Page 40 of Water Moon

Chapter Forty

Ghosts

The small village had slipped out of time’s hands and tumbled to the wayside of life’s road a long time ago. It stood, a shell of its former self, waiting to crumble in the late-afternoon sun. Once it had longed for visitors, but now it was too tired and it had too much dust in its eyes to notice the two people that had climbed out of the puddle next to a footbridge that might have once been bright red. A bed of round, dusty rocks ran beneath the bridge, their edges smoothened by a vanished river.

Hana tightened her ponytail and surveyed their surroundings. She and Keishin had barely spoken during their hike out of the forest, and even after traveling through the puddle, she still did not possess any words that were worth the air and effort to speak.

“The chimes made it easier,” Keishin said.

“To do what?” Hana asked.

“To not talk to each other. The chimes filled the void.” Keishin looked around the empty town. “But the silence in this place makes the air feel stale. It’s hard to breathe. I’m sorry, but if you don’t say anything, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bore you with a lecture about quantum physics and other extremely tedious things just so we don’t suffocate.”

“Welcome!” A man waved at them from across the footbridge. “Welcome!”

“Oh…hello.” Hana bowed. “I did not realize that anyone still lived here.”

The man walked over to them with a wide smile. “I’m Uchida Tomo. Are you looking for a place to stay? My family owns a ryokan here.”

“Oh…uh…thank you, Uchida-san, but we are headed to the Night Market,” Hana said.

“The market won’t open until midnight and both of you look like you have not had much sleep. Why don’t you stay at the ryokan while waiting? My wife can cook you a warm meal.”

“We could use some sleep,” Keishin whispered to Hana. “And food.”

Hana pulled her mother’s glasses from her bag and turned to Tomo. She raised a brow and just as quickly yanked it down. She nodded at Tomo and smiled. “Where is your ryokan, Uchida-san?”

—

The simple, well-kept ryokan stood at the foot of the mountain. Compared to its dilapidated neighbors in the village, it looked like a palace.

“Not many people come around to the village anymore,” Tomo said, leading them across a small garden. “My wife will be thrilled to have guests.”

“I have passed by this village a few times on the way to the Night Market. I did not realize that anyone still lived here. I thought that it was abandoned.”

“It is just me and my wife now,” Tomo said. “When the river dried up, everyone else moved on. But this is our home, and we do not wish to live anywhere else.”

A slender woman with a kind face greeted them at the door. “Welcome.”

“This is my wife, Yui,” Tomo said, introducing Hana and Keishin.

“Please, come in.” Yui smiled. “I will show you to your room.”

—

A small plate of daifuku, mochi balls filled with mashed azuki beans mixed with honey, and a bowl of karintō, sweet, deep-fried twiglike snacks coated in brown sugar, were arranged next to a freshly brewed pot of green tea on a low table in the middle of the room.

Keishin shot a look at Hana, showing his surprise at finding their refreshments waiting for them.

“The onsen is through here.” Yui walked over to a set of sliding doors across the room and opened them. A steaming outdoor bath, fed by a hot spring and bordered by smooth rocks, was cocooned by an ornamental garden. “We do not have any other guests, and so you have the onsen to yourselves.”

“Thank you,” Hana said. “It looks lovely.”

“Your meal will be served in the dining room after you have enjoyed your bath. I will leave you now so that you can rest, but please do not hesitate to let me know if there is anything else you need.” Yui bowed with a smile as she left, sliding the door behind her.

“For a ryokan in an abandoned town, they seem quite prepared to receive guests. It almost seems like they knew we were coming,” Keishin said, lowering his voice. “Do you think it’s a trap by the Shiikuin?”

“It is not a trap.”

“But don’t you think it’s strange that—”

“They’re ghosts.”

“What?”

“Tomo and his wife are ghosts.” Hana took off her mother’s glasses. “I saw who they really were through these. They have been dead for a very long time.”

“Then what are we still doing here?” Keishin’s eyes flashed.

“You said it yourself. We need rest and a meal.”

“But—”

“They are harmless.”

Keishin looked around the room. “Is any of this even real?”

“It is real because Tomo and Yui believe that it is.”

“They don’t know that they’re dead?”

Hana shook her head. “And it is not our place to tell them otherwise.”

Keishin kneaded his nape. “I never believed in ghosts.”

“Oh? But isn’t that why you moved to Japan? To find them?”

“Neutrinos aren’t ghosts.”

“You told me that they are remnants of the past. Wisps of nothing that you cannot see or touch. Echoes that carry stories of dead stars. How are they not ghosts?”

“I…I don’t know,” Keishin said. “I don’t think I know anything anymore.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing things.”

“There is, when your whole career is about finding answers.”

“Have any of the answers you’ve found made you happy?”

“Science isn’t about finding happiness.”

“I thought that finding happiness was what life in your world was all about. That is why it has always been so easy to convince our clients to give up their choices. All any of them wanted was to smile. If happiness were as simple to obtain in this world, I would have given up part of my soul for it too.”

“What do you want me to say, Hana? That nothing I did in my world truly made me happy? That I’ve spent my life trying to fill a void carved out by my mother? That when I came here, pretending to be all noble and saying that I wanted to help you, all I was really thinking about was finally discovering something that would make me worthy of being loved? You weren’t the only one who hid the truth.”

“I suppose that we are more alike than I thought.”

“I suppose we are.”

—

Hana and Keishin rested their chins on their folded arms on opposite ends of the onsen, their gazes wandering over the surroundings. The newly risen moon bathed the garden in an otherworldly glow, revealing its truth. It was more than just a picturesque landscape. It was its creators’ unique point of view about the world and their place in it. The garden was nature in miniature, an idealized version where rocks were mountains, and koi ponds were seas. It was a pleasure that was not meant to be indulged in all at once, but rather slowly explored, with delights hidden by little hills or trees. Uneven stepping stones forced you to watch your step, keeping you in the present and fully aware of the unfolding path.

“This is Tomo and Yui’s heaven, isn’t it?” Keishin said.

“I want to believe that it is.”

“I wonder if everyone is free to create their own afterlife.”

“What kind of heaven would you create for yourself?” Hana asked.

Keishin turned to face her, brushing a damp lock of silver-white hair away from his eyes. Hana had never met a man more unaware of how he filled the space around him, charging the air. The streak of lightning in his hair made her believe that if the moon disappeared and darkness swallowed them, he alone would remain lit. He strode toward her, moonlight gleaming on his wet shoulders.

“It would look exactly like this place and everything in it. I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said, locking onto Hana’s eyes. “How about you?”

The steaming water rippled between them, caressing Hana’s breasts. “I am not sure.”

“Try. Close your eyes and try to imagine what would make you happy for eternity.”

“I don’t think I know what eternity is. It is too big.”

“Then go smaller. Imagine now. Something you can hold in your hands.”

Hana kept her eyes closed and let the heat of Keishin’s body guide her fingers to his face. She let them wander over the angles of his jaw and brush over the bow of his lips. “Like this?”

“Hana…” He groaned her name, circling her waist and pulling her into his chest.

Heat licked Hana’s breasts and writhed like a flame between her legs. “I should push you away.”

“You should.” Keishin left a trail of kisses from behind her ear to her shoulder.

Hana moaned. Keishin lifted her from the water and took her breast in his mouth. Hana knotted her fingers in Keishin’s hair, clutching him to her. His tongue erased almost every argument she had summoned to run from him, drawing a list of reasons to stay in little circles around her nipple. “Kei…” she said, forcing the last of her clarity into something she hoped resembled words. “We have no future.”

Keishin pulled away, breathing hard. “You’re right.”

Hana’s throat tightened. A part of her had hoped that he would argue with her, that he would scoff and insist that some scientific law in his world made what she said completely unsound.

“No one is promised tomorrow,” Keishin said. “No contract, vow, or even magical tattoo can guarantee forever with someone, regardless of whether you share a world. But what we do have is what you and I have been fighting to deny almost from the second we met. There is a connection between us, Hana, a knot without any measurable form or weight, a knot that only gets tighter the more we struggle to pull away.”

“Then that knot is a trap. A beautiful one like the watery cage for your ghosts from the stars.”

Thunder rumbled over the ryokan.

“It’s going to rain,” Hana said, surprised that it had taken the rain so long to find her. It was, it seemed, the one constant in her life, always at the ready to remind her of her duty. “We should go inside.”

“Or what?” Keishin said. “We’ll get wet?”

A laugh rose from Hana’s belly and burst out of her, taking with it all the pain she had been swallowing back. Keishin laughed with her, their tears falling into the bath, cleansing them, and turning to wisps of steam. Rain fell over their cheeks and trailed down their shoulders. Hana’s skin glowed with the Horishi’s blue ink. Her hand flew up to cover herself.

Keishin caught her arm by the wrist and gently drew her hand away. “I told you, Hana. I see you. Only you.” Raindrops splattered over Keishin’s wrist. A name, tattooed in blue ink, glowed on his skin.

Hana.

Hana gasped. “What…how…”

Keishin let go of her arm. He ran his thumb over Hana’s name. “The Horishi told me that she had never tattooed a grown man’s fate. I had already lived so much of my life, and she thought that the best way to start my story was at its end. Your name. It was all she had managed to write when you showed up and told her to stop.”

“Why…why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because telling you wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s done, Hana. My fate, like yours, is written.”

“But what does it mean?”

“I think you know what it means as well as I do. This journey with you is where my story ends.”

“No. Do not say that. You will go back to your world. You will find your way home.”

“It’s okay, Hana. This was my choice. I told you, no one is promised tomorrow. I’m grateful for the time I have now. Seeing ghosts. Listening to wind chimes. Holding you, no matter how brief. For the first time in my life, my head is filled with something other than questions. I have my answer. It’s written on my skin.”

Hana pressed her lips to Keishin’s mouth and drank him in. Hours, weeks, or years could have passed and Hana would not have noticed. The breadth between her skin and Keishin’s left no room for time. Urgency took up every available space. Everything beyond Keishin’s mouth vanished, leaving only the tremble that passed from his lips and into hers. She tasted his longing and could tell from the way Keishin devoured her that he tasted hers too. But there was something else that laced their tongues, an unspoken fear that made their kiss taste bittersweet. Last times almost always came in disguise, never revealing who they were until they were gone and all you could do was miss them.

But Hana had known that the day she met Keishin was the beginning of a long goodbye. On their first and possibly last night together, Hana made sure to remember every detail. To each other, they were already ghosts.