It was like he had charged straight at someone, only for his target to vanish into smoke. Like he had swung a punch and missed, grazing nothing but air. He was also baffled to find that the view from his physical eyes wasn’t getting any brighter. If anything, it was somehow darker than before.
“Can you hear me, Doctor Tou?” a woman’s voice echoed from overhead. “Welcome to the world of the jar.”
Clunk!
Following that weighty sound, Tou’s vision was shrouded in darkness.
“Are you crazy?! Don’t talk to him!” yelled Keigetsu, snatching the lid from the side and slamming it down on the spittoon. She couldn’t stand to watch Reirin blithely chatting with the soul sealed inside.
A red braid was looped around the neck of the small jar. This was the real bracelet Reirin had previously received from Leanne.
Keigetsu jabbed a finger at the container, newly transformed into a ritual implement to seal the sorcerer’s soul. “Get serious! We’ve turned this spittoon into a magical tool! A curse given form! If the sorcerer’s soul gets loose, your body will be stolen for real!”
“M-my apologies!” Chastened, Reirin stood up straighter and scrambled to hold down the lid. “Nothing is more dangerous than a false sense of security. Oh, I have an idea! Shall we weld the lid shut to ensure that he doesn’t escape?!”
“I can tell you think that was a brilliant idea, but what you’re suggesting is basically torture. It’d be equivalent to roasting the soul inside.”
“Oh dear.” The Kou Maiden’s lack of moderation could give her quite the vicious streak, but you’d never know it from the way she daintily put a hand to her cheek. “I’m sorry. I’ve never sealed a soul before, so I’m not sure how it works.”
A red bracelet was tied around her right wrist, but it was not the same one Tou had tasked Leanne with making.
“Still, it’s thanks to your guidance that we managed to seal him without a hitch,” she went on, smiling. “We hardly even needed to prepare an extra bracelet as a smoke screen.”
“Just checking one more time, but are you sure that didn’t mess up your hand?” Keigetsu asked, casting her friend’s wrist a dubious glance.
Reirin responded with a flick of said wrist. “Oh, not to worry. I’ve done it plenty of times before.”
“No matter how many times you’ve done it, I’m quite certain people’s hands aren’t meant to bend that way…” Flashing back to an unpleasant memory, Keigetsu shuddered and rubbed her upper arms. “You really must be out of your mind! Dislocating your joints to slip out of the bracelet so you don’t have to cut it?! Who even does that?!”
With how worried Keigetsu had been, Reirin obviously wasn’t going to keep the bracelet on. She had removed it two days ago, right after they made up. However, she had made a suggestion first:
“I shall do as you’ve asked and remove the bracelet. But rather than simply cutting it off, I propose that I dislocate my wrist to escape.”
The butterfly had said it so matter-of-factly that Keigetsu could only gape in response.
When asked why she was so determined to preserve the bracelet, Reirin had replied, “The sorcerer likely plans to use the bracelet as a guide to steal my form. In that case, why don’t we tie the bracelet around something else, force the sorcerer into coming after my body, and guide his soul into that object instead? A jar might do the trick, for instance.”
One of Reirin’s biggest concerns had been that assuming they apprehended Tou, they would still have to take care not to treat Prince Gomei’s body too roughly.
“If we can entice him to ‘swap bodies’ with a jar, it will leave Prince Gomei’s body empty. This will allow His Majesty to bring home a body that belongs to no one but his brother.”
The problem with that plan was that this would all unfold on the Day of Ultimate Yin, the one day that Tou would be free to go after anyone. Keigetsu had argued that he might ignore the supposed owner of the bracelet and steal a different body altogether.
“That won’t happen,” Reirin had replied with finality. She had then opened the window of the emperor’s room and gestured toward the scenery beyond—or, more accurately, toward the music of a flute playing in the distance. “Everyone present is going to sing a requiem. This requiem will have the power to soothe the mind—or the power to settle the soul back into the body, if you will. Once all the other souls have been coaxed back into their vessels, the sorcerer will panic and go for the defenseless owner of the bracelet.”
According to Reirin, the song Genyou played was sure to have lyrics to go with it, and she turned out to be correct. When they went with Gyoumei and Keishou to convey their strategy to the emperor, Genyou had acknowledged that the piece he’d been playing was written by Gomei and immediately consented to the plan.
In the present, Genyou scrambled down from the rock, all traces of his usual aloofness discarded. “Brother!”
The peak of the eclipse had just passed. As the sun regained its shape, its light began to filter back down.
As if spurred by the first few sunbeams cast upon the earth, the exalted man whipped around, robes aflutter, and dashed across the shore. “Tan! Retrieve his body at once!”
“On it!”
Now that Tou’s soul had vacated it, the sorcerer’s body—no, Gomei’s body—bobbed lifelessly on the water’s surface. Akim hauled the corpse onto the ice in his muscular arms.
“It looks like everything went well,” a smooth voice called out from behind Reirin and Keigetsu.
“Your Highness!”
After galloping up the mountain to entrap the sorcerer, Crown Prince Gyoumei had appeared on the scene with a whinny from his Stalwart Steed. Riding his horse at full speed while cloaking himself in the dragon’s qi must have worn him out, as his forehead was dappled with sweat. Nevertheless, he nimbly dismounted and regarded the spittoon Reirin was cradling with a nod.
“Well done,” he said, then squinted and looked up at the skies. “Look. The eclipse is almost over.”
The shadowed sun was on its way to regaining its proper light, currently filled out to the shape of a crescent moon.
The locals also stared up at the sky with relief.
“Wow!”
“The sun is coming back!”
Some areas of the lakeshore were still dim, others graced with sunshine. The children frolicked back and forth between them, shielding their eyes with their hands as they peered up at the sun.
As they watched the gloom give way to a world filled with light, they cheered, “It’s the middle of the day, but it’s like morning came all over again!”
Around the time the sun had expanded past the shape of a half-moon, Genyou finally made it to the frozen surface of the lake. His breathing ragged, he set foot on the ice without hesitation. As he laid eyes on Gomei’s body for the first time in twenty-five years, he collapsed to his knees, the strength leaving his legs.
“B-Brother,” he called out for the first time in years, his voice barely a croak. He timorously reached a hand toward the stone-cold corpse of his half brother, stroking eyelids forever shut with trembling fingers. “I…I apologize for taking so long.”
Still kneeling beside his brother, Genyou took the man’s lifeless hand in his own. For a while, he did nothing but close his eyes and cradle that palm to his forehead. Only after that could he steady his breathing enough to speak coherently.
“I’m sorry I left you to suffer in the dark for so long. I shall bring you home to Sunlit Bliss Hill at once. You will never want for light again.”
The prince’s hand was cold as ice, and it would never again retain warmth. But the sun was there to make up for it, casting its warm light on Gomei’s cheeks as it returned to its former glory.
“Do you see that, Brother?” Genyou whispered. He recalled what Gomei had once said, his voice still so tranquil in his final moments.
“Look at that. Isn’t it almost like a sunrise?”
Genyou’s brother had never been without a cheerful grin. For all his younger sibling’s insolence, Gomei had never looked upon the boy with anything but warmth.
“I always loved the sight of morning gracing this kingdom.”
What did the man see behind eyes eternally closed? A Paradise awash with light?
When the eclipse came to an end and the sun was a perfect circle once more, a single tear trickled down Genyou’s cheek.
“The darkness has passed.”
With the darkness gone and the light restored to the world, it was like day had broken at last.
“Morning has graced this kingdom.”
The boundless blue sky was almost too dazzling to behold. His brother’s hand pressed firmly to his forehead, Genyou kept his head bowed for some time.
“Morning has finally come.”
Gomei had always secretly yearned for the arrival of dawn. Genyou murmured the same words over and over, praying that these tidings of morning would reach him.