I will always love (she says, you say), with hands that can no longer hold her.

You have no interest in births. Deaths are an art; births, an accident. Even the ones which are intended add little value to the world. Both the human realm and Netherworld are swollen with a never-ending tide of noise, a cacophony of light and yelling and messiness. The Underworld is crammed with the leavings of both. There is nothing remarkable about a few extra souls being added to the mix. Life is far from precious - it is already much too loud.

But the first time you met Oriyuki was the first time you realized that birth and death could be the same manner of beast, where the start of things could be so merciless, so indiscriminate in their desires that they would boil open silken cocoons to steal away the cowls from the larva within. That birth could be a ruin, a wreckage: an annihilation so complete that there would be no distinction between something first opening its eyes, and something else being destroyed forever.

Your encounter with Oriyuki is the only beginning - and ending - which matters in any world.

It was in her family's estate that you first discovered her, like a precious fleck of lacquer chipped off a cup and forgotten in the wilderness. Simple curiosity had drawn you to wander through the outdoor paths, investigating paths forged already by the snow. The humans caught you in your carelessness; some sharp-eyed watchman had recognized the distortion of your silhouette against the stars as you had drifted idly along on the winds. They brought noise - which you loathe, and would have gleefully smothered - but they brought fire as well, bright crackling tongues hungry for cloth. This, you had recoiled from, jerking back your delicate wrappings before they could be burned.

Playtime was over.

The servants had clambered messily through the walkways in pursuit - but Oriyuki had been the one to capture you, in the end. The snare she used had been woven from the fibers of her heart. She had looked into your soul as you were busy spying into hers, lost in the wonder of a shared loneliness that cried all the louder upon sensing its twin - and then let you pass by, without screaming for help. Fear had not slowed a single step. She had beckoned for you to keep going, and then turned to face your pursuers in your stead.

The perfume of her kimono lingered in the night air as you had wavered, and then fled.

Shouts rose once more, this time without coming any closer. You could hear the distant crack and smash as Oriyuki's lantern shattered, flames unleashed as oils spattered everywhere - and then you were free at last. Only the hush of snow remained to welcome you, encircling you safely as you had burrowed into hiding, and waited for the silence to return.

You knew it then: Oriyuki had sacrificed herself for you.

You knew it then: she was the only person who would ever matter again.

Her lovely face had been speckled with bruises as punishment for her defiance. The stains had bloomed like tea leaves in milk, dark outlines dimly visible in gloomy promises before finally breaching the surface. You had touched the marks as gently as you could, watching Oriyuki wince at even the most careful pressure. She had known her own fragility; she had possessed no illusions of being able to fight back, but had only braced herself to endure.

Even so, despite being a stranger - despite being a yōkai - she had found you precious enough to take on those wounds for you, suffering so that you would be spared.

Oriyuki had loved you instantly. And you - you had no choice but to return it with the same lack of hesitation: fully, completely, losing yourself without any whisper of protest, and without any opportunity for self-preservation.

To treasure someone and yet be willing to let them go is said to be the highest form of devotion. Poems are full of these lessons.

You have never believed in such idiocies.

But you obeyed their decree for Oriyuki's sake, whose entire life was defined by the stifling margins of what the aristocracy granted her - and if noble courts championed such foolishness, then she must too. You heeded grudgingly, unwilling to press her into the misery of picking between sides. Other laws took precedence instead, despite how much you heard the rule of your own heart singing: keep her. Keep her safe with you, always.

Another human stood within Oriyuki's world, after all. A mortal thing, composed of heat and fluid, who could bring her smiles and umbrellas and joy in the predictable ways of her kind, albeit in small and stolen amounts. Like you, he touched her face in violation of all propriety, offering simple words of comfort. The crime of it should have had you both flayed. As a nōkanshi, he was barred from entering the gilded cages of nobility for anything save business, and even then without glory or thanks. Lowest caste. Ritually unclean. Barely above a field beast in their eyes. Casketers are the lowest of the low - by human accounts - beneath even merchants, who do not create anything of their own but only benefit parasitically from the work of others.

You are a demon. Both of you are pariahs.

And yet - because of that, because you had felt his plight was so close to your own - you surrendered your beloved to the nōkanshi's care. In doing so, you made the worst mistake of all.

You were right: he is just like you. He could not save her, either.

All of Okuribito's skills, all his gravedigger's courage - all of it was as equally ineffective as your whisper-soft fingers and fabric bones, a creature to be rebuked by wards and barred by spells, cries of monster and demon bright in your ears. His corpse-tainted hands were barred from even brushing her skin without punishment. Marriage was impossible. He never could have kept Oriyuki safe from her own family's predations; he could never have protected her enough.

You will not surrender her again, not anymore.

Be soft, she tells you (she says, you say). Do not hurt them. Do not hurt him.

She is always with you. She is always with him. You should murder Okuribito in compensation, but Oriyuki's presence keeps you from loathing him just enough not to slaughter him in revenge. The urge lingers in an uneasy hum that belongs to you and you alone. If you could, you would dissect the nōkanshi, peel his skin off and tease free the strands of his muscles down to the barest red bloody scraps. The remainder of his meat could be left in tatters in some anonymous field, to be picked at by scavengers. His bones would be gnawed upon by scavengers marking ownership of his corpse with their teeth.

Some days, Oriyuki does not succeed in keeping your resentment bound, and you spring out from the shadows anyway to ambush Okuribito, hating his yōkai-long ears and the power he has gained only now, now, when it is too late to do anyone any good.

You should know better than to fight him. Not because of Oriyuki's sentiment, but because it is his spell that preserves her body. If he were dead, that spell would dissolve, and then her precious, beautiful body would be gone forever.

So, you must keep him alive. Even until the end of all things, past the end of time and all the worlds which persist, so that you and he are the only creatures which remain: you must keep the nōkanshi alive. He is her coffin. You are her soul.

Even knowing the debt you owe to Okuribito, it is hard to stomach his presence. He holds your dearest love hostage. Without him, Oriyuki's body would be rotting and wormed, lips peeling back from her teeth, skin mottled and soft like a pear too long from the tree, slowly collapsing in upon itself as its innards liquify and seep out. The nōkanshi could not save Oriyuki in life, but he saved the rest of her in ways you could not, not with your hollow fabric heart - which is one more reason to loathe him. His skills have become elevated into the reach of the supernatural now; the man has made himself an avatar of his craft, a grave incarnate. He has transformed himself into a tool to preserve her with. His spiritual energy flows through Oriyuki's veins like borrowed water poured into a dried-up river, sacrificing himself anew each day. His flesh is kin to the coldest earth, clasped around her bones to keep them frozen in time.

It is the least he can do, in apology.

You would perform the same service as well, if you could. You would unravel yourself down to the barest threads and allow your beloved to weave her new flesh from your remains, but she shows no signs of having that desire. Oriyuki has never wished for power. The same grace which allowed her to love both a stray yōkai and a lonely undertaker - it makes her heart too big, almost too big for you to hold. You sweat and strain to encompass it, tucking yourself around the mass in your chest. She is the meal you have swallowed, and yet refuse to digest.

Forgive, (she says, she says) and you find yourself going soft under her tranquility, like a pet rolling meekly beneath its master's palm. Her gentleness seeps outwards from your belly. Her compassion softens your spine. You cannot refuse it, for to do so would be to refuse her, and you would burn before that happens.

Forgive. This is not a tragedy, as she considers it. In death, Oriyuki is finally free.

He is always with her now. She is always with you.

At night sometimes, you clutch your hands to your chest and press them flat, holding them steady against the flexing of your flesh. You clasp them there until you can feel the pulse of your life energy reflected back into your palms and you can pretend it is Oriyuki's living heart echoing back in an endless wave, a steady beat that promises: I am here, I am here, I am here.

You have taken some of Oriyuki's soul. You thought you had taken it all. Oriyuki's physical heart is a literal thing to be parceled out now, a muscle gone still in the grave; her nōkanshi keeps it beating in the same way as a waterwheel might turn, mechanically drumming in reaction to the sluggish blood pressed through it. Bam, bam, bam. Like a wooden board, that's what he's made your beloved's flesh into. His power, forcing her muscles to squeeze. His fingers, massaging her limbs to keep the fluids moving so that they do not pool into new bruises all on their own.

You have watched Okuribito work at times, huddled in the darkness as he lays out the wooden coffin, and opens it up with ritual reverence. He tends to Oriyuki each evening, even though she is beyond such things as sweat and mucus, oil and tears. Even so, he unpacks the paints and cleans her methodically each night, gently spreading a broad white cloth over her body to preserve her modesty while he wipes her limbs down with fresh water, her nakedness protected from even his own eyes. He examines her clothing meticulously for stains and dresses her again, reapplying color to her face with brushes dedicated to that task alone. It eats up hours every time. Sometimes the nōkanshi speaks aloud; he pretends that none of this has happened, and he is simply coming home after a long day at work, eager to share news of the road and weather. He laughs under his breath, as if in reply to some jest that Oriyuki might have made in turn. His affection is there every time he smiles down at her, only allowing himself to touch her hand and cheek with unflagging restraint.

You feel it in your chest, every time he does. A flutter of weakness melting through your ribs. A single flake of snow.

He is diligent about tending to her; that much, you can grudgingly acknowledge. He is not so foolish as to disregard her a second time.

But you got there first, before he did, and you stole her heart too. Oriyuki gifted you both, in death as well as life. Only a fractional glimmer of her spirit remains in her body, enough to allow it to move as she once did, tilting her face in the same endearing manner that she employed in life. Her smile is the same. It is a mercy in many ways that she is not jerked about like a puppet, with limp arms flailing and her skull lolling on her neck. The nōkanshi could never replicate her same grace.

It is not enough to fool either of you into believing she truly lives. For that to happen, Oriyuki would need the rest of what you carry within you, but you do not know how to use the nōkanshi's coffin to bring her back to life. Reincarnation is no longer an option, not after what you both have done to her. Okuribito has already proven once that he does not know the right spells to keep her safe. Any trust you had given him has been incinerated forever.

Such riddles mock your limited understanding. In nightly hunts from long years past, you had overheard Shinto priests in their shrines, saying that there are many parts of the spirit. Death doles them out like a moneylender into distinct, miserly piles. Some amount goes back to the higher gods, some to join the family gods, some to the earthly world around you - and some is lost forever in the process of rebirth, ending its cycle and never being revived again. Memory. History. Identity. All gone.

You listen to the priests more carefully now, head cocked at an inquisitive angle as you listen to them babble, and then smother them.

You are not a god in a shrine; you do not know how much of Oriyuki's soul you have claimed, nor how much of it makes up the unique woman you love. You are not a priest, and onmyōji are less than useless for this. On the tally-list of Oriyuki's life, only the Honorable Enma herself might know how much has been lost like an bird's egg shattered in the grass, tiny slivers of shell embedded in the dirt, so that no matter how long you search, you will never be able to piece it all back together.

But Oriyuki is not condemned to such a doom alone. You have your own soul to fill in the gaps, what little you can understand of them. The material of your life is the warp; she is the weft. You will not allow her to suffer further through neglect, dwindling away in the darkness with no one to save her.

For Oriyuki, you lower yourself to walk as a mortal might, allowing the ground to touch your feet. You curl up on the highest branches of trees, and in the rushes that line the riverbeds. Every path is an undiscovered wonder to wander upon, freely exploring wherever the whim strikes - as she never could, not in her heavy, layered robes, restrained by propriety. Your body is a poor channel for her new experiences, but you offer everything it can provide, leaping gaily over puddles and splintering logs, racing madly through the fields in long bounds of your legs. Running turns to flying, dancing free of the earth - a gift no mortal could have given her - and you feel Oriyuki laughing with pure delight as you lift her through the clouds, unfettered as a star.

Together, you find a nest of young foxes, tumbling through sunbeams and wrestling with one another in squeaking, excited yips. You kneel to let her touch them, her giggles waterfalling through your mind, and then pull her away when their bristling mother reappears.

So beautiful! Like a koto covered in jewels! Crouched beside a bush, she tugs and tugs on your mind until you humor her, lifting the branches to expose a spiderweb still spotted with dew. Delight bubbles up through your chest. The spider scuttles closer, wondering dimly if you are too big to eat, and you wrinkle your nose indulgently at it as Oriyuki marvels at the stripings on its body.

How precious it all is, she gasps, and you agree.

You agree.

It is Oriyuki's face which is reflected back in the river whenever you look. Each time, you reach out to touch it, halting yourself just moments before you would destroy the illusion.

You have never held a soul like this before, twined against your own. But Oriyuki's body did not call it back into itself, and you cannot replace it in turn, and now you are uncertain what new state you have all been left in: her and you and Okuribito, each transforming slowly the longer you hold that which you love.

In the silence of your failure, she tells you things.

You are no human priest - but you do not have to be one in order to understand this portion of what you have inherited from her. Foreign memories flit like butterflies through your thoughts, powder-soft wings stroking the breeze. They scatter when you turn your focus upon them too swiftly. Only when you hold yourself perfectly still do they congregate again, flexing the colors of their wings in your mind.

You have never loved a human before. Humans are creatures of clumsiness and noise, whose layers cannot be unwrapped and rewound without permanently damaging them. You do not know how to woo one. Instead, you listen to Oriyuki share stories about herself, late at night when the moon doles silver crests across the mountain trees. Oriyuki was never given proper respect by her family; you make up for that lack now by giving her all your devotion, and more. You slow every part of yourself down so that only her voice remains, making yourself into mere layers wrapped around the treasure at your core, preserving memories which would have otherwise been lost eternally in death.

When all your thoughts have been finally hushed, then you can hear her best.

Her list is small, but precious. Oriyuki shares it with you like fragments of half-drafted poetry. These were her favorite sweetcakes, that was her favorite tea, those the dumplings that will always remind her of a summer spent catching fireflies. You must be very quiet to listen. Her words come in whispers and impressions, as gentle and fragile as spiderwebs on bare skin. To hear her, you must become more like her, day by day, until the lines finish blurring entirely and she will be the one left wearing your bones.

But you will not give her back even then. Even if you become the ghost haunting her blood, and Oriyuki is the one who has engulfed you completely: you will not give her back again.

Snow is the season of many of your unions with Okuribito. Suitable: you have begun and ended with Oriyuki. It was winter when he lost her, too. Now the nōkanshi wanders forever, having left his hovel behind and the way that Oriyuki's family had ruined all of your lives with it.

It is in winter that you trouble Okuribito most frequently. You do not know if it is because of Oriyuki, or in spite of her - only that whenever the sky clouds, flattening out the heavens into a stretch of grey unblemished by any snarl, you find yourself restless. Anguish tangles your chest into a single, searing blister. You refuse to rest until you have spent it all on vengeance, ignoring Oriyuki's voice as you hunt the nōkanshi through the wilderness.

You do not know how much Okuribito suspects of you; you never know if he glimpses Oriyuki's face in yours. He fights with enough enthusiasm that you believe he is unaware, for if he killed you, then he would lose Oriyuki forever. Unless he could somehow wrestle her spirit from you, and reunite it with her flesh - then, perhaps. Perhaps.

But you will not let it happen, not even if you knew it was possible. You will not risk Oriyuki's remaining soul, not to this nōkanshi's hands, nor any other. He will have to slaughter you for his prize. He would have to force Oriyuki's body to kill you, and the thought of that irony makes you chuckle, dry and dusty, into your bitter threads. You would eagerly die to give her fresh life, but there is no one in the world who could earn your trust enough to see it done.

It is always Oriyuki herself who interrupts you both in the end, heart and flesh making a wall against your angers, placing her body between you before either side can cause permanent harm.

There have been other nights beside those quarrels, more peaceable ones where Okuribito has been ignorant of his protection. Midnight vigils where you have watched him rest, tucked up like a forest animal against Oriyuki's coffin. He looks so small like that, so vulnerable, and you yield to the prodding to creep closer, observing how not even oblivion can smooth out the lines of worry in his face. He frowns, even in his dreams. His heart is a raw welt of loneliness, only barely soothed by Oriyuki's body nearby.

Even as Okuribito sleeps, you can sense that pain like an inflamed wound snaking throughout his body. It is so intense that it does not matter that you have claim to Oriyuki's soul: the ache burrows back into you like your own blood fed backwards into your veins, as if you were drinking salt water endlessly in hopes of slaking a thirst. The emptiness is so familiar that you cannot deny it as kin, and in doing so, you know that - no matter how you may wish otherwise - you and the nōkanshi are still so much the same.

One evening, you come across Okuribito while he is already fighting off a pack of onibaba, their mouths leering as they fence with him, long knives glittering in the trees. His coffin is shut tight on the ground, Oriyuki tucked safely within. The onibaba are meat-eaters: they hunger for the contents of his coffer, to reap the flesh on both sets of bones.

The fools.

They are little things, warbling their hungers as they attack. Their ungainliness is deceitful. They stoop and hobble forward, waggling their hips as they gallop closer, laughably clumsy - until they are in arm's reach, and then all their awkwardness melts away into a final, fatal lunge. The nōkanshi does not give them the opportunity to demonstrate. He backs away readily, black energies twining around his fingers as he draws a clear line of defense, and refuses to let them cross it.

Okuribito has more than enough power to repel mere onibaba. Still, he is predictable and he is slow, and you will not allow the creatures to figure out how to use both flaws to lure him into a trap. It would be humiliating for Oriyuki if he should fall so readily. He has shamed her enough.

With two sweeps of your arms, cloth spins through the air. It is a simple matter to navigate around Okuribito's broader attacks; he is far from agile, preferring instead to plant his feet on one plot of soil and defend it until his attackers either die or grow weary of dodging his aim. One by one, white ribbons slice through sagging flesh, until the last of the onibaba is scrambling away, and you are floating high on the breeze to watch them depart, buoyed by your own smugness.

You think to leave Okuribito there, already bored with the night's work. The stars are calling. The air is clean and fresh, laced with moonlight.

Oriyuki has other ideas.

She lures you back with the subtlest of touches, nudges so natural that they feel like your own urgings, second-guessing your own whims until you find yourself floating down again. Okuribito's head is turned away from you, studying the direction the onibaba had fled in case they have already planned to return. You are soundless in your descent. Closer and closer you drift - until the wind finally betrays your mischief, rustling your wrappings while you are still too far away to attack.

Okuribito startles at the noise, whirling; the heavy layers of his clothes ripple in a wave like ocean froth. Hostility wars with suspicion on his face, both emotions marching in lockstep. He lifts a hand, already summoning a clump of energy into his palm.

Oriyuki's coffin rattles.

It surprises him as much as it shocks you. Torn between lashing out at you and heeding the reaction of Oriyuki's corpse, Okuribito tries to obey both. He jerks his hand down for only a moment before clawing it back up into the air - but the coffin buckles again, and you sense it now, a spark-quick flicker of concern echoing in the back of your mind. Concern, yes. But also determination, hot and fierce as a shattered lantern in the snow, its destroyer willing to protect her loved ones at any cost to herself.

You have always underestimated Oriyuki. Everyone has.

Confusion colors Okuribito's wits. You ignore him, too busy concentrating on the faint whispers of whatever Oriyuki's spirit might be trying to say. It is a ceasefire by default: both of you have gone still as stones, all enmity forgotten as you each listen desperately for a voice that will never come.

Finally, the moment passes. The coffin is dormant again. Oriyuki remains silent in your thoughts. You regal Okuribito with a long, disdainful stare, blank wrappings conveying as much contempt as you can manage, and lift your chin with a sniff.

The breeze catches you once more; you drift backwards, letting the air wrap its fingers around your weight. It is long past time to go.

"Wait," he calls out, looking at you, and you feel an unwelcome thump in your chest, a tug like that of a bird flinging itself against walls to get out. It pulls you back towards him, reeling you in like a kite. Unwillingly, you bob lower to the ground, feeling grass against your toes.

"You," Okuribito begins, hoping to stuff a thousand questions into a single moment, and losing them all before he can make an attempt at even one. He takes another breath, tries again. "You know why the spell failed, don't you?"

His voice cracks like a whip across the field.

"You know what happened to Oriyuki. Why she could not be revived. Tell me. Please, you have to - you have to tell me what went wrong. How I can fix this. If there's a chance she can still come back to life - "

Affection bursts suddenly through your chest like a fruit splitting its skin, sweet juices staining everything they drip upon. It is a fondness which reminds you of the honey which Oriyuki remembered to you one afternoon: as golden as the scattered rays of sunlight overhead, of another girl laughing beside her, of the pleasure of sneaking a treat away from her family's eyes. She is so full of love still, overbrimming with it. The ocean of her heart meets all of your boundaries, and pours through.

You float upwards. You smile.

"Sleep well," she says, with your mouth.

You leave Okuribito with no more answers than before, on either side.

Becoming the vessel for Oriyuki's spirit is not what you expected. Any other outcome would make more sense. You could accept if she remained a mere whisper nestled alongside your instincts - or if you became her nourishment instead, willingly dissolving away beneath her presence as if she were a golden thread being stitched upon your plainer cloth. You would have understood if she had reclaimed her existence again in such a manner, like a kimono slowly earning its folds after the silk had been measured and cut: a birth that is not, and could never be an accident.

But this change is unpredictable. Oriyuki is too vast for your limitations. You are forced to reshape yourself around her, a second living coffin even as the nōkanshi has made himself into the first. She is the energy which pulls the two of you back together endlessly, like string matching scraps of discarded fabric into a single patchwork blanket. She will not let you destroy one another; she will not allow either one of you to retreat into isolation alone. Each time you and Okuribito clash, the edges of your differences merge like skin freezing into snow. Oriyuki reweaves what remains, dissolving you into string and braiding your lives into a new tapestry that only she knows the final pattern for.

Okuribito, yourself. Both waiting, both listening for the ways in which she speaks. Both continuing to breathe on behalf of her.

Between the two of you, Oriyuki will never truly die.

Her body remains with him. Her soul is with you. But it is Oriyuki's heart which cradles you both, greater than anything either one of you could contain - warming your thoughts each evening, grasping Okuribito's hand whenever he calls for her - and in her care, you are all made whole.