CHAPTER 4 – IN THE SILENCE, I KNEW

It was cherry blossom season.

But the petals didn’t fall like they did in poems. They clung stubbornly to their branches, as if they, too, were afraid to let go.

Xenjiro knelt beneath the tree, sharpening his blade. Not because he needed to—but because his hands needed something to do.

Across the garden, Lady Lumei walked with purpose, her robe trailing across the stone path like mist. She did not look at him. She never did.

Until that evening.

He was injured. A minor wound—a shallow cut across his shoulder from a border clash. The other samurai said it was nothing. He insisted he could tend to it himself.

But when Lady Lumei summoned him to her quarters, he obeyed.

She was not a woman used to being defied.

The room smelled of herbs and damp paper. Scrolls lined the walls. A single candle lit the space, casting flickering shadows over her pale hands.

“Remove your robe,” she said softly, not unkindly.

He did.

She dabbed the cut with something sharp. He did not flinch.

“You fight like you wish to die,” she said.

He didn’t reply.

She glanced up at him, her gaze unreadable.

“And you heal like you’ve done this before,” he finally said.

Something passed between them. Not warmth. Not tenderness. Something deeper. Older.

She bandaged him in silence.

They met again a week later. This time, by the koi pond.

He stood guard. She sat under the willow tree, writing with a calligraphy brush. But her hand trembled.

He watched her from the corner of his eye.

After an hour, she set the brush down.

“I can feel the war returning,” she said.

He nodded once.

“If the castle falls,” she added, “I will not leave.”

He didn’t question her.

In the days that followed, she began requesting him specifically—escort duties, deliveries, scrolls moved from the temple to the tower.

Always with purpose. But always alone.

She would not touch him. He would not speak unless spoken to.

But sometimes, she would pause while walking, and he would turn just enough to hear her breath catch. That was enough.

One night, beneath a half-moon, she placed something in his hand.

A small, carved wooden token.

“A charm,” she said. “For protection. From… forgetting.”

He looked at it like it was sacred.

She began to walk away, but then stopped.

“I read a poem yesterday,” she said. “May I?”

He nodded.

“If my heart had a name,
it would sound like yours—
written without ink
whispered through steel.”

Xenjiro closed his eyes, and for the first time, breathed fully.

That night, he played his flute alone.

And her candle stayed lit until dawn.

The siege came quietly. No warning. No sound of horns or drums.

Just the castle gates shuddering beneath the weight of fire.

Nobles rushed to escape. Servants fled to the hills.

But Lumei stayed.

“I will not abandon the wounded,” she told Xenjiro calmly, as if reading weather.

He was ordered to defend the western gate.

They crossed paths in the hallway near the garden.

Neither said anything.

Until she reached for his hand.

A moment. A touch.

“In another life,” she said softly, “I would have followed you.”

He held her gaze for the first time.

“Then let us meet again… where no duty can stop us.”

When the castle burned, they were on opposite sides.

He died with his blade in hand, at the final gate.

She died in the infirmary, with her hands pressed against a soldier’s chest to stop the bleeding.

The fire reached them both.
But the token in his hand never turned to ash.

[END OF CHAPTER 4]