Kitsune Saiguu was about to die.
Black calamity swept across Narukami Island. Gray-white corruption trailed through the night like falling stars, drawing dark paths across the sky before crashing to earth.
This was the second disaster to strike Inazuma since Khaenri'ah's fall.
The Sacred Sakura remained in bloom. Pure-white blossoms drifted to the ground and cleansed the contaminated land, but calamity was gradually consuming that immaculate white and staining it dark.
No one could trace the Sacred Sakura's origin.
It seemed to have stood upon this land since the beginning.
As the present Guuji of the Grand Narukami Shrine, Kitsune Saiguu had to protect it.
She would never forget the first time she saw the tree: pink blossoms stirring the languid spring light and dyeing half the sky red. The beauty and breathtaking vastness of the sight had branded themselves deep within her heart.
The Sacred Sakura protected Inazuma, and she protected the Sacred Sakura.
That seemed perfectly fair.
But now she was going to die.
The black calamity had already corrupted her mind.
Kitsune Saiguu knew that she had become defilement.
Her snow-white tails hung limp. Her golden eyes had turned a murky gray-yellow. Crimson marks—the sign of corruption—spread across her cool, exquisite face. Her ears drooped, and the white skirt of her shrine maiden's robes dragged through the dirt, covered in dust and stripped of its former splendor.
The closer death came, the more she remembered the days of long ago.
The gatherings beneath the cherry trees, when everyone had been there.
Cicadas rasping among the green leaves of tall trees. Cherry blossoms swaying and casting ripples of shadow. Flask after flask of plum wine, shared from morning until dusk.
Makoto, Ei, Sasayuri, Mikoshi Chiyo...
and that man...
Everyone had been there.
Those scenes grew steadily fainter. Her memories of the past were disappearing.
That gathering could never happen again.
Corruption consumed her consciousness and drew it gradually into this cursed earth. Her memories and emotions would be recorded in the depths of the ley lines, enduring within the world in twisted forms.
From that moment onward, she would no longer be Kitsune Saiguu.
If she was no longer Kitsune Saiguu...
then who would she be?
She would be defilement.
A monster that ought to be exorcised.
How... unwilling she was...
Before her eyes closed, she saw black calamity fall to earth. She saw the Sacred Sakura sway on the verge of collapse, its blossoms scattering and drifting to the ground...
But once the flowers had scattered, who would she be?
"Your name is Hanachirusato. You are my friend."
Before the last flower scattered, through the haze surrounding her mind, she heard a young man's voice.
Calamity descended upon him and vanished.
He wore a plain white kimono and wooden sandals. Pale-blue eyes as gentle as a clear lake gazed down at her. His long white hair fell naturally around him, and several strands brushed Kitsune Saiguu's cheek.
They tickled.
"I once promised you that before our sakura wine matured, we would hold the grandest gathering of all."
Kiyo spoke softly.
"And I did it... I found every guest—"
Hanachirusato's fading form was reflected in those deep-blue eyes.
"Only you are missing, my friend."
She did not understand.
She did not understand any of it...
Yet for some reason, his presence made her feel safe. The sensation was both long-lost and unfamiliar, like meeting an old wine again after many years apart. A single taste left her gently intoxicated.
Hanachirusato...?
At last, she closed her eyes. Her lips moved faintly.
"That name... isn't bad."
"Rest easy and have a pleasant dream." Kiyo smiled. "I will guard it in your stead."
The flower scattered in the end.
But spring would return, because the flower had merged with the soil, and the earth remembered it.
Within the proper course of history, Kitsune Saiguu truly had died.
Yet flowers that scattered would one day return.
"Four hundred years from now, we will meet again."
Kiyo withdrew his gaze and looked beyond the sky.
Calamity came from outside the world, high above the heavens, as though it meant to erase all of Narukami Island.
Kiyo understood its objective.
It had come to destroy the Sacred Sakura.
The tree should not have existed in the proper history. Reason had come to correct the timeline.
If it was to endure, it had to survive this final correction.
Kiyo gazed at the calamity stretching across the entire sky. Facing the endless rime and mist, he drew Kamigiri.
"My heart is still; the Pillar endures for all ages."
—
Deep within Mt. Yougou lay the place where Kiyo had once sat in silence for a thousand years.
Unlike the barren mountain of a millennium ago, flowers now bloomed everywhere.
This was where his journey had begun.
And so it was here that his journey would end.
[To Miss Lumine, four hundred years from now:]
[With this letter, the box is finally full. I have reached the end of my journey at last.]
[Today is New Year's Day again. The sky is clear tonight, and I can see the stars. The sky four hundred years ago looks no different from the sky four hundred years from now.]
[When you read this letter, if you can look up at the stars as well, then we will be admiring the same view together.]
Kiyo set down his brush. Leaning against the tree, he raised his eyes to the sky.
The sunset's last radiance had vanished together with the faint red glow upon the horizon. Night had fallen. Meteors flowed between the clouds, trailing long and brilliant tails like silver fish chasing one another through a twilight sea.
Beneath the stars that painted the sky white, the Sacred Sakura stood in full bloom. Starlight glimmered among the white blossoms drifting from its branches.
It fell across the letter as well, illuminating Kiyo's paper and brush.
He lowered his head and continued writing. While his brush moved, white petals settled slowly upon his lap, forming a thin layer of frost.
[I once forgot many things. Once, I lost everything.]
Kiyo coughed softly as he reached that line. A boiling murmur rose from the depths of his soul, where Khaenri'ah's curse and the wounds inflicted by the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles shrouded his inner world.
He was injured.
[But I recovered what I had lost.]
[I am truly content now.]
One length of red cord remained clutched in his hand.
Sasayuri had given it to him. It bound one longing to another, and through that bond, he could find his path across the river of time and return to the future.
Now the cord had broken.
A thousand long years had worn that longing away, and the future's location could no longer be found.
But Kiyo did not need the cord anymore.
He was very tired.
[There were no flowers on Mt. Yougou in the past... I wanted to plant the first one. Then every flower you picked here in the future could count as a gift from me.]
[But I failed. I could not plant flowers across the entire mountain.]
[I'm sorry.]
His wounds had worsened constantly over the past century.
After returning from Khaenri'ah, he had forced his body onward despite the injuries left by the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles. He had planted the Sacred Sakura, merged Makoto's consciousness with the Raiden Shogun, fought the second calamity, and protected the tree for nearly a hundred years...
He was already exhausted.
[I could not cover the mountain in flowers. I planted only one tree.]
[Whenever you look up at the sky and see cherry blossoms rolling through it like clouds, that will be me coming to see you.]
He was about to fall asleep.
[Good morning, good afternoon, and good night.]
He wanted to rest.
"Are you tired?"
Sasayuri's voice came from behind him.
The Great Tengu was still young, not yet the decrepit old man of later ages. He wore a plain white warrior's robe, and his long hair poured to his waist.
He gazed at Kiyo—
at an old friend both familiar and strange.
Sasayuri had learned many things: the secret of the Sacred Sakura, Kiyo's origin... and Musou Isshin.
"I want to sleep." Kiyo set down his brush, raised his eyes, and smiled at him. "I have been walking for more than a thousand years. I want to rest. I can't run any farther."
"Will we..." Sasayuri's eyes wavered. "Will we meet again?"
"Four hundred years from now, we will."
Kiyo slowly rose.
Cold starlight covered his back and glimmered along Kamigiri's edge.
The blade bathed in divine blood trembled faintly and released a muted glow. Musou Isshin dwelled within Kamigiri, its inner world engraved into the sword's patterns.
Now those patterns shone.
The entire mountain answered their light. The wind moaned hoarsely, and leaves whispered throughout the forest.
Kiyo drove Kamigiri into Inazuma's soil.
Thunder rolled over the plains and unleashed its loudest roar from the deepest reaches of the clouds.
His consciousness merged with the earth.
The sky flashed white.
Pure-white radiance covered the mountains.
Then the white world gradually withdrew, and warmth returned to the world's colors.
Clouds piled like mountains above Mt. Yougou, one range layered over another—gray clouds and blue-green peaks. At the boundary between gray and blue, within the opening between cloud and mountain, a new blaze of crimson burst forth.
A crimson... gate.
Or rather, a crimson torii.
Beyond the torii stood a shrine.
Kamigiri had become the gate.
Anyone who passed beneath that torii could enter Kiyo's inner world, reach Musou Isshin, and enter the realm where time had grown indistinct.
"Four hundred years from now, you and I will meet again," Kiyo told Sasayuri. "Bring the person I will be then to this place."
"Tell him what he must do."
"Keep this secret, and withdraw far from the mortal world."
Kiyo had used this gate to travel from the present into the past. Then, in the past, he had left the same gate behind, laying the road by which his present self would travel backward.
The circle of time was complete.
Use Musou Isshin to return to the past.
Leave Musou Isshin in the past so that Kiyo Seigan could return there.
Sasayuri's eyes moved faintly as he gazed at Kiyo.
Then he nodded.
Kiyo leaned against the torii. He was already exhausted. Calamity was corroding his body, and he might fall asleep at any moment.
A smile rested upon his lips—faint and thin, like sunlight on a winter afternoon.
"There is a girl," he said softly, a gentle amusement in his pale-blue eyes. "She has... golden hair. She fusses too much, and she's terribly greedy, but she is adorable... Four hundred years from now, she will always be at my side. You'll meet her then."
"Inside the cave... I buried many letters. So very many."
Kiyo paused and coughed violently several times.
"Four hundred years from now, there will be a gathering. If I do not return in time, give those letters to her."
"...You won't return?" Sasayuri asked, watching his eyes.
"I'm going to sleep. I'll find somewhere no one can reach me and rest properly."
Kiyo's voice was soft.
"I'm very tired. Perhaps I will sleep for a hundred years. Perhaps four hundred... Perhaps I will never wake again."
Sasayuri lowered his eyes and fell silent.
For a long time, he said nothing.
Kiyo straightened with difficulty, the wounds left by the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles still aching within him. He took a rolling paper and tobacco from inside his kimono, lit it, drew a breath, and coughed again.
"Kiyo Seigan... Kiyono Raimei." After a long while, Sasayuri looked at him. "You will return."
"Four hundred years from now, we will meet again."
He knew what Kiyo had endured.
He understood the weight Kiyo carried...
a vigil that truly spanned a thousand years.
"What we intend to deceive..." Kiyo paused and smiled at Sasayuri. "...is the entire world."
"You must leave the mortal world and endure four hundred years. I must do the same."
"Sasayuri, you have always been the fastest... I could never outrun you."
He watched the thin smoke vanish into the cold, starry sky.
"This time, I will lose to you again."
"Even if you lose, you will reach the finish line." Sasayuri regarded him solemnly. "I will wait for you at the end of time. That golden-haired girl of yours will be standing there too."
Kiyo froze.
After a moment, he finally smiled.
"Then I'll see you next time. I need to find somewhere to sleep."
"I have to wake before dusk," Kiyo added with complete seriousness, "because I'm going home for dinner."
"Goodbye," Sasayuri said softly.
"Goodbye."
They walked in opposite directions.
Brilliant starlight covered both their shadows. Beneath the swaying silhouettes of cherry trees, they receded from one another—one toward the forest, the other toward the mountain.
After walking for an unknown length of time, Sasayuri stopped and looked back.
Kiyo was already far away. Starlight illuminated the road along which he had departed.
Sasayuri had once heard that when an old cat was about to die, it sought a place no one knew and went quietly to sleep, allowing no one to find it.
Would Kiyo never wake again?
Or would he open his eyes after centuries, perhaps millennia, had passed in the mortal world?
Would he be late for the Covenant beneath the Sacred Sakura—for that gathering?
Sasayuri did not know.
The only thing he knew was the gentle, weary smile upon Kiyo's lips when he spoke of the golden-haired girl.
It seemed to pass through eternity itself.