In the Eyes of Shizuka Doumeki (Part 3)

The Lay of the Future Surveyed

Life goes on.

And then it gets away from you. Or rather, it has gotten away from him.

Even Kunogi Himawari has found someone to marry. Astonishingly, her husband is entirely ordinary, and not entirely immune to the curse either. But somehow, she seems happy.

And your own mortality confronted you. Normally it wouldn't bother you—not for your own sake. The question is, when you're gone, who will be there to take care of Watanuki? For the time being, you've decided to do nothing with egg, but it is entirely possible that Watanuki will outlive you.

Likewise, Kohane approached you with this idea in mind.

There's something to her proposal, and there is a kind of love between you, in one of its indefinable forms. So you agree to marry her. And the love grows, and flowers in new directions. Life is good, and you are both quietly happy.

As she has always done, when the silence becomes too thick, the air too stilted with tension, Kohane gently bridges the gap between you and Watanuki with a single quiet word, a look, or a soothing gesture. When the shop closes around just the two of you, as it sometimes does, she slips away and lets you alone. But as the years go on, she becomes more and more reluctant to intrude on the bond between you and Watanuki as she becomes sensitive to her position as the third wheel. Watanuki is as gracious and kind to her as ever, but both of you are lost and mystified as to how to dissuade her from retreat.

When you ask her about it, she tries to avoid the question. But you persist, and finally she confides that she finds it oppressive to be with Watanuki when he is in the same room with you, because your friendship operates on an intensity that she can never hope to rival. It is as if you communicate with each other on a frequency that she cannot hear. She knows she doesn't hold Watanuki's attention anymore. And she just...feels lonely. And she realizes that Watanuki probably feels the same way about her and you, because he feels guilty whenever she is in the room. For taking up time that Watanuki feels should be hers. So it would be easier if...

She blinks, seeming to realize what she has just said. There is an embarrassing non-almost-argument wherein she explains very hurriedly and quickly that she would never suspect you of infidelity and of course nothing was wrong, you give her more than enough time. In turn, you explain very quickly and hurriedly to reassure her that of course she is right, and of course you would never do that to her. Then you snap your mouth shut, realizing it would be unwise to explain your reasoning in any further detail.

Not without her knowledge, at least, and you have no plans to—Watanuki is in a very bad place but it somehow seems like a very bad idea—so even if that was possible you don't think you would—that's not what he needs, it's not a matter of want. He's a good friend, that's all. A good friend you would do anything to help get back on his feet—

Looking back, those had been the thoughts running in the undercurrents of your mind for the last few years. All of a sudden you feel wretched, as if you have been disloyal somehow, that you had unthinkingly committed a grave error. That something is wrong with clinging to that...hope... Which means...

Even if Kohane said she would allow such a liaison, it would surely hurt her, but you hadn't thought about that, only about Watanuki's happiness. If you are to be completely pure and honest with yourself and Kohane, you cannot entertain the notion of such a thing. There must be a line drawn. It is a matter of honor. There must be a part of you that is all hers, that belongs to no one else. If that was not so, what on earth did marriage mean?

Kohane blushes, and you feel yourself turning red, also. You stutter apologies, almost incoherent. She says she trusts you; it's just hard, and she knows how Watanuki must feel about you and her, so she has empathy for it. The subject is never brought up again in conversation. It never needs to.

Sometimes you wonder who you love more—Kohane or Watanuki—and which is more important to you. For years you wondered, unable to decide. Although the marriage was never really about what was fair, your wish is to do right by Kohane. Sometimes you worry that you are shortchanging her. When you ask, she insists that nothing is wrong, but given her family situation when she was young, you are still not entirely sure of whether to trust her answer. She might think this situation is normal when it actually isn't.

It takes time, but as you work through the dilemma in your head, eventually you realize that it doesn't matter any more; the love that belongs to them is different, but equal, and that is that. As long as you have them both, beholden to them in so many different ways, it shouldn't matter who comes first. It is probably impractical to dwell on the wildly unlikely and simplistic hypothetical choices that would force the thinker to trade one life for another. That reality should not happen. It is impossible for you to choose at this late date, and Kohane knows this, knew it from the minute she proposed. She is comfortable with the situation as it is. To her, this—steadfast happiness—this is bliss. It therefore must be you who are restless, who wishes to cleave more tightly to Kohane in order to reach some sort of balance.

It suddenly dawns on you that there are things you could have done, but have yet to do, to correct this. Now is the time, and you are ready. It is as if you had just opened your eyes again—and suddenly you see, with some surprise, that she has been ready for the next step for some time. So you ask, at last, and she turns a face of amused affection on you. Is it time? Yes, it is time. What were you waiting for?

Now you have children, and you love them very much. Kohane mothers them with all the abundant warmth she never received from her own mother, although she confesses that at times she feels inadequate. You reassure her often, and intervene when she is overwhelmed: doing some cooking, taking the children on outings, helping with homework, talking to them about their problems, running errands. The balance of child-raising in your house is much more balanced than in those of your peers; but although different, you believe it is a good thing, a strength in your family, a sign that you are doing well. As soon as the children are old enough you pay the price so that they can enter the shop, and you introduce them to Watanuki. They will outlive you, after all.

Watanuki becomes more and more grateful for the time you spend with him with every passing year. It's impossible to convince him that it isn't the bother he thinks it is. This is probably because he seems to enjoy giving you mischief for growing old on him.

Blind Eye

You are not as quick as you once were, and you are starting to feel it. Watanuki does not seem to see it, however.

Although you were slow to sense it, you begin to realize there is discontent among the children regarding your relationship with Watanuki. You do not know where it comes from, but it has flowed out of something deep and painful and nasty. All of your inquiries are met with shame. They love and honor you, so they will not confront you about the problem. No, indeed, you hear whispers; all the simmering suspicion and blame and resentment and even scandal that you hear through closed doors is reserved only for Watanuki.

There has been some misunderstanding. You fear it is too late to correct it. But just what the problem is...

It started with Kohane's death, so peaceful and quiet, that was nevertheless a huge blow to you all. The first stirrings began then. It probably began as a reaction borne of grief, but it has since become something more.

That your own children would believe...

You are deeply frustrated and perplexed and disappointed in them, all the more so for they refuse to take notice of what you say when it comes to him. They dismiss it all. They do not trust you, not in this area. But if they do not trust you here, what other insecurities and troubles could they be hiding from you in scorn?

People change in the intervening years. You knew that would happen—they got married, found jobs, went to work, had kids of their own. There were influences, of course there were; but you cannot believe that they would become so cynical. There were hints of discontent, little comments every now and then: you thought you answered them to the best of your ability. Against the influences of the world, wrapped up in their own grief over their mother, they must not have believed you. Somehow, what had been a wholesome understanding has become warped.

Were you blind, that this could have happened?

The children would not believe how Kohane's death rocked your world to the core, knocking it from its foundations. There was the grief. That in itself was not simple to wrestle with.

But her last dreams that she shared with you, as you helped her through her pain, while she sorted through her dreams and memories and experiences as her foster grandmother the seer taught her to do. She showed you the future, painted in fragments—those were—

—Time was of the essence, it was slipping away from her, and what she wanted to convey to you was urgent. During the last week of her life, you did not leave her side, even for Watanuki's sake...

She had a plan, even in those last days. She said she knew you had always been there for Watanuki as you had been there for her, and it was in her power as a dream-seer to give you a choice, a bid for more time with him. She, too, wanted the best for Watanuki. But though it was time for her to go, you might have another chance. He might have another chance. She wished you luck. She described what you would do. The way seemed impossible as things stood, but you promised you would remember when the time came.

She pushed you out of her dreams firmly but gently. Then she smiled, and died.

It hurt, so keenly, when she set you free. You loved her, didn't want to let her to go—that hurt—and yet she had left you already looking forward to another life—a life that you wanted—told you to follow your loyalty as you always had. You weren't sure if that didn't hurt even more. In your spirit, you felt both hot and cold at once.

The children knew nothing of that.

The next nine months were like limbo. You avoided the house when you could, avoided memories of her, stored away her personal effects. Kept them safe, but locked away. You would walk to the wishing shop every day, and pause on the porch, and reach to knock on the door—but not quite, you never had the courage to actually knock unless you had groceries in hand: once a week on Fridays, as always. You would hand him the groceries with stiff movements, unable to speak, and then you would spin and walk away, back hunched, hands fisted at your sides, no faster or brisker than normal, but it still felt as if you were fleeing. Watanuki knew about Kohane's death, and he did not question you. He simply accepted the groceries, and made attempts at small chat and watched you with sad eyes when you walked away before he could invite you in.

Sure enough, elements of Kohane's vision slotted themselves into place. She hadn't described how they would, but they had. Certain of Haruka's missives unexpectedly came to light of day. The descendant of a correspondent of his, a long-lost relative who was also a prominent magic-worker, auspiciously brought them back. The descendant had obviously never read them, a fact for which you were thankful later. You read them, and the hair stood up on the back of your neck. They were family histories, rites, practices that had all but been forgotten.

Haruka kept an awful lot of secrets, not all of which were pleasant. What you held in your hands was—it was a highly practical method for your purposes, but it was dark and highly dangerous and unpleasant to contemplate. Many of your ancestors had risked it, however.

You made quiet arrangements in your will. You contacted certain of your relatives. Your eldest, the quietest and most sensible, you thought, could be trusted with Watanuki's well-being, whatever his own reservations on the matter. He did not defend Watanuki from the mutterings of his siblings, but you had never heard him impugn his name, either.

You had what you needed to make the choice. The stars and the planets had aligned so what had been impossible shortly became possible. So you did what you had to do.

Watanuki did not take the news well, though it was all done for his sake. But you hadn't really expected him to, even though your choice is essentially the same as his to wait for Yuuko, just in a different form.

This is your wish. The price is the risk...of failure, of death, of the spell going wrong, of Watanuki's wrath, of missing change in Watanuki's life, of Watanuki fading entirely without you. Come what may, you risk it, that you may also come back.

Generations

On the day you died, a satisfied smile on your lips for having lived a full and wholesome life, your great-grandson was born. It cannot be a coincidence that he was named Shizuka.

[...]

On the day you were born, your great-grandfather died. Of course it isn't a coincidence that he was also named Shizuka. There's a part of you that isn't quite yourself; it's him, a part of him that made itself at home in you. So at home, in fact, that there is barely any difference between you, a difference so slight that you only became aware of it the very day you entered the wish-granting shop at the age of fifteen.

Watanuki — for that was what you called him from the start, without hesitation, without the honorific — seemed to recognize the resemblance immediately. He was rather amused by your hasty apology afterwards. In confusion, you offer to call him "Watanuki-sama" and he actually laughs, which of course makes it worse. In reply, he asks if he may call you Shizuka, just to cement the difference between the two of you in his mind, and please just call him Watanuki without the honorific. He explains that "Watanuki-sama" reminds him of his schoolboy days when he was a completely arrogant young fool and wanted to impress and (or?) humiliate Doumeki at the same time...or something. It just seems ridiculous to him now, because that life is so far away, and he says that if you called him that, it would probably still give him airs. He keeps fidgeting while he says this.

Watanuki's idea of "airs" seems more like "spasms" to you, but okay...

"Didn't you call my great-grandfather by his first name?" you inquire. Why shouldn't he have? They were close.

Watanuki's laugh flutters briefly. "Oh, no. I could never! He was a Doumeki. Through and through. He might as well have been a rock. 'Quiet' or 'peaceful' just wasn't the right way to describe him. He was too stiff." He slides his eyes over to meet yours. "It may describe you better, though. You're less rude." His eyes glint with humor. "But if you must know, we didn't like each other very much at first. By the time we became good friends...well. I was already calling him Doumeki, and Doumeki never asked me to call him otherwise, so I never took the next step. He never asked to call me by my first name, either. It happens more often than you'd think. Can you think of calling your teachers anything other than sensei? It's so ingrained that if they let you, you would call them 'sensei' for the rest of your life, no matter what might happen between you after school was over? Yes? It was the same for us."

In the end, your great-grandfather never made a decision one way or another on the matter of Watanuki. You have inherited the choice, and a few of his effects like the peachwood ring (it does work for you; with Watanuki's encouragement, you also learned archery), but so far, you have been unable to do anything about it. Perhaps there is nothing that should be done.

If there is any difference between you, that is your great-grandfather and yourself, it is the difference between how you see Watanuki. Watanuki, of course, has taken it in stride. Your great-grandfather was highly protective of him while you…frankly, you are a little in awe of him.

And then there's the butterfly dream, a dream for which Watanuki has been waiting for over a hundred years, the one that plays out according to the pattern of the first story in Ten Nights of Dreams. The dream is slow to reveal itself; it takes many many successive weeks of visits for Watanuki to reach the end of it. And he finds...it was Yuuko's dream. One last prophetic remnant of herself.

And she showed him what he needed to know. Watanuki can leave, if he wishes.

Is it because his powers are strong, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, controlled enough? Or is it because his payment is over? The meaning seems ambiguous, unclear. You wonder if he will ever take the chance to go outside, and risk losing Yuuko… Will she come back for good after all? Or will she not? How could seeing her this way, just this once, be repayment enough for a hundred years? Or is this too much to ask of the dead, of the one who ceased to be?

Messages in Dreams, Dreams in a Bottle

Your great-grandfather remembers: on the first night when Watanuki began working for the shop, when Watanuki blew on Yuuko's pipe, he loosed a stream of butterflies. Yuuko's symbol. One last gift she left for him.

What you see now, slightly more than one hundred years later: Watanuki blows on Yuuko's pipe and looses a flock of birds. The symbol he chose for himself.

Perhaps they—the birds and the butterflies—contained a dream. If so, for whom is Watanuki's dream intended?

Birds are the symbols of freedom, yet are often trapped (or confined; at times it is their choice) in cages, needing the companionship of others to be happy, depending on them completely, yet freely giving happiness to others. They may also indicate the movement of undetectable forces in an unseen world, though that very sensitivity puts them in danger. The choice of the bird as his symbol may have seemed deceptively simple and childlike, but it was nevertheless full of meaning and history; that was Watanuki Kimihiro.

Butterflies are symbols of freedom, too, and also fate, hitsuzen, choice, change, and dreams, and the cycle of life and death. Butterflies worry for no one, can exist with companionship or without it; the fleeting life of a butterfly is missed by only a few—in short, only by those who happened to notice its death. They are the product of complete transformation, the final form, the adult. The parent. That is Ichihara Yuuko, and what she meant to Watanuki.

Song of the Shamisen

"Burned by love: louder than the chirping cicada

Is the silent firefly, whose body burns."

"To meet is joy…to part is pain…

How fine it would be…to meet but never to part…

But when you're in love…there is nothing that can be done…"

Messages Across Time and Space

Volume 15: "Yes, the dream will soon end."

Volume 16: "And I will always be waiting. Always."

Volume 17: "Even so…sorry."

Volume 18: "So for now, cross the bridge and wait…"

And we wait:

For the dream of a butterfly.

For a sign: the first night of Ten Nights of Dreams

For Ichihara Yuuko

(it is not her true name)

(not true Yuuko, true name unknown, the one who lived so long, who was known and loved…)

(it will be one with a spirit as close to hers as a mirror image)

(never a clone, never again, nor a living statue in stasis, as Clow Reed thought her so)

(there will be no more paradoxes)

For release from the fragile embrace of existence that was her wish…life...in death, for there will be no vanishing.

(kieru na)

For the granting of a single, simple wish that is neither common nor simple.

(we all wish it)

(life)

(eternal)

(isn't that right, Kami-sama?)

(the price was not right, but it was as close as we could come)

(for the future)

(we are waiting)

(come now)

(Tsubasa)

Author's Note: This fic was quite hard to write, not because of the peculiar combination of the predominantly present tense/second person viewpoint, but actually because of the research. I had to comb through the entire story, especially the later volumes (which were subtle), to pick out details that would be most important to Doumeki and his relationship with Watanuki. Plus I had to untangle my own confused perceptions of what happened from watching/reading the anime and manga at the same time! And I thought this would be quick—ha! Anyway, I hope you liked this.

If you've gotten this far, please review and tell me what you're thinking. Good, bad, something you didn't understand? Whatever you please. Complaints even. I welcome them. Silence is death.

As for everyone who has been so kind as to leave a review, thank you very much! It means a lot to me. Everyone has said such sweet things so far.

I have posted the continuation of this story, which will take it beyond canon and into the realm of the imagination. The direct sequel is "Unending Winter," and the work after that, "Shall Your Wish Be Granted, which is still in progress. Another related fic is "Sun Fortune," which follows the story of Himawari Kunogi and Doumeki Shizuka shortly after Watanuki took over as shopkeeper, and the struggles they all endured.

I should note the many fanfics that influenced my understanding of this period in Watanuki's and Doumeki's lives: "Fickle," by c00ki3, "Cat's Cradle," by Foolish Mortal, "We Forgot to Breathe," by Manialoll Spins, "The 3651st Day," by Miss Kiri-chan, "Immortality Changes Nothing," by silver-kin, "Locked in Time," by EudaimonArisornae, "of wishing and worry" and "waiting for tomorrow," by AGENT Kuma-chan. Flakedice on her LiveJournal, Ice Flow, independently reaches some of the same conclusions as I do in her canon!XxxHolic pieces, and creates some interesting extrapolations. Without all these extra influences, this fic would not be what it is. Some of these pieces include different "tomorrows" which pose valid possibilities that I chose not to take. They are excellently crafted and I highly recommend that you read them.

"Here's To Your Empty Space" on Archive of Our Own, by Kali Cephirot, influenced the piece insofar as it illustrates what I believe might have happened had Doumeki's relationship with Watanuki gone the way Doumeki contemplated, but decided not to go: a very bitter path (warning: mature rating). I did not want to go there with my work, but if you're curious, now you know—it's only part of the answer "why not," however.