I take the girls to school, and hold Makoto-chan back before she runs off. “I’ll see you Thursday night.” She nods, and then looks up at me. “Why? Are you going to be sick again?” The way she asks that question… makes me wonder how aware she is that my “illnesses” are rarely of the physical variety. “No, I need to take care of something, but Mochizuki-san will take care of you.”
“Oh.” She looks down, and then hugs me, which she doesn’t usually -really- hug me at school. If she had protested… I would have given up. I hold her back for a minute, tight. “Be a good girl,” I tell her. She nods and smiles at me before running into the school. I watch… maybe I am doing the right thing.
One last stop… Sugiyama-san. I explain that family business calls me away, but that I’ll work on Saturday and would most definitely be back for seeing to pay on Friday. She’s less than pleased, of course, but I am firm. “Family business”, I tell her again.
I make it to the station with time to spare, and I’m able to duck into the washroom. I’m glad I already saw to binding before I left home, I did forget it was so uncomfortable. I think of what I was told, of another who used a similar tactic but for mischievous means… those are not mine. Trying to remember to walk right, I get on the train just before it departs. I don’t see anyone I know… just the usual mix of tourists. I’ve not left Ito, not really, since I came here six years ago and there is fear in this, fear in leaving and fear in what I’m doing.
Of course I doubt my plans. Hiroku-san is right I am foolish.
I settle into my seat for the long ride. I see my reflection in the window. I don’t make a very good man… but it has been a long time since I saw Hidejiro.
Wednesday, May 6th, 1885 – He Who I Once Was
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Tokyo… at the station for a moment I’m struck. I look so very old fashioned, not just the hakama and the kimono but men don’t have long hair now. But I do as I was taught, keep to myself and at the edges of the crowd, and try to blend in.
“Hidejiro?” I look up and it’s -her-. No longer so much my mirror, and there’s something uncertain in her presence. As if nobody else can see her. Ghost? Vision.
“Ah.. sister,” I greet her. The sadness weighs heavy on her face. “I’m going back to Kyoto. Well… I will. Or I did.” She looks slightly confused as her eyes follow a lady in Western fashion. “This is your time, ne?”
“I think…” I go to sit on a bench by the wall and she follows. Her kimono speaks of autumn colors, and everything else around me that I see indicates spring.
“You never said goodbye to me either.” She looks directly at me. “I thought… you would always be there to support me. But you left me behind and went another path, far beyond me. Where I can’t have you around to stick up for me.”
I look at that face… it carries less years than mine. “Ah, I -am- sorry. I couldn’t stay anymore…” In all of the pain I thought so little of her. When I did… I thought I was giving her a gift. Of independence. That I would never come to take over her life, even when in the end she offered me the chance to peek in, when we really needed it… but -that- never happened. “You… why are you leaving?”
She looks down at her hands. “Oh, my brother wrote me to come home. Heard about how I was running about with strange men at night.” She shakes her head. “Eh… not so simple as that… and then, Souji left. Gone. To see him sister that they found in Yokohama, or so they told me.” She sighs and I see how she just looks -tired-. “And then they brought back Yamazaki Susumu – not the same Yamazaki-san I met first in that world, and he has, eh…. interest in me.” A strange look crosses her face. “Apparently, I was his first love.”
“I began to hate myself for being fickle, for looking to another so soon. But I knew that Souji was really -gone-… and even if they brought Souji back… it wouldn’t be him. But I can’t… just ‘get over’ him, no matter how kind Yamazaki-san is, or how much his sister wished it. You know how that is – being left without an ending?” I nod slowly, watching the crowd before us… old Japan and new Japan all crossing paths. Kimonos and bustles; hakama and bowler hats. “Really, not being able to at least say goodbye to Souji should leave me a bit unbalanced, ne? I came to Tokyo… not so much in search of a romance but to know – it was never knowing, and the way he left, that made me unable to go on.”
“Fujita-san tried to help, to tell me that there were other things for me… but then he left too.” She hands me a flat object, wrapped in paper. “He did give me this tanto, though. It was I think more of a joke meant -not- for me. Here. I won’t need it, I can’t even use it.”
I look at it, trying to be discrete. “Thank you.” Oh, it is a good one. It feels real and solid, unlike the hand that gave it to me. Hide-san seems so blurred on the edges. “I can’t endure another one. Fujita-san was a good friend to me, and I knew that they would just send someone else in with his face. Maybe I’m as afraid of change as you once were… but it’s for the best.” She sighs. “Perhaps I’ll be written about, ne?” From her bag she hands me a paper sack. “Pears, of course, as they’re in season where I am.”
Something around her shifts, and on this May afternoon I feel a chill coming from her. “Sister, I need to go. It’s not wise to break these boundaries -too- often, or for too long.” She takes both of my hands in hers, hers that are softer, without six years of work on them. “When you perfect your camellia hybrids, do name one after me? They always have been my favorite… and remember… you’re not ‘out of character’… you are your own woman.” She leans over and kisses my cheek, and stands. “Goodbye.”
I stand, tucking the pears and knife into my bag, and walk after her, “wait, where are you going?” Don’t… “I never thought you’d give up.”
She smiles, hers which has always been a softer one, gentle. “Maybe this time it will be -me- lobbying for better treatment of -you-.” She turns, and walks, fading into the crush of people, off to where she will be next, a separate fate. Fitting… as we always were. Separate, two women with the same name and face but very different creatures, and always meant as such.
This is a strange place… always. I turn to leave the station and find a carriage. An expense, but Tokyo is probably as hard to navigate as I remember it to be.