“Kyōka lost his mother early in life, and they say that he continually pursued her image and brought her back to life in his works through his ideal women. And the fact that many of his stories take place near water could be an allusion to the amniotic fluid of a mother’s womb.
“Dozing in the water, protected by his gentle mother before he was born—he constantly wrote stories reminiscent of that kind of eerily beautiful dream.
“Kyōka was obsessed with cleanliness and he was afraid of a lot of things. He hated dogs because he was afraid of getting rabies, he was afraid of flies and bacteria, and he would never put something uncooked in his mouth. He would only drink alcohol that had been boiled to scalding, he would recook the food he ate at his hotel in his room, and any food that he ate by hand, he would leave uneaten the part he’d held it by. The word curdle unsettled him, so he refused to refer to tofu as ‘bean curds.’
“Kyōka sought something unquestionable that would protect him from such a terror-filled world—he sought a mother. So Kyōka’s heroines love the protagonists instantaneously, like mothers who embrace their newly born children with joy and dedicate their very souls to trying to shelter and heal them.
“The face of the cruel waterside goblin and the face of the deeply compassionate holy mother. Just as water can be both blessing and disaster to people, Kyōka’s heroines always combine that sort of precarious duality.
“And maybe Yuri was like that, too.
“She may have been a terrifying water spirit, but at the same time she was a woman who lived for a single-minded love.”
With a look as clear as water, Tohko gazed at Maki.
“No matter her reasons, the fact that Yuri killed the servants is not something we should condone. Yuri and Akira’s story is cursed and drenched in blood without question. It’s a somber, ghastly, cruel story that no one can redeem.
“But it’s just like the way Kyōka’s stories with all their focus on the grotesque, subtle, and profound can actually be beautiful love stories between men and women. I expect there existed another story behind the story of Yuri and Akira, one filled with affection and happiness and kindness.
“Kyōka’s stories are a lot like dreams, but they aren’t all scary; they’re also beautiful and kind. The story of Yuri and Akira must have been the same.
“And perhaps because it was such a beautiful story, Sayo’s grandmother continued to guard it for nearly eighty years. And so did Sayo.”
Tohko turned a warm gaze on Uotani.
Tohko had gently picked up in her white hands the story that Maki had dismissed as laughable and retold it as a fleetingly beautiful story.
As if to say, “The story you and your grandmother protected is not in any way laughable or absurd.”
It was a gentle, tender story—like a dream.
Glittering water collected in Uotani’s eyes.
Maki yelled, obviously aggravated, “But Akira was killed and the story had an unhappy ending. No matter how many pretty images you pick out, that’s the truth! Yuri was defeated by the Himekuras, just like my father.”
Tohko didn’t back down.
She looked back at Maki calmly, her eyes touched with melancholy, and whispered, “You’re right. In the real world, Yuri and Akira couldn’t marry.
“A lot of Kyōka’s love stories don’t see fruition in reality, either.
“They become goblins, or they’re joined in the next world…or they promise to be together in the afterlife. After watching the countess die, Takamine from ‘The Surgery Room’ takes his own life.
“Like the phrase about a flower glimpsed in the mirror that gave rise to his pen name—all love was like that reflected flower, like the moon floating in the water; beautiful but unobtainable, ephemeral as a dream.
“Yuri and Akira’s story was also like a dream.”
A love that prayed to be always together with the flower, with the moon.
But you can’t touch the flower reflected in a mirror, and if you try to scoop up the moon floating in the water, it vanishes.
“We all awaken from dreams. Kyōka has Akira’s friend in Demon Pond say that there are dreams you wish you didn’t have to wake from, but no matter how hard you wish for it, you will wake up. There’s no dream that won’t end in waking. But you know…”
Tohko’s voice held warmth, like a mother encouraging her children.
“After you wake up from a beautiful dream, the story remains in your heart.
“The dream Yuri had kept on giving her strength even after she woke up. So perhaps Yuri didn’t go after Akira and instead chose to live Akira’s share of reality.”
Tohko’s lips curved into a smile.
She turned a cute, mischievous look on Maki and asked, “Who do you think it was calling themselves Akira and studying abroad in Germany?”
Maki’s eyes widened. I was confounded, too.
“Akira was supposed to have passed away and been buried in the estate’s garden, so isn’t it odd that he went to study abroad? But the fact that there was a Japanese student named Akira Shikishima is recorded in the letters another Japanese student sent to his family. Akira was definitely in Germany eighty years ago.”
We were confused, so Tohko belted out in a vibrantly cheerful voice, “I imagine that was Yuri! Yuri studied abroad in Akira’s place. Hiding her sex as Akira.”
“That’s absurd! Your imagination is out of control! It’s not possible! She’d be exposed right away.”
Maki argued forcefully.
I also found it very hard to believe.
But Tohko grinned at us like the sun, vibrantly, brilliantly.
“Not possible? No, I believe Yuri made the impossible possible. And that it was her dreamlike story with Akira that gave her the power to do it.”
She made this declaration in a cheerful voice and began telling Maki the contents of the letters from the other Japanese student that we had found out about from Ryuto.
How Akira’s condition had deteriorated in the first year and how he was in convalescence afterward. How he had suffered unable to communicate. How he had applied himself intensely to study and rarely interacted with others and never drank alcohol. How he’d had a habit of touching his earlobe, had never returned to Japan once during his period of study, and had gone missing afterward.
“Would Akira, who read Goethe in the original for Yuri, have had so much trouble communicating? And can’t you picture her not drinking alcohol and going back home before the sun set out of caution because she was hiding the fact that she was a woman?
“I’m sure it would attract attention if a woman was pretending to be a man in Japan, but in a foreign country at that time where Asians were still an unaccustomed sight, perhaps she was able to fool them as simply being youthfully slender and having a high voice for a man.
“So she would have especially avoided the other Japanese students.
“The man writes in his letter that Akira was like the moon. Perhaps it wasn’t only because of his brusque attitude, but because he looked beautiful, too.
“Almost like a woman—
“Plus, apparently Akira mentioned that he’d picked up the habit of touching his earlobe from his lover, but if you consider that it was Yuri herself, it makes perfect sense.”
“How did she make arrangements to get to Europe? How did she pay the fees every month? Are you suggesting a young noble lady ignorant of the world managed to live in a foreign country?”
“What if the Himekuras arranged things behind the scenes?”
Maki gasped, taken aback.
“They say there was a long period of bad luck for the Himekuras at the time, so they must have been scared of Yuri. It’s totally plausible that they would have done what she told them to out of an indescribable fear and sense of guilt. Maki, you should know better than me how much power the Himekuras have. If the Himekuras were backing Yuri, my imagination all becomes reality.
“The Himekuras didn’t defeat Yuri.
“On the contrary, her very existence overwhelmed them and she made a bargain.
“That is what I, the book girl, imagine!”
Maki was agape.
Of course, she would be. Tohko’s story was extremely hard to believe. Even I thought it was preposterous. As if Yuri had become Akira and gone abroad!
Still, when I heard Tohko’s sunny voice and saw her brightly shining eyes, I found myself thinking, Well, it could have happened.
That the story hadn’t ended with Akira’s death.
That Yuri went on with her life and managed to do something that would have shocked everyone.
Uotani huddled down on the ground and burst out crying. Tears rippled down her face, her shoulders trembled, and through her sobs, she choked out, “M-my grandmother told me…that Miss Yuri had become a story.
“I would ask her, ‘What happened to Miss Yuri? Where did she go?’ And she would always beam at me and gently say, ‘Miss Yuri became a story in the land of the dragons.’”
I am myself but a tale of one line.
The words Uotani’s grandmother had told her.
I imagined what they meant and my chest thrummed with heat.
Maki’s face stiffened, as if she, too, found it difficult to believe but was wavering.
Uotani covered her face with both hands and spoke, her voice thick.
“Miss Yuri…was as pretty as a dream…and she was so kind…my grandmother would always, always tell me that. I loved the stories Grandmother told about Miss Yuri…I would sneak over to the house and…I read Miss Yuri’s diary so many times…I wanted to protect Miss Yuri’s house.”
I wondered if Uotani had put the pressed dianthus blossom in the pages.