A mother comes to pick up her child in the evening.
That was all it was about.
I offered my entire day planner to Tohko, who was making a suspicious face.
“Would you read it for me? Just reading it won’t count as eating, right?”
“…O-okay.”
Tohko took the planner in both hands and started to read it slowly.
She was flustered at first. Then her expression gradually loosened up, and a gentle light tinged her smiling eyes.
Her eyes ran to the end, and she murmured, “That was a nice story. The choice of words was…very pretty.”
“The prompts were ‘dragonfly,’ ‘sunset,’ and ‘pick up,’” I told her, then took the planner from her hands and ripped the two pages out.
I ripped them up even smaller and sprinkled the pieces on Tohko’s lap like flower petals.
Tohko’s eyes went round.
“…Konoha.”
“No one will be able to read it ever again. If you don’t eat it for me, it’ll go to waste.”
I spoke brusquely, and she gazed intently at me, her face slightly pink.
I wished she wouldn’t. Because I felt a tickle in the pit of my stomach that was driving me crazy.
“Thank you.”
Tohko smiled.
She picked up a piece of paper I had shredded in her thin fingers and brought it to her lips. Even though she usually dripped criticism everywhere, today she went on eating in contented silence, as if savoring each and every flavor.
When I saw that, the pit of my stomach got even more ticklish. I got fidgety and looked away and picked up the copy of Demon Pond with the embroidered cover.
“To my daughter…”
I turned the page with the brush-written message on it and sat down on the opposite end of the chaise lounge from Tohko and pretended to read.
In fact, hardly any of it penetrated my mind.
The flowing characters were beautiful to look at, but it wasn’t really suited to easy reading, and I wasn’t used to the old way of spelling things, so I was stumbling.
“That was great,” Tohko murmured happily.
I kept pretending to read the handmade book.
Tohko leaned in and peeked at me from the side.
She smelled like violets, and I thought my heart would jump out of my chest.
“You’re not making much progress.”
I jumped. “It…it’s hard to read. And the sentences…I don’t really understand the situation.”
“But Demon Pond is one of the easier Kyōka stories to read. The Grass Labyrinth tells another story inside the story, and a lot of the time you get confused about who’s talking about what. That sense of peril is like turning circles in a maze and it entrances you.
“You don’t think about Kyōka’s stories as you read them. You surrender yourself and drown in them. Simply sinking deeply into them without flailing your arms and legs around…
“You don’t think about them with your mind, you feel them with your heart.
“Still, if you don’t understand it, hmm—maybe we should try reading it aloud.”
Tohko’s face sparkled as if she’d just had a great idea.
“Let’s split up the parts and read it together! The flavor of a play goes up dramatically when you say the lines out loud!”
“What?!”
I tried to refuse, but with her belly full, Tohko had gotten her energy back, and she was in full swing.
“Since I’m a girl, I’ll be Yuri, and you be Akira. You do Shirayuki, too.”
“Shirayuki is a girl!”
“Don’t get picky over the details. I’m doing Shirayuki’s servants and her nurse. Oh, and you’ll be Akira’s friend and the villagers, too.”
“Don’t I have a lot more parts?”
“I’ll help when I need to. Okay, let’s start. Go!”
When I hesitated, Tohko jabbed me in the chest with her elbow.
Geez, why did I have to do stuff like this?
I started reading Akira’s lines stiffly, as if I had been called on in class to read from the book.
“The water is beautiful. Whenever I look at it…beautiful.”
“Yes,” Tohko answered gently in the role of Yuri.
“The water is clean.”
“But it is white.”
The stage directions indicated that Yuri puts a hand to her white wig, and Tohko too touched her hair. Girls just love playing house and playing with dolls and playing pretend…
The sunny exchange between the husband and wife went on for some time.
“It is that part of you which seems to shine through the last iris to bloom, casting a shadow on the water. It is even prettier.”
“I know not whereof you speak.”
“Is there anyone who is incensed by flattery?”
“Though this holds me up for your enjoyment to ridicule.”
Ugh, this conversation was so embarrassing. Even if it was just acting.
Plus, Tohko was oddly infused with feeling…Since she was reading right next to me, I felt her breath on my ears and her braids tickled the back of my hand.
I wanted it to end quickly, but the story was still in its introductory stages. After this, Akira’s friend Gakuen would happen through a place where Yuri is by herself and talk about his friend who had gone missing.
Unwilling to let Akira go back, Yuri tries to drive Gakuen away, but at that point Akira comes back.
Akira soothes Yuri’s anxiety by telling her, “I won’t go back.” Seeing the two of them like that, even Gakuen is overwhelmed by emotion.
“How thoughtful of you to inquire whether I wish to return to Tokyo after you’ve rapped me on the back and woken me from my dream.”
“Come now, Hagiwara. This dream shouldn’t end from seeing my face. You hardly need wake if you’re having a good dream.”
“After this part, there’s a really long conversation between Akira and Gakuen.”
“Okay, I’ll be Gakuen.”
Perhaps because the entanglement between Akira and Yuri had gone away, my embarrassment gradually lessened, too, as we continued reading together.
In fact, sitting beside Tohko in this room walled in with books, following the words from a shared volume, putting our voices to them, and speaking the words, it started to feel pleasant.
And even when Tohko murmured, “Acting is fun. I could get used to this,” despite myself, I almost replied, “You’re right…”
“As you know…I wanted to hear the tales of every land and walked up the Northern Highway. As I did so, I…I am myself but a tale of one line.”
The words expanded my imagination.
As if the two of us were bobbing through a dream in a tiny boat shaped like a chaise lounge.
All around us was unbroken water.
The moon dyed the water silver and pleasant-smelling white flowers floated by on it.
Tohko wove the brilliant words together.
Pulling me into that unreal, ephemeral illusion.
And I answered with words.
Magic-tinged words like a moon, like a flower, tickling at my ears and inviting me into fantasy.
Finally, Shirayuki appeared and told of her frantic feelings for her beloved partner who lived in the pond at Swords Peak.
She missed him.
But while the villagers kept their promise and continued ringing the temple bell three times a day, Shirayuki remained sealed. She could not leave her pond.
Then she would knock the bell down!
“Nurse, whatever you think of me, I am going. I must go to Swords Peak. If only it weren’t for the bell, there could be no pact…They will pull down the bell and smash it into atoms.”
“Whatever becomes of a human life, it is no concern of mine!…Love has no need even of my own life.”
As I read Shirayuki’s lines, I was pulled into her passion, her restlessness, and the core of my brain grew numbingly hot.
How fierce was
the dragon princess…
“I cannot abandon love for the sake of a life. Withdraw, withdraw.”
“Were my body to be smashed to dust, were I to be cut to pieces, would my soul, which burns with desire and dyes the one I love in blood, turn into a faint firefly’s light and fly to Swords Peak?”
The cry like lightning cutting through a storm recalled a girl who was now gone.
Hotaru Amemiya—
The strong, evanescent girl who had risked her life to accomplish her love.
Her love had been a purely destructive love that no one would have celebrated. She had loved someone she could never be with, with all of her soul.
For the rest of my life I would never forget her smile as she clung to the one she loved, smiling as she wept, and whispered, “Father…”
A painful love that engulfed everything and destroyed it like a storm.
At the same time, the image of the rampaging dragon princess was superimposed on Maki, too.
Whatever becomes of a human life, it is no concern of mine! The image of her making that arrogant declaration—
“I’m doing this my way. Shirayuki doesn’t exist. Neither does the curse. It’s all a delusion. Even if the curse does happen, I’ll take it all on myself.”
Amemiya and Maki.
Though their appearances and personalities were polar opposites, right now the two of them felt like one, like the front and back of a coin.
Maybe it was because of the intensity they both had inside them.
Like Amemiya, Maki wouldn’t mind letting a rain of fire pour over her body if it would grant the wish of her heart.
Perhaps the Shirayuki who had slaughtered the people of the mansion had been that way, too.
Sealed at the bottom of a dark pond, frustrated, perhaps she had cherished tempestuous feelings.
Like the Shirayuki of Demon Pond—who had caused a flood and swallowed up the village—the Shirayuki Yuri Himekura feared had dyed the mansion in blood.
The Shirayuki of Demon Pond had heard Yuri’s lullaby as she waited for Akira, and her spirit was quieted. For Yuri’s sake, she decided to keep her promise with the humans.
But…
“I envy the couple in this house; I covet what is theirs. Nurse, let us settle ourselves and emulate them.”
“I will embrace this doll and sing as well…”
As I spoke the words, I felt the terrifying realization that if she hadn’t heard Yuri’s singing, Shirayuki probably would have caused the temple bell to fall even if it brought a curse down on herself.
Just then, there was the sound of glass shattering on the second floor.
Tohko and I jumped at the same moment.
“Wh-what was that?”
“It came from the second floor.”
“You don’t think it was in Maki’s room?”
Tohko stood up with a grim expression and bolted out of the room.
I hurried after her.
It was nearing two o’clock in the morning. We turned on lights in the hall as we ran, then sprinted up the stairs.
As we were heading toward Maki’s room, we saw a red liquid dripping, dropping in the hall, and Tohko grew even paler.
“Ee—is this…blood?”
She shook her head with a shudder, as if trying to force back her fear, and opened the door to Maki’s room.
“Maki, we’re coming in!”
The next instant, Tohko gasped and came to a stop in the doorway.
Peeking in from beside her, I tensed as well.
The window facing the veranda had shattered spectacularly and fine shards of glass were scattered on the desk and floor.
Maki was holding a rumpled sheet of paper in her hand and was staring down at it.
“Maki! What happened?”
“Aw, you came.” Maki looked over at us.
“We were just passing by,” Tohko said spitefully, then went into the room and peered down at Maki’s hand. Her voice became shrill. “Wh-wh-wh-wh-what’s that?!”
Maki opened the paper for us with a dry rustle.
It was traditional rice paper that might be used for calligraphy. It was wrinkled up and the upper half was ripped diagonally.
Words were laid out on it in red brushstrokes.
“Don’t forget the promise.”
Something cold ran down my spine.
This was obviously a warning. But from whom? About what?
Maki pointed at a rock about the size of a fist on the table and said, “That was wrapped around this. I was thinking of heading to bed when it came flying in. It’s a real pain this late at night.”
“H-how can you be so flippant? If you’d gotten hit by a rock that size, you’d be in real pain then. Everything’s fine because you happened to be away from the window, but you might’ve gotten seriously hurt if you weren’t lucky. Besides, with these—these—red letters like blood—” Tohko declared, shaking. She looked over at the window and froze.
A moth had landed on the broken glass.
All around it tiny red beads had dripped, dropped.
At last they had turned into red streams, and moving as slowly as a crawling slug, they dripped down the glass.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled instantly.
A white moth.
Several streams of red, creeping sluggishly.
When they got to the shattered spot in the glass, the streams turned back into droplets and pattered to the floor in the room.
I couldn’t get my voice out, as if a cold hand was squeezing my throat tight.
We were all staring at the window tensely. The warm, muggy air blowing in from outside mixed with the cold air from the air conditioner and smelled of rotting fish.
“Yuck! Wh-what’s that?” Tohko murmured at last, her voice sounding as if she’d forced it out. Her thin legs were shaking.
Maki went boldly over to the window.
“Maki, be careful!”
She ignored Tohko’s warning, opened the window, and went out onto the balcony.
The white moth flitted away.
“Maki, come back here!” Tohko shouted.
“It’s fine.”
As soon as Maki turned her face to look up, it happened.
A huge amount of red water cascaded over her head.
The red torrent engulfed Maki’s entire body instantly, accompanied by the sound of water pounding against the ground.
“Maki!”
I ran to the window with Tohko. A sharp smell assaulted my nose. An intense smell like rotten cheese or fish guts that had been butchered and extracted with a kitchen knife.
I covered my nose with one hand reflexively, and we froze in place. Maki slowly lifted her face to look at us.
The pale moon floating in the sky illuminated an unearthly figure.
Her long, undulating hair was stuck all over her face and the stinking red liquid was dripping from it.
Her silk shirt and loose pants were both soaked through with the liquid, and the now-translucent cloth lewdly accentuated the curves of her breasts, her hips, and her thighs.
Plus, fish guts and scales and eyes had in fact been mixed into the liquid, and they hung from her hair and shoulders, giving off a foul stench that made me feel nauseous.
The servants, only now running in, let out a shout at the doorway and leaped back.
To them, Maki herself probably looked like a ghoul who had crawled up from the bottom of a pond, dripping with blood.
Tohko and I, our faces half covered with our hands, were also still staring at Maki without so much as a muscle twitching.
With one hand, Maki brushed away the hair stuck to her face.
When only the right half of her face was revealed, we got goose bumps even worse than before.
That was because Maki was smiling.
The corner of her mouth was hitched up, her eyes were glinting, and bathed in the moonlight, drenched with blood, letting off a rotten stench—even so, she was brimming with joy.
/> I was unable to discover even a hint of fear or dread or anger, nothing but an almost evil exultation, which was vividly present.
A chill ran down my spine and the hair on my body stood on end.
Were we seeing something not human—?
Silky words slipped from her smiling lips.
“It seems Shirayuki has appeared at last.”
It sounded as if she had been awaiting the arrival of a hated enemy and welcomed it.
The instant she wildly shook the other half of her hair aside, fish guts went flying and smacked into Tohko’s forehead.
Tohko didn’t scream.
She just quietly fainted.
When was it that I sensed the fraying begin?
She was extremely cautious in weaving her stories, and she hid that from me, so I was unable to see it.
But in that tiny room of books, she gave me many hints.
For example, when she would suddenly fall silent.
For example, when she would lower her eyes sadly.
For example, when she would pull away slightly, her cheeks flushed.
When she would get angry with me and tell me I mustn’t get close to her.
There was always meaning in her inexplicable behavior.
One day she grew suddenly furtive and fidgety and started avoiding me.
It was for a mere two or three days, but—
She was confined to her bed with a cold for some time after that, and when we next met, she had a bright smile and squeezed my hand like before.
So I quickly forgot about it…
Chapter 4—The Princess’s Situation
The next morning I woke up when I got bonked in the head.
Tohko was the one who’d kicked me. I turned onto my side and her toes were planted on the pillow. When I tried to get up, I got swatted in the face again and again.
Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower Page 8
