Love That Lingers

"Of Servant and Master"

The year was 1872, and the cherry blossoms bloomed late that spring.

In the city of Kyoto, where the last remnants of the shogunate still whispered from the crumbling walls, General Hozuki Arata stood tall beside his soldiers. The samurai class had been stripped of its former glory. Their swords, once symbols of honor, now hung more ceremonial than practical. But Arata still wore his katana—not for war, but as a memory. Of a time lost. Of a promise unspoken.

Atop the hill near the old imperial estate, she watched him—Princess Ayaka, daughter of the late Lord Michizane. Her eyes always searched for him in the gardens, in the rain, in every letter the wind carried. Their hearts had once beat so closely, but silence had kept them apart.

Arata had once served her house as a page boy. In their youth, Ayaka would sneak out to the barracks to watch him train. He was only fourteen then, and she thirteen, but they shared a bond neither understood.

Now, he was thirty and a decorated general under the Meiji military reforms. She was twenty-nine, a woman too old for most suitors, and too proud to marry for alliance.

They never told each other. Not in letters. Not in glances. Not in the brush of fingers when he handed her a fan she dropped in the tea room. Because he was her servant once. And she his mistress. That line never faded, even as time washed the world around them.

---

It had been raining the day he left for the Satsuma Rebellion. The Emperor’s orders called him south to quell Saigō Takamori’s uprising. Ayaka had stood in the garden, her hand clenching the red umbrella she once shared with him as children.

“You must return,” she had said, her voice trembling like the leaves under the storm.

“I always return to Kyoto,” Arata replied.

She wanted to say it then. To beg him to stay. But pride, the armor of noble blood, and fear—the binding chain of status—held her still.

So he bowed. And she nodded. And the moment slipped away like mist over the lotus pond.

---

The war scarred him. He came back limping, a cane in his hand, medals on his chest. And beside him was a woman—a kind, gentle nurse named Hana, whom he met during the battle at Kumamoto.

Ayaka smiled when she heard of the engagement. She smiled so brightly at the court feast that it made the maids comment on her beauty.

But that night, she wept into her pillow until her tears soaked the silk.

She knew then she had lost. Not to Hana, but to silence. To duty. To all the years of “what if.”

---

A year later, she was wed to a nobleman named Lord Kagetora from Hiroshima. He was courteous and intelligent. A patron of Noh theater, he gifted her poems every morning and rose petals in the shape of cranes.

She respected him. But she never loved him.

In autumn, Arata sent her a letter, congratulating her. It was polite, formal, with ink that faded like his voice in her memory.

> _To Her Highness Ayaka-sama,

I pray for your joy and health. May your new home bring you peace as Kyoto once did. May your husband’s kindness reflect the light I have always seen in you.

Yours,

Hozuki Arata_

She burned the letter that night. And yet, the ashes she kept in her diary.

---

Years passed. They met once more, under a pale winter moon, when her husband died of fever. She had returned to Kyoto briefly to visit her family’s shrine.

He stood by the river, staring at the snow falling onto the surface like ghosts of the past.

“You cut your hair,” he said.

“And you still limp,” she replied.

He looked at her then, really looked—his eyes older, wearier. She was dressed in mourning robes, but she had never looked more alive.

“I had thought of writing,” he said.

“I had thought of visiting,” she whispered.

They both laughed then, the sound brittle as the frozen wind.

And again, they didn’t say it. Because now they were broken people. Not prince and servant. Not general and princess. Just two souls, passing again on the road of what might have been.

---

Arata died five years later of tuberculosis. His wife Hana never left his side. She was said to sing old Meiji ballads to him as he faded.

Ayaka didn’t cry when she heard the news. She sat in her garden, hands folded, and whispered, “I loved you.”

Then she opened her diary and placed the ash of his letter onto the snow.

---

Epilogue

In the temple where General Hozuki is buried, there is a sakura tree that never stops blooming, even in frost. No one knows who planted it, but monks say an old noblewoman visits it every year on the same spring day. She leaves a red umbrella at its base, and bows deeply, before vanishing into the city.

The blossoms fall gently around her. Like promises never spoken. Like love never claimed.

The End.