Chapter 18: 3.5

When they left the mansion, they saw the old couple and an unfamiliar man talking in front of the villa caretaker’s house. The old couple kept bowing their heads to the man and seemed to be making excuses. The man was in his twenties, wearing a well-made suit and glasses. Suzuko wondered if he was angry, as he was listening to the old couple with a stern look on his face.

“That might be someone from the Furuya family,” Takafuyu said. Suzuko nodded.

“Is the old couple being scolded for letting us into the villa?”

“That might be so. Let’s explain the situation.”

Takafuyu quickly approached the man.

“Pardon me. Are you Furuya-san?”

“Yes,” the man replied warily. His stern look hadn’t changed either. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“My name is Hanabishi Takafuyu. Due to some circumstances, I had this couple let me into the mansion.”

“Hanabishi…Baron Hanabishi? Of Kuneidou?”

The man’s expression softened a little.

“Excuse my rudeness. My name is Furuya Atsushi. My younger sister used to live in this villa.”

“So, you are Viscountess Sasao’s older brother?”

“Yes. Did you have some sort of business here, Baron Hanabishi?”

Takafuyu gave him an amiable smile.

“I heard the viscountess’s ghost was haunting this mansion, so I went to have a look myself.”

Furuya’s brow furrowed, and he frowned at the old couple. “It’s quite troubling that such a rumor has spread.”

“No, we never…”

“I didn’t hear it from these people. I only happened to overhear it,” Takafuyu intervened. “That’s how much it was rumored.”

Furuya sighed.

“I see. That was how far the rumor spread?”

“There’s no need to worry anymore, because the rumor will soon disappear. I’ve exorcised her.”

“What?” Furuya asked back quizzically. “Exorcise?”

“I am a priest.”

“The madam has passed on?”

The old man exclaimed in surprise. The old woman next to him also gasped.

“She’s gone. She won’t show up again.”

The old couple let out deep sighs of relief. Inexplicably, the old man clasped his hands together toward Takafuyu. The old woman was wiping her eyes with her apron.

“Truly…?” Furuya looked skeptical. “No, I know that you are a Shinto priest and that you perform exorcisms. But, did my sister truly pass on?”

Takafuyu had a “Oh?” look on his face for a moment. Perhaps he was surprised that Furuya knew that he did exorcisms. Suzuko was also surprised. She wondered if Furuya was that well-informed about the world of the nobility.

“The viscountess had been looking for something for a long time. Now that she has found it, she has passed on to the other side.”

“Looking for something?”

“This thing,” Takafuyu turned his gaze to Suzuko. She held out the pocket watch to Furuya. His eyes were glued to it.

“This is…” Something like a groan slipped from his mouth.

“Do you know this watch? It fell out of the tower window and got stuck. If it had fallen all the way to the ground, the glass would have been shattered.”

Furuya took the pocket watch and stared at it.

“This belonged to my sister. I had always assumed that it couldn’t be found among the belongings she left behind. My sister asked an engraver to carve a design on an imported pocket watch—both our grandfather and father studied abroad in England, and there was a time when we were obsessed with all things English and liked to incorporate those things into our lives. It was the same for accessories as well…”

“Is that why she had a liking for jet?”

Furuya nodded.

“It’s mourning jewelry. It’s probably out of fashion now, but my sister wore it anyway. …”

Furuya tried to continue, but faltered. He turned his gaze to the villa and said, “It’s impolite of me to keep you standing around talking. Let’s go inside.” Suzuko and Takafuyu returned to the villa again. The old couple were left behind.

After entering the villa, Furuya took off the white dust cloth from a sofa and told them to sit. Suzuko and Takafuyu both sat down, and Furuya also sat on the sofa opposite to them. He placed the pocket watch on the table and stared at it as he spoke.

“We were originally a very religious family.”

“Are you talking about your family in Koufu?”

“Yes. We were silkworm farmers, and most of us worship the god of sericulture.”

“Like Oshira-sama, Kokai Myoujin, or Aśvaghoṣa?”

“Yes, you are very knowledgeable, as expected. At our home, the god was called ‘Komori-sama,’ and we worshipped them as a household gold. After starting another business, both my father and grandfather began worshiping Ebisu-sama as well. At any rate, being superstitious and pious was valued. I hear a lot of businessmen are like that.”

“I’ve heard that as well.”

“Perhaps because my sister was raised in such a house, but she was a very religious child from a young age. She was a shy and quiet girl. She was a sickly child, so our grandparents, parents, and maids preciously raised her like our treasured silkworms. I don’t know if it was because of that or not, but she was high-strung, or perhaps I should say, highly sensitive, and she often said strange things.”

“Strange things?”

“She would say things like ‘Grandmother’s ghost is here,’ or that our ancestors were angry and we had to do this, and so on. Even though our family was deeply religious—no, perhaps it was because they were religious, but they didn’t like my sister’s behavior. My grandfather was once afraid that Komori-sama was angry with us. Our parents were worried and had a doctor see her and gave her medicine. None of it worked, though. But she didn’t act like that all the time, so we didn’t worry over it or suffer from it too much. And then——”

Where did it all go wrong? Furuya let out a bitter laugh.

“It all started with the driver.”

He must have been talking about the viscountess’s lover, her personal driver. Suzuko and Takafuyu already knew about it, but they feigned ignorance so as to not interrupt him.

“He was a driver who worked for us. He and my sister were in love with each other.”

“I see,” Takafuyu chimed in.

“It’s a common story,” Furuya said in a fed-up tone. “I’ve heard plenty of stories of love affairs between drivers and the wife or daughter of the family they worked for, and ours was no exception.”

Furuya’s brow furrowed tightly. “We were careful, though. We didn’t want them to elope or commit lovers’ suicide.”

“That driver and the viscountess…”

“The driver died from illness. It was a sickness of the lungs.”

Takafuyu nodded and silently urged him to continue.

“The relationship between the two of them became known when the man quit his job due to his lung disease and had to recuperate elsewhere. My sister insisted on going with him. We were horrified. It was like a bolt from the blue. In any case, we couldn’t let her do that, so we persuaded her to pray for his complete recovery first. Our father also told her that they could get married if his illness was cured. That’s far better than having them elope or commit suicide. We were neither a noble family nor an old family. In fact, our father had the driver admitted to a hospital in Osaka that was famous for its tuberculosis treatment. He always indulged my sister. Too indulging. That was when my sister became obsessed with religion.”

Furuya glared at the pocket watch and continued talking sullenly. It was as if he was venting his frustration towards his sister on the pocket watch.

“She decided to pray, just as we persuaded her to. Whenever she heard that performing an act of charity would heal illnesses, she would make an offering to that religion and ask them to pray for her. Eventually, she ended up at that fox-possessed house of worship.”1

“Fox-possessed? You mean the Touka Faith?”

“Is that their name? They were preaching about some grandiose doctrines and dignified deity, but that must be a load of nonsense.”

“Well, they are more or less a government-sanctioned religion.”

“I don’t know what tricks they used to get the government to recognize them—” Furuya shook his head. “Anyway, my sister became too zealous about them. She had always been a nervous and high-strung girl, so she became overly zealous and worrying, and everyone in the family was concerned. Then, the driver who had been recuperating died. Can you understand how agitated and unstable she became when that happened? She could have followed him into death at any moment.”

“It was the Touka Faith that saved her.”

When Takafuyu said that, Furuya grimaced and sighed.

“Yes, that’s right. By praying to that god, my sister somehow managed to maintain her mental state. Our whole family tolerated it because there was no other way to help her, but then she began to act like a fortune-teller.”

“She’s a clairvoyant, right?”

“You certainly know a lot. Yes, that’s it. She was doing all sorts of suspicious things, like finding lost things and doing some kind of fortune-telling. Just as we were concerned about her, marriage talks suddenly came up. It was with Viscount Sasao.”

A bitter smile appeared on Furuya’s lips.

“I’m sure that it has been rumored plenty, so I’ll put it bluntly. We forced her onto him with a large dowry. We’d had enough, and we didn’t know how to manage her. At that time, she was staying with relatives in our hometown, but there were rumors about her there as well. There was nothing we could do. Of course, we told the viscount about her circumstances. Still, he insisted, so we gave her to him in marriage. We thought that the viscount was a good-natured, kind man.”

There, Furuya’s expression became clouded for the first time, and he looked out the window with melancholic eyes.

“Since she was a woman who even her family couldn’t handle, perhaps the burden was too heavy. My sister was imprisoned here immediately after her marriage, and the viscount lived in Tokyo. No, of course, I think my sister could have gone back to Tokyo if she wanted to. She probably had no intention of doing so either. Word soon reached me that she was proselytizing here by acting like a clairvoyant. No matter how many times I told her to stop, she wouldn’t, and if I pressed her too hard, she would lose her temper, so I eventually left her alone. It was the same for the viscount. But, unlike us, he had to maintain the appearance of nobility, yes?”

Furuya looked at Takafuyu, who nodded and said, “Yes.”

“If the scandal became known and caused controversy, depending on the Department of the Imperial Household’s judgement, his privileges could be suspended and he might be forced to return his title. It’s not just a matter of having a bad reputation with the public; it was a matter of life or death.”

“The nobility has its own challenges, I see,” Furuya smiled wryly after Takafuyu’s explanation.

“That was why the viscount seemed to have been at a loss as well. He consulted with me several times, asking me to do something about her. If we had been able to do something, we wouldn’t have married her off so we could drive her out.”

Furuya laughed self-deprecatingly.

“Even at the home of her in-laws, my sister became a burden. And at the end of all that, she fell to her death and became a ghost…”

Furuya shook his head and looked down.

“Foolish little sister.”

The way he said that make Suzuko’s heart ache as she recalled the viscountess’s tears, but she only bit her lip and didn’t interject. She was sure that Furuya didn’t want a sister who was unmanageable. And the viscountess had no place to belong, so she became addicted to religion. Neither party’s pain gave Suzuko room to interject.

“…Pardon me, if I may.”

Suzuko wanted to ask one question and opened her mouth. Furuya looked at her from the front as if she had entered his sight for the first time.

“My wife,” Takafuyu briefly introduced her. “Ah,” Furuya nodded lightly.

“What is it?”

“No… I want to ask about the jet that the viscountess was wearing. When did she start wearing it?”

Furuya looked puzzled, but answered immediately.

“It was after she got married. Probably in remembrance of the driver.”

That was what Suzuko thought at first, but now she thought that it was probably wrong.

My heart is dead.

Maybe that was what the jet signified. She felt like that was the right answer. There was no place for the viscountess either at home or her husband’s house. The person she loved was dead. No one understood her—no, there was only one. Faith was the only one that understood her, her only support. It was her lone lamplight.

Perhaps what she wished for and sought was an existence that would recognize and accept her. Faith, worship, longing. Suzuko thought she could see her painful cries for help in those moments of her fading tears.

“Why do you ask about it?”

Furuya suspiciously asked Suzuko, who had fallen silent. “It’s nothing,” Suzuko replied and shook her head. Even if she said what she thought at this moment, it wouldn’t help anyone. It would only needlessly worry and torment Furuya.

“Do you mind if I ask a question as well?” Takafuyu said.

“What is it?”

“Was your sister’s funeral Buddhist?”

Furuya was at a loss for an answer, perhaps because it was an unexpected question.

“Pardon my rudeness, but I’m of the priesthood, so I’m curious about such things.”

“…Aah, yes. It was a Buddhist funeral. We are Soto school, so it was in that style. I don’t know anything about Touka-style funerals. In the first place, no one from Touka even came to offer a single word of condolence. Not a single one.”

“The funeral was held in the style of your family’s school? Wasn’t Viscount Sasao the chief mourner?”

“No, it was my father. By that time, the viscount had already gone missing.”

“Gone missing?”

“Yes. He disappeared shortly after my sister fell down the stairs and he told the villa caretaker couple to call a doctor. We didn’t know where he was until about a week later, when we were told that he was run over by a train and killed.”

Furuya seemed to be recalling that time, as there was a troubled look on his face.

“Apparently, he was drunk. We don’t know where he was and what he was doing for that one week.”

“Perhaps he was wandering around, driven by self-reproach.”

Furuya glanced at Takafuyu.

“Are you thinking that the viscount pushed my sister down the stairs? I’ve heard those rumors, but he’s dead now. I will refrain from speculating on my part.”

He was a prudent person. But from the way he said it, it was as if he was saying that he had the same thought. In fact, it made a lot more sense to assume that viscount had pushed the viscountess down.

The viscount and the viscountess quarreled about her faith, and the viscount angrily took the pocket watch from her. The viscountess tried to take it back and grab it, but she was pushed by the viscount down the stairs. The viscount realized what he had done, threw the pocket watch out of the window, and ran to the villa caretaker couple…

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They could make these assumptions from the facts of the matter, but there was no way to know for sure since both husband and wife were dead. Besides, the important matter for the viscountess was not whether or not she was pushed, but the whereabouts of her pocket watch.

Furuya picked up the pocket watch, carefully wrapped it in a handkerchief, and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“At any rate, I’m very grateful to you for finding my sister’s belonging. I’m glad to hear that she had passed on.”

The words were simple, but they were filled with warmth. He must have had some regrets about his sister.

It was also a signal that the conversation was over, so Takafuyu stood up and Suzuko followed suit.

“We are the ones who should apologize for entering your mansion without permission, We even made you speak about something that’s difficult for you.”

“No, this must be some sort of fate,” For the first time, Furuya gave a gentle smile, like he had opened up to them. “This isn’t the first time that I’ve met Baron Hanabishi. No, not you, but the previous one—your brother. I’ve met him before.”

Takafuyu’s expression stiffened for a moment. He immediately put a smile on his face.

“I did not know that you knew my brother. Were you two good friends?”

“No, we only met once. I’m sorry to hear that he passed away. He was a very intelligent man.”

“Yes…he truly was.”

Takafuyu’s voice was mingled with the loneliness of a spring shade. There was a melancholy there that was different from coldness.

Suzuko left the mansion with Takafuyu and walked through the pine forest along the coast again, but he hardly spoke.

The sea breeze shook the treetops. The sun shone through the trees, casting complicated shadows on Takafuyu’s face.

“Suzuko-san.”

Takafuyu said in a stiff voice and stopped. Suzuko did the same.

“Yes?”

When she tilted her parasol and looked up at his face, he had an unusually meek, almost mournful expression.

“What is it?”

Even after she prompted him, he didn’t speak for a while. Thinking that he was about to talk about something serious, Suzuko silently waited for him to speak. The sound of the waves resounded loudly.

“There’s something I’ve been hiding from you for a long time.”

When he finally opened his mouth, he already looked as if he was in pain from that alone, as if he was vomiting blood.

“I couldn’t tell you this for a long time…I was afraid that you would hate me, that you would despise me.”

Suzuko stared at him.

“You find that scary?”

It was a strange thing. What was so frightening about being hated or despised by a young girl like Suzuko?

Takafuyu smiled wryly.

“I’m terrified of it. There’s nothing more terrifying than this. I don’t care if anyone else hates me, but I don’t want you to hate me.”

Suzuko tilted her head slightly.

“I won’t hate you, though.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been keeping from me, but I probably won’t hate you for it. Because my impression of you was worst the first time we met. No, I suppose it was worst the second time we met.”

Yes, the second time is definitely the worst, Suzuko murmured. Takafuyu stared at her blankly.

“I don’t think it will be any worse than it was then.”

“Then,” Takafuyu spoke fearfully. “You won’t get angry?”

“Oh my, so you demand that I not get angry as well? You’re asking for a lot.”

Suzuko was exasperated. Takafuyu scratched his head awkwardly and looked away, as if he was a dog being scolded.

“I may be angry with you, but I won’t hate or despise you. There must have been a good reason for why you couldn’t tell me.”

Suzuko turned it over in her mind. Something that couldn’t be spoken lightly, something about her, something that might make her angry if he told it to her.

If it’s something about me…

“Is this about…the ‘pine crest’ thing I asked you to investigate?”

As soon as she said that after it popped into her mind, Takafuyu’s face stiffened and paled.

“It seems that my clairvoyance is still going strong.”

When she said that, Takafuyu let out a long, deep breath and crouched down on the spot.

“Are you okay?”

Suzuko bent down and looked into his face. He ran his hands through his hair.

“I’m no match for you. Yes, you’re right. I underestimated your clairvoyance.”

“I wonder if I can still turn it into a business.”

“Please don’t do that.”

Takafuyu laughed weakly and looked up at her. Their positions were reversed from usual. The face that Suzuko looked down at was that of an anxious, helpless boy.

“…My brother…had a pine crest.”

Takafuyu said in a feeble voice, his hand still on his head.

Suzuko ruminated on those words in her heart.

Takafuyu-san’s older brother…

“Your late brother had the pine for his personal crest?”

“Yes.”

Takafuyu dispiritedly drooped his head. Suzuko couldn’t feel any feelings of anger or contempt welling up within her. There seemed to be a feeling in her heart that was different from those emotions.

Was this person suffering for all this time because of that?

She had thought that he was troubled and distressed over something. Was it this?

Now that she knew the reason, she felt a strange sense of relief, a sense of exasperation that he should have told her sooner, and the desire to comfort the depressed Takafuyu, all mixed together.

“…Even my oldest brother has a pine crest. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I’m already well aware of the fact that the pine crest is very common among members of the nobility. So it wouldn’t be strange or surprising if your brother also had it.”

Takafuyu raised his head and stared at her, as though to gauge her feelings.

“If by some chance that that murderer’s pine crest is your brother’s, it still has nothing to do with you, and it won’t change the fact that you’re my husband.”

Suzuko recalled the Kinzanji-ya ghost. And the ghost of that poor lady who continued to stop in front of his daughter’s house to apologize. Neither that woman nor her daughter who hung herself should have had their lives destroyed like that.

But—if Suzuko were the daughter of the Kinzanji-ya, would she feel the same way about that woman or her daughter? Would she think that the whole family wasn’t to blame, that there was no need for them be punished?

If Takafuyu’s brother really was the murderer, would she be able to say the same thing she just said?

She didn’t know. Right now, she didn’t possess that certainty. Even so, she wanted to accept Takafuyu’s anguish. Just as he had accepted her fear of Awaji no Kimi and her desire to eradicate her.

Suzuko didn’t really understand things like romantic love or affection. She simply wanted to face Takafuyu as a fellow human being.

The parasol fell from her hand. She reached out her hands to the cowering Takafuyu and embraced him. His back was cold, perhaps because he was in the shade of a tree. Suzuko stroked his back several times to warm it.

Takafuyu’s hands also reached out to her back. It seemed that her back was also cold, and the warmth of his hands spread from her back to the inside of her chest.

“Suzuko-san.”

The voice that called her name trembled slightly.

The sea breeze of early summer blew through the pine forest. The sunlight filtering through the trees swayed, and the dazzling light fell on them.

That night, when Takafuyu entered their bedroom, Suzuko was waiting on the bed, sitting on her soles.

“I fell asleep last night, so I’ve resolved myself to stay awake today.”

Seeing Suzuko’s serious face, Takafuyu almost burst out laughing.

“I can feel your warrior’s blood. You are very courageous.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Of course not. I respect you.”

When he said that, Suzuko’s gaze wandered around in embarrassment, as though she wasn’t completely displeased.

Adorable, he thought.

There were times when he simply loved Suzuko with all his heart, times when he wanted to bow his head in awe at her high-minded loftiness, and times when he thought she was adorable as a puppy. To express it all in a single word, Takafuyu worshipped Suzuko. That was the closest he could word it. He thought that this must have been what the ancient, primitive worship of the earth goddess was like.

When he climbed onto the bed and placed his hand on Suzuko’s hands, which were folded in her lap, he felt her stiffen.

“Suzuko-san, is it extravagant of me to want you to fall in love with me?”

He peered into her face. She looked at him strangely and said, “I don’t particularly hate you or anything of the sort.”

“I want you to fall in love with me. I want you to pine for me ardently.”

Just like his current self.

Suzuko had a confused expression on her face.

“Even though we’re already married…?”

“Form and feeling are two different things, aren’t they?”

He knew that Suzuko didn’t shun him. He was surely taking advantage of that, having such indulgent hopes.

Suzuko’s feelings were as fresh and dazzling as the sun shining through the trees. On the other hand, his own feelings were warped and deviant like the mire at the bottom of a swamp. Why couldn’t he love her more lightly?

“I’ll do my best,” Suzuko met Takafuyu’s eyes and said. He laughed.

“You’re wrong, Suzuko-san, I’m the one who will work hard. I will make every effort to make you fall in love with me.”

Takafuyu squeezed Suzuko’s hands.

“…Will you not abandon me?”

Suzuko gazed intently into Takafuyu’s eyes. Thinking back, she had been looking at him with a gaze that seemed to shoot straight through him from the beginning.

“No, I won’t.”

Suzuko answered, like it was natural, and nodded.

Takafuyu thought that she must not understand his devotion to her. He caressed Suzuko’s cheek and then her yukata-clad shoulder. He was making sure that she was right there with him. When he embraced her, her body felt surprisingly small.

I don’t want you to go anywhere.

He prayed and closed his eyes. In the back of his eyes, stars shined. The faint flickering was like a lamplight, dimly lit in the darkness.

The next day, Suzuko boarded a boat rowed by Takafuyu. Despite saying “no, no,” even she would get interested once she came near the sea. Getting on the boat was the rockiest and scariest part, but once she was on board, she felt fine. Because it was an inlet, the waves were calm and the wind was moderate. With her parasol in her right hand and her left hand on the edge of the boat, Suzuko looked out to sea. The way the waves sparkled in the sunlight was like looking at glittering diamonds. She squinted her eyes at the glare. The sea was vast and endless. It was strange that the sky and sea were both blue, but the colors were clearly different. She could see a large ship sailing offshore in the distance. The sound of the waves was quiet and the scent of the tides was strong at times, perhaps from the wind. She didn’t dislike the scent of the tides, which combined the living and the dead.

“Aren’t you afraid, Suzuko-san?”

Taking a break from rowing, Takafuyu watched Suzuko.

“I’m fine. It’s very open here, and pleasant-feeling.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Takafuyu laughed.

This morning, the two of them lit the incense together. Once they were out on the ocean, that scent disappeared as the sea breeze enveloped it.

“Shall we come again in the summer?”

“Yes. I won’t go into the sea, though.”

“You can at least put your feet in, can’t you? You’re even able to get into a boat now.”

“I refuse.”

Takafuyu’s laugh was loud and bright. His smile seemed even more dazzling than the waves, and Suzuko’s eyes crinkled into a smile. The wind that blew through was shining brilliantly.

End of book 1! See y’all in May when book 2 comes out

Footnotes

The term used here is kitsunetsuki, which means “possessed by a fox spirit” but can also refer to mental illnesses that make people seem like they are that way.

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