Chapter 31:
The Aromatized Agarwood
Dream Seclusion
We take a little detour from the main storyline to 23 years prior.
Shinazugawa Kyara was seven years old when she stood at the edge of the engawa, watching the rain turn the stone lanterns into weeping monuments.
Her father, a man whose presence usually carried the scent of expensive ink and sharp cedar, had left through the front gates an hour before. He hadn't carried a trunk. He hadn't said goodbye. He had simply walked until the mist swallowed his silk robes.
He never came back.
In the weeks that followed, the house transformed. The servants were let go one by one, their departures marked by hushed whispers and the sound of sliding doors being locked forever.
Her mother, once a woman of delicate grace, became a creature of shadows.
She spent her days in a room that smelled of stale rice wine and unwashed silk, staring at the empty space where a man’s vanity chest used to sit.
"He left because this house is a graveyard," her mother would mutter, her voice a dry rattle. She would look at Kyara with eyes that didn't see a daughter, but a lingering debt. "And you... you are just the dirt he left behind to cover the smell."
Kyara did not cry. Even then, she understood a fundamental truth: if the man who gave her a name could discard it like a soiled rag, then the name was a lie.
She began to retreat into herself, building a world where no one else was allowed to breathe.
When her mother screamed, Kyara simply watched the dust motes dancing in the light.
---
By 1858, the Kyara estate was a skeleton. The once-vibrant gardens were choked with weeds, and the koi pond had turned into a dark, stagnant mirror. Kyara was nineteen, possessing a beauty that felt less like a flower and more like a blade—sharp, cold, and forged in a fire no one else could see.
Her uncle had decided she was the final asset. A merchant from the north, a man with a belly like a sack of grain and a laugh that sounded like gravel in a tin cup, had been invited to the house.
He looked at Kyara not as a person, but as a piece of fine porcelain he intended to crack.
"She’s a sullen thing," her uncle said, pouring the merchant a cup of their last decent sake. "But her blood is pure. She’ll give you sons who carry the capital's prestige."
Kyara stood in the corner, her hands tucked into her sleeves. She felt a profound, icy detachment. "They think they are selling me", she thought. "They think they own the air I breathe because we share a roof. They are wrong."
A month before the wedding was to take place, a section of the northern wall collapsed during a summer storm.
Because the merchant wanted his "prize" to be housed in a respectable-looking estate, he paid for a small crew of laborers to repair the stone.
Among them was a man whose name Kyara never sought to learn from the foreman. He was quiet, his shoulders broad, his skin bronzed by a sun the Kyara family had spent generations hiding from.
"The stone here is tired," he said. His voice was a low, grounding vibration that seemed to cut through the suffocating humidity of the afternoon.
"Everything here is tired," Kyara replied.
He looked up then. His eyes were the color of the sea before a storm—gray, deep, and impossibly calm. He didn't bow. He didn't look away in shame of his station. He looked at her as if she were the only real thing in a landscape of rot.
"A stone only breaks when it's forced to be something it isn't," he said softly.
"These labourers give their all for a couple tablets of gold, does that mean their resolve for that currency is stronger than that of a stone?"
"What are you getting at, O-samurai-san?"
"You don't wanna marry that fatass, do you?"
"...", Kyara's heart felt heard for the first time in years, "I don't. Yeah."
"I see."
For the first time in twelve years, the fortress inside Kyara’s chest shuddered.
---
The rules of the Kyara house were strict, enforced by an aunt who moved with the silent, predatory grace of a crow. Kyara was monitored from sunrise to sunset.
However, there was a gap.
Every evening, at the transition between the afternoon prayers and the preparation of the evening meal, the women of the house gathered in the inner sanctum to gossip and drink.
For exactly twenty minutes, the northern garden—the place of the broken wall—was forgotten.
In those twenty minutes, Kyara found her universe.
She would slip through the shadows of the overgrown camellias, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
He would be there, waiting by the unfinished stone, holding onto his hilt.
They didn't touch at first. They simply sat in the tall grass, the twenty minutes ticking away like a countdown.
"Tell me about the mountains," she whispered during their second week.
"They don't have names there," he said, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
"Not real ones. The wind doesn't care if you're a scholar or a beggar. It just asks if you can stand."
"I want to stand," Kyara said, her voice breaking. "I am so tired of bowing to ghosts."
He reached out then. His hand was rough, his palms mapped with the scars of his profession. When his fingers brushed her cheek, it wasn't an act of possession. It was a recognition.
In that touch, the merchant, her uncle, and her mother’s bitter wine-breath ceased to exist.
For those twenty minutes, the world was reduced to the space between their heartbeats. She didn't love him because he was her savior; she loved him because he was the only person who had ever looked at her and seen something other than a tool for survival. To her, he wasn't a man; he was the physical manifestation of her right to exist for herself.
"Nineteen minutes," he would whisper, glancing at the shadows of the sun.
"Then give me one more," she would reply, leaning her forehead against his shoulder.
---
The winter of 1859 arrived with a cruelty that matched the spirit of the house. The wedding was two weeks away. The merchant had arrived with trunks of heavy, suffocating silk and a set of gold hairpins that looked like tiny, ornate cages.
That evening, Kyara’s mother came to her room. She looked older, her face a mask of powder that couldn't hide the jaundice of her spirit.
"You will be grateful," her mother said, clutching a silk sash. "This man is bringing light back to this name. You will smile,
and you will forget this...
..Mountain-filth you’ve been whispering to in the dirt."
Kyara froze.
The air in the room turned to ice.
"You watched me?"
"Your aunt has eyes where you have none," her mother spat. "That samurai guard was sent away this morning. If he returns, your uncle has promised to have the city guards break his hands.
He is a ronin, Kyara. Without his hands, he is nothing."
The hatred Kyara felt in that moment was so pure it felt like a physical weight in the room. It wasn't the hot, screaming rage of a child; it was the cold, absolute resolve of a woman who had finally found the edge of her patience.
"You gave up your soul for a man who didn't even want your shadow," Kyara said, her voice a terrifying whisper.
"You stayed in this tomb because you were too afraid to be nobody. I am not you. I would rather be a ghost in the wind than a queen in this house."
Her mother walked up.
The year 1854 did not begin with a sound in the Shinazugawa household; it began with a silence so heavy it felt like the walls were leaning inward.
Shinazugawa Kyara was seven years old when she stood at the edge of the engawa, watching the rain turn the stone lanterns into weeping monuments.
Her father, a man whose presence usually carried the scent of expensive ink and sharp cedar, had left through the front gates an hour before. He hadn't carried a trunk. He hadn't said goodbye. He had simply walked until the mist swallowed his silk robes.
He never came back.
In the weeks that followed, the house transformed. The servants were let go one by one, their departures marked by hushed whispers and the sound of sliding doors being locked forever.
Her mother, once a woman of delicate grace, became a creature of shadows.
She spent her days in a room that smelled of stale rice wine and unwashed silk, staring at the empty space where a man’s vanity chest used to sit.
"He left because this house is a graveyard," her mother would mutter, her voice a dry rattle. She would look at Kyara with eyes that didn't see a daughter, but a lingering debt. "And you... you are just the dirt he left behind to cover the smell."
Kyara did not cry. Even then, she understood a fundamental truth: if the man who gave her a name could discard it like a soiled rag, then the name was a lie.
She began to retreat into herself, building a world where no one else was allowed to breathe.
When her mother screamed, Kyara simply watched the dust motes dancing in the light.
When her uncle moved into the primary wing and began selling off the family scrolls to pay for his gambling debts, she looked through him as if he were made of thin, cheap glass.
---
By 1858, the Kyara estate was a skeleton. The once-vibrant gardens were choked with weeds, and the koi pond had turned into a dark, stagnant mirror. Kyara was nineteen, possessing a beauty that felt less like a flower and more like a blade—sharp, cold, and forged in a fire no one else could see.
Her uncle had decided she was the final asset. A merchant from the north, a man with a belly like a sack of grain and a laugh that sounded like gravel in a tin cup, had been invited to the house.
He looked at Kyara not as a person, but as a piece of fine porcelain he intended to crack.
"She’s a sullen thing," her uncle said, pouring the merchant a cup of their last decent sake. "But her blood is pure. She’ll give you sons who carry the capital's prestige."
Kyara stood in the corner, her hands tucked into her sleeves. She felt a profound, icy detachment. "They think they are selling me", she thought. "They think they own the air I breathe because we share a roof. They are wrong."
A month before the wedding was to take place, a section of the northern wall collapsed during a summer storm.
Because the merchant wanted his "prize" to be housed in a respectable-looking estate, he paid for a small crew of laborers to repair the stone.
Among them was a man whose name Kyara never sought to learn from the foreman. He was quiet, his shoulders broad, his skin bronzed by a sun the Kyara family had spent generations hiding from.
But he wasn't a labourer. He was a samurai.
He only kept his eyes on the labourers. That's all he did.
One afternoon, as she walked the perimeter of the decaying garden, she found him kneeling by the base of the wall."The stone here is tired," he said. His voice was a low, grounding vibration that seemed to cut through the suffocating humidity of the afternoon.
"Everything here is tired," Kyara replied.
He looked up then. His eyes were the color of the sea before a storm—gray, deep, and impossibly calm. He didn't bow. He didn't look away in shame of his station. He looked at her as if she were the only real thing in a landscape of rot.
"A stone only breaks when it's forced to be something it isn't," he said softly.
"These labourers give their all for a couple tablets of gold, does that mean their resolve for that currency is stronger than that of a stone?"
"What are you getting at, O-samurai-san?"
"You don't wanna marry that fatass, do you?"
"...", Kyara's heart felt heard for the first time in years, "I don't. Yeah."
"I see."
For the first time in twelve years, the fortress inside Kyara’s chest shuddered.
---
The rules of the Kyara house were strict, enforced by an aunt who moved with the silent, predatory grace of a crow. Kyara was monitored from sunrise to sunset.
However, there was a gap.
Every evening, at the transition between the afternoon prayers and the preparation of the evening meal, the women of the house gathered in the inner sanctum to gossip and drink.
For exactly twenty minutes, the northern garden—the place of the broken wall—was forgotten.
In those twenty minutes, Kyara found her universe.
She would slip through the shadows of the overgrown camellias, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
He would be there, waiting by the unfinished stone, holding onto his hilt.
They didn't touch at first. They simply sat in the tall grass, the twenty minutes ticking away like a countdown.
"Tell me about the mountains," she whispered during their second week.
"They don't have names there," he said, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
"Not real ones. The wind doesn't care if you're a scholar or a beggar. It just asks if you can stand."
"I want to stand," Kyara said, her voice breaking. "I am so tired of bowing to ghosts."
He reached out then. His hand was rough, his palms mapped with the scars of his profession. When his fingers brushed her cheek, it wasn't an act of possession. It was a recognition.
In that touch, the merchant, her uncle, and her mother’s bitter wine-breath ceased to exist.
For those twenty minutes, the world was reduced to the space between their heartbeats. She didn't love him because he was her savior; she loved him because he was the only person who had ever looked at her and seen something other than a tool for survival. To her, he wasn't a man; he was the physical manifestation of her right to exist for herself.
"Nineteen minutes," he would whisper, glancing at the shadows of the sun.
"Then give me one more," she would reply, leaning her forehead against his shoulder.
---
The winter of 1859 arrived with a cruelty that matched the spirit of the house. The wedding was two weeks away. The merchant had arrived with trunks of heavy, suffocating silk and a set of gold hairpins that looked like tiny, ornate cages.
That evening, Kyara’s mother came to her room. She looked older, her face a mask of powder that couldn't hide the jaundice of her spirit.
"You will be grateful," her mother said, clutching a silk sash. "This man is bringing light back to this name. You will smile,
and you will forget this...
..Mountain-filth you’ve been whispering to in the dirt."
Kyara froze.
The air in the room turned to ice.
"You watched me?"
"Your aunt has eyes where you have none," her mother spat. "That samurai guard was sent away this morning. If he returns, your uncle has promised to have the city guards break his hands.
He is a ronin, Kyara. Without his hands, he is nothing."
The hatred Kyara felt in that moment was so pure it felt like a physical weight in the room. It wasn't the hot, screaming rage of a child; it was the cold, absolute resolve of a woman who had finally found the edge of her patience.
"You gave up your soul for a man who didn't even want your shadow," Kyara said, her voice a terrifying whisper.
"You stayed in this tomb because you were too afraid to be nobody. I am not you. I would rather be a ghost in the wind than a queen in this house."
Her mother walked up.
She struck her—a weak, desperate blow that Kyara barely felt.
She didn't strike back. She simply watched her mother crumble, realizing that the woman before her was already dead.
She had been dead since Kyara was seven.
---
The night of the blizzard was the night the Shinazugawa name finally burned out.The wind howled through the lattices, carrying the sound of the ocean and the promise of a total, white erasure.
The merchant and her uncle were in the main hall, celebrating the finalization of the dowry. The house was loud with the sound of men who thought they had won.
Kyara moved with a silence she had practiced for a lifetime. She took nothing but a single warm cloak and a small paring knife she had stolen from the kitchen.
She didn't look at the family altar.
She didn't look at the room where her mother lay in a stupor.
He was standing still, at first glance he seemed unfazed, but his breath came in ragged gasps.
He had no horse. He had no money. He only had a heavy blanket and a look in his eyes that told her he would have waited until he turned into a statue of ice.
"Let them hunt," Kyara said, her hand finding his in the dark. "They are hunting a girl who died years ago. I am not her. I don't belong to them, and I don't belong to this city."
They stepped into the white.
The journey was not a romantic montage. it was a grueling, agonizing crawl through the mountain passes.
They ate frozen berries and shared the warmth of their bodies under a single blanket in the hollows of trees.
Kyara’s feet bled, and her lungs burned with the thin, freezing air. To which the samurai would pick her up either on his back or on his arms.
Every time she felt her strength faltering, she looked at the man beside her.
She didn't need to know his lineage.
She didn't need to know his past.
He was the anchor of her new reality. In the philosophy of the storm, they were the only two things that mattered.
However..
Something did happen during that journey.
Something that made these two lovebirds' escape much, much more popularized than it should have been.
Something that sainted them.
---
1877. Present Day.A small cabin sat on a ridge overlooking a valley that the maps of Kyoto had forgotten. The snow here was different—it didn't feel like a siege; it felt like a blanket.
Kyara sat on the porch, her hands busy weaving a hemp rope. Her skin was lined by the sun, her palms were as rough as the slate the labourers had once carved, and her silk robes had long since been replaced by sturdy, indigo-dyed wool.
A man emerged from the treeline, a brace of hares over his shoulder. He moved with a slight stiffness in his wrist—a reminder of something tragic he survived—but his eyes were the same calm, slate-gray they had been in the northern garden.
He sat down beside her, and they watched the sun dip below the peaks. For twenty minutes, they sat in a silence that was no longer a countdown, but a celebration.
"The village down the pass says the world is changing," he said, his hand resting on hers. "They say there are new laws. New ways to live."
Kyara leaned her head against his shoulder. She thought of the woman who had stood on the engawa in 1854, watching her father leave. She thought of the merchant’s gold pins and her mother’s bitter wine.
And she thought of the man she leans on, who she almost lost, 10 years ago.
"The world can change all it wants," she said softly. "I have already lived a hundred lives in the time it takes for the sun to set."
He smiled, pulling her closer. They were nobodies. They were ghosts to the Shinazugawa name and shadows to the city of Kyoto. But in the vast, indifferent silence of the mountains, they were the only ones who truly knew what it meant to be alive.
In fact, Kyara wasn't even a Shinazugawa anymore. She adopted the name of her husband to discard all that she ever was, or rather..
Was forced to be.
Taiichiro Kenichi and Taiichiro Kyara, are dwelling on their beautiful lives, happily.
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