This time Jinya was the one who showed confusion. He only met Hotaru in the Dove District that shouldn’t have existed, so there was no way Takumi could remember him. And yet, some dots seemed to connect in the man’s mind as all traces of doubt cleared from his eyes.
“I’m sorry, but could you come with me to my clinic for a bit?”
“Why?”
“Please. It won’t take a minute. There’s something I need to give you as well.” Takumi bowed his head deeply.
Jinya was confused, but the man seemed insistent, so he obliged. He followed Takumi back to a small clinic on the bank of the Sumida River. The building had white, clean-looking walls, and the smell of sanitizer stung his nose when he went inside. He was led to the back of the waiting room, where he sat on a sofa and waited.
He looked around. The walls were white, and the room was neat. Apparently places like hospitals only used simple colors for their walls to set patients at ease. Jinya had to admit that the clean white color did have a calming effect on him.
“Thank you for waiting.” Takumi returned with a long, narrow paulownia wood box in his hands. He sat across from Jinya and placed the box on the table between them, then slid it toward him. “Go ahead and open it.”
Jinya slowly lifted the lid of the box. Inside was a sword bag. He took out the bag’s contents and looked at it in surprise.
It was a single sword. A long, peculiar blade set in an unadorned scabbard.
“Yarai…?”
It was Yarai, the sword that had been his companion for more than a hundred years.
“Why is this here?” he asked.
“She entrusted it to me,” Takumi answered, speaking calmly now. “By the time I reached the Dove District, she had already passed away. But the manager of the place where she worked handed me this sword along with a letter.”
The letter had read: Someday, a man carrying star sand will visit my grave. Please return this sword to him.
Such a thing couldn’t be possible. Jinya had only met Hotaru after she died. She didn’t have Yarai then and couldn’t possibly have written a letter.
But Yarai was unmistakably here.
With a powerful emotion welling up inside him, he shut his eyes and saw an impossible scene.
“It’s been a while.”
She leaned back in her seat, the soft spring breeze caressing her skin. Sunlight filled the white walls of the room as she looked out the window. Amid a shallow dream, she drifted, waiting for his arrival.
“I’m sorry. I broke our promise.”
After a long wait, he’d finally arrived. She welcomed him with a smile.
“Nonsense. You kept it fine; it just took a little while.”
She lifted her pinky finger. He thought he had broken their pinky promise, but no. He’d just arrived a little late, that’s all.
“Thank goodness. I was able to return this for her…”
Takumi’s voice brought Jinya back to his senses. He opened his eyes and found himself back in the waiting room. The beautiful scene he saw had slipped through his fingers and returned to the distant sky.
The only thing left from it was Yarai. It felt heavy, not because it was steel, but because of the journey it had taken to get here. Similarly, its cold steel had a warmth to it.
“Thank you very much. Please, let me return this as well,” Jinya said. Takumi accepted the star sand he wouldn’t take earlier.
Memories were supposed to fade with time, but Jinya’s memories of Hotaru had remained because he had the star sand to connect them. Perhaps, then, he would come to forget her now?
No, Jinya answered his own thoughts. They were still connected even now, so surely he would remember her.
“Can I ask why you traded a sword for a bottle of star sand?” With no hidden motives, Takumi looked down at the bottle in his hands and asked that question, which came from genuine curiosity.
“The two of us swore to meet once more, and we exchanged the things we held dearest so we wouldn’t forget our promise.”
“…And that was this star sand for her?”
“Yes. This sword is a part of me. It was my only possession that could match what she entrusted to me. That’s how dear your star sand was to her.”
To be more specific, it wasn’t the star sand itself that she treasured but what it represented: the time she had spent with Takumi.
Takumi looked speechless to hear how she felt.
As for Jinya, he had said the things that needed to be said and reobtained Yarai. He returned the sword to its bag and quietly stood up. “I’ll take my leave here.”
“W-wait!” Takumi called out as Jinya left. Jinya stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Takumi. “Just…who are you?”
Jinya pondered over how to answer, then grinned slightly and replied with a nonanswer. “Just one of the many men, as numerous as the stars, who were in love with the woman known as Hotaru.”
His name would have been meaningless to Takumi anyway, but he made a point not to give it out of respect to the fact that he had fallen for Hotaru.
Reality was demanding and cold; that was why ladies of the night deceived men with cheap lies and shallow imitations of love. Jinya had definitely felt love for the woman who tried her best to remain a lady of the night until her last. That was why he wouldn’t give his name here. He was just a man—one who knew nothing of her and whom she knew nothing of—who had loved Hotaru the sex worker, and that was enough.
He bowed to Takumi while the latter was still in a daze, then left the clinic.
He’d promised to return that same day, so he made no stops and headed straight for Koyomiza.
His dream was over, so it would’ve been wrong to stop and linger on it at that point. There was no hesitation in his steps, and he didn’t pause.
From time to time, he thought back on that one night and how he couldn’t take that last step no matter how hard he tried. Their night of passion faded like snow. But some things were beautiful precisely because they ended as no more than a dream.
“Goodbye, Hotaru… For real this time.” He said the words he’d failed to say long ago, bidding farewell to a past love. This parting lacked gravity, but he felt it was right.
The scorching sun’s heat made him feel a little dizzy. He squinted and thought he saw her smiling beyond the summer haze. She vanished almost immediately; she’d been just a trick of the eye. He felt some sadness in his heart, but it was drowned out by a joy that brought a smile to his face.
After long nights, the morning sun could be blinding to the point of disorientation. But above him now was a clear, blue summer sky, and that was enough for him to keep on walking forward.
In spirits almost high enough to make him whistle, he thought of what lay at the end of his long journey.
✦ ✦ ✦
To be continued in Sword of the Demon Hunter:
Kijin Gentōshō – Heisei Arc