Holding a chipped cup of sake in her calloused hands, Dororo looks out at the gaping darkness of the night, and sighs. Her white breath, like a ghost, catches onto the breeze and disappears. It is very cold –an empty autumn night, without crickets; only last leaves glittering on pallid branches.
Now that the rice is harvested, the fields sleepily seem to be waiting for the winter. Even the village, with the harvest festivities already passed, has mellowed down to the damp days of fog, and the smell of smoke hanging from the air. It had been a lovely autumn, she thinks, with the trees burning garnet in the long, delightful hours of sundown.
Distracted, she sips her sake. The cup gets empty. She pours more. A lovely autumn. With lovely walks through the paths that leave the village, little talks about nothing and everything, grave and trivial alike, but Hyakkimaru never notices.
She is not too exactly sure about time, most of the time, but she knows with painful precision that she had lived ten harvests in the village by the time he, one day, returned. And since then, it has been three more harvests. Three whole turns of the seasons where she thought she would thrive with her most precious person by her side.
It had been nothing like. Nothing like at all!
The darkness of the night is intimidating, and it is cold. Her sake is also cold. But she does not feel like moving yet, and with the idleness that comes with not having to wake up at dawn the morning after to work in the field, come also the thoughts that work normally does away with. First is always the wistful longing. He had looked very handsome in the last harvest festival, in that auburn yukata. And he was so elegant, always, moving with that unnatural fluidity that she had always admired him for. Maybe it had spilled to her, too, when they were dancing?
He'd been happy. He'd been smiling so charmingly. And she'd been happy too. Horridly happy, masochistically happy, in the most depressing big-brother-is-dancing-with-his-little-sister kind of anguish.
It is unbearable. Every day when she knows she'll see him she thinks she cannot do this anymore. For his sake, she has been trying. He who has nothing at all left, who came back to find her because he feels at home with her, how can she break this illusion for him and leave him destitute again? Refuse him sisterly affection, and betray him with her stupid feelings?
She does not have the heart.
Her cup empties and fills again. It is a small cup, she thinks, anyway. It will not get her drunk. But it will get her to stop thinking, hopefully. And the harvest has been so good, too. The people in the village are happy. The pesky evil creatures that she and Hyakkimaru used to fight in the past leave them largely in peace.
She sighs, and her sigh comes out shaky, like the beginning of tears. The breeze carries its vapour frozen in the cold air away, once more. The expanse of the night beyond gapes like an abyss, and up above, even the stars look cold.
She falls back against the wooden floor, making a hollow sound, far louder than she would have liked. Now she can see the stars better, she thinks, and the edges of her vision blurry slightly. Well, then. Maybe it was one too many small cups of sake. Who cares.
She lets out a puff of whiteish air, and watches it dissolve into the night and the stars. When it is gone, she does it again. But when she is starting to blow out the third, a silhouette towers above her, invading her field of vision. She did not hear him come.
'You're still awake', Hyakkimaru's sleepy voice says, 'I heard a sound, and came to see'.
'Ah, it was just me, bro', she says, sounding more tired than she feels, and less wistful, too. He catches on.
'You're drunk?' he asks, humour lacing his words.
'One too many little cups,' she sagely replies. Now, she hears his feet leave, and then she hears them come again, and he drapes a blanket over her; and only then she realizes she was cold. Cold and sad. He sits down next to her.
And he pours sake into her cup, and takes a slow, contemplative sip, looking out to the darkness. He won't speak, Dororo knows. It is always up to her to break the silence. But she does not want to do it, either. The harvest was good, autumn was beautiful, the stars are very pretty, and all of this she knows he knows. And what he does not know…
She sighs wistfully, hoping the night will just spirit her feelings away and save her from herself. It does not happen.
'Dororo,' she hears, very softly, 'There is nothing to be sad about, that I know. Why are you sad, then?'
Each word is like a needle made of ice, and the question feels horrible.
'Hah, that's silly, it's all right. I drank too much, maybe? You know, after all the harvest and the storing and all the getting ready for winter, it was just so nice to be here and drink and chill…' she's drunk enough for her words to come out slightly slurred, but sober enough to notice they do, and thinks her answer is passable.
Hyakkimaru lets himself fall back to the wooden floor too, and from that position he looks into her eyes, which is strange. Standing, he's so much taller than her, but lying like this, it's uncomfortable, she does not feel like she can hide much, like his. Maybe the time has come, a thought surfaces, to stop living together. Maybe enough is enough, it's not fair to her heart, to want to be vulnerable and honest with herself like tonight, and have him (the cause of it) come into her personal bubble of misery and interrupt her.
He looks at her for the longest while.
'I thought I knew you by now,' he says, eventually, 'but, do I, Dororo?'
She does not like the tone in his voice. 'Why do you say that?' she asks, moodily in spite of herself.
He is looking up at the stars, now. 'I thought you were happy here. But you always look a bit…' he trails off. And then he looks back at her, sleep lingering still a little at the corner of his eyes, which seem so… concerned.
'Is it my fault?'
She sits up, maybe too abruptly, and the cold night air stabs her suddenly, from all around. The world spins a little, and she looks down at him, haloed by his loose hair spilling over the floorboards.
'It's because I love you,' she spills, pouting. Whatever. Whatever, whatever.
Hyakkimaru looks only slightly confused. 'But I love you too.'
'But not like I love you.'
He frowns. 'What do you mean?'
It is so cold, so bitingly cold. She takes the blanket and wraps it around her shoulders too, oddly more concerned about the cold than about the fact that she is actually having this conversation, after three years of having been able to keep quiet.
'..like your sister,' she finally says, looking pained, and then looking away into the night.
'… not like my sister,' she hears, but, having been so certain of the deviancy of her affections, she is not really listening.
'You're beautiful. I felt really ashamed when I arrived, seeing you after so many years. That my first thought was… was….'
She does not get to hear what it was, because he trails off; and when she whips her head around to look at him, he is also looking away now, in slight embarrassment, which is uncommon to see in him.
She stands up, on slightly wobbly legs, with the world still spinning a little bit, rather, a little bit more than before, and takes a set of steps into the darkness.
What…?
Behind her, she hears rustling, and steps, and then, two arms are wrapping around her and her blanket from behind, and the calming, familiar smell of Hyakkimaru is all around her.
'I would not rob you of your brother. So I thought it was better not to say anything.'
She places her hands over his hands.
'I thought the same,' she says. The cold is too cold in spite it all, and the sake is making her sleepy, and his words are making her fuzzy, and there is a happiness in her chest that scares her. 'Let's go in?' she asks.
She feels him nod.
