A bell chimed somewhere far away.
For a long time, Yukari lay on her back trying to recapture the warmth of slumber and pretending she wasn't still exhausted. It was morning again, if such early hours before dawn could be called such. Yuyuko was fast asleep next to her, her face unlined but her movements fitful.
Yukari pulled the covers back over Yuyuko before dragging herself upright and then outdoors through a gap she conjured into the universe. It was a night of a full moon, after all. Basking in its lunatic light might be just the cure for her lethargy.
The moment she entered the garden she was embraced by a mist so icy she might as well have fallen face-first into a snowbank. She drifted aimlessly through it, looking for a gap in the clouds above. When she found none, she turned her attention back to ground level. There was not so much as a single surviving blade of grass left between the trees.
It had to be April by now, or perhaps even May. Yukari hadn't kept track of the weeks, but they had been numerous. The longer winter lingered, the more likely it seemed it would never go away.
The bell rang out again. This time, however, she was certain it chimed in the air and not merely in her dreams.
She waited in place until the mists parted to bring a scowling Youki into her view. He halted as he spotted her, with something like uncertainty flashing in his eyes.
"You're up early," he muttered. Paying no more attention to Yukari, he uncorked the small flask in his hand.
"Night-time belongs to youkai." Yukari resumed her search for the moon before glancing at him sideways. "The real question is, what's a half-human doing up before dawn?"
She didn't expect him to answer at all, let alone directly. It was therefore quite the surprise when after a swig he gave a laconic reply. "Couldn't sleep."
Finally, she located a winter moon obscured by clouds, little more than a paler patch of grey in an endless void. "Spring arrives late here."
"The winters get longer each year." Youki followed her gaze and squinted at the moon. "And the longer they get, the more mournful she is."
"How would you know when you never speak to her?"
"Any halfwit could see it." At length, Youki sighed. "Even from a distance, hers is not the posture of a happy person." He drank again and shook his head. "It's a shame."
It was the first time Yukari had heard Youki express something that could be interpreted as sympathy.
For a moment, they stood side by side in silence. Eventually, she held out her hand towards him. "Give me some of that."
"In your dreams."
Stealing was child's play when one's numerous hands could be anywhere where one pleased.
Yukari blinked, then blinked again. She was sitting upright and gazing up at smoke-coloured clouds limned by an ashen sun behind them. Some of the mist in the garden had faded, but the air was as icy as ever.
Something pricked the back of her neck. She found something foreign stuck to her skin and tore it off. She opened her hand in front of her eyes to discover the shrivelled remains of a butterfly.
She dropped the corpse on the ground and watched as other butterflies, their blazing colours undulled by the gloom, gathered around it in such numbers that they blotted it from view.
Stone clattered against stone as Yuyuko dropped her pieces back into the bowl. She repeated the motion, then finally picked up a stone. She caught Yukari's eye. "Sorry. I didn't mean to break your concentration."
Yukari smiled. "I wouldn't worry about that." She had more or less already won the match. Yuyuko had adapted to the modern strategies Yukari used against her with alacrity, but in this particular game, Yukari had a comfortable five moku lead heading towards the endgame. "Worry about your own game instead."
"So you noticed I'm distracted." Yuyuko said the words with a smile, but there was a shard of steel in her eyes, a suggestion of veiled competitiveness.
"Too busy pondering how beautiful I look in the morning light?"
"That doesn't help, of course." Yuyuko was still smiling as she finally placed a stone, but her amusement was short-lived. "It's the trees. They should no longer be barren."
"Winter is reluctant to move on this year."
Yuyuko followed the trajectory of Yukari's fingers as she placed her stone and plucked out the captured black piece. Her gaze lingered on the surrounded spot on the board. "Perhaps the problem lies with me."
"How so?"
Yuyuko's smile was brittle. "I'm not sure I truly wish for winter to end."
"So you believe you've gained mastery over the seasons?"
"Is it that impossible?"
Yukari considered the suggestion in earnest while scanning the board for any possible openings Yuyuko still had left for evening the score. It wasn't impossible, no: if Yuyuko could currently bring death to living creatures, her abilities might well grow to affect the seasons and even wholly abstract concepts. "Is this a confession?"
"I'm not doing it on purpose. But I know what I wish for in my dreams, and so..."
Yukari leaned across the board and brushed her fingers against Yuyuko's cheek. "Didn't I tell you that when I leave, I will take you with me?"
There it was again, the sprout of hope in Yuyuko's gaze. This time, it was rapidly smothered. "Thank you for your offer, but I still believe I should remain here."
Yukari said nothing. For her, the nature of the suggestion had changed. The first time she had offered to spirit Yuyuko away, she had spoken carelessly with little meaning to her words. It ran like a ripple across her spine, the realisation she was now serious.
The realisation was followed by a burst of pain in her chest, as though someone had pierced her heart with an arrow. She looked down, but there was no entry wound.
A butterfly fluttered away from her and back to Yuyuko.
Yuyuko studied the board for just a moment longer, then bowed her head. "I resign."
After the game, Yukari found herself alone on the porch, angling to see the Saigyou Ayakashi in the distance. It was too cold for her to truly relax even with a full teacup in her hands. No wonder Yuyuko had excused herself in spite of having been attached to Yukari's hip for the past several weeks.
No. The chill wasn't the only reason Yuyuko had fled. She had seen something behind Yukari's expression, some sign of the pain she had failed to fully mask, and her horror at it had been all too obvious. Thinking about it made the wind seem even colder.
...Hah. To even notice a triviality like cold air. Yukari really was beginning to think too much like a human.
The familiar peal of a bell rang through the air. Yukari gazed around, but there was no sign of Youki, only an array of butterflies that had come to rest on her sleeve and clung on even as she shook her arm.
She let them be and closed her eyes, allowing the weariness which had shadowed her for weeks to momentarily embrace her. One way or another, winter was coming to an end.
She woke up to a grey gloom and a pair of hands desperately shaking her by the shoulders.
"Yukari!" Yuyuko's voice was urgent and so close to a sob Yukari knew at once it was neither the first nor second time Yuyuko had called her name within the past few minutes.
Yukari exhaled. It was strange how much exhaustion could feel like everything was being pulled inwards, all the doors and windows dragged shut and all thought retreating to the very core of one's being, and how much effort it could take to reach out again.
She reached out all the same. Still drowsy, she raised her hand to caress Yuyuko's cheek. So dreamily soft it hardly seemed as if she had awoken after all.
"It's the winter," she replied to the unuttered question in Yuyuko's eyes, then yawned. "I have long thought how pleasant it would be to hibernate through it. It seems the longer it lasts, the more my body seeks to make that dream a reality."
Who knew? Perhaps she was telling the truth.
She allowed her hand to fall. Yuyuko's shoulders had done likewise, but there was a sheathed blade in her gaze as she sat down next to Yukari.
"What if..." Yuyuko hesitated before continuing. "Should winter not have ended three days from hence... perhaps we could simply say it has."
Yukari smiled, now almost convinced she was indeed still within a dream. Yuyuko's words didn't usually echo like bells, after all. "That's one way to manipulate a boundary."
Yukari woke up chilled and utterly exhausted.
She blinked away some of her weariness as she looked around. It was already well into the night. Had she truly spoken to Yuyuko that afternoon, or had that been a dream as well?
She stood up, pushing away the weight of sleep still smothering her. She could no longer deny what was happening to her and wait for it to pass. She could either accept she was weakening and hope more sleep would act as a natural remedy, or she could get away from this well of death energy.
Where did I go wrong? Which border did I push in the wrong direction?
Such an annoying hindrance. She wasn't in any true danger: no matter how lethargic she became, no matter how deeply her self-inflicted wounds had cut, she was a youkai, not a human. She would survive. At the same time, she was beginning to grow restless.
She returned indoors. Yuyuko would likely already be asleep, given the hour.
Yuyuko was not asleep. She sat in the room where they played Go with the door leading outside wide open and blasting her with night-time air. She startled as she heard Yukari enter.
"Oh." Her shoulders relaxed. She had been crying very recently: her eyes were red-rimmed and her voice hoarse. She had at some point changed to a slate-coloured kimono with no embellishments apart from a blue trim on the collar and sleeves. "I couldn't get you to wake up again. I thought..."
"I've always been a heavy sleeper."
Yuyuko made no response. It was as though Yukari's words had flowed right through her without registering. At length, she tried to affect a smile. "I'm sorry. I don't think I can wait for three more days."
"Then why wait?" Yukari held out her hand. "Spring begins tonight."
Yuyuko didn't take her hand. She stared at it instead, slowly inching herself away as she did so. As if she was suddenly afraid of Yukari.
No. Afraid for Yukari's sake.
"I'm sorry," Yuyuko repeated, her voice so small that it was almost inaudible. "Even when I knew you were speaking in jest, I still allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to leave here with you."
"I wasn't joking then. Nor am I joking now."
Yuyuko shook her head, then stood up and padded to the open door. She looked ready to plunge herself into the darkness, but in the end merely stared at where the Saigyou Ayakashi's outline blended into the night. "I can never leave this place."
You could, Yukari nearly said. But what was the point of rehashing that old argument? It was obvious when Yuyuko turned towards her, calm despite the tears threatening to spill over, that her will was as unyielding as ever.
"The more I think about it, the more I suspect the Saigyou Ayakashi and I are one and the same." Yuyuko paused and shook her head again. "No. That's a lie. I suspected it from the first time a bird fell dead before my feet. Now I know."
Yukari said nothing.
"On some level, I have always been aware of it. Why else would I be shadowed by death everywhere I go? Why else would I be immune to its lure myself? That's why leaving was never truly an option. I carry deadly poison with me wherever I try to escape, and it only grows stronger with every breath I take." She met Yukari's eyes. "You must be able to see what I am. Tell me the truth."
"The person standing before me is human."
There was that gently sad smile again. "Thank you for saying that. I can never fully express how grateful I am to have spent the past two months with you. You gave me a final glimpse of summer." She looked away. "But this is it. I cannot leave. It's over."
The ringing of a bell echoed in the silent room.
"I should wish you well and beg you to leave at once." Yuyuko's voice was as soft as a caress. "The most I should hope for is that you remember me for at least a little while. But I..."
She closed the door and remained standing next to it, wilting, suddenly helpless.
The bell echoed again in Yukari's ears as she walked across the room to put her arms around Yuyuko.
She had half expected Yuyuko to resist. Instead, Yuyuko leaned into her as though she was the only thing keeping her upright.
"Go ahead," Yukari said, breathing in the scent of Yuyuko's hair. "Say what you really want."
I think you already know what I mean to ask." Yuyuko buried her head into Yukari's shoulder. "It's selfish of me. Every moment you stay means you are still in danger."
"Say it."
The soft sound of Yuyuko taking in a breath filled the room.
"Please stay. Just for one more night. Please don't leave me alone tonight."
Yukari pulled her tightly against her. Their bodies slotted together so naturally it seemed there was no gap between human and youkai left to be crossed.
Yuyuko's fingers dug into Yukari's back as she exhaled. "Thank you. Thank you..."
Yukari stuttered awake, her limbs still submerged. For a moment, her eyes were open but saw nothing but swirling chaos.
Sensations returned to her one by one. The bamboo beneath her face and palms. The futon beneath her feet. The fabric of her clothes, the scent of her hair, the lingering aura of death in the air all around her. Even paralysed and thus unable to turn away from the wall before her eyes, the sunlight seeping into the room spoke of high noon.
She stirred her fingers from their slumber, then her hand, then her wrist. Finally, she sat upright, ignoring the call to eternal sleep that had become enmeshed into her flesh. It was something a human might succumb to, nothing more. If anyone had been present to witness her standing up and adjusting her clothes, they wouldn't have been able to tell how unnatural the movements felt to her.
The manor was entirely silent. Yukari found herself listening for the playing of a kin, and, failing that, the ringing of a bell. Nothing.
She reached for the boundaries of time. They yielded to her fingers as if eager to serve her after so many weeks of stiffness, but refused to reveal exactly how long she had slept. She felt as though she had drifted in a dreamless slumber for days.
As soon as she stepped outside, she was assailed by an impossibly perfect spring. Every cherry tree was in full bloom, their petals so radiant they glowed. The green of the grass and the budding leaves were dazzlingly bright, the air soft and fragrant and as warm as a comfortable bath, and the breeze stroking her hair sang promises of endless beauty and renewed life. Even if it was more likely that the entirety of spring, previously unable to manifest, had taken root all at once, it still seemed as though the unnaturally long winter had been an illusion all along.
There was birdsong everywhere, an overwhelming cacophony after the pristine silence of the manor. Yukari stepped down from the porch and watched plants sprout around her feet, so boisterously alive their shoots twined around her ankles. The weariness which still clung to her like loose skin began slowly shedding away, leaving her limber and renewed.
She ignored the sensation of strength as best she could and held onto the shadow at the edge of her consciousness as she turned her head towards the grove.
She began walking towards it one slow step after another, feeling as though she was inexorably dragged along by an invisible rope around her waist.
She saw the item of clothing lying on the grass long before she reached it. Once she stood next to it she leaned down to confirm it was indeed Yuyuko's sash. Her kimono was next, lying abandoned like a fallen piece of a rain-cloud. A hairpin glinted nearby in a patch of rapidly growing grass. Despite everything, Yuyuko liked butterfly motifs in her ornaments.
Next to the hairpin was a small puddle of bright red liquid, curdling at the edges but still glinting in the sunlight. A black-rimmed butterfly sat by it on the grass, drinking from it. Not far was another larger puddle with multiple butterflies vying for the liquid. And from there, drop by drop...
Yukari halted. She kept following the trail with her eyes until it led her to the Saigyou Ayakashi.
A slight figure in white lay nestled between the roots of the demon tree, her head tilted downward in the deepest slumber. At her feet lay a small stained knife. Around her, a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttered as if hoping in vain to awaken her.
Yes. Despite everything, Yuyuko had liked butterflies.