Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower

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  When we were separated, she left behind pain that threatened to shred my heart, a slight resentment, and gentleness.

  I never understood what she was thinking when she chose that path, and all that was left was to weep until my throat was raw. She herself probably couldn’t have given me a clear answer about why she’d had to make such a painful choice.

  Did she really have to do that? Couldn’t she have chosen a kinder option? Then the two of us could have stayed in our happy dream without ever having to know that soul-crushing sadness. And yet Undine shook me with her gentle hand and roused me—why?

  She had a secret.

  She had nestled flowers and the moon in her heart.

  For the longest time I didn’t know that.

  Prologue—Maki—Firefly

  Nightfall/The Princess Speaks

  I saw a god enraged.

  The source of my grandfather’s anger was unknown to me.

  Mitsukuni Himekura was supposed to be a man who governed information, a man who wielded his power and issued orders however he wished, an arrogant man in absolute control.

  As far as I was concerned, my grandfather was a god who would allow no contradiction. He was well over halfway through his seventies, but there wasn’t the slightest hint that his physical or mental capacities had been compromised, and he gave off the impression that he had ruled the world since hundreds of years ago and that he would go on living into eternity.

  Despite that, my grandfather’s face was twisted hideously with humiliation, his one eye grew red and bloodshot, and his shoulders shook with rage.

  Feeding the koi fish at the edge of a pond on a moonlit night, my grandfather’s movements were violent and he looked as if he was venting his anger. Each time he cast a handful of food, the surface of the pond threw up rough waves that reflected the moonlight, and the koi fish that were my grandfather’s pride felt their master’s displeasure and twitched their red fins and swarmed away in suspicion.

  I listened, holding my breath behind a pine tree, to the vengeful wail that spilled from his cracked lips.

  “…That blasted Shirayuki…the promise…is still going?”

  Shirayuki? And what promise?

  Ignorant of it all, I felt something move deep in my chest like the dark surface of the water.

  My grandfather fell into silence after that and continued throwing food to the fish. My skin prickling with tension, I left that place as silently as possible.

  That happened during the summer when I was about to turn eighteen.

  One night several days later, I turned eighteen and we held the kind of ostentatious party my grandfather loved on the grounds of the estate.

  Most of the guests who’d come to the vast and garishly lit garden were company people much older than myself, and it was obvious that they had come not to celebrate my birthday, but to pay their respects to my grandfather. It was dismal keeping my smile in place and responding to the people I was meeting for the first time who told me, “Happy birthday,” so courteously. Because they could carry out their duty by being friendly to the little girl just once, but I had to act cordial and repeat, “Thank you,” over and over until the party ended.

  And when a lot of people got together, I started to hear things I didn’t want to.

  For example, how my mom had cast off her husband and child and gone back to her native England.

  What it might mean for the Himekura family if the child of a woman like that took charge.

  That Mitsukuni Himekura, who was obsessed with bloodlines, had made a fine bungle of things by approving the marriage of his only son to a woman of foreign ancestry and a common family, or that no, she was an evil woman who had duped the heir of the Himekuras by getting pregnant, then forcing the marriage. That they’d heard she had demanded alimony even though she was the one who’d left.

  I mean, seriously, you get tired of hearing the same things for years on end.

  But even if that’s what I’m thinking, I can’t show it on my face, and I have to pretend that I can’t hear what they’re saying. Putting on a lofty smile, untroubled, unshaken by anything, like the noble young lady of a good family. That’s what my grandfather and the people around me expect of me—Maki Himekura.

  So I must clothe myself in a shiny silk dress and smile more beautifully and bewitchingly than anyone else here.

  “Maki, I’ve heard that you’re the conductor of your high school’s orchestra.”

  “Yes, at my grandfather’s request. It’s tradition for a member of the Himekura family to act as conductor in the orchestra.”

  I responded just enough to avoid being rude, but I was fed up and bored.

  The person in front of me right now, with a champagne glass in one hand and a polite smile on his face, was the son of the president of some financial group or other.

  He was a third-year in college, three years older than me, a pampered son with the blood of an illustrious house and a family line older than the Himekuras even—the man my grandfather had selected as my future husband.

  I don’t have any dreams about love. There’s no man I’m crazy about, and since marriage is nothing but a contract between men and women, I don’t care who it is as long as they abide by the conditions I set. A Don Juan who flits from woman to woman like Ryuto Sakurai is out of the question.

  It’s just, whenever I wondered whether Grandpa chose the scion of an impeccable family tree because his grandchild has inferior blood, it made me feel so irritated that the pit of my stomach seemed to bubble and roil.

  Whether my mother’s blood flowing in my veins was so intolerable to him—

  Whether Himekura blood had to be blue and patrician—

  Appearing unaware of my irritation, my grandfather was getting buttered up by the guests.

  Seated in his chair, he was presiding over the gathering, as if flaunting that he was the person who stood at the apex of the grand Himekuras at this moment in time. No matter who came to greet him, he never stood up.

  He wore a monocle over one of his eyes, the left one that had been damaged in a fire when he was young; the artificial lens glinted, but authority flashed like fire through his naked right eye. His face, too, though carved by wrinkles, was spilling over with power and purpose.

  The woman hanging back beside my traditionally dressed grandfather was his secretary. I’d heard she was in her midthirties, but she looked younger. There were rumors that she was his lover, and I wonder if they’re true. Her short-cut black hair, her smart, natural makeup, and her unadorned pants suit matched my grandfather’s tastes. He hated women who wore heavy makeup and flashy dresses and called them low-class. He was probably prejudiced against the female sex itself.

  “I don’t want to talk business with someone wearing a skirt.”

  He would make that sort of bold proclamation, a person out of touch with his era. So the woman who worked closely with my grandfather had stopped wearing skirts, and her hair had gotten shorter almost naturally. Because if she wore fluttery clothes or painted her face in bright colors, it would put my grandfather in a bad
mood.

  I’ve always kept my hair long.

  The hair I inherited from my half-Irish mother is as wavy as the sea, a translucent brown, and when the sun hits it, it’s wreathed in a golden shine.

  When he sees my hair, my grandfather knits his eyebrows in apparent disgust.

  It’s un-Japanese. It’s unrefined. Why not dye it black?

  I let those comments wash over me so as not to upset Grandpa’s feelings too much, but I shake out my long hair more than ever in front of him. It was the sort of meager rebellion I could pull off.

  A squat, middle-aged man approached my grandfather, all but groveling in front of him.

  The guests murmured meanly.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the head of the Kusakabes.”

  The Kusakabes are a related branch of the Himekuras, and until two generations before the current heads of the households, the Kusakabes had held sway. At the time, Grandpa had been young, and I’d learned that the head of the Kusakabes had worked as his chaperone. And yet now in their grandchildren’s generation, the Kusakabes had toppled completely and they clung to my grandfather’s aid to somehow preserve their family.

  Kusakabe was known as my grandfather’s dog.

  My father was the same way.

  My father, who was overseas for business, had gone against my grandfather once to marry my mother, but after she was abused and chased out of the Himekura family by my grandfather, my father’s will to resist him was torn up by the roots. He no longer desired anything in life and refused to think for himself. Whether accepting himself as a vacant doll who moved its limbs according to my grandfather’s will had given him psychological peace or not, my father showed no strong emotion ever on his face, and he seemed dispirited. It was as if he were living his life dead.

  I wonder if someday my grandfather will pull out my fangs, too, as he did to my father or to Kusakabe.

  If I won’t even feel irritation and become a doll my grandfather controls to live bound head to toe in chains.

  Just imagining myself like that, I felt a shudder go down my spine and the core of my brain got hot and trembled.

  No way! I won’t turn out like my dad.

  I won’t surrender everything the way he did. I don’t want to have my very soul be bound. That’s not living. Death would be better.

  Fiery hot rage and loathing rose up in me at the fact that I’m a Himekura, at the fact that I’m his grandchild. The fire smoldered in my throat and my annoyance accelerated.

  Being a Himekura is an inescapable fact.

  The purplish birthmark peeking out from the collar of my grandfather’s kimono and the birthmark on the nape of my neck.

  The mark, shaped like a fish scale and said to be proof that we’re descended from dragons, proved the link between my grandfather and myself to a suffocating degree.

  The mark is wreathed in heat, as if a brand had been pressed against my skin.

  I felt my face tensing with the screams I was holding back and the pain that jabbed my throat. Why did I have to smile at a time like this?

  The hordes that amused themselves with self-involved gossip, the airheads who continued their carefree conversations right in front of me, knowing nothing of the world—they were all worthless. I wished every one of them would vanish right this second. Better yet, I wished a flood would swallow the world and destroy everything! If that happened, I would laugh. Loudly. With all my heart.

  Just as the raging black water was beginning to inundate my heart, the lights in the garden cut out.

  The gossiping stopped, and gasps were heard here and there.

  “Oh…fireflies.”

  The black wave pulled rapidly away from my heart.

  Faint lights were shining in the garden.

  Sweet little lights bobbing upward, exactly as if they had wafted up from the grass.

  Lovely, glowing dots flared on the tips of the pine and maple branches, over the bridged pond, on the white tablecloths, on the hair and shoulders of the guests, and flickered with the brevity of life.

  They weren’t real fireflies. It was a performance using lights made to look like them.

  But the particles of pristine, palely winking light purified the gathering and transformed it into a limitless space, guiding us to a dreamy impression of standing in the midst of a cloud of real fireflies.

  I stood frozen, entranced, and couldn’t help but remember the girl who had passed away only a month before.

  Hotaru Amemiya.

  The girl who had loved like a storm and who at the very end had given off a spectacular flash like lightning and passed away with a smile on her face.

  I had watched her story all the way to her death. Something in my heart had idolized her, having in her breast emotions I would never possess. Though I was astounded by the inescapable resolution to her story, I couldn’t help admiring and envying the girl who had stood behind her feelings to the end.

  The chainless soul that I still burned for, that I still sought.

  That introverted, kind girl showed me what it was.

  Even though she appeared to be tossed about by fate, to be a prisoner to love and hatred, to be constrained in every way, Hotaru’s soul had been free until the very end. She had shaken loose every restraint and taboo, had chosen the man she loved for herself, and had closed her eyes in his arms.

  I don’t think she had any happiness beyond that. Every time I remember Hotaru, I think that.

  If I’d asked her whether she regretted that, she would probably have given me a gossamer smile and nodded her head.

  Hotaru had loved one man to the point that it destroyed her, had lived freely and had died freely.

  Compared to that, I…

  The irritation that had receded momentarily began to smolder again in my heart.

  Though I’m called the Princess at the school where my grandfather serves as director and I’m given a lot of special treatment, the real me isn’t free at all.

  What I do exercise is my grandfather’s power and not my own. Even though I wanted to paint pictures, I was forbidden to join the art club. In exchange for being given my own workroom at school, I was forced to promise that I would join the orchestra and be its conductor.

  Even though things are so suffocating and unavoidable, my grandfather is the one person I can’t defy. With rage and despair that could have crushed my heart, I came to see firsthand what happened when my father raised the flag of rebellion against him.

  So then would I be able to go on being a Himekura, obeying my grandfather’s will forever?

  Without ever loving someone the way Hotaru had? Would I marry the man my grandfather chose, add the fetter of wifehood, and live my entire life as a Himekura?

  I might be freed if my grandfather died. But when would that be? Ten years from now? Twenty? That seemed like an absurdly distant future to me right now, and that monster looked as though he could live another hundred years.

  Would I spend my life as a doll under my grandfather’s command all that time?

  No!

  The scream almost tore my throat apart.

  The light of the false fireflies flickering in the warm darkness of summer crept to my innermost heart, creaked against the door I was holding shut, and tried to throw it open.

  The impassive scion said that he was going to his villa in Nice next week and would I like to go with him? I felt such loathing at the poverty of intonation in his refined voice that my skin crawled.

  I made the excuse that there were guests I still had to greet and broke away, fleeing him.

  I moved immediately toward a deserted area.

  The false fireflies shone faintly on my cheek, my shoulder.

  The waves that continued trembling in my chest would not calm. I felt as if I’d been punched in the head, and the mark at the base of my neck throbbed with fire.

  Hotaru—the real firefly—had moved away somewhere far out of my reach. I could never again see her kind, timid smile. I could never wat
ch over her fierce passion.

  I’m alone here.

  I wondered if that Ryuto Sakurai, who had gotten so frustratingly entangled with Hotaru, was experiencing this feeling of loss, this agitation that seemed to have torn my heart in two.

  I had taken Ryuto to a hospital under the thumb of the Himekuras when he’d been stabbed by Hotaru, and while we tried to keep him under control so they could treat him, Ryuto had wailed, “I gotta protect Hotaru. I promised her. Lemme outta here!” his face wild, like a rabid dog’s.

  No, that three-timing, four-timing excuse for a man was probably just fine, chatting up some other girl right now. Because most importantly, he’s free. Unlike me.

  I felt suffocated, as if a huge hand were clamping down on my chest.

  I hated the idea of marrying a man my grandfather chose for me.

  You think I would go to Nice? I want to be free now. I can’t wait so much as one more second.

  But what can I do? Not as Mitsukuni Himekura’s granddaughter—just Maki Himekura?

  I came to a stop, as if I’d been shot.

  The moon floated in the pond, and my face was reflected as hardened as an ogre’s in the dark water.

  This was where my grandfather had tossed food to the fish and let his anger flash.

  Red fins wobbled at the bottom of the pond. I stared at them.

  “Miss.”

  How long had I been standing here, frozen? A gentle voice that held intelligence called my name.

  When I turned around, a tall man wearing a well-tailored suit was standing there. Takamizawa, my grandfather’s underling. He had been my grandfather’s secretary before, but now he filled the role of my chaperone and worked at the school.

  “What’s the matter? Do you feel ill?”

  “No. I wanted to be alone.”

  “He won’t approve of the star of the party being absent.”

  “I’ll go back soon,” I answered, collecting myself, though deep in my brain I was still thinking.