Page 38

Chapter 38

Kaneko

O ld women snore.

Who knew?

For Irie, it was a guttural, wheezing thing, punctuated by sharp inhales and long, drawn-out exhales, like a bellows slowly deflating in the corner of the room.

I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, listening to every inhale, every exhale, every half snort that came from Irie’s side of the room. It was relentless. Steady. Predictable in a way that should have been infuriating.

And yet, I found it strangely comforting.

The jungle had been filled with unfamiliar sounds—rustling leaves, distant animal calls, the unshakable paranoia of footsteps behind me. Whether those had been real or imagined, I couldn’t say. Still, the thought of them was almost as terrifying as the real thing.

But here?

Here, there was no jungle. There were no pirates lurking just beyond the firelight. There was no ship creaking beneath me, no endless stretch of ocean. There were only wooden walls, the faint scent of herbs, and an old woman sawing logs like a lumberjack on a mission.

I should have felt safe.

But I didn’t.

Sleep tugged at the edges of my thoughts, but every time I started to drift, my mind yanked me back, filled with images of fire, screams, Yoshi’s hand gripping mine, then slipping away, lost to the waves—

I exhaled, slow and steady, forcing myself to stare at the ceiling.

Yoshi had never been aboard that ship. He hadn’t died when it went down. He hadn’t even left the safety of our home.

Safety.

Home.

Those words no longer belonged in the same breath. My heart sank with that admission.

The truth was I had no idea what happened to Yoshi. He might’ve made it to safety, fled to a shrine or temple where good brothers stood guard with powerful magics. He might be snug in his bed in the castle, his Daimyo father having survived the raid to lead our people back into Amaterasu’s light.

He might be safe.

My heart wanted to believe it was so.

Unable to keep my eyes closed, I sat up and looked about. The shop was small but cluttered, filled with things I didn’t recognize—bundles of dried flowers hanging from the rafters, shelves lined with strange powders and tinctures. Even in the darkness, the faint scent of herbs lingered, seeping into my clothes.

I would probably sweat an herb smell before too long. That wasn’t a pleasant thought.

Kazashita had gone somewhere else for the night, leaving me here with Irie. That fact alone unsettled me. I had spent every moment of the last weeks with him, and now, for the first time, I was alone.

Well, except for Irie’s snoring.

I sighed and flopped back down, shifting onto my side and curling my hands beneath my head. The pallet was thin, but it was better than the jungle floor. That was the way things had been going lately—measuring comfort in degrees of suffering.

The storm had been worse than the jungle.

The jungle had been worse than the pirates.

The pirates had been worse than—

No.

I swallowed against the lump in my throat.

Nothing had been worse than Tooi.

I hadn’t let myself think about it much. Not really. There hadn’t been time. Every moment since the raid had been about survival. The wreck, the jungle, the fight in the outer camp—it had all been too immediate, too present. There was no room for grief when my body was still running, still fighting, still desperate for breath.

But now . . . now that silence was creeping in and I had nothing left to distract me . . .

My mind wandered back—back to the smell of fish frying in the marketplace, to the creak of wooden boats in the harbor, to the way the sea breeze carried the scent of salt and home. Tooi had been small but full of life, a place where people knew each other’s names, where old men argued about the tides, where children ran through the streets, playing games in the dust.

Now it was gone.

I had seen it burn. I had heard the screams, smelled the smoke, felt the heat of the flames against my skin. I hid like a coward while my people were slaughtered. I had watched it happen and done nothing.

And worst of all—

Yoshi was gone.

I turned onto my other side, exhaling sharply, trying to push away the weight pressing on my chest. I’d dreamed of him the past two nights.

And not in a good way.

In my dreams, his hand always slipped away from mine. His face blurred, swallowed by water or by flames or by something I couldn’t reach. He was always just out of grasp, just beyond my fingertips.

I had spent so much of my life beside him that I still half expected him to be there when I turned my head, still expected his voice, low and amused, whispering some quiet joke to pull me back from my own thoughts, still expected the way he would touch my shoulder—light, casual, but grounding—still expected the way his fingers would linger just a little too long or the way his gaze would soften at the edges when he looked at me, even when he was teasing.

I had always told myself it was nothing, that the things I felt when Yoshi was near were just the closeness of brotherhood, of friendship.

But that was a lie.

It had always been a lie.

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the sting behind them.

What if he had survived? What if he was still out there—hurt, lost, thinking I had drowned? Would he be searching for me? Would he assume I was dead?

I had no way of knowing—and that was the cruelest part.

I could live with grief. I could live with the knowledge that he had died, that the sea had swallowed him whole.

But this? This endless not-knowing, this purgatory of maybes and what-ifs?

It was unbearable.

I let out a slow breath, blinking up at the ceiling. Somewhere across the room, Irie let out a particularly loud snore, then smacked her lips in her sleep.

I almost smiled. Almost.

It was strange, being here, in a warm room, in a home. After everything, it felt like a dream. But dreams weren’t real, and sooner or later, I would wake up.

I drifted in and out of sleep, never fully surrendering to it.

At some point, I must have dozed, because I found myself dreaming of the past.

I was in Tooi again, sitting on the docks with Yoshi. The air was warm, the sky darkening into purple as the sun dipped below the horizon.

“You think too much,” Yoshi said, nudging my shoulder.

I scoffed. “You don’t think enough.”

He smirked, leaning back on his hands. “That’s why we make such a good pair.”

The dream blurred. The sky darkened, the water churning violently beneath us.

I turned my head. Yoshi was gone.

I jerked awake with a sharp inhale, heart hammering against my ribs. The room was dark, the only sound Irie’s steady, familiar snoring.

I let out a breath.

It was just a dream.

I turned again, pulling the thin blanket up over my shoulders, staring at the wall. Tomorrow, I would wake up and continue forward.

Because that was all I could do.

But for now—just for a little while—I let myself miss him.