桜姫
*** Sakura Princess (Ume POV) ***
I closed my eyes, focusing on the sandalwood fragrance of Shishi’s hair mixing with the forest meadow. The faint perfume of plum blossoms wafted from the fruit trees at the mound’s base. The sakura trees that mingled with the plums brought up lost memories, both pleasant and painful.
Then I started telling my story.
My mother came from an aristocratic family and bitterly resented that our family had lost its fortune during the Lost Decades. All except my grandfather, who squeezed the last profits from his dying mills. They used to say, “The kami has blessed him.” I don’t know if they knew how true that was.
Appearances were important to my mother, and I remember an odd combination of extravagance and poverty: we weren’t allowed to talk about the expensive heirlooms that disappeared; calls from collection agencies were never mentioned; and no reference was made to my mother’s tirades about the sale of rice fields to pay my father’s gambling debts. At the same time, we had an expensive car and threw lavish parties where the men in impeccable suits and women in elaborate kimonos attended.
I was too young to attend the parties, but I would hide and watch. Oh, how I loved those dresses. The bright colors and the patterns. The sound of the silks as the women moved fascinated me. They seemed graceful goddesses. I wanted to be them. I dreamed of being them.
Whenever my father had lost an especially large amount on a plunger at the races, my mother would use that as an excuse to go dress shopping and drag me along. It was her opportunity to share all her bitter complaints about life, my feckless father, my stingy grandfather, and the unfairness of her lot.
One day, I stole some scraps of kimono silk at the dressmaker’s. I remember it was a light russet material with bright scarlet maple leaves. I was very young. Second grade, I think. Old enough to know that stealing was wrong, but not old enough to keep it hidden for long.
As you’d expect, my mother soon caught me with the cloth. If you think about it, it wasn’t much of a crime; it was just a piece of silk no one wanted. But that didn’t matter. She was furious. I still remember her screaming face.
Eventually, she calmed down enough to ask why I had taken it, and I replied, “I want to be a girl.”
There was silence, and then she asked me to repeat what I’d said. I did. “I don’t want to be a boy; I want to be a girl.”
By that point, her face was ashen. It was much more frightening than her normal scowl. The next thing I knew, she’d slapped my face and hissed, “You are never to say that again. You are a man and heir to our house. You are never to forget it.”
I was used to her anger, the constant scolding, and the lectures over the smallest infraction. But her look and her tone that day terrified me. I never forgot it or the lesson that what I felt was wrong. From that day forward, I lived a secret life.
Part of that life was the time I spent in an abandoned mountain shrine. To reach it, I needed to follow the road past my grandfather’s house and then turn off onto an overgrown path through a bamboo forest. In the light, you could make out a faint path, but in the dark, it was impossible to follow. Beyond that was an open rocky slope, and at the top was a graying torii gate in front of a grove of sakura and ancient pines. I was told the shrine had been abandoned after the Pacific War when all the priests died. Adults had forbidden the kids from going there, and since it was a long walk on a forgotten trail, few people disobeyed.
For me, however, it was a little paradise. I made a tunnel in the bushes that grew underneath the trees, and by crawling through it, I would reach my hidden “palace.” To anyone else, it would have looked like a burrow littered with empty food and drink containers, broken household stuff, and whatever scraps of cloth I could find. But they were all part of the house I kept with my husband, Matsu-kun; a doll I made from a large pine cone.
This went on through most of the third and into the fourth grade. I went there alone, being careful never to be followed. At school and home, I was a normal boy. But in my sylvan palace, I was a carefree princess.
All that changed in the summer of the fourth grade. One weekend, I went to my palace and threw a tea party for my imaginary friends. A cicada orchestra played as we gracefully drank fine imported tea. Then I curled up with a shoujo light novel I had taken from a girl’s desk at school. I remember it was about a private girl’s academy. Eventually, I closed my eyes and daydreamed about serving tea to my onee-sama as she talked with her friends about hosting a party.
The day was warm, and before I knew it, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the cicada had fallen silent and night had descended. I crawled out of the trees and looked down the slope. The lights of my grandfather’s house shone in the distance, but there was no way I could find my way there in the dark. In despair, I collapsed into a heap and cried.
As I lay there, a breeze blew through the branches of the trees. It sounded like they were speaking to me. At first, I couldn’t make out the words, and then I clearly heard, “Ume-kun, stop weeping. It is unbecoming.”
The voice was stern but not harsh, like my mother’s. Looking up in surprise, I saw a tall woman dressed in an old-fashioned white kimono standing under the torii gate. I should have been frightened or wondered how she knew my name, but instead, I sobbed, “I can’t get home. It’s too dark.”
“I’ll give you some sweets if you stop,” she replied more kindly. “Then I will take you home.”
Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I stopped crying, and she gave me two mochi: a sakura and a red bean. If I’d been older, I would have noticed sakura was out of season, but I was just a kid.
“Now take my hand and follow me,” she said. “When you get home, tell your grandfather, ‘The Bride will reject any proposal by your son.’ Use those exact words; please repeat them. ‘The Bride will reject any proposal by your son.’”
I repeated what she said, “The Bride rejects my father’s offer.” My father was my grandfather’s son, after all.
“No, that is incorrect,” she said, stopping in the path. “The Bride will reject any proposal by your son,” she repeated. “Don’t alter my message. The words are important.”
“The Bride will reject any proposal by your son.” I got it right this time, and she rewarded me with more mochi.
After that, she resumed walking and led the way to my grandfather’s house. I had to walk rapidly since she made no effort to shorten her stride for me.
Before long, we arrived and halted just outside the light from my grandfather’s house. When I stopped panting, she made me repeat the message.
Pleased when I recited it perfectly, she gave me another sweet and small white box imprinted with a sakura blossom pattern. “Give this to your grandfather. On no account give to your father or mother. And as for you, do not come back to the grove unless you have a proposal for me. It is a sacred place.”
“Now go,” she commanded, giving me a little push.
I started for the door, and when I looked back, she was gone.
My grandfather’s house was in turmoil when I entered. My mother, father, grandfather, and his servants were all there, and as soon as they saw me, they grew silent. I walked toward my grandfather, holding out the box. I thought that maybe if I gave him the box and message, I would escape punishment.
When my mother stepped toward me scowling, it seemed like my hopes would be dashed, but my grandfather intervened, uttering the words, “Leave him be, woman!”
“Bring me that Fumi-kun,” he said, addressing me.
My mother stepped back, and I finished advancing to my grandfather. He took the box and opened it. Inside were two mochi. One pink with a sakura blossom on it and the other green with a pine sprig pressed into the top.
“Ah,” he said. “You’ve been there. Is there any more?”
“Yes, grandfather. She said, ‘The Bride will reject any proposal by your son.’”
“I see. It has come to that.” He didn’t explain, and the look he gave my parents quelled any desire to ask.
For the next year, he tried to teach me to be a “proper” man but then gave up. As for the memory of encountering The Bride, it drifted into that space where we dimly remember our childhood fantasies.
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Story by Nara Moore
Twitter/X:@nara_moore
Mastodon: sakurajima.moe
WordPress: Josei Yuri and Paranormal Romance
Art by Mai-sensei
Twitter: @Maiisheree
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