes patiently distant while someone throws a cup at her and misses.
You turn to face Gengoro and let him crush his lips against yours, drag you against his body. This doesn’t hurt me, you think—but you aren’t like her. Even as the catcalls behind you grow louder, as Taichou bellows out a terrible laugh, as the sound of cloth tearing makes you grit your teeth—you are aware of the trembling in your hands, how you have no blades or claws. How you long for this story to close at the end of winter. How the first touches of spring are still not showing through; how they may never show for you.
The following night, she tugs on your robe and puts her hands against your chest, saying, “It’s cold, cold, cold, it’s so cold.” It’s the most desperate you’ve ever seen her, eyes huge and wide as a child’s. And she’s only a child, really—though how many times has she been a child, you don’t know. You’re only a child. You’re like two rabbits sitting terrified in the midst of everything. But she’s no rabbit, she’s a wolf, she’s biting off your long ears and you let her because she looks so much like you, and it’s freezing. You wrap your arms around her and tell her to go to sleep. She makes this sound, a nothing-whisper, and huddles against you like she might understand your heart. You’ve done this before. You were here before: someone’s arms around you, and you couldn’t protect him, and he was waiting inexorably for death to claim you both, because the fire didn’t that first time.
“What was his name,” she whispers.
“Kaoru,” you whisper back. “He was never really the strong type. We couldn’t save each other.”
Only when he held you. Only when they’d brought the cane across your hands too many times, and you thought maybe this is what all older brothers do: stand by, do nothing, just kneel by you when it’s all over, hold your head and weep.
Ayame shifts to face you. “Would you save someone now, if you could?”
There is an alien note of pleading in her voice. You can’t bear it. “Of course.”
“Then destroy me,” she says. “That’s all I ask. I’ve been searching many years for someone who can. It hurts just as much for me, only there is no end in sight.”
Sorrow pierces like a knife through your chest. Slowly, you close your hands around her neck. Your heart beats slow and steady. You push your thumbs down, feeling her pulse, the movement of her throat as she swallows.
“I can’t,” you say, ice inside you, everywhere. “I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough.”
Her hands rest over yours, carefully. “It’s all right,” she says, disappointment mingling with resignation. “Death wouldn’t keep me long, anyway.” She rests her head on your chest. Next to her warm body, you feel frozen. “You’re kind, Akira-kun. I won’t ask it of you again.”
The village is already burning when you enter. When will you stop being broken by the sight, the sound, the sorrow of war? You are twelve again, being embraced by Kaoru and he doesn’t tell you to be happy, he doesn’t even tell you goodbye. He just tells you to live. It is the sweetest parting message in the world. Or this, perhaps: crackling fire, orange against the snow.
Taichou tells everyone to grab what they can, no need for niceties here. Spot the enemy, find those bastards. Again, Ayame is forgotten. It’s strange how she leaves their minds when they aren’t hurting her, but not strange enough. Not wrong enough. You’re tried of trying to reconcile the halves of your heart; you can no longer lie to yourself. So you don’t stop her, you don’t do anything, when she emerges from where she was asked to stay put, brings out her instrument, and starts to play.
The next few scenes do not make sense. They do not happen in order. They perhaps do not happen and your eyes, witnessing, are traitors.
A little girl stumbles out of her house, blood streaming down her face, crying, and sees the oiran.
Someone, unseen, opens fire. Gengoro next to you falls on his knees, blood erupting from his chest.
You hear yourself shout—the same time Taichou does—for everyone to get down, hit the ground.
The little girl runs for Ayame—anything that is female, human, mother, mother, you almost hear her think—and Ayame lets herself be hugged, hugs the girl back, bending forward, her sleeves billowing out.
You leap over Gengoro’s body, duck behind the façade of a house, sight along your rifle. You don’t see any attackers. You realize it might not be bullets, flying through the air.
In the oiran’s arms, the little girl flops backwards. Her eyes are glassy, her mouth slack.
This is it, you think, this is when I know for sure—
Ayame pulls out her koto and Taichou points his rifle at her, shouts at her to fall back, what the hell is she doing, and she yanks off the strings. You remember the strange gash on Kazushige’s throat and everything slowly, beautifully, clicks into place. That can’t be the only thing. As if to prove your point she reaches into her sleeve and, with the practiced grace of swans, draws out her fan. (You never wondered whether it might be steel.) The sharp edge she launches goes straight for Taichou’s throat, and instinctively you make a move to run for him, knock him out of the way.
You don’t make it. You weren’t expecting to. His eyes, in that final moment, are luminous with hate, betrayal.
“Cursed,” he manages to spit. His gaze lingers on you as he dies.
Your body doesn’t know which direction to move toward. Are oni pouring out of the mountains, or is it just her, the little girl now fallen from her grasp, all the other men turning with bewilderment and terror to witness Taichou bleeding out on the snow?
“Akira-kun,” she calls. She doesn’t need to shout. Her voice carries over the snow—her voice, your home. “Akira-kun, run away!”
(Kaoru said: There is no leaving this place.)
(Ayame said: I was told not to let anyone live.)
You could run. You could leave her. You can’t save her, after all.
You can’t save anyone.
Kenjirou appears from the other direction, takes in the scene, aims as she turns. Her chest explodes: crimson blooms on her navy robes, spatters the ground, spills out of her mouth. She falls on her knees, gasping.
The gunshot echoes endlessly in your ears; shatters something inside you.
Kaoru’s distorted breathing. Tamakoto’s eyes flicking away. Your hands against Ayame’s throat. It hurts, she said. How she must suffer, alone and filled with hate, swallowed by blood and oaths and the fact of an existence that doesn’t end. You’re the only one who understands, who knows—and you can’t leave her now.
You will lend her your blades, your hands, your hate—however weak and blunted.
A cry of fury escapes her lips, blending with their cries of terror, as she stands. You raise your rifle and shoot Kenjirou in the head.
“Do you remember mother’s favorite song?” you ask Kaoru. You are lying on his lap, looking up at his face. It is a summer afternoon like the one so many years ago, when you bought a demon’s mask. A dragonfly darts in and out of the window. Across the street, the faint banter of oiran and their kamuro can be heard.