-/ Chapter 6 \-
Upon returning from elementary school, Kohane spots Doumeki loitering on the steps of obaachan's house as she opens the gate to enter. He looks up quickly, hearing the squeal of the hinges. He looks her up and down, then returns his troubled gaze to his feet. This is probably the first time he has seen her wear a school uniform. It's something of a shock—Kohane acts so mature, above her age, that Doumeki forgets that she's only just turned eleven. Kohane walks into the garden, calmly closing the gate behind her.
Since Watanuki took over the wishing shop, Doumeki made himself scarce. She hasn't seen him in a very long time.
"Good afternoon," Doumeki says in a low monotone.
Kohane nods in greeting and walks past him to unlock door, then ushers him to come inside. After a slight pause, Doumeki does so, following her to the low table where he seats himself cross-legged. Kohane fetches a few snacks and drinks and puts the plate on the table between them, then seats herself.
"It seems obaachan's not home right now, but she knows you, so she won't mind," Kohane tells him. "Did you just come to visit, or...?"
Doumeki shakes his head vehemently.
"Then...?" Kohane's voice falls.
"I just wanted to see someone," Doumeki forces himself to say. "Someone who knows. About him. I couldn't...I couldn't think."
Kohane bites her lip. "I'm sorry."
Neither of them are very good at this. Talking.
Doumeki looks down at his hands. Nods. His expression is set, pulled tight around the eyes so she knows he's not ready to speak.
She thinks over what she just said and blanches. "I'm sorry," she says again, and embarrassment suffuses her cheeks with color. "I only meant, I'm sorry you've been lonely. Not...not that...I'm glad you've come to me."
"It's not your fault," Doumeki says.
"I—I wasn't sure," says Kohane, blinking. "I—I thought maybe you wouldn't want me to interfere."
Doumeki is motionless for a few moments; then he lowers his head. "Maybe at first," he says, without emotion. But it's there, just a little; she can see how much it costs him to make even this admission.
Kohane laughs, weak and watery, sort of like a sob or maybe like a hiccup. It's a sound he's never heard before. As long as they've known her, even when it was so hard, she never made a single sound when she cried.
Doumeki's hands clench in his lap.
"You're angry with him, aren't you." Kohane leans forward. "Can you bear it, for a little longer?"
Doumeki bends—almost unwillingly, but he nods, and forces himself to loosen his fists.
"It's just...it's been so long."
Doumeki doesn't contradict her. He nods again, just as stiffly.
"I wanted to speak to you before, but...you seemed to be handling it for the last year...and I was settling in with obaachan, but I wondered if I could help," Kohane says softly. "But it just didn't seem right, then. I didn't know if you would appreciate the assistance. But since you've come to me like this after all this time, I want to ask you if I can help. There's only a little I can do, but I don't think this burden is something you should shoulder alone. Taking care of him has taken a toll on you."
Doumeki shifts uncomfortably. He doesn't seem to know what to do with that. Unable to accept, yet...
"Tell me?" she pleads with him. "Tell me what it's like?"
It's hard to describe the change that occurs in front of her, but with a slight shudder, he inexplicably unwinds. As if this was the thing he was waiting for. The thing he's been wanting to get off his chest and couldn't. Tentatively, he reaches forward across the table. Kohane touches his hand, lightly, with the tips of her fingers, and Doumeki closes his eyes.
"Please?" she asks again.
Doumeki opens his eyes, and opens his mouth. At first the words are soundless, but he finds his voice again and the words build on on top of the other until she can feel his despair settle like a flat stone sinking into the heavy sea.
Every day, I buy the groceries after school and take them to Watanuki's house, and I go inside. Some days he is sleeping, or cooking, sometimes he is re-sewing Yuuko's wardrobe. Some days I find him covered in blood. Some days he hides his injuries so I won't see them. But I know him. So I never let him. But every discovery sickens me, and I find myself becoming more and more anxious and desperate, while he doesn't change. Someday I won't be able to tell. I want to shake him until he listens to my anger, but I'm afraid I would only hurt him to no purpose. He has suffered enough, and I don't want to hurt him at all. But I'm afraid that I'm going to go mad before he does.
Ever since Yuuko disappeared he's waited, and he thinks about her and talks about her until I want to throttle him, but he doesn't realize he's doing it—remembering her, emulating her. Pretending to be her. He won't accept that she's gone, he's always trying to reconstruct her and make her alive again. He wants to remake his own reality, but he can't. Not in this lifetime. I can't let him. He's not her, never will be. But it's as if he's lost now and I can't get him back. He stopped his time, he won't age anymore...he'll just exist there in the shop, alone. And he doesn't know why that is wrong.
He's waiting for a ghost. It doesn't matter that it's a ghost we both knew. He loved a ghost once, and I made him lose her. He was so angry, he could have rejected me. This time isn't any different... But even if I dared to risk crossing him again and earning his hate, I can't choose for him. His promise is stronger than any number of arrows without a target.
He didn't choose to disappear, but I wanted him to live the way he said he wanted to with us...I wanted him to hold on to our world. But it is as if he forgot. As if he learned nothing. He has always been such a fool. I should have stopped him from going back that first time. Or the second time. I shouldn't have let him back into the shop at all. He should never have known that death had taken Yuuko.
He can't take her place as shopkeeper, he doesn't know enough. He doesn't know the first thing about right payments, and every mistake takes from his body. I have to stay alert and notice everything. At any moment, he could fall. More than ever his work is fraught with peril yet he is no more careful than he ever was. How am I to know when he loses so much blood or sustained such an injury that he can't survive another wish? If he faints from anemia, or from a spirit miasma, or he loses himself in dreams—how am I supposed to know that this time, sleep is innocent, and won't be fatal?
I come to him every day after school and it's always food and saké and friendly words and he makes everything out to be fine before I find out about his latest stunt. Something always went wrong. He complains and resists me when I take care of him, but he knows he can't do everything by himself. I get so angry that I can't trust him to even take care of himself when he can. And for these past months, I was so busy that I thought I had no one else to turn to, until I...remembered.
"Sometimes I want to hate him." Doumeki stops talking, and looks at the ground.
For a while, Kohane doesn't say anything. "But you don't hate him. You love him, don't you?" Kohane whispers. "And that only makes it worse for you, because you feel rejected. He is certainly a fool, and you are right to be angry. But he hasn't forgotten us."
He shrugs.
Kohane insists, "If he had, he would have made it so no one could ever reach him. But he let you." Doumeki doesn't respond. In a burst of inspiration, Kohane says, "Kimihiro-kun chose Yuuko, but he made it so we would always be together. It was a compromise between the forces he couldn't control and the course of his own heart. He didn't mean to hurt you."
Doumeki looks up.
"It didn't have to be Yuuko. If any of us had disappeared, he might well have done the same. Because he needs us. This way, as the shopkeeper, we'll always know where he is. He'll know where we are. He'll watch us grow old. We will be there for him. He can watch over us." Kohane shrugs slightly. "That is his happiness, whether he ages with us or not."
"Then he doesn't understand that his choice can only lead to pain."
"Not only." Kohane shakes her head. "But he will see the pain only when he has to."
"Why must he—" Doumeki scowls.
Kohane sighs. "Because Kimihiro-kun is Kimihiro-kun, and he only learns through his mistakes. Or rather, he must realize he has made a mistake in the first place. And only he would be tempted to walk this path, because what seems clear to us does not occur to him."
Doumeki drops his voice low. "Even a mistake such as this one?"
"You said he won't be dissuaded. Kimihiro-kun isn't the only one dealing with grief. You are grieving for him, too."
Doumeki falls silent.
"It is not good to be sad together. You need some time on your own," Kohane continues. "You've worn yourself out trying to understand, and there is no understanding." She pauses. "Why won't you tell him you love him?"
"I don't even know what my feelings are for him," says Doumeki, gazing sightlessly at the table. "All I know is that I want be the one who protects him and gives him what he needs. How is that so different from a servant? I am content, since he requires it."
He doesn't sound content. He sounds frustrated.
"He needs you in other ways," Kohane presses. "And he does want you there."
"It doesn't feel like it." Doumeki shakes his head. "Something is missing."
Kohane sits straighter. "What is missing is his recognition. He is missing your feelings," she asserts. "He's cruel without meaning to be, because he is acting on an assumption that never was. But he won't see the whole picture until you tell him."
She may be on to something.
"But do I even love him?" Doumeki asks. "I do not know. What do I see in him after all? Why do I want to be closer to him than I am now? Why does he push me away? Nothing is reasonable. Even when I'm angry with him, I...can't leave him alone."
"Shizuka-kun, that is love," Kohane says gently. "If you do not push, if you do not take action and make your own mistakes, you will not find the answers to your questions."
"But how could he accept me? He dislikes me. He finds me irritating. And he annoys me as well."
"Only he can answer that. But wouldn't it shock him enough? Force him to reconsider?" Kohane asks.
"Surely not from me." Doumeki slumps.
"Kimihiro-kun may surprise himself," Kohane says, surprisingly firmly.
Doumeki shakes his head.
Kohane purses her lips. Since the argument doesn't seem to be going anywhere, she decides to leave that topic aside. "It's not just Kimihiro-kun, though, is it?" Kohane asks. "There's more bothering you, isn't there?"
Doumeki nods. "My family," he says, and sighs deeply. "And..."
"The future," she supplies.
"Yes. For these past months, I have hardly had the time or energy to look outside myself..."
"I will help if I can." Kohane nudges the snack tray in front of her, and Doumeki reluctantly take something to eat, and sips the tea. Although he tastes it tentatively at first, he seems satisfied, and the offer of food does seem to calm him down slightly. Kohane is glad to see it.
Well, food that is trusted is a kind of safety...
"Do you know that you and Kimihiro-kun are my closest friends?" Kohane asks him.
Doumeki blinks.
"Yes, you too," says Kohane. "Back then, you both rescued me. I will always be grateful."
"I was only there because I was helping Watanuki."
"You cared about me too."
Doumeki looks away. "Only by the end."
"No. You did, too."
Putting a cookie into his mouth, Doumeki crunches on it slowly. "I will accept your offer of help in regards to Watanuki." He swallows. "If you don't mind coming with me."
"Doumeki-kun, what else?" Kohane asks him.
"Things," says Doumeki, pondering. "Things I don't know how to explain. They've been happening to me lately."
Kohane waits.
"I—" Doumeki stops. "I see things. Visions. Insights. Truths. Differently from the way Watanuki sees things. I know what he knows, but I don't think he knows what I see through my eyes. But I do."
"Visions, but not dreams."
Doumeki shrugs. "If you heard Watanuki talk...You would hardly know what is and is not a dream anymore. It doesn't seem to matter."
"Could it be your spiritual ability?" Kohane asks. "Your gift?"
"I am afraid so." Doumeki looks at the table. "Perhaps it's growing."
The air is filled with a small, poignant silence.
"Your grandfather then," Kohane says at last. "Like him."
Doumeki nods.
"And yet?"
"Everything feels...wrong," Doumeki says flatly. "I do not know what I must do. All of my attempts..." he closes his eyes.
"What is it?"
"My parents forbade me join the Buddhist temple," says Doumeki, and opens his eyes again. "There is no money in it, they say. Aiming to become the head priest, which is the only rank worth aiming for, they say, will take decades to maneuver. None of my other family has even a shadow of my grandfather's ability. They wouldn't be able to guide me, and they wouldn't understand. So...I allowed myself to be dissuaded." He looks exhausted. "It seemed that I would learn little worth knowing."
"Leaving you nowhere," she surmises.
"Yes."
"Are the visions so hard to deal with?" Kohane asks.
"They come on suddenly without warning. Not terribly disruptive...only surprising. And blunt with the truth." Doumeki falls silent. "They hardly make sense even to me. I am simply a mouthpiece."
"So it will make people look at you strangely."
"Yes."
"Does it bother you?"
"No." Doumeki takes a deep breath. "But this— It seems to have nothing to do with my future. And I thought— It seemed like it should. But now it never will. I am unable to follow in my grandfather's footsteps. What good is a gift, if I will never know how it should be used to help people? Not even Watanuki seems to be aware of it."
Kohane lightly lays a hand on his arm. "But you will," she says, and pulls it back again.
Doumeki squints at her.
So she explains. "Simply by being alive, by going about your daily business...you help people. People you will never know, but people who needed to hear what you said. The things you say need not make sense to you. But those people will understand it, and by hearing your vision of the truth it will change them, though you will not hear back from them. Because you were led to them by hitsuzen. That is the nature of your gift, and it does not need to be honed at all. It is a potent thing in and of itself. It is a great gift."
He frowns. "But why would they listen? They must think I'm going mad."
Kohane simply smiles. "Anyone might listen, Doumeki-kun. Anyone at all. And it's all right if they think you are strange. If the truth matters to them, you will shock them, and they will listen. If a vision comes to you, it must be something they needed to hear. You can choose, Doumeki-kun. You can choose whichever future you wish, and you cannot go wrong. Why don't you do that, Doumeki-kun? Do what makes you happy."