Page 103 of Japanese Gothic
Each morning and night, as the tide retreated and the ocean of Otohime’s birth drew far away, her powers waned. The wallsof time and memory that she had built grew thin, the years began to bleed into each other, and the two children found each other across time.
Otohime tried with all her might to patch her crumbling palace, to keep the worlds separate, to protect her children from their fates. She could never force them to stay, but she could do everything possible to make them choose her.
But when the two children found each other, they no longer wanted Otohime at all.
Just as before, humans sought out the love of other humans, and they left Otohime alone at the bottom of the sea.
They sent her away, and as the tide retreated, so did the careful walls she had built to keep them safe. They had never belonged to her, and their lives poured through her fingers like ashes.
When it was all over, and both of them were gone, Otohime sat alone in her palace under the sea once more.
Was I so wrong to treasure humans?she wondered.Will they always leave me alone in the dark?
She swore to never care for humans again, to never lend them her heart, never try to save them from themselves. But still, she tasted their tears like the salt of the sea, felt the ache of their pain deep in her bones, cried for them as she wished someone would cry for her, even once. She did not know if she would ever find the love that humans held for only each other, but she would continue searching until the end of time.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Last Letter of Iwasaki Sen
Lee Turner, you are the strangest person I’ve ever met.
Take this as a compliment—there are enough boring people in the world.
Or, if you would like to be offended, that’s also fine. Because then you will remember me as the girl who offended you, and I don’t mind that as long as I am remembered.
My father always said that samurai do not fear death. That is how I know, at last, that I have become a samurai.
Because now, when I think of my life, and my time here, I don’t see it as a fixed beginning and ending on a flat plane. Maybe for us, time curves back around and its beginning meets its end, and we’ll meet again one day in a closet where I will almost cut you down with my katana. Or maybe time is like a train that reaches its destination, then turns back around and heads home, and we get to try again once more. All I know is that I’ve never feared death, I have feared an ending. And now, because of you, I know that nothing ever truly ends.
Normally, a father’s property would go to his eldest son, but soon my father will have no sons, and they will have nochildren after they die. All my father’s possessions belong to me, but I have no sons either.
So instead, I leave everything to you.
“Everything” is not much, in this case.
I leave you the week we’ve spent together—good or bad, however you saw it, it’s now yours, so please keep it somewhere safe.
And, more importantly, I leave you this house.
I write this to you in 1877, a year when you are not yet born. I do not understand how this strange door of ours works, but I know that somehow you have found me, and somehow, inevitably, this will find you.
One day, you will be born somewhere far away from me. When you grow up, please come to Japan, to this house behind the sword ferns, and find me. I want to meet you again.
Iwasaki Sen
The Last Samurai
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