"I write because I refuse to be written.
Yet every word I claim as mine bleeds her permission.
To write one's own story is the highest rebellion — and the quietest defeat." —E
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The air smelt lovely — a bouquet of lavender and iris lingered, an aftermath of the bath I had just taken. The yukata, a soft weave of white and violet, clung to my skin with a warmth that felt almost human. I didn't know what fabric it was made of — silk, perhaps, or something woven from the patience of the moon itself — but it was kind, forgiving to touch.
"Ah, baths," I sighed, voice a whisper to no one, "one of mankind's few mercies."
The steam had cleared but the memory of heat still glowed in my bones.
Once again, I found myself back on my futon, wrapped in the lull of solitude. The gas lamp had long gone out, leaving me beneath the crimson moon's patient watch. The world outside was still, save for the night insects reciting their endless psalm. I let my eyes wander, tracing shapes across the wooden beams above, my mind adrift in places neither dream nor memory could quite hold.
Himitsu's words echoed still.
A job.
"A job, huh," I muttered to the ceiling, the syllables brittle and bemused. Gratitude and grief sat side by side in my chest, like quarrelling sisters forced to share a room. A job meant a life — routine, income, perhaps dignity. But it also meant that Camille was being buried. Quicker than I had imagined.
I turned onto my side, facing the wall as though a shift in angle could change the truth. The wall was cool. Unbothered.
Himitsu had apologized, saying the position was modest. No recommendation, no proper credentials — her hands had been tied. She'd done what she could. And I was thankful, I truly was. I didn't even know where to begin my own search in this foreign place.
Still, a part of me smirked — a hollow, mocking grin that tugged at my cheeks but carried no malice. There was humor in my helplessness. Life had a way of offering you scraps and calling it salvation.
"It's fine," I whispered into the quiet, though no one had accused me otherwise. "It's fine."
A breeze slipped through the half-open shoji, teasing the paper walls and stirring the scent of lavender again. My hair, still damp, brushed my neck. I pulled the blanket higher.
Tomorrow would come — dressed in the same crimson moonlight that had watched me every night since my arrival. Maybe it was blessing, maybe it was judgment. The line between them blurred here.
I thought of Dōngzhì's words earlier that week — you don't ascend, you drown in knowing.
And wasn't that just it?
I had drowned — in names, in places, in memories that were mine yet not. Perhaps knowledge wasn't a ladder but an undertow, dragging you toward what you thought was heaven only to reveal it was the depth all along.
The moon watched me still. It had the patience of something that had seen all rebellions fail and all gods fade.
"Even rebellion," I murmured, "is a verse already written."
Sleep came softly then, the kind that does not ask but takes.
As my thoughts dimmed, I thought I heard another voice — quiet, feminine but not quite, ancient.
"The ink was yours," it said, "but the silence was always mine."
Whether it was memory, dream, or the High Priestess herself, I could not tell.
Only that it lingered long after I had fallen into the dark, and the scent of lavender followed me there — faithful, patient, eternal.