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Sonzai (Existence)
Four: Kaika
He did not know where he was running when he bolted, stumbling, away from the light of the fire, only knowing that he had to get away from her- her voice, her face, the hitch in her breath as she had leaned against him as if they had been old familiar friends, or lovers. It was wrong, every sense in his body told him. It was wrong, and he could not afford to be weak.
He crashed through the brush blindly for what seemed a very long time. The bushes were thick here, and leaves and twigs tore at his hands, his face, leaving scratch marks and one tiny cut across his lips, which he knew was bleeding because he could taste it on his tongue. There was moonlight here in the forest, but it was dim through the fog, and if he had been in a calmer state of mind, he would have realized it was prudent to go back before he slipped into some hidden bog or crashed into some poisonous plant in the dark.
But he simply blundered on, his face hot and stinging from where tree branches whipped his cheeks. The feel of her skin as she buried her face in his neck was like a hot brand there, and he half-raised his hand to smear the traces of her away. He did not know why it was so wrong. It simply was wrong.
Just for a moment, the fog thinned, and the moon came out from behind the clouds, and he saw that he was surrounded by tall, dark trees, their trunks black against the silver moon, giant spears of leafy branches rising into the sky. He looked back. Of course, it was foolish. He was a long way from their camp, and he could no longer see the fire.
He stopped running.
Standing, swaying in the middle of the trees, he felt a hollow sense of despair come over him as he fell to his knees, and the faces of his mother and father flickered into his mind. He shouldn't have come, he thought. What whim had come over him that he thought he could just leave home without a word? He didn't even know...her...this girl who had appeared in his life out of nowhere and held his memories in the palm of his hand.
Crumpling to his knees in half-despair, he felt something tumble out of his belt and roll down one knee to land in a pile of dead leaves. He reached down one hand to touch it.
It was his flute.
He knelt there, fingering the instrument absently, taking deep, gulping breaths of cool forest air. He was not afraid of the dark, nor the trees nor the fog, because something told him that he had grown up in places such as this and he had the power somewhere within him to quell any fears that he might have. He did not know why - he'd woken up in his bed in Sairou that day knowing it, just as he had known that there was something about the flute that was powerful to him, so powerful that he had begged his parents day and night to tell him where they were hiding it until they finally told him that he had been devoid of any possessions when they found him, save the clothes on his back.
He'd asked every passing peddler and merchant, but none of them carried flutes. So he had finally made one himself. It was a little crude and the finger-holes were not even, but it was enough. That knowledge was a part of him, too, but it was comforting somehow to know that whatever he had been in his past life, it could not have been so bad if he had been a flute-maker.
Suboshi was...a friend. He died.
No, he shook his head soundlessly. Suboshi couldn't have died. He would have felt it, he knew, if Suboshi had died, though there was something nagging at the back of his mind about that too. There were days when he woke up and saw the blue sky through his window and felt strange, like he should have been dead.
Finding his way back to Yui and the fire was most likely a lost cause. He wondered if she would come to look for him, then decided that if she were to do so, she would wait till morning. Leaving the fire would mean that they would both be lost, wandering around the great forest like two blind humans in the dark, and she was not stupid.
He grasped the flute firmly in his hand, intending to bring it back to its resting spot in his belt. It seemed almost of its own accord that his hand kept rising past his waist, bringing the instrument to his mouth, and he began to play. There was no conscious thought that kept the melody moving, nothing but his mouth and fingers on the hollow reed and the air swelling in currents of sound around him. He could almost see the notes, he thought, see them as they coursed on the wind around the trunks of the trees and each bush and flower, lighting them like sun's rays.
You can...forget...
The music soared over him and he felt it soak into his bones and his blood like a seeking living thing, familiar and warm, a small child's hand reaching up to grasp his own. A little boy looking up at him, large eyes and sweet smile, the brightest laugh he had ever heard, and he leaned down to pick the child up and wrap his arms around him. I love him, he thought. I love him more than anything or anyone in this world, and there is nothing I would not do for him.
The stars reached down to cradle them in a warm bower of light. The child moved in his arms, breath sweet against his cheek. From somewhere there was music reaching their ears with a distant glow like sparking fireworks and it was just the two of them alone in the universe, their light against the dark, and he hugged the child to his chest and cried as they fell together.
The rough jolt he felt were leaves beneath his hands, the sudden jarring was his flute falling from his fingers, and the almost inaudible ticking was the sound of his tears rolling down his cheeks and dripping one by one from his chin to puddle on the forest dirt below.
Suddenly, he realized he was not alone.
He started to move, to turn around, but the presence at his back did not feel threatening and so he remained where he was in a crouch over the forest floor, hunched over like his very life blood was draining from him. It hurt to breathe. He saw his flute as a slim sliver of moonlight through the leaves, and then the stranger spoke.
"When you didn't come back, Yui-sama was worried."
At the familiar voice, he stiffened. Questions flashed through his mind, accusations and half-truths, and finally he settled on the one that felt the most sensible to ask.
"How did you find me?"
The woman laughed, low and huskily. "Easy," she said. "I heard your flute."
He drew a deep breath and blew it out in frustration, standing on unsteady legs and jabbing his flute back into his belt at last. It seemed to protest at its forced treatment, and he tied the cloth firmly around it so it could not fall out again. He was forever having bad luck with that, it seemed. "I can't go back there," he said. "You don't understand."
A slight chuckle from behind him. "On the contrary. I understand very well. And if you're afraid that she's upset...she sent me out here to find you."
"I don't care about that," he grumbled, a little peeved at how the other seemed to be having fun at his expense. "I've got better things to do with my time than argue with you, too."
"You do? Out here in the middle of the forest in the fog in the middle of the night? I have yet to believe that."
"Shut up."
The stranger seemed to realize she had gone too far, for she didn't answer, waited for him to swallow once, twice, square his shoulders, breathe out another long sigh. Then she said, "I'm sorry."
"Forget it," he said roughly. "I don't even know you. I don't know why I'm arguing with a stranger." He turned so that she couldn't see his face, but for some reason he'd gotten turned around, and when he looked up, she was standing in front of him, as the fog chose for that moment to lift and the moonlight shone bright down through the trees onto her face.
He froze.
She reached out one hand to him slowly, and without quite knowing how or why, he lifted his ever so slightly, gazing into those gray eyes in a daze. The ghostly music that had been so clear earlier rang in his ears. There was the laughter of a small child, and he shivered, took one step towards her, then another, and then raised his palm to meet hers-
"Don't," she said clearly, and dropped her hand.
He stared at her as she moved back a pace, tilting her head and regarding him with a look on her face that did not quite match any expression he'd seen before. He must look very odd, he realized, with one hand raised up in the air to touch someone who was not there, but his arm wouldn't move, and he stood there for several seconds until she said, "We should be going."
The spell broke, and his arm dropped back down to his side as he sagged to the ground. Sweat dripped down the sides of his face and he felt hot and cold, head throbbing, and his stomach heaved like he was going to be sick. There was medicine in the pack, but he had left that with Yui.
"Get away from me," he rasped. "Stop saving me. You're always saving me. For once, I just want to save myself."
Thankfully, the woman drew no nearer and he breathed in and out several times deeply, raising a hand to his face and feeling the rough reality of the dirt that stuck to his palm. The tiny stones pressed deep into his skin and he relished the feel of the discomfort that bordered on pain. This was real. Amid the memories that he did not even know if they were reality or illusion, the forest around him, the branches swaying in the wind and the moonlight on the dead leaves was solid and comforting.
"Amiboshi," the woman said, "we must go."
He got to his feet and checked to make sure his flute was still in his belt, and then stopped.
"My name is Kaika," he said.
She opened her mouth, and he stopped her with swift, cutting motion of the hand as if his fingers were the cold blades of knives. A cloud of darkness passed before his eyes, and when he could see again, she'd moved closer to him with her eyes on a point somewhere beyond him, as if she were looking far away at a distant land he'd never seen.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "Kaika. I'll show you the way back to camp."
He didn't know how she knew the path so clearly. Maybe she had extraordinary night vision and could make out every branch he had broken and every bush he'd crashed into on the way to his final destination there in the middle of the forest. Or perhaps she was just a great forestwoman. There were people like that, he knew, who made it their livelihood to track living things out in the wilds, who could move through the trees without a sound and without leaving any disturbance in their wake. He had been one of those, once. A year of living in Sairou had made him soft.
"Are you from Kutou?" he asked her finally.
There was a moment of hesitation before she answered. "Yes," she said. "Though I have been abroad as of late. I hadn't thought of returning to Kutou until I met you."
He thought of her sitting at the well, waiting for him, then their encounter at the bottom of his hill. "Why?" he asked.
Another hesitation. "You could say I had something I was supposed to do, and I failed to complete it. I'm...here to make sure that I don't leave anything undone." A dry chuckle. "You could say that I'm paying my penance."
He frowned. "Penance for what?'
"For my sins," she returned, and then he saw ahead of them the warm glow of a fire, and the silhouette of someone jumping to her feet as they emerged into the flickering light, and Yui was there, watching him with worried eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said awkwardly. "I shouldn't have run off."
He could tell she wanted to touch him but was afraid to, and he felt very ashamed of himself for his reaction earlier, so he walked toward her and stopped, quite close. "It's all right," he told her softly. "Please don't think I'm angry at you."
She stared at him, and when she didn't move, he picked up her right hand and placed it gently on his shoulder.
A moment passed, and then she smiled. "I saved your food," she said. "Though it's rather cold now. I was going to make you another one, and then I remembered we'd eaten all of them. There's some dried beef, I think, if you want it."
"Thanks," he said, "but I'm not really that hungry. I'll just finish my bread."
He moved to the fire and bent to sit down, before he remembered and stood back up quickly. Looking back to where the circle of light met the trees, he expected to see the stranger standing there watching them, waiting for an invitation, but there was no one there. "Yui?" he said, and he knew his voice sounded strange, like it was thick with tears, though he did not feel like crying. "That woman just now. She's gone."
Yui smiled sadly and he sensed that something was amiss. But she did not volunteer information, only said, "She'll come back when the time is right. Don't worry, Kaika."
He clenched his fists over the cold food in his hands, squeezed his eyes shut and thought of the wild flute music, the cry of the child in his arms. It was no use, he finally thought, and opened his eyes. For some reason, everything was blurry and he could not quite breathe.
"I-"
"Kaika?" Yui's worried voice came through the fog that surrounded his senses, and he shook his head.
"My name is..."
She had been reaching a hand toward him, but at his words, she stopped.
"My name..."
"I know you're not Suboshi," Yui whispered. "Don't trouble yourself over it. I'll try to-"
"No," he said. "That's not it. There is something...something that I..." Like a part of me that was lost has come back to me, he thought, and it was on the tip of his tongue before he stopped himself from saying it. Did that even make sense? He didn't think so. He sat furiously and bit into the bun so hard that he bit his tongue, and yelped.
Yui laughed.
He smiled at the sound of that and finished the bread quickly, staring into the flames of the fire as it began to die. The night was waxing, and soon it would be time to sleep, but he was not tired.
"Do you remember Soi?" Yui asked suddenly.
The name struck a chord within him and he had the memory of a woman's hand, a soft voice. She had been kind, he remembered. Very kind, yet very fierce and very sad.
"Yes," he said. "I do."
"She was with me on the...journey. To Sairou, I mean. She sat in my caravan wagon and one night when it was cold, she gave me a blanket. I never saw her face and never knew who she was until tonight, but I thought her voice was familiar."
He was silent, trying to place the red-haired woman in his memory. It had a place, he knew, somewhere. He could grasp the shape of her memory puzzle piece in his hand, knew the corners and dents and ridges of its edges, but could not make it fit. There was no room for her in the framework of what he remembered, and it frustrated him. "I saw her twice," he said. "Once by the village well, that day I brought you home, and the second time the night before we left. She told me your name was Yui."
Yui smiled. "Did she? That was nice of her."
There was a wistful tone in her voice that intrigued him. "Were you friends?" he wondered, hoping that something she'd say would jog something loose. But she shook her head slowly.
"I...no, we weren't friends. She didn't like me then, and I didn't like her. I don't know why, but it's what I remember."
"That's too bad," he said. "Perhaps it will be different this time around. She told me she was from Kutou. I wonder if she lives near here?"
"She-" began Yui, then stopped. A flash of pain passed over her face, and he tensed, about to spring up if anything happened, but she simply sat back and sighed. "No, she doesn't. Not anymore. She hasn't...been to Kutou in a long time."
She said she came back to pay penance for her sins, he almost said, then decided against it. Instead, he said, "It's getting late. We should go to bed."
He wondered if Soi would show up the next morning, appear just like she did last night by the ashes of the fire in the sunlight that burned the fog away, and when he opened his eyes he sat up looking for her. The trees stretched clear through the sunshine and to his right he saw Yui still asleep, curled up in her blanket. But Soi was not there.
Shaking his head, he rummaged through the pack for his waterskin. The cool water was refreshing to his parched throat, and he was still drinking when he felt someone come through the bushes behind him. He glanced at Yui, still asleep, and then finished drinking, replaced the cover on the waterskin, placed it back in his pack, and then said, "Hello, Soi."
"Good morning," she responded. "I like talking to people better when I can see their faces."
He squared his shoulders and turned around reluctantly. She was standing there under the trees with her arms crossed over her chest, still wearing the dark cloak but with the hood thrown back so that the sun sparkled on her red hair and he could see her face clearly. He wasn't sure what he had expected to happen - a lightning strike of memory from heaven, perhaps. But whatever it was, it didn't happen. She simply stood there regarding him with a touch of annoyance as the birds sang their morning songs in the foliage above their heads.
"Thank you for showing me back," he said finally.
"I regret I can't accompany you on your journey today," she said, "but I have some things for you, if you'd like."
That piqued his curiosity. "What things?"
"Everyday things that you seem to have forgotten, or left behind," she said, a touch of laughter on her lips. When he didn't move, she said impatiently, "Hold out your hand."
He stretched out his right hand, and from somewhere she produced a small sack, which she dropped lightly into his raised palm. He immediately grunted and almost dropped it.
"What is this?"
"Open it and find out after I'm gone," she said, and then her tone softened. "I'll see you in a few days. I have some errands to run first. There's a village about two hours from here where you can get a bite to eat and maybe sleep in a warm bed if you'd like. Don't lose the things I gave you."
He'd been examining the pouch in his hand, had put a hand to the drawstring when she stopped talking, and when he looked up she was gone. "Soi?" he said, then louder: "Soi!"
Yui grumbled and rolled over.
He hurriedly crouched by his pack, putting the small sack out of sight, and then set about kicking the ashes to make sure they were dead, then to erase the traces of their fire so they would not be tracked. He didn't know who would be tracking them except for Soi, perhaps, but it never hurt to make sure. At the very least, it would stop wild animals from questioning.
"Suboshi?" said Yui from behind him sleepily, and when he turned sharply, she'd clapped both hands over her mouth. "Sorry," she said from behind her fingers. "Sorry. Gods, sorry..."
There was no point in getting angry about it, so he simply forced a smile and blinked back the tears. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I regret to say there's not much breakfast food today. All we have is some dried meat, I think. I wish we could have brought some rice."
She rubbed her eyes, still not quite looking at him. "That's fine." Rummaging through her pack, she produced one of the cloth-wrapped strips, and they chewed the tough meat in silence, before she said, "Kaika, I-"
He held up one hand. "If we're going to be traveling together, it's something we're both going to have to get used to. It's not like either of us can help it, and apologizing gets old after a while. Don't you think so?"
"I don't want to make you hurt any more than you already are," she said in a low voice.
Getting to his feet, he stretched and then hoisted his pack onto his back. "I told you already, don't worry about it. Every time you hurt me is maybe one step closer that I get to remembering who I am and what I'm doing here."
He could see her digesting his words slowly as she chewed the last of the meat, and then she looked up at him. "I suppose," she said at last. "If you put it that way, I can see what you mean."
"Well then, it's all right." He offered her his hand to pull her up and she took it with a small grin. "Soi said there's a village somewhere near here. We might start by trying to find it."
The forest thinned almost immediately as they continued following the mountain downhill. It was a pleasant walk, made easier by the fact that the slope followed a gentle decline and most of the brush underneath was made up of dead leaves and twigs, like a soft carpet. They had walked perhaps the better part of the hour when Yui held up one hand and looked back at him.
"Do you hear that?"
The sound of water was plain to his ears, but even louder than that was the sound of children's laughter and the grunting of what sounded like pigs. "People!" he said, and scrambled the rest of the way down.
The trees opened up into a magnificent valley dotted with splendid-looking groves of trees on both sides of a shallow rushing river. Several modest bamboo huts stood on the near side of the bank, and at the entrance to one of them, two children were playing in the mud. Behind the house, in a crude wooden enclosure, were the pigs.
"Hello?" Yui called. "Hello there!"
The children stilled for a moment, wide-eyed, hands and faces covered in mud, and he couldn't help but laugh as one of them vanished inside the house and came back a moment later with a large, broad-faced woman in tow. She looked surprised to see them, but she smiled cordially enough, and Yui smiled back. He trailed behind her, not sure what to say. If Yui was going to take the lead, he thought, he'd let her.
"We're travelers from Sairou," Yui began when they came closer, "and I was wondering if you knew of a village or town around here? We heard there was one about an hour's distance, but we don't know what direction."
"Oh sure," the woman said, her rurally accented dialect strange to his ears, and he had to strain to catch what she was saying. Yui didn't seem to have any trouble following along. "Due east, if you follow the river. Can't miss it. Water flows directly through the center of town." She narrowed her eyes critically at them, obviously wondering what two young people were doing hiking through the mountains. He didn't know what they'd say if she asked, but she didn't ask.
Yui bowed politely. "Thank you very much."
"Don't mention it," the woman said, then raised a broad hand suddenly. "Safe journey!"
He moved up beside her as they made their way down past the cottages to the river. It was much wider than it had looked from far up the hill, though it seemed to be just as shallow, gurgling in its huge basin as it spilled over a rocky bed and disappeared behind the curve of the looming hills in the distance. On a whim, he stopped, bent over and slipped off his shoes, and then splashed into the water. It foamed around his ankles and he reveled in the feel of sand between his toes as Yui watched him with amusement.
"Come on in," he said. "There's no use wasting a good river."
She laughed and took off her shoes too, wading in as he moved aside to make room for her. The water rose almost to mid-calf where he stood, and suddenly on a whim he held out his hand to her. "Shall we go?" he said.
She looked at his hand and then back at his face. He tried to keep the smile there, but he could not, feeling the strain on the corners of his mouth. Drops of river water splashed up to the bare skin of his outstretched arm and he wondered what he would do if she rejected him after all. No more apologies, he'd said earlier this morning, but this situation was not like the rest.
"I don't-" he began, and she reached out a little unsteadily and placed her hand in his. Her palm was slightly sweaty, and smaller than he had expected. They stood there together for a moment in the roar of the river, and then he squeezed her hand and began to walk.
The river wound behind the hills they had seen earlier from the woman's hut, cutting a deep chasm through steep valleys that somehow felt to him more familiar than the red cliffs of Sairou ever had. Yui's hand wrapped around his loosely, and he almost felt as if he should not look down at her face at all, as if the pressure of his hand on hers was a sacred daydream, something that would disappear if he dared to test the reality of it. There were words he must say, he felt. Words that she should hear before they reached whatever destination they were heading towards, words that might have no bearing on anything but the state of his heart, if she was willing to listen. But there was something about the warmth of her hand and the cool water of the river and the bright sun beating down on the both of them that said to him, not yet.
"I was thinking we could stay the night in the village," Yui said, and he caught in her voice the wistfulness of someone who was used to the comfort of a solid mattress and a hot meal. How hard was it for her to have to endure all those nights with him in the forest? he wondered, and suddenly felt a bit guilty.
"We can do that," he said. "How much money do we have?"
Her hand tensed in his. "I don't know. I didn't pack any."
"I have a little," he began, and then the thought of Soi's mysterious bag hit him, and he stopped walking, trying to fumble open his pack with one hand while still holding onto hers with the other.
Yui watched him curiously. "What are you doing?"
"It might be money," he said, and she evidently had realized what he was up to, because she let go of his hand and moved around behind him to open his pack for him. He rubbed the suddenly free hand against the side of his shirt. The wind against his damp palm was dry and cool.
The pouch Yui placed in his hand was as heavy as he remembered it, and he fumbled the drawstring open as she looked over his shoulder, reaching one hand inside the pouch and feeling the hard, flat, cold surfaces of metal there.
"It's money," he said in amazement, tipping the bag into her cupped hands. "Look, Yui." He'd never seen this much money in his entire life, he thought, recalling the simple lives his parents led, remembering the early mornings and the late evenings at market. "We've got enough to stay in the village forever, if you'd like."
Yui laughed softly and fingered the coins in her palm. The bag seemed still just as heavy as it had been before he had given her the coins. "One night's enough."
"Two nights," he said, and he looked up from the bag into her face, into her eyes. He caught the trace of a worried expression before her facial muscles relaxed and she smiled at him, as if she had been waiting for him to look at her for a very long time. He noticed, as if for the first time, how long her eyelashes were. "Until we figure out where we're going. Because unless I'm mistaken, you have no clue."
She opened her mouth as if to protest, then shut it. "No," she said. "You're right. I don't know. I've been...walking, hoping I'd remember something, maybe. Or that something would happen, maybe..." A sigh. "I'm sorry. It's not fair to you, Kaika."
"I trust you," he said simply.
A moment's hesitation, and then Yui said, without meeting his eyes, "Thank you. That means a lot."
There was an awkward silence, and then she made a sound in the back of her throat that was almost a laugh, but not quite. "Well, Soi trusts us, anyway," she continued, as if the moment had not happened. "Though I wonder if that's wise."
"She said the bag was full of everyday things we'd forgotten." He dug another fist into the bag, wondering if it had a bottom, or if it was one of those magic bags that he'd heard about in legends, the ones given by the gods that could be poured and poured and never went empty. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to be one of them, because the bag had a bottom and he could feel its rough cloth surface quite tangibly. "I suppose you could-"
"Kaika?" Yui said curiously as he broke off the sentence abruptly, fishing around in the bottom of the bag for that odd shape he had felt, the shape amid the flat discs of metal that was smaller, spherical and ridged, and not money, but it seemed to have disappeared amid the rest of the coins. Impossible, he thought, and kept digging, fingers scrabbling till they felt quite numb.
And then he found it.
He grabbed ahold of it, not caring that he snagged a few coins in his grip as well, bringing his closed fist out of the sea of coins out into the open air, and Yui stared at it, then at him.
"What are you doing?"
"I found something," he said, not bothering to elaborate as he opened his fist and picked the coins off the object that lay there, throwing them back into the bag and shifting it into the crook of his free arm as he examined the thing that was left there.
"What is that?" she wondered, moving closer.
That was a good question, was his first thought as he gazed down at it. Surely it had to be a mistake, because why would Soi place something such as this in a bag full of money? It felt light in his hand, surface deeply pitted with what looked like scores formed by eons of erosion, but which could not be because he realized in the next instant that what he held was not a rock, nor was it any sort of mystical object that should puzzle the human mind.
The object shining dully in the palm of his hand was a small, white clam shell.
