Chapter 5
"Naa, Kouryuu, where do you sleep?"
The two boys were walking toward Kouryuu's room. Kouryuu had just finished sweeping the remainder of the leaves, and was heading for bed. His only punishment was being denied his supper; Goku had had his and was rubbing his stomach, which was growling as though it had not received several bowls of noodles.
"In my bed. You sleep on the floor." Kouryuu opened the door to his room, which was small and barely furnished. A bed lay on the side of the room facing the door, at its foot a narrow wooden closet. There was a low table beside the bed, on top of which was a thick roll of old, dusty cloth.
"Why can't I sleep with you?" Goku ran up to the bed and sat on it. "This is much softer than the floor."
"That's my bed. Get off it." Goku reluctantly got up. Kouryuu took the roll of cloth and handed it to him; he gaped at it, not knowing what to do. "That's a futon. Unroll it on the floor." He lay in bed and turned around, pulling his blanket up.
"I don't want to sleep on the floor! Kouryuu, wake up!" He shook Kouryuu, who remained still as if asleep. He sighed and got to work unrolling his futon, muttering under his breath about the selfishness of certain people. He lay down on it and gazed at the ceiling, the shadows of night playing idly on the wooden eaves. It was his first night at a temple; in fact, his first night under a roof. He had spent most of his life wandering by the river on the mountain where Kouryuu found him; he thought he'd never leave it, but by some strange fate Kouryuu had appeared just that day, took his hand and led him to a new life in a temple he knew nothing of. He had few memories of the time before the river. Travelers seldom passed through it, and Kouryuu was the first person he had seen, or talked to, in several years. He had no real concept of time; the sun set and the moon rose, eternally as it had seemed to him; day after day it was the same. The sky was blue every time he raised his face to it; the woods and grass were green, whenever he looked up from the river to check. Only the waters of the river shifted continuously, changing the face of the river so that it wore a million different faces every day. His own face did not change, every time he looked into the river; it remained childish and young, the golden eyes always round and bright, the brown hair always unruly and long. He touched the band of gold wrapped around his forehead. Even it was untarnished, a familiar weight.
He grinned at the ceiling. It had been nice to hear his own voice again. He wanted to practice it some more, to shout at the top of his lungs, but he had a feeling that doing so would displease the people who had taken him in. He rubbed his ankles and wrists cheerfully; the old monk whom Kouryuu called oshou-sama had kindly removed the manacles, and the lightness of his limbs thrilled him. While he was still living by the river he hadn't given them much thought; the weight had been a daily chore, a feeling he had associated with the sound of the river and the softness of the grass beneath his bare feet. Its loss made him giddy with an unreleased energy; he wanted to run through the halls of the temple, seeking out every unopened door, every hidden crevice.
The dull, dark shadows of the ceiling soon bored him; the stars were far prettier, he knew, and he had fallen asleep several times while trying to count them. He got up and quietly approached the small window, which was on the wall beside Kouryuu's bed. Through the metal bars he could see the moon, pale and round, no longer full as it had been the night before when he'd last looked at it. The stars were a series of little pinpoints of bright light amidst a sea of velvety black sky. How often he had looked up at this sky, this dark expanse that stretched on and on forever. He had thought that his life would never be anything more than lazy afternoons spent sitting by the river, watching its water flow on and on, perhaps in the same direction the sky stretched. Those days, like the river and the sky, had seemed to have no end; life would always be the same, walking barefoot on the soft river bank, following the flow of the water...
Kouryuu's voice had come from out of nowhere, piercing sharply through the calm of the forest. Goku had turned around to see a short boy in a plain cotton robe, his legs and feet bare. These, however, were not what had caught his attention. From the start he had seen the boy's golden head, his eyes narrow as though he were sleepy, colored a royal purple, deep as the darkness at dusk when the sun had gone down and the stars were getting ready to shine. A portent of things to come, and Goku had known it, deep within his soul. This boy had come to take him away from the dragging monotony of the river, of an endless sky which had no limit.
He gazed on the sleeping boy, his head turned to the side facing the other way, his purple eyes closed in sleep. Was he dreaming of how he had come across his new friend? Maybe friend was too strong a word; Kouryuu treated him indifferently, as though Goku were a nuisance he hadn't wanted to bring home. He probably hadn't thought of finding Goku at all; perhaps he was just taking a walk in the woods when he happened across him.
Kouryuu slept on, oblivious of the deliberation going on in Goku's mind. He knew nothing of how greatly he had changed Goku's life; in all probability he didn't care. But Goku did.
Outside the wind blew softly among the drying leaves of the trees. The autumn night was cold, as if the moon were a round chunk of ice that gave off chilling waves. Beneath it lay the temple, where not one person, either monk or disciple, made a sound. Goku's breath was warm as it escaped his nostrils; was Kouryuu as warm under his blanket? Goku hoped he was.