The rain continued until deep into the night. I stood outside with my kimono tied hastily, carelessly, and the closure revealed me to the night. The sky poured down on me, soaking me fully, and I was so saturated I thought my skin didn't have the capacity to hold any more. I stood lifelessly, staring in the mountains in the rising mist, the deep greens in low contrast again the dark grey of the night storm. My mind was empty, but my heart felt heavy in my chest, full of conflict, but so too full of satisfaction.
"Seishin?" Her voice soft behind me. I closed my eyes to the sound of my name on it. "It's time to go."
I felt that traditions, rituals, they all broke under the weight of me when I became involved in them. From the moment I set foot in the Okiya that I had been sold to as a child, my heavy presence in such a sacred world was volatile. I knelt on the floor of the shrine, the rain water running out of the silk of my kimono, the strands of my hair, my chest bare and my lips blue from the chill. Beside me, the Maiko and Geisha, and Mori, perfectly presented. There had been a time in my life that showing myself with beauty and grace was the only outcome in my sight. Who did I have to be beautiful for? The Kanushi stood before us, the white of his robes and insult to the unholiness I had spread across the floor. He said his prayers, binding me to the Okiya as the reining mother, taking the responsibility from the Geisha who had not yet been adopted.
I bowed to the Kanushi, my fingers against the floor, my forehead resting atop them, as he circled the incense over my body, chanting for me to be blessed. With my head down, he could not see my face, and he could not see how I smiled at his ignorance. As I lifted my head from the floor, I dragged my fingertips into the rain water. I kept my head down, outstretching a hand to the Geisha beside me.
"Blessing me will do no good. The Gods are not listening to my name. I would like to adopt her, so that at the end of my time, the Okiya will not be left without care."
We were instructed to face each other, and I stole a moment in time to look into her eyes. I wanted to see some kind of fear there, but the fear I harboured was that I would see resentment. So clearly though, I saw warmth in her for me. I saw gratitude, desire for peace, and expectancy. It was faith, I realized, that she looked back at me with. She was putting her faith in me that the evil in me had been laid to rest.
"Will you change your name?" The Kanushi addressed the Geisha.
I felt my eyes turn hard, and my gaze upon her could have set her ablaze. "Don't."
"Her name will remain Yukiko." Yukiko. I burned the name into my memory. She had been named, I knew, with Hiroyuki-san upon her acceptance into the house, and had taken with her a piece of him. With his passing, that piece became even more precious.
The ceremony was beneath me. I had no use for their well wishes and blessings, and I knew the demon in me would stir, given time to drag its claws into the fabric of my happiness. That was what I told myself. But happiness none the less came to me, filled me, and I left the shrine with a sense of purpose, as if the soaking rain had coursed through me to gather every inch of sin left in me, and left it on the floor of the holy place. I was no longer responsible. No matter what I told myself, what excuses I gave to the curiosity in my mind, I reached for the hand of Sayaka on one side of me, and for the hand of Mori on the other, and exited the shrine in a make-shift family. Acceptance, yet it had taken a servant of the Gods to allow me to receive it.
"Will you become human, after all?" It was not out of a request that I asked, but in wonderment instead. I let down my guard that night, laying heavily on the tatami close to the fire pit in the center of the main room. Steam billowed from the tea pot, but the small flames of the fire warmed enough of my body to keep me content.
"I don't feel the need. Unless you grow old and I've grown to love you." Mori's company was silent, allowing the sound of the rain to permeate the atmosphere in the room.
"You haven't come to love me enough?"
"Seishin." I heard her laugh. What a beautiful sound it had come to be. "I have you now. It doesn't matter how much I love you in the end, does it, the chase is over."
"Then why bother to marry me?"
A beat of silence, but intentionally so. "I still want to spend the rest of your life with you."