The dawn was breaking. At the back of the Okiya, the sliding doors of the engawa faced it, and I sat with it, watching while it began an impossible climb to the top of the sky. "The beauty I have to let go of". Sugai's words in my mind, echoing like a distant call I could ignore if I had wanted to, but I wanted to listen. The light of dawn slowly spilling over the moutain brow was beautiful. The red colour leaking into the darkened sky was beautiful. The stars being snuffed out one by one by the growing morning light was beautiful. The wood floor of the engawa, the green of the grass in the field, the patterns in the silk of my kimono, all beautiful. All there for me to witness as I pleased. I felt a sense of power coursing through me, to know such beauty before my eyes, when the one I used to love saw only one source of it. And he had given it away.
I had expected to feel loss. The fear of loss had left me in the forest, running with gravity out through the soles of my feet into the earth. No wonder, I thought, that everything around me had perished. It had taken the burden of my loss. There was nothing left for me to feel. I felt free, light, and I wondered if the severed connection to a Kitsune had been weighing on me. Mori and I had made no promises to each other, had no connection spoken between us besides under the cover of darkness. Sugai's love had been all consuming, and the more I craved it, the more I gave it permission to keep its ensnaring fingers wrapped around my heart. It had permission no more.
As I laid to rest beside Mori on the tatami, I felt my body heavy as if my skin had been soaked, and she stirred. Her distant blue eyes locked mine, and I felt her searching me, as if her eyes had hands that reached in to caress my brain, withdraw the thoughts. "You're lighter." I said nothing in response, only smiled. She could see without question what I was suddenly lacking to reduce my weight, as heavy as I felt, I was only grounded. Happiness was becoming a less foreign emotion. "He's left you."
Her expression frantic, she continued to search me, all her strength I felt gripping the inside of my mind. All she could find was peace, I knew, and she didn't believe me in the slightest. But I didn't know how to deceive her that way. I turned my body to face her, my smile remaining as I covered her eyes with my hand, my palm against her skin. "Search all you like, what you see will not change."
She reached a hand to wrap her cold fingers around my wrist, but made no attempt to remove my hand. Her only attempt was to create more contact with me as I had severed her connection to my mind. I could feel her for the first time. There was nothing in the way as I lost myself in the atmosphere of her, the relaxation in her body, the strength of her fingers around my wrist, the tension in her shoulders, the emptiness of her aura. It must have been relief, I thought.
"Do you know the legends people tell about female Kitsune?" I let my hand wander over the curve of her face, the expanse of her neck and chest, coming to rest at her waist. Her eyes found mine, but she remained outside of them. "They seduce men in hopes to marry before they are found to be Yokai." A laugh that I hadn't heard in so long.
"I already know your secrets."
"And I know yours. All of them." A hard look. "Better than that, I know how your heart picks up speed when you touch me."
"Are you trying to convince me of something?" Coy. Shy. I had never known her to express shame alone with me.
"The legends say that when the Kitsune is discovered, she runs away." Like a game between those occupying the plane of Yokai, watching the lesser of us like pawns. "I have already been discovered."
"You never attempted to hide in the first place."
"You accepted me as I am." Her end game drawing near, she spoke her words like katana blades piercing my attention. "I never had to pretend anything with you, Seishin."
"Then what do you want from me?" I feigned impatience with her story telling, but I knew what she wanted to say. I didn't need to read her mind for that much.
Her face seemed to soften, the angles in her cheeks and eyes relaxed like she had given up proving her worth to me. "Seishin, you're twenty years old now. It might be time to think about the remaining life you have here. This Okiya, now with the thorn pulled out should be your reward for enduring."
"Yes."
A startled exchange. "Why did you say yes?"
"If I'm not mistaken, it sounds as if you're asking me to marry you and live a quiet life in this Okiya until I grow old without you."
Pause. Happiness. A normalcy from her that I had never experienced. Living beside a Kitsune, one or the other, for the time that I had, I had come to understand how human I was. How much of a child I had been. "And you're saying yes?"
"I'm saying yes."