The Saigyou Ayakashi stood stark amidst the sea of spring. The remnants of its final crop of leaves lay decomposing beneath its branches, sacrifices to the passage of seasons.
Yukari kept her distance as she watched where the branches met the sky. She didn’t need to observe the borders to know the tree teetered between life and death, so unstable all it would take was a single push to banish it from Earth for good. An unnecessary push: it would soon topple into the Netherworld of its own accord. Already the boundaries connected to it undulated and rippled, marking the garden as belonging to two worlds at once.
If anyone had been there with her and had dared to asked, Yukari would have told them this was why she did nothing. Nature would take its course without her input. Why bother? Of course, she was alone, and she didn’t feel the need to deceive herself in this particular matter. She let the tree be because it was, in essence, all that remained of the one human she had truly loved.
She made her way closer, stepping lightly from the blanket of fallen petals to the brown earth encircling the Saigyou Ayakashi. The seal upon it was tremendously strong, guaranteed to keep any further victims from succumbing to their fates, ensuring it would never flower again. If the tree could bloom, just how bright would the blood seeping through the roots dye its blossoms?
A cool breeze swept across the garden, sending petals flying and grabbing at Yukari’s loose hair. It wouldn’t be long till the season of cherry blossoms ended and only plain green remained in the trees. In all trees except the barren youkai tree.
A youkai tree. A youkai, just like her. Hadn’t she already accepted that? Who was it who had chosen to look beyond each veil she found and let what she had discovered behind them change her? It didn’t matter if being able to manipulate borders also meant living with no escape from the awareness of the fragility of the world, that the boundary between meaning and nonsense was gossamer-thin. She would grow used to it. Others had.
The more she thought about it, the more the tree was an eyesore. How long would it stand there, glutted on life force and lingering on without water or sunlight or freshly stolen souls before finally shuffling off to the Netherworld for good? She raised her hand to send it far beyond her senses.
“Do you think its blossoms would be even more vibrant than the rest?”
Yukari’s hand remained up. She put it down very deliberately before turning to face precisely who she had expected to face.
Yuyuko had emerged by her side as quietly as a flower opens its petals. Her butterfly-like delicacy concealing a steel blade of a mind had been refined into ethereality, but had she been dressed in something other than a snowy robe, she might still have fooled a human into thinking she belonged in their fold.
Of course, there was no fooling someone who could see all the boundaries of the universe. Yuyuko had very decisively bled across the border of life and death. Even if that hadn’t been obvious, the tree’s blossoms remained sealed by the very being who now smiled at Yukari as though meeting an interesting stranger for the first time.
Yukari forced herself to remain calm. It had been inevitable. Where else could Yuyuko have gone, so decisively bound to the Saigyou Ayakashi, but to this awkward borderland? The only place where she could go from here was onwards to the Netherworld, where she would hopefully find the peace she had never found in life.
In other words, there was no reason for why Yukari should feel like someone had just slashed all of her veins from the inside.
“It would surely have the most magnificent blossoms of all,” Yuyuko mused, continuing to smile in spite of Yukari’s silence. Her voice was unchanged from life, even if the dreamy, vague tone hadn’t been typical of her in the past. “What a shame. It’s fortunate we have so many other trees to enjoy, at least.”
Yukari found her voice. “You seem very at ease for a ghost.”
“Yes, rather. I must have had many lingering regrets to remain here, but here I stand with little notion of what they may have been. Not that I mind.”
With that, Yuyuko’s attention returned to blossomless branches.
That could have been the end of it. Yukari could have accepted the situation for what it was and left Yuyuko behind, secure in the knowledge that what awaited her was better than a lifetime of fear and loneliness.
Instead, she found herself speaking once more. “Do you remember me?”
Yuyuko turned and tilted her head. A thin frown crested on her face just for a moment before her perfect calmness re-asserted itself. “Possibly. At least, I feel that I could hazard a guess. Perhaps after we find a suitable place to sit down we can entertain ourselves by trying to guess each other’s secrets.”
Yukari watched this new, breezy, strange Yuyuko and saw instead a face wet with tears, wreathed by hair clustered into clumps.
“You must go. I was selfish to ever think I could live with another person. If you don’t leave, you too will…”
“Yuyuko.” It was all she could think to say, only she didn’t think it: the name escaped on its own, maliciously prolonging the encounter.
Yuyuko faced her, unconcerned by the lack of title or honorific, unconcerned even by Yukari’s knowledge of her name. Her eyes were a marginally redder hue of brown than they had been in life. They had been entirely altered.
Yukari searched for something to say and found only further memories of a figure huddled tiny by guilt and winter’s chill alike — a winter which had only just ended, but which Yukari had experienced as another person altogether.
“But I’m still selfish. I still cannot let you go.”
“Please, stay with me. For one last night.”
“Before it’s too late.”
She reached for the boundary between the past and the present, and Yuyuko came back into focus. The current Yuyuko, the one whose eyes were so close to those in Yukari’s memories and yet weren’t the same.
She looked at her in silence. The truth was that when Yuyuko had died, she had invited a part of Yukari to join her in death.
But… in doing so, perhaps Yuyuko had done her a favour.
She needed to stop thinking like a human. After all, she wasn’t one. Neither of them were. And with that thought, she smiled at Yuyuko. “I’m glad you’ve been able to discard your past concerns.”
“Thank you. I think I truly have.” Yuyuko tilted her head again, precisely as she had when Yukari had first stumbled into this garden. “Perhaps you may one day tell me what those concerns were.”
“Who knows?” Yukari found her smile becoming more genuine. “On my way here, I saw the perfect place to sit down and admire the remaining flowers.”
“Wonderful. Will you lead the way?”
Yukari wasn’t surprised when Yuyuko held out her hand. She was slightly more surprised when she herself reached out and took it.
Even so, as she interlaced her fingers with Yuyuko’s, she felt like she was coming home.
There would be a time for re-introductions, re-explanations, a rekindling of passions. Or perhaps there would be none of those things and instead a new flower would sprout from the ground left bare by the cessation of humanity.
It would be a wondrous blossom regardless, Yukari knew, finally smiling in earnest as she guided Yuyuko through the land that was at once alive and dead, changing the boundaries of the scattering of light in her eyes to the shade of the most vivid cherry blossoms imaginable.