On Mortality...
"Have you ever considered pursuing the tengu road yourself?"
He laughed, sloshing his sake, and quickly took a gulp to empty the cup.
"Ah, why would I do that?"
"I think you have the power for it."
"Do I?" he said, annoyance creeping into his voice. "Haruka…"
I cringed inwardly, but he stopped himself from whatever rant he was about to launch into.
"Ah, Haruka." he sighed, "For you, as a nature spirit, it is natural, it is your nature, to be a tengu," he said. "A good and normal thing that is right with the world. And though you are of the spirit world, when you~when black tengu~die, you are subject to the same fate as proper beings, to move on, or move back, or remain a tengu and be reborn into a new life until your soul has learned what it needs to become enlightened.
"Not so for Sugino. To become a tengu represents a failure of his humanity. He did not learn what he needed to know, to have been granted such power as he had. So now, he is on the slow road, as punishment for being an idiot."
"Don't say that to his face."
"He well knows it. He had some choice, though. You might say he chose to stay back in school rather than face punishment for a failing grade. In that way he is like a powerful ghost, held to this world by his unfinished business."
"Hasumi claims you were held back several times. I should think you'd be used to it."
"That was school. I don't plan to be in life," he said, shakily pouring himself another sake. "Why would you ask such a thing?"
"Our life-spans would not be different," I said.
"Ah, you of all people should know better. That was Fuji's mistake—greed for more time with you than was her right. No, Haruka, the universe is as it is. We have each other now, and in the future," he sipped his cup, "in the future when I'm gone, I hope you will be happy with someone else. Because that is as things should be, I think."
"It's confusing when you go all 'wise' on me like this."
"Considering what's best for you makes me wiser," he says, sitting up straight in a mockery of pride. "…as I'd hoped. Though sake helps, don't you think?" he giggled like a girl. "Ah, I think I might puke…" he said, and abruptly fled out the back door.
I looked at the empty room, and the open door, and heard him vomiting in the yard, and wondered if, in a thousand years, I would remember this as one of the "good" times.