CHAPTER NINETEEN

箱入り娘

Hakoire Musume

The train hurtled south under the cover of night, putting ground between Tokyo and me. It made me maudlin to imagine Mother asking Emi to wait for a train that would never come. But when I remembered how she spoke to me over the summer, I released the breath I was holding. I missed my family, but I did not miss feeling trapped by circumstance.

"Is Nadeshiko-san with you, sensei?" Amu asked hopefully through her fear. I held my breath again. Please, no.

"She is resting in the sleeper car," Fujisaki-sensei said, eyes on Amu and Amu alone. "But I'm sure she would be delighted to see you tomorrow. Surely she would prefer a school-friend than her old mother."

Despite the grime of Kyoto's train station, Amu's twill suit looked smart. She stood poised, taller than me. In her shadow, I felt like a frilly seductress, slithering into Fujisaki's household to cradle-snatch. Fujisaki-sensei might prefer if Amu caught her son's fancy.

"Oh…" Amu wilted. "I suppose so. Thank you again."

Her gaze turned to me.

"Some rest might do you some good," she put her coin purse away. I felt briefly sorry for the imposition. I thought her cruel and unforgiving, but Fujisaki had cared for me when I was helpless and ill. Like her son, she loved elusively and unreliably.

"You have had quite an ordeal… and before the New Year, too. Mashiro-san is still weak, is she not?"

Mashiro-san was weak as a rule. She reviled physical exercise and had been coasting on her typhoid fever to get out of physical education class for weeks.

"How could I forget – Rima, your lungs are still weak!"

I felt fine but nodded numbly.

Our twinette was typical of the economy class ticket we were on: cramped, dark and uncomfortable. A woman was already asleep in the bottom bunk.

We washed and dressed by the light of a single candle, illuminating Amu's still-perplexed face. As we climbed into the top berth and lay down under the covers, Amu finally spoke.

"You would think it would be natural for us to share a sleeper car with Nadeshiko, not strangers."

My eyes snapped open.

"I don't know, just…" Amu was whispering breathlessly to the ceiling. "We're all girls. We all sleep together, but you're the only one who's ever been in the same room as her, Rima. It's strange, isn't it? Does Fujisaki-sensei not trust us with her daughter? Does she want to keep Nadeshiko alone? I don't want to think bad of her, but… I don't know."

The knowledge made me feel funny in the pit of my stomach. It was a moment before I realized it was fluttering in pleasure. I possessed a privilege no other woman had. Nadeshiko, mine alone. But only so far as another woman didn't capture his attention. The fluttering stopped.

"Yaya says she has a deformity," I said, trying to be neutral.

"Do you think so?"

The woman underneath us sighed, rolled over. I re-adjusted the covers to avoid answering.

"No," I said. Softer. "She's perfect the way she is."

"I suppose it isn't any of our business," Amu said, gulping. "I wondered if it wasn't because…"

I was used to sleeping on solid mattresses on sedentary floors. That a den of snakes awaited me at the end of the train's rattle-and-purr did not ease the approach of sleep.

Nadeshiko, Nagihiko, Nadeshiko. I could summon her next to me in Amu's place, even now. Tantalizingly close. Nagihiko's nose tracing my neck, his hair in my hands, cheek against his. I squeezed my eyes shut and fisted the blankets with both hands.

"If it wasn't because… I've often thought Nadeshiko might like women like you do."

I wondered if he lay awake in his empty sleeper car, thinking of me.

Perhaps he thought of Amu. Perhaps he thought of begonias and ghosts and pretty things, not a cold woman's touch. My nails dug into the scratchy blanket.

"If she did, it would make no difference," I said, hollowly. "A passing fancy before marriage."

Amu sighed. "I wish… I've never been able to tell what Nadeshiko's thinking. If only I could look into her heart."

I rolled over to look at Amu. I could only see the outline of her face, uncertain.

Her hand patted my shoulder, and my anger melted away. I refused to cry, but the tears still came. It was Amu's turn to clumsily comfort me in the last hours of the Year of the Ox.


I awoke from my doze to realise the train was still moving. The length of the ride felt an eternity to the Tokyo high-speed rail. I did my toilette slowly. Amu pointed to the little window.

"Rima, look! The sea looks so different this far south!"

Amu had always wanted to visit Nadeshiko in Hiroshima. I tried not to feel bitter for her sake.

The sea did look different this far south. I joined her at the window. Kure was the country's biggest dockyard. I could barely see the ocean for all the warships and aircraft carriers. A light dusting of snow adorned the masts and pagodas, giving everything a silvery sheen. I could tell that come spring, the surrounding hills would be lush and green. Islands were scattered off in the morning mist, glimmering like distant dimensions.

"I wonder if we'll see Nadeshiko at breakfast?" Amu asked hopefully. "It's unusual for her not to just… materialize."

Nagihiko was beholden to his mother more than ever outside of Seiyo's confines. Amu discovered mother and son in the dining car, eating a subdued bowl of rice. A camellia was tucked into Nagihiko's ponytail, back straight in seiza formation despite the chair.

Upon spotting us, he went very stiff and smiled politely. It was Fujisaki-sensei who beckoned to us imperiously and implored us to eat. I dared not look at him, and instead opted to bore a hole in my spoon.

"We heard the landslide," the spoon's warped reflection whispered to Amu. "From where we were. A horrible rumbling, like the sound of a dragon stirring below the earth."

Oh, no, I think Fujisaki-sensei sounds worse than that, I would say wittily, if it was just Amu and I. Instead, I ate faster.

"I've been in a quake on a streetcar when I was younger, but it wasn't nearly so bad. We just stopped until it was over, and some things knocked over," Amu said, paling. "I thought the train was going to turn over. But Rima grabbed me the moment the shaking began and pulled me under the seats. If it wasn't for her, who knows…"

"Did I?" I looked up from the spoon. Three pairs of eyes stared at me.

"You did," Amu said, amazed. "Do you not remember?"

"I don't," I prodded my rice. "I just remember being under the seats with you."

"The memory is like a pool of water," Fujisaki-sensei spoke, surprising everyone. "When a stone breaks its surface, the ripples fracture its recollections long after the stone has sunk."

With this proclamation, Fujisaki-sensei ended the conversation. We ate in silence. Outside, a station-whistle. For the first time in ten hours, I felt the train slow beneath me with nausea.

"Home," Fujisaki-sensei whispered, in a voice reserved only for her and her son.

"Home," Nagihiko whispered back, with the first genuine smile I had seen from him in weeks.

Home.

We disembarked the train into a lungful of crisp winter air. On an uneasy sleep, the scene passed like a disorienting dream: my suitcase passed to me, the sloshing of the winter sea against the docks, the clatter of the streetcar. We went up a hill. I nodded off sitting up straight, like a horse. I heard Nadeshiko whisper something to Amu, and her soft replies. Fujisaki-sensei did not speak at all.

The air got colder. An incline. I opened my eyes blearily, only to find the streetcar halfway up a hill, stopped. The scenery outside the streetcar was blanketed in a soft, quiet white, lit dimly pink in the morning sun. The roofs of surrounding houses were drowned in white hillocks, pine boughs weighed down by it. When I exhaled, my breath fogged out in front of me like a dragon's snore.

"Where are we going?" I asked Amu groggily. Fujisaki-sensei answered with uncharacteristic spirit.

"Not the destination, but the journey." She rose to her feet gracefully. "One we are taking on foot."

"What," I said.

"The streetcar won't run this far in the snow," Fujisaki-sensei murmured through the stole around her face.

I looked at Nagihiko, aghast. To my surprise, he was already meeting my eyes. Before I could stop myself, I smirked back.

Amu wordlessly gestured to our luggage, handing me my hat-box.

We blundered through the three-day-old snow. For once I was grateful for Amu's clumsiness, which kept me from looking ungainly in comparison. Even Fujisaki-sensei's graceful snow-slicing walk staggered when she met a patch of ice. Our centres of gravity were made no more stable by the labor of our suitcases, hauled from hand to hand. Such was the conditions that Nagihiko did not even lower himself to the chivalrous offer of taking our things – though I wished he had, as I would have taken him up on it, grudge or infatuation be damned.

I wasn't sure how we were going to scale the mountain until Fujisaki-sensei held out a hand, stopping us. She broke off the leafy branch of an azalea and began brushing the snow at her feet. She unearthed a set of teeny-tiny stairs, tightly hugging the hill.

"Before this land was settled by farmers," Fujisaki-sensei said to the cold air with the familiar sing-song rhythm of a geisha telling a story. "There was a temple here, dedicated to the Amida Buddha. The monks built these stairs to more easily walk up and down the hill to the temple network.

"All of that changed when one monk made a terrible choice. Since that day, the temple is no longer here… but the steps to Heaven they built remain, even buried under the snow."

Amu gawked. Nagihiko spoke up:

"Mother, don't tease our guests," he said. "That's just a story she made up."

A wink and a boyish grin at Amu. I soured. A hare scampered across the snow. Its huge feet distributed weight, allowing it to skim the surface. My tiny feet merely sank.

Fifteen minutes later, we crossed an arching bridge over a frozen river. It was here that a dainty-footed girl of no older than twelve crossed our path, with two buckets slung over her shoulder.

"Young Mistress, senpai," she called, bowing as low as could be afforded with the yoke over her shoulder. "Welcome home."

"Thank you," Fujisaki-sensei replied gently. "Did you see us coming up the hill?"

She nodded shyly, covering her mouth with her kimono sleeve.

"Go, then," she said. "No doubt you have an errand."

The girl made herself scarce in the snowy underbrush.

For the last quarter of a mile, I had lagged behind. At least I had not dropped a pin in the snow like Nagihiko and spent ten minutes searching for it while Amu and I caught our breath. My shoes were soaked through. My feet felt like blocks of ice, and twice as heavy.

Descending the other side of the bridge yielded stripped-bare maples framing a white wall weighed down by the snow on its gables. A keyhole archway was carved into it. No gate.

I looked to my left, then my right. The wall was low and flat but stretched as far as my eye could see in any direction. I saw Amu following my gaze, and a dawning realization.

The Fujisaki mansion was emerging through the snow-laden trees.

It could not have been more opposite my little house on Chuo Road if it tried. My city home compacted where Nagihiko's rambled, like morning-glory growing willy-nilly over a moor. It could have been a farmer's hovel but for its labyrinthine size. A network of hallways and porches laced themselves through the wilderness. It was unattractively thatched, all dull brown and whitewash.

As the lady of the house, Fujisaki-sensei ascended into her domain first. From the blinding white of the snow, we were plunged into the pitch dark. A traditional foyer took shape in the harsh white light as my eyes adjusted.

"We're home!" Fujisaki-sensei announced to the rafters. A wall parted, much like in Kouen Castle. From behind it came an elderly woman. She removed Fujisaki-sensei's stole and took her parasol, murmuring something about heating bathwater. My ears perked.

A house of women, I thought. Like Seiyo.

To my delight, the Fujisaki house was efficient and worshiped the guest to the point of insanity. Four pairs of tabi socks were waiting for us, warm from the coals. As Amu and I removed our wet stockings, I finally began to feel more human and less icicle.

"Apologies for intruding," Amu apologized to her socks. I mirrored her and leaned forward, fiddling with my gloves.

"Not at all," Fujisaki-sensei said warmly, but something about the way it was delivered seemed disinterested. Amu picked up her suitcase handle and received a faffing hand.

"No, no," Fujisaki-sensei insisted. "We will take your things to your room."

"Hot bath first, I think," the housekeeper contributed, clearly over the moon at having girls to smother. I wondered if Nagihiko allowed himself to be babied like this.

The answer was, of course, that he was just as bad. The abominable creature took his place between his mother and housekeeper, furrowing his brow at us.

"They'll need something to change into. I'll go take some out of the storehouse."

"I have a suitcase," I said. "Don't trouble yourself."

Fujisaki-sensei and Nagihiko both tutted.

"We'd like you to relax fully while you're under our care," Sensei said.

"This is a cult," I whispered to Amu. She shushed me.

The Fujisaki's bath was an outbuilding accessed by covered walkway. When a snow monkey leapt off the roof and into the pines, I nearly gagged. The housekeeper seemed oblivious. Baths in those days were offered to guests before anything else as a method to get one comfortable and relaxed. I wasn't sure how anyone could relax, up to their chin in scorpion broth.

Well, one person could.

"This is so nice," Amu sighed, wet cloth stuck to her forehead. We were both crammed into the single tub, like salt-packed sardines. "I never want to get oooooooooooout."

Amu shabu-shabu, I thought, and grinned to myself. Then I sobered, remembering I, too, was in the pot.

"Why is the Dragon even doing this for us?" I asked, blowing bubbles like a mudfish.

Amu extricated her leg from the bathwater and shrugged her shoulders in a relaxed roll. Unlike Amu, I knew the taste of luxury but had no urge to savour it.

"What's the saying… mm… 'better than a distant relative is a nearby stranger'? Who knows what we could have done if sensei hadn't intervened on our behalf?"

"We could have stayed in Seiyo," I pointed out. Amu frowned at me.

"Not like this," she said.

"You'll see," I muttered.

In the foyer area of the bathhouse was two piles of folded clothes. I expected Nagihiko's choices to be over-the-top. They weren't. One was solid pine green with bamboo leaves, the other plum with zigzagging plum blossoms. They came with warm underrobes and jackets, padded for the mountain cold.

Returning to the main house brought us face-to-face with a maze of sliding doors. Twice we took a wrong turn into a futon closet, and I got to watch Amu walk confidently into a pile of folded mattresses.

On the third incorrect door, we came face-to-face with the glassy eyes of a traditional Japanese doll the size of a child.

I braced.

Amu yelled.

I smacked her, which only made her yell again. We both turned around to see the housekeeper. Amu went bright red.

"Please excuse our outburst…" Amu was still apologizing repeatedly as the housekeeper showed us to the guest-parlour. She politely got onto her knees to slide the door open, and Amu had to duck below the lintel.

It was the largest room in the house by far and must have been nothing short of luxurious in the summer. The far wall of sliding screens would open to the summer air, Seto Inland Sea visible beyond the veranda, framed by pines. By winter, soft white light diffused into the room through the storm-shutter to illuminate a calligraphy scroll in the alcove opposite. I smelled something soft and fragrant that I would later discover was hinoki cypress.

Strangely, what has stayed with me most about the Fujisaki house was the use of gnarled and bent wood posts in the room's construction. It made me think of my stunted tree-drawing, worlds away.

"Don't dawdle in the doorway!" a middle-aged woman I did not recognize enjoined us. "Come down to the hearth where it's warm."

Her voice was so jovial and inviting that we could not help but come closer. We were forced into the seats of honour with our backs (humbly) to the scroll.

I glanced down. A cushion. With a wince, I settled myself into seiza.

The woman who spoke to us was not the only Fujisaki clan-member I did not know: two men were present, one older than us, one younger.

Nagihiko looked up from the woman's right, grinning. "Is it true? You both get lost on the way back from the baths, and walked into a futon-closet?"

"Nadeshiko," his mother reminded her, "It is not proper to listen to the maid's gossip."

"Especially when inaccurate," I said, compelled to speak out of turn. "It was twice."

Nagihiko laughed, surprised. My chest hurt.

"Let's eat," the woman said in a husky voice that did not match her red mouth. "Hinamori and Mashiro-san, is it?"

Amu gave a noise of assent and hungrily eyed the grill laid out over the hot coals. A kettle hung from a hook in the ceiling, steaming. My stomach growled. I hadn't eaten since the train.

"Welcome to our home. Thank you for taking care of our Nadeshiko all this time. It's not much, but we're happy to have the company."

She must be Fujisaki-sensei's sister-in-law to speak with house authority above Nagihiko's mother. Certainly not married. Her hair was pulled off her face in an elaborate coiffure, and her face was powdered and painted like an actress's. When she thought we weren't looking, she winked and clicked her tongue at Fujisaki-sensei, who bristled. I felt a funny shiver in my stomach that I thought might be cold, but probably wasn't.

The food was simple but dazzling. Bowls of rice were passed around, followed shortly by roasted sweet potatoes; then by fresh Miyajima oysters grilled in their shell before our eyes. There was none of the seasoning I was used to, but it was steps above the hardtack of Seiyo. For some time, there was nothing but the grateful clinking of chopsticks against bowls as we ate.

I tried to find a dignified way to pick the oyster out with my chopsticks. Across the hearth, Nagihiko was prying the oyster from its shell and mixing it with his rice. Nagihiko's aunt raised an eyebrow at him.

"What's gotten into you? You've eaten oysters before," she raised her eyebrows. The powder at her hairline cracked to reveal a seamline. I goggled, but nobody else seemed to have noticed.

"Just slurp it."

To prove her point, she detached the mollusc neatly with her chopsticks, doused it in a splash of vinegar, and tilted it up to her mouth. Her lips pursed around it. I watched the flesh wobble and slide down her throat. My shiver worsened.

"Come now," his aunt laughed. "You'll have a happy wife if you can eat an oyster, eh, Nade?"

"Father!" Nagihiko tried to say with dignity, flushing. He hadn't spoken in quite some time, and I realized he had slouched under the table, as though trying to make himself as unnoticeable as possible. "Don't embarrass me!"

Father. Unlike me, Amu forgot to hide her look of surprise.

The seamline on Nagihiko's father's brow cracked further and revealed the coiffure to be a wig. The wig was promptly discarded on the floor, leaving only a hairnet.

I should have guessed, between the raunchy jokes and husky voice. A male actor of female roles. The famous Fujisaki Aoi IV looked as normal as one could get for a glittering Kabuki celebrity. There was something of Nagihiko in the arch of his nose, the fullness of his mouth. Other than that, he could have been any kimono-clad man in his mid-forties on a train platform.

"I'm just ribbing, I'm just ribbing," the Mr Fujisaki Aoi grinned. "You can wed someone as miserable as you like."

"Don't say that," Tsubaki said. "Or she will, just to spite you."

Amu's eyes were still locked on the Kabuki wig behind him, staring. Having confused gender presentation once before, I found myself remarkably undisturbed.

"Madam Fujisaki is right," the older man warned over the sound of bowls. "The world is changing. The West has put the idea of love marriage into our daughters' heads, and young people act selfishly."

Amu, Nagihiko and I – the young people – all exchanged a neutral look. Children should be seen and not heard had been hammered into me from the time I knew how to cry.

Fujisaki Aoi only seemed amused. "In my short time on this earth, I see some fathers treat their daughters like hina dolls, keeping them in storage until they can sell them. What's the use in that?"

"You romantic," the old man scoffed, shovelling rice into his mouth. It occurred to me that it must be a member of the troupe, and that the entire house likely belonged to them. "You'll let her marry whoever touches her first?"

"The worms will eat one's daughter, even locked in a trunk," he said lazily. He was citing an old proverb: hakoiri musume ni mushi ga tsuku. "Teach your child to see vermin, and you won't have one who acts selfishly."

Nadeshiko smiled modestly.

"You mean to say," the man gave us a cursory glance before leaning in. "You will let her pick for herself?"

Pronouns were absent. Did every close associate of the Fujisakis know Nadeshiko's identity? Or did the blending of gender within the theatre form a tidy precedent for unusual companions? I never found out, for Tsubaki decided she had enough of this conversation.

"Hinamori-san," she entreated, turning to her with a bright smile. "Am I to understand that you and Mashiro-san live in Tokyo?"

Amu, panicking under the attention, tore her eyes from the wig.

"Yeah," she said. "Yes."

She looked to me for help. Remembering that Nagihiko's father hated Tokyo, I smiled with my eyes.

"The city seems busier than ever these days," Tsubaki mused. "We must seem pedestrian by comparison, no?"

Amu's glare was intense now.

I said: "I would hardly call the country's largest shipyard pedestrian."

Tsubaki's neck swivelled to me. I lost my nerve and swallowed another oyster.

"These are good," I added.

"The shipyard is an eyesore, isn't it," Fujisaki Aoi said with a smile. "Supremacy for supremacy's sake."

Nagihiko and his mother both tensed. Too late, I realized I had tread on one of the hot-button topics endemic to every family.

"I'm pleased you like the oysters, Mashiro-san," Tsubaki addressed me, but she was speaking to her husband. "They are just coming into season, and a specialty of the prefecture."

Fujisaki Aoi gingerly touched his shoulder, as though it was sore. I was reminded of Utau's body language the morning after being beaten. Tsubaki's face was a mask. She couldn't have. Not her own husband.

I made up my mind to not speak again, even if Amu begged me to. Making conversation did not come easy to me: I spoke bluntly, or not at all. Shipyards, indeed! It was far better to keep my mouth shut.

"Mashiro-san," The Dragon's voice called out, almost lovingly. "It is so quiet in here."

Her punishment for my comment was swift.

"I had the pleasure of witnessing your koto performance this past summer. Would you do us the honor of musical accompaniment?"

"No," I said. "I will not."

Nagihiko's father roared with laughter. Tsubaki, perhaps under the impression he was mocking me, shot him a glare.

"How I love a woman's straightforward modesty!" he cried, wiping an eye. A black smear followed his finger.

"I find Mashiro-san's playing charming." Nagihiko did not elaborate.

"Then you must play for us," Tsubaki concluded like the thing was decided.

I groaned under my breath. Servants brought an ancient koto out from what must have been one of the many futon-closets. My table and dishes were removed in favor of a thirteen-stringed beast I never thought I'd have to look at again.

Mother, I miss you, I thought miserably. At this moment, I would take a stiff New Year's Eve over having to play a koto in front of a family of doubtless musicians.

I plucked a string. Tsubaki winced. Wrong note. I tried again with the correct string this time, whispering notes under my breath. Nagihiko's mother could not humiliate me, for I had no pride in my accomplishments as a woman. One, two, three. Nagihiko dancing like water in my room,

Something resembling the Nagasaki Wandering Song took shape, each note filling in the stillness with a misshapen sound. Hatanaka Marimo would be performing excellently in my place. The kind of old-fashioned love story that all parents dream of. An accomplished Japanese beauty who could wear kimono, who had pretty hands and feet, could play koto for her mother-in-law without her wincing.

All-in-all, I considered it a mediocre performance better than my usual standard, which pleased me. Nagihiko's father requested Haru no Umi, which surprised me twofold, as I played poorly and assumed Kabuki actors to be old-fashioned. Tsubaki engaged Amu in polite conversation over my second song, which Nagihiko joined. Watching them, I felt a little bit like Nagihiko's father's vermin.

Aoi called for tea, and I was rescued from the beastly instrument. The hearth wore down to coals. Nagihiko declined a cup, and instead lowered his head to the floor.

"Forgive my impertinence," he said. "I must take my leave."

"Of course," his mother said. "I will tell O-Mari to keep a lantern lit for you."

So ended our first night in the Fujisaki house.


Amu and I awoke the next morning to the almightiest clatter. The maids were just outside the guest room, cleaning the house from top to bottom in preparation for the new year.

I groaned, burying myself in the futon. Amu crawled over to the snow-viewing window, lifting the shutter with a smile. For Amu, this was the farthest she had been from her problems in months. Me? — I was ever so slightly closer.

Fujisaki Aoi was out making New Years' calls. Nagihiko was nowhere to be found, so I knew he must be practicing. The Madam Fujisaki spent her time between supervising her son and entertaining callers, leaving us free of her gaze. It was slightly better than Seiyo. Almost.

As giftless guests imposing during the busiest time of year, we begged to help. They refused. They only relented when Amu grabbed a broom and declared herself cleaning. I had no choice but to join.

The maids despaired of my womanly ability. At first, they conspired to send me into tight spots nobody else could reach. This was to no avail: I would clean whatever was in front of me, blind to stubborn mould and corner-dirt.

O-Mari had the idea to shunt me off to the kitchen with the housekeeper. Like most women of a certain age, the housekeeper was shamelessly bossy. There was no shortage of work to do, and lunch to be considered. It was soon clear that whatever basic ability Seiyo's kitchens might have instilled in me, a housewife I was not. I could make scalded rice, brew tea and cut vegetables. I could not de-scale a fish, monitor a grill, prepare stock, shave noodles or pound mochi. There had always been a maid to do our cooking and cleaning so far as I could remember. It was considered beneath my family name, dying and heir-less though it was, for a Mashiro to do her own housework.

I was sent back out of the kitchen in disgrace. Through the thin paper screen, I heard the muttered "princess." My cheeks were on fire.

Amu fared better save one respect: she was a born coward. As we pulled futons from a closet, out poured a torrent of large, brown grains of rice. I picked one off me, only to realise it had little legs and was moving.

"Bug!" Amu hollered, jumping like the floor was fire.

The maid was swift and lethal. Wielding her broom over her head like a sword, she struck the louse out of my hand.

A pungent odour filled the hallway, coriander but worse. My nose crinkled.

"Stinkbug!" a voice roared. It was O-Mari.

"They're everywhere!"

"The lady will never abide by this," she said grimly. "There must be hundreds. We'll never kill them all and dissipate the smell in time."

The stinkbugs crawled through the wood grain, into the warm cracks and crevices. We had thrown open the shutters to air the house through. Brow furrowed, I watched them run from the cold draft.

My pride still stung from the kitchens. I said, "Have you a mosquito-coil?"

"They're put away in storage, for the summer. What a question, Mashiro-san. Why for?"

I did not answer. She left to fetch the coils. Calmly, I took a lantern down from its bracket. The insects crawled towards the light, mistaking it for the sun.

"Rima?" Amu asked curiously.

"Hush," I said.

I refined my trap in the ensuing hour based on their movements. A tray of soapy water was pushed under the lantern, raised on a platform. The mosquito-coils were placed in front of all other warm drafts or closets, warding them with the smell of pyrethrum.

The bugs fell frantically to their watery death. This did not endear me, but they feared me.

Vermin.

The housekeeper re-emerged from the kitchens with Nagihiko, balancing trays of glutinous, mirror-like rice cakes. I recognized them as the ones I couldn't pound sufficiently with a mallet.

"The young miss is getting so strong," the housekeeper teased him. "It's a pity you weren't born a boy."

"And what a boy I'd make!" Nagihiko laughed. "Where's Mother?"

But Mother was already present. She looked terser than usual when she said, "and has the parlour alcove been done?"

"It has."

She took two rice cakes from the tray and took delicate steps around a corner. We stood there uncertainly, exchanging puzzled looks.

"An offering for the altar," the housekeeper said in a low, pained voice.

"For Amida Buddha?" Amu asked, obliviously.

"And the lady's father-in-law, and the child she lost in infancy to cholera."

Amu paled. "I never knew. How terrible for sensei…"

The anguish in Tsubaki's voice had been genuine that night. The tragedy in three parts: the paltry ashes of a child not yet two, barely enough to fill an urn. Registered in the book of the dead under her newborn brother's identity, switching places with him in one fell swoop. As we spoke, Nagihiko stood before an altar, eye-to-eye with his own name on a burial tablet.

If Nagihiko could only reappear, so I could say silently with my eyes: I know. You never have to smile and hide anything; not with me.

But when he returned with his mother, his eyes were elsewhere. I presumed so were his thoughts.

"I ought to go to the theatre early," he said, in a subdued, quieter voice than I was used to. Our eyes met, and then broke at the same time, startled. "Father and I can go. The performance is an amateur, small little thing. It is my wish that Hinamori-san and Mashiro-san not be bothered for such a petty thing on New Year's Eve, when you are doubtlessly missing your families."

It surprised me to note that I did miss home: I had never spent a New Year's away from family in my life, and in a strange prefecture, surrounded by my failures, I felt lonely. But my only lifeline – Amu – put her hands together and her eyes lit up.

"Oh, Nadeshiko, please, we'd love to come! At home, my family always listens to the NHK radio programme on New Year's Eve, so I'm used to staying up for a show. I've never seen real kabuki, even when it's playing in Shibuya. Please."

The idea of being trapped alone in a house with O-Mari and the housekeeper was not an attractive one. It was only a dance. And whatever else I might delude myself into thinking — I loved how she danced.

"I would like to go, as well," I said robotically.

"You've worked very hard," Tsubaki reminded her son, frowning. She seemed as confused as I was that Nagihiko was trying to put us off it. "We would love to have you."

Nagihiko lowered his head in wordless submission, tucking his hair delicately behind his ear.

"You look as if there is something you would like to say, Grandmother," said Tsubaki, looking over my shoulder.

"I do," the housekeeper burst out. She nodded to Amu's and my cleaning smocks. "You don't mean to send them in that, do you?"


1. NEW CHAPTER SOON LOL this one was split into two

2. I love Nagihiko's dad even though I made him up based on a single throwaway line from the anime