Chapter 8:
Karin
"Yuri ..." I said, looking at this young man whom I so desperately loved but who would never love me.
"Don't look at me like that. I'll see you soon," he said and I could tell he wasn't speaking the truth, so I tried again.
"Please, please promise me - I don't want to lose you forever!" I was begging, hoping something would change his mind, change his heart toward me. I was begging and praying as hard as I could until -
"Yeah," he said and my heart broke. Now I knew I'd never see him again. My eyes began to tear, blurring the vision of this timeless place, this Plain of Takamagahara. The winds of Time whipped around me and I felt suddenly lighter as my body lifted up on the winds. I reached down to him, wanting to touch him one last time, wanting the weight in my heart to pull me back to him when suddenly, he called out.
"Karin!" and reached out to me, grasping my hand with his fingers, holding more tightly than I thought he ever would. "Karin," he said and I felt my heart lurch at the tears forming in the corners of his scarlet eyes, overflowing onto his cheeks and drizzling like rain down past his chin.
"Yuri…"
"Thank you," he says finally and then my hand slips through his fingers, insubstantial as my thoughts, as empty as my hopes. And then everything faded away.
I hadn't expected to love him. Really, I tried not to. But when I awoke that day, my vision blurry and the world dark, I saw this handsome man bending over me and his eyes… his fiery orbs reminded me of someone – someone I loved, once, long ago. He spoke, and I thought I understood him, then I took his offered hand and rose shakily to my feet. I was dressed so oddly, I thought as I looked down at myself. Now where had I gotten such a short dress?
He took off his coat, an army coat, and draped it around my shoulders, muttering something in my ears, his voice so soft, so gentle, so much like that other voice, the one in my dream.
He lead me away that day, taking me to a friend's home, leaving me to be cared for by the man, Naniwa, and his young daughter. She was a precocious one, and she taught me so much, including the language that came slowly tripping off my tongue. And soon he returned and we spent afternoons together in the garden; taking long walks and talking slowly – he so patient with my halting first sentences in this almost familiar tongue and he - he filled me with stories of his life and what he hoped to do.
He had a home in the mountains and asked me to go there with him. He asked me that in the garden as the koi splashed quietly and the sound of cicadas chirred in the early evening. I looked at him and realized that, though I knew him so little, I loved him. Like a long lost friend. I, who had no memory of where I had come from, no idea who I was, had fallen in love with my rescuer. How romantic.
I remember laughing at myself over that one afternoon as I sat on the porch of his sister's home in Katsuragi. I was rocking our young son and listening to the friendly voices of our neighbors and his charming sister. He had brought me to his home in the mountains and I had fallen in love with the beauty and the peace of the place. We shared his sister's home, for he traveled much for his work. But his sister was kind, and beautiful, and full of warmth and laughter and made me feel welcome, so that this was our home too – mine, my husband Jinpachiro's and Yuri's.
