Kotodama
"There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usage of man's life:
'Know thyself,' and 'Nothing too much'; and upon these all other precepts depend."
- Plutarch
Author's Note: This is dedicated to the one who inspired me with her talk of rivers and oracles.
Above all, it is fear that weighs down a bird's feathers. The possibility that a phoenix, after perishing once, will never again rise from the ashes; that eternity will fold in on itself, become invisible, then become nothing. Therefore, when a phoenix sleeps he dreams fitfully of that impossible nothing, and burns those dreams immediately upon waking, because he is a bird of immortality, not history. Leave memory for the sparrows who possess desires but lack vision.
At night the phoenix wraps himself in brilliant silk and sips warm brandy, eyes fixed upon the cycles of the moon as it brushes against the cool skin of his uncertainties, as he wonders why he does not wish to sleep. Perhaps it is because the one room he cannot illuminate exists behind his own eyelids. The darkness of knowing nothing is the most terrifying, and so it is better to fill that empty space with the words of another. Reassurances that there exist ways to sustain, straight until the end of eternity, one's life, legacy and kingdom.
Kou knows this: that above all, kings and immortals have the greatest desire for soothsayers, and it is for this reason alone that dealing information has always been more lucrative than selling drugs or weapons.
But what pleases him most are men like Kubota Makoto who think they desire nothing, only to flicker between blindness and selective memory once something of worth edges up alongside them; and sometimes Kou begins to believe that the children of those who live on silk and brandy eventually endure this fate.
He remembers his own childhood, diluted with time but still lingering on his tongue, and how the people of his village wrote prayers on holy paper, burned them, and then drank down the ashes with cold water. Internalization. Word made flesh and truth, fate sealed. Kou's prayers were always the foolish wishes of a child, but they had never faded, because messages to the gods are immortal, and do not understand the aging body.
"Do wishes taste like anything?" Kubota asked one day at the shop, in the same off-hand manner he approached any topic of conversation, as if he were talking about sweets in a tin box. "I've always wondered."
The sounds of Chinatown swelled around them, curling in from the open windows of the drugstore: chestnut hawkers and their smoky carts, squealing tires as the bosozoku gangs burned through the streets, and the ever present rattling of the divining sticks and coin purses of sidewalk fortune tellers.
Kou sighed, folded the newspaper he had been skimming, and reached for the cup of tea on the shelf next to him. "If you ask it like that, it's almost like you're looking for trouble. You should be more careful, otherwise you'll end up tasting it from another's mouth."
"So even that incident reached you."
"Sanada is the type of man who would say it to anybody without words. He comes by looking for you every so often, and always leaves without buying anything." Kou paused, allowing this information to seep in, then continued. "I recommend that you keep your pet in the house until things settle down."
"Easy," Kubota said from the visitor's couch, and smiled behind his cigarette. "He's in bed with a cold."
"That is for the better. Let us hope he stays sick a while longer."
"Appropriate choice of words for a doctor." Kubota raised his empty glass. "Mind if I have some more? It's rather good today."
Drinking tea together on cold afternoons like this, it was easy to forget what kind of world they lived in and how far they both had come to get here. But distance is relative, a fabrication strung between time, movement, and psychosis. Sometimes Kou wondered whether or not he was moving backward or forward, rising up or slowly sinking. The Toukohan collected everything, from hours and seconds to dust and shadows…himself even. Perhaps he had not moved at all and the world was merely contracting at this very point.
"Hey boss, about those wishes..."
"Hmm?" He drank down the rest of his own tea and winced when the found it to be lukewarm.
"You didn't answer me before."
"Because it was an unwise question," Kou narrowed his eyes, breathing out the possibility of his intentions; because it was his nature to peck at the eggshells and ashes left behind by more ambitious creatures. "I doubt you would find my answer suitable to your tastes. After all, we all move in the same circles. I am not very different from the men you have encountered before. It is possible that I may be worse, therefore do not tempt me."
The glare of sunset was flooding in through the windows, against Kubota's back and the marble tiles of the shop. Sometimes it was like this, humorously futile, like drawing out lines with chalk and marking boundaries in the rain. Kubota opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of a car out front alerted them to the coming of a visitor they both knew and half anticipated; and with a gesture of Kou's hand towards the back room, he swiftly disappeared, taking away Kou's empty cup and replacing it with his own.
As a child, Kou wished to know everything in the world.
Living like he did, it was as close to his wish as he could get, lapping up information at every possible spring, even from the mouths of those whose words he needed, craved to the point of near disaster. Kou was not a monk, he was no stranger to brothels and the secrets that leaked from the corners of closed rooms. To some extent he enjoyed it, given the right partner and a promising amount of knowledge.
That youthful desperation was all in the past, but Kubota would certainly taste it on him if given the chance; he would know the price Kou had paid for all this knowledge and what maps he had drawn to reach his prize. Seeing those routes, Kubota was bound to trace them and find his way to the man Kou used to be. That would put an end to everything. A beautiful finish, and Kou knew that perhaps one day he would seek it.
His eyes on the small row of security monitors behind the counter, Kou brought his lips to Kubota's cup, dipped his face in the steam and allowed himself a moment of blindness. The door to his shop swung open, bringing with it the winter chill, the crisp suits of the Izumokai, and the mild scent of gunpowder.
Today, Kou decided, he would not be so kind. He would find some way to tell them, without words, that in this city Kubota Makoto worked for only one man, and Kou would not give up that place so easily