Table of Contents

Copyrights and Credits

Title Page

Table of Contents Page

Character List

Taisho Arc

Lantern-Lit Dreams in the Red-Light District

The Lost

Interlude: What’s Your Favorite Food?

Under Starry Skies Together

Heart of a Flower

Dream’s End

Intermission: Where Revenge Leads

Final Chapter: Visiting the Remains of a Red-Light District

Newsletter

Lantern-Lit Dreams in the Red-Light District

1

ILEAN BACKin my seat, the soft spring breeze caressing my skin. Sunlight fills the white walls of the neat room as I look out the window. Amid a shallow dream, I drift, awaiting his arrival.

***

Every now and then, a most peculiar guest would visit the red-light district.

It was now April in year thirty-four of the Showa era (1959 AD).

Night fog blurred the light of the street lamps. The intermittent zaps of gathered moths drawing too close to the lamps could be heard—an occurrence all too common to inspire thought in most people. Bugs were bewitched by light, only to fly too close and ­perish. This place was meant for such creatures. Perhaps that was why Hotaru felt she could sympathize with the moths as she walked down the street.

The Dove District was located in Tokyo, about a kilometer away from Tamanoi. Tamanoi had once been home to many pleasure quarters that had stood since antiquity, and it had continued to thrive before the war as a red-light district. It was once even hailed as the place a man could buy a dream for a night. The area saw particularly remarkable success from around the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake to the early years of the Showa era. Sadly, the brothels were burned down in the air raids of the war, and the long history of Tamanoi’s sex industry came to an end. But no matter the era, there were those who could not choose the means by which they lived. Several brothels migrated toward Mukojima and gathered in one part of town to form what would later become known as the Dove District.

Red-light districts like the Dove District—which was also euphemistically called a “café district” or a “special restaurant district,” referring to common brothel fronts—became only semi-permitted during the occupation by American forces. On maps used by police, a red line was drawn to denote these establishments of dubious legality. Still, red-light districts saw success after the war, and the Dove District was perhaps the most successful of them all. The unique smell of love was in the air day and night there.

Taking a look around, the majority of the chic-looking establishments along the street were brothels. There were buildings with fronts lathered in pink mortar, buildings with faux brick tiles, buildings with display windows, and more. The place had its own alluring charm, for sure. But the narrowness of the street and the incohesive aesthetics made it all feel so cluttered.

Twenty-four-year-old Hotaru was one of the many who found themselves swept along by life until they drifted here. Hotaru meant “firefly.” It was not her real name, but one that she chose after abandoning her old name together with her family name. She lost her parents when she was young and was passed around, unwanted, by relatives for most of her life. The household of a family friend took her in after the war, but she didn’t stay there either. The only place where she could finally put down roots was the Dove District.

She spread her legs for a living. She was accustomed to taking unknown men as clients and was long past thinking of what she did as shameful. But different thoughts would occasionally come to her—not in the moments she spent with clients, but in moments like this, spent alone walking down the cluttered street.

The men flocked here in search of comfort, and the women swarmed those same men. Of the two, which exactly were the moths?

She watched as a moth was burned by a street lamp and saw her own fate mirrored in its charred corpse.

“Oh, Hotaru-chan. Welcome back.” Her return was met by the listless drawl of a sharply dressed man.

This small, tiled, modern-looking building that resembled a café was Hotaru’s workplace—Sakuraba Milk Hall. There were always at least three or four waitresses on staff at any moment, and the place served light meals and drinks, generally milk. But of course, its main service wasn’t refreshments. The real goods on offer were Hotaru and the other waitresses. The clients chose whichever girl caught their eye and went upstairs with them for some private time. The milk ordered by the customers was simply to pass the time until they made a selection.

“Sorry I took so long.”

“No, no. I’m the one who asked you to run an errand, sweetie. There aren’t too many customers, anyway,” the forty-something man said in an effeminate tone. He was the manager of this establishment, essentially making him her pimp. He was a gentle, mild-mannered man, though, and Hotaru had a favorable impression of him.

She handed over the bag of things he’d asked her to buy, made a small bow, then went upstairs to change into her waitress uniform—a modest, Western-style dress that was all white and smothered in frills. It was slightly difficult to move in, but in her line of work, form came before function.

She returned downstairs to the place where her fellow waitresses were, as well as one customer who shot glances all over as he drank milk at the counter. Her eyes met his, so she politely bowed.

Her modest dress and graceful bowing posture made her seem like a prim and proper woman, even in an establishment like this. Of course, it was all an act for the sake of being chosen.

“Just look at her…”

The other waitresses quietly scoffed behind her back, but she paid them no mind. They were only jealous of how often she was selected, and what’s more, this was simply the trick of the trade. Men didn’t shell out so much just to sleep with a woman, but to dream for a night, and so a sex worker had to be a woman worthy of being part of that dream. She was only doing what was expected; there was no reason for the other women to be so snide. It annoyed her how they could be so stupid, but she was used to that too, and so she didn’t dwell on it.

She put the peanut gallery out of her mind and smiled emotionlessly, after which the customer immediately called out to the manager. She would fulfill her role perfectly. It was everything to her now.

“Hotaru-chan, a moment, please?”

“Coming.”

Her client for tonight looked to be a broad-shouldered man in his forties with the vulgar grin and eyes of a lecher. Her face seemed to pass his standards as he moved his gaze downward, practically licking her full breasts and slender hips with his eyes.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Hotaru.”

She was used to this kind of appraisal and was more than capable of feigning indifference. She flashed a coquettish smile that seemed to greatly please the man, whose expression changed rapidly.

“O-oh…” He swallowed back a mouthful of saliva.

She didn’t feel too much revulsion toward his naked display of lust. There were many kinds of awful customers: rich ones who looked down on sex workers, bastards who only saw women as objects to please themselves with, and so on. Comparatively speaking, this client wasn’t bad at all.

“Please, follow me.” She gently took his hand and led him upstairs. The room farthest back, the one with the balcony, was her assigned work room. In it was a tidily arranged bed, a side table, and a lamp that she’d requested.

She lit the lamp. The flickering light of its flame was faint, and that was what made it perfect. A dream was only a dream if its shape was indistinct.

“You’re a pretty little thing, you know that?” the man said.

“Hee hee. Thank you very much.”

The sight of her face in the orange light of the flame must have been irresistible for him, because he suddenly reached out. She put her palm over the back of his hand and guided it to her dress.

“Would you undress me?” she asked.

He seemed to fall into a trance from the atmosphere she created. His touch grew several degrees softer, like he was handling porcelain, as he undressed her piece by piece. He stared in awe at her bare skin. Her body was symmetrical and perfect, unlike that of the common sex worker who thought youth was all one needed to work. As the last article of clothing fell to the floor, a sugary smell of perfume wafted up to the man’s nose. Sweet like nectar. This, too, was one of her tricks of the trade.

“…What—”

What is a girl like you doing in a place like this?

She knew what he was going to say, so she stole his lips before he could finish. There was nothing rushed or crude about her action. Her lips met his softly, then she slid her tongue in and wrapped it around his, producing lewd and wet noises. When she drew away, a line of saliva formed between them.

She touched his neck with her thin fingers, then drew them across his peach fuzz and up to his lips. “Why spoil our night with boorish talk?”

Pushing him onto the bed, she lay on top of him, and felt his warmth directly through her skin. His body was hot from arousal. Meanwhile, her own body felt as though it was only getting colder.

She slept with men for money. She’d done so more times than she could count, spending every night in the arms of a different man. It became easier as she gained experience. Even if there was no love, she could feel the warmth of another. And yet, for some reason, she felt so cold just then.

Letting out sweet moans, she allowed herself to drift off into this shallow dream, as if to leave behind and forget the worries of her heart.

After the deed was done, the two lay side by side in the bed. She drew close and clung fawningly to him. When the Dove District was formed after the war, many of its sex workers were inexperienced and acted as though the men were lucky to sleep with them. Women who played the role of a lover like Hotaru did were rare, and that seemed to catch the man’s interest.

“Hotaru…” the man said.

Instead of replying, she reached out and touched his chest, looking up at him with upturned eyes. She was exhausted after their workout too; her smile was perhaps better described as hollow than ephemeral.

“Whew, that was real good. I’ll be sure to visit you again sometime.”

“Thank you very much,” she replied with some exhaustion.

The man threw on his clothes. She sat up and covered her chest with the sheets, and he handed over the payment. He added on a fair amount extra, more than the usual price of a “dream.” The look on his face told her he was simply that satisfied. She had played her role well.

She put her clothes back on, thanked him for waiting, and then left the room with him. After confirming no one was around, she kissed him, and then they went down the stairs arm in arm. She was intimately familiar with the whole send-off process by now. She bade him farewell right outside the entrance, and the dream reached its end. All that was left in its wake were her earnings and a feeling of languidness. She repeated all of this with three or sometimes four clients a day.

It was April, but the wind had a chill that made her narrow shoulders tremble. The moon, veiled by thin clouds, looked dimmer than the street lamps did.

She looked away from the direction the man had gone and gazed at the moths gathering around a street lamp. Some called those in her profession the “butterflies of the night,” but she saw herself more as a moth. They were identical in almost every way, but while butterflies danced beautifully through the air, a moth only drew too close to bright lights and perished.

“Both fireflies and moths live such busy lives…”

She had never found her life as a sex worker to be unpleasant. Maybe it wasn’t something she could brag about, but it suited her nature, and life in this small world wasn’t bad.

She returned inside to report to the manager that the job was done.

“Good work, Hotaru-chan,” he said in his effeminate drawl.

“Thank you. I’ll be stepping out for a bit.”

“Now? It’s late, so do be careful.”

She went upstairs to change out of her uniform and into plainer Western clothes. Her work room on the second floor doubled as her bedroom. Sakuraba Milk Hall wasn’t just her workplace, but also her home. Staying in the same place all day was suffocating, though. That was why she liked to go for night walks on days she didn’t have a client until morning.

Tonight, she took more detours than usual. The varied alleys were soothing when her mind was plagued with too many thoughts. There was a hodgepodge of smells, mostly the kind that came from clogged ditches. She saw a Western-style building with a pink cloth hung at its entrance; elsewhere was a neon sign in the shape of a heart. The Dove District was not like the classy pleasure quarters of the past. Most of the sex workers were young amateurs; those like Hotaru who could provide truly adequate service were rare. That fact earned her a fair share of envy from her colleagues, but it didn’t matter. Her life was better than it was before. That was why she shivered when she heard a familiar voice from her past.

“I finally found you.”

“Ah…” she said weakly. The face in the darkness was one she recognized well. “Takumi-san…”

“You remember me. I was worried you’d have forgotten.”

How could she ever forget Kajii Takumi? Before she drifted to the Dove District, he had been her boyfriend.

Ask anyone, and they would probably say the two had been a close couple. Takumi loved her to the point that he’d even proposed, and she held affection for him as well. He was eight years older than her, and he had become a physician after the war. He inherited the clinic his family had run for generations and was by all means an upstanding man. He did not look down on or pity Hotaru and her lack of parents.

But the two parted in the end. There was no infidelity, nor was there any fight. Not a single clear reason for their split could be found. It simply hurt too much for her to stay with him. That was why she ran, discarded her name, and became Hotaru. The woman he had known was nowhere to be found anymore, so why was he here now?

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Do I even need to say it? Come on, let’s go home. Together.” He offered his hand. She did not feel threatened or fearful as he reached out. The fact that he still remembered her after all this time should have made her happy. But it didn’t.

“No. I am not the woman you knew. I’m Hotaru now.” She felt indebted to him, and so she kept her voice cold and showed no emotion. She knew she could not go back with him, so she at least wanted to let him forget her and leave with no lingering regrets.

“…Why? You know I—”

“Don’t, Takumi-san. The two of us are over.”

“Enough of that. You don’t belong in a place like this.”

“I could say the same thing to you.”

She wanted to flee right then and there, but she didn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to run, nor to say another word. She didn’t have it in her to push him away twice. He violently reached out, but a strange man caught his hand.

“Leave it at that.”

He was around seventeen or eighteen. It was unusual for someone so young to come here, but he carried himself with confidence. His grip on Takumi’s arm was firm, not budging in the slightest as Takumi pushed and pulled.

“I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t like to meddle in a couple’s affairs, but surely you can see you’re frightening this woman?”

Takumi groaned, and his expression turned pained.

Hotaru impassively told the young man, “Please. That’s enough.”

She was relieved to be helped but couldn’t bear to see Takumi suffer. Was that contradictory of her? The young man said nothing as he shoved the arm, and Takumi with it, backward. He stepped forward to stand protectively before her. He didn’t make any threatening moves whatsoever, but Takumi still shrunk back, intimidated.

“I’ll…come again.” After a few moments, Takumi gave up and left down the dark alley. He left willingly, perhaps not because of the young man’s presence but because of Hotaru’s sad eyes.

“Thank you for helping me,” she said. The young man probably thought he was just chasing away a drunk, but she was still thankful.

“Not at all. But are you okay ending things like this? It sounded like he really plans to come again.”

“He’s welcome to. This is the Dove District, after all.”

Indeed, there was nothing odd at all about Takumi’s presence here. Strange and peculiar guests visited all the time, and Takumi certainly fell within those bounds. Or at least, that was what Hotaru told herself as she put on her best flirtatious smile.

The young man wasn’t shaken by her efforts at all; his expression didn’t shift in the slightest. He simply stared into her eyes, then closed them after seeming to peer into her depths.

“If you say so.” And with that, he left.

Hotaru was alone again, and the night was stiller than before. Reminded of the past by the silence, she hung her head.

Takumi had said he would come again. She was not afraid, but she was saddened to know that he hadn’t given up.

***

“Jin-san, w-wait up.”

After parting from Hotaru, the young man—Kadono Jinya—walked for a short distance. He stopped in his tracks when he heard his companion Aoba, out of breath, finally catch up.

She was a sex worker he’d met here in the Dove District. She was only sixteen, though, and had yet to take a single client. She wasn’t even at the level of apprentice yet either, technically speaking. She was thin and petite, and her large eyes made her seem even younger than she already was. Her outfit, a skirt on the shorter side and a blouse, had apparently been arranged by an acquaintance and did not make her look like much of a sex worker at all.

Aoba was the first person Jinya became acquainted with in the Dove District. They met by chance, and she had followed him around ever since. Her exact reasons for following him were a mystery she had kept hidden for the two months they’d known one another, but he didn’t exactly mind as she made a good area guide.

“What’d you run off so suddenly for? You just left me behind.”

“Sorry. Something caught my attention.”

He had asked her to guide him around the Dove District for yet another night. He’d abruptly run ahead when he saw the earlier quarrel, but he’d been certain she would chase after him. She looked a bit annoyed, though.

“Was it the person you’re looking for?”

“Unfortunately not.”

Jinya had come to this red-light district not to sleep with a woman but for another purpose. He was searching for a specific person, or rather, a certain demon.

“Well, there are more than three hundred sex workers here, and they come and go all the time. Many use the names of flowers as aliases, and you don’t even know the name or face of the person you’re looking for. Can we really find this mystery woman of yours?”

According to a certain rumor making the rounds, there was a peculiar sex worker in the Dove District, one who bore the name of a flower and was a tremendous beauty. Apparently she had a mysterious aura that could make any man feel like they were amid a dream.

“Who knows? Perhaps it’d be better if I don’t find her.”

“What now? Is that supposed to be some kind of riddle?”

“Just my honest thoughts.” Some unease stirred in his chest. His intuition was never wrong in times like these. “I doubt anything good can come from a place like this.”

Jinya gazed up at the night sky. The moonlight filtering through the clouds looked terribly cold.

2

RAIN POURED DOWN. His mind was too hazy to think. It felt like his brain was being churned.

He sat himself down on the side of the street and leaned against the wall of a café-style brothel to keep himself from falling over.

“Ugh…” he groaned. He wasn’t wounded or bleeding, but his mind wouldn’t function. He felt as though he would lose consciousness at any moment, partially because of the rain battering and chilling his body.

He stayed like that for a time until the rain abruptly stopped.

No. The sound of rainfall continued, but the drops no longer struck his body.

“You’ll catch a cold, sir.”

He forced his lifeless body to look up and saw a young woman holding an umbrella over him.

This was how Jinya met Aoba, a sex worker who wasn’t even apprenticed yet. She was a kind soul who smiled for him, a stranger, and didn’t care if she got wet while she was covering him with her umbrella. But he had to wonder, why did she look to be in tears?

The event that started all this took place about a week earlier.

Jinya spent the years of the war away from civilization, but he returned to Koyomiza theater in Shibuya, Tokyo after the war ended. He spent his time growing a few plants with Ryuuna, doing domestic chores, helping out with the theater, and looking after Kimiko’s grandchildren. It was a busy life.

He hadn’t forgotten his principal purpose, but demon rumors were few and far between at that time. The enigmatic Magatsume made no moves, and his days passed relatively peacefully. Eventually, though, a strange rumor reached his ears.

“Jii-chan, you got some time?”

This rumor was brought to him by Jingo, the eldest son of Yoshihiko and Kimiko. Despite Jinya’s protests, the couple had insisted on using the same “Jin” kanji character that was in Jinya’s name for Jingo. Jingo was quite fond of Jinya and called him “Jii-chan,” a cross between Kimiko’s nickname of “Jiiya” and the word “Gramps.”

“Sure. Need something?”

“No, I just made some isobe mochi and thought you might want to share. I’ve also got an interesting rumor for you.”

“Oh, really? I’ll gladly accept both.”

Jingo turned twenty-nine this year, had a son of his own, and his wife Asako was pregnant with their second child. What had once been a mischievous little boy had grown up into a fine parent, but to Jinya he was still something like an adorable grandkid. The reverse was true too; even as an adult, Jingo looked up to Jinya and often came by to chat over tea with him like this.

“Glad to hear it. You really like isobe mochi, huh?”

“I do. It was a rare treat in the past. I used to get excited for it as a kid.”

“I have a hard time imagining you as a child. Anyway, as I was saying…”

After they finished their isobe mochi, Jingo took a sip of his tea and changed the topic. Though he didn’t have the exact details, he knew the gist of Jinya’s goals and a little about Magatsume. That was why he occasionally came by to report any strange rumors he heard, no matter how inconsequential or far-fetched they sounded.

“Have you heard of the Dove District?”

“I have. Wasn’t it one of those ‘café districts’?”

“That’s the one. Apparently, a mysterious prostitute with the name of a flower can be found there,” he began. “One who gives the people who visit her a dreamlike experience.”

“That’s quite the interesting rumor.”

The daughters of Magatsume all had flower names, but that meant little here because many sex workers also used the names of flowers. However, the fact that this woman was in the Dove District of all places piqued Jinya’s interest.

“Ryuuna, take care of everyone for me.”

“Mm. Leave it to me.”

Jinya told the others what he would be doing, entrusted everyone’s safety to Ryuuna, and then left for the Dove District.

Thought to have been built by those from nearby Tamanoi who survived the wartime air raids, the Dove District had become one of the most popular postwar red-light districts. It had even grown large enough to be featured in media, but its history ran shallow, and it had little to do with such things as demon rumors. But if a daughter of Magatsume was really there, then Jinya would deal with them appropriately.

Jinya made his way to Mukojima to look into things, but the moment he stepped foot into the Dove District, something assailed his senses and rendered him unable to move.

“Ngh…” When he came to, he found himself in an unfamiliar room. Slowly, he propped himself up with sluggish arms. He could recall collapsing in the rain on the side of the street last night, but nothing more than that. He moved aside the duvet that covered him, lightly stretched his stiff muscles, and looked around at his surroundings once more. The room had the bed he was in, a small dresser, a drawer, and a flower vase on top of it. It was a modest but neat room, and from the small accessories he saw, he ventured to guess it was a woman’s. He had been changed into a yukata robe at some point. His leather sword bag was propped against the wall in the corner. In it was Yarai, his cherished sword that had been with him for many years now.

Nothing seemed to have been stolen, and he wasn’t bound. His headache was gone, and nothing felt wrong with his body.

“Oh, you’re awake.” The woman who had held an umbrella over him last night entered the room. It logically followed that she’d been the one to bring him here.

“You are…?”

“Aoba. I’m a, well, you know. A woman from this part of town.” Indirectly, she let him know she was a sex worker. He thought she looked a bit too young to be a lady of the night, but she probably had her circumstances, and they were no business of his. He turned to face her as she continued. “Do you remember me from last night?”

“A bit. You brought me here?”

“Ah ha ha, well, I couldn’t just leave you out in the rain, now, could I?”

“I see. Thank you. I am in your debt.”

A human might’ve died from being left out in the elements like that, but not a demon like him. Still, she had helped him out, so he thanked her with a small bow.

She looked surprised by this gesture, her eyes widening, but she quickly smiled. “Don’t worry about it. The fact that I stumbled upon you just means it was fate for me to help you out. By the way, how are you feeling? You seemed pretty out of sorts yesterday.”

“…I’m fine now.” He didn’t answer immediately. Something nagged at the back of his mind. His headache was gone, and his hazy consciousness was clear again, but something still felt off.

“What were you doing out in that pouring rain without an umbrella anyway? Oh wait, don’t tell me.” She made a face like she was walking on eggshells. “Did you get turned down by the girl you liked?”

She was completely off the mark, of course. Perhaps being rejected by a sex worker was a common enough occurrence here for that to leap to her mind. At any rate, Jinya himself didn’t know what had happened to him. He’d simply found himself abruptly buckling over in the Dove District—the events leading up to that point were a mystery.

“I’m…looking for somebody.” Jinya hadn’t forgotten the objective he’d come here with, though. He told Aoba the truth without obfuscation—though he wasn’t quite sure why he did so. “I heard there was a sex worker here with the name of a flower.”

Himawari, Jishibari, Azumagiku, Furutsubaki—all of Magatsume’s daughters bore the names of flowers. Sex workers often used flower names themselves, but a certain abnormality had led him to believe this lead was worth investigating. Having arrived, he now knew for sure that he had been right to follow up on his hunch.

“Aoba-dono, was it?”

“Umm, just Aoba is fine. ‘Dono’ is a bit embarrassing, ha ha. I’m not anyone important or anything.”

“Aoba it is, then. Can you tell me what year it is?”

Her eyes widened at the strange question, but he was completely serious. Understanding that, she answered, “It’s year thirty-four of Showa, of course.”

“And this part of town is called…?”

“The Dove District. You know, because it’s full of us cute ‘doves.’”

“Right. You did say earlier you were ‘a woman from this part of town.’ Can I take that to mean you consider yourself a sex worker?”

She nodded.

“I see…” he mumbled. “And nothing about that seems out of place to you, does it?”

Confused, she gave him a questioning look.

That all took place a week earlier.

Convinced something strange was going on in the Dove District, Jinya stayed and searched for the mystery sex worker with the name of a flower, as was his original plan. There was one thing he didn’t plan for, however.

“Jin-san, this way. Up next is the famous travel inn Kinomiya.”

Aoba ended up tagging along wherever he went. He turned down her company at first, but she insisted with surprising persistence. It was hard for him to refuse too strongly since he was living out of her place for the time being.

“You’re not from around these parts,” she had said. “It’ll take you more than a couple of days to find this person you’re after, so stay at my place. I’ll guide you around while I’m at it.”

He did think it was suspicious. What kind of young woman would ask a stranger—a man at that—to stay with her, even going as far as to provide a bed and meals? There were deadbeats bumming off girlfriends who worked here, and sometimes sex workers tried to trick customers into paying for expensive services by offering a free bed, but this was neither of those cases. Jinya had no interest in any service Aoba might offer—she apparently hadn’t even started taking clients yet. She would get no benefit, monetary or otherwise, from helping him. And Jinya wasn’t so naive as to blindly believe she was some kind of saint.

“Hm? Is something wrong, Jin-san?”

“…No.”

He hadn’t accepted her offer to help without reason, though. It was normal for a lady of the night to have a secret or two. If she intended to use him somehow, then so be it. He would use her for a place to stay in return.

If he grew careless and lost his life in his sleep, for example, then he would only have his own negligence to blame. If she was a minion of Magatsume, then he would be saved the trouble of finding a lead. So long as he stayed aware that she might be plotting against him, things should be fine.

“Any luck?”

“Another miss.”

He checked all the sex workers at Kinomiya, a famous travel inn brothel, and asked if there were any strange rumors from the area while he was at it. He came up empty-handed in both regards. They’d spent the whole week searching and hadn’t found a single piece of useful information.

“Oh well, that’s too bad. But I guess we are searching for a needle in a haystack here. Off to the next one?” Aoba showed no disappointment, smiling as she led the way. He understood she was purposefully keeping things light so he wouldn’t be dejected by their string of failures, but he couldn’t help but wonder what motive she might have to try so hard. She showed no sign of having any ill intentions toward him, and she sometimes looked at him with sad, wavering eyes that further dissuaded him from prying.

“Up next is this building here.”

She led him to a two-storied café-style building next. A small signboard with the words “Sakuraba Milk Hall” was out front. The place’s modern design strongly hinted at it belonging to the new wave of red-light districts.

“I’ll wait here outside,” she said. It was bad practice to take a sex worker into a competitor’s brothel, after all.

“Got it. Thanks.” He placed his hand on one of the two rather striking diagonal brass door handles and opened the door, which let out a long creak as it opened. Inside was a counter one would generally expect from a café or milk hall, as well as several waitresses on standby. He received a number of bewildered looks, likely because he looked so young.

“Welcome.” A man behind the counter, presumably the manager of the establishment, greeted Jinya. He had an effeminate drawl to his voice.

No matter the era, red-light districts operated about the same. Even if someone was a little young, they were a customer so long as they had at least some manners and could pay.

“I’ll have liquor. Actually, some milk if you would.”

“Sure thing.”

Jinya checked the faces of the waitresses as he approached the counter, then ordered a drink. He took a quick look around and felt somewhat nostalgic.

Milk halls had been at the height of their popularity in the Taisho years. After the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake, they were mostly supplanted by the newer trend of cafés, making them a rare sight. Jinya sighed, thinking to himself how the old replacing the new was simply the way of things as he received a glass of milk from the manager.

“Thanks. I have some questions I’d like to ask, if that’s all right.”

“Well, of course. Need help making a pick?” the manager joked.

The manager had brought the milk over, not one of the waitresses, as he’d sensed beforehand that Jinya had questions. He seemed to intuit Jinya wasn’t there to spend time with a woman. The milk was indirect payment for taking up the man’s time.

Jinya took a sip of the milk, then asked, “Is there an employee with the name of a flower working here?”

“Sorry, none at our place. I’m sure you can still find a girl who suits your fancy here, though.”

“Have you heard any strange rumors?”

“Rumors, dear? The Dove District hasn’t been around long, but it’s still a red-light district. You’ll find your usual ghost stories here and there, if that’s what you’re after.” The man shrugged, having nothing to offer on both accounts.

Jinya had come up empty-handed again, but he wasn’t disappointed. The point of his search wasn’t really the search itself but to see how the mysterious sex worker of rumor would respond. If she was really a daughter of Magatsume, then she should make a move at some point. By that logic, his efforts weren’t truly in vain.

Just then, a waitress came down from the second floor, her arm linked with a customer’s, and he recognized her. She was the sex worker he met last night, the one who’d gotten involved with some troublesome man.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s Hotaru-chan. One of our most popular girls,” the manager answered.

The woman seemed to take notice of Jinya as well, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. She looked away indifferently and leaned against her client, smiling warmly at him. She couldn’t be eyeing other men while she was on the job, or her client would feel slighted. That kind of consideration brought to mind the sex workers of old. With some nostalgia, Jinya felt this lady of the night was out of place in this modern red-light district.

“Girls like her were more common back in the Tamanoi days,” the manager said to himself. For a brief moment, his gaze turned melancholic.

It was a faux pas to dredge up the past in this line of business. Jinya tactfully made no comment on the manager’s words, finished his remaining milk in one go, and then took out some money and got up to pay. “Sorry for the bother.”

“Not at all. I love well-mannered men like you.” The manager smiled slightly, amused by Jinya’s antiquated mannerisms.

“Oh, one more thing.” As he left, Jinya recalled one last question he’d forgotten and looked over his shoulder. “Why do you remain here?”

The question seemed to hit a sore spot. There was weariness in the manager’s smile. “Good question. I suppose I have lingering regrets, and attachments too. We all have things we can’t bring ourselves to leave behind.”

His words resonated with Jinya, who carried his own attachments to the past. They met eyes and, feeling a kinship, both smiled softly.

“Feel free to come by again,” the manager said. “Maybe for a stiffer drink instead.”

“If I get the chance.” Jinya looked away and left. As he opened the door, it creaked again, as though it hadn’t been used in ages.

The blinding light of pink neon signs and street lamps greeted him as he stepped outside. This place was full of glitz and glamour, and yet it all felt so hollow.

“How’d it go, Jin-san?” Aoba quickly approached him like a puppy that had been waiting for its owner. She certainly had the slyness of a lady of the night, being able to put on such a cutesy act while hiding her hidden motives.

“No good. I met an interesting fellow, though.”

“Well, at least that’s something,” she said, smiling. He could see something lurking behind her smile, but he still chose to work with her for his own benefit.

“I suppose. Let’s end things here for tonight. Sorry for making you come with me this late.”

“Hey, don’t treat me like I’m some kind of child. I’m a proper woman of the Dove District. The night is still young for my kind.” She jokingly complained back, seeming to enjoy their banter.

Jinya looked down the cluttered street. Lust and greed; lecherous men and the women who tempted them. Raw, naked desire was always on full display in red-light districts, but one could also say they overflowed with a vitality unique to themselves. The Dove District was no exception, and that was why Jinya had felt a constant sense of unease ever since he arrived there.

To continue our story, we must first expand a little bit further on the history of the Dove District. Of the many burgeoning café districts, the Dove District was particularly popular and was even featured in various media, turning into something of a social phenomenon. It was often said that men who generally rode the Yamanote train line would go out of their way to make a pilgrimage to the après girls of the Dove District. The place only featured a handful of brothels directly after the war, but by the latter half of the Showa twenties, 108 establishments were all crammed into the fairly small part of town with over 300 sex workers in total.

But times changed. After the war, a rapidly rising awareness of women’s rights swept the nation, and prostitution was deemed a societal ill.

“Prostitution harms the dignity of the individual, is against sexual virtue, and disrupts the proper morals of society.”

The Japanese government passed the Prostitution Prevention Law in year thirty-one of the Showa era (1956 AD). In the name of protection and rehabilitation for sex workers, the café districts were ordered to suspend all business.

The law came into full effect in April of year thirty-three of the Showa era (1958 AD), and all in the industry were forced to find different paths. Many red-light districts vanished for good. Not even the newer café districts were safe. The Dove District suspended activity permanently on March 31st in year thirty-three of the Showa era. On the last day, they played Glow of the Firefly—a melancholic Japanese song that used the melody of Auld Lang Syne—as owners, sex workers, and patrons gathered to give the Dove District one last reluctant send-off.

It was currently April of Showa 34. By all accounts, the Dove District should have long ceased to exist.

“Is something wrong, Jin-san?” Aoba cocked her head, mystified as to why Jinya was staring at the neon lights. But he was the truly mystified one.

Why was Aoba here, claiming to be a lady of the night? And why did the Dove District still exist?

“Aoba…if I were to tell you the Dove District didn’t exist, would you believe me?”

“Ah ha ha, that again? You really like your jokes, don’t you?”

There was no point. She would just laugh off what he said. She saw nothing wrong with claiming to be a sex worker, nor anything unusual about the present situation.

It was unknown whether this was the work of Magatsume’s daughter or of something else entirely. At any rate, the information provided by Jingo had proved to be a hit. Jinya had his first worthwhile rumor to investigate in a long while.

“Oh, you’re that man…”

As he stood there, a woman called out to him. Hotaru, who had stepped out to see off a client, bowed her head gracefully.

“Thank you for your help the other night,” she said. “Are you on your way home?”

“I am.”

“I see. That’s a shame. I hope I’ll have your company next time.” She reached out and softly held his hand.

The manager had said she was one of their establishment’s most popular girls, and Jinya could see why. Her looks were fair, but more important than her physical attractiveness was her cunningness. Although she solicited herself to him, she did so without crudeness and maintained her wholesome image. She had the wiles to make one view her as something other than a sex worker. Rather than her body, she sold dreams one could lose themselves in. She was a proper lady of the night.

“If the opportunity arises, I would love to,” Jinya answered. This was the red-light district. Here, women used their wiles to ensnare men, but it was a man’s duty to play along and fall for the women and their sweet lies. He wouldn’t be so uncouth as to shake her hand off, not if he had any respect for that lady of the night he once knew.

The lively red-light district still felt odd to him, but he walked off into the night anyway, joined by Aoba. Hotaru watched them go, her thoughts unknown to them.

“Welcome to the Dove District. May you enjoy a pleasant dream here.”

Her faint voice reached him clearly, though.

In April of year thirty-three of the Showa era, the red-light districts all vanished. Only a mere decade after the war, their golden days became simply a memory. With the passage of the Prostitution Prevention Law, most brothels became apartments and lodging houses, the buildings living out their remaining lives as ordinary residences. They’ve weathered like you would expect over the half century leading up to the present Heisei era and scarcely bore a resemblance to what they were before.

The sights, old feelings, and even promises once sworn—all were swept away by time.

…But every now and then, I still thought back to the Dove District that couldn’t have possibly existed and the strange events that occurred within it.

The Lost

1

PART ONE: THE MANAGER OF SAKURABA MILK HALL

I must have lost my way at a fork in the road somewhere.

IN THE PAST, WHEN TAMANOI was still only wetlands, people built their homes wherever they liked. The roads came afterward, resulting in a wild, labyrinthine sprawl of streets. This gave the pleasure district of Tamanoi a distinct atmosphere compared to the orderly layouts of other such districts and, in later years, allowed it to flourish greatly as a haven for unlicensed prostitutes.

But that all eventually came to an end. On March 9th in year twenty of the Showa era (1945 AD), the Bombing of Tokyo occurred, and Tamanoi disappeared overnight. Nearly five hundred brothels were destroyed and more than a thousand sex workers perished.

Not a trace remained of that prosperous world. Staring at what had once been the place he called home, a man wavered.

He had a choice: He could stay in Tamanoi and try to rebuild, or he could wander somewhere new. He figured he would be starting over either way, so he decided he might as well move to a residential area between Tamanoi and Mukojima’s own red-light district—a residential area that would later become the Dove District. If someone asked him why he made this decision, he wouldn’t know how to respond. But he would probably eventually answer that he had simply been lost on his path.

And so, what had once been a youth working at one of Tamanoi’s questionable shops became the manager of a milk hall. He named the place Sakuraba Milk Hall. The name held no deep meaning; he simply thought a garden of sakura flower trees—a “sakuraba”—had a nice ring to it. He didn’t know if the place could be considered classy or not, but at least he could call it his own. He was fond of it.

“What’ll it be?”

“Single malt whiskey, if you have any. Any brand is fine.”

He poured the amber fluid into a tumbler glass. The ice block in it cracked sharply as it melted under the liquor. He loved that sound, as clear as the ring of a bell. He said so, and the young man leaning against the counter frowned.

“…Leg injury?”

“Hm? Ah, this? Yes, just something from when I was little.”

A childhood illness had left his right leg unable to move well. The young man had managed to grasp his leg problem over the counter just from his slight movements. He had quite the keen eye.

The young man looked to be around seventeen or eighteen. On his last visit, he had promised to get a stiffer drink if he came by again. His stern, serious look was uncommon of patrons to red-light districts, but the way he drank showed he was no stranger to liquor. He drank quietly, showing none of that tiresome wildness many youths had.

The young man savored the whiskey’s fragrance, took a sip, and smiled softly. “Times have changed.”

The whiskey was a domestic product. Though Japanese attempts at Western-style liquor didn’t sell much in the Taisho era, they were widely popular now.

The manager found himself in agreement. Times had changed. It used to be unthinkable for Japanese whiskey to be so widely accepted. Once frowned upon, it was now simply normal. How strange, indeed.

“They sure have. But I don’t hate change if we get better liquor out of it,” the manager drawled before sighing warmly. Most customers reacted in some way when they first heard this middle-aged man speak so effeminately, but the young man showed no surprise at all and simply enjoyed his drink. Did he simply not care, or was he being considerate? The manager could not tell, but he liked the way the young man drank.

“You said it,” the young man replied. He didn’t say much at all, hardly acting the way his age would suggest.

Every now and then, a most peculiar guest would visit the red-light district. The red-light district turned no one away, which was why an oddity would occasionally slip in. This young man, mature beyond his years, was likely of that sort.

It was true that the manager liked to talk effeminately, but it didn’t have any deeper meaning than that. He did take a considerable liking to this young man, though.

“Hey, Mister. Why not leave the drinking behind and come play with me?” Their peaceful moment was interrupted by the coquettish call of a woman. One of the waitresses had come over to try and score a client. She was a young but fully competent sex worker. Confident in her looks, she flaunted her body.

The young man gave her a glimpse, then said, “No thanks.”

She didn’t back down, however. From the man and the manager’s comfortable interaction, she figured they were old acquaintances and assumed that to mean he had more money than his youthful appearance let on.

“I’m sorry, Akemi-chan. This man’s here for me today,” the manager said. He had a decent grasp of what the young man was after. He wasn’t there for women but on a search for something else.

Akemi, not knowing the young man’s motives, felt offended that her advances weren’t working and looked at him coldly. “Don’t tell me you’re penniless. Or maybe you prefer something other than women?”

“You got me. How’d you know?” replied the young man without missing a beat. He smiled softly, leaving the waitress flabbergasted. Her mouth dropped as she froze in shock. He lifted his whiskey glass as if to show it off, the amber liquid inside swaying.

His reply took the manager by surprise as well. He tried but failed to hold back his laughter. Who knew the young man had such a playful side to him?

“…Ah.” Belatedly, Akemi realized the young man meant he preferred liquor over women, and her face went red with anger. Her womanly pride must have felt hurt, with her advances having failed and her own insult turned against her. She stormed away, stomping loudly.

“Don’t tease my girls too much, if you could. And sorry for the bother,” the manager said.

“It was no bother at all.” The young man took another sip from his glass. His expression didn’t shift much, but the manager thought he could understand what he felt. The same feelings ran through him as well.

“She’s a good girl, that Akemi-chan. Good enough to have men falling for her,” the manager said.

“But not to make men fall for her?”

“No. Sadly, that’s not in style these days.”

The Dove District was also known as the Red-Light District of the Après. “Après” was derived from the French word après-guerre, meaning post-war. The word was originally used to refer to shifting trends in literature and art, but after the Second World War, it came to describe the youths in Japan who acted unbound by traditional thought and morality.

As a new, burgeoning red-light district, many of the Dove’s sex workers were young women who started the trade after the war. Unlike the pleasure districts rich with history like Yoshiwara, it was home to few ladies of the night who knew the proper art of taking customers. Many men still flocked to the Dove District anyway, taken with the more amateur, and perhaps genuine, service its women provided.

None could say whether this change was for better or worse, but it was a bit sad to see. The pleasure districts of old were full of dreams and women worthy of dreaming with. Men would visit, knowing full well it was all a lie but still eager to “fall for” the women. The sex workers of the Dove District sold their young bodies but not dreams. Fleeting dreams of love were simply out of style these days.

“How dull,” the young man said.

“Isn’t it also dull to pay money for a dream?”

“There’s something to be appreciated in maintaining the facade.”

“Ah, like with Shibaraku? My, how youthful you are.”

The men who visited the red-light districts knew the dreams offered there were not real. But the same could be said for Shibaraku, one of Kabuki theater’s Eighteen Great Plays, in which Kamakura Gongoro Kagemasa appeared just as some characters were about to be beheaded. The hero arrived in the nick of time and struck a fierce pose. It was expected, and it was the whole point. It would be silly to watch the play and complain that it was unrealistic. Similarly, it was tactless to ridicule those who bought and sold fleeting dreams of love.

“Still, you could’ve acted at least a little flustered for poor Akemi. Girls care about what men think of them, you know?” the manager said. The young man’s response to her advances was no different than saying there was nothing alluring about her. Of course, the one out of line had been her. The manager wasn’t faulting the young man for anything, just teasing him for his excessive stoicism.

“I used to know this one streetwalker,” the young man began with a nostalgic smile. The ice block in his glass, blurred by the amber liquid, cracked sharply. “She was a woman who could read people’s hearts like nothing. I think of her as the way a lady of the night is supposed to be. I can’t help but have high standards because of her.”

“An old flame?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but no. Nothing of the sort.” With those words, the young man downed the last of his drink and placed the glass on the counter. “Thanks for the drink. I certainly enjoyed myself.”

“Glad to hear it. I enjoyed having you as well. Now if you’d just spend a night with one of my girls, then you’d be the perfect customer.” The manager looked appraisingly into the eyes of the young man, who didn’t flinch one bit.

“I can do nothing about that.”

“Don’t any my girls catch your fancy?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just more interested in you than them.”

“Why, I’m flattered. My tastes lie elsewhere, though.”

“What a coincidence. Mine do as well.”

Hidden underneath their frivolous words, they probed one another. The young man’s statement about being interested in the manager was likely true. However, he wasn’t interested in him sexually—it was because he suspected this milk hall was close to the hidden truth of the Dove District. He didn’t come out and directly say so, though. Perhaps he thought it would be pointless, or perhaps he had other reasons to refrain.

“Are you sure you want to leave so soon? I was under the impression you had some questions to ask.”

“My questions are a bit too heavy to pair with this liquor. I’ll ask them when I feel ready for answers.”

He truly was an old-fashioned young man. Enjoying his personality, the manager stifled some laughter.

“Oh, one more thing before I go. I’d have used Moonlight Mask as an example instead of Shibaraku.” The young man seemed to enjoy the rapport between the two of them as well. The manager frowned, uncertain what he was getting at. The young man triumphantly continued, “Kamakura Gongoro is a bit of an antiquated character. Don’t you think something from this era would make more sense?”

Taken aback, the manager’s eyes widened. As if he had hoped for that exact reaction, the young man made a slight smile of victory.

***

“On your way out?”

After paying, Jinya was about to leave when a waitress called out to him. He turned around and saw Hotaru trotting over to see him off.

“Yeah. Sorry, I’m just here to drink today.”

“Is that so? Please do come again, for drinking or otherwise.”

“Sure thing.”

She drew close and leaned in, almost brushing against him. After a pregnant pause, she gave him a peck and then smiled seductively.

A scent tickled his nose—perhaps perfume? Or maybe it was simply her natural odor. Either way, Jinya was beside himself with admiration for her charm, which befitted a true lady of the night.

“…Are my advances not to your liking?” she asked curiously. She seemed to find it strange that a young man like Jinya showed such little reaction to her flirtations.

“Not at all. You’re so captivating that I want nothing more than to let myself fall for you.”

“Thank goodness. I’m relieved.”

“But I currently depend on another sex worker. I would be remiss to ignore her and have fun with another,” he said with a wry grin.

“A shame. But I suppose I shouldn’t be taking another woman’s man, now, should I?” She giggled and backed off easily, having expected nothing in the first place. Still, she must have approached him for a reason.

“Are you still thinking about that man?” he asked. He must have hit the mark, because her professional visage faded and was replaced with the look of a vulnerable woman. She quickly fixed her expression, but her eyes still showed some sorrow.

“…Yes.”

“Like I said before, he will come again. Of that I’m certain.”

Her shoulders trembled slightly. Jinya knew nothing of their relationship, and she probably had no inclination to share.

“You sound so sure.”

“Because I am. Be careful about being alone at night,” he warned.

She sighed wearily. “I can’t do much there. Even when I’m in someone else’s arms, there isn’t a night I’m not alone.”

After leaving Sakuraba Milk Hall behind, Jinya gazed out at the cluttered streetscape as he walked. This Dove District that shouldn’t exist was alive and thriving. The people he saw walking to and fro showed no signs they thought anything was unusual about their location.

The manager of Sakuraba Milk Hall was a peculiar man who spoke effeminately, but that wasn’t what caught Jinya’s interest. The manager probably knew something.Jinya couldn’t be sure, but his intuition told him he was on the right track.

He didn’t want to overstep too soon, though. One wrong move and he could lose his only lead—and, more importantly, a place to drink quality liquor. He still hadn’t found the sex worker with the name of a flower and there were many mysteries left, so he would let things play out for the time being. He would make his move once the time was right.

“Oh, welcome back, Jin-san.”

On his way back, he bumped into Aoba, who had probably come out to look for him. She waved as she trotted over.

He knew where the milk hall was and didn’t need a guide. That was what he’d told Aoba to get her to let him go alone. She probably wanted to complain about being left behind and about him smelling of liquor, but she greeted him with a smile instead. Jinya decided not to think too hard about why that was.

“You don’t have to worry about me running away,” he said.

“Ah ha ha. Oh, you. What are you talking about?”

After some light banter, they walked side by side. Their night walk was pleasant. In no time at all, Aoba’s home came into view: an apartment on a street with cafés on one side and some stores on the other. Aoba was fifteen, maybe sixteen at most. Though she claimed to be a sex worker, she wasn’t even in training yet and hadn’t taken a customer. Naturally, she couldn’t rent a room at a brothel, so instead she lived here alone. She did do odd jobs at a brothel, though, and she got a discount on the apartment through the manager’s connections.

It was fairly late by the time they returned to her apartment. All that remained for them to do was go to bed—in the non-sexual sense, of course. Jinya was currently a freeloader, no better than the deadbeats who sponged off their girlfriends like red-light districts were known for. Feeling a bit guilty about that, he tried to make up for it in whatever small ways he could.

“Here.”

“Oh, thanks.”

They sat around a small table and drank hot tea. A few days after he started living here, he had suggested they regularly chat before going to sleep, and she’d readily agreed. They both wanted to probe one another for information, but nothing useful ended up coming out of it. Before they knew it, their chats really became just chats.

“…And that was when the hairpin took the form of a cuckoo and returned to the skies with her wisteria brother.”

“Wow. What a happy ending.”

Aoba had a thing for unusual and emotional stories. Fortunately, Jinya knew many of those. He recounted the strange events of his past as they happened, but she didn’t need any embellishment to find them entertaining. She properly looked her age for once as she listened to his stories. Personally, Jinya didn’t mind these late-night chats one bit.

“Let’s leave it at that for tonight,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. It’s getting pretty late. What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“I’ll be looking for the sex worker who’s named after a flower again. Would you mind being my guide?”

“Not at all.” She flashed him a smile. She took every opportunity she could get to be at his side. It was plain as day that she had some ulterior motives, but he still couldn’t figure out what those motives might be.

The mysteries only piled higher and higher. Disappointed with his lack of progress, he sighed.

“But before we look, there’s somewhere I want to take you,” she said.

“I don’t mind. I owe you, anyway.”

“Good. It’ll just be a quick stop by Ichikawa.”

Ichikawa was the shop Aoba worked at, not as a sex worker, but as a handler of odd jobs like washing dishes, cleaning, and so on. He knew the place because she’d mentioned it before, but it apparently had no sex workers with flower names, so he skipped visiting it.

“Nanao-san, this sex worker who’s basically also the manager, wants to meet you.”

Apparently this Nanao was also the one who’d gotten the apartment for Aoba. Since she felt indebted to her, Aoba had wound up promising to bring Jinya without actually checking with him beforehand.

Jinya agreed to go, though he mentioned he wasn’t a particularly interesting guy to meet. He owed Aoba a bit and could at least afford to help her save face.

“Sorry for the trouble. And thanks.” Aoba smiled with relief—a rare honest reaction from her. Her respect for Nanao was evident. Aoba seemed truly happy she didn’t have to let her boss down.

The next day arrived. Once the evening sun was in the sky and the streets took on a dark-orange color, Jinya and Aoba visited a small, cozy shop with a sign that said “Ichikawa” out front.

This shop was different from the milk halls and cafés that were so common in the area. Ichikawa offered rooms to sleep with women in and nothing else. The walls of the building were tiled, giving it a passably modern look. But the facade was traditional Japanese-style, making it unclear what aesthetic the shop was aiming for.

“Here we are. Come on now, in you go.”

Stepping inside, he was met with a wood-floored corridor instead of an open space for drinking or dining like one might see in another establishment. It looked like this was once a normal home that was repurposed into a shop. He proceeded toward the back of the narrow corridor until he reached a wooden door. According to Aoba, this was where Nanao was.

Aoba urged him inside, and he obliged. The room had wooden furniture that matched the aesthetic of the place. A woman waited for them inside, and Jinya’s gaze went cold and sharp when he saw her.

“Oh, Aoba-chan. And who might this be?” the woman said with a seductive drawl.

“Hello, Nanao-san. I brought Jin-san like I promised.”

“Ah, so we finally meet. Sorry for all the trouble, dear.”

“Not at all. I was glad to be of help.”

Aoba’s fondness for Nanao was clear from the way they talked, but Jinya continued to stare.

Nanao had beautiful, well-groomed hair that came to her shoulders, and her looks were fair. She was pretty, no doubt, but she wasn’t a drop-dead gorgeous beauty or anything of that sort. Even so, Jinya couldn’t take his eyes off her. His body felt stiff because he hadn’t expected the two of them to meet so suddenly.

“I guess these things happen from time to time,” he murmured.

Aoba didn’t understand what his words meant, but Nanao did. The corners of her lips curved into a wicked grin.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Jin-san, was it? Aoba has told me so, so much about you…as has my mother.”

She didn’t even try to hide her demonic air or her identity. Now that he really thought about it, this possibility had always been on the table.

Azumagiku gained Shirayuki’s exact image by taking in her skull. Jishibari took Nagumo Kazusa’s image, and Furutsubaki took Saegusa Sahiro’s. Except for Himawari, every one of Magatsume’s daughters had to take in an aspect of a person to gain a sense of self and an appearance.

This was nothing to be surprised about at all, then. If they could consume someone to take their appearance, their voice, and even their memories—they could become that person. Their meeting here was a coincidence, but it was one that had always been possible. He just hadn’t thought it out that far.

“Oh, where are my manners? I am Nanao, a sex worker and the temporary manager of this place.”

Jinya could tell—perhaps because he’d fought them so many times or perhaps because he’d devoured a few—that this sex worker Aoba looked up to was a daughter of Magatsume. Or, to put it more accurately, she was someone who had been consumed by a daughter of Magatsume.

2

BROTHELS HAD A UNIQUE SMELL to them. There weren’t many shops specializing in bath services in the Dove District, but there was still a sweet, musty smell in the air. The smell was less like that of flowers and more akin to ripened fruit. It was a smell familiar to all red-light districts, one that hadn’t changed even as the industry did.

The night grew long. Midnight passed, and the red-light district came to life. Men entered Sakuraba Milk Hall, tempted by sweet smells, and ogled the waitresses as they tried to make a choice.

The ice melted with a refreshing crack. Jinya leaned against the counter as he always did and drank indifferently.

“Just here to drink again?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“I don’t mind, but…” The manager glanced toward the waitresses and grinned.

Jinya followed his gaze and saw one of them looking his way with a huffy glare. Her name was Akemi, he faintly recalled. She averted her gaze when their eyes met. It seemed he was disliked.

“Perhaps I teased her too much?”

“It’s fine. Akemi-chan is proud, but she doesn’t hold grudges forever. She’ll forgive you in time,” the manager said with a smile.

Jinya nodded, then took another drink of his whiskey. The fragrance wafting to his nose had an elegance that Japanese liquor lacked. It had made him frown when he first tried it, but he was used to it now. One could get used to most things with time. Whether that was a good or bad thing, he did not know.

“Is tonight’s drink not to your liking?” The manager’s question had nothing to do with the drink. He saw something was on Jinya’s mind and was giving him an opportunity to talk without pressuring him to do so. If Jinya didn’t wish to open up, he could simply say the drink was fine, and the manager wouldn’t push any further.

“I found the sex worker I was after,” Jinya replied. He didn’t have to tell the truth, but he did it anyway.

“Well, isn’t that good?”

“I wonder. It might’ve been better if I’d never found her.”

“Is that so? Why might that be?”

Jinya took another drink, then let out a small sigh. A warmth seeped through his stomach, and he formed his words before it could cool off. “This sex worker is my niece…”

The manager would probably misunderstand what that meant to Jinya, but there was nothing wrong with that. Jinya just wanted to grumble. Whether he was understood or not wasn’t important.

“Ah. You didn’t want to see her become a sex worker?”

“It’s not that. My relationship with her mother—my sister—isn’t the best. I wish I hadn’t met her at all.”

“But you looked for her anyway. Why?”

Jinya was at a loss when faced with that question. He fiddled with the glass in his hand as he thought. It was true that he didn’t want to meet this daughter of Magatsume, but he’d looked for the sex worker with the name of a flower anyway. He was puzzled over why that was, but if he were forced to give an answer, he would say…

“…It’s probably because I felt lost.”

It wasn’t because he wanted to discover the truth of this Dove District that shouldn’t have existed. He’d looked for her because he was lost, and nothing more.

***

At the very start of it all, he lost everything. He failed to protect the woman he loved and his family, saw everything he believed in get trampled on, and took his first step forward out of nothing but hatred.

Human, for what purpose do you wield your blade? That question once posed to him had continued to haunt him ever since.

In Edo times, he surrendered himself to his hatred and lived as it dictated. He wanted to become stronger, and that desire became everything to him. But a woman whose smile was as beautiful as a flower showed him there was solace to be found along his mistaken path. From her, he learned to walk slowly again.

In Meiji times, he had a friend who was always ready to lend a hand and a daughter who said she would stay with him as family. He learned there was strength to be found in days of peace, but he ultimately failed to prove the worth of such strength. He lost all that he had gained, and hatred flared in him once more.

In Taisho times, he clung desperately to what he had. He hated his own weakness and his perpetual failure to protect what was dear to him, so he fought with all his soul and was finally rewarded with a smile at the end. That girl probably had no idea how much her gratitude meant to him.

Finally, the Showa era. Aoba brought him to this room in the brothel called Ichikawa, where he came face-to-face with someone his destiny was tied to.

“Aoba-chan, if you would,” Nanao said.

“Of course. You’d better not do anything to her while I’m gone, Jin-san,” Aoba warned.

“But doing things with men is my job, isn’t it?” Nanao joked.

Aoba left readily, as if she’d been informed beforehand that Nanao wanted to talk privately.

It was just Jinya and Nanao now. Jinya made no move to sit and instead cautiously drew his left leg back a little. She remained where she was, sitting lazily with her legs to one side.

“Does it smell? I’m sorry, I just had a client in a moment ago,” she said. As there was little ventilation, the air remained stagnant. It teemed with the scent of sweat and something else—the smell of sex. Nanao apologized without much remorse. Without moving from her seat or bothering to fix her disheveled clothes, she gave a bored yawn. She was teasing him.

“Is Nanao your name, or that body’s?” Having no intention of being swept into her pace, Jinya forced the conversation forward. His voice was firmer than it was when he talked to Aoba. Though Nanao was a woman, she was also the daughter of his sworn enemy. He didn’t feel like playing games with her.

“This body’s. But it’s still the name of a ‘flower,’ is it not?” Red-light districts were also commonly known as “flower districts” in Japanese—the flowers referring to the sex workers, just as the doves in “Dove District” did. She was making a play on words.

She must have wandered into the Dove District at some point as a featureless demon with the name of a flower. She then consumed a sex worker named Nanao, thereby gaining a will and a human appearance, and had since blended in with her surroundings—effectively becoming Nanao.

As someone who cannibalized his own kind, Jinya couldn’t fault her for consuming a human. The grimace on his face was there for a different reason. “Is it you Aoba looks up to, or the real Nanao?”

He didn’t know how long it had been since this daughter of Magatsume became Nanao. Perhaps Aoba knew the real one, perhaps not. Knowing wouldn’t change a thing. He knew his question was meaningless, but he cared enough about Aoba to ask it anyway.

“Oh my. You’re a softer man than I thought. How can someone so soft hope to kill his own little sister?” She made a shrill, energetic giggle, but he felt no malice or hostility from her. This was just a sex worker flirtatiously teasing a man.

“I take it you have no intention of answering?” he said a bit strongly.

“What would it mean if I did answer?” She replied with the plain truth. The events leading up to her becoming Nanao would not change the way Jinya dealt with her. “Perhaps I deceived sweet little Aoba-chan. Perhaps her adoration for me is real. It doesn’t matter, does it? This will all end the same way.”

Indeed, the truth didn’t matter. Jinya would end up killing this daughter of Magatsume regardless. Aoba would lose someone dear to her, no matter where the truth lay.

“So? What’ll it be, then? Are you going to kill me?” Nanao said teasingly, as though daring him to become a murderer in Aoba’s presence.

He shot her a cold gaze, but she was unfazed. She had guts—or perhaps she was just underestimating him. Either way, she was troublesome to deal with.

“No,” he said. At least, not yet.

“Well, that’s a relief. Oh, just to put it out there, I didn’t intend for things to end up this way.”

“I know.”

She couldn’t have planned that Jinya would grow close to Aoba. She might have been using the coincidence against him, but he couldn’t fault her for that. It didn’t really matter much, anyway. When the need arrived, he would kill Nanao without hesitation. He was the kind of man to put his own goals before Aoba’s feelings. For the time being, he would settle for just asking questions. He could think about how he would kill her later.

“Why did you want to meet me?” he asked. It was the obvious question to lead with. Nanao was a daughter of Magatsume. By all means, she should have been his enemy. It was strange for her to take the initiative and meet him like this.

Evasively, she said, “Who knows? Maybe I thought it would be exciting to start a scandalous affair with my own uncle?”

“Take this seriously.”

“Boo. You’re no fun.” She brought her arms up and stretched deeply, arching her back. The demon that devoured many of her own sisters was in front of her, and yet she remained so relaxed.

“…Just how are you a part of her?” he murmured to himself. All of Magatsume’s daughters were formed from the parts of her own heart she removed from herself. The woman Nanao took in might possibly have influenced her somewhat, but by all means, Nanao should’ve been a side of Suzune. This bawdy woman full of composure bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Suzune he knew.

Nanao giggled scornfully. “You think you knew your sister? It’s because you knew nothing about her that things turned out like they did.”

That hit a sore spot. He and Suzune had been a loving family once, before they came to hate one another. But he hadn’t really been looking at her then, had he?

“You’re right. You know just the right words to say.”

“Of course. I am a sex worker, after all.”

He ignored her suppressed laughter. They were getting nowhere. Sitting down with a thud, he looked her squarely in the eyes. “Nanao, why did you want to meet me?”

She sensed the change in mood, and her gaze became a touch more serious. The listless atmosphere was still there, but the stagnant air seemed to drop a few degrees.

“I wanted to talk with you, I suppose,” she said defeatedly. Her coquettish look disappeared, and a faint, transient smile took its place. Now she was probably speaking her true feelings. “Well, I really had two reasons. The first is that I simply wanted to talk to you. No ulterior motives. I felt sentimental, is all. Let me guess, you probably thought my mother hatched some plot and sent me after you?”

“Yeah. I’ve just about had enough of her crazy schemes, though.”

“Ah ha ha! That’s hilarious.” She laughed from the heart, not at what Jinya said but at how silly her own mother sounded. “But, no, none of that. My mother abandoned me long ago. I have no reason to help her.”

“You… What?”

“You heard correct. My other sisters are dear to my mother, but she has no need for me. So I was abandoned, drifted my way here, and became a sex worker. An all-too-common story for those in the Dove District, really.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, showing no emotion. She was clearly different from the other daughters he’d met until now. Furutsubaki was an exception given her circumstances, and there were differences in the degrees of their affection, but all the other daughters had loved Magatsume and followed her every command.

“But I have freedom thanks to that, so I suppose I can’t complain.”

“Wait, but that means…”

“Yes. I have nothing to do with what is going on with the Dove District. If anything, I’m another victim.”

He had looked for her mostly because he expected a daughter of Magatsume to be behind all this, but demons could not lie. His belief had been wrong.

“Which brings me to my other reason for meeting you. These kinds of supernatural cases are your specialty, are they not? Won’t you be a dear and do something about all this for me?”

As a daughter of Magatsume, Nanao knew that Jinya had dealt with these kinds of supernatural cases in the Edo and Meiji eras. How strange it was to think he would be back at it a hundred years later.

“I have a job for the master swordsman who slays demons with but a single strike. Resolve the mystery of the Dove District that shouldn’t exist. Your reward will be, let’s see… Perhaps my ability will be payment enough?” It was a simple deal. She would willingly give him her life if he brought an end to whatever was going on. She spoke her words off-handedly, as if she were merely continuing a joke.

His mind came to a halt; he was unable to read her intent. She must have picked up on his bewilderment, because she smiled.

“It was nice meeting you. I have little to offer, but feel free to come by again if you don’t mind. If you have the money, I’ll make time for you whenever,” she joked.

She seemed to be in genuine high spirits. He didn’t reply, not knowing what to say.

***

“…It’s probably because I felt lost.”

Before Jinya knew it, Akemi and a couple of other waitresses found clients, and the milk hall became rather empty. He recalled his exchange with Nanao as he took another drink from his glass.

The flavor tasted off. He finished his drink but declined a refill when it was offered. Liquor was to be enjoyed. It was wasteful to drink with his mind in its current shape.

“I see,” the manager remarked and followed up with nothing more.

Jinya was thankful for the silence. Even though it was empty, he fiddled with the glass in his hand and stared down at the counter. He noticed the manager moved somewhat stiffly.

The manager noticed his gaze, stopped what he was doing, and grinned wryly. “Maybe I mentioned it before, but I had an illness when I was young. Left my right leg paralyzed.”

“You don’t use a cane?”

“No. It’d get in the way of my work, so I use a leg brace. I’m used to having a bad leg, though. Doesn’t get in the way of most tasks.”

He made small talk as he wiped some glasses. His disability didn’t seem to weigh on his mind much; he could even joke about it. He had probably received more looks of pity than he cared for ever since he was a child.

“But I guess it was rough for me in the past,” he continued. He squinted sadly. “Children are cruel, you know? I had friends, but I couldn’t run with them. I always got left behind.”

His voice was tinged with nostalgia, but he sounded more like he was getting something off his chest than anything. His expression grew softer with each word, as though whatever burdened him was being cleared away.

“I don’t even know how many times I’ve cursed myself for having this leg, but it also meant that I didn’t have to go to war. You never know what will turn out to be a blessing in life.”

“You call it a blessing, but you don’t sound happy about it,” Jinya said.

“…I suppose not. In the end, I got left behind again because of this leg. My friends all ran and ran, rushing forward to die for the country’s sake and leaving me all alone.” He gazed off into the distance, to someplace else.

“Do you wish you could have died with them?” Jinya bluntly asked. He chose not to mince his words out of respect. Seeming to understand, the manager faintly smiled.

“…To tell the truth? I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d wish for.”

The nation came together as one to fight in the Pacific War. All of the manager’s friends went to battle and ultimately perished for their country.

The Great Empire will never lose!

If we don’t fight, who will?

Everyone ran forward as fast as they could. He could do nothing but watch as they left him behind, and he survived because of it. How was he supposed to feel about that? Should he wish he could have fought with his friends and died? Or should he be happy to be alive? More than a decade had passed since the war ended, but he still didn’t know.

“I haven’t a clue what I should have done. I feel like I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.” He made a wry, tired smile. Though he was in his forties, he looked helpless like a child. A child trying to run but unable to catch up as he begged in tears for others not to leave him behind.

“We’re not too different,” Jinya said. No matter how hard he ran, he was often too late when it mattered. That was why he could see the pain hiding underneath the manager’s ambiguous smile, and why he could now guess the reason for the Dove District’s persistence. “Sorry. That’ll be all for me today.”

“Oh? I understand. Feel free to come by again.”

As Jinya stood, the heavy atmosphere fell away. The two returned to being strangers, two ships passing in the night. But as they passed, they had glimpsed each other and seen they were not alone.

Two lost men wandered into this place and stayed. That was the kind of anomaly he was dealing with.

3

BEFORE HE BECAME the manager of Sakuraba Milk Hall, he felt small and inferior. During the war, almost every adult man was conscripted, and even students were mobilized for labor. He was spared the battlefield because of his bad leg, but he was just as useless elsewhere. He lacked the education to work a desk job, and he wasn’t shameless enough to stay home and leech off his family, so he left home as if he was running away.

That was how he came to work as an assistant handling odd jobs in one of Tamanoi’s questionable shops, and his decision proved wise. Even in those times, Tamanoi was flourishing. Men sought dreams to forget the fears brought about by the war.

He had to work hard to earn his place, but that was better than being useless. He was happy to be one of the many who kept the dream of the glamorous, neon-lit world alive. His boss and the women who worked at his place liked him. He wasn’t the fastest at his job, but a man’s help was still rare with most being conscripted. He worked earnestly, and though his bad leg sometimes got in the way, he never slacked. His efforts were recognized by those around him, and he, who had always thought of himself as a lesser person, found fulfillment in this dingy red-light district alley.

But every day, after he worked himself dead tired and took a moment to breathe, he would be gripped with an indescribable unease. Where it came from, and why it worried him so, he did not know.

On March 9th in year twenty of the Showa era (1945 AD), the Bombing of Tokyo occurred, and Tamanoi disappeared overnight. Nearly five hundred brothels and more than a thousand sex workers perished.

As he stared at the burned remains of what had been his home, his former boss made a suggestion. “The Tamanoi folks are going to buy up this one residential district. Why not try running your own shop there?” And that was how he came to be in what would later become the Dove District.

Perhaps he went with it because he figured he would rather try something new if he was to toil all the same. Perhaps he was simply happy to have his previous efforts recognized and be entrusted with a business of his own. To tell the truth, he did not know. Any reason he came up with sounded like no more than an excuse. For reasons even he didn’t understand, he came to the Dove District and settled down as the manager of Sakuraba Milk Hall.

But nothing changed. He worked earnestly and tirelessly as the manager, but in his spare moments the unease returned.

“…I must be lost as well.” With resignation in his voice, the manager let out a similarly feeble murmur. The young man had already left and the waitresses were busy with their work, leaving him alone downstairs. It was quiet enough to hear the ticking of the clock, giving rise to all kinds of unwanted thoughts. The receding figures of his friends always came to mind in moments like this.

Age had given him wisdom. As he was now, he felt he understood why he had come to this place.

“I…”

He was likely the first to realize the truth behind the Dove District.

***

“Heading home?”

Jinya exited Sakuraba Milk Hall and encountered Hotaru right outside the entrance, gazing up at the night sky. She pushed her hair back to show flushed skin, an alluring action. She seemed a bit older than most of the Dove District’s sex workers, but she had the grace and charm to make up for it.

“Yeah. Were you seeing a customer off?”

“Stargazing. Or is that a little too pretentious a claim?” She smiled, as though to make Jinya quickly forget about another man being with her. She never dropped her act. Being a lady of the night was ingrained in her.

“Sorry, were you waiting out of consideration for us?” asked Jinya. He figured she’d stayed outside after seeing off her customer so she wouldn’t overhear his conversation with the manager.

She looked momentarily bewildered, perhaps because he had guessed right. “I suppose… I wasn’t sure if I should be around to hear.”

“If it was something I minded people overhearing, I wouldn’t have brought it up in a place like this. The same goes for your boss.”

“You’re too kind… But the thoughts of a lady of the night are like an open book to you, huh? I guess I’m still too green.” She seemed amused rather than offended by their exchange.

“Have you been working here long?” he asked.

“Yes, ever since I decided to become a sex worker. The manager has taken good care of me.”

“Then you were here around spring last year?”

“Of course. I have no home to return to. I’m here in spring, and in summer, fall, and winter as well.”

“I see. Oh, by the way, would you happen to know what year of Showa it currently is?”

She giggled and answered, “Year thirty-four, of course.”

To her, his question probably sounded like a lousy attempt at being considerate by changing the topic. But no, he was probing for information, and the result was what he’d expected: She, too, saw nothing strange about the current year or the fact that the Dove District still existed.

“Can I ask you something too?” she asked. “Are you an old acquaintance of the manager?”

“No, it hasn’t even been a month since we first met. Why?”

“No reason. It’s just that I haven’t seen him show that kind of weakness to anyone before.”

Jinya only knew the manager as a strange man who talked like a woman, but he had seen how earnest he was toward his work and what a calm character he was. He also kept his walls up high, something that likely came with running a brothel. Hotaru must have had a similar impression of him, and so it surprised her to see him act so vulnerable in front of Jinya.

“Weakness, huh…” mused Jinya.

“Not the word you’d use?”

“It’s not. He’s realized his truth but is on the fence about how he ought to be. I don’t think it’s fair to call him weak for trying to figure that out.”

Just as women experienced the pain of labor when they brought life into this world, people would always feel pain when they reached for something new. That was a fact of life. Jinya didn’t want to call such a thing weakness.

“He’s trying to come to terms with himself. It might be a bit too late for him, but he’s trying.” He stopped himself short of adding That’s why he’s here. Jinya couldn’t speak for others. He still had to come to terms with things himself.

“He lets his walls down for you, huh?” said Hotaru.

“Pardon?”

“The manager. You understand him well, so he opens up to you.”

“Ah, I wonder. Some things are just easier to tell a stranger.”

“Perhaps,” she said after a pause. “But I’m sure this time it’s because you two can relate to one another.”

She was right. Jinya and the manager both had pasts they were helpless to change. They couldn’t help but understand each other’s pain. They shared a bond built not out of time but of sympathy.

Hotaru’s expression clouded briefly. She had said too much. She hardly knew Jinya; he wasn’t even a client of hers. This was shameful behavior for a lady of the night.

“At my age, it’s no surprise that I have a few memories of bumping my toe into dressers.” He smiled thinly, confirming what she said out of courtesy and keeping things vague out of consideration. No one could truly understand another person’s pain. One’s lived tragedies were no more relatable than a story of bumping one’s toe. In a roundabout way, he was telling her not to worry about her overstepping. She grasped that and nodded.

“Does your toe still hurt?” she asked hesitantly, not as Hotaru the sex worker but as just some woman. Her gaze, as though fleeing his, turned to the sky. Her face in profile appeared forlorn.

“From time to time,” Jinya answered. He hesitated to say anything further and looked up at the sky with her instead.

It was a curtain of black velvet, with sporadic shards of twinkling silver. Jinya felt like there were fewer stars than there used to be. With all its street lamps and neon lights, the nights of the Dove District were made bright with man-made light, and the twinkling stars shone less prominently in turn. What he saw now was a far cry from the dazzling night sky he had seen with Shirayuki so long ago.

But Hotaru didn’t feel the same way. “I like gazing at the stars,” she said, looking up at the sky with eyes full of nostalgia. “We didn’t have the money to spend on things, so instead the two of us would gaze at the stars for fun.”

Her voice was frail, as though a passing breeze would scatter her away. She didn’t say it directly, but Jinya understood she was talking about the man he’d seen her with many nights ago.

“Do you regret coming here?” he asked.

“Of course not. This place accepted a straggler like me. I have nothing but gratitude for it.” But the slightest bit of lingering regret followed her wherever she went. “Kajii Takumi was his name. He was my boyfriend, and before I became a sex worker, I promised to marry him.” Her voice was lifeless as she continued, “I don’t regret coming here, but…I think not telling him how I feel was a mistake. I couldn’t do it, though. I was too scared. Too sad. And I haven’t changed since then one bit.”

Her words weren’t meant for anyone in particular. Maybe they were only for herself. Jinya, who knew nothing of Hotaru, could not read what emotions lay behind her thin smile. But he listened to what she had to say, making no attempt to offer his own words of comfort.

Hotaru exhaled a sigh, then donned the face of a sex worker once more. “Sorry for oversharing a bit there.”

Not a trace of the frail image she’d shown remained. Even her tone changed, as though to highlight that she was finished. Her sharing her past unprompted must have been her apology for overstepping.

“You’re rather earnest,” he said.

“You’ve got to be in my line of work.”

Their exchange was lighthearted again. Now that they were strangers once more, they had no reason to linger.

“I think I’ll take my leave here,” Jinya said.

“Is that so? Sorry for taking up your time.”

“Not at all. I got something worthwhile out of it.” Her expression showed she wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He smiled lightly and walked along. “There might be no point telling this to a woman of the night, but do be careful going out this late.”

“Thank you for your kind words. Please do visit again.”

He didn’t need to look back to know she was seeing him off.

Hotaru had known it was year thirty-four of the Showa era but saw nothing strange about the Dove District’s existence. The same went for Aoba. The manager of the milk hall seemed to feel something was off, though. There must have been some significance in the difference between them.

“Damn you, Nanao…”

Annoyed, Jinya sped up his pace. The light of the bright neon signs felt irritating just then.

The following day, after the sun dipped down and night arrived, Jinya returned to the brothel Ichikawa. When he entered, he called out to the first sex worker he saw and gave his name. Nanao must have told her workers about him, because she smiled in bemusement and led him to the back room. He didn’t know what exactly she told them, and he didn’t particularly care. He sat himself down across from Nanao, who was just as listless as before.

“Oh, you’ve come again for me? Why not spend the night? I’ll cut you a special rate.”

“I’ll have to decline. I’m here to talk about the job you offered me yesterday.”

Unfazed, she merely smiled as he shot her down. Her offer for him to stay wasn’t serious in the first place; she only meant to tease him.

He continued, “There are some things I’d like to ask.”

“Oh dear. Is this going to be a serious talk?” She didn’t bother sitting up. Her movements were sluggish, but at least she was listening.

She acted unguarded and lazy, but she didn’t brush Jinya off. He didn’t know whether this was because she was a fragment of Suzune or because of her own disposition, but she was an undeniable outlier among Magatsume’s daughters.

“You want me to resolve the mystery of the Dove District, and you claim not to be a perpetrator of it but a victim, if anything. Is that correct so far?” he asked.

“Yes, you’ve got it.”

The job she offered was to resolve the mystery of the Dove District. The reward was her life. She had already parted ways with Magatsume and had no intention of supporting her. She had nothing to do with the mystery and was only another victim of it. That about covered everything she claimed…but under further scrutiny, it didn’t logically stand up.

“Nanao, you’re lying, aren’t you?”

Hotaru and Aoba didn’t have the slightest doubt about the way things were. The manager of Sakuraba Milk Hall had an inkling something was off, but he continued to run his shop as usual. The other waitresses, like Akemi, went about their work like normal. In other words, none of the people caught up in this mystery were directly aware of it.

“No, maybe ‘lying’ is a bit much. You’re hiding something. Many things,” Jinya said.

“Oh? Am I now?”

“From the start, you’ve been unaffected by whatever is going on in the Dove District. And I’m willing to bet you already have a general idea of what it is.”

Jinya was certain he was right. Nanao could only claim she was another victim here if she had a fair sense of what was really going on. However, she still went out of her way to request that Jinya resolve things for her. There had to be a reason why.

“Oh my. You saw through me rather quickly.” She showed no guilt, likely because she had no reason to feel that way. Even though she knew what was going on, that didn’t mean she was behind it. In that sense, she truly was another victim.

In other words, she knew what the cause was but had no interest in doing anything about it herself. That was why she instead pushed that duty off onto Jinya. Or perhaps she had other reasons for entrusting things to him. He was sure those reasons wouldn’t bring harm to him, but if they were what he thought they were, then he had no choice but to play along.

“I take it you came to refuse my request, then?” she said.

“Not at all.”

“Oh? Well, that’s a surprise. I was sure you would.”

“I’ll dance to your tune for now. It’s a fact you’re not the cause of all this. Moreover, this whole mystery will come to an end on its own if it’s left alone. I might as well accept your request and claim my free reward.”

“My, my. You’re rather shrewd,” she joked. Smiling in satisfaction, she added, “Thank you. You’ll come by again, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Jinya said with a firm nod. “When the time comes to collect.”

The sun fully sank below the horizon, and the night grew deeper. The room’s only source of light was a single lamp, and the flame inside it flickered and swayed as it illuminated Jinya.

By now, he had just about fully recognized the nature of the mystery surrounding the Dove District. The only real issue at hand was Nanao’s motives.

He would not run from her. The time had finally come to confront what he had been avoiding.

Some days later, Jinya visited Sakuraba Milk Hall again. He intended to have a serious conversation but still ordered whiskey. He wanted to keep the lightheartedness of a small chat over a drink.

“Why’d you come to this place?” he asked. He was essentially here to double-check his conclusions.

“Though I managed to survive the firebombing of Tamanoi, I couldn’t feel happy about it. The choice I had to make was just that anguishing.” The manager of Sakuraba Milk Hall wearily shut his eyes. “I didn’t have any grand reason for coming here. I didn’t come here because I chose to; I came here because I was lost.”

He began recounting his past to Jinya. He told him of his youth, of how he never tried to chase after his friends as they ran ahead. He knew he couldn’t keep up, but he never asked them to slow down for him either. He felt as though they would stop being his friends the moment he did so.

He was a child who tried to be as agreeable as possible and was quick to give up on things, but he had the brains and sense to still get by. And he did get by for a time. But eventually the day came when he grew up and had to watch all his friends be sent to the battlefield. There was nothing he could say to them. He believed a man who couldn’t fight for his country had no right to speak.

The years passed, and he continued to age, now alone, but he was still the same lost boy on the inside. He didn’t regret not dying with his friends. Rather, he regretted not saying anything to them, instead using his leg as an excuse to say he had no right to.

Every time he had been presented with a difficult decision, he’d wavered as though he was lost. But he always told himself there was nothing he could do and gave up, allowing himself to drift along into whatever was easiest. He’d worked hard up until now, no doubt, but he’d never once actually tried to overcome his difficulties.

His move to the Dove District was no different. He simply thought it would be easier to start from scratch than rebuild. He lacked the firm will to make bold decisions and could only compromise. It was only natural that his constant indecision would lead him to this place.

Others may have seen him as a sharp, capable man, but he had carried an inferiority complex his whole life. The identity of the unplaceable unease that had tormented him since he was young was the fact that he had drifted through his life leaving the important decisions unmade.

“I’ve known for a long time now that I have to eventually confront this side of me, but I’ve held off on doing so. And before I knew it, I’ve reached this ripe old age.” He smiled wryly as he took his own glass of whiskey and gulped it down. Perhaps he felt he needed the liquor to speak. Jinya didn’t say a word, instead taking a drink of his own to match. “That’s why I made one small decision, a promise to myself, when I came to the Dove District: I swore to remain the manager of this place until the very, very end. Even though it’s somewhere I drifted to, this place is my castle. I want to do right by my girls and my customers for as long as I can.”

At the end of his lost journey, he finally made his first decision. That was why he, and Sakuraba Milk Hall, remained there to that day. For as long as the Dove District existed, he would continue operating this place as its manager.

“Ha ha, or something like that. I’m trying to dress things up, but really I’m just reluctant to part with this place.” He spoke in an emotional tone, and his expression softened.

He accepted that he was lost and tried to move forward, little by little. It was because he was such a man that he, someone with little connection to the supernatural, realized sooner than anyone else that the current Dove District was not right.

“So that’s why you stay here,” Jinya said.

“Right. Like I’ve said before, we all have things we can’t bring ourselves to leave behind.”

That was why the Dove District continued to persist. Time passed, and laws changed. Red-light districts were outlawed, but everyone in this place was unable to leave it behind, so they simply remained.

This was a place that didn’t exist anywhere, formed from somebody’s lingering regrets. There was no real need for Jinya to do anything. These attachments would fade away on their own, taking this place with them. When that time came, this would all be nothing more than a dream.

“So, what will you do, young man?” the manager said knowingly.

Everybody in this place had something they were reluctant to part with, a truth they had to confront, and Jinya was no exception.

“I suppose I have to confront a part of myself as well.”

He didn’t say what, and the manager didn’t ask. His answer was enough.

The manager’s expression suddenly turned impish, like a naughty child who had thought of a prank. Teasingly, he asked, “Is tonight’s drink not to your liking?”

It was the same question as before, but this time it bore a different meaning. To Jinya, who had to confront something in himself, the manager jokingly asked: Can you?

To tell the truth, Jinya didn’t know. The hatred that smoldered in him was still there, and his hands were stained in far too much blood. But if this place was formed from lingering regrets, then he would have to do it.

Jinya drank his glass dry and grinned slightly. “It tastes far better than last time.”

It was time to come to terms with the hatred he bore. Now that he’d wandered into this place, that was the only way he could leave.

Interlude:
What’s Your Favorite Food?

1

PART TWO: AKEMI, SEX WORKER OF THE DOVE DISTRICT

I’ve never once liked how it tastes.

THE CHARCOAL SOOTHINGLY crackled as the mochi on the earthenware grill began to expand.

“Okay, it’ll be just a little longer.” Motoharu attentively adjusted the mochi’s positions every now and then to make sure they didn’t burn. Using a hand fan, he sent a steady flow of air onto the grill, a serious look on his face.

“Oooh!” Jinta couldn’t help but exclaim. After all, isobe mochi was his favorite. He and Suzune were originally from a fairly well-off merchant home, so their father would make him isobe mochi from time to time. He wouldn’t make any for Suzune, though, so Jinta would always hide a few pieces to eat with her later.

They couldn’t eat isobe mochi as much after they ran away from home. Kadono was one of Japan’s few iron-manufacturing villages, but it wasn’t a wealthy place by any means. They wouldn’t go hungry, but not even the family of a shrine maiden guardian could afford much luxury. Still, that only made the rare occasions they could eat isobe mochi all the more enjoyable. Jinta would come right up to the grill and eagerly watch as Motoharu prepared the mochi.

“Jeez, Jinta.”

“Wh-what? I’m just watching.”

“Hee hee. Calm down a little first.”

His face turned red out of embarrassment as Shirayuki chided him.

Amused by the children’s exchange, Motoharu laughed. “She’s got you on a tight leash, huh?”

From Motoharu’s perspective, Shirayuki was the one who called the shots between the two, and Jinta had to admit that was the case. Nine times out of ten, she was the one to start some trouble, and he was only haplessly dragged along.

Jinta was starting to sulk a bit when he suddenly felt something tug on his arm. Surprised, he looked next to him and saw Suzune had joined him in waiting for the mochi.

“Jinta, look! It’s getting bigger!”

“It is, it is.” He roughly tousled his sweet sister’s hair, which made her smile. He smiled as well because she looked so happy. Shirayuki and Motoharu watched the siblings warmly.

“Do you want some mochi too, Suzu-chan?” Shirayuki asked.

“Yeah! Jinta and I used to eat mochi together a long time ago.” Suzune grabbed Shirayuki’s hand. She wanted to eat together with everyone. Though she didn’t say so directly, her actions made it clear.

“It’s done!”

A fragrance that whetted the appetite wafted through the air, and the three children cried out cheerfully. It seemed Shirayuki had been looking forward to eating too. They enjoyed a wonderful meal together.

This was a distant memory from days when he could still smile without a care in the world. He would probably remember the taste of the isobe mochi he ate then for the entirety of his life. That was why, if someone asked what his favorite food was, he would grin slightly and answer that it was isobe mochi.

***

A peculiar smell filled Sakuraba Milk Hall. Akemi, one of the waitresses there, yawned. She hadn’t found a client yet that day. A few men were present and ogled the girls in the electric light-lit milk hall, but business was slow. She felt that was an ongoing trend; day by day there were fewer clients around…and fewer girls too.

“Hotaru-chan, a moment, please?”

“Coming.”

It was nothing surprising by this point, but Akemi raised an eyebrow out of irritation anyway. Making no effort to hide her displeasure, she leaned against the wall and stared coldly at Hotaru.

“Hotaru-san got picked again? Ugh. What do they see in a hag like her?” A nearby waitress of the same age as Akemi grumbled. Hotaru was twenty-four, making her the oldest woman here. She was already a hag to the other girls, who weren’t even twenty, and yet she was still somehow the most popular among the clients. The waitress’s complaints came from a place of jealousy.

Though not as many as Hotaru, Akemi got quite a few clients herself. She wasn’t jealous of her like the other waitresses around her were, but she wouldn’t step in and defend her either. She had different reasons to dislike Hotaru.

“I’m going to step out for a breath of fresh air.”

“What’s wrong, Akemi?”

“Just not feeling too great today.”

One could only blame themselves for their inability to get a client. Akemi disliked the other waitresses, who hid their ineptness behind jealousy, even more than she disliked Hotaru. Not wanting to be lumped together with them, she stepped outside the store. In a way, she was lucky not to be chosen. Sleeping with a man when her heart wasn’t in it was boring. She was done looking for a client that night.

Akemi came from a completely average middle-class family. They couldn’t afford every luxury under the sun, but there was always food on the table. She lacked little in life. Still, she became a sex worker anyway. It simply suited her nature.

She believed having to slave away for money was pathetic, but it was obviously better to have money than not. She was pretty enough for men to come to her on their own, and young too. So why shouldn’t she use her youth while she still could? She had no special skills or education, but she didn’t need any of that to sell herself. That was why she drifted to the Dove District.

In other words, she was not a true sex worker but what was called an après girl—one of many reckless young girls who came to this place not because of hardship but because it was in vogue to do so. That being the case, whether or not she worked at all sometimes depended on her mood that day, and she did not see eye to eye with the old-fashioned ladies of the night like Hotaru.

The idea of selling dreams was stupid to her. Men only cared about sleeping with a young, pretty thing and nothing else. Only withering hags needed to pretend they were in love. That was why Akemi hated it.

The whole idea of putting on a fake smile and pretending to be someone you weren’t reminded Akemi of a woman she loathed. She probably hated Hotaru so much because she reminded her of that woman. Hotaru wasn’t at any real fault. Akemi was just venting frustration. Hotaru only happened to remind her of her awful mother.

“Ugh. Why’d I have to remember her now?” The stroll did nothing to clear her gloom. If anything, the image of her mother’s face only grew clearer in her mind. She tended to think about her mother more often lately. Her hate for her was genuine, but for some reason, the expression her mother had made just wouldn’t leave her mind.

A heart-shaped neon sign dimly lit the street. The pink light, a poor fit with the night, made her feel so uneasy as she looked at it now.

She began to feel irritated by her own thoughts. Ever since she came to this place, she had been prone to these strange bouts of sentimentalism. Was she simply tired? She couldn’t sort through her thoughts, and her gloom remained.

She stepped off the street, went into a dim alley, and leaned against the wall of an old photo studio to take a breather. It was good to stop when one was tired, so she decided a short break was in order.

“What’re you doing here?” a voice suddenly said.

Akemi looked up and clicked her tongue. People used to believe there were days of good luck and bad. It looked like today was a bad one.

Standing in front of her was a tall man with an annoyingly sharp gaze and a stern look. It was the cocky young man who had had the nerve to rebuff her advances before.

***

Jinya saw Akemi crouching against a wall and called out to her. Together, the two went to eat.

“The Dove District hasn’t been around long, but the nightlife is thriving. There’s plenty of spots to eat even this late,” Jinya commented.

They passed a street of brothels and came to a shopping district. There were many bars here, some specifically open late to cater to sex workers getting off work. Though these were places mainly meant for drinking, they still served basic meals.

The bar they entered was lively, but Akemi remained stone-faced as if she was not too pleased with what was going on. She mused out loud, “Why the hell am I eating here with you…?”

“Because I invited you?”

“No, I get that. Ugh…”

Jinya recalled their exchange back at Sakuraba Milk Hall, where he had jokingly turned down her advances and hurt her pride as a woman in the process.

He ordered an appetizer to go with his drink, then took a sip. The manager of the milk hall had said Akemi was nineteen, but Jinya thought the way she wore her heart on her sleeve made her seem younger.

“Why’d you invite me, then?” she asked. “It’s not like you want to sleep with me, right?”

“Just because. It seemed like you’d come along if I asked.”

She frowned distastefully at his ambiguous answer.

He explained, “You’d probably have refused me as you were before, but you don’t have the energy to even bother doing that now. That’s why I invited you.”

Even a stranger like Jinya couldn’t leave her alone when she looked so down in the dumps.

She clicked her tongue. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“No, but your boss did.” The manager of the milk hall had asked Jinya to check on her if he could, and Jinya just so happened to spot her. That was all.

Akemi tried to keep glaring at him but eventually gave up, her shoulders going slack. “Is that so?”

“And with this, I’ve fulfilled my obligation to him. I’ll leave you alone after this.”

“You’d better.” Akemi began to eat. Her first impression of Jinya had been bad, but she was warming up to him. Turning down his kindness would reflect poorly on the manager of the milk hall by extension, so she let herself indulge.

Seeing her eat, Jinya started drinking again. The mood was peaceful. Akemi started to talk more as she got drunk and her guard lowered. “Oh yeah. Was it your niece, or something? The one who’s here in the Dove District.”

Jinya’s brow twitched. She hadn’t been in the milk hall when he talked to the manager about that. He gave her a look, and she indifferently told him that the other waitresses were talking about it.

“Isn’t gossiping about stuff like that generally taboo?” he asked.

“Who cares? If you were trying to hide it, you wouldn’t have brought it up at a place like ours.” It might’ve been because she was drunk, or it might’ve just been her nature, but Akemi was quite ill-mannered. Women like her would’ve been rare in the pleasure districts of old, but here in the Dove District, these kinds of sex workers who lacked business sense were the majority. Traditional ladies of the night like Hotaru were few and far between.

“So, tell me: What do you think of that niece of yours?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know… What did you think when you heard someone in your family became a sex worker?” She put on a show of indifference, but her gaze was serious. The atmosphere stiffened, and her eyes seemed almost fearful of his reply.

“I didn’t think anything in particular,” he answered. He could have changed the topic, but he didn’t. He had no reason to. He felt nothing about the fact that Nanao was a sex worker. In fact, his biggest worry concerning her involved Aoba.

Nanao was his niece in name only. Just thinking about her mother made hatred smolder inside him. A man with such hate in his heart had no right to tell others how they should be, not that he cared enough to say anything to begin with.

“What the heck?”

“Unfortunately, my relationship with my sister isn’t the best. I met her daughter, my niece, for the first time here in this place. We have too little to do with one another for me to feel anything toward her. So I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the answer you’re seeking.”

Akemi frowned in annoyance.

She had asked what he thought about a family member becoming a sex worker. From that alone, he could guess what her circumstances were: She was probably a runaway. She wanted to hear what Jinya thought of his niece, who she presumed was in a similar situation to her. Perhaps she wanted him to say he still thought of her as family even if she were a sex worker.

“You saw right through me, eh?” she said.

“Did you have some issue with your family?”

“Duh. I wouldn’t be here selling my body if I didn’t, now, would I?”

Jinya knew what words she wanted to hear, but he couldn’t give them to her.

Akemi scoffed, then returned to eating. There was shishamo smelt, croquettes, fried tofu, rolled omelet, and some pickled vegetables. They had gone through five decanter bottles of liquor already.

Since this was a bar, the food only played second fiddle to the liquor, but the flavor was still passable. The speed of Japan’s recovery after the war had been spectacular. It was hard to think people had even been eating the vines of sweet potatoes just to get by only a decade earlier. As young as she was, Akemi probably thought nothing much of it. She bit into a shishamo smelt and wolfed it down.

“But I can’t really complain,” she said. “I make good money, and sleeping with men is, like, the easiest job in the world. So long as I make enough to eat well every day, I’m happy.”

Perhaps such callousness was typical of youth. There wasn’t a shred of sadness in her sunny voice. She was a lady of the night who could not lie. To Jinya, who was already over a hundred, her way of being was an incomprehensible thing.

But what was wrong with that? The times had changed. No matter what Jinya said, he would just be a preachy old man complaining about how things weren’t the way they used to be. He had no right to tell others how to be. So instead, he took a sip of his drink and let her words pass by. One little thing did bother him, though. “Was it not to your liking?”

“Huh?” Akemi didn’t get what he meant at first. She followed his gaze, then grinned. “Oh, no. I just don’t like croquette to begin with. Never have.”

It was about time to go, since they had been there for a while. Their bottles were nearly empty, and the plates were picked clean. Only the croquettes Akemi had ordered were untouched.

He let the matter go. “I see. Shall we be off, then?”

“Right. Sorry for the trouble today.”

“I didn’t mind. The drink tasted better with you around.”

“Well, of course it did. Any drink would taste better when it’s shared with a beautiful woman.” She kept things light, perhaps to thank him for not prying too deeply just then.

She stepped outside while he paid. Jinya looked back over his shoulder at the plate left untouched on the table. If this Dove District were formed from lingering regrets, then the thing Akemi had to confront likely involved those croquettes.

“What’s wrong?” Wondering what was taking so long, Akemi peeked back into the bar.

“Nothing. Let’s go,” Jinya replied. She responded with a smile.

“Thanks for treating me today. Eating with you wasn’t half bad.” Her smile, like everything else about her, was genuine. She was young, a sex worker of the ripe age of nineteen. But she too was stuck in the Dove District that shouldn’t exist, trapped by her lingering regrets. He had no obligation to help her, but the manager of the milk hall had asked him to. What’s more, he sympathized with her. He felt the two of them weren’t so different. The words were out of his mouth before he knew it.

“Would it be all right if I invited you again sometime?”

Her eyes went wide. Neither of them had expected him to suggest such a thing.

2

AUGUST 2009.

The Jinta Shrine, where Miyaka lived, hosted a yearly festival on the fifteenth of August. The festival was quite popular, with several stands setting up shop every year, but that also meant there was a lot of garbage to clean up afterward every time. The stalls at least cleaned up their own trash, but there was always some stuff left over, and going around and picking up that trash was a yearly practice.

The mid-August sun was dizzyingly strong, even before noon. The heat certainly didn’t make trash-collecting any more fun.

“I’ve finished up over here.”

“We’ve used up quite a few trash bags. I’ll go bring some more.”

At least Miyaka had some extra help this year. A school acquaintance had offered to help. She had refused at first because she felt bad, but her parents insisted it’d be a waste not to take them up on the offer, so she was half forced to accept.

She was thankful for the help, but she felt like she was always on the receiving end of things with Kadono Jinya. He didn’t seem to mind, though. He claimed he was acquainted with her parents and wanted to drop by to say hello anyway. It wasn’t clear whether that was the truth or just something he said to stop her from worrying, but at any rate, it seemed like he didn’t want her to mind, so she tried not to.

“Thanks for the help. Things are looking a lot cleaner now,” she said.

“No problem. Looks like we’re almost done.”

“Yeah. Why don’t we take a short break first before we tackle the rest?”

After two hours, they had collected a fair amount of the garbage and moved under the eaves of the shrine to take a breather. The heat weakened as they entered the shade, making her exhale a sigh.

Even after working under the blazing sun for hours, Jinya didn’t look tired in the slightest—there wasn’t even a bead of sweat on him. His stamina surprised her, but when she really thought about it, this kind of work was probably much less taxing than all that leaping and jumping around with a sword that he did.

She realized then that it would be impolite not to give him something as thanks, so she had him wait while she went inside her home and dug around her refrigerator. They were out of juice and only had barley tea, but that would be a bit uncool to serve. She checked the freezer, thinking there should be some ice cream there, but only found some cheap soda-flavored popsicles. She remembered that her dad had eaten the expensive ice cream yesterday. Still, popsicles were better than nothing, so she took two and went back outside.

The sun was still going strong when she stepped out. She heard the ear-splitting cries of cicadas and smelled the thick scent of greenery. It was so humid that the air shimmered. Summer was in full swing here at the temple, and it was blazing today. She sped her pace up to return a bit faster to the shady spot where Jinya was waiting, then handed him one of the popsicles.

“Sorry, this was all we had.”

“I don’t mind. Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do when you’re helping me out.”

The two sat eating their popsicles in the oppressive heat, and the cold treat chilled them nicely.

Jinya’s expression didn’t change at all, but he was probably enjoying himself. He gave a long, comfortable sigh, as though to exhale the heat in his body. “These kinds of things taste a lot better in summer.”

“They sure do. Oh, but I’m sure you’d still rather be eating isobe mochi, huh?”

“Ha. I do like mochi, but it isn’t all I eat.”

Could’ve had me fooled, she thought. He was so crazy for isobe mochi that he even brought it to school for lunch. It was comforting to see such a childish side to an otherwise overly serious person.

He rubbed his cheek sheepishly, which made her giggle.

“Well, what about you? What’s your favorite thing to eat?” he asked.

“Huh? Me? Well… Nothing really leaps to mind. I’m not really particular when it comes to food.” Of course, she would hesitate if she was served something like seasoned grasshopper, but she could eat anything you’d see on a normal dinner table with no problem. She wasn’t averse to particular vegetables like some people were, and she enjoyed the strong flavors of mutton and black carp. There was little she couldn’t eat, but also not much she could recall especially liking.

“What about gyuudon?” he asked.

“Mm, I do get the urge to eat some every now and then, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite of mine. Oh, come to think of it, we got gyuudon not long ago, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. I assumed it was a favorite of yours or something.”

“Nah. I guess I could say Japanese food is my favorite? Or rather, just rice. I can’t work up much of an appetite without rice.”

“I feel the same way. Bread tastes good, but it just doesn’t fill the stomach.”

“That comes first, huh? You’re such a guy.”

They kept up their trivial chat. Miyaka wasn’t the social type, but she enjoyed talking to Jinya. The only other person she could talk to like this was her best friend since junior high school, Azusaya Kaoru.

“Oh…” Then she remembered that there was something she liked eating, though it wasn’t exactly a favorite of hers.

Seeing her go stiff all of a sudden, Jinya gave her a questioning look. Feeling bashful from being stared at, she quickly smiled and said, “Oh, sorry. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, there is this one thing I remember I liked eating, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it a favorite.”

“Oh?”

She was a bit hesitant to say it. The girls in her class had told her it was weird to like something like that when she mentioned it before—which was likely why it hadn’t come to mind earlier.

Somewhat interested, Jinya waited for Miyaka to speak. She could change the topic if she wanted. She had only known him for a while, but she knew he was considerate enough to let it go. But she decided to say it anyway, even though she was a bit embarrassed.

“Um, it’s something called…”

***

“Nice to see you,” the manager of Sakuraba Milk Hall said. As Jinya visited to drink practically every night, the manager’s greeting gradually became more friendly.

Hotaru was there in the milk hall, but she only gave him a small bow. They were little more than strangers, after all. Still, the fact that she remembered to greet him as one of their regulars showed that she was a proper lady of the night.

“What’ll it be today?” the manager asked, already reaching for a glass. Jinya drank mostly whiskey these days, but he was there on different business today.

“No drink for me this time, sorry. Is Akemi in?”

The manager’s jaw dropped. Even Hotaru looked a bit surprised, her mask as a sex worker slipping slightly. As if she’d been waiting for just that moment to appear, Akemi walked up with a beaming smile.

“Wow, you really came,” she said.

“I’m not so rude as to go back on my offer.”

“Just be honest: You missed me.”

Their banter overflowed with friendliness. The others seemed shocked by that, but who could blame them? The man who didn’t so much as glance at the waitresses and only came there to drink was now close to a woman he had previously rejected.

“I’ll be stepping out for a bit,” Akemi said.

“Okay, take…care?” replied the manager, still flabbergasted.

Enjoying her boss’s reaction, Akemi laughed. “Ah ha ha ha. Everyone’s stunned! Hotaru-san even made a face I’ve never seen on her before. Serves her right!”

Apparently, she wasn’t on the best of terms with Hotaru. She continued to laugh after they left the shop, remembering everyone’s reaction. Jinya didn’t feel put off, though. While Akemi was an overly frank woman, she wasn’t malicious and was just being honest about her feelings. He certainly wouldn’t join in on laughing at everyone, but he did not hate the way she wore her heart on her sleeve.

“Oh, sorry, sorry. You’re close with Hotaru-san, right?” she asked after laughing. She seemed worried she might have offended him. Though it wasn’t very sincere, it was still an apology.

“No, not particularly. She’s a woman of the night through and through, after all.” Whispered nothings and a lover’s embrace would amount to nothing but a dream with her—all gone once the night was done. That was the kind of sex worker Hotaru was. Getting truly close to such a woman would be a grand undertaking. Jinya thought of his friend who had somehow won the heart of the Streetwalker and felt a bit warm inside.

“I suppose that’s true. What kind of woman do you see Hotaru-san as?” asked Akemi.

“A clever and dutiful one. She is graceful while still being charming to her core.”

“Is that so? You men are all so stupid, falling for her cheap tricks and all.” Akemi stuck her tongue out and grumbled, acting childish for her age. By this point, Jinya was used to seeing her act in a way unbefitting a sex worker.

“You seem to have it out for her.”

“I…” She hesitated. “I guess I do.”

“Or perhaps you’re just not good with her type?”

“I’m like an open book to you, eh?” She pouted and ended the topic there.

The light of shop lanterns swayed faintly across the dark street, and their destination came into view.

“That’s the place. I hear they have good soba,” Jinya said.

“Wait, what do you mean you ‘hear’?”

“People tell me things?”

“What the heck? If you’re inviting a girl out to eat, the least you can do is try the place beforehand!” She complained, but a brimming smile filled her face.

The meal shared by the unlikely pair ended up being fun in its own way.

***

The coating was always too thick on the croquettes sold by the local butcher, and they were always cold by the time Akemi’s family ate, so they did not taste good at all. Even so, they ate them often. Her father was a stern man, but he never complained about her mother’s cooking—not even when she simply served what she had bought outside. Akemi hated the croquettes they had for dinner, but she hated her mother even more.

Akemi’s father was an ordinary company man, but he came from a family of high standing. Her grandmother would always say things would’ve been so different for them if it weren’t for the war.

Akemi’s mother was from an ordinary family. The father’s family had been against their marriage because of their difference in social status.

Akemi saw her mother as a boring woman, always at her husband and mother-in-law’s beck and call. Akemi thought little of it as a child, but once she grew up, she understood her mother wasn’t servile—she was just enduring her position. Her status weighed on her. She was financially dependent on her husband and conscious of the fact she was an outsider who had been accepted into a household far greater than her own. It didn’t matter that the family she married into was a shadow of its former self; her sense of inferiority remained. That was why she tried to play the role of a good wife and mother as best as she could. As a result, Akemi had very few memories of her mother ever getting mad at her, but she also lacked many memories of her mother ever showing her real kindness.

She always tried to put her daughter before herself, so in that sense, she was a good mother. But despite being so subservient when it came to the wishes of her mother-in-law, she was strict with Akemi, always reminding her to learn how to do housework for her future husband’s sake. Young Akemi thought this meant her mother was a pathetic woman who could only be firm with those beneath herself.

Akemi wanted to earn money herself, even if it meant becoming a sex worker. She probably had her mother to thank for that. She didn’t want to end up financially dependent and stuck like she was. That was why Akemi decided to leave home.

She told her mother so, and that was the first time she had ever become mad at her. Her mother raised her voice for the first time, telling her she was speaking nonsense. Losing patience, Akemi argued back.

Why was she only getting angry now when she hadn’t cared enough to do it before? She wasn’t a child anymore; she could stand on her own. She didn’t want to live her whole life putting on an act to try and stay in somebody’s good graces. I don’t want to end up like you!

She said everything she could think of, hurting her mother in the process, then left without looking back. She settled down in the Dove District, where she lived a comfortable life.

Men paid handsomely to sleep with her there. She earned her food and clothes herself, something her mother could never do. That alone made it all worth it.

But from time to time, Akemi would recall her hated mother’s face.

Ah… Come to think of it, they’d had croquettes for dinner the day she left too.

***

“You can be awfully mean sometimes, Jin-san,” said Aoba with a grumpy look.

Jinya had been going out frequently to eat meals with Akemi. They went for soba one day and yakitori the next, and they even tried out a fancy-looking Western-style establishment. The one who told him about all these places was Jinya’s self-appointed guide, Aoba.

“I can’t believe it. I look away for one moment, and you go and find yourself a woman.”

“It’s nothing like that. Really,” Jinya insisted.

“Even so, think about how I feel as the one giving you guys ideas for your dates.” Aoba feigned tears. She probably wasn’t actually angry, but it was true that he hadn’t been making time for her lately. He made sure to make food for her before he left, but that was only the bare minimum he ought to do as a freeloader.

“You’re right. Why don’t we go somewhere together, then?” Jinya offered.

“How about you make that kitsune soba of yours again instead? It was pretty good last time.”

“You’re fine with just that?”

“Yeah. I thought the broth was a bit thin at first, but it’s grown on me.”

The difference in broth was a regional thing. Because he used to have a restaurant in Kyoto, Jinya mainly cooked with white shoyu and dashi soup stock. The taste was less pronounced than the darker udon and soba broth of the Kanto region, which Tokyo belonged to. Kitsune soba was a dish dear to Jinya’s heart, so he was honestly ecstatic to hear that Aoba liked it.

“All right. I’ll make it again sometime.”

“Thanks. While we’re at it, can I ask why you’re spending so much time with this woman? Have you fallen for her or something?”

He shook his head and grinned, amused by the idea. He had no romantic inclinations whatsoever toward Akemi. But if this place was truly made of lingering regrets, then, as something of a kindred spirit, he wanted to help her by giving her a little push. “No. I’m with her because I’m stuck in this place too.”

“What? So cryptic. Is that supposed to be a riddle?”

“Nothing that elaborate.”

He wanted to help mostly out of sentimentalism, but it wasn’t just Akemi he wanted to help. It was also the other residents like Aoba—and even Nanao as well. Everybody in the Dove District had something they couldn’t bring themselves to part with. Since he was no different, Jinya couldn’t ignore their troubles. That was all.

“I don’t really get it, but don’t do anything too reckless or whatever,” Aoba said offhandedly.

“I appreciate your lack of concern.”

“Heh heh.”

He was genuinely thankful she didn’t pry too far. He thought he should make it up to her with something extra sometime; she didn’t seem to mind much, but it was still true that he was meeting another woman while freeloading off her.

Making plans to do something as an apology, he left and headed for Sakuraba Milk Hall.

***

At the soba restaurant they got tenzaru soba, at the yakitori place they tried different things, and at the Western-style restaurant they got omelet rice. Akemi ate with Jinya at many places, and they went to a new one today as well. She ordered the same thing as he did, and they chatted pleasantly over food. Before she knew it, their meal was over, and it was time for work. She returned to the milk hall to seek clients.

She enjoyed her new daily routine. That was probably why she’d become much more amicable lately and had been picked more often by clients.

“We’re going for Western food again?” she asked.

“Yeah. This place is a bit dingier than the one we went to last time, but apparently their fried foods are to die for.”

“Another place you heard about from someone else, huh?”

As reluctant as she was to admit it, she probably had Jinya to thank for her newfound success. She’d only seen men as sources of money ever since she arrived in the Dove District, but this unexpected, non-sexual bond she shared with him allowed her to let her guard down and relax some more—and she knew that directly tied into her work performance.

Life was smooth sailing, but occasionally her face would come to mind at random moments, and those moments had only become more frequent ever since she started eating with Jinya like this.

“I’ll have this,” Jinya said to the employee.

“…Oh, sorry. I’ll have the same thing as him.” Having been caught zoning out, Akemi got flustered and just ordered the same thing as Jinya. He didn’t seem to think anything of it, since she often matched orders with him. He sipped his water as they waited for their meals.

“There’s been a lot of these Western-style restaurants around lately,” he said.

“Yeah. I guess they’re popular now. Japanese people love their new trends, you know what I mean?”

Curry, hamburger steak, Napolitan spaghetti, omelet rice. None of these foods were completely Western, but they certainly weren’t Japanese either. Instead, they were a unique fusion of tastes. They appeared everywhere after the war and were things that the common man could splurge on every now and then. By this point in time, the Japanese were no strangers to these new foodstuffs.

“Actually, the history of Western food in Japan goes back surprisingly far,” Jinya said. “Curry was already a thing by the Meiji era.”

“No way? That far back? I totally thought it was a new thing.”

“It feels that way because you didn’t see it around much back then, and it’s hard to make your own curry at home too. It didn’t really take off until instant curry came about.”

“Interesting. You know a lot of really random stuff, huh?”

They continued to chat about unimportant things until their food arrived, carried over by an employee.

“Here’s your order: two mencoro meal sets.”

A fragrant smell came from the fried foods, whetting their appetites. The meal came with white rice, miso soup, and some pickled vegetables. The main dish was fried minced cutlet with shredded cabbage, as well as a plate of Akemi’s dreaded croquette.

“Huh…?”

“Let’s eat,” he said. “Oh, come to think of it, didn’t you mention you don’t like croquettes?”

He wasn’t even trying to hide his intentions. It was clear to her that this had been his goal with going to all these restaurants all along. But she didn’t address that, instead freezing up. Her expression contorted with memories she didn’t want to recall.

“Yeah… I hate croquettes.”

“How about changing them out for something?”

“No, that’s all right…”

She didn’t want to be too insistent when he was the one treating her, so she hesitantly reached her chopsticks out to a croquette, cut off a mouthful, and ate a bite.

“I couldn’t eat them at all before, but I’m not a kid anymore. I can at least put up with them even if I don’t like how they taste.” That was what she said, but she stopped after one bite and hung her head.

Jinya didn’t eat or say a word but waited patiently instead. Akemi more or less knew what he was waiting to hear.

“I’ve hated croquette ever since I was little, because my mother would always buy them.” As though trying to escape the awkward silence, she kept going, her voice no more than a faint murmur. “She never talked back to my grandmother, not even when she complained about her skills as a wife or about her being a commoner. She let my grandmother walk all over her and kept playing the part of a good, obedient wife and mother. I hated that about her. She could cook better than most people because of that, but she would still always buy these ready-made croquettes.”

Akemi still remembered those croquettes, bought at the local butcher and gone cold long before they were put on the table. Her father and grandmother ate them without a word of complaint, but Akemi hated them. She always thought it was strange that her grandmother never said anything about her mother buying ready-made croquettes, as strict on her as she was.

“Our local butcher fried them, but the coating was always too thick and they never tasted good. I’d tell my mother I wanted to eat something else, but she’d always just say ‘I’m sorry, honey’ and buy them with a smile. I hated that. It felt like she wasn’t listening to me.”

Akemi hated the croquettes and their overly thick coating, but she hated the smile her mother made when she bought them just as much. After she left home, croquettes became a sort of symbol that tied her back to her mother and the unpleasant memories of her youth. That was why she couldn’t enjoy eating them even at restaurants like this one.

“But even though I hate them so much, I started being able to eat them at some point.” She reached out for another bite of croquette. She didn’t like how it tasted, as she expected. She hated the crunchy fried coating. “I still don’t like them. I don’t, but…when I eat them now, even though they taste completely different, I feel…nostalgic.”

Her chest felt tight as she swallowed.

Her mother could cook well, but she never made croquettes herself. Was she just being lazy? If she was, why didn’t Akemi’s grandmother ever say anything? Why didn’t her father, for that matter? Akemi’s childhood was far, far behind her, and yet she still hated croquettes, even though she could eat them now. So where was this feeling of nostalgia coming from?

“Your parents must be in their forties by now, right?” asked Jinya, finally speaking up. His seemingly random question was asked with great calm, which made him feel worldly all of a sudden. “Croquettes are a cheap dish now, but they used to be plenty expensive in the past. They were a luxury eaten only in Western restaurants, up there with pork cutlet and hamburger steak.”

“Really?”

“Really. I think it was around the start of the Showa era that they became a common side dish. There was even this famous shop that had customers lined up out the door for their croquettes. Me and Kimiko, this acquaintance of mine, wanted to try it, so we lined up ourselves once. I’m sure your parents remember that era, though I’ve never met them myself,” Jinya added with a grin. “It may be a bland side dish to you, but your parents probably think of it as a nostalgic treat. Who knows, they might’ve even stood in line for it together themselves a long time ago.”

“…You think so?”

“I have no idea. Again, I don’t know your parents; I’m just talking about what-ifs here. But just as you have your own story, your mother has one too. Maybe there’s something hidden behind that demeanor of hers you hate. Something you couldn’t see when you were young.”

There was a limit to how much one person can know. No matter how sagacious or studious someone was, they can only see the world they see. Perhaps there was something more to the way Akemi’s mother always tried to play the role of a good wife and mother. Perhaps there was something more to the croquettes they always ate. Who could say?

“Of course, maybe I’m wrong and she just bought ready-made croquettes to save time,” he said.

“What the heck?” Akemi was a bit exasperated by his noncommittal conclusion.

Then he started to eat, slathering his croquettes in sauce and stuffing his cheeks with it and rice. Though his expression was as flat as ever, he seemed to be greatly enjoying himself.

“Pfft, ha ha. Aren’t you using a bit too much sauce?” she said.

“You think so? The son of that acquaintance I mentioned says croquettes taste better like this. He claims it pairs extra well with the rice this way.”

“The heck? That’s so lame.”

“Don’t say that. It may be lame to you, but it’s a nostalgic memory to me.”

She saw how he ate up the now-soggy croquettes and thought to herself: Oh, so that’s how it is. Even something as seemingly trivial as this had something dear behind it. But she hadn’t even tried to understand what that might have been for her mother before she ran away from home.

Akemi exhaled a sigh and murmured. “A nostalgic memory, huh… Maybe my mother has some of her own from before she became my mother.”

Jinya didn’t stop eating and replied like he was just making small talk. “I’m sure she does. Memories of worrying when she was young, memories of being happy on all-too-ordinary days, and memories of falling in love too, I’m sure. Most mothers were once normal girls, and becoming a parent doesn’t change that fact.”

“I never thought of that when I was young. That’s why I could only fault her for the way she was. I even ran away from home to become a sex worker. Ah… What a terrible daughter I’ve been.”

The truth was, Akemi knew her mother only got angry at her for wanting to be a sex worker because she was worried. But out of a desire to rebel against her mother, she ran away and became one anyway. If she had just stopped and listened to her mother a little then, maybe she would never have come to the Dove District.

“I disagree,” Jinya said. “You managed to eat the croquette you said you hate, didn’t you? Children who hate certain vegetables one day grow up and discover they can eat them. Some even come to like the sharpness of things like wasabi and ginger. Tastes change as one becomes an adult, but not all change has to be dramatic. It takes time to accept the things one hates.”

Children became less picky with time. Similarly, the day might just eventually come when one found something precious that had been overlooked, and the unbearable past became bearable.

“You just needed a bit more time to eat croquettes and confront the thing you overlooked in your past. I’m sure that, one day, you’ll look back on all this as a pleasant memory too.”

Her time in this place was necessary, and so she didn’t need to hate herself for what she had become.

Akemi hung her head after she heard Jinya’s ordinary words of comfort. He continued to eat like nothing had happened, so she followed suit and gingerly took another bite.

“Well? How is it?” he asked, a bit mean-spiritedly.

This was all just idle chatter made during a meal. None of this would change anything. She still hated croquettes. She had still hurt her mother. She still became a sex worker. She didn’t know if she could accept her mother even if she did confront her past—she didn’t even know if her family would accept her. Even so, she felt some of her lingering regrets clear away.

“Gross,” she answered, a broad smile on her face.

Jinya sighed with relief; he’d hoped for that exact reaction.

***

The next day, Jinya visited Sakuraba Milk Hall again and found the manager at the counter cleaning glasses as usual.

“Nice to see you.” The manager gave Jinya his usual friendly greeting.

Hotaru could be seen around. Jinya asked her, “Excuse me, is Akemi in?”

Even though he went out for meals with Akemi almost every day, Hotaru replied with confusion. “Pardon?”

The confusion on her face spoke a thousand words: No such woman worked there. Hotaru had no recollection of Akemi.

Jinya had somewhat expected this. With her lingering regrets gone, Akemi couldn’t stay in the Dove District. The small push he had given her had been enough.

“If you’re looking for Akemi-chan, she’s already left,” the manager said. Jinya was surprised at first, but he figured it made sense. This was his shop, after all. If anyone would remember who worked there, it was him.

“I see. You remember.”

“Of course. I promised I’d do right by both my customers and my girls until the end.” With a small shrug, the manager sadly added, “I can’t recall her face anymore, though.”

The Dove District was a place that shouldn’t have existed. No matter what happened there, it would all end up being no more than a dream. Like the manager, Jinya still remembered Akemi as well. But when it came time for this place to meet its end, his memory of this dream was sure to fade with it.

“I wonder where she went,” the manager mused.

“To her family, I assume.”

“Her family?”

Jinya nodded. He couldn’t know for sure, but he wanted it to be true. He thought of the young woman he had encountered by chance here in the Dove District that couldn’t exist. Even if it would all end up no more than a dream, he wanted to pray for her happiness.

“Why don’t we share a drink?” Jinya offered. “I’m in some high spirits for once.”

“My, I quite like that idea. Let’s have ourselves a toast, shall we?”

In both their hands was a glass of amber whiskey. It needn’t be said who the toast was for. Saying it outright would spoil half the fun and be embarrassing too. But they definitely had the same person in mind as they clinked their glasses together.

“Cheers.”

He wondered if he would ever happen across her again. If he did, and if he still remembered her, he wanted to be a little playful and ask her a slightly mean-spirited question: “What’s your favorite food?” It’d be nice if she answered croquette.

With those thoughts in mind, he took a sip from his glass. The whiskey tasted even better than usual that day.

***

August 2009.

“Um, it’s something called ketchup yakisoba.” The thing Miyaka recalled as they talked about favorite foods was the ketchup yakisoba she ate in junior high school. Jinya made a face that showed he didn’t understand, so she continued, “It was back when I was in junior high school. I think it was a Sunday. Kaoru and I were studying for a test together. Noon rolled around, but we were too lazy to go anywhere, so we took some bagged noodles from the fridge and grilled them to make yakisoba.”

They’d added cabbage, fish paste, pork, and egg. That much was normal enough, but when it came time to add some flavoring, they realized they were out of sauce. They scoured the kitchen as hard as they could but came up empty-handed.

“That was when we got the idea to use ketchup. We figured that ketchup spaghetti was a thing, so ketchup yakisoba couldn’t be that much worse.”

“Interesting. How was it?”

“It was incredible. We called one another geniuses and ate our plates clean.” She still recalled the excitement she’d felt then. It was nothing more than an ordinary lunch, but the memory of it was still vivid in her mind. “It’s still the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. I try to make it again every now and again, but I just can’t make it taste as good as it did then.”

Realizing that she was being wordier than usual, she blushed. She smiled wryly and tried to play things off, probably because her classmates had called her ketchup yakisoba weird before. She looked at him, afraid of the way he might respond. “Ah ha ha, sorry. It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?”

“Weird? Not at all.”

“Really? I mean, people usually say it sounds gross and stuff.” Though it was something she liked, she didn’t think most people would.

Jinya smiled and looked off into the distance. “Both my birth father and my foster father would grill isobe mochi from time to time.”

“Huh?”

“I still remember being around the grill, waiting eagerly together with the whole family. But food didn’t keep as well as it does now, and the mochi we grilled was stiff and hard. To be honest, it wasn’t that great a thing to eat.” He sighed softly, speaking with tenderness. “But it tasted amazing. I still remember that day we three kids ate mochi together, all smiles. But, you know, the isobe mochi that Chitose made me probably tasted better.”

Miyaka couldn’t see what Jinya recalled at that moment, but she understood the emotions he felt.

“It must be something like that. Even if it isn’t really that amazing, we remember the flavors that reach our hearts.”

And for Miyaka, it was the ketchup yakisoba she ate that day.

She felt a smile come onto her face. She was happy he understood how that trivial meal that came about for silly reasons was something dear to her.

“I see… Um, thank you,” she said.

“Not at all. I’d say we’ve rested enough now. Shall we finish cleaning?”

“Right. Wanna get something to eat when we’re done?”

Having finished their soda-flavored popsicles, the two stood up. There was still some more trash to clean, and their meal was sure to taste all the better after they were done and had worked up a sweat.

“Sounds good.”

“It’s settled, then. You can pick what we eat this time.”

“Really? In that case…” Jinya thought for a bit and quickly came up with something, the corners of his mouth rising slightly.

Time stopped for no one. Though he had gained much, he had also lost much in the process. Such was the sad truth he was helpless before.

“I’m in the mood for croquettes today.”

But he would probably never forget the flavors that reached his heart for as long as he lived.

Under Starry Skies Together

1

PART THREE: KAJII TAKUMI, HOTARU’S FORMER BOYFRIEND

I’ve searched so long just to see you once more.

All I want is one more chance to say what I couldn’t before.

KAJII TAKUMI SAT on the veranda, taking an evening rest surrounded by the flowers of his garden. By his side was a woman dear to him. The wind gently brushed her hair as she looked up. Following her gaze, he saw that the sky was turning from orange to indigo and the stars were starting to sporadically twinkle.

True night still had yet to arrive, and the stars in the light-indigo sky were far from bright. Their modest shine reminded him of her. He looked back down to her soft face in profile and was entranced.

“Takumi-san? Is something the matter?” She noticed his gaze and asked him that question. Her large, moist eyes made his heart skip a beat. To think he, a man eight years older, would be so flustered by her.

“No. I was just captivated by the sight of you.”

“Oh, you.” She giggled and covered her mouth as she smiled. His heart began to race.

Looking back on it all, it might have just been him who was in love.

Two years had passed since the war ended, and Japan was going through difficult times. But Takumi could still enjoy comforts like this evening rest on his veranda because his family ran a successful clinic in Yamagata that had been largely unaffected by the war. The love of his life lost her parents during the war and was taken in by the Kajii family because they had known her parents. However, she wasn’t adopted as a daughter but accepted into the home as the eventual daughter-in-law. She was grateful to Takumi and his family for welcoming her, but even without such an obligation, the two were close.

He held her dear and believed she felt the same way about him. But what she held in her heart must not have been the same love he felt but the kind felt for family and friends instead. She never returned him the answer he wanted to hear.

“Ah, right. I brought you a gift,” he said.

“Oh? What is this?”

“Star sand. I thought you might like it since you always love looking at the night sky so much. Maybe it’s a bit bland?”

But he was willing to wait. He believed love needed time to blossom.

“No, it’s wonderful… I’ll treasure it.”

In the end, she never answered his proposal, and they parted without a single goodbye.

***

Hotaru recalled an evening shared on a veranda somewhere. She fiddled with a small bottle of star sand in her hand. It wasn’t a valuable object by any means, but it was a gift from him. The small, star-shaped grains looked like sand, but apparently they were actually the husks of deceased tiny organisms… His gift would have been a lot better if he hadn’t tacked on that explanation, but being a little foolish was very much like him.

She would gaze at the small bottle from time to time. It had a calming effect on her. Etched in the star sand were nostalgic memories of hers: the starry sky they looked up at together, his sheepish smile. She’d left many things behind, but this bottle was the one thing she couldn’t bring herself to part with.

“Hotaru-chan, a customer’s here for you.”

“Coming.” She put the bottle of star sand in her breast pocket and smiled softly. She would sleep with a man she didn’t know again today, but there wasn’t a trace of hesitation in her. She was used to this line of work.

She passed by the bar counter and, out of the corner of her eye, saw the young man who had become a frequent customer lately. He didn’t come to sleep with any women, however, but to drink liquor and chat with the manager. He showed some interest in Hotaru, but apparently not enough to buy her services. That was fine by her, though. He was several years younger, but he was sharp and knew how to hold a conversation. Talking with him was pleasant.

She swore there had been a waitress he was quite taken with, but he made no attempt to talk to any of them now. Perhaps she simply misremembered? She looked around, thinking to herself there were both fewer customers and fewer waitresses around than before.

“Heya, Hotaru. Hope you don’t mind me coming by again.”

“Of course not; I’m delighted to see you. Please, allow me to lead you upstairs.”

Tonight’s client had already come by a few times to sleep with her. She was pleased to know she was liked so much. The man, used to the process, followed her up to the balcony room on the second floor without hesitation.

They spoke little, having no need for words. They took their clothes off and got on the bed. She lightly brushed his hand and guided it to her chest. Snuggling close, she could feel his warmth and his breath.

Ah… So cold. His skin was warm, but the hotter it felt, the colder a place dear to her became.

She did not hate sex. She had abandoned her old self and become Hotaru in full, which was what allowed her to play the role of a sex worker and grant these ephemeral dreams of love. The smile on her face and the feverish moans she made were all real. The man loved her, and she loved him back.

But nights in the Dove District were long, and sometimes it felt like she was gasping for air.

***

Jinya received some rather worrying news from the manager of the milk hall.

“Is that true?”

“It is. A man’s been going by several brothels looking for a certain woman. From the sound of things, he seems to be searching for Hotaru-chan.” The manager jokingly added, “Reminds me of a certain somebody, don’t you think?”

“That’s a very interesting tidbit you’ve given me. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome. I must say, you’re a rather strange man as well,” said the manager, who seemed endlessly amused by Jinya. He wasn’t one to call others strange, however, being a man in his forties who talked effeminately. Jinya questioned the manager with his gaze, prompting him to answer, “You clearly have eyes for Hotaru-chan yourself, but you have no interest in buying her services. Am I wrong?”

“She’s a charming woman, but yes, her services aren’t what I’m after.” Hotaru weighed on Jinya’s mind, not because she attracted him as a sex worker, but because the way they first met was so unusual. “The reason she’s caught my eye isn’t that sort of thing.”

“Then why?”

“It’s just an old habit of mine from a previous job.”

The reason he stepped in when he saw that man hassling her was mostly because of his previous occupation. He couldn’t stand idly by when someone was in need, and he believed he had a responsibility to see things through once he started. The main reason why he came so frequently to Sakuraba Milk Hall and why he continued to search the Dove District, had to do with that man.

“That kind of man will definitely come again. I may not have been asked to work this case, but I’ll lose sleep if I don’t do anything.” That was the way he lived during the Edo and Meiji years.

Handling spirits was a shrine maiden guardian’s duty.

Several days passed. A pale moon hung bright in the sky, casting the night in a metallic sheen.

“Mm, delicious. Freshly made soba is hard to come by, even at restaurants.”

Jinya freeloaded at Aoba’s place, an apartment one street over from many brothels. In exchange for the roof over his head, he took care of the household chores. Having been a caretaker for many years, he enjoyed their living situation, even if most people would say he was no different than a deadbeat sponging off a woman.

At Aoba’s request, he made kitsune soba for dinner, recreating the same dish he made back when he ran a restaurant in the Meiji era. Soba soup broth was generally made thicker in Tokyo than in Kyoto, so Aoba was a bit surprised at first, but she found the taste suited her palate and ate it eagerly.

“I’m glad you like it.”

“I was surprised that the soup was so thin at first, but it’s great. How’d a guy like you get so good at cooking?” she asked. It was a bit odd that a rugged-looking man like Jinya was so good at something so domestic. He could cook, clean, and even do the laundry well. It was all thanks to his past, of course.

“I used to run a soba restaurant,” he answered.

“Ah… So it comes down to experience, after all.” Her expression turned serious. It sounded like she wasn’t very confident in her own cooking skills. Having lived alone, she could handle domestic chores decently well, but when it came to cooking, she could only manage simple dishes that involved stir-frying or stewing everything together; more delicate cooking was beyond her.

Jinya watched Aoba go into deep thought and smiled wryly to himself. He looked like a young man no more than eighteen years old, but she saw nothing strange about his claim to have run a soba restaurant in the past. It was as though she already knew he was more than he appeared to be.

Of course, he wasn’t surprised by her lack of reaction, because he already knew she was plotting something. He was just a little amused that she would give herself away like that. He let it go and started a new topic with her as he prepared their after-meal tea. “Hey, Aoba. Why’d you decide to become a sex worker anyway?”

“Oh? What a surprising question for you to ask.”

He wasn’t trying to fish secrets out of her or anything like that. They’d lived together for a while now and had grown fairly close. He asked his question out of honest curiosity alone. This was just an idle chat over tea. She could deflect if she wanted to, and she was smart enough to know that. He sipped his tea and waited for her to decide if she wanted to talk or not.

“It’s because I didn’t want to inherit my family trade.” She sighed and made a tired, resigned face. Her voice was weak, telling him her words had to be honest. Her usual pep was nowhere to be found, and a frail girl took her place. She looked her age for once. “My family’s been running a certain trade for generations, and my grandfather’s terribly strict about it. He’s the kind of person who demands that everyone put the household first.”

“Is your father not around?”

“No, he is, and he’s doing his best with the family trade. But he doesn’t meet my grandfather’s expectations, so I was picked to inherit things instead of him. I didn’t like that, so I ran away.”

“That must’ve taken quite some guts.”

“Ah ha ha. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, really. But it’s hard to get by on your own as a woman. That was when I read in a magazine about the Dove District and how all the young girls were flocking here to be sex workers. I saw no other option. Kind of silly of me, huh?”

She spoke cheerfully, but Jinya saw an equal measure of sadness in her. Though she didn’t let her bubbly air fade, it was a fact that this woman of tender age had run away from home. It must have been a difficult decision. There were few jobs women could find, and perhaps it was only fate that she found her way here to the Dove District.

“So I came here, nervously looked for work at Ichikawa, and met Nanao-san. I was planning to become a real sex worker at first, but she had a few things to say about that.”

“A girl like you has no business being a sex worker.”

“Watch us for a while first if you still insist.”

“If seeing how we live doesn’t change your mind, then I’ll allow it.”

Aoba was surprised to hear Nanao so flatly tell her a sex worker wasn’t something to aspire to be. However, she understood it was said out of kindness, and she decided to stay in the Dove District because of Nanao. She had known the place would have darkness to it, but Nanao showed her it contained warmth as well. Aoba aspired to be a woman like Nanao, someone who had turned her back on society but still lived with integrity.

“Nanao-san didn’t want me to become a sex worker, but she still looked after me by giving me this room and odd jobs to do.” That was how Aoba became a sex worker in name only, one who didn’t take clients and wasn’t even an apprentice.

Nanao was against the young Aoba becoming a sex worker, and Aoba looked up to Nanao and idolized the job. They shared a strange bond, but it was a bond Aoba was clearly fond of. Her respect for Nanao could be felt in each of her words.

She finished, “So, yeah. My reasons are nothing grand. I came here because I rebelled against my grandfather. Oh, and I’d rather keep what my family trade is a secret, if I can. It’s a bit embarrassing.”

“I see. You’ve never thought about returning home?” Jinya asked. He assumed Nanao kept Aoba from selling her body to leave her that option, but even after the Prostitution Prevention Law came into effect and the Dove District neared its end, she didn’t leave—and that was why she still remained here. Hidden behind her carefree smile were lingering regrets that kept her here like so many others.

“I’m too ashamed to,” she said.

“Why? I’d figure Nanao stopped you from becoming a sex worker so you wouldn’t have to feel any shame.”

“I’m sure she did. But while I was away, my grandfather died.” She said it very offhandedly and averted her gaze, preventing him from getting a good read on her. “A letter came from my father. Apparently, he knew where I was. I still can’t bring myself to go back, though.”

She ran away because she didn’t like how her grandfather ordered her to inherit the household. She didn’t know how much her actions hurt him, but he probably passed away with deep worries over the future of the family, and that fact haunted her. She betrayed his expectations, then denied him a peaceful death. How could she be so shameless as to return at this point?

“I keep thinking about how I should have done things. What if I had at least shown him the family trade was in good hands with me before he died, so he wouldn’t have had to pass with such regret? Would I have given up and gone home by now? I really wonder sometimes.”

The Dove District she drifted to was a more comfortable place to live than she could have possibly imagined, but she wasn’t mature enough to completely leave her old home behind. She was stuck, unable to decide whether she wanted to return home or not, and had remained in the Dove District ever since.

“Just kidding. Who do I think I am, the heroine of some tragedy?” Aoba tried to clear the air with a joke. It worked only a little, the oppressive mood turning a touch softer.

Jinya had enough tact to tell she wanted him to play along to help clear the air, so he said in his usual indifferent voice, “You can be the heroine of some tragedy if you want, but your story’s incomplete without a male lead.”

“That’s what you’re here for, Jin-san! The girl with a troubled past soothes the lost man. It’s a classic trope.” With a broad smile on her face, she spread her arms wide for an embrace. She was mostly joking, but just a tiny bit serious. She wanted someone to comfort her just then.

Jinya sighed with exasperation, reached out, and flicked her on the forehead.

She flung her head back, pretending to be hurt. “Ouch!”

“A girl your age shouldn’t be doing such things,” he scolded her with mock anger.

“Er, you know I’m still technically a sex worker, right?” She hid her face and feigned tears. “Boo-hoo. Jin-san, you’re so cold.”

“As if. Oh, we’re out of tea. Shall we call it a day here?”

“Oh, sure. I’ll wash the teacups. It’s the least I can do.”

“No, it’s fine. I need to earn my keep here. Just go ahead and take it easy for me.”

“Well, if you insist… Thank you.”

Jinya took the teacups and went to the sink. Aoba sprawled her arms and legs out and lay down on the ground. Her thanks wasn’t for washing the cups but for playing along with her silly acting.

After putting away the teacups, he called out to her once more. “Sorry, but I’ll be heading out for a bit. Go ahead and sleep first without me.”

“You’re not just trying to be considerate of my mood and give me space, are you?”

“Unfortunately, I’m not that tactful a man.” His reasons lay elsewhere. He picked up the leather sword bag containing Yarai and made to leave.

A pale moon hung in the sky. Spirits liked to stir on nights like this.

***

Kajii Takumi came to the Dove District in pursuit of his former sweetheart. It was an acquaintance who told him she was working there as a sex worker. He knew this acquaintance from his school days but didn’t think of him as a friend, particularly because he always said things that got under his skin.

The friend said that he met his old sweetheart in the Dove District and that she had grown into a proper woman, her breasts and hips fleshing out. He even claimed that he’d paid money to sleep with her.

Takumi was furious, but he didn’t care to waste energy on a lowlife like that man. He knew she would never be in such a place… But what if she were? The faint possibility drove him to the Dove District.

His mind was broken, the same thought repeating within it: I want to meet her one more time. Just once more. He was haunted by lingering regrets, trapped by feelings he left unsaid. He had continued to search for her ever since, all for the sole purpose of meeting her. He believed that if he could find her just once more, they would stay together for good this time.

He was in his mid-thirties now and beginning to develop conspicuous wrinkles. He was tall and thin, but in an emaciated and lanky sense. His face was pale, and his gait was unsteady. He looked like he had become a ghoul. Even so, he continued his search, shambling through the night.

He saw a figure appear from the darkness and came to a stop.

“We meet again,” the figure said in a voice as stiff as steel. He was a young man, about seventeen or eighteen years of age. He had a sword bag slung on his shoulder and a well-trained physique that was visible even through his clothes. The rugged young man, who looked out of place in this red-light district, stood before Takumi as if to block his path.

Takumi recognized the man’s face. He had been the one who got in his way when he reached out for his sweetheart that one time. Remembering that moment put Takumi in a foul mood. The young man’s composure only irritated him further. Filled with bile, he glared at him.

2

HOTARU SLEPT IN BED with her skin pressed against her client’s. The sun was already at its peak. Bright beams of sunlight shone in from the window and roused the man beside her. She met his gaze and smiled passionately, then snuggled closer against his chest.

In the old pleasure district of Yoshiwara, it was customary for men to be roused at eight in the morning—beaten awake, if necessary—but things were lax in the Dove District. Since it was a relatively new red-light district, rules were lenient, and many customers slept in until noon. Hotaru lazily welcomed the morning with her client from the previous night. By the time she saw him off, lunchtime was long past.

“Whew…” Spending the whole night with a client took quite some stamina, but she couldn’t let her exhaustion show while the client was around. Only after confirming he was out of sight did she exhale deeply.

She’d never once hated her job as a sex worker. She worked hard to be a woman worth dreaming with, but the nights she spent in the embrace of others were terribly cold. Before she realized it, her hand was reaching for the small bottle in her pocket, seeking warmth.

She must have still been exhausted, because the bottle slipped through her fingers and rolled on the ground. Luckily, it didn’t break. She followed the bottle, but someone reached for it before she could.

“Is this yours?” It was the rugged-looking young man who came by the milk hall just to drink. He picked up the bottle with a blank expression, glanced at it for a moment, and then nonchalantly handed it to her.

She sighed with relief when she touched the bottle’s familiar glass. She thanked him with a genuine smile, forgetting to don the mask of a sex worker. “Thank you very much.”

“Not at all. That’s star sand, isn’t it?”

“It is. I got it as a gift some time ago.”

To Takumi it had been merely a simple gift, but to her it was so much more. When she held it, her heart felt warm and full.

“Must be quite the old gift. The glass is all dull,” the young man said.

“I suppose I’ve had it for a few years now.”

“You seem to treasure it.”

“I do. I’ve left many things behind, but this was the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to part with.” The truth slipped out all too fast. It appeared she still hadn’t fully woken up fully, and she forced a smile as though to chastise herself. “Oh dear. A lady of the night shouldn’t spoil the mood so.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “We all have things we can’t bring ourselves to leave behind.”

He meant to say he was no different in that sense. Understanding this, she said nothing in reply and looked at her feet.

She was interested in the young man, but only as an odd patron who stirred some curiosity. Conversely, the young man liked the way she handled herself as a lady of the night, but he had no desire for her services. Their interest in one another only went so far. That was why, even when they both revealed some of their true self, there would be no attempt to pry deeper. It was an unspoken rule that such things weren’t done around here, and he had to know that.

Her assumption lowered her guard and made his sudden sharp words feel like they clawed at her heart. “Do you cling to that thing because you can’t bring yourself to forget Kajii Takumi?”

Her heart ached painfully.

“A bottle containing traces of bygone days… Is that the form of your lingering regrets?”

He was not mocking her. He took the tone with which one might chastise a child, a tone full of gentleness. But her damaged heart throbbed violently.

“You’re awfully mean-spirited today,” she said.

“Forgive me, but it’s in a man’s nature to turn jealous when a woman shows off a gift from another man.” He made a light apology and shrugged. He clearly didn’t mean what he said about being jealous, based on the way he was brazenly gauging her reaction. “I happened to meet Kajii Takumi last night. It seems his feelings for you haven’t changed.”

She knew this, too, was just another jab to get a reaction out of her. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from trembling. With moist eyes, she stared back at the young man, but he said nothing further. Satisfied with what he saw, he excused himself and began to leave.

There was much she wanted to ask him, so she tried to call out. However, her voice wouldn’t form. All she could do was watch as he faded from view.

***

Jinya had spoken with Kajii Takumi the previous night. What they shared was less of a conversation than it was Takumi laying his emotions bare.

“Who is she to you?!”

“She isn’t the kind who belongs here.”

“I’ll make her happy this time for sure. We’ll be together forever. I won’t let go of her twice.”

“So please, I beg you. Don’t…don’t take her from me.”

As a fellow man, Jinya could somewhat understand how he felt. On an emotional level, he was on his side. But he couldn’t fully approve of his actions, so he was left conflicted.

“These things happen, I suppose.” Jinya walked away from the man, then mingled with the crowd and murmured to himself. He had thought it was just Takumi who was clinging to Hotaru, but despite the way she acted, she was attached to him too. They both held lingering regrets toward one another, and the Dove District had welcomed those regrets.

It was a strange situation, but it presented a good opportunity. The two likely already understood it was time for them to confront their regrets, but they wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place if they could take that first step themselves.

“It’s not like me to play matchmaker, but…” Surely nobody would fault him for giving them a little push?

Jinya didn’t mind playing the fool from time to time, especially not if it meant a heart entranced by what was lost could come to face tomorrow.

***

It was year twenty-two of the Showa era (1947 AD). Two years had passed since the defeat in the war, and poverty was still rampant in Japan.

During the war, Tokyo endured repeated firebombings, and many buildings and people perished. It was the end of winter when the parents of a certain thirteen-year-old girl passed as well. Unable to survive on her own, she was entrusted to relatives.

She did not have an easy life in her new home, though. Goods were in short supply after the war; every household barely got by. Her relatives forced many chores on her, claiming they had no food to spare for hands that didn’t work, and they rewarded her exhausting efforts with meager amounts to eat. The children of her new home bullied her and called her parentless. She could not defy any of her relatives, having no choice but to depend on them, and she spent most of her time crying.

It was a tough life, but most of all, it was suffocating. She hated how she was only treated like a waste of space. She didn’t want to feel so useless and pathetic. The days continued to pass, but she still felt like she couldn’t breathe. She thought she might actually suffocate to death if this went on.

But those days didn’t last long. She wasn’t freed from her hardship, however, but kicked out by her relatives after a few months. She was passed over to other relatives but received basically the same treatment there. She was unwanted. A burden. She came to think that it must have been a mistake for her to survive, that she would’ve been better off dying with her parents.

In time, she grew accustomed to her new life, and, as a result, she lost all expectations for anything to change. But two years later, when she turned fifteen, a change finally occurred.

“…-chan. I’m sorry I took so long.”

A man named Kajii Takumi came along. Their parents were friends, so she had known him as a family friend who was eight years older than her. He had moved to Tokyo from Yamagata and lived alone. Out of worry for her, he came by her relatives’ place several times to meet her. His visits came to an end when she left Tokyo, but he had somehow found the new home she had been passed off to.

“It’s been a while. You’ve gotten a little thin, huh?” He sadly patted her head with his soft hands. It had been a long time since she’d felt the warmth of another.

The two talked at length as though to make up for lost time. He had graduated from medical school and passed his medical license exam, and he was set to move back to Yamagata. He wanted to take her with him.

“Was that a bit confusing? I’m saying I love you. I want you to be my other half.” His awkward smile made him seem a little childish.

He planned to introduce her to others as his fiancée and claimed he wanted to repay her parents for the kindness they had shown his family before.

Happy to be wanted as a wife, she felt her face heat up, but her mind was in disbelief. She believed an adult like him couldn’t possibly want her—much less love her. Having been treated as unwanted for so long, she thought it was too good to be true.

She turned him down, but he came back the next day and the next, asking the same thing every time. No matter how much she refused him, he wouldn’t give up. She knew he was just being kind. Making her his wife had to just be an excuse to save her poor pitiful self from being tossed around between her relatives. She felt stupid for getting her hopes up, even if it was just for a moment, and she felt guilty for all the trouble she was causing him.

He visited over and over, asking her to marry him, but his words no longer moved her heart because she knew his true intentions. “I want to make you happy,” he would say. Those words proved he only saw her as an object of pity. His undeterred kindness was enough to eventually break down her walls, though. In time, she took his hand with a smile. However, she didn’t smile out of joy but out of an obligation to reward him for trying to save her worthless self.

The feelings in her heart were likely not those of love, but there were feelings of some sort in there, ones meant for him. That alone, she could not deny.

Despite that, she became Hotaru anyway.

A few days had passed since her conversation with the young man, but discomfort still lingered in her heart. But she still had work to do, so she forgot what he said for the moment and entered the milk hall as a waitress.

“Huh? Somebody is looking for me?”

In a spare moment with no customers around, the manager had called her over. His words made her tense up. “That’s right, sweetie. A man’s been visiting other brothels looking for a girl of your exact description. You wouldn’t happen to be involved in something, would you?”

She knew who the man was right away. Though it had been formed out of pity, her relationship with Takumi had been a good one. He’d probably come because he didn’t want it to end.

“It’s fine.” She inadvertently reached for the small bottle in her blouse’s chest pocket, placing her hand over her clothes. Just pressing against it gave her warmth. To tell the truth, she didn’t want things between them to end either. Even so, it was too late for her to return to his side. “You taught me yourself, remember? The Dove District is what it is because it accepts all: lust and greed; man and woman. I’m Hotaru now, anyway.”

If he came to meet her, then she would face him—but not as the girl she once was. She would be Hotaru.

“If you say so,” the manager said. “But come to me if something happens. I’m here for you.”

“I will. Thank you.”

Out of respect for her wishes, the manager didn’t pursue the matter further, and she appreciated that. She’d been in his care ever since she drifted to the Dove District. Her memories of the parents she lost when she was young had already faded to the point where she couldn’t recall her father’s face. That was why the kind manager felt like something of father to her.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “A client has requested you.”

…On second thought, a father would never readily pair her up with a client like this.

She was told that the client came in while she was away and had already been led to her room, which was unusual. The manager didn’t like it when the proper procedure wasn’t followed. Even if it meant making the client wait, he usually kept them downstairs so the waitress could start by greeting them.

Thinking that something felt off, she climbed the stairs and made for her room. The floorboards of the hallway creaked. She turned the cold metal doorknob of her room, opened the door, and froze.

The only light in the room was that of the lamp. The man’s shadow swayed as the flame oscillated, and the air of the room smelled stagnant. She recognized him.

“I hope you don’t mind me waiting for you here,” he said. It was the young man who came to this milk hall to drink almost every night. He sat on the bed, a cold look on his face. It was unexpected of him to seek the services of a sex worker and to appear in front of her so brazenly after their previous exchange.

She was shaken, but not enough for it to show on her face. She did not mind. The young man was the sensible sort. He would be a fine client.

“Of course not. In fact, I should be the one to apologize for making you wait… I am Hotaru.” She introduced herself, as was customary, but did not ask for his name. If he wanted her to use it, he would tell it to her of his own volition.

“Right,” he replied. That was it for pleasantries, then.

She sat down next to him on the bed, leaned against him, and reached out to touch his chest. He stopped her before she could, though.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“Not at all.” He took some money out of his pocket and put it on the bedside table, then turned to face her. His eyes were calm, absent of the feverous desire she had seen in so many of her customers. “I must start with an apology, however.”

“For buying a woman you don’t intend to sleep with?” she interjected without missing a beat, putting him at a loss for words.

He put his hands up to show surrender and said, “You got me. But I really mean no offense.”

“No offense taken. I can at least pride myself as a lady of the night in having read your intentions.”

She had surmised that he didn’t intend to sleep with her, and she was fine with that. Quickly, she recovered from her earlier surprise. The stiffness she had felt since their argument a few days earlier faded as well. The young man smiled wryly, having been seen through.

“You’re free to buy my time if that’s all you want,” she said. “But I’d like to know why you’re doing it. It’s not the way of this world to ask about one’s past or circumstances, but it is strange that a man as young as yourself would pay a far from insignificant price for a woman only to not sleep with her.”

His action confused her. Moreover, she couldn’t readily accept his money without having done any work to deserve it.

“I want to gaze at the stars with you, and maybe talk about love… Or is that a little too pretentious a claim?” He said his words as though delivering a pickup line, perhaps to get back at her a little. The kindness in his eyes made it clear he was kidding.

They passed rows of café-style buildings with fancy tiling. One wall had the words “Off Limits” written on it in English, a remnant from the time the American occupying forces were around. The street, lit by a blindingly bright heart-shaped neon sign, was wide enough that people could easily stop and gander at the shops on either side. Night had just begun. Men walked to and fro, and women stood in front of shops to try and call them in. Hotaru and the young man bore witness to the red-light district’s unique vitality as they walked down the street.

The young man had brought her out, and she followed him without a word. The two avoided the shopping district and the area with densely cluttered brothels as they headed for the outskirts of town.

“This should be far enough,” he said as they left the street and reached the Sumida River. It was quiet. The distant hustle and bustle was faint, and the bugs by the riverbank were silent. The stillness made it the perfect spot to gaze at the stars.

The two found themselves staring up at the sky. Luckily, there was not a cloud in sight, and they were far enough from all the neon lights that they could easily see the twinkling of the stars. She had looked up at the stars like this in the past, together with Takumi. She had surely known happiness then.

“Is something on your mind?” asked the young man.

“Yes. I was wondering why you didn’t sleep with me.” She lied, hiding what was really on her mind. He probably saw right through her, but she kept up her mask as a sex worker and smiled anyway. “Do you hate women who spread their legs and whisper sweet nothings to anybody for money?”

“Not at all. If I were a man who couldn’t appreciate the value of dreams, I wouldn’t have come here.”

The young man claimed she reminded him of the more antiquated ladies of the night, but he himself felt very old-fashioned. Most people these days laughed off the prospect of paying to fall in love for a night, but he understood the allure that a dream brought.

“You’re a charming woman, one well worth falling in love with for a night, but I’ve brought you here for other reasons. It’s time for you to settle things.”

“What… What do you mean?” She was slowly realizing the young man’s intentions, but she continued to play the part of a dumb, clueless woman.

“I told you I wanted to talk about love, didn’t I?” He smiled slightly and looked back up at the sky. His gaze was distant, seeing something that wasn’t there. “I used to look at the stars more often in the past. It must be all the street lamps now, but they look dimmer than they used to.”

It was strange for such a young man to talk about the past like it was far behind him, but she could tell he meant what he said.

“I fell in love once, back when the stars shone brighter… Hey now, don’t look so surprised. I’m a person too and I’ve had feelings for others, especially when I was young.”

“Oh, er, of course. I apologize,” she said.

“Away from the village, there was a small hill next to the river where I would look up at the stars together with the girl I loved. We even promised to marry when we got older.”

His story felt reminiscent of Hotaru’s own. The starry sky he looked up at now must have contained memories of a distant love just like it did for her.

“She was the daughter of an important family in the village and was chosen to become the shrine maiden. I swore to be her guardian, to stay with her in at least some form.”

“But things didn’t end well between you two…”

“They did not, and I have remained a bachelor ever since.”

“I see…”

They had loved one another but did not wed, their promise leading nowhere.

Hotaru squeezed her bottle of star sand. Like her, the young man knew the feeling of love that couldn’t bear fruit. Her heart ached hearing his story, but the young man showed no such sadness himself.

“But when we met again, she told me I couldn’t stay fixated on what had happened because I had a life ahead of me to live. I had been dragging out the past up until then, recalling it to let it hurt me. I felt like doing that would let me stay connected to what I once lost. It was pathetic of me, really.” Despite his self-disparaging words, his soft smile showed no such contempt for himself.

“I don’t blame you,” said Hotaru. “You can’t replace the things you’ve lost. It’s only natural to want to stay connected, even if it’s through regret.”

“You’re right. There really is no replacement.”

With heavy sadness in her voice, she asked, “Then why can you still smile like that?”

He replied in a gentle, parental tone. “I suppose it’s because the woman I loved taught me that even if you come to forget the feelings you once thought were everything, something will remain. But you can’t live only looking back at that something.”

People could not live in their dreams, and memories were doomed to fade. Some things must come to an end for people to continue walking forward again.

“I’ve lived my life weighed down by lingering regrets,” he continued. “I have no right to tell you to forget your past, but I do believe you need to come to terms with it.”

“By settling things?” she asked after a pause.

“That’s right.” His eyes dropped down from the stars to something. She followed his gaze and froze, her heart skipping a beat when she saw the man standing there: Kajii Takumi—the object of her lingering regrets.

To be honest, she’d expected this. She’d had a feeling the young man was bringing her out to meet Takumi, and she was fine with that. She had been ready to bid him farewell as Hotaru.

But now that she was actually in front of him, her body turned stiff. The fact that Takumi had followed her to this place terrified her.

“I was once a shrine maiden guardian,” the young man said. “I served as demon hunter as part of my duties, which included the exorcising of spirits.”

With that, the dots came together for Hotaru. It finally made sense why the young man claimed he didn’t like to meddle in a couple’s affairs but did so anyway. It was both because something inhuman was present and because an unfulfilled love similar to his own had come to pass. He wanted to give a proper conclusion to the feelings both she and Takumi were experiencing.

“A grim fate awaits those entranced by spirits. What happens from here is up to you.” The young man looked Hotaru squarely in the eyes. He believed she would make the right choice. Even though the two were little more than strangers, he trusted her, and so he left without saying another word.

She and Takumi were the only ones left by the riverbank. They stared at one another, unmoving.

“…-chan,” he said. Even his raspy voice brought back memories. The two were to be married one day, but she couldn’t bring herself to stay with him, so she had fled.

The young man was right. She had to settle things once and for all and bring an end to what they used to have.

3

THE LONG WAR came to an end with the Empire of Japan’s surrender. In the final years, when Japan began losing ground, many men were conscripted and sent to the battlefield. Those who weren’t nobility or of a similar social class were generally chosen for conscription, but Kajii Takumi was lucky enough to be exempt from the draft because he was a medical student and doctors were always in short supply during wartime. However, Takumi didn’t linger much on his good fortune. Any focus he had was dedicated to his studies.

A young girl he knew like a little sister had lost her parents to an air raid and was now living with her mother’s relatives. He couldn’t bring himself to ignore her plight, but he understood there was only so much he could do. He could not bring her parents back from the dead, and even if he stayed by her side, he had nothing to offer. People liked to say the comfort of one’s presence alone could mean the world, but talk was cheap. One’s presence could not fill the stomach, nor could it provide a roof over one’s head.

Japan was poverty-stricken after the war. If he wanted to help her, he needed money. That’s why Takumi decided to become a doctor—not to take over his family business but to become someone capable of helping her. To put it in another, less flattering way, one could say Takumi was such an awkward man that it took years of preparation for him just to approach a girl eight years his junior.

He believed that the two of them were always connected through the starry sky. Most people feared the sky during the war because they never knew when the next air raid might occur, but she alone would gaze at the stars and call them beautiful, smiling as she expressed the hope that everyone else could appreciate their beauty someday.

That smile of hers was probably what Takumi first fell in love with. He believed he could overcome any hardship if it meant she would smile for him again.

“…-chan. I’m sorry I took so long.”

The first thing he did after becoming a doctor was go meet her. Softly, he patted her head. She was thinner now that she’d been passed between the homes of relatives for a while, and her eyes were hollow and devoid of hope. But he wasn’t powerless anymore. He now had what it took to help her.

“Was that a bit confusing? I’m saying I love you. I want you to be my other half.”

He told her that he had always loved her and he wanted to introduce her to his parents as his fiancée. Out of embarrassment, he couldn’t help but sheepishly add that he felt like he owed her parents and wanted to return their favor—something he probably would’ve been better off not saying at all. But at least he managed to tell her the full extent of his feelings.

She was greatly surprised by what he had to say, which was understandable. It had taken him a long time to come to her, so he wouldn’t have been surprised if she turned him down. But he staked everything on the small chance she would have him anyway and visited her almost daily to ask her to come to Yamagata with him.

No matter how many times he told her his feelings, she always flatly replied that she wasn’t a fitting match. He became dejected, but his desire to help her didn’t change. So he came to a decision: He would make one last attempt, and if she rejected him once more, then he would give up and support her as a mere friend.

“…Why are you going so far for me?”

“Like I’ve said, it’s because I love you. But the last thing I’d want is to trouble you. If you happen to hate me, then…”

“No. I could never…never hate you…”

Tears suddenly began to fall from her eyes. As she cried, she finally showed him that smile he had been waiting for.

“I know I’ve turned you down so many times already, but is it not too late for me to change my mind and come with you?”

Her soft, gentle voice brought back memories of the days when she was younger and treated him like an older brother. Overcome with joy, he hugged her. His action flustered her, but he held her tight as though it meant he would never lose her again.

That was probably the happiest day of his life. Seeing her smile again was all he needed to be happy, and yet he lost that happiness all too soon.

“She’s…gone?”

He proposed to her once more on her eighteenth birthday, but she disappeared without giving him an answer.

Somberly, his father told him she’d chosen to leave. Takumi didn’t understand what he was saying at first, but his father’s grim expression cooled his head and made the words gradually settle in. She had left him.

It dawned on him that she must have hated him enough to run away. He felt plunged into darkness.

He knew she didn’t love him romantically at first, but they’d spent much time together since then. When they looked up at the stars and their fingers brushed, she would blush. The way she called his name turned endearing at some point, and the eyes with which she looked at him had become warm and moist. His waiting hadn’t been in vain. She had come to love him as a man—or so he had believed. In the end, he was mistaken.

He felt as though the ground had disappeared beneath his feet. Everything he’d believed in was a lie. She had smiled so happily when he gave her that bottle of star sand, saying she would treasure it. But that smile hadn’t been real.

And so the two became separated.

Eventually, he followed whatever lead on her he could find and, knowing he was simply pursuing a dead love, set foot in the Dove District.

***

From Hotaru’s perspective, things had been over between them for a long time. But the Dove District that couldn’t exist had brought them together again.

“Takumi-san…”

“Come on, let’s go home. You’re not meant to be in a place like this.”

“Takumi-san, please listen to what I have to say.”

“I will, after we go back home. To our home. I won’t let go of you twice. I’m taking you back with me, no matter what you say.”

“Please, just listen to me,” she pleaded. Tears streamed from his lifeless eyes as he reached a shaky hand out. She shook her head and sadly said, “I’m sorry, but I’m Hotaru now.”

“None of that matters. You’re my wife,” he insisted. He still clung to her, or rather to the woman she had been. He couldn’t let go of what was already long in the past and was left desperate to regain it somehow.

“Why are you going this far?” she asked.

“What do you mean why? I love you, I…I really, really loved you…”

She saw his desperation and, all too late, regretted what she had done. But that was why she needed to end things here, for good. He had always been there for her, but they couldn’t stay together any longer. He simply wasn’t meant to be in a place like this.

“I’ve always thought,” she began, “that you only saved me out of kindness.”

“No. I was happy to be the only one who would save you. I thought it meant we could be together forever.”

He didn’t try to reach his hand out to her anymore. Instead, he drew near and threw his arms around her. The embrace of others always felt so cold to her, but he had the proper warmth.

“I knew you didn’t love me that way,” he said, “but I was fine with that. So long as I could be with you—so long as you smiled—I’d have been happy.”

She’d thought he was trying to save her, a girl with no place to belong, under the pretense of making her his wife. But the truth was the exact opposite—he wanted to make her his wife so badly that he went so far as to offer her a life that lacked nothing. The two had misunderstood one another from the start.

“I’m sorry. I told myself you only ever saw me as a sort of little sister and never doubted it,” she said.

“That’s fine. I didn’t care if I was loved back. I just wanted you to be happy.”

“But you misunderstood me too, Takumi-san. I did love you.”

Even now, she still remembered the starry sky they looked up at. She’d left so much behind, but she still couldn’t bring herself to part with the star sand he had given her. He may have been no more than a brother figure from the neighborhood when she was a child, but time could change hearts. The little girl had grown up to find love.

“But then why did you leave…?” he asked.

“What I felt for you wasn’t love at first. But as the days passed, my feelings turned into love. That’s why I couldn’t bear to stay by your side any longer.”

She would only cause trouble for him if she stayed, so she left everything behind and became Hotaru, sleeping with different men every night with only the star sand to soothe her. That was who she wanted to become.

“I wanted to make you forget me and find somebody else to marry. To let you be happy.”

She wanted to become the worst kind of woman imaginable, one who was ungrateful for all the kindness he had shown her, so he could be left with no lingering regrets.

“But why? Just seeing you smile made me happier than anything,” he said.

There had been a fatal misunderstanding between the two. The happiness she thought he deserved was different from the happiness he actually sought. If only they had opened up more, then things might have ended differently.

“If you really love me, then let’s start over from here. Please stay with me. That’s all I want,” he said.

“I can’t, and I know you know why. Please, forget my foolish self.”

It was all far too late. Their only option now was to end things as cleanly as possible and maybe make one last beautiful memory. She pushed against his body. His arms went lax and dropped from her side. A distance appeared between the two again.

“I could never forget you. I want to be with you forever.”

“We can’t. I know your feelings are real, but I can’t stay by your side.”

With unfulfilled love in her heart, she spent many years alone and came out a little stronger and a little kinder than she’d been before. She looked at him, not as the girl she once was, but as a different woman.

“You’ve clung to my memory long enough, but you can’t let a dead woman weigh you down forever.” She bared her heart to the man she once loved.

“No. Stop it.”

“You searched for me the whole time, didn’t you?”

Takumi had looked for her from the very day she disappeared, but he hadn’t found her in time.

“I’m sorry. For not living long enough…and for not staying with you.”

A year before the Dove District met its end, there was a sex worker who passed away. Because her disease wasn’t infectious, she was allowed to work at Sakuraba Milk Hall up until her last moments. She never lived to see the end of the red-light districts.

That was why, though she could guess it was year thirty-four of Showa, Hotaru knew nothing of the Dove District’s end. She did not live to see it.

“I’m sure you would’ve insisted on marrying me even once you learned I was dying. That was why I wanted you to forget about me instead. I wanted you to remember me as a terrible woman who would spread her legs for money, not a wife who died before her time.”

It hurt her to stay with him. His father had examined her body and told her she didn’t have long to live. She hadn’t been afraid of death, but of dying in front of him. Not wanting to hurt such a kind man, she fled to where he wouldn’t find her.

She was sure her ungratefulness would be enough for him to hate her, but if by some chance he actually came looking for her, then he would only find a whore. That, she had been certain, would be enough for him to forget about her and move on.

“But even so,” he said, “even if this was all for me, I still want to be with you. Even if it’s just for a little longer.”

He was still haunted by the bygone days of the past.

What the young man had said was true: A grim fate awaited those entranced by spirits. Takumi would never move forward again if he kept clinging to the memory of the dead. That was why she needed to end things between them for a second time.

Because she had truly loved him, she would bring an end to their lingering regrets.

“Takumi-san. I loved you both as a kind brother figure and as the man who helped me. So don’t think to yourself that you could make me happy if you had another chance. I was already the happiest woman in the world with you.”

Her words were a half truth. The more she came to love him, the more it hurt her to be with him. But she would see this lie through to the end for the feelings of the man who gave her a place to belong. Surely God would forgive such a small white lie.

“It’s your turn to find happiness. I won’t be able to rest in peace otherwise.”

“No, don’t leave me. I still—”

“Thank you for loving me. You gave my unwanted self a place to belong. You were the one thing I could consider true.” This time she fully meant what she said.

The bottle of star sand was still in her hands. It would be enough for her to bid him farewell with a smile.

“Goodbye. Make sure you don’t fall for such a worthless woman next time.”

She showed him no tears, nor even tenderness. She ended things with a joke so he wouldn’t need to feel burdened as he moved forward again.

The stars still twinkled in the sky. The refreshing breeze was reminiscent of a night long ago. In the Dove District that shouldn’t have existed, the two parted for good under the same starry sky they once shared.

***

“Is your goodbye over?” A monotonous voice called out to Takumi as he groveled on the ground. A figure approached—it was the young man who’d set the stage for tonight’s meeting.

“Yeah. It’s over. It’s all…over. She’s gone…” Takumi said.

“I see. The wind’s cold tonight. You should get going,” urged the young man.

Takumi made no effort to move. Nothing was on his mind but thoughts of her.

He truly loved her and had wanted nothing more than for her to be happy. But the red-light districts were already a thing of the past by the time he had reached the Dove District. The woman of the night called Hotaru passed away even a full year before that, and so their love had never reached a proper conclusion.

“I had no idea what she was thinking when she left, and she never understood how I felt up until the end. Maybe the two of us weren’t looking at one another at all.”

Hearts could not communicate if both sides only forced their feelings onto each other. Perhaps they had just been selfish, claiming they acted out of love without ever stopping to consider what the other really wanted.

“You said just being by her side made you happy, and she wished for you to be happy even if she couldn’t be by your side. I’d say you were both looking at one another just fine.” The young man’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “So don’t be so down. The two of you definitely loved one another.”

The kindness in the young man’s voice made Takumi look up, only to find him gone.

Lingering regrets faded and become no more than memories. But from time to time, Takumi would surely recall the beautiful stars he had seen that night together with her.

***

Thus ends the story of Kajii Takumi, Hotaru’s former boyfriend.

For the most part, things went just as Jinya expected they would. Only one abnormality remained.

“Thank you very much. You made it so I could settle things.”

Just as he left the Sumida River to head back to the shopping district, a woman called out to him. He had assumed those who abandoned all their lingering regrets would disappear from the Dove District, but here Hotaru remained.

“Not at all. Sorry for forcing something so difficult onto you,” he replied.

“It was necessary. For Takumi-san, and for me as well. You knew the truth from the very start, didn’t you?”

It only took a glance for Jinya to understand that Hotaru was dead and Kajii Takumi hadn’t moved on from her. That was why he intervened when he first saw them, even though he didn’t like to meddle in a couple’s affairs. It was easy to see that only a grim fate awaited the two: a woman who couldn’t fully discard her feelings and a man who remained entranced with the dead. From the start, the one Jinya had been saving wasn’t Hotaru, but Takumi.

“You hung around where I was for his sake as well, I assume,” Hotaru said.

“More or less. I’d rather not see what becomes of a man entranced by the dead.” It could be said that Jinya himself became a demon because of lost love. He felt an obligation to stop them from meeting the same fate, even if it meant doing something unthinkable. “You really needn’t thank me, though. I intended to kill you if things had ended differently.”

If Hotaru shared Takumi’s wish to stay together, then Jinya would have killed her to free him. That was why he couldn’t readily accept her gratitude.

“Even so, I’m thankful.” She smiled genuinely, not as a sex worker but as herself. “Thanks to you, our feelings could reach a conclusion. We managed to identify the thing we held between us as love, despite all our misunderstandings. That wouldn’t have been possible without you.”

“I see,” he said, finally accepting her gratitude.

She nodded, then said, “I can only hope he manages to forget me.”

There was still quite a distance before they reached Sakuraba Milk Hall, and the two walked side by side as they chatted.

“Don’t ask for the impossible. Some women stay unforgettable no matter how much time passes.”

“Even for you?”

“Of course. I’m sure I’ll never experience a love as vivid as my first.” Jinya looked over at Hotaru; he’d remembered to ask her something. She was unlike anyone he had ever met before. She was old-fashioned, clumsy with her feelings, and sometimes couldn’t bring herself to say what she truly felt, but something about her made her easy to talk to, especially now that she had parted with her lingering regrets. “Say, Hotaru…”

“Yes?”

After ending things cleanly with Takumi, she should have had no reason to cling to her life in the Dove District. So why did she stay?

“Why are you here?”

Did she still carry lingering regrets?

She understood Jinya’s question and thought about it with a childish look on her face. “Hmm, well…” She trotted forward a few steps, spun around, and impishly put a finger to her lips. “That’s a secret.”

She truly was a lady of the night. Her smile was so perfect one wouldn’t mind letting themselves fall for her.

Heart of a Flower

1

PART FOUR: NANAO, DAUGHTER OF MAGATSUME

HOTARU WAS GRATEFUL to the young man, but she also felt a bit bad that he’d done so much for her. He had helped resolve the rift between her and her old boyfriend, and paid a sizable amount of money in the process. Sure, he did it all of his own volition, but she wasn’t so shameless as to do nothing in return. That was why she insisted on at least giving him his money’s worth in companionship. Understanding she would feel indebted otherwise, he accepted her offer. Maybe there were some other emotions involved, but neither could identify what those might have been.

“I assumed your skin would feel cold,” the young man said as he quenched his thirst with the water left on the side table. They were on the second floor of Sakuraba Milk Hall, in the room with the balcony—Hotaru’s work room that doubled as her personal bedroom. She had spent several nights here in the arms of other men for her job. The room was dim, lit only by the shaky flame of a lamp.

Hotaru didn’t grasp what he meant at first, but she quickly put two and two together. He more or less knew what she was. The dead had no warmth, so it was strange that she did.

“Oh. Perhaps that was rude to say?” he added.

“No, I don’t mind. I felt warm to you, did I?” she mused.

“You did.”

“Mm. Good.” With the sheets wrapped around her body, she smiled. She knew he meant no offense. A mean-spirited man wouldn’t have anything to do with a strange woman like her in the first place. He was simply making a passing remark and trusting she wouldn’t take it to mean anything more than that. His trust was mainly in Hotaru the sex worker, though. The fact that that bothered her proved her heart was changing somewhat.

“I thought you were warm too,” she murmured, hanging her head with a soft sigh. He felt warm, unlike her other clients, not because he was particularly different but because she had changed. The lingering regrets in her heart had faded, and she could now allow herself to freely indulge in the warmth of others. She said, “Any warmth you felt in me must have been your own.”

The young man smiled faintly. She spoke more familiarly with him, foregoing the stuffy formalisms as a show of affection. She was just a companion bought with money. No matter how you dressed it up, her sweet nothings would all end as a mere dream; her affection would disappear once night gave way to day. But there was nothing wrong with that. Some things were beautiful precisely because they were ephemeral.

“I’m flattered.” The young man, knowing fully well her love wasn’t real, allowed himself to fall for her anyway.

The two held no special feelings for one another, but for these brief moments, they were in love.

“I think I’ll take my leave here.” He started to dress himself. The sun still hadn’t risen, and the sky was the color of twilight. He could sleep in until morning if he wanted, but he showed no tiredness even though he’d just risen and got ready to leave.

“So soon?”

“Yeah. Thanks for tonight, though. I enjoyed myself.” He smiled, and she could tell it was genuine. She was reluctant to part with him, but it would be unrefined of her to try and make him stay.

She quickly dressed herself as well in her Western clothes, then held his arm and led him back down to the entrance. After she let his arm go, they went back to being strangers.

“Thank you for your patronage,” she said as she saw him off.

But after a few steps, he stopped.

“Is something the matter?” she asked. She knew nothing of his past but could see how he tensed.

“Just recalled a bit of the past; that’s all.” Elaborating no further, he left.

***

Jinya had momentarily stopped in his tracks because he was thinking of his old home. His one-night romance had dredged up the memory of a loved one from his past.

The memory of this distant love was precious to him, but it wasn’t a lingering regret within him. He could say with pride that he had said his farewells to Shirayuki, and so his reasons for wandering into the Dove District had to lie elsewhere.

“I can’t stand in place forever…” He exhaled the air in his lungs to soothe his stirring heart.

It was unlikely to all be a coincidence. The daughter of his mortal enemy must have been there for the same purpose.

The streets of the red-light district had grown quiet, their unique vitality nowhere to be seen. There were visibly fewer women seeking to bring customers into their shops and fewer men wandering around than before as well. Everywhere Jinya looked, he saw brothels with their lights out. This gaudy neighborhood felt empty without its people. The Dove District was gradually becoming deserted, similar to what happened when the Prostitution Prevention Act came into place.

The air of this dying district was growing stagnant, like the air in an abandoned building. This place would eventually meet its end if it were left alone. Time was all it took for lingering regrets to be buried by memories; regrets faded naturally as one lived out their days. But there was something he needed to do before that time came.

Jinya arrived at Ichikawa early in the evening, a time before most customers patronized it. The women were familiar with him by now and immediately guided him inside to the one he was there to see.

“Oh, you came.” Waiting for him in the back of the room was a listless woman wearing Western clothes—Nanao, daughter of Magatsume. “Take a seat. I was just thinking it was about time you showed up.”

He sat as she requested, which made her giggle. There was teasing in her voice, and weariness and resignation as well, but that all faded in an instant. She looked at Jinya appraisingly, nodded to herself, and then fixed her posture.

“So what brings you here today? Maybe you’ve finally come around to purchasing my services?” she asked.

“Drop the jokes. You know why I’m here. It’s what you’ve been after this whole time.”

“My, how rude. You make it sound like I’m scheming something, even though we’re after the same thing.”

“Hmph. I suppose you’re right.”

The two kept their eyes locked on one another. There was neither hostility nor passion in their gazes. They were too tense for things to be called peaceful. Jinya tried to act like he usually would, but the stiffness was still there. He felt no discomfort, however, likely because his goal was clear now.

“Everyone’s beginning to move forward,” he said. “It’s time I do the same.”

“And I as well. We have to do this eventually or it’ll never end, will it?”

The job Nanao gave him was to resolve the mystery of the Dove District that shouldn’t have existed. She knew how this place operated but didn’t make any effort to do anything about it herself. She likely didn’t care what happened to this place. She was a daughter of Magatsume, a discarded part of Suzune’s own self. For better or worse, that meant her motives had to lie with none other than Jinya himself.

The same was true for Jinya—his motives for coming to the Dove District lay with her. Their lingering regrets had to do with one another.

“I consumed the woman named Nanao and entered this place. I had no particular goal; it was just mere coincidence. I was abandoned by my mother and simply happened to drift here. But while life here’s been good, at the end of the day, I’m still my mother’s girl.” She held Jinya’s gaze squarely, not looking away once. She knew that if she backed down here, she would come to regret it. “My lingering regret is you. I don’t care about doing anything for my mother at this point, but I’m still a fragment of her. A fragment of the Suzune who loved you long ago.”

He recalled his hundred-year journey up until now, a journey both short and long. He had found many precious things along the way, but his hatred had been a constant companion throughout it all.

“It’s the same for me. I need to confront my feelings toward all of you sooner or later,” he said. His voice was uncharacteristically weak. He had meant the cruel words he directed at Magatsume after he lost Nomari. He had come to hate her, not because he had to do so as a demon, but with his whole heart.

He had delayed deciding what to do with her, believing he might find it in him to forgive her one day, and that was what came of it.

“I despise her. I still hold her dear and I’ve lived a hundred years, but I can’t part with the hatred in my heart. She’s no longer the Suzune I knew either, but Magatsume now. The two of us have long passed the point of no return.”

Jinya’s lingering regret was that a part of his heart was naive enough to still think things would turn out all right. He believed that he might find it in himself to forgive her in the end and she might have a change of heart too. He had been putting off deciding what he would do, unable to give up on a happy ending.

But Suzune had become Magatsume, and his hatred for her still persisted. The fate that had been foretold for the siblings seemed inevitable by this point.

“That’s why I need to confront her and the feelings she once held for me.”

Kadono Jinya needed to determine his answer: At the end of his journey, what would he choose? The day had come to give firm shape to his wavering heart.

“In other words, you want to understand us, the discarded pieces of our mother’s heart, before you decide whether to kill or spare her? You’re a rather foolish man. Killing her would be so much easier the less you knew.”

She was right. Still, he didn’t want to take the easy route.

“If I kill her, it’ll be with full knowledge of her feelings. If I accept her, it’ll be together with all my hatred. That’s what it means to confront something.”

“What an exhausting man you are.”

“Sorry. It’s in my nature.”

She sighed with exasperation, but there was some joy in her expression. Jinya was, at the very least, a man who wouldn’t kill her mother without some thought. Knowing that made her less tense. “You’re certain to end up fighting to the death, but you want to understand her anyway. Do I have that correct?”

“I’d say that’s about right.”

“I see. My own goal was to confront you, or to put it more simply, I wanted to make you understand a small part of my mother’s feelings. What a lucky girl I am for us to both be on the same page.”

In a sense, they had been on the same page since their first meeting. Even though she knew the Dove District would meet its end on its own, she asked him to resolve its mystery so things would end on both their terms. He agreed to her request to show he accepted that. They didn’t say it directly, but they had both been hoping to confront one another like this.

“Well then, why don’t we dive into things…is what I would like to say. But a professional has a price for everything, even just talking,” she said.

Jinya frowned somewhat disappointedly. He had thought they were after the same thing, so why was she stalling here?

“How about this?” she said. “Bring me gifts. For each one that pleases me, I’ll tell you something you want to know.”

“…Gifts?”

“Yes, women love their gifts. You don’t mind, do you?”

“What is this? Your version of the Five Impossible Requests?”

“Ha ha ha, I’m no princess. Just think of this as your cute niece asking you to play along with her.”

He couldn’t help but feel irritated. They both wanted the same thing, so why was she being so difficult? But she didn’t cower at his cold gaze; instead, she broke out into laughter. She seemed to be taking this all as a joke, but she too was a demon. She wouldn’t suggest such a thing and then flippantly back down, so he saw no choice but to play along.

“Fine.”

“Oh? That was easier than I expected. I suppose you’re too stubborn to threaten killing me.”

The fact that she called him stubborn, and not naive, proved she was appraising him correctly. He’d killed many people up until then and had no hesitation over killing others, but he had no desire to kill her here. He had already chosen to confront her and the feelings of Suzune she held, and he wasn’t going to walk that decision back.

“I told you, didn’t I? I intend to confront you all. Besides, I don’t think you’re the type of woman to mess around for no reason.”

“Ha ha, I’m flattered. You’re right, of course.”

That was good enough for him.

“I’ll come by again.” He got up and moved to leave, feeling her gaze follow him as he departed. He didn’t look back once.

Their conversation had lasted for quite some time. When he stepped out of the brothel, the sky had already turned indigo.

He had taken the first step, but he was far from thrilled. Nanao had said she would talk if she got gifts that would please her. In other words, she wouldn’t say a peep if his gifts weren’t to her liking.

In “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” five men came to ask for Princess Kaguya’s hand in marriage, and she asked each of them to obtain a treasure. These were the Five Impossible Requests: the stone begging bowl of the Buddha, a jeweled branch from the mythical land of Hourai, a robe made from fire-rat skins, a jewel from a dragon’s neck, and a cowry shell birthed by a swallow. They were all treasures impossible to obtain, so, naturally, none of her suitors succeeded.

Compared to the Five Impossible Requests, Nanao’s request for him to bring her something that pleased her was terribly ordinary. He suspected there might be more to this, but he figured he might as well do what she wanted at this point. Still, he felt a bit weary and exhaled a sigh.

2

JINYA PAID HIS USUAL VISIT to Sakuraba Milk Hall and sipped his drink as he tapped into the manager’s wealth of knowledge.

“You’re looking for a present a woman might like?”

“My niece asked for something. Any idea what I should get?”

“Ah, that one niece of yours, huh?”

Jinya had tried on his own to think of something Nanao might like, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He came to the manager for advice and got some right away.

“How about something like sushi or some baked sweets? Your niece is a sex worker, right? I’m sure she’d be happy with a snack before work.”

A gift that was too much could backfire. For a member of the opposite sex with whom one wasn’t particularly close, store-bought food was enough.

“I’ll try something like that, then. Thanks for the help.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Thank me afterward, if she likes it.” The manager seemed in good spirits; his expression was softer than usual.

Jinya finished his whiskey in one go. With one less thing to worry about, he could enjoy the flavor.

“Ah, finally. I’ve been waiting.”

After picking the milk hall manager’s brain, Jinya returned to Ichikawa with a gift in hand. He found Nanao waiting listlessly for him in her usual room.

“Here.” He handed her his gift. She accepted it carefully as if she were handling a baby, brushing a finger across it lovingly like a mother.

“Sorry for making you go to the trouble,” she said.

“Weren’t you hurrying me just a few seconds ago?”

“Only boorish men bring up the past like that. Are these cookies?”

A box packed with expensive sushi was something of a customary gift for a sex worker, but Jinya brought her cookies instead. The cookies made liberal use of nuts and looked rather filling, so they would be perfect for a quick snack before work. A varied and high-quality assortment like this must have been fairly expensive, and the packaging looked nice too. It was a good gift.

“My, you really splurged for this, didn’t you? Thank you. I’ll eat some later.” The gift appeared to be to her liking, and she accepted it happily.

Jinya breathed a sigh of relief.

She smiled and looked at him with kind eyes, seeming amused by the sight of a master swordsman worrying so much over how his gift would be received. She fixed her disheveled clothes for once, and then her expression changed completely. “Then let’s get to it as I promised.”

With her Not-So-Impossible Request out of the way, they could get to what they were really after. They locked gazes, the room’s peculiar smell still surrounding them.

“Let’s see… Why don’t we start with my mother’s present situation?” she suggested.

“Should you be leaking such juicy information?”

“I told you, I’ve no interest in being her ally at this point. I couldn’t care less whether you know what she’s up to or not.”

Jinya was meeting with Nanao to learn whatever he could about Magatsume and her daughters, but he hadn’t thought Nanao would start by revealing something so grand.

She said, “My mother can’t move for the time being, so you can rest easy. I doubt she’ll pull any schemes until we get closer to the fated year.”

“She can’t…move?”

“Yeah. She’s, how do you put it… She’s gone and hurt herself. She’s cut away too many pieces of her heart and left herself with nothing but her hatred. If you change what’s inside, the vessel changes too. Her body is turning more and more into a monster. She’s gotten stronger, but I think it was at the cost of her presence of mind. She doesn’t have what it takes to come and meddle in your affairs anymore.”

Now it made sense that he hadn’t seen Magatsume causing any trouble during the Taisho and Showa years.

Nanao continued, “That’s why she’ll only make her next move when her ultimate goal is in sight. I’m sure you’re thrilled to hear that.”

In other words, he could be sure the people of Koyomiza wouldn’t be targeted. He was, indeed, thrilled to hear such a thing.

“That about covers it. What’s left… Ah. Say, how much do you know about my mother’s goal?”

“I heard that it involves creating hearts,” he answered, “and that she hates the world and wants to bring ruin to everything.”

“Those are both about right, I suppose. But that’s all just part of the process. There’s a place my mother is seeking, a place she’s been seeking from the start and will only keep seeking from here on out. Creating hearts and bringing ruin to everything is merely the groundwork for this ultimate goal—no more than the ingredients prepared for a recipe.”

Everything she said was news to Jinya, and the more he heard, the more eager he was to keep learning. Intensely, he asked, “What is this ultimate goal of hers?”

But just as they were approaching the heart of the matter, she raised her hand to stop him, saying in a teasing tone, “Oh no you don’t, Mister. Your gift this time only gets you that much.”

He couldn’t hide his irritation. “What?”

“If you want to hear more, you’ll have to bring another gift that’ll please me.”

“What about those cookies? You seemed plenty satisfied with them.”

“Oh, I was. But they weren’t a gift for me so much as they were for a sex worker. Am I wrong?”

She wasn’t. He’d chosen those filling cookies because he thought they would make a sex worker happy, not Nanao specifically. She’d accepted them with a smile, but he hadn’t truly fulfilled the conditions of her request.

“Ah, it seems you agree,” she said. “Then let’s end things here for today. I’m looking forward to your next gift.”

“No, wait—”

She ushered him out of the room with a smile, not bothering to hear his complaints. To be honest, he didn’t really know what he would say if she even gave him that chance. She had outplayed him well.

The women outside the room looked at him and, having seen him get chased out, regarded him with equal measures of pity and amusement. He had spent less than a half hour inside before being shoved out, giving rise to all sorts of sad but humorous possibilities.

“Fine. I accept your challenge.” He clenched his fists, his shoulders trembling with humiliation. He silently vowed to bring a gift that would render her speechless.

“A gift Nanao-san would like?”

He didn’t care about maintaining appearances, so he went to Aoba, his best bet among his acquaintances to learn about Nanao. He questioned her the very moment he returned to her apartment, rendering her a bit surprised.

“Er, I guess I don’t mind telling you, but what brought this on?”

“I need a worthy tribute to speak with her.”

“Uhh…”

Seeing she was still confused, he filled her in on what was going on, leaving out the important bits.

“Wow, so Nanao-san’s your niece? Wait… So you’re Nanao-san’s mother’s older brother? Is that right?”

“It is. Why?”

“Well, it’s just that Nanao-san told me a little about her mother before. She said she was the kind of woman who’d get jealous of her own brother’s lover and throw a fit.”

“That’s about right.”

“Wow. You must’ve had it rough, Jin-san.” She smiled wryly out of exasperation, or perhaps sympathy. “I think Nanao-san likes collecting combs. She once told me she likes ones with flower designs on them.”

“Combs, huh? Thank you. You’re a big help.”

“No worries. Oh, and she apparently likes yellow flowers. She also mentioned that she and her mother don’t like white flowers because they hate snow.”

Jinya avoided commenting on that last bit. He’d gained some valuable information, though. As he made dinner for them both, he thought about his plans for the next day.

“Oh? A boxwood comb. Is this fretwork of a lily of the valley? It’s quite a good make.”

Jinya paid another visit to Ichikawa, and his gift for Nanao this time was a boxwood comb. Boxwood was a popular craftwork material that was used for stamps, furniture, decorations, and the like, but it was best known as a material for combs. Boxwood combs had been a popular gift for women since olden days and were even the subject of many love poems. Gifting a boxwood comb was even considered a discreet way of expressing love.

Of course, Jinya held no romantic feelings for Nanao whatsoever. But she was a lady of the night, so he assumed she would appreciate this gift that promised ephemeral affection.

“My, my, I’m flattered,” she said, her cheeks slightly flushed. “You’ve chosen a gift that suits my interests and my line of work.”

“Anything to please you.”

“Oh, I’m pleased, don’t you worry. Now, for your reward…” With her face still flushed, she bashfully continued. “Let’s see… Ah, I know. Why don’t I tell you about us daughters of Magatsume? That’s what you originally wanted to know, right?”

He nodded, which made her smile. Her voice was more cheerful than before, perhaps thanks to the boxwood comb gift.

“We daughters were originally faceless spirits, created from the discarded parts of our mother’s heart. By taking in an aspect of a person, we gain individuality. I myself ate the sex worker known as Nanao to become who I am. However, I am not a copy of Nanao, but a mixture of her and the fragment of my mother’s discarded heart. The only exception to all this is Himawari-neesan.”

Jinya had always suspected Himawari was different from her sisters, and now he had firm proof he was right.

“Himawari-neesan is the eldest of us daughters. She was formed from the first thing our mother discarded from her heart: the love she once held for her brother. She didn’t need to take in an aspect of a person to form individuality; the emotions from which she was formed were already strong enough. That’s why she alone is special. Oh, of course, she’s also special because of her final duty, no doubt.”

Her final duty? That tidbit immediately caught Jinya’s interest, but Nanao moved along before he could get a word in. He had a feeling she was toying with him.

“Now, to explain why she created us,” she said.

“The ‘why’ is obvious, isn’t it? She needed pawns to do her dirty work.”

“Ahh, I had a feeling you thought that. But no, we weren’t created because she needed us as pawns. It’s the very opposite. We were created because we were in her way.” A heartbroken look filled Nanao’s eyes. She’d mentioned she was abandoned by her mother and was through with her, but she clearly wasn’t fully over her. “My mother loved you, her brother. That’s why she had to create Himawari-neesan first. She couldn’t stand against you with her love for you still in her heart.”

The daughters of Magatsume weren’t made to oppose Jinya; they were a mere byproduct of what she had to discard to oppose him. That was why Himawari looked so young even though she was the eldest of the daughters—she was born from Magatsume’s most precious and most impeding emotion.

“Of course, the same goes for the rest of us sisters. Our mother single-mindedly discarded the parts of her heart that got in her way, forming us. We all bear flower names and abilities that share that name, to represent what we were formed from.”

“How so?”

“Through the language of flowers. Himawari, or sunflower, means ‘I only have eyes for you.’ That’s why her ability lets her remotely observe a set target. She was formed from our mother’s wish to watch you at all times, so she could go to you wherever you were. Perhaps that matches what you know of Himawari-neesan?”

Jinya recalled how Himawari acted. She had warmed up to him abnormally quickly the first time they met, as though she already knew him. Now, understanding why, he gritted his teeth. An emotion he couldn’t identify welled up inside him.

“Jishibari means ‘to restrain.’ Her ability allowed her to restrict movement and abilities with chains. She was created from a desire to bind you, to keep you by her side, unable to leave, even if it meant chaining you down… Ha ha. She has some rather kinky tastes, that mother of mine.”

Jinya recalled Jishibari, the demon he met back in Edo times who had taken Nagumo Kazusa’s image. She had mentioned being unwanted by Magatsume and never once referred to her as her mother because of it. Jinya had pitied her.

“Azumagiku means ‘brief respite.’ The ability to erase memory was formed from a wish to make you forget her…or perhaps the troubled history you two share. I’m not sure. At any rate, I’m sure there were many things she both wanted to forget and wanted to make you forget. My sister Azumagiku was the manifestation of a faint wish to return to the way things were with you, but she wasted any chance of that on a rather silly scheme.”

As an aside, Nanao mentioned that Magatsume had personally adjusted Azumagiku to make her look more like the woman whose aspect she absorbed. Jinya already knew that, of course. Azumagiku had essentially been her.

“Furutsubaki means ‘I will always love you,’ which sounds nice on the surface, but she had the rather twisted ability to control others. But then again, I suppose that’s a form of affection too. When you love someone, sometimes you want to control everything they do. It’s improper, but such is the nature of a woman’s heart.”

Jinya recalled that pitiful daughter of Magatsume, captured and manipulated by Nagumo Eizen. She had taken Saegusa Sahiro’s image and left a rather poor impression on Jinya, but her ability Furutsubaki had allowed him to save Ryuuna. For that, he was thankful to her.

“All of us sisters come from something our mother felt toward you. Even after she discarded us from her heart, she keeps us dear. Most of us, at least. You see, my flower name represents a desire my mother didn’t want to acknowledge. That’s why I wasn’t made one of her pawns and got discarded in the truest sense, eventually ending up here.”

“…And your flower name is?”

“You’ll know in time, when all is finished and I’ve given you my ability as payment. Just. As. Promised.” She brought the topic to a close and giggled, enjoying the face Jinya was making.

He had known the daughters of Magatsume were discarded parts of her own heart, but he hadn’t stopped to seriously think about what that meant. This newfound knowledge changed how he saw the daughters he had faced so far. His chest tightened with the realization that he had mercilessly devoured every single one of them he encountered, Himawari aside. He even knew why Magatsume had hurt herself so much now. An unplaceable emotion welled up inside him together with his hatred.

“Thank goodness. I was worried you wouldn’t be affected by all this,” Nanao said.

Magatsume was currently left broken because she had cut away the parts of herself that cared for him. Put another way, the feelings Suzune had held toward him were so deeply rooted in her heart that cutting them away had damaged her essential self.

“I’m relieved you are the man you are. Do you understand now? My mother truly loved you. Even after you both became demons, her feelings for you were so strong that she had to do away with them in order to stand against you. But no matter how much she cut away, more and more of her feelings for you appeared. You are, in the truest sense, everything to her.” Nanao sincerely hoped he would never forget that. Even if the day came when he killed her mother, she prayed he would at least never doubt the sincerity of her feelings.

Jinya was speechless. He saw the love his sister and her daughters held for him, but his hatred was still there.

“Let’s call it a day, shall we?” Nanao said. “Next time we’ll talk about my mother’s ability and her ultimate goal. If you bring me a worthy gift first, that is. I’m looking forward to your next visit.”

Unable to calm the emotions inside him, he could only manage a nod in reply.

3

NANAO TOLD HIM the next visit would be the last. He couldn’t come up with a fitting gift for the occasion, though. Learning what lay in Magatsume’s heart had daunted him. His thoughts were leading him nowhere, so he decided to get a drink and visited Sakuraba Milk Hall.

“Nice to see you.”

“Welcome.”

He was greeted by both the manager and Hotaru. The latter acted slightly differently now, perhaps because the matter of Kajii Takumi had been resolved. She was still as graceful as before, but there was also something more to her now.

“Hey,” Jinya greeted.

“Is something the matter? You seem to be in low spirits,” Hotaru said.

“Do I?”

“You do. Quite obviously so too.”

“I see…” He couldn’t even be bothered to deflect it.

She looked at him and thought for a moment, then grabbed his hand. She turned to the milk hall manager and asked, “Is it all right if I step out for a bit?”

“Go for it. Make sure you treat our best customer well.”

Without even waiting to hear Jinya’s wishes, she pulled him out of the shop. A demon like him could’ve resisted if he wanted to, but he trusted her enough to go along.

She took him to the bank of the Sumida River, a place they’d been before and a good spot to see the stars.

“You’re rather aggressive today,” he said.

“You could have resisted me if you wanted. The fact that you didn’t means you don’t mind, right?”

“I suppose so.”

She’d seen how troubled he was and brought him out here as a way to return the favor he had shown her. But she struggled to find the right words to say next, even though she was usually such a smooth talker. That proved she was trying to help him as herself, not a sex worker. Understanding that, Jinya relaxed greatly.

“…Do you find it funny to see me so tongue-tied?” she asked.

“Not at all. It’s heartwarming, if anything.”

“Somehow, I’m not too flattered.”

He let out a warm sigh and looked up at the night sky, where a curtain of stars was sprawled out above. Starry nights were something special to both of them.

“Sorry for making you worry about me,” he said.

“Not at all. Would you mind if I asked what happened?”

“I was just reminded of how pathetic I am, that’s all.” He avoided giving a true answer, which made her frown.

“All right. But if you ever need anything, come to me. I can’t be on the receiving end of your kindness forever. A woman’s got to save face.”

“I appreciate your kindness.” But he would never actually seek her help if it came to it. She was a woman of the night, and he was a client. The line in the sand was clear, and crossing it would do neither of them any favors. “This is a good opportunity. Can I have your opinion on something?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t think of a good present to give this one sex worker I’m acquainted with. Can you recommend anything?”

She frowned. It was discourteous to ask one sex worker to think of a present for another. But she quickly guessed who this gift was for, and her frown faded. “Oh. Is this sex worker the one I’ve heard so much about?”

“My niece? Yes. I’ve gifted her food and a comb already, and she liked them, but they don’t seem to have been quite what she was after.”

“I see. Are the two of you close?”

“Good question. I’d like to believe she’s fond of me, at least.” He shrugged.

Hotaru couldn’t see what he was so stumped by. She replied not as a lady of the night, but as herself. “Just about anything should be fine, I’d think. It’d be one thing if you were getting a gift for any old sex worker, but I’m sure your niece would be happier with one that you had to come up with yourself instead of asking around for. All the more so if she likes you.”

“…Is that really true?”

“Absolutely. At least, that’s how it was for me,” she said, fiddling with her bottle of star sand.

The value of a gift didn’t lie in its price or how it matched the receiver’s interests. The value of a gift lay in the thoughts it was chosen with.

“Was I of any help?”

“Yes, very much.” Jinya thanked her, then looked up at the stars with her.

The stars were less numerous than he remembered from the past, but they certainly shone a little brighter than they had a few moments ago. The night sky was not so bad in this neon-lit part of town.

The act of wrapping gifts in paper is called origata. In Edo times, paper was a precious commodity, and using it to wrap objects was an act of both etiquette and prayer. One could not fold paper without it coming from the heart. A gift could be a transient thing, but the sincerity with which it was prepared and given always lingered.

The gift Jinya brought this time was not wrapped in anything. However, that wasn’t because he lacked sincerity; instead, he believed his sincerity would come across even if he didn’t dress his gift up.

“Is that your gift for today?” Nanao asked.

“It is,” he answered without a hint of shame, which seemed to please her. The gift in his hands was a small flower he had found along the street as he made his way here—a dandelion.

“I saw it on the way here. You like yellow flowers, right?”

“I do. Thank you, it’s a wonderful gift. You pass.” She accepted the flower from him with great care, as though it was a fragile thing.

He had given her expensive sweets, a boxwood comb, and now a flower picked off the street. Most would think his last gift was intended to slight her, but Nanao was beside herself with joy and wore a broad smile. Seeing her smile reminded him of a much younger girl—Suzune used to smile like that for him, long ago.

“Of course, all your gifts so far have been passing ones. Or rather, there isn’t a single gift you could give that wouldn’t be. I am part of my mother’s heart. It’s only to be expected that any gift from you would please me.”

From the start, this had been nothing at all like the Five Impossible Requests. The gifts themselves were unimportant; it was the effort he put into making them that mattered. That was why the gifts he had help in choosing, like the sweets and the comb, didn’t reach her heart as much as the flower that caught his eye on the way here.

Nanao smiled victoriously, full of relief and satisfaction. “You understood what I was after.”

“It took me a while, but yes. You said you weren’t the type to mess around for no reason. It took me a few days, but I finally figured things out.”

In the past, Magatsume…Suzune used to be happy to receive the trifling gifts he had brought her. As a child, he had no money. The best he could manage to give her were things like pretty stones found on the riverbed or flowers, but she would treat them like little treasures anyway. Any gift from him was a precious thing. Such happy times had once existed between them, and that was what Nanao wanted to remind him of.

“Good. I may have been abandoned, but I’m still my mother’s girl. I wanted to do at least something for her.” With this, Nanao’s lingering regret—the fact that she hadn’t done anything for her mother—was resolved. Though she had been abandoned by Magatsume, she still regretted not being able to do anything for her. But now that Jinya had learned a little of how her mother felt, the lump in her heart cleared away like ice melting in the spring sun. She had fulfilled her purpose and was in high spirits. “Let’s get to our final topic, then: my mother’s ability and her ultimate goal. But promise me one thing before we continue. Once we’re done, make sure you accept my payment.”

Once it was all over, he was to use Assimilation to devour her and her ability.

“Nanao…”

“It’s what we agreed on, isn’t it?” she said with a smile. “I have nothing to tell you if you can’t uphold your end of the bargain.”

“Why go so far?”

Jinya’s arm had to devour others whole in order to take their abilities. He couldn’t steal someone’s abilities and nothing else. To take someone’s ability was to take their life. She had to know that, and yet she still insisted he kill her.

“Because. I may be my mother’s girl, but I am myself first and foremost,” she said resolutely, as though to suggest there needn’t be any further reason.

He couldn’t manage a word in response, but her feelings reached him, so he slowly nodded after a moment’s hesitation.

“Thank you. I’m ready to tell you everything now. I only ask that you not get caught up in what I have to say and instead make the choice you believe to be right. I’m sure my mother will accept whatever future you choose.” As if she was entrusting her last wishes to him, she began, “My mother’s ability is Mahoroba…”

Jinya listened to Nanao’s explanation in full. He learned of the truth behind Magatsume’s regeneration and the wish that formed it. Her pitiable feelings made his heart feel constricted like it was being wrapped in soft silk. He would no longer hesitate now that he knew everything. No matter how painful an ending it would lead to, his answer was set in stone.

Nanao said, “I’ve said it already, but I’ll say it again: You are the only one who can stop my mother at the end of it all. A demon’s ability can grant anything but their one dearest wish. Don’t forget that.”

“I know.”

If what she said about Magatsume’s ability was true, then the only one who could stop Magatsume—in terms of both ability and emotion—was Jinya. Of course, even if there were somebody else who could fill his shoes, he wouldn’t let them. This was his responsibility.

“With that, I’ve told you everything. I’m satisfied. Are you?” Nanao asked.

He had confronted what lay in Magatsume’s heart and learned of her goal. Though it had taken him many years, he finally had an answer to what he would do at the end of his journey. He could proudly say he had no more lingering regrets—which meant it was time to bid farewell.

“Thank goodness,” she said.

The time to fulfill their bargain had come. There was no fear in her eyes; in fact, they were full of joy. That must have been because she was made from Magatsume’s emotions. She was more than glad to give her life for Jinya.

“Don’t look so glum. This is what I wanted,” she said. She drew close and put her hand against his chest. Her warmth was comforting. He had let his guard down toward her enough that he could indulge in such a thing.

“You’re really fine with this?”

“Of course. Believe me when I say I’d be the happiest woman in the world to become part of your strength.”

The other daughters of Magatsume up until then had only been enemies because they obeyed their mother. Having become estranged from Magatsume, Nanao instead placed Jinya first in her heart. She wanted to become his strength and was readily willing to throw her life away to do so.

“You’d better not back out now. Not after forcing a lady to make such a shameful display of herself,” she said, speaking flirtatiously in the manner of a lady of the night.

A natural smile formed on his face. “Ha. Fair enough.”

The tension in the air dissipated. Taking advantage of Jinya’s lowered guard, Nanao made her move and stretched forward, stealing his vulnerable lips. It was a kiss without passion, crude and forced. Her cheeks flushed lightly.

“Hee hee. Looks like I beat my mother and Himawari-neesan to it.” As if to say that action alone made all her efforts worthwhile, she took Jinya’s left hand and put it at the base of her neck.

Jinya would likely never understand this woman’s heart. He couldn’t fathom the depth of her emotions—he dared not even try. But this was the end she wished for. Even if he couldn’t understand her desire, he had a responsibility to grant it.

He put strength into his left arm and tightened it around her thin, pale neck.

And so, behind closed doors, the story of the mysterious sex worker of the Dove District came to a conclusion. Her end was far from a happy one, but she smiled in her last moments.

Jinya left Nanao’s room and stopped, sensing a change in the air. It was already night, work time for the brothel, yet the place was silent. Not a single light was on in the corridor, and the air was dry. He couldn’t see any of the other sex workers around. The place was abandoned. This was a dead building, absent of its caretakers. Without any fanfare, Ichikawa had met its end.

Nanao had been this place’s manager. With her gone, many of the other sex workers must have lost their reason to linger. This place had never existed to begin with, so perhaps this was only a fitting end. Jinya felt a little disheartened, but he couldn’t stand still forever. He looked back once and committed the sight of Nanao’s room to heart. It was no funeral service, but he had a feeling it was enough.

He left the brothel behind. It was late in the night, but the unique vitality of a red-light district was absent. The end was palpable. This place that shouldn’t have existed would meet its proper end soon.

Jinya stood alone on the empty street and stared at his left arm. He had devoured Nanao. He’d gained almost none of her memories, as had been the case with the other daughters of Magatsume. However, he’d gained her ability and therefore learned her true name and the meaning behind it.

“Suisen… The ability to redirect something meant for another to oneself.”

Suisen was Nanao’s true name, and her ability’s purpose was to force feelings meant for another onto oneself. In the language of flowers, suisen—the Japanese word for “daffodil”—meant “narcissism.” But Nanao had said she liked yellow flowers, and in the language of flowers, yellow daffodils meant…

“…‘Love me once more.’”

That was why Magatsume abandoned Nanao. She alone represented a feeling she could not accept as part of herself.

Magatsume could acknowledge her feelings of love for her brother, but her desire to be loved by him was another matter. Jinta had loved Shirayuki, so Suzune stopped her own growth to at least remain by his side as his sister. However, a sister could not hope for anything more than familial love. Out of love for her brother, she gave up on being loved back. That was why she spurned Nanao, who represented her unbecoming desire to steal his feelings for another and make them hers.

Nanao lived her whole existence unwanted. She had no place to go or belong, and she only found meaning through being devoured by Jinya and passing her ability on to him. To provide at least a little help through self-sacrifice was the only thing she could wish for.

“Nothing’s sadder than feelings with no place to belong,” he said. For her sake, he would walk forward carrying the feelings she had shown him. He caressed his left hand and committed her warmth to heart. “Thank you. Your feelings are with me now.”

He would not forget the way she had loved her mother, nor the way she had helped him. His murmur might fade into the night, but a part of her would remain with him. He closed his eyes and prayed: Even if the Dove District had to end, even if his memory of this fleeting dream would be lost, may the warmth that had come to rest in his heart remain.

With that, he began to walk again.

Silence echoed down the dreary street, and he could not see what lay ahead in the darkness. But, much like a lantern, Nanao had lit the path awaiting him. He had a feeling the destination he sought would be brighter than he’d previously expected.

Dream’s End

1

SHE THOUGHT BACK to the night they slept with one another. Things came to be out of indebtedness and compromise; their hearts weren’t in the act. But to Hotaru, it was still an unforgettable night.

“I’ve whispered sweet nothings to many men in this room,” she had said.

The young man listened without interrupting. She found him strangely easy to open up to. The two gazed at the night sky as they cooled their flushed bodies out on the balcony.

The wind was a bit warmer than she’d have liked, but plenty of stars twinkled overhead. She felt peaceful as she exhaled the hot air in her lungs.

“The other girls have issues with how I talk to men. They say that my words are insincere and I can’t get customers without humiliating myself.”

The starry sky was connected to her memories of a distant romance. This room and its balcony were only given to her as part of her job, but she liked them. Her life at Sakuraba Milk Hall had not been a bad one, and being a sex worker had turned out to suit her nature well. She had lived as a traditional lady of the night, as Hotaru, all the way until her disease took her.

“But I think lies suit a lady of the night just fine.”

Surely she had earned the right to break the rules a little? She had departed the mortal coil long ago, and this was a place that didn’t exist. Her night with the young man was something that shouldn’t have been possible, a dream born out of coincidence piled on top of coincidence. Surely she could be allowed to indulge for a few seconds, for the short time they cooled their bodies and looked up at the stars, and be somebody other than Hotaru, the old-fashioned lady of the night?

She laid her heart bare to the second man who’d shown care to the girl she had once been. “Love from the heart demands too much in return. That’s why insincere sweet nothings that last for only a night are just right… Everyone has times when they find life too much to bear. What’s wrong with giving others a moment of comfort to help ease their pain and let them sleep the night away?”

True love was demanding and cold; that was why ladies of the night deceived men with cheap lies and shallow imitations of love. A lie’s warmth would disappear without a trace by the time one woke up, but at least they would be comforted through their otherwise sleepless nights. As a fatally ill person who could not hope to live long, Hotaru had desired the ability to grant those kinds of comforting dreams.

“Just kidding. I’m sure I don’t really mean any of that,” she said.

“Why not? I thought it was wonderful.”

“No, I…I probably just wanted to comfort myself. I thought becoming such a lady of the night would let me use the warmth of others to ease my own cold heart.”

She saw herself as a foolish woman. She fled from Kajii Takumi but still sought somebody’s warmth and, even more than that, longed to be wanted. She lived and died a foolish woman through and through.

“Doing what is ‘right’ isn’t always what’s best,” the young man said. “You might’ve started sleeping with men for the wrong reasons, to use them to comfort yourself, but there have been people you helped. Even if the love you gave others ended up being no more than a dream, the comfort you provided was real. I’m sure of it.”

Sometimes, good could come from doing something considered wrong.

There’s a saying that went “Dead flowers bear no fruit.” Once you’re dead, nothing was left. But here Hotaru was, in a red-light district that didn’t exist, experiencing a warmth she never found in life. It was too minor a thing to call a miracle, but it was one of the few things to occur in this district that she could call genuine.

Her first love was long over. If there was any lingering regret to be found in her at all, it would have to be this warmth she felt now, she thought. She concealed her feelings and smiled.

“…That’s a nice line. What kind of woman did you pick it up from?” She was too embarrassed to just thank him, so she joked back instead.

“You can tell?”

“Of course. It’s obvious from the tender look on your face.”

The young man awkwardly touched his face; he hadn’t realized the expression on it. “I learned it from the poster girl of this soba restaurant I used to frequent.”

“An old lover?”

“Nothing like that. She was a friend, maybe. Or perhaps an older sister figure. I’m not quite sure what’s the right word. But she was someone dear to me.” His eyes overflowed with affection. He had nostalgic memories he treasured. Hotaru was happy for him, but her chest felt tight.

“I’m jealous.” The words inadvertently slipped right out of her mouth. The young man’s expression didn’t shift, but his brow did move slightly, and he questioned her with his gaze. She smiled and said, “I’m jealous of the way you can say you treasure old memories without a hint of hesitation.”

She wasn’t jealous of the woman he spoke of, but of him. From the sound of things, he clearly hadn’t met this woman in a long time. But there was no sadness in his gaze, only tenderness.

Hotaru had had much taken from her and left behind many things herself. She could do nothing but grieve about all that. That was why she felt jealous of the young man and how he could look back on bygone happy days and say without a hint of grief that they were precious to him.

“Unlike you, I can’t do anything but feel sad over what I’ve lost,” she said.

“I see. I’m rather blessed, then.”

The young man didn’t push her to explain. She appreciated his kindness, but a small part of her wished he had. Perhaps that would’ve been asking for too much, though. She went back to talking about unimportant things.

After some talking, the young man abruptly made a slight smile. “There’s nothing romantic about this at all, huh?”

Having moved on from the soba restaurant’s poster girl, they only talked about inconsequential things like past work, what kind of alcohol they liked, Hotaru’s daily life, and good places to eat. It was fun, but it lacked the spice that would typically follow a night of passion.

“No, there really isn’t. But nights like these aren’t bad,” she replied. The night wore on with no words of passion being exchanged. They were far from the image of lovers, but she didn’t mind.

“Indeed.” He didn’t seem to mind either.

She looked at his face in profile and felt he had become mellower than when they first met. He, too, must have confronted his lingering regrets at some point here in the Dove District. That meant the time to bid farewell was approaching. Although she saw that their end was near, she pretended not to notice. Part of her wanted to, but she hesitated because speaking one’s mind was not the way of a lady of the night.

Ah… In the end, she couldn’t let herself be an ordinary woman.

A wry grin formed on her face. The stars twinkled, as indifferent to her worries as always. Neither of them said those damning words that would end it all.

From time to time, she thought back on this night and how she couldn’t take that last step no matter how hard she tried. That was fine, though. Words left unsaid and feelings never brought to light—both eventually faded like snow. But some things were beautiful precisely because they ended as no more than a dream.

***

He woke up rather peacefully. The remnants of his dream still lingered, threatening to lull him back to sleep.

He was living a decadent life, sponging off a sex worker without doing any labor outside of housework. As ashamed as he was to admit it, he liked this life; after all, he had lived driven by his hatred so far. By no means did he regret the painful path he walked, but ordinary peace like this was nice.

“Up and at ’em…” Jinya forcibly kept his consciousness from slumbering again and got up. It was time to prepare breakfast.

“Thanks for the meal. Your food’s always delicious, Jin-san.”

Ever the voracious eater, Aoba enjoyed two servings of rice with her breakfast, then sipped her after-meal tea. A healthy appetite was a good thing, and watching her eat was satisfying enough to make the effort of cooking worthwhile. He thanked her, then washed the bowls in the sink. They chatted afterward like they always did.

He had grown accustomed to his freeloader life, as embarrassing as that was to admit. He would miss it.

“Is something up?” Aoba asked.

“Yeah…” He had an answer to what he would do at the end of his journey now. His lingering regrets were gone, and so was his reason for staying. “I’m thinking it’s about time I left the Dove District.”

Her expression stiffened for a moment, and he could tell she wasn’t acting. She was genuinely flustered. “Huh? You’re…leaving?”

“I am. My objective is complete, and I have others waiting for my return. Also, I don’t want to impose on you any longer than I have to.”

“I…I see.”

“Thanks for all the help you’ve given me, Aoba. I mean it.”

She had taken him, a stranger, out of the rain and given him a place to stay. He never learned what she was hiding from him, but whatever her reasons may have been, he was still grateful to her.

“That’s a shame, but I guess it can’t be helped. Are you leaving soon?”

“I want to say my goodbyes to a few people before I go. I’ll leave after that.” He reached for Yarai’s sword bag. The Dove District was almost empty by now, so it would no longer be a problem if he walked around with it. The only place he had to visit was Sakuraba Milk Hall, specifically to see the manager and Hotaru. He wanted to say his goodbyes properly, since it would be his last time seeing them.

“You’ll come back, though, right…?” Aoba’s voice was weak, like a child left behind by parents. Her sudden change bewildered him. She noticed his reaction and quickly tried to smooth things over. “Er, I’m not trying to stop you from leaving or anything like that. It’s just that it’d kind of suck if you left today and never came back, you know…?”

“I’m planning to come back tonight, at least. I’ll be leaving tomorrow. That is, if me staying another night is all right with you.”

“Why, but of course, sir!” Aoba answered with good humor and pep. Her earlier flustered manner was now completely hidden. She likely wouldn’t answer even if he pressed her on what was bothering her.

“Thank you. I’ll be heading out, then.”

“All right, take care. Don’t stay out too late.” She saw him out with a superficial smile.

The two of them were undoubtedly on good terms, but they both kept each other at arm’s length. They were not close enough to divulge their secrets, but he couldn’t help but wonder something after having spent so much time with her.

Aoba still remained in the Dove District. That meant she’d come this far without confronting whatever her lingering regret was. Such a young girl was frozen in her tracks by whatever it was she couldn’t leave behind. Jinya wasn’t so cold as to not feel anything for her. But as vexing as it was, he couldn’t offer her a hand.

“No point even thinking about it,” he murmured to himself, then shook his thoughts free from his mind.

No matter what he wanted, his confrontation with her would only come when she was ready. Until then, he could only wait.

“Looks like rain…”

The skies were cloudy, as though reflecting Aoba’s heart.

He passed by a number of eateries and soba restaurants, a photo studio facing the street, a bathhouse near the center of the district, and the brothel called Ichikawa. Not a single soul was to be found anywhere. The brothels were all quiet, and because it was still daytime, the pink neon signs weren’t lit. The Dove District was deserted. All that remained were the carcasses of moths under street lamps.

The barren streets brought out some sadness in him, but he felt it was wrong to mourn what was gone. Rather than cling to what was and ruin its last moments, one should let the dream end as what it was—a dream.

That was why he set foot into Sakuraba Milk Hall.

“Ah, nice to see you.” The manager greeted him from the bar counter with a warm smile. He had been polishing glasses, presumably because he had nothing better to do. There were no customers or waitresses to be found.

“Single malt whiskey if you have any, two fingers. Any brand is fine.”