Note: this was written for the dailyprompt community at Dreamwidth. The prompt was "stranded at the side of the road".
There is snow falling when Akito leaves, wet spring snow that melts when it touches the ground and only settles in sheltered spots between tree roots.
He asked the head of the family if he couldn't stay a few days more, until the weather was dry and the wind had died down, but she wouldn't allow it. She said that men always leave when the snow melts; this is the law her family has followed for generations. He cannot stay any longer.
She is mistrustful of his intentions, and she's right to be: Akito is going to take her daughter away as soon as he can. It's probably best to leave now, and not give her time to confirm her suspicions.
So Akito makes his way down the treacherous mountain path, where earth and slush and snow have mixed into freezing mud. The wind blows sleet at him until he is wet through, shivering so hard that his teeth rattle together; he can't hear anything but that and the harsh sound of his breathing. He tries to warm himself with thoughts of Kyouka.
He will go down the mountain to his home and will infuriate his friends with mysterious hints of the beautiful woman he will soon marry. In summer, when the shrine is quiet, he will come back for her, and for the secret she whispered to him before he left: the child who might be born by then. They will escape and come down the mountain together, and she will be fascinated by everything, and he will see the sunlight on her hair.
The ground rears up suddenly to meet him. He tries to catch himself on his hands, but one arm isn't working. When he falls, his shoulder... moves. It shouldn't move like that. His arm is limp, and he's lying in a puddle of icy water, but there's a warmth spreading from his neck and shoulder, and with it, the beginnings of pain.
He rolls onto his back, and his arm flops uselessly underneath him, but he can't feel it. The Kuze family head is standing over him. She's holding something that he doesn't want to look at, but he can see it's red.
He dies.
Dead, he watches her take his bag, strip him of his bloody clothes and roll his body into the ditch at the side of the road. He falls into more muddy water, crashing through rotten ice.
Dead, Akito sees the Kuze family head roll his possessions into a wet bundle and make her way back up the path to hide what she has done. He waits at the side of the road, with the snow blowing through him. How desolate, the sound of the wind.
There is a time, as the weather warms, when the water in the ditch is low and he can see himself, quite well-preserved and white, with his hair falling out. Then reeds grow up, quick as the sun rising, to cover him.
Akito is at the side of the road in summer when he hears the cry of his child carried on the wind from the shrine. The reeds and bushes hide him very well now. The family head comes down the path one day, sparing little more than a glance at the place where she left him, that day at the end of winter. She comes back with four young girls to be trained as Handmaidens, and this time she doesn't turn aside at all.
The road is quiet. Every now and then, one from the villages below will bring up a basket of offerings, food and cloth and other necessities, for the residents of the shrine. They leave it at the gate where the path curves out of sight.
In autumn the leaves fall among the dying reeds, covering what is left of him. There is not much now. The reeds and insects and small animals took him apart.
Kyouka comes to the gate one day, late in autumn, and looks out for a long time. Her kimono is dark blue, a sombre colour against the bright leaves. By the side of the road, unable to speak, Akito watches her look down the path, her waiting form as still and graceful as a maple tree. He watches as she turns her back to go inside.
The snows fall again. The water in the ditch freezes solid. If any Worshippers came by and happened to look, they would see nothing; but Worshippers always look straight ahead, and they do not come this year. The road is quiet.
Kyouka comes past in the night, wrapped in many layers and holding a bundle in her arms, walking carefully. When she passes Akito, the bundle squirms and makes a coughing cry, and Kyouka hushes it. At the side of the road, Akito sees his son being carried away. When Kyouka makes her way back, before dawn, her arms are empty.
The years pass. The snow falls. Worshippers come, and go. Handmaidens walk up the path children, and leave as older, knowing girls. Kyouka comes to the gate and looks out, but less often. Bones break down and fall apart. The light falls through him.
He sees a young man in a blue kimono, that same shade, the colour of grief. He recognises the earring the man wears, but his son does not come out of the shrine again.
Akito is still at the side of the road when the Worshippers no longer come. The shrine is out of sight around the corner, but he hears the silence spreading from it, the emptiness growing in it. Snow falls. People come in strange clothes to pick the bones of the ruin, taking books and roof slates and items of interest. The road is quiet.
At last he sees a man who looks like him – though now he looks like green bones underwater, under earth, once he looked like this. The man goes through the space where the gate used to be, into the silence where the shrine used to be; and comes out, and goes down the mountain again, and does not come back.
Akito is beside the quiet road, bones waiting to be found. How desolate, the wind.