Hearing Uotani’s confession, I knew that it certainly hadn’t been fear or a sense of obligation that had compelled her to become Shirayuki.
Uotani had only wanted to protect Yuri’s story.
Beside the pond illuminated by the moon…
In the garden dyed in the crimson sunset…
In the tiny room, surrounded by the books Yuri had left behind, with warm light streaming in…
Perhaps Uotani had been having a lovely dream of flowers and moonlight.
Tohko bent her knees to crouch down and put her arms gently around Uotani, then stroked her hair.
“Sayo? When I finish reading a book, there are times when I’ve felt sad, too, as if I’ve woken up from a dream. The longer you’ve spent reading a book and the more fun you’ve had, the more truly bereft you feel, and you get this idea that you’ve been hollowed out.
“But it’s not like dreams go away when you open your eyes.
“The memory of having the dream stays with you.
“And so your heart can still be warmed by that memory.”
As she slowly stroked Uotani’s hair over and over, Tohko talked in a kind voice that seemed to pervade the room.
“Even if you can see the flower reflected in the mirror or the moon floating in the water, you can’t pick them up. If you try to take hold of either one, they vanish as if they never existed. But for that very reason, as long as we don’t forget about them, they can linger in our hearts and stay beautiful forever.
“Remember what I said before?
“Even if you wake up from a dream, the story remains.
“After you’ve read a book, the story stays in your heart without fading so that you can pull up your favorite scenes again and again and read them over.
“You can cheer yourself up that way so that you can move on to the next story.
“I’m sure that’s how Yuri made it in a foreign land.”
Tohko smiled contentedly again.
“And you know—
“Yuri received one other important thing from Akira.
“She bore Akira’s child over there.”
The hands covering Uotani’s face dropped away, and she shot her eyes up to look at Tohko. Shock rose over her face still drenched with tears.
The cast of Maki’s eyes changed as well and she stared at Tohko.
“After the study abroad period was up, Akira disappeared. But someone saw him walking around holding the hand of a small child. They said the child resembled him. Perhaps the reason Akira threw up so much and had to recover during the first year of studying abroad was because of giving birth. And hurrying home before it grew dark was also because her child was waiting for her. Plus there’s a hint hidden in the rhyme that Uotani’s grandmother taught her.”
“…In the song?” Uotani murmured suspiciously.
Tohko nodded, that’s right, and actually hummed the words herself.
“A snake is in the swamp there.
“Rich old spirit’s little girl,
“Get you up and set a trap.
“A bead of water ’pon her neck,
“Golden shoes upon her feet,
“Call me this and call me that
“To the mountain or the field, go, go, go…”
When she finished singing, she grinned again.
“This song appears in Kyōka’s story The Grass Labyrinth. But there’s just one part that’s different: ‘A bead of water ’pon her neck.’ In The Grass Labyrinth, this part reads, ‘Two jewels in her hands.’ Sayo, your grandmother told you this song came from the land of dragons, right?”
Tears pooling in her eyes, Uotani nodded.
“She also talked about how Yuri had gone to the land of dragons, right?”
Again, she nodded.
Tohko smiled brightly.
“The land of dragons was Germany. Or rather, Yuri misunderstood it to be that. One of Goethe’s poems is called ‘Mignon.’ It’s a poem inserted into a longer story called Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, wherein the girl Mignon, who’s dressed as a boy, sings to the protagonist Wilhelm of her longing for the southern lands. Have you ever heard the poem that begins, ‘A land you know where lemon flowers bloom’? She wants to go to the land where oranges glow, where rows of bay trees grow, and the myrtle blooms with someone she cares for. She says there’s also an ancient herd of dragons that live in caves in that land—
“Yuri probably had Akira teach her this poem.
“Actually, the land to the south was Italy. But Yuri got the idea that it was Germany. When Akira proposed to her and said they should go to Germany together, she asked him if she could plant lemons and myrtle, and he’d laughed at her.
“Even so, for Yuri the land to the south was Germany. So perhaps that’s what she told her friend Chiro, too. That she was going to the land of dragons.”
“How is that connected to Yuri having a baby?”
Still smiling, Tohko answered my question.
“The fact that the song came from the land of dragons—that meant it was a message that had arrived from Yuri, who’d gone over to Germany. They say children are occasionally born in the Himekura family with a birthmark shaped like a dragon’s scale. Perhaps the bead of water was pointing to that mark.
“In other words, Yuri was informing Chiro that a child had been born with a mark shaped like a bead of water on its neck.”
I recalled the birthmark on the nape of Maki’s neck.
A vivid purple, scale-shaped mark rising out of her white skin. Very much like a drop of water that had fallen from the sky—
Tohko’s eyes sparkled.
“Do you understand how important that fact was for Yuri?
“There was no question that Yuri’s child had Himekura blood. It had the birthmark to prove it.
“Yuri wasn’t a child conceived in her mother’s affair. Akira had given Yuri memories, a new life, and proof that she was a true daughter of the Himekuras.”
Maki abruptly shouted, “That’s just what you imagine happened!”
Maki was pale and her gaze roved about restlessly; she was acting extremely panicked and confused.
“A child? A birthmark on its throat? That— It would never— You don’t even have any proof that Yuri studied abroad as Akira, and yet—”
Just then, a cheerful voice spoke up from near the door.
“In that case, I’ll give you one more fact.”
“Ryuto!”
When she saw Ryuto come strolling in, Maki raised her eyebrows.
“Wh-why did you come back here?!”
“I got some new info, so I thought I’d come by. But I was holdin’ back ’cos it looked like you were in the middle of somethin’.”
How long had he been there?
Maki’s eyes were bugging out as Ryuto came close enough almost to touch her, then tilted his face slightly and with a grin showed her the cell phone dangling from his fingers.
“I found out the name of the person who sponsored Akira when he was abroad. Shuichiro Kusakabe—one of the branches of the Himekuras—and oh, that’s right, isn’t that also the name of your grandpa’s chaperone?”
An intense shock came over Maki’s face.
The one who’d sponsored Akira’s study abroad had been someone with ties to the Himekuras!
That was a huge element backing up Tohko’s imagined scenario. Her imagination was getting closer to reality.
That Yuri had actually used the Himekuras to go over to Germany and live as Akira. And if that were true, her other imagining—the idea that Yuri had given birth to Akira’s child—wasn’t out of the question, either. In fact, that story had much more of an air of truth to it than the one about studying abroad.
Maki laughed out loud, which startled me.
Her face was lowered at first, and she chuckled harshly in a low voice. But her secretive laughter gradually grew brighter and higher until she threw her head back, her cheeks and lips curved up impressively, and she guffawed as if she were more overjoyed than she could bear.
Ryuto was right next to her, so of course he was startled, but Tohko, Uotani, and I all stared at Maki with him.
You were looking all frigid and moody five seconds ago so what exactly changed, Maki?!
“Ha-ha-ha, really? So a Kusakabe sponsored Akira. So Yuri had a baby. I’m sure that child is now my despised grandfather. My grandfather who’s got some Oedipal complex and keeps chasing after the phantom of his mommy, just like Kyōka.”
I didn’t get it. I was clueless.
But Maki was in incredibly high spirits. It was like a glittering aura of the vital energy that filled her was pouring out of her entire being.
“That’s great! What a wonderful story. I’ll have good dreams for the first time in a long while tonight! I’m sure when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll feel like anything’s possible.”
“Hey, hey, no plottin’ to take over the world now,” Ryuto said with a shrug and started to walk off.
Maki called out to him.
“You leaving? Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a pretty lady waitin’ for me in town.”
“I really do think you’d be better off dead.”
“If I found a woman who’d kill me, definitely.”
He smiled, enjoying Maki’s annoyance, and said, “Oh, right, I came with a message to deliver. ‘The armada’s preparations are complete.’”
Who on earth was that message from? Ryuto wouldn’t say, but it looked as though Maki understood immediately.
Her eyes widened slightly in surprise, and then a predatory smile came immediately over her face.
“I really…don’t like you.”
Ryuto grinned once more, waved his hand casually, then left.
Afterward, I thought maybe Takamizawa had given Ryuto the message.
That maybe Ryuto had been the guest who’d called at the inn…but somehow or other, I kept that to myself.