Reunited – Chapter 22

I creep slowly from the bed, careful not to wake Jiro yet. He’s usually a morning person, so if I’m awake before him, he needs the sleep.

A beautiful, sunny morning greets me as I slide the door open to the porch. Before me is the dog. He slept outside of our bedroom all night long. I would have let him in if he weren’t so disgusting and smelly. He actually has flies buzzing around him like some old cartoon. I think I’ll get dressed and force Kentaro, Beni, and Jiro into the garden with me to give my new dog a bath.

I keep him out of the bedroom and lead him down the porch to the walkthrough right outside the dining room.

“Sit down,” I command, pointing at the ground, and he does. Hmmm, he must have belonged to someone to be so obedient. I leave him there to eat breakfast with everybody, and not once do I hear him bark. He’s not afraid of anybody or anything which is good because so many people live here. I’d hate for him to go crazy on one of them.

After breakfast, we make a collar for the dog out of an old metal chain, and Kentaro holds him while I dump buckets of warm water on his muddy fur. Beni brings me shampoos from the bathhouse and stands clear of our mess.

“Ugh, he’s the dirtiest thing I have ever seen. I almost don’t want to touch him.”

“Just get in there and get it done. You’re going to have to soap him up at least twice.” Kentaro leans his head back as far as he can while still holding on.

I work a lather up into his coat even though I’m completely disgusted. As I rake my fingers through his fur, out come twigs, leaves, and dead bugs.

“I’m afraid the next thing I’m going to find in this fur is a dead animal.”

“It was your idea to bring home the dog,” Kentaro mumbles, clenching his lips together in case dirty water ends up on his face.

“It was Jiro’s,” I tell him, “but yeah, he came to me.”

Kentaro narrows his eyes at Jiro who has removed himself from the situation smartly. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt today, and with his arms crossed over his chest, he’s handsome and strong.

Concentrate on the dog, Sanaa.

As soon as I extract my hands from the dog’s fur, he stands up, shakes, and sprays us with the most foul water ever. Jiro and Beni burst into a laugh behind us, and Mariko peeks her head out of the kitchen area to watch.

After two shampoos and six buckets of water, he’s clean, and Kentaro lets him loose to run in the garden and shake himself over and over while barking like mad. He was indeed white underneath all of that dirt. Jiro corners him with a towel, finishes drying him off, and the dog lies down in the sun with his tongue out on the white pebbles. If I blur my eyes, he blends in.

“What are you going to name this one?” Jiro asks, throwing the towel onto the porch.

Hmmm, he looks like a big fluffy, white cloud lying like that. I glance up at the sky and one floats by almost the same shape.

“Kumo.”

Jiro closes his eyes for a moment. “Momo and Kumo. Peaches and clouds.” He opens his eyes, looks down at happy Kumo and sighs. “The finer things in life.”

“Gross. I’m going to go get cleaned up.” Kentaro, wet and dirty, walks off with his arms out in front of him. I’m going to need a shower too, but I stand next to Jiro and put my arm around him.

“Why are you sad?”

He squeezes me to his side hard by my shoulder and kisses me on the temple. “Nothing. I’m just…” He stops to glance around but we’re alone out here now. Beni went back to the bathhouse once Kumo was washed. “I’m ready to start our life together. Ready to start a family, and then all of this happened.”

“I know.” I nod and avert my eyes from Sad Jiro to look at Kumo. Now that he’s in the sun, he’s fallen asleep. “I wish things were different.”

“I guess the pets will have to do for now.”

“I was thinking about getting a bird next.”

Jiro bursts into a loud laugh, running his free hand through his hair, and squeezing me again. Wasn’t it just yesterday I sat in the Itō dōjō and watched him perform kata for the first time? I remember his young face, so peaceful and serene, following each of his father’s prompts and how I knew right then I was a goner. I smile at him and let his warmth fill me up.

“Yes. A bird. Great idea.” He kisses my temple again and breathes deep. “You can have anything you want,” he whispers, “but some things will have to wait.”

—-

Dog baths are not the only thing on the agenda today. I promised everyone we’d explore the area around us in the opposite direction of town, so we all gather at the front of the estate after lunch. When we make our way out of the gate, Kumo comes barking after us.

“Do you think we need to put a leash on him?” I ask Jiro, kneeling down to hug Kumo and scratch his ears. I’m already in love with him.

“Nope. He was waiting for you outside your aunts’ place, I’m sure of it. He won’t stray.” Jiro pats his leg and Kumo comes right up to him.

Jiro, Usagi, Kentaro, Kumo, and I hike into the forest. This is my second time ever in the woods, and the cool and shady trees are at once quiet and full of life. We walked through a small forest from the landing field north of Izumo, but I wasn’t paying attention because I was worried about our trip. Now I can concentrate on the nature around me.

The wind rushes past, rustling the dead, dried leaves that clung to branches all the way through fall and winter. Branches crack and birds take flight over our heads. Kumo makes a lot of noise, too. He’s not stealthy. He sprints back and forth between me and Jiro and Kentaro and Usagi who are in front of us, the murmuring of their conversation low and unintelligible.

I reach for Jiro’s hand. He’s been sad since this morning and I can’t help but feel like I’m a disappointment to him, a failure. I do is wrong. I screwed up our first trip to Izumo. I can’t start a family. His mother still dislikes me, and I’m endangering what little peace we have left by being alive.

I swallow in a dry throat and cough. Jiro glances sideways at me, and I muster up a fake smile for him. “I’m looking forward to visiting Maeda’s casino tonight and Izakaya Tanaka. It’ll be fun to dress up and do something different. Think about other things.”

Jiro nods his head and swings my hand but remains mute. Okay, fine. No more talking.

After another ten minutes of silent climbing, we clear a bend in the road and find the way blocked off by a high, wooden gate covered in a green plant that has woven through every crack in the slats.

“Huh. Well, I guess we can’t go any farther than this unless we want to scale the gate.” Usagi pushes the handle, putting all of his weight into it, but the latch doesn’t budge.

Looking left and right, up and down the mountain, a fence extends from both sides of the gate, stretching up the hill out of sight. It was meant to keep people out rather than fence them in since all of the gate’s mechanisms are on this side. I doubt this gate would stop an army or anything since it’s all made of wood and could easily be broken through.

“There’s a path over here on the left,” Jiro says, pulling away some overgrowth and revealing a strip of dirt leading up the mountain. “Let’s follow it and see where it goes.”

We don’t get far before coming to a graveyard. No one’s been here in a long time, and everything is overgrown and dirty. The Japanese take caring for the dead seriously and to leave a graveyard untended is heresy. Abandoning dearly departed loved ones is just something that’s not done in our culture. Even in Nishikyō mausoleums, relatives regularly visited to pray or leave offerings for their dead relatives. With the amount of overgrowth here, it’s evident the town has been deserted for at least a decade.

We fan out to investigate, but I’m immediately attracted to the largest grave in the center. The stone enclosure was sculpted and carved into beautiful curving edges and smooth planes. This is the grave of a wealthy family, for sure. I brush off the dirt and pull off the vines that crept up its side. The stone enclosure rises up out of the dirt farther than any of the others, and the headstone is inscribed, but I can’t read the words without cleaning off the dirt.

I probably shouldn’t be climbing all over someone’s grave, but if I’m going to read what it says, I need to. I apologize and bow to anyone buried here, and grabbing the side of the headstone, I step up on the enclosure. First I try smearing off the dirt with my hand, but I have to take my sleeve and wipe away the caked-on sludge instead. I’m going to need another shower when we return home.

When I step back down and look up, everything clicks.

“Jiro! Come here!”

“What is it?” He runs to me, Kumo barking at his side. Jiro’s eyes search around me for a predator, but I point to what I’ve uncovered.

On the headstone is the same diamond pattern I’ve seen all over the city and our estate. Wait… I also saw this on the Heian Initiative flyer!

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks, his eyes trained on the headstone.

“I don’t think this is some random design. It must mean something. Can you read the writing?”

He steps closer to the headstone and runs his fingers over the engravings. “No. My kanji is rusty.”

I laugh, and the sound echoes off the trees and startles a nearby bird. “Miko said the same thing the other day. We should all re-educate ourselves. Here…” I pull my tablet out of my bag that I lugged up the hill. “Let’s take a photo and run it through the image processor.”

Usagi and Kentaro join us, and we all stand with our arms crossed. “It’s that diamond pattern again,” Usagi says, tilting his head. We all blink and look at it thoughtfully. I hadn’t considered that this pattern may actually mean something, not just a random, well-loved and often used motif. What something, though?

“I think we should turn around and head home. I don’t know if there’s anything more to see along this road.” Jiro turns my shoulders back towards the road, and I stumble trying to look at the headstone again.

“Wait.” Kentaro stops at the gate and peers through the slats, pulling on the green vines. “There’s a sign on the other side of this gate. We should try to figure out how this opens.”

Clearing away all the vines around the metal gate mechanism helps, and Jiro and Kentaro force the latch and swing the gate open. A large metal placard nailed to the other side is covered in dirt as well, but we have no trouble reading this since it’s the first sign I’ve seen since landing that’s both in Japanese and English.

A cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck as Jiro reads out the inscription:

“May all those that enter the town of Ōmi die a hideous death. May your children be crippled, your houses burn, and your lands be laid to waste. May the sky fall on you and the earth open to swallow you whole. You are not welcome here.”