“I sometimes forget,” Dai says, “how small I am. I wasn’t always so small, you see.”
I frown. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“When spirits first enter this realm, we are given a choice to take any form we want,” he explains. “If we happened to die a young man, we could take the form of an old man. If we died an old man, we could take the form of a little boy. But Miki died when she was only a baby. She hadn’t had a chance to dream of being older than she already was. When deciding what type of body I should take, I thought of Miki. I thought, I must be little like she is to understand what she’s feeling. I’m a boy, after all—what do I know about what it’s like to be a little girl?”
He chuckles to himself. Beside him, Mask laughs her muffled laugh, and Miki trembles in my arms.
“Do you know how much I love Miki?” he continues. “When she gurgles, like she does when she’s happy, I feel like my heart grows to ten times its normal size. When she is sad, I feel like my heart is breaking. I would give my life a hundred times for Miki.”
The tears that I was holding back slip down my cheeks. I know he would; he almost did today.
“Do you know how much I love Miki? I came down from heaven so I could be with her.”
“H-heaven?” I ask.
He smiles, a faraway look in his eyes. “Beyond this world, there are others. One of those other worlds is heaven. That’s where I was, you see. I was waiting for my wife to join me, but then Miki … she’s my great-granddaughter. My wife would never forgive me if I left Miki to float alone down the River of Souls. I came down from heaven, and I picked her up out of the water, and I’ve never put her down since. I spoil her, I think. She is my Miki. I love her.”
Miki reaches for him, and I can’t deny her. Carefully, I place her in his arms. “She is not very heavy,” he whispers. “She is light. And if my wife passes through and straight up into heaven, she’ll just have to wait. But she won’t mind, because she knows I will be with our Miki.”
Across Dai, Mask takes my hand, and together we watch as Miki lays her head on his shoulder, her trembling having stopped, safe in his arms again. The small furrow wrinkling her brow disappears, and she falls into a peaceful slumber.
“Do you know how much I love you, Miki?” Dai whispers softly. “Even I don’t know. My love for you is endless. Deep and endless, like the sea.”
* * *
In the morning, I wake to sunlight on my face and Dai drooling on my sleeve. Mask and Miki are nowhere to be found, though all four of us fell asleep together on the small pallet. Dai’s face has regained most of its color. I adjust his blankets, careful not to wake him.
Outside, Miki sits on Mask’s lap as they watch Namgi and Nari play a board game with white and black stones for markers. Namgi picks up one of the black stones from the bowl, hovering it over the board. Mask makes a tsk sound. He moves his hand to hover over another position. When she nods, he places it on the board.
“This is unfair,” Nari says, picking up a white stone from her bowl. “I thought I was to play a young Imugi, not a grandmother of interminable age.”
I glance between Namgi and Mask. Last night, I witnessed Namgi’s transformation into a monstrous sea snake, and Dai revealed that he and Mask were not as their appearances might have implied. And yet, in the morning sunlight, Mask and Namgi look as they always have, familiar and good.
I take a seat beside Mask, tickling Miki’s toes. “Where are Shin and Kirin?”
“Crane House,” Nari replies. “Where, by now, Lord Crane must have come to regret all his wrongdoings.”
Namgi chuckles at that, but as the day grows longer and Shin and Kirin don’t return, I wonder what could be keeping them, and if Lord Crane has revealed to Shin what he had divulged to me.
Even a Red String of Fate can be unmade, if one party should form a stronger connection with another. How will Shin react to this information? Since the moment our fate was first formed, he wanted to destroy it because of the risk to his own life. With that reasoning, he won’t desire to form a bond with another soul. Which means only I can break our tie by choosing the Sea God, and having him choose me in return.
Soon, day becomes night, and everyone separates to their own sleeping chambers—Miki and Mask to join Dai in Namgi’s room; Namgi to Kirin’s room, where he’ll be bedding for the next few days as Dai recovers; and me, alone, to the floor above.
Moving to the far wall, I pick up the large bedroll and spread it down the middle of the floor, patting the blankets until they’re smooth and flat. I hesitate before going to the paper screen, dragging it over the blankets so that the bedroll is divided. Finished, I take off my short silk jacket and untie the strings of my skirt. I let both fall to the floor before kicking them to the side. In my thin white shift, I crawl beneath the blankets. I stay awake awhile longer, sensitive to every sound outside the door, but when an hour passes and no one appears, I fall asleep.