Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei
Notes: On June 11th, 1917, the battleship Sakaki was torpedoed in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Malta, during a heavy fog. The hit took out the bow, gunroom, and engine room, and smashed the bridge. Fifty-nine men died. Strangely enough, the ship did not sink.
As mentioned earlier, abortion was officially illegal in Japan at this time; it was only legalized after World War II. Socially, however, Japan has a long history of abortion and infanticide. Traditionally abortion was carried out by inserting a rod—for example, long chopsticks or a barley stalk—soaked in some sort of mixture (usually involving mercury) into the uterus to pierce the fetal body. The risk of piercing the uterus and introducing infectious bacteria is, I feel, obvious.
I adjusted Shinji to be older than Yuuki and Ruka because the draft was implemented for those 20 years old and up. Daiki joined the military of his own volition at age 18.
The Bolshevik Revolution took place in November of 1917 according to the Gregorian calendar (October in the Julian). France asked Japan to interfere in Russia in 1917, which they refused to do initially. However, in July of 1918 at the request of Woodrow Wilson, Japan sent 70,000 troops to Russia, and the Imperial Japanese Army remained there until 1922.
There was a dispensary, designed purely for tuberculosis patients, built in 1915 in Osaka.
A kamidana is a shelf wherein a family upkeeps a Shinto shrine. San-san-kudo is a ritual of sharing sake, first between bride and groom, and then between their families. I found practically nothing on the actual text of a Shinto wedding, which is the only reason why the second ceremony is not detailed.
"The adulteress's house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death." – Proverbs 7:27
Love and Blood
-June 11th, 1917
Daiki's imagination had been filled with images of Hell pretty much since the day he had learned of it. Aimi had preferred to skim over the harsher aspects of their religion, choosing instead to focus on the concepts of love, forgiveness, and grace; it had been one of Takashi's offhand comments after Aimi's death and his insatiable childlike curiosity that sent Daiki to his father's library to root through the pages and pages of writings by Catholic movers and shakers. The one labeled Inferno had kept his interest the longest; the descriptions of the different layers of hell fascinated him and then became ingrained in his mind, as if they were Gospel truth as much as the death and resurrection.
It was funny, but he couldn't recall one of the levels of Hell being so cold and so dark blue as the place he was in now; the sun blocked from penetrating the water by the thick fog that had enveloped the sky and by the blackness of the Sakaki as it valiantly kept the gaping hole caused by the torpedo above water.
It was also funny how he thought of Yuuki, as he watched mangled appendages and shreds of metal that had been torn from the ship floating by him, somehow sinking faster than he was. The ripped-up arms and legs and chunks of ship reminded him of the swath of cloth he had torn off Yuuki's kimono the night before he left, before dragging her to the floor by her hair. For a moment it was like she was there as well, and having her share this unknown hell with him, the one of sinking into unfathomable depths for the rest of eternity, somehow made the sea's temperature a literal cold comfort.
He didn't quite mind the seawater filling up his mouth as he vocally wished Yuuki a similar fate. At least it was somewhat replacing the blood escaping from his head and drifting away with the tide.
-June 20th, 1917
Three women had been there that day a few weeks ago, huddled together in a small line of nerves, waiting to be called in or found out. The woman to her right also claimed uncertain paternity as the reason why she needed to send the child back. The woman to her left said, in mournful voice punctuated by wracking coughs, that she was too sick to continue a pregnancy.
Yuuki was the last one called in. She remembered the room was cramped, and dark. He explained that this was so attention from the outside would not be drawn to the room; a darkened window was not interesting to passers-by.
He warned her, before chloroforming her, that she'd be in pain when she woke up, and that she might bleed; the other two who were now sleeping off the procedure had both bled like stuck pigs.
Two voices, one hers and one Asato's, resounded in her head, faintly begging her to get up and leave. But before she could truly acknowledge either, a cloth was pressed to her face and she automatically inhaled. When she woke up she found dried blood caked onto her inner thighs, as had been expected. He said that she'd been the worst of them all, even the sick woman.
The day had been on her mind more than she would have liked, the same way that Asato had not left her alone during the two months that she had doggedly avoided him. It was on her mind when Takashi and her parents called her into the main room of her childhood house.
She had to read the letter several times, distracted by her parents' preemptive whispered condolences and Takashi's conspicuous silence. Had it come a year earlier she would have acted the part of the bereaved wife before hiding in her room to thank whatever higher powers had been involved with freeing her from Daiki's grasp. Instead now the words seemed to reach into her lungs and squeeze out the blood she was suddenly coughing onto the paper.
-November, 1917
"You didn't have to come with us, Ruka."
"Of course I had to." Ruka shifted her weight, her hand resting on Shinji's arm. Ken'ichi and Natsumi stood further before them, closer to the train tracks, in a similar pose. "She's my family, too. Well, tomorrow she will be, officially."
They had been planning on a July wedding, but Daiki's death and Yuuki's illness had thrown everything off-course. A strange sense had settled over the two houses, as if hands were wrapped around each resident's throat, fingers tensing and flexing, continually threatening to tighten their grasp. Ruka had assigned herself to suicide watch for both her father and Asato; the numb silence they had imprisoned themselves in kept her up at night, sick with nerves. Several times over the past few months she'd asked the twins to take turns keeping watch at their father's door while she holed herself up in Asato's room.
Ruka had been willing to postpone the wedding indefinitely, until both her family and Shinji's felt the sense of suffocation lifting. But, during one of their long quiet moments outside together, Shinji told her that he'd gotten the notice of conscription and would be leaving as 1918 was ushered in. Rumors were swirling about whether he'd end up fighting the Germans or the Russians. Now more than ever, he told her, he wanted the certainty of a wife waiting for him if he returned home, and if not, at least a memory of a wedding to take with him.
Natsumi wrote to Yuuki in Osaka of the news of the new wedding date. Yuuki wrote back, with penmanship that betrayed a weakening hand, that she would never forgive them if she missed it. Against her doctors' wishes she had dragged herself out of Toneyama Dispensary and onto a train, reserving a private car to keep public air free of tuberculosis.
Ken'ichi and Natsumi had initially decided that only they would be picking their daughter up from the station, reasoning that they'd already fulfilled their duty to have children and it wouldn't be as great a loss if they shared her disease. Shinji categorically refused to not partake his sister's homecoming, saying that it was bad enough that the rest of the country was avoiding her. And Ruka had simply shown up that morning and went in silence with them to the station.
The blow of the horn just barely heralded the coming train, which barreled past them at what felt like lightning speed. Its rapidity made up for the long wait there was for Yuuki to appear; healthy passengers and luggage were given exiting priority. When she finally did appear, wheeled out by the doctor that had accompanied her, her family and she stared at each other, both wondering how she could have gotten so small in the five months since she had immediately been packed off to Toneyama.
"So what do you think?" Ruka asked, raising and lowering the translucent fabric over her face. "Veil, no veil?"
"Why didn't you decide this earlier, Ruka-nee?" Asato eyed his sister with exasperation. The push and pull between Catholic and Shinto, and England and Japan, had been a constant theme during Daiki and Yuuki's wedding, covering most of the ground for Shinji and Ruka's own, but certain things had been left to personal preference.
"When did I have time to?" Ruka shot back, defensively. "You try planning a wedding in a few weeks."
"I feel like I have," he returned, maintaining a good-natured tone. Ruka had jumped at the chance to change her silent vigils over her brother into meetings, and despite himself, Ruka's vigor was both infectious and distracting; over the past few weeks he had found himself actually smiling a few times. "Go without it. It doesn't suit you."
Ruka took one last glance at herself in the mirror before agreeing with her brother and setting the veil aside. "And…I actually think that's it."
"Thank God, I thought it would never end…"
Ruka made a face at her brother, before her expression melted into a laugh. "Me too. I think I will actually sleep tonight, Asato-otouto."
"Considering the wedding's tomorrow, I hope you do."
"Great, you had to remind me of that, didn't you?" Ruka grinned.
"You forgot?" Asato tossed back, in mock horror. "Maybe you shouldn't be getting married if you can't even remember when the wedding is supposed to be."
"We are beyond ready to get married," Ruka said, flopping to the floor. "If I actually had to wait all that time I said I would, I think I would have strangled something. Waiting for him to come home is going to drive me crazy as it is."
The subtle change in her tone, accompanied by the slight pink tint that began to color her face, cued Asato to scramble across the floor and take his seat beside her, in time for her leaning frame to land solidly against his. She hadn't much discussed the fact that a month after the wedding Shinji would be gone, though every once in awhile he noticed her stop whatever task she was doing to stare off into space, mind occupied by thought. It hadn't helped that there wasn't much to distract her. Takashi moved through the house like a ghost, staying shut up in his office for hours-long stretches. The twins' antics were centered mainly around harmless practical jokes played on their older sister, whose end results were usually amusing but whose preparation required a lot of secrecy and therefore isolation from her. Asato himself was in desperate need of distracting, hence his inclusion in the wedding plans.
"How much longer do you think this war can go on?" Ruka asked quietly.
"I don't know, Ruka-nee. It's been three years; I think all sides are getting sick of it."
"One thing I've noticed is that men never tire of violence."
"Says the girl who can and will beat the crap out of me…"
Ruka straightened up a moment to punch his arm, and then managed to giggle at the irony of the situation. The laughter was short-lived, however, and she slumped again; Asato slipped his arm around her and clasped her to his side.
"I don't know how many more funerals I can go to."
"Try not to think that way, 'Neesan. There's no guarantee he won't come back alive."
"I thought that way about Daiki, and he didn't come back at all."
Mentions of their older brother usually silenced Asato immediately, and this time was no different. In some of his crueler moods, he hoped that a shark had made a good meal out of Daiki. These thoughts horrified him once the bad humor passed, and despite the hatred he and his brother had for each other he would wish that Daiki had come home, or at least a body had been recovered, for the family's sake.
"I'm just…I'm really scared, Otouto," Ruka said, her voice low and strained, struggling as it was against the lump in her throat. "I keep thinking that in a few months I'm going to get a letter saying that I should be proud that he fought so valiantly…"
Asato shifted the pressure in his arm to pull her against his chest; the moment he did so he felt warm droplets of water begin to soak through the front of his kimono. It wasn't often that Ruka turned to him for comfort; more often than not when she cried it was more out of compassion for him than out of her own sense of despair.
"And I know that-that Mom, she would say that if God called him, it would be for the best," Ruka stammered, turning her head so she could talk freely, "but she's not here to tell me that herself, and…and I don't want to be Daddy, Otouto."
Asato choked back the apology that had been waiting inside him for over nine years. If he tried again to verbally blame himself for Aimi's death, rage would accompany Ruka's sick anxiety, and that was the last thing she needed right now. He rested a hand on the back of her head and let it run down her cascade of black hair.
"I'm sorry," Ruka said, straightening up and trying to wipe away the tears on her cheeks; more stubbornly replaced them. "I'm being stupid, and you don't need this right now…"
"You're allowed to worry about your fiancé, 'Neesan," Asato said, trying to ignore the memory of Ruka walking in from escorting Yuuki back home unable to look at him.
"Some wedding this is going to be, huh?" Ruka continued, almost laughing. ""Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your life?" "Yes, for all two months that are left of it!"." She released a mock wail, too close to the real thing for Asato's liking. "And then I faint at the altar."
"I'll catch you before you knock over anything important," Asato said. It had been decided that Asato would be Shinji and Ruka's only attendant. Shinji's friends had not undergone the process of conversion and thus were ineligible to stand for them; Ruka had no one outside the family she could count as more than an acquaintance, and as dearly as she loved the twins she did not trust them to behave themselves any further than she could throw them.
"I can always count on you, can't I?" Ruka said, running her finger around the rim of her lower eyelid. "Sheesh, look at me, blubbering like this. When did I become such a girl?"
"You're not a girl?"
Ruka punched Asato's arm again, but the strike was light, and she was giggling once more. A few swipes of her hand took away the tear tracks on her face. The giggle turned into a full-blown laugh when Asato's fingers wiggled in front of her face and then flicked her nose.
"Thank you, Asato. Thank you for that." She leaned towards him again, but this time she rested her chin on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his back. He returned the embrace, and they did not relinquish their hold on each other for a long, long time.
"Shinji and Ruka, have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?"
"We have."
"Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?"
"We will."
"Since it is your intention to enter into marriage, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and His Church."
Ruka's hand met Shinji's halfway; they allowed themselves a moment of playing with each other's fingers before settling on their grip.
"I, Shinji, take you, Ruka, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness," the thought of his sister briefly passed through Shinji's mind, "and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life."
"I, Ruka, take you, Shinji, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad," her breath caught in her throat for a moment, "in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life."
"You have declared your consent before God and the Church," the priest announced. "May the Lord in His goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with His blessings. What God has joined, man must not divide." The priest paused for a moment, allowing the small congregation soak in the benediction. "Who holds the rings?"
"I do," Asato said, nearly missing the question, so absorbed was he in the radiance he could see emanating from his sister's face. The priest held out his hand for the rings, which Asato handed over. As he settled back into his place, Asato caught a glimpse of Yuuki, sitting towards the back of the church, her face covered by the veil Ruka had rejected to try to protect the air.
"May the Lord bless these rings which you give to each other as a sign of your love and fidelity," the priest said, before placing the rings in the bridal pair's palms.
"With this ring, I thee wed," Shinji said, gently placing the ring on Ruka's finger and sliding it into place.
"With this ring, I thee wed," Ruka said, more forcefully doing the same. Once the ring was in position she pushed herself up on her tiptoes, catching her now-husband in a passionate kiss that, after nearly instantly getting over the initial shock, Shinji was more than happy to respond to.
After a few seconds a murmur of impatience ran through the congregation, and the priest cleared his throat. Asato himself was torn between enjoying his sister's happiness and wanting to pulverize Shinji for daring to kiss Ruka in such a manner.
Ruka finally planted herself on her feet, stepping back out of a sense of propriety but not shame. All eyes turned expectantly to Asato, and he ran his tongue over the inside of his cheeks to wet his mouth.
"God the Father willed that husband and wife should become one flesh in marriage. Let us pray to Him in sincerity of heart on this joyous occasion. We pray for Ruka and Shinji, that their love for each other may be patterned on Christ's love for His bride, the Church. We pray to the Lord."
"Lord, hear our prayer," the rest of the congregants replied.
"We pray that Ruka and Shinji will enjoy the gift of children." The mention of children twisted the knife that seemed ever-present in his gut. "We pray to the Lord."
"Lord, hear our prayer."
"We pray that the parents of Ruka and Shinji will continue to support them on the journey which begins at this altar." Asato could nearly feel the wince Takashi, standing in the front row next to where Aimi would have been, would not allow himself to do. "We pray to the Lord."
"Lord, hear our prayer."
"Father of life and love, in union with…Mary our Mother, who was a wedding guest at Cana, we make our requests in prayer through Christ our Lord."
"Amen."
Ruka turned her head quickly to flash him a grateful and proud smile. The smile sustained him throughout the Nuptial Blessing, the Lord's Prayer, and the dismissal, even as his gaze wandered back towards the lonely figure in the farthest pew, even as in the confusion of the recessional he lost track of both the women he loved.
Out of fairness to Shinji, who had reluctantly converted only to allow Ruka the church wedding she had always wanted, a second, Shinto wedding had been agreed upon by the families. In order to spare the much more pious Tsuzuki family any discomfort, and to avoid having to pay another fee for use of a facility, Ken'ichi and Natsumi had opted to dress up their kamidana for a short and unofficial ceremony, rather than head to a shrine. The decision actually made things easier: Ruka had a chance to change from the white kimono, in her view so saturated with Aimi's faith that it was inappropriate to wear to a Shinto function, into a red one; the heirloom and decidedly fragile cups wouldn't have to risk the perils of travel for the sake of san-san-kudo; the antsy twins could set up the yard for the admittedly small reception which was to follow; and Yuuki could lie down, as the excursion to the church had exhausted her limited supply of energy.
The room the Seika kept their kamidana in, like all the rooms in the house they'd been forced to move into after investments went sour, was intended for only four people to be in at once. Part of the reason Ruka had insisted on Asato standing for her at the church was because there was simply no room for him at the second ceremony, after the newlyweds and their parents had squished themselves, along with the necessary accoutrements, into the room.
Asato helped Ruka adjust her new outfit, a hand-me-down from Natsumi's family that did not fit quite as perfectly as the one from Aimi's, before sharing a tight embrace and a quick good-bye as Ruka rushed inside the room for the second ceremony. The door was shut behind her, and Asato was left alone.
It didn't surprise either of them when Asato found his way to Yuuki's room. He'd never been in her family's house long enough to memorize the layout, but the sound of her wracking coughs left a trail to her bedroom that Asato couldn't resist taking.
"Do you need anything?" Asato asked, after a moment of staring at the wasting body in front of him. "Water, or…?"
"I'm fine."
"You should be lying down."
Yuuki was sitting on the floor, her futon packed away into her closet and her face turned away from him. "I'm sick of lying down. I-"
She was cut off by another cough, and the hand pressed to her mouth could not hide the bloody sputum she choked up.
"You shouldn't get too close," she said quietly, as she felt his weight settle beside hers. "It's…it's really contagious."
"I don't care." His arms settled carefully around Yuuki.
"I care," she countered, still not looking at him. "You shouldn't have to suffer, too…you told me not to do it."
"It's still my fault," Asato said, gently pulling Yuuki closer to him. "If I hadn't…you wouldn't have gotten pregnant, or you would've known who-"
"I spend all my time at Toneyama lying down and thinking about the abortion," Yuuki interrupted. "Just once…just today, when something good is happening to my family, I would like to sit like a normal person and not talk or think about it."
"Okay."
"You were great, earlier," Yuuki said, after a very long moment of silence. "During the…what are they called?"
"Prayers of the Faithful. And, thank you. I was really nervous."
"I couldn't tell."
"That's good. I didn't want anything to go wrong, for Ruka's sake. She's worried about everything these days."
"It must be hard for her, with Shinji leaving next month."
"It can't be easy on you, either."
"I'm not so worried that I'll have to mourn for him."
"Yuuki?"
She didn't reply immediately. After a moment she began coughing again, her back giving itself over to spasms as she did so. Asato put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around; not recoiling from the splotchy visage sporting tear-lined eyes and fresh blooding running from her mouth. His hands moved up, pulling away strands of hair that stuck to her sweat-soaked face, fingers gently moving against her skin before burying themselves in her thin curtain of hair.
Yuuki was unresponsive to the kiss that came next, neither resistant or enthused, and only tensed when he lowered his head slightly, pressing his lips and then his tongue to the trails of blood on her chin.
"Asato, what…?"
"It's all I can do for you," Asato said, his voice trying not to break, and failing miserably. "I can't fix anything else."
"Don't…Asato, you're just going to get sick, too…"
"I know."
Yuuki pressed her hand against his chest and tried to push him away, but the disease had robbed her of the little strength she'd had, and she succeeded in propelling herself away form him, instead. She wiped at her chin, leaving her hand at her face as she coughed again. More blood fell into her palm; before she could stop him, or he could stop himself, he licked away the stain it left on her lip.
"I know you don't want to," he said quietly, his forehead resting against hers, "but you should lay down. Save up some energy for the reception. They'll be done soon."
"I'm probably going to sit it out, Asato," Yuuki said, resignedly and matter-of-factly. "All I wanted to see was the wedding."
"No, there…there has to be more. There has to be more that you want to see."
"Asato…"
She found herself pulled down again, but this time to the floor instead of topsoil, and she thought that sometimes the end is rather like the beginning. The remembrance of their first rendezvous in the garden, surrounded by the Patrinia that Asato had planted, imposed itself over her mind's eye, and the vision was so lovely that she immediately became enraptured by it…by the quiet peace of an otherwise empty garden, by the feeling of freedom Daiki's imminent departure gave to her, by the yellow and purple that dominated memory's landscape.
The day passed through Asato's mind as well, but instead of flowers or freedom all he could recall was the Yuuki's questions and the inadvertent reminder of Aimi's death. Now, he realized with a sick heart, he saw his mother's face, robbed of warmth and life by the loss of a child and the ravages of disease, in Yuuki's. The struggle to smile despite strength's abandonment was the same.
"Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee," Asato said, his voice barely able to climb higher than a whisper as he pulled Yuuki flush against him. "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and…at the hour of our death."
Yuuki's shook with another fit of coughs; Asato tilted her head up and covered her mouth with his. Her eyes were closed and her expression was peaceful, as if she were ignorant of her convulsions.
"Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death," Asato repeated, running his tongue over her chin and cheeks, unwittingly smearing the blood he was trying to mop up. "Pray for us sinners…" The saltwater falling from his face tempered the iron taste on his tongue. "Pray for us…"
Yuuki exhaled a deep, even surrender of whatever untainted breath was left in her lungs.
"At the hour of our death...Mother, pray for us."
