[Author's Warning (to those who read the previous version of this chapter): it has been heavily edited.]
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II. headless jizō.
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(before)
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'Forgive me,' he said, 'I'm afraid my eyes cannot see very well these days'.
But Kasumi Seizō believed he deserved to live in a world of shadows- it felt appropriate for him, who sought to do so much good, and caused so much suffering instead .
The girl who was talking sound young and shaky, and she told him about her father. 'If I met him now,' she said, 'I wouldn't accept any excuses. I wouldn't forgive him.'
I wouldn't forgive him…
'I had it all planned. But this isn't fair. I can't do anything to you now, not if you're like this…'
That was the journey's end. She knew it then. It ended with a victory and a loss cancelling each other, leaving her where she started: standing at the remnants of a house consumed by the fire.
'Fuu…', he said, feebly.
His sallow eyes opened to a silhouette against the doorframe.
They saw a ghost, instead.
'I don't think we'll see each other again,' her collected voice said, 'Goodbye…'
She walked out, leaving all the ashes inside.
Outside, the sky was very blue and the wind was picking up, bringing from the sea the insistent crying of the gulls. She leaned against the door and sighed.
She felt then that she could almost see her mother before her, smiling proudly at her from a far-away place where it was always summer. Smiling as if she knew how little Fuu didn't mean what she said. After all the searching, all the healing. Her mother seemed to smile as if she knew Fuu will inevitably turn her wish for revenge into compassion for the consumed, dying figure in the hut.
She couldn't make such choice then, but her heart knew the outcome already. So she sagged to the ground, tears of defeat becoming tears of anger –she hugged her knees, and her tears were then tears of sheer sadness.
She lifted her eyes for a moment, everything seemed to quiet, but the world never stopped turning for anyone, and in her gut there set a sensation of inevitability.
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As he lay on what he was certain would be his deathbed, Kasumi Seizō's eyes were seeing without seeing. He beheld, with pity in his heart, rows and rows of beheaded jizō statues: the death of benevolence. And he asked himself: if that was the only fated outcome, then was the high price paid worth paying?
'How meaningless to ask this question only now,' he thought.
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Outside, an explosion, and the magnifying echo of an explosion, tore through the cliffs and hillside. It came from the beach, and time seemed to stop.
But it was the weight of time passing that crushed Fuu to a place so low she thought she might not withstand it: because then, suddenly, awareness struck and there before her was what she had lost, and what she might be losing at that moment, too. A scream destroyed its way out from her gut to her lips, and formed a name that was then heavier to spell than it had ever been before.
'Mugen!'
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beheaded jizō statues: during the Shimabara rebellion, some Christians decapitated buddhist statues as a reprisal for being persecuted.