It was a morning like any other, a few days after the official end to harvest celebrations, when the crisp air and bright red maple leaves of early autumn had begun to give way to pale light and semi-constant drizzle. A morning like any other which greeted Hieda no Akyuu with solemn gentleness as she rose from her slumber and realised it would be her last.
She stood up slowly, as rushing would only make her woozy and liable to collapse. She had awoken before the sun, and thus before most of the servants, even the one who slept by her room specifically to keep an eye on her health in case of sudden emergencies. That suited her just fine.
She slid the door open and tiptoed through the mansion still in her socks, gratified she managed a certain poise in spite of her frailty and the clumsiness that accompanied it, counting each occasion she found her feet dappled by pale moonlight.
She washed herself with water so cold it bordered on icy, likening it to dew in a sudden whim of childishness. Shivering, she returned to her chamber and dressed herself. It took both time and effort — even back in her healthier days, she had usually had the aid of a servant for the task — but it felt right, doing it by herself this one final time. It loosened her aching joints, so much older than their physical age, and hopefully, it would also make her fingers nimble enough to hold the brush for a few hours longer.
Once she was done, her closest servant finally stirred and made her presence known. Would she like something to eat? No. To drink? Only water, for now. Anything else?
Yes, she had said, straightening her back and ignoring the weight of past lives threatening to bend her over, call upon Kosuzu.
Kosuzu had barged in, her cheeks frost-reddened, brimming with that child-like exuberance which had never abandoned her even after she had blossomed into womanhood. It was strange she was already awake. Perhaps it was fate.
"It will happen today," Akyuu said as soon as Kosuzu had halted before her, catching her breath. "Well. Tomorrow, perhaps. Nevertheless, this will be the end."
It was a strange experience, watching Kosuzu's face go from astonished to disbelieving to finally despairing. Amusing, almost, if not for the shadow it cast. After all, Kosuzu had known this day would come for nearly as long as Akyuu herself had.
"This isn't the time for tears," Akyuu continued when Kosuzu failed to make a single sound.
"I wasn't going to cry," said Kosuzu, tears already staining her voice.
Akyuu shook her head. It went without saying she was older than nearly every human she encountered by virtue of her circumstances, but the difference seemed all the more pronounced when she stood next to Kosuzu. Dear, sweet Kosuzu, who had never learnt to keep her heart from her sleeve.
"It won't be till late this evening. Or early the following morning." Dying wasn't an exact science. "In any case, I didn't call you here to mourn."
Kosuzu finished dabbing at her eyes and furrowed her brow. "Do you need a borrow a book? Today?"
"Actually, yes." There was indeed a reference book Akyuu had only just had returned to the Suzunaan after leafing through it, which she now realised she had a use for. "But I have another request as well. One you are free to refuse if you haven't the time."
Other people she considered her friends would have reacted differently. Marisa would have laughed and perhaps made a joke in hopes of alleviating the tension. Reimu would have scoffed and told her to spit it out already, blunt to mask any real sentiment. But not Kosuzu. Kosuzu at once clasped her hands together, almost indignant. "I'll do it, whatever it is."
Akyuu smiled, then gestured at Kosuzu to follow her indoors and to her study, stripped of all but the bare essentials to encourage focus. Within, her desk awaited, with a servant kneeling next to it, thoughtfully freshening the ink and laying down Akyuu's favourite brush. Next to the desk lay the letter she had left unfinished the night before, to be completed and delivered along several others to inform those concerned of her demise and her final words of advice.
She sat down, acknowledging the servant's work with a nod. She dipped the brush in ink. This, at least, she would have to finish by herself.
"The current volume of the Gensokyo Chronicle I'm working on remains incomplete." She drew only a single character before dipping the brush back into the ink. More now than ever, she had to be mindful of how much ink actually ended on the brush. "I expected as much, but there should be just enough time, assuming I work till the end, to conclude my most recent entries and to write some semblance of an afterword."
"And you're going to do that?"
"Yes." She needn't have answered: Kosuzu already knew. What choice did she have? Already she had occasionally wondered if she had given her duty the precedence it deserved, ultimately deciding that all the distractions, all the time spent with friends, and all the novels written under pseudonyms were a necessary part of the process. Now, however, when time was running short, she found herself once more burying lingering strands of regret. "I need help, however. My mind is as sharp as it has ever been, but..."
She might as well demonstrate. She gestured at Kosuzu to approach, and once Kosuzu was leaning over her, showed her what she had just written on the scroll. There was nothing in the revealed part of the letter that required secrecy. It stated merely her final farewells.
In symbols as brittle and uncertain as those of a child holding the brush for the first time.
She matched Kosuzu's startled expression with a grim one of her own. It happened, sometimes, that one's body gave way before one's mind did, but it was a vexation all the same. When she had been Hieda no Aya, she had been able to write her final sentences while already lying on her deathbed in a crisp calligraphy that would have put no-one to shame.
The servant returned, bringing Kosuzu a cushion. Kosuzu retreated towards the door and thanked her with her usual artless consideration. She then sat down looking like a pupil expecting to be scolded.
Akyuu waited for her to settle down before continuing. "To get to the point, I need a scribe. I could ask one of the servants, but you are very well read, and I admire your way of writing. I will be happy to compensate you for you time, of c-"
"No!" There was a flash of what looked like genuine anger in Kosuzu's eyes. "You're not going to pay me! The shop is doing fine, anyway." She nodded, as if making an agreement with herself. "I'll do it."
Akyuu nodded. There was no need to press the issue. Forcing payment on someone under such circumstances was akin to stating their friendship wasn't authentic enough. Besides, Kosuzu was already included in her will. "You will have food and drink, naturally."
As if on cue, the servant returned with tea. Only a single cup, as Akyuu neither needed no desired more earthly sustenance. Kosuzu accepted the cup with thanks, but only nursed it gingerly as Akyuu set the scroll aside and instead looked through the manuscript to see where she had left off. Her eyes glided across the name written at the beginning of an otherwise blank scroll, the kanji of which she had been able to verify only a couple of days ago. There was much work to be done.
Nothing to it, she thought as Kosuzu placed the teacup on the floor, barely touched, and traded places with her. Even if she couldn't write, t she could recite, and recall, and word truths in a amnner that would be precise and accurate without stirring panic. And so she would do till either the manuscript was complete, or the other side claimed her.
And so, as if possessing a single mind, they set to work.
The rim of orange light visible behind the screen finally tapered into nothingness. Before Akyuu could call for a servant, Kosuzu already took up the task of lighting additional candles. The flames flickered and danced in the darkness as the room filled with their soft waxy scent.
Akyuu sat back up. She had been up and down all day, sitting upright for as long as her strength carried her, then reclining on the futon whenever the debilitating weakness which had gained a stranglehold on her grew too forceful to bear. Her stomach was well and truly empty, but she felt no hunger, and the pain she knew she was in was more a vague notion, a shadow she could only glimpse when she looked over her shoulder. But if her limbs simply refused to obey as her body shut down, well, that was it, then.
"The testimonies can be quoted as they are. They should be in that pile."
"Alright." Kosuzu reached for the pile of scrolls and unfurled the first one, deciphering Akyuu's handwriting with the same ease she read foreign scripts and words no human should have been able to understand. She had been intermittently back to her usual cheerful self, so absorbed in work which was, if Akyuu dared say so herself, quite exciting, that she forgot entirely to be gloomy.
All the same, once she had copied Akyuu's words onto the manuscript, Kosuzu stilled and turned towards Akyuu with an apprehensive frown. "That's another profile done."
Akyuu nodded. "Onto the next one." If Kosuzu was worried about them running out of material, she needn't be. They would run out of time much sooner. In fact, their next task was one of priorisation. "We should be able to finish the entries for all the main players in the most recent incident."
Kosuzu nodded with a deepening frown. Could it be she hadn't met either Reimu or Marisa following the incident — Akyuu was quite certain she had never encountered Seija, the third infamous person involved in the debacle — and thus knew nothing of it? Perhaps so; it had only been two weeks prior.
"The Ephemeral Shapeshifter," Akyuu began to dictate. "Nariko Ruika. Ability: Manipulation of form. Threat level..."
She paused to consider the danger Nariko posed. The incident was so fresh and her health so precarious she hadn't been able to investigate the matter beyond second-hand accounts and a single visit from Marisa and Reimu. They had been, if not entirely evasive, much happier to discuss other topics, and while Akyuu had been able to gather the incident had begun with the cheeky shapeshifter pitting the tengu and tanuki against one another by successfully mimicking high-ranking members of both species, many of the details still eluded her. How vexing.
"Let's call high it for now," she decided. "Human friendship level..." Another tricky one. "Low." This was an educated guess. While the incident hadn't affected the daily lives of the humans of Gensokyo, she had read between the lines to discover the peril had been much greater than the airy satisfaction of the incident-solvers had given away. There was a suggestion that the villain's plan had been to unravel all of Gensokyo's social order and thus Gensokyo itself, which would absolutely have imperilled its human residents likewise.
Kosuzu wrote the words down. Akyuu didn't need to see the text for herself — she knew Kosuzu's calligraphy was more than adequate and downright beautiful at times — but she enjoyed seeing an empty page being slowly filled up with ink, and was sorry she could only barely glimpse at the scroll. Still, she had to conserve her strength. She lied down with a sigh, already shaping the opening paragraph of Nariko's description in her mind.
"I have no witness testimonies for her," she realised as her description of Nariko's general abilities and foul personality came to an end.
"Oh." Kosuzu finished writing down the last sentence Akyuu had recited, then set the brush down. She pursed her lips. "I could go get them for you."
Akyuu shook her head. "It will take too much time."
"Not now. I mean..." Kosuzu hesitated, but once she spoke, it was in a loud and clear voice, as though being honest about it somehow made it better. "After."
The thought gave Akyuu pause. Having another transcribe her own words was one thing, but having someone include words in the chronicle Akyuu herself had no part in, even if it was simply to include interview material? Had she not been granted her memories of past lives precisely so she could devote herself and only herself to the task?
"Leave them out," she eventually said. "It won't be the first time, and it won't be the last. I will instead explain what we know for a fact regarding the incident."
Kosuzu nodded and turned back towards the scroll. Though she was clearly making an effort, she couldn't quite hide the shadow of disappointment on her face. Akyuu didn't let it keep her from recounting a basic framework of recent events.
The moon had long since vanished behind dark clouds. The screens of the stripped room were illuminated only by guttering candles. They would need to be changed soon: it wasn't even the witching hour yet. So much was left to be done, all of which required light.
With painstaking effort, Akyuu turned to her side and watched Kosuzu labour over the scroll. Complete silence had fallen into the manor, so perfect even the gentle sound of Kosuzu's brush gliding across the scroll was magnified to the level of loudness.
Akyuu had always preferred to keep each her rooms relatively staid, feeling that the wealth of her work was heightened by the austerity of her surroundings. Yet now the barrenness of the room had become palpable, a void which made Akyuu's world taper into the circle of candlelight, narrowing down to nothing but Kosuzu and the manuscript. She rubbed her eyes just in case, but everything remained blurry. Her vision was dimming. Time was running short.
"That will have to do," she decided. Some profiles remained truncated, just as some of the descriptions of Gensokyo held ambiguity for those who read them with the wrong mindset, but it was, in some sense, a complete work. She had long since learnt only time beyond that granted to any humans could truly strive for perfection.
The bibliography was complete after Kosuzu's final addition to it, and the publishing details were out of her hands. "Let's move onto the concluding remarks."
The shadows the candlelight cast upon Kosuzu's hair altered as she nodded. She unfurled more of the scroll and wrote out the title, then paused, brush poised over the paper.
"You're going to stain the scroll." Akyuu nudged her head in the direction of the precariously tilting brush. Kosuzu had been so conscientous about it so far, as careful as anyone with a career handling books. She must have been exhausted.
"Oh no!" Kosuzu hastened to correct her mistake, then let out a sigh of relief. She turned to look expectantly at Akyuu.
Her smile slowly dwindled as though to match the stubby candles. "Do you know what to say?"
Akyuu turned onto her back and considered the question. In a way, forewords and afterwords were the hardest of all, if only because she had to switch into another mindset to compose them. She didn't usually bother with the latter at all if she could avoid it. And the last one was always the hardest one of them all.
Well, it was now or never. Better not be too maudlin. "I will be brief."
She was still considering the opening when she realised Kosuzu was already writing. "I didn't meant that as the beginning."
"Oh." Kosuzu raised the brush mid-stroke, then saw what she had done. "Oh!"
Akyuu smiled. That too took effort. "It's fine. I'll simply begin with that."
How long it took, she could only guess. Time had seized up much like her body had. All she knew was that by the time she sat up, she was drenched in sweat, yet felt at peace.
"My duty has been, as always, to take advantage of my perfect memory to collect and distribute knowledge, and so share the greatest gift of all with the humans of Gensokyo. Though this formerly frozen world is moving faster each day, I know some of what is written will still be of use by the time I return on this earth. I know from long experience that the fundamental nature of the humans and youkai inhabiting this land does not change. With this, the final revision of the ninth volume of the Gensokyo Chronicles comes to an end."
She had barely breathed since beginning the recitation. She did so now, closing her eyes and focusing on the sensation of her lungs expanding with air.
The next thing she knew, A pair of small hands fell upon her shoulders. Kosuzu knelt before her, face twisted with anxiety.
"Not yet!"
Akyuu had never known someone could both scream and whisper at the same time. Wordlessly, she placed a hand upon Kosuzu's. Trying to move it would have been an exercise in futility. Had Kosuzu thought she would expire the very moment the chronicle drew to a close? "No, not yet. I have until..." She glanced at the window, and though it was impossible, thought she could see the moon through the clouds."Dawn, I believe."
Kosuzu sighed in relief, then grew skittish again. "Do you want to go somewhere before that? Outside, I mean."
"No." And, since Kosuzu's grip had loosened, Akyuu eased herself back down onto the futon. "I'm comfortable here. I won't rise again."
She relaxed, seeking a sense of accomplishment and finding it to be as muted as always. She knew well that as her work was never truly finished, even the victory that was finishing a book always left her feeling a little incomplete, a little more doubtful she would never again feel the true triumph she had in her first life, the one she had been given freely.
If so, it couldn't be helped. She would be back again, and again, and again, as many times as she was allowed to return to the world, each time chipping off flakes of the growing mountain of ignorance.
Her musings dissolved at the sound of broken laughter, as brittle as the last ice of winter.
"I'm sorry." Kosuzu tried to wipe her cheek dry with the back of her hand, but her face was awash with tears. When had she learned to weep so silently? "I told myself I wouldn't cry until you were actually dead."
Akyuu closed her eyes. "It's fine."
"It's not." The words were, again, accompanied by a desperate little laugh. "I'm being so selfish. I should let you pass on in peace, but... I can't stop thinking about how we're never going to meet again."
Akyuu opened her eyes again and watched Kosuzu fight to hold back her tears.
Indeed, she had done her best to avoid that particular line of thought. She had known all along she couldn't slip away without confronting her feelings, known that delaying the inevitable wouldn't make the end result any less painful. She had done it anyway. There were some things experience couldn't teach you, no matter how many lifetimes' worth of it you had.
"I know it must be different to you," Kosuzu continued when no response came, as though she was desperate to fill the silence before it became permanent. "You've died before, of course," a comment made with a self-deprecating smile, "and you've lived for so long and you've known so many great people. It's not at all surprising if you forget..".
Akyuu let the rest of Kosuzu's stumbling explanations wash over her, trying not to listen. Even knowing Kosuzu meant no harm, and and knowing she likely thought she was being considerate and tactful, Akyuu felt a little insulted.
Much earlier, the first time she had been brought back to this world, full of enthusiasm to use every breathing moment to continue her chronicles, she had assumed that in due time, age would dull her senses and that novelty would be a thing of the past. The latter had come partially true: with each incarnation, fewer and fewer things surprised her. Even Gensokyo, with all its richness and the strange position it put its human residents in, was ultimately not tat difficult to swallow.
But her emotions had not grown any less sharp. If anything, she felt joy and excitement and sorrow more acutely than ever, like each time she returned brought that layer of her closer to the surface. She would have thought that much was clear to anyone who knew her, as well. Especially Kosuzu. Perhaps she was trying to make herself feel better by diluting Akyuu's affection towards her.
She tried to shake her head, only to find herself weaker still, so weak she ought to stay still if she wished to form words. And form words she must. There was no way to avoid having regrets, but allowing resentfulness to poison her farewells to Kosuzu was a regret she would carry with her for centuries to come. "You're one of a kind, Kosuzu. I will never forget you, and I will miss you so much I don't know how I will stand it." And, as there was no-one to relay the information further, she allowed herself to smile. "I love you."
Kosuzu sucked in a sudden breath. When she next leaned over Akyuu, it was with determination. "In that case, I've made up my mind."
"About what?"
Kosuzu grew bright. "I'm going to become a youkai!"
While Akyuu was yet too stunned to speak, all too aware of what happened to humans who became youkai under Reimu Hakurei's watch, Kosuzu continued with a fresh smile, louder and more excited with each new syllable. "I'm sure I can find a way! I have contacts now, and even if that doesn't work out, I'll be sure to find more youma books if I look hard enough. That way, I don't have to worry about dying before you're reincarnated, and once you do, we can meet again!"
"No. We cannot."
Kosuzu's smile fell like an autumn leaf; slowly, but decisively.
Akyuu got up to her elbows for what she was certain was the final time. She rode the dizziness the action brought along, then whispered into the deafening silence. "When I'm reborn, I will have the same memories, but I will not be the same person. I change every time, even more decisively than we all change during our lifetimes. No matter what happens, Hieda no Akyuu will be dead." She shook her head, then met Kosuzu's crestfallen eyes. "And you will be too. Even if you somehow survive, you will no longer be as you are now."
She hated seeing Kosuzu cry. She made herself watch the cascade of tears regardless. She owed her that much
She couldn't raise her hand high enough to wipe Kosuzu's eyes, but she could still place her hand on hers where it lay by her side. "What we may become doesn't matter now. All that matter is that you were here. Thank you. For both your companionship." She smiled. "And for being you."
Kosuzu sniffled. Not even when she cradled Akyuu's fingers and attempted to tug the corners of her mouth upwards could she truly smile.
And even as Akyuu acknowledged the truthfulness of all she had said and the necessity of what was about to happen, she found herself in sudden pain as certain as if someone had slid a sword through her ribs.
She didn't want to go. Not yet. Not when it meant leaving behind everything she had gotten accustomed to, her life, her friends, herself. And Kosuzu. Always Kosuzu.
But she didn't have a choice, and so she smiled, holding on and feeling Kosuzu's bird-like pulse coursing through her fingers, hoping she could use her final breath to take away at least a little of the sorrow she saw in those radiant, candle-lit eyes.
"Thank you."
And so, the space meant for words was overtaken by silence.