REUNION
In Asakusa, Tokyo, a bit removed from the street of the famous Kaminarimon Gate, there was a dimly lit alley with an antique store called Kogetsudou. It had been around since the middle of the Meiji era, but not many customers ever came by. The building was old, giving the store a rather shabby look. The sun was setting for the day, bathing everything in the color of sunset, and the store’s antiques looked bewitching bathed in the orange glow.
The store’s owner, Yunohara Aoba, blankly looked around the empty shop and let out a slight yawn.
Business was poor, but she didn’t particularly mind. Her husband had a company job, so the family earned enough. She ran Kogetsudou not to make a living but more as a hobby, making the lack of business a nonissue.
“Pardon me.”
A customer entered just then—a rather rare sight. His voice was somehow familiar, belonging to a young man around seventeen or maybe eighteen years of age.
She had known this day would eventually come. Some emotion she couldn’t identify welled up inside her. Its warmth raced through her whole body and made her smile. “Oh, hey. It’s been a good while, Jin-san.”
It really had been a good while. He was a nostalgic face, and she was truly happy to see him.
“It really has. Twenty years, has it been?”
“Twenty-three. Wow, you haven’t aged a day. Meanwhile, I’ve turned into an old lady over here.” She slapped her own cheek softly.
Jinya smiled wryly, thinking to himself that she hadn’t changed at all. “Aren’t you surprised?”
A demon she’d sealed away had appeared before her. He’d half expected a different reaction than this. But she didn’t even get up from her chair and instead treated him like he was an ordinary customer.
“Oh, I am, but I had a feeling you would come. I just knew the first thing you would do once you were free would be to come here. So although I’m surprised, I’m not that surprised.”
She hadn’t been safekeeping the sword particularly securely, so its seal coming undone was no surprise. She was certain he wouldn’t come seeking revenge either. When he appeared before her, it would only be to say hello.
The tension left his body once he heard her words. The two of them had lived together while hiding many secrets from one another, but she still trusted him enough to talk to him like this. He sighed, probably out of relief. Their time together hadn’t been meaningless after all.
“I see… What have you been up to since then?”
“What else but living life with thoughts of revenge on you in my heart? And thinking. Lots of that. I’ve been thinking about thoughts that led nowhere this whole time.” She spoke jokingly, but her words were the truth. She had spent the past twenty-three years on revenge and thoughts with no answers.
But the man who had the answers was finally here.
“Hey, Jin-san? Something’s been on my mind these past twenty-three years. Why did you let me seal you without fighting back? I’m sure you could have found some way to stop me.”
To this day, she still didn’t know why he allowed her strike to land. He could have chosen to end things differently, but instead he let himself be sealed away and wasted twenty-three years of his life estranged from those he knew. She didn’t know what had been on his mind then or what he thought of her, the girl who had tricked him. She had spent all this time aching to know.
“I couldn’t move,” he answered.
“Don’t lie to me, please. A man as skilled as you should have seen through my movements easily.” She didn’t believe him, but he insisted it was the truth.
“No, I mean I really couldn’t move. The demonic blade of Demon Wail only needs a small cut to activate its effects. I was doomed the moment I failed to dodge your first strike. What’s more, I had taken from you twice already by then without managing a single thing in return…”
Since he had taken Saegusa Sahiro and Nanao’s lives, he was seeking a way to end things that would leave Aoba unharmed, and that hesitation dulled his movements.
“I didn’t know what to do. That’s why I was too slow to dodge or block. You had abandoned all indecision, but I couldn’t do the same… There is no grand secret hidden within our bout. It was simply an honest victory for you.”
The truth she had waited all these years to hear turned out to be something so anticlimactic. The cause of his defeat was none other than his impurity, which dulled his blade and made him weak. A blade clouded with indecision could reach no one. He might have been able to slay a stranger, but not Aoba, to whom he had grown attached after living with her for a time.
Jinya had hesitated because he did not want to cut down a young woman desperately trying to carry out her will. That proved her time in the Dove District with him had not been meaningless.
“…I can’t believe you. You’re so skilled most of the time but clumsy in strange ways. You’re a real fool. What if I killed you after sealing you away?”
“I knew you wouldn’t. If you were that kind of woman, I could’ve killed you without hesitation from the start. I told you it was clear how this would all end, didn’t I? No matter what path might lead up to it, I was certain we would meet again like this.”
So that was what he had meant, she realized. He had taken the lives of her grandfather’s loved one and Nanao, but she never hated him herself. If it hadn’t been for her grandfather’s wishes, she’d never have turned her blade against him. That was why he knew she would only seal him away at best, not kill him, which in turn made him hesitate to fight her.
The end had been clear from the start. He had known they would meet again like this and manage to smile together again.