Pages Left Behind
Chapter 12 – Pages Left Behind
Hana learned how to read without touching.
Not literally–she still had to turn pages, still had to hold the notebook steady on the low table. But something in her posture changed after Ren’s instruction.
Read. Do not write.
The rule turned her hands into something different.
Not a participant.
A witness.
A keeper of evidence.
Hana did not like what it did to her heart.
Every instinct in her body insisted that love–care, connection, whatever this was–required response. That to receive words and give none back was cruelty.
But Ren had called words swords.
And now, her words were not only swords.
They were torches.
They could light up the wrong faces.
So Hana obeyed.
She did not open the notebook every night.
She waited.
She listened.
She went to bed without ritual as often as she could, trying to live on the far side of the bridge like Ren had told her.
Then, on the third night after his new rule, the notebook hummed again.
Soft.
Insistent.
Not like a phone.
Like a moth beating against cloth.
Hana sat up in the dark.
She stared at the closet.
She told herself she would not.
Then she did.
She retrieved the notebook with trembling hands and carried it to the table.
She did not make tea.
She did not turn on extra lights.
She left only a small lamp glowing, low enough that the corners of the apartment stayed shadowed.
As if the shadows might help Ren.
Hana opened the notebook.
Ren’s frame was already there.
Not one page.
Several.
As if he had written in advance.
As if he had left a trail of paper behind him for Hana to follow.
Hana’s throat tightened.
She read.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ JOURNAL ENTRY ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Era : Sengoku – Kaga Province ┃
┃ Date : Tenbun 20, night ┃
┃ Light : Moonlight ┃
┃ Weather : Cold, silent ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ 春よ。 ┃
┃ ┃
┃ Haru. ┃
┃ ┃
┃ 返事は要らぬ。 ┃
┃ ┃
┃ No reply is needed. ┃
┃ ┃
┃ だが、私は書く。 ┃
┃ ┃
┃ But I will write. ┃
┃ ┃
┃ 今宵、屋敷で”帳”の話が出た。
┃
┃ Tonight, in the estate, talk of “a notebook” surfaced. ┃
┃
┃ 名を出さずに言う。
┃
┃ I will speak without names. ┃
┃
┃ 主君の側近が、失せた書付を探している。
┃
┃ My lord’s attendants search for a missing writing. ┃
┃
┃ “異国の筆跡”だと。
┃
┃ They say it bears “foreign handwriting.” ┃
┃
┃ 私は笑った。笑わねばならぬ。
┃
┃ I laughed. I had to. ┃
┃
┃ 怖れを顔に出せば、死ぬ。
┃
┃ If fear shows on the face, you die. ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Hana’s breath caught.
Foreign handwriting.
Her pen.
Her modern lines.
Hana pressed her palm lightly to her chest.
Fold it small.
Keep it quiet.
She turned the page.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ JOURNAL ENTRY ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Era : Sengoku – Kaga Province ┃
┃ Date : Tenbun 20, night ┃
┃ Light : Moonlight ┃
┃ Weather : Cold, silent ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ 春よ。 ┃
┃ ┃
┃ Haru. ┃
┃
┃ 探す者がいるなら、捨てればよい。
┃
┃ If there are searchers, I should throw it away. ┃
┃
┃ だが、捨てれば残る。
┃
┃ But if I throw it away, it remains. ┃
┃
┃ 燃やせば灰が残る。
┃
┃ If I burn it, ash remains. ┃
┃
┃ 隠せば、隠したことが残る。
┃
┃ If I hide it, the fact of hiding remains. ┃
┃
┃ 残るものがあるなら、人は嗅ぎつける。
┃
┃ If something remains, people sniff it out. ┃
┃
┃ だから—-
┃
┃ Therefore– ┃
┃
┃ “残す”方法を変える。
┃
┃ I will change the way I leave things behind. ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Hana’s throat tightened.
Change the way I leave things behind.
Ren was thinking like a retainer.
Like someone trained to survive suspicion.
Hana turned the page again.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ JOURNAL ENTRY ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Era : Sengoku – Kaga Province ┃
┃ Date : Tenbun 20, night ┃
┃ Light : Moonlight ┃
┃ Weather : Cold, silent ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ 今宵、主君の書庫に入った。
┃
┃ Tonight, I entered my lord’s archive. ┃
┃
┃ 危うい行いだ。だが、これが最も安全だ。
┃
┃ It is a dangerous act. But it is the safest. ┃
┃
┃ 書庫は人が近づかぬ。近づけば咎められる。
┃
┃ Few approach the archive. If they do, they are reprimanded.┃
┃
┃ 私はそこで筆を取った。
┃
┃ There, I took up a brush. ┃
┃
┃ 帳ではない帳に書く。
┃
┃ I will write in a notebook that is not the notebook. ┃
┃
┃ 書付の中に、書付を混ぜる。
┃
┃ Mix a note within notes. ┃
┃
┃ そうすれば、探す者は”異物”を見つけにくい。
┃
┃ Then the searchers will struggle to find the “foreign thing.”┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Hana’s mind raced.
He would hide the notebook’s content inside other writings.
Camouflage.
A retainer’s survival.
Hana pressed her fingers to her lips.
Ren was protecting her.
By removing the need for her to write at all.
By taking the risk entirely onto his side.
Hana turned the page.
The next entry was shorter.
Sharper.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ JOURNAL ENTRY ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Era : Sengoku – Kaga Province ┃
┃ Date : Tenbun 20, night ┃
┃ Light : Moonlight ┃
┃ Weather : Cold, silent ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ 春よ。 ┃
┃ ┃
┃ Haru. ┃
┃
┃ 私は今、二つの戦をしている。
┃
┃ I am fighting two battles now. ┃
┃
┃ 一つは、外の戦。
┃
┃ One is the war outside. ┃
┃
┃ 一つは、疑い。
┃
┃ One is suspicion. ┃
┃
┃ 疑いは血を流さぬ。だが、首を落とす。
┃
┃ Suspicion spills no blood. But it takes heads. ┃
┃
┃ そなたの世にもあるか。
┃
┃ Does your world have this too? ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Hana’s eyes stung.
Yes.
Her world had suspicion too.
It didn’t take heads.
It took reputations.
Jobs.
Peace.
And yet she was not allowed to answer.
She turned the page.
The final entry was the one that made her throat close.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ JOURNAL ENTRY ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Era : Sengoku – Kaga Province ┃
┃ Date : Tenbun 20, night ┃
┃ Light : Moonlight ┃
┃ Weather : Cold, silent ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ 春よ。 ┃
┃ ┃
┃ Haru. ┃
┃
┃ もし、私が消えたら。
┃
┃ If I disappear– ┃
┃
┃ 帳に縋るな。
┃
┃ Do not cling to the notebook. ┃
┃
┃ 印に縋れ。
┃
┃ Cling to the sign. ┃
┃
┃ 石は残る。
┃
┃ Stone remains. ┃
┃
┃ そして、そなたも残れ。
┃
┃ And you–remain too. ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Hana’s vision blurred.
If I disappear.
Do not cling to the notebook.
Cling to the sign.
Stone remains.
And you–remain too.
Hana pressed her fist to her mouth to keep herself from making a sound.
She did not know what was happening in Ren’s estate.
She did not know who had reached into his hiding place.
She did not know how close he was to being found.
All she had were these pages.
Left behind like footprints.
Hana wanted to reply.
Wanted to scream across centuries.
Wanted to write: Don’t disappear.
But she could not.
Ren had made new rules for survival.
And survival meant restraint.
Hana closed the notebook carefully.
Her hands shook.
She carried it back to the closet and buried it beneath sweaters.
Then she sat on her futon and stared at the wall.
Her heart beat too fast.
Her breath felt too shallow.
She pressed her palm to her chest and tried to fold fear small.
But fear did not fold easily tonight.
Because Ren had written the word disappear.
And Hana realized the cruel truth.
A one-way bridge was safer.
But it also meant she could lose him in silence.
Without even being allowed to call his name.