The next day, Shin paid Kansa another visit. The icy, wintry wind seeped into his collar and through his sleeves, giving him a chill. He could hear a faint, whistle-like sound—was it the wind?
It sounds so sad.
“Well, if it isn’t you, young master!” Kansa greeted Shin happily. “I didn’t expect you to come back so soon.”
“You didn’t get to finish what you were saying yesterday,” he replied.
“Oh, is that why you came back? Well, I’m pleased nonetheless.” Kansa had Shin sit down in front of her bronze brazier. Red-hot coal was burning inside. Relieved, Shin held his hands up to it. His body had been exposed to the bitingly cold winter wind moments earlier, but now it began to warm back up. In terms of fabric, silk responded best to heat, and hemp fabric preferred the cold. That being so, Kansa needed to heat the room with a brazier when she was weaving silk in the winter months.
“Please take a look at this, young master,” said Kansa, showing Shin some fabric. It was a length of silk dyed a pale shade of red. “I just picked it up this morning. I requested for it to be dyed.”
Although clothes tended to be tailored at home, the actual dyeing of fabric tended to be left to fabric-dyeing shops. Different craftsmen specialized in different colors and techniques, so it was necessary to visit specific artisans depending on whether you wanted your fabric dyed blue, black, or red, or if you wanted someone to decorate the fabric with a stencil or even tie-dye it.
“It’s beautifully dyed… But what’s this for?”
“Don’t you think it’d suit the daughter of the Kitsu family marvelously well?”
Shin’s eyes widened. “You know about that?” It hadn’t even occurred to him that Kansa might have been aware of the plan.
“Everybody knows, young master,” she said. “We’ve known about it for a long time. You’re just out of the loop because you were in the imperial capital.”
“Is that right…?” Was I really the only one who didn’t know? Shin thought to himself. It made him so uncomfortable that it felt like his skin was burning.
“She’s a nice, well-mannered young lady. Personally, I think you two would make a good match.”
Shin found Kansa’s wording somewhat intriguing. “Are you implying that there are some who don’t agree?”
“Oh, no—that’s not what I meant.”
“If there’s something you know, I’d like to hear it.”
Kansa looked down at the floor, flummoxed. “She’s a lovely young lady, but at the end of the day… The Kitsu family are your family’s vassals. People were just expecting you to marry the daughter of a prestigious family from elsewhere…”
It sounded like Kansa was struggling to get the words out. She continued. “It’s common to prioritize marrying someone of a similar background—you know that. I get the impression that many believe that the woman who marries the head of the Saname clan needs to be from a notable family… They don’t understand why you’d marry someone of a lower ancestral status.”
The woman left it at that, but there was an answer to that “why”—Shin was not going to be the next head of the family.
Shin found himself frowning. He’d heard people say things like this countless times before. It was like a curse he would never shake. “The heir to the Saname clan won’t be their oldest son,” people would say. “It’ll be their second…”
“You didn’t need to hear that. I do apologize,” said Kansa, but Shin shook his head. She never sugarcoated uncomfortable truths, and that was why he trusted her.
“More importantly, what was it that you didn’t get a chance to tell me? Was it about this?” he asked.
“Well, no…” She hemmed and hawed, seeming even more reluctant to speak now. The feeble sound of the breeze came from outside, surprising Kansa enough to make her stir slightly.
“Oh no, I almost forgot,” she muttered before immediately retreating into the back of the room. The woman went over to the kitchen, and when she came back, she was carrying a basket of oranges. Then, she walked straight outside, still holding the basket.
What is she doing? Shin thought. He peered out through the window and watched her throw pieces of fruit over the brushwood fence. The oranges seemed to be falling into the thicket.
“Were you feeding the wild animals?” Shin asked once Kansa had returned.
Kansa looked somewhat embarrassed. “Dear Shosen is out there,” she said.
Shin paused. “What?”
“She looks like she’s starving, so I’ve been giving her some food. If I don’t, she bites into my fence. Look—it’s already broken in places… That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
“What are you talking about?” Shin was confused. Kansa was making this sound like simple small talk, but Shosen… “Wasn’t Shosen my mother’s name?” he asked.
Shosen was the childhood name of his late mother. Since Kansa was her wet nurse, she occasionally referred to his mother by that name.
“Yes. So…” Kansa smiled awkwardly. “This might be hard to believe, but dear Shosen seems hesitant about leaving… This was where she passed away, wasn’t it?”
“Are you saying that my mother’s ghost has appeared?” he asked. “After all this time?”
“Yes. It gave me a shock too.” Kansa placed a hand on her cheek. “I suppose it has to be a ghost,” she said, continuing. “It’s my first time seeing such a thing, so I can’t say for sure. One evening, Shosen was standing there, just on the other side of the fence. She was wearing the embroidered robe she was buried in. I tailored it and embroidered it myself, stitch by stitch. She didn’t say anything, but she looked so haggard. There was no life in her eyes. I offered her a boiled chestnut, thinking she might be hungry, and she ate it right up.” Kansa was now happily chattering away as she told the story. “After that, she began showing up every now and then. Recently, I’ve been giving her dried persimmons and oranges. I make sure to have things like that to give her because when I forget now and then, she throws a tantrum and munches on my fence instead.”
This story sent chills down Shin’s spine—and yet Kansa was speaking with a smile, acting as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
You must be mistaking a monkey or something for my mother, Shin wanted to say, but he swallowed the words back down before they made it out of his mouth. Kansa wouldn’t make such a mistake—and if she did, it would have been due to her own wishful thinking.
As her former wet nurse, Kansa had been very compassionate toward Shin’s mother. When she died, she was inconsolable with grief for days. Did those emotions cause Shin’s mother’s ghost to appear?
Still, why now?
“When did this start?” he asked.
“Quite recently—while you were in the imperial capital.”
Shin was usually the only visitor Kansa had. With Shin staying behind in the imperial capital, there was no one who would come see her. Had her loneliness caused her to start seeing strange things?
Surely it can’t actually be my mother’s ghost…
The idea that his mother spent all this time drifting through the mountains, starving and never having gone over to paradise, was one that Shin didn’t wish to entertain. The thought of her devouring food thrown at her was far from tolerable either.
“When she gets particularly ravenous, she starts crying,” said Kansa. “Listen… Just like that.”
Shin could hear the cold wind outside. “That’s the breeze,” he wanted to say to assure her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.