A/N: This short piece was originally written for Writober 2019. It's set in Chapter 216 of the manga, when Chihaya is greeting the day she fights for her dream on the tatami without many of her primary pillars of support. It's practically just a written narrative of a fraction of the chapter's events, with some details supplemented to lend it a bit more of a creative substance. Or something like that.
DISCLAIMER: Chihayafuru is, of course, the work of Suetsugu Yuki, and thus, all rights pertaining to ownership are hers, which include the characters in this story. What's mine is the premise of the following piece and its entirety.
It was the expected cold January day that greeted them in the morning when the Master, the Queen, their aspirant successors, and their entourage paid the initiation visit of tradition. The snow had fallen in the early hours of dawn, painting its natural canvas all around them a fresh white and several grays. It was still falling now, and the Queen aspirant, enduring an unfortunate insufficiency with her wardrobe, burrowed her gloved hands deeper inside her robes as a worried thought for the deliverer of her designated clothes crossed her mind.
Bells echoed throughout the shrine as they traversed it, their sounds following the group of visitors on their light, cushioned footsteps. The Queen aspirant swept her eyes across the grounds and the broken beams of sunlight that filtered through the thick precipitation here and there, mentally remarking that the new year did not look like much of a new beginning. She imagined the light that was waiting to break free through the clouds and awash the earth in its wide and bright reach. Even with the impeding arrival of the first snow, the light was bound to shine through.
As she trod in hushed steps, she became increasingly aware of the silence that dominated the place. It was perhaps more a form of peace; sacred, unobstructed peace. However, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that this peace was causing her to lend much of her attention to the ringing bells. They made big and small sounds wherever she and her company passed through, and she could hear them all. So much so that they were beginning to overwhelm her, to fill her.
She and the others floated through the inner haiden. It stood right across the more easily accessible outer haiden, where visitors were already pouring in to pay their respects, offering prayers in joined hands. Yet even as the open environment offered the Queen aspirant new stimuli, the sound of the bells and their echoes still bombarded her with pronounced intensity. But she walked slowly onward nonetheless, with the cold seeming to have steadied its onslaught and becoming more tolerable. As she gave a passing glance to the hall across, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Standing among the visitors across the grounds from her was him.
His hands were together in a prayer, his head bowed. He wore a coat and a scarf, and his hands were bare, but he was definitely dressed more warmly than she was. The thought settled with her comfortably. After his prayer, he lifted his head up, saw her looking over at him, and flashed a brilliant smile. Her hands fell to her sides, and though she had frozen in disbelief, she thought she had never felt warmer.
She yelled out his name, but before she could get it all out, someone walked in front of him, and when they'd passed, he was gone. He had disappeared.
But it couldn't be, she thought. She had seen him! He was standing right there, and he smiled at her! It was him!
It was him…
A faint breeze shook a nearby maidenhair tree, and the faint light that filled the gaps between its branches seemed to dance slightly. As if in harmony, the shrine bells twinkled in a rapid singsong pace, and the echoes were carried away by the brief wind.
Ah, she thought, sadness pricking her in realization. It was only that.
It was only the sound… of light… The light… of sound.
It was only… a trick of the light.
And the cruel light brought tears to her eyes.