After buying a bouquet of flowers from a shop in the Dove District, Jinya followed the map he’d received. There was a large temple in Sumida Ward, and behind it was the cemetery Hotaru was laid to rest in. Because it wasn’t clear what faith her family had followed, the manager had asked a monk he knew to handle her service.
The cemetery was in a location that received good sunlight and had lots of greenery. A soft summer breeze blew through, shaking the leaves and caressing his skin. The incessant cries of the cicadas seemed quieter here. The cemetery felt still. Jinya found Hotaru’s grave in one of its corners.
“What should I say? Long time no see?” he asked the gravestone. Of course, it made no reply.
He’d never asked what flowers she liked, so he picked out a prearranged bouquet meant to be offered to graves. Would she have been offended by his safe pick, or maybe amused?
He had no real way to find out. The woman Jinya had known was no more than the mask she donned as a sex worker of the Dove District. The true Hotaru was unknown to him.
Her gravestone was clean, absent of moss and grime. Somebody must have been coming by often to wash it. On its side would be her real name and the year of her passing, but he didn’t look. The two never learned one another’s name. They met and dreamed together as strangers. To learn her name in such a manner would be tactless, and it wasn’t what he was here for anyway. He was here to apologize.
“I broke our promise,” he said.
She’d already been deceased by the time they met, and so he didn’t feel sad to be faced with her grave. The emotion welling up inside him now was regret. He recalled the pinky promise they made. They’d sworn to meet once more before he left the Dove District and had given each other something they treasured dearly.
But he broke their promise. He failed to meet Hotaru, and twenty-three years had flown by since. He’d returned to the Dove District to apologize before her grave.
“I’m sorry. I betrayed your trust in the last of your moments.”
She had trusted him not as Hotaru the sex worker, but as an ordinary woman. At least, that was what Jinya believed. But he had betrayed that trust. He knew it was just the lingering regrets in him, but he wanted to apologize to her. An inanimate gravestone had no words to speak back to him, though.
But of course it wouldn’t. Apologizing here was meaningless; nothing he said would reach her. The only one who could be consoled by this action wasn’t the dead but his own self.
Maybe it was a lie to say he wasn’t sad to be faced with her grave. His heart felt like it was being squeezed tight.
“Oh? Hello.”
Jinya stood there for an unknown amount of time. When he came to, there was a man in a suit approaching with a flower bouquet. He looked to be nearing old age. The man’s gaze was on Jinya, presumably because he stood in front of the grave he was visiting.
Jinya made a short bow and moved to the side. The man returned a quick bow of his own, then placed his flowers before the grave and offered a silent prayer.
Perhaps unable to bear the awkwardness, the man spoke up first. “Um, are you…?”
“I was an acquaintance of hers,” Jinya answered. “We were little more than strangers, though.”
“Ah, I see. I apologize; I just thought you seemed a little young to be visiting her.”
She was the only thing they had in common to talk about, and so their conversation was subdued.
The man must have thought it strange that a young man who looked to be around eighteen was visiting a woman who’d died more than twenty years ago. He snuck wondering glances at Jinya.
“Are you the one who cleans her grave?” Jinya asked.
“Ah, yes. I opened a small clinic around here and come by often. Oh, I’m sorry; I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Kajii Takumi, an…old acquaintance of hers.”
Kajii Takumi. Jinya recognized that name. He was Hotaru’s former boyfriend, the one who wandered into the Dove District unable to forget her, and who also gifted her the star sand.
“…Kajii Takumi,” Jinya repeated.
“Is something the matter?”
“No, it’s just that I’ve heard about you from her.”
“Oh dear, ha ha. Nothing embarrassing, I hope.” The man laughed, but he seemed tired. If what he said earlier was true, then he was the one who maintained this grave. He continued to visit his dead love after all these years. Jinya could not see into the man’s heart, but he could easily imagine what was there.
“Quite embarrassing, I’m afraid. She would go on and on about her time with you,” Jinya said.
That gave the man pause. “She did, did she?”
“Indeed. She talked about how close you two were and how you gave her a place to belong. She said you were the one thing she could consider true.”
Takumi went speechless. He averted his gaze and looked at the gravestone with an expression full of disbelief. “…Truly?”
“Truly.”
“I see…” He frowned slightly, still unable to believe.
He really loved her and had wanted nothing more than for her to be happy, but the red-light districts were already a thing of the past by the time he reached the Dove District. The woman of the night called Hotaru passed away a full year before even that, and so their love never reached a proper conclusion. He was probably still tormented by regret even now.
“To be honest, I find that hard to believe,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I loved her. I had no idea what she was thinking when she left, and she never understood how I felt up until the end. Maybe the two of us weren’t looking at one another at all.”
He shared the same thoughts he’d told Jinya once before. Hearts could not communicate if both sides only forced their feelings onto the other. Takumi still believed that perhaps they had only been selfish, claiming they’d acted out of love without ever stopping to consider what the other wanted.
“She wished for your happiness even if she couldn’t be by your side. I’d say you were both looking at one another just fine. You just misunderstood each other a bit, that’s all.” Seeing the pain on Takumi’s face, Jinya said the same words he told him long ago. “So don’t be so down. The two of you definitely loved one another.”
Bewildered, Takumi said, “Wait, you’re…”
Jinya paid him no mind, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small bottle made of dull glass. “Here, let me return this to you. She entrusted me with this bottle of star sand. She claimed it was something precious she received from you… I originally planned to return it to her grave, but I think it’d be better for you to take it.”
Takumi’s jaw hung open. His gaze flitted between the bottle of star sand and Jinya’s face. After a few moments, he nodded, finally accepting what was going on. “So you’re the one she meant.”