Tea beneath the Sakura Blossom

Darkness. Endless darkness. The girl walked quickly, quietly. Her heart beat hard against her chest, so hard she thought she could hear it. She could see nothing, yet she could see her own hands, and when she looked down, she could see her two bare feet showing underneath her kimono.

Beneath her feet, however, was darkness. She felt nothing against her soles. There was no way to tell what she was running on, or from. She shivered, both from fright and from the freezing cold. Is it winter? She thought to herself. But there is no wind, what is causing this horrible cold?

Where am I?

She slowed to a walk, her breathing ragged. Even her breath was cold. Calm down, she told her heart, this is not the time to be scared. Try and recall what you were doing before this.

She closed her eyes, not that it made much difference. I was sweeping the courtyard, she thought, then I did the dishes and went to bed.

So this is a dream.

She opened her eyes slowly. The darkness did not go away. She was still able to see herself, but unable to see anything else around her. She ventured forward, no longer as frightened as she was, her feet prodding grass and sand.

Wait. Grass?

She looked down quickly to make sure she was not disillusioned, but there it was. She was definitely treading on grass. She looked up to see if anything had changed. The darkness was lifting. Slowly she could make out outlines of trees, and rocks, and a river. Even a rabbit. Its eyes glowed lightly in the dark, but then she blinked, and the rabbit was gone.

So you’ve finally come, said a voice from behind her. The young girl spun around, and the sight took her breath away.

Before her stood a majestic sakura tree, the flowers in full bloom, and their petals reflecting the light from the brilliant full moon hanging high above in the night sky. That’s impossible, the young girl thought to herself. Such a scene cannot exist.

This really is a dream.

Beneath the sakura tree sat a tiny old lady. She had on a plain olive kimono, with her hair neatly rolled up in a bun. She held a tiny teacup in her wrinkly hands, slowly sipping from it. The young girl stood transfixed, unable to move or say anything.

What are you doing there, child? Come, have some tea with me, said the old lady, smiling gently at her.

The young girl stood for a minute, before walking towards the old lady underneath the sakura tree. It was no longer cold. The old lady poured her a cup of tea, and she accepted it, her cold fingers finding comfort in the heat from the cup.

Thank you, said the young girl in a small voice. She was no longer afraid. The old lady did not exude any harmful aura, but she was wary of her all the same. The old lady sipped on her tea peacefully, looking out at the countryside.

Take a look, child, the world is light again, she said, beaming.

The young girl looked, and where there was only darkness before was now the most beautiful view she had ever seen. The fields stretched without end, and everything was gleaming in the moonlight. The hills sloped into each other, and the river weaved its way quietly along its path, towards an ocean too far away to see.

Where are we? The young girl asked.

Hmm…I wonder. The old lady sighed. Where do you think we are?

The young girl turned back to look at the old lady’s profile. Her hair was pure white, without a single speck of black or grey. Deep lines crossed her face and neck, speaking of many untold stories and experiences collected throughout her lifetime. Yet she gave off an air of something the young girl could not put her finger on. Was it elegance? Or refinement? Was she a highly educated woman in her younger days? Did she once possess beauty so stunning a king would slow his steps to get a second glimpse?

Obaa-san, who are you?

The old lady did not answer. Instead, she took another sip of tea and lowered the cup to her lap.

Then she told the young girl a story.

Exactly sixty years ago, I was a farm girl in Edo living with my parents and an older brother. Life was good. We woke up every day with the sun, feed the animals, milk the cows, plow the lands, pull out weed. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had enough food. It was hot in summer and cold in winter, but we always made do. If I had my way, we would stay like that forever. We wanted nothing more.

The young girl listened intently. Her question was being answered the long way, but she did not mind. So this lady was just like me when she was younger. An ordinary girl, but carefree and happy. She even lived on a farm.

The old lady ran a finger along the brim of her teacup. Her fingers, though wrinkled and bony, bore a picture of age-old elegance. Strange, the young girl thought. A person who grew up on a farm playing with her teacup the way a young lady from a good family would.

The old lady sighed. Then the war happened, she whispered.

We were ordered to give up our land. We left our home with nothing more than our lives and whatever clothes we had on our backs. My brother had hastily dressed me in some of his older clothes and tied my hair back so they wouldn’t know I was a girl. I narrowly escaped the fate of being wed to a rebel. The less fortunate young women were married off, raped, enslaved, sold as prostitutes, and more. It was a dark, dark period of our lives.

We took refuge in a small town in the forest on the outskirts of Edo. We had an uncle who separated himself from community and went there to live his life, so we went to him for help. He did not have much, so we had to sleep in the barn. It was not pleasant. There were insects all over the ground. My father and brother made a little bed out of the little hay that was there for my mother and myself, and they slept in the dirt.

My mother did not live long after that. The cold of the night and the poor living conditions took a toll on her body, and she passed away about a month after that. My father took ill from grief, and before long, my brother and I were left on our own.

With nowhere else to go, my brother and I stayed at my uncle’s barn. We went hunting with him, washed his laundry, and did all the cooking. We ate leftovers from his dinner, and went to sleep with the insects every night. It was extremely hard, but no matter how little, he at least gave us food and shelter.

Then the rebels came.

We didn’t know how they found us, but they did. We hid in the barn while our uncle negotiated with them. He told them no one had visited in years, and that he had been living alone for even longer. It didn’t quite work out though. One of them spotted the barn and came over to investigate. My brother had his hunting spear, ready to strike when the rebel opens the door, but uncle was quicker. The rebel was dead before he reached the door.

It was utter chaos after that. Uncle was yelling at us to run, and he released all the horses he had. My brother had dashed out and grabbed uncle’s favourite horse, a fine black stead, snatched me off the ground and we rode off into the forest. We never saw uncle again. I guessed, in his own way, uncle had done his best to look out for us.

We traveled through mountains and forests and came to Aizu, and we decided to settle down for the time being. I was still dressed as a boy, and my brother made me use signs instead of talking, so my voice would not give me away. We lived like that for a long time.

Years passed and nothing else happened. My brother never married. He devoted his life to earning hard cash so we could survive. Nobody would hire me because no one knew what I was trying to say with my signs. I stayed home and did my best to be useful to him. My brother never complained, never drank, never smoked. He came home straight after work every day without fail, and did it all over again the next day.

However, the war was not over. Before we knew it, it had found us once again. We fled to Kyoto, and hid in an abandoned house. It looked like it was raided not long ago. I remember that house as though it was carved into my memory. There were blood-stained baby clothing on the floor, and a dead man laid face down in front of the door. We assumed the woman of the house was taken away after the raid. I threw up for days.

Life in Kyoto was never peaceful again.

There was fighting every day. Nobody dared leave the house after dark. We had cleaned up the abandoned house and buried the man in their backyard, and stayed in the hope that the war will not revisit the house they already destroyed. We had to sneak in and out every few days in order to get food, other than that we stayed mostly indoors and kept the doors and windows tightly closed.

Perhaps it was the meager food we had, perhaps it was a lack of work, but my brother started changing. It was subtle, unnoticeable, but it was happening. He would sit by the sealed up window, and peek out through the slit of wood to see the roads outside. Days passed and we would just sit in the house, eat when it was mealtime, and sleep when the sun went down. It was unbearable. Occasionally, someone would scream outside, and I would curl up on the floor hoping against hope that he or she managed to run away, but knowing with clarity that they never would. I did not count the days. All I remembered was feeling constant despair.

And then autumn came. When it did, my brother left.

I remember sitting alone on the floor in the house. A basket sat next to me, piled high with dry food, an open letter in my hand. He had decided that joining the army was the most direct way to protect the weak. To this day, I never found out what happened to him. I do not know if he still lives, or if he had died years and years ago. Because of that though, I am able to cling to a sliver of hope that he had somehow survived, and is alive and well.

I felt no anger for him, even as I read the letter for the first time. Confused, yes, but there was no boiling rage. My brother had loved me deeply, this much I knew, and I had loved him. The decision must not have come easy. This might’ve been the only thing on his mind during all those time spent by the window. In a way, this had set me free. I was by myself at last. I may live however I wished. My brother had left with the confidence that I will not go to waste. The only thing I can do to honour him was to not let him down. I packed up the food he had gathered for me and left the house.

Life was still hard, though I lived through it. I don’t even know how I did it, but I did. 

And then I met him.

He was silent. He was swift. He moved like he was part of night itself. The blue of his coat shone in the moonlight. His gaze was cold, yet soulful. I had never met another man like him before.

Time spent with him flew by like the wind. I cannot remember with clarity the circumstances that forced us to travel together, from one battleground to another, but we spent many days and nights talking about the world, the sun, and the moon. Before I knew it, I had fallen deeply in love, yet I never told him. I was afraid. What if he did not love me? I told myself having him near me was all I needed, and after living through so much hardship, I truly believed in the simplicity of knowing that when he was around, I was a part of his life, no matter how small that part was.

I knew, down in the deepest part of my heart, that I will never be able to love another human being as much as I loved him.

Yet he was a man I could not have. Before long, he was sent to die on the front lines. The morning he departed for good, he held me in his arms for a long time. He had never touched me prior to that, not with that amount of intimacy. No words were exchanged, but more was said in that moment than any word can ever convey. I waited for a miracle that day. I waited until the sun set and the moon rose. He never returned.

The war soon began to fade. A new era began, but my world had changed long before that. I had lost both my family and the one love I will ever know. I married the first decent man who asked me to marry him, and gave birth to his children. They all grew up and had families of their own. My husband lost his life to stomach cancer, but he had left the bulk of his assets to me. I was thirty-eight years old then.

The story stopped there. The young girl watched the old lady intently. Although she had just recounted what could possibly be the most tragic experiences of her life, she still looked at peace. The old lady raised the teacup to her lips, and took another sip. There was steam coming from the cup, even after all the time spent talking. The young girl glanced down at the cup in her hands – hers still had steam too.

The sky was a deep, inky indigo colour. Stars littered the sky like she had never seen before. She caught the sight of a glowing piece of something pink out of the corner of her eye, and looked up. The wind was carrying the sakura flowers with it, and they fell gently all around them, their petals a soft glowing pink. They seem to be trying to tell me something, she thought to herself. Normal sakura flowers did not look like this. Even when they were in full bloom, she had never seen sakura flowers that glowed in the night, regardless of the moon’s presence at the time.

Suddenly, the young girl felt uneasy. The dark blue of the night was so unnatural, yet so beautiful. And the flowers. The flowers! I will never ever see it like this again, she thought. And I’m not sure I want to.

Obaa-san, where are we? I’m scared.

The old lady turned towards her sadly. I’m sorry, dear child. I understand. But you will also learn, years later, that what you’re feeling now is not fright. She looked down, eyes a little wet. It is something much more heartbreaking than that.

She looked up at the falling sakura petals, each glowing as brightly as the stars. A single tear trailed down the line extending from the corner of her eye, and fell silently onto her lap. The olive fabric soaked it up like it was nothing, and before she could blink the tear stain was gone.

How do you know that? The young girl asked quietly. Why are you telling me the story of your youth? What are you trying to say to me, obaa-san?

She suddenly remembered the strange feeling the old lady gave her from the moment they met. She could not identify it then, but she is certain of it now.

Do you…know me?

It was familiarity.

The old lady smiled. There was no malice in her smile. There was only kindness.

I know you as you are now, but what you will become depends on your choices. You may become like me, or you may become something else entirely different. You still have one last chance to change your fate.

The young girl sat frozen where she was, confusion written all over her face. There were so many things she did not understand. The indigo sky, the glowing flowers, the beautiful silver moon, the endless landscape bathed in pristine clarity, and this peaceful old lady, with her tragic experiences in her youth, sitting here sipping tea. All of this must mean something, but what?

Perhaps all of this thinking was starting to get to her. Her head was throbbing, and her vision was growing blurry. What’s happening? Please wait, she begged, her eyes beginning to feel heavy. Obaa-san, what’s happening to me? Why am I falling asleep?

She instinctively reached out to grab something, anything, to do what, she wasn’t sure. But she thought as long as she could grab a hold of something from this world, she could stay a little longer, find out a little more. She felt wrinkled fingers close around hers. Something about this grip was strange. She had never experienced anything like it. The size, the length of the fingers, everything about this grip felt confusingly familiar. As wild and crazy as it sounded in her head, she felt as though she was holding her own hand.

She forced her eyes to focus on the old lady, who had sorrow etched into every single wrinkle. There is something I regret never doing, she said, her eyes glossy with tears again. Though I had moved past it, though I had shut it away in the deepest part of my heart and lived out the rest of my life, I have always, to this day, regretted not saying it. I was afraid, that if I had said it, something would change, and whatever there was would cease to be, and I would be left with nothing, and my last memory of him would be one of heartache and hopelessness. I wonder every single day, if things would be different had I had enough courage to say it, if he would still be alive, if we would have a future together.

She could make out the glowing sakura petals dancing in the wind. A gust had blown in their direction, and the flowers on the ground spiraled up around them. It was a beautiful, yet miserable sight. The young girl felt tears cloud her eyes. Such is the fragility of life. Like these flowers, filled with unbelievable beauty, yet unable to survive.

The old lady looked up at the moon, and the young girl followed her gaze. It stayed where it was, still bright, still full.

It’s almost time, the old lady whispered. As soon as she said it, the young girl could feel her vision blurring again, and she instinctively knew that this will not occur again. She was suddenly frightened, much more than she was before.

Must I really go, obaa-san? Can’t I stay here with you? She pleaded, tightening her grip on the old lady’s hand. The latter smiled sadly at her.

I’m afraid not, child.

The young girl slumped onto the grass, her body giving out, and laid there fighting against the heavy sleep that was threatening to take her. She felt a gentle stroking on her head.

When the war breaks out tomorrow, your life will change forever, said the old lady sadly. You will have an extremely hard life. I know, because I have lived it. But you will survive. You will live through it all and not regret a single moment. You will meet the man you love and he will love you like no other. Be brave. Do not despair, do not falter. Do not become like me.

And when you meet Hajime, please, tell him you love him.

And with that, the magnificence of the landscape faded into darkness once more, a darkness no different from her first experience of this world. The young girl’s eyelids fluttered shut, and sleep claimed her at last, as a single sakura petal floated down onto the surface of her tea.

***

Author's note: This is a subtle Hakuoki fanfiction. Fans of this series/game (if any are reading this) might recognise the few references I have in this piece. It's not very loud, and not very strong, but it's there.

This piece is also one that is very close to my heart. I re-read it many times when I feel like I need a pick-me-up. I can only hope that it brings the same kind of effect to anyone who reads it, even if it's just one other person.

As usual, please be generous with feedback =) and thank you for your time.