Dear Akyuu,

My father was an illusion for two.

We worked hard to craft my father: I set aside Kampo for the week to work out the details with Reisen. I allowed her to pore over his journals, and gave her all the pictures I had of him, even those I had drawn myself (inexpertly). I thought it would give him emotional depth, somehow. For her part, Reisen had set upon the task with a sort of grim determination that made me feel safe leaving my father in her hands.

The setup was simplicity itself and we spent the first few visions perfecting the details without my father in the picture. I would meet him in the tea room in the morning, as I did when he was alive. There was to be records and hot tea on the table, music from the phonograph. My father would turn to face me, and I would talk to him about the last few years. Reisen would have him nod at appropriate moments. He would then lay a hand on my shoulder, smile, exit.

Still, the first time I came face-to-face with my illusionary father, he had no face. I had screamed bloody murder, of course.

It's funny in a way, Akyuu. I am sure that, having crossed over, I am the first human to have seen most of Reisen's many different faces. I was a little dazed after that disastrous vision, and she had positively fretted over me.

"Would black tea be okay, Chiyo? I'm really sorry, I gave you a nightmare. Not good at human faces yet. I'm so sorry."

"Where do you put the sugar - do you even want sugar? Would it be okay to light the stove now? Back home, our heaters are a lot more practical, I want to bring them here sometimes. Though I like how yours is a lot more solid. Seems it's proud to be heating this house."

She then gossiped about the Scarlet Devil Mansion and their money issues: they had apparently resorted to paying for Hourai Pharmacy medicine with crates of black tea. We commiserated about clients bartering odds and ends for medicine; I told her about the time a villager had paid for Maoto with dried grasshoppers. Pretty soon, the faceless phantom was the last thing on my mind. Her company felt warm—even after she left for the night, I had felt her presence flitting about the house.

Having reread my letters, I've definitely omitted a lot of these moments with Reisen. Maybe they were soured by the conclusion. If she weren't such a youkai, she'd have become my confidant, I am sure. She had seen through my faces and partitions, after all.

Eventually, we compromised by changing the time of the day to late afternoon, casting my father in silhouette. I would only see the outlines of his face and the hint of his smile, but that would have to be enough. Reisen said that she would double the detail on the surroundings and the music. That had done the trick.

My dreams started blending with the visions. This would've been Fumitsuki, towards the end of Reisen's tutorship. I would awaken before sunup and amble towards the tea room, as was my habit, but feel my skin prickle. I would ignore this sensation; I've been long enough outside the village to know when real danger called, and this wasn't that. Just before entering the tea room though, I would feel an icy fear bloom in my stomach. My heart would pump, spreading the tingling fear to my arms and legs. My father's music would start up in the tea room, and I'd be seized with the notion that some scaly hairy thing was crouched at the other side of the sliding door. My arms would slide the door open, then I'd wake up in cold sweat.

"That means the treatment's affecting you," Reisen had chirped happily over some red-bean mantou. "Trust me on this, Chiyo."

I placed my full trust in her, and she in turn became accommodating. She hadn't objected when we went over facial and tongue diagnosis techniques, even though I was sure that the Hourai Pharmacy didn't rely on such methods. She had simply become an abiding student, as I'd hoped she would after getting to know her.

The nightmares subsided after a while, it was true. In their place were oddly vivid dreams, though I couldn't guess at their meaning. In one, I would hear my father's voice call out from over a hill, but as I crested it, I would find myself nested in a field of lily-of-the-valleys. In another, I would lose sensation in my arms and legs and feel my heart beat irregularly - beat, pause, beat-beat, pause. I would wake up with ringing ears.

After a week of vivid dreams, Reisen declared that her illusion of my father was as perfect as it could reliably be, and that I was now fully receptive. Her explanation had been technical, something like, "I'm attuned to your wavelength." She also told me how the full moon would amplify the effects of her visions. Things were falling into place.

The afternoon before the grand vision took place, Reisen had come bearing a bundle of clothes along with her usual large pack of medicine.

"Chiyo, I've settled things with my master. If you have no objections, I'll be staying over for the night. Obviously I won't waste time sleeping. Your illness will be cured tonight - hopefully. We'll have to wait for moonrise, though."

It'd been rather sudden, but I remarked that this was practical since our lessons would be ending soon. Reisen had given me a very self-satisfied smirk.

"Well, that's what you get when you leave things to me. Trust me tonight also, okay? What are we learning today?"

After our lesson about the importance of asking your patients about their condition ("Ah, I've learnt that pretty well,") we spent the afternoon eating mochi and flinging trivial questions to each other. Reisen had brought a box of them and said she pounded them herself. I asked if she could then call herself a true rabbit youkai.

"You could say that but not exactly, either. You could say that I'm half-half. You're familiar with Ms. Keine, right? I'm like her, only not exactly. I guess." Reisen's answers had lost none of their evasiveness, so I decided to ask about something more direct. I asked about her actual relation to the sisters she had gone on so frequently about.

"I guess they were my mentors. They fed me, taught me about life, and I stayed with them for a while. Like I've said, I won't deny that they were very rough with me, but it was part of everything. And the point with mentors is that you outgrow them and sort of make your own way, right? I'm grateful for them but up to a point. I won't excuse what they did to me, sometimes, but I'm here now and I'm happier."

Feeling that she had revealed slightly more than necessary, Reisen had hurriedly cut her answer short. Easy enough with hindsight to point to this as her motivation. Simply, the ghosts of her mentors still haunted her, and I was to become the hapless medium for an exorcism.

The moon dawned earlier that night, bathing the tea room with an eerie glow. In the middle of conversation, Reisen's ears had stood to their full length.

"It's time, Chiyo."

Her smile, like the moon, had been eerily bright. She didn't care to hide her eyes: they were red and large and aglow. Something in her mien was fae, slim. If she had told me right then that she didn't eat humans, I wouldn't have believed her. Drained of the warmth she'd had moments earlier, Reisen turned spectral and uncanny.

I had prepared a futon in the tea room, because fallers like me were safer off lying down. Reisen bustled about the house, turning down the lights, moving furniture out of the room. Her glowing eyes made little smears in my vision, and as the room darkened I could see only those two points of moving light. Finally, Reisen had closed the curtains. The room turned utterly dark.

"Can you see me?"

Rhetorical. I couldn't see the end of my nose. Reisen's voice floated, disembodied.

"Good."

The room flashed blindingly crimson, and I fell. Here my recall becomes regrettably patchwork, Akyuu. You must forgive me.

Dimly, dimly, I saw afternoon light scatter in front of me. I saw the floor of my house realize. Taking tentative steps forward, the sliding door gained definition. Around me, the teaching room breathed into existence, familiar lacquer boxes moved into shape. The blackboard made itself known, and finally the light had slanted in an achingly familiar way. What had I been doing? I tried to remember, but could only recall some hazy task in the mountain. My hands felt dirtied and heavy. I felt exhausted, but my conscience kept me standing.

The sliding door cracked open. My father strode in, mighty and assured, face cast in shadow. Some inner glow spread itself within me, a stomach-full happiness. What was it for, though? I knew trouble was coming.

"Chiyoko. Byakujutsu is not Sojutsu. Sojutusu, not Byakujutsu. Don't let the Chinese idiots say otherwise. Zhu is zhu!"

I had no idea what he was talking about, as always, and my mind was ready to sleep. I felt my body sag. Had I been crying? Shameful, shameful. The salt-thick taste of snot spread in my mouth. The third time this week I had failed him.

The first blow landed just above my elbow. Inconceivable, inconceivable that a single blow could hurt like that! My arm had gone limp and flown away, replaced by a clumsy mass of pins and needles. Opening my eyes, I saw my father stride back towards the blackboard, his broad shoulders obscuring the view. From where I had crumpled, I saw only him. Did he carry a sword before, truly?

"Chiyoko, I could adopt any boy from the village. Be dignified."

I remembered this, vaguely. Everything felt slightly angled, but the thrust of the memory was the same. I had something to say to my father, but what was it? Some nonsense about some history that hadn't happened yet. He stood there in the afternoon dim, sure and unmoving. There was no talking to him. Bitterness welled deep within me. Where was my mother?

The scene tumbled and I awoke as if from a dream. It hadn't been a pleasant one, and I was covered in sweat. I needed to pee. Slowly, I crawled and opened the sliding door. The hallway seemed impossibly long, dark, and the privy was at the end of it, outside. The moon seemed uncomfortably close, and I felt it through the walls, a peeking curious spying moon. I had to crawl to the privy, that much was obvious. I had to crawl because I heard voices in the teaching room, laughing. My father's voice was heavy and gravelly, but I heard others. They were laughing at something - the thought of it turned my stomach, because I felt sure they were laughing at me. Pathetic, having to crawl to the privy like a dirty animal. My father didn't want to be interrupted. The thought terrified me, and slowed my pace. The mocking laughter rang and rang again. Only the thin sliding door stood between me and them, and I felt sure that something creeping and hairy was on the other side. Something that would goggle and loll. I crept like a small fearful thing, veins pumping ice.

Then I was on my back. My father's heavy presence by my side, his booming voice calling to attention:

"You are stupid, Chiyoko. How did you mistake anything for lily-of-the-valley? Have some of the medicine you mixed."

The scenery flickered. I was outside, on a shaded mound. The Nameless Hill. Had I been abandoned? I lay there, among the lily-of-the-valley. I no longer felt my arms and legs. I could feel the beating of my heart deep inside my ear, irregular and skipping. A sense of dread so heavy that it crushed my chest. What a way to die, I thought. A billion kilometers from home on an impure hill in the middle of nowhere. Where had Tewi gone? Who was Tewi anyway? Would Kaguya miss me? Who was Kaguya? I have to get back to Master.

My father was by my side again. He was feeding me something, forcefully, and I was vomiting it out. It couldn't be helped. I floated a bit above myself.

The scene changed—my father was dead.

Somewhere in the mountain where he had insisted on going despite the weather. How did it feel when he died? It was nothing like in the poems. I hadn't seen his body but all the other villagers seemingly had, so I was a guest at his own funeral. There was triumph, but also fear. I had missed him immediately, for a while the feeling caught in my throat and stopped me from speaking. But now I could speak, what did I want to say?

"I hate pretending. I don't want your dignity. I miss, miss you. Please come back."

I remember thinking, Luna. Luna, Reisen. I thought aloud.

My vision went pitch black. I could see two red orbs hovering above me.

"Chiyo, are you okay? I'm sorry. I had to do it. I was in your place once. You hated him, but you couldn't say."

I wanted to strangle her. What nonsense had she shown to me? My mind felt cored out, as if someone had poked grubby fingers through my eyeballs and dirtied my brain. All she had to do was let me apologize to him. Instead, the violation was physical: I wanted to vomit and wash my insides.

"I had to suggest some things, but those things were what your father wrote in the journal himself." Her eyes smeared from one end of the room to the other. I could feel some hesitation in her voice, but mostly righteous emotion. "He was a horrible teacher, right? He poisoned you for getting the mixture wrong. At least the Watatsukis didn't poison me. Why do you still mourn him now?"

She moved to my side, disappeared. I felt a warm hand squeeze my own, but Reisen's hand had slithered, slimy and abhorrent, like a reptile's. She smelled pungent, animal.

"You'll outgrow your father. You'll be okay."

I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing had come out.

"Why are you shouting? Don't be disturbed. I can hear you just fine. I don't understand. Why were you so sad for someone like this, even if he was your father? Does death wipe away violence?"

Pity crept into her tone, but it was exact, detached, as if she were beholding something dissected and preserved in fluid.

"For your dignity? Are you pretending again? I guess you realize now. He's passed, and now you're free."

I was crying. A youkai had reached into my mind and shook it violently. When I try to remember my father now he is no longer the loving solid man but the half-beast man, striking at me with the scabbard of his sword. Had he always been a half-beast? I am fairly certain he'd never owned a sword. I hope, I dearly hope, that your power over memories can tell me the answer, Akyuu.

I mercifully fell asleep, or was made to. In the morning, Reisen was nowhere to be found. I resolved to write a tell-all. I wrote to Ms. Yagokoro that 'agreeable, well-behaved, non-murderous' did not equal harmless. I wrote that whatever thing her Watatsukis had inflicted on her still had her in pieces. I wrote that she had poisoned the memory of my loving father, forever.

But you know what, Akyuu? I burned the letter. I wrote Ms. Yagokoro a proper, correct letter terminating her assistant Reisen's tutorship. I still acted with dignity, Akyuu.

The next day I received a box of mochi from Reisen. I threw them away, box and all.

Now that you've heard my account in full, I hope that you may be able to judge me more fully. Did I act correctly, in sum? Certainly not. I made many glaring mistakes. But I believe that you will judge me lightly, if only because my loss has been far greater.

The wind is biting, Akyuu. The summer is not upon us yet.

Your friend,
Chiyoko Miyake.