Heat licked Hana’s breasts and writhed like a flame between her legs. “I should push you away.”
“You should.” Keishin left a trail of kisses from behind her ear to her shoulder.
Hana moaned. Keishin lifted her from the water and took her breast in his mouth. Hana knotted her fingers in Keishin’s hair, clutching him to her. His tongue erased almost every argument she had summoned to run from him, drawing a list of reasons to stay in little circles around her nipple. “Kei…” she said, forcing the last of her clarity into something she hoped resembled words. “We have no future.”
Keishin pulled away, breathing hard. “You’re right.”
Hana’s throat tightened. A part of her had hoped that hewould argue with her, that he would scoff and insist that some scientific law in his world made what she said completely unsound.
“No one is promised tomorrow,” Keishin said. “No contract, vow, or even magical tattoo can guarantee forever with someone, regardless of whether you share a world. But what we do have is what you and I have been fighting to deny almost from the second we met. There is a connection between us, Hana, a knot without any measurable form or weight, a knot that only gets tighter the more we struggle to pull away.”
“Then that knot is a trap. A beautiful one like the watery cage for your ghosts from the stars.”
Thunder rumbled over the ryokan.
“It’s going to rain,” Hana said, surprised that it had taken the rain so long to find her. It was, it seemed, the one constant in her life, always at the ready to remind her of her duty. “We should go inside.”
“Or what?” Keishin said. “We’ll get wet?”
A laugh rose from Hana’s belly and burst out of her, taking with it all the pain she had been swallowing back. Keishin laughed with her, their tears falling into the bath, cleansing them, and turning to wisps of steam. Rain fell over their cheeks and trailed down their shoulders. Hana’s skin glowed with the Horishi’s blue ink. Her hand flew up to cover herself.
Keishin caught her arm by the wrist and gently drew her hand away. “I told you, Hana. I see you. Only you.” Raindrops splattered over Keishin’s wrist. A name, tattooed in blue ink, glowed on his skin.
Hana.
Hana gasped. “What…how…”
Keishin let go of her arm. He ran his thumb over Hana’s name. “The Horishi told me that she had never tattooed a grown man’s fate. I had already lived so much of my life, and she thought that the best way to start my story was at its end. Your name. It was all she had managed to write when you showed up and told her to stop.”
“Why…why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because telling you wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s done, Hana. My fate, like yours, is written.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I think you know what it means as well as I do. This journey with you is where my story ends.”
“No. Do not say that. You will go back to your world. You will find your way home.”
“It’s okay, Hana. This was my choice. I told you, no one is promised tomorrow. I’m grateful for the time I have now. Seeing ghosts. Listening to wind chimes. Holding you, no matter how brief. For the first time in my life, my head is filled with something other than questions. I have my answer. It’s written on my skin.”
Hana pressed her lips to Keishin’s mouth and drank him in. Hours, weeks, or years could have passed and Hana would not have noticed. The breadth between her skin and Keishin’s left no room for time. Urgency took up every available space. Everything beyond Keishin’s mouth vanished, leaving only the tremble that passed from his lips and into hers. She tasted his longing and could tell from the way Keishin devoured her that he tasted hers too. But there was something else that laced their tongues, an unspoken fear that made their kiss taste bittersweet. Last times almost always came in disguise, neverrevealing who they were until they were gone and all you could do was miss them.
But Hana had known that the day she met Keishin was the beginning of a long goodbye. On their first and possibly last night together, Hana made sure to remember every detail. To each other, they were already ghosts.
Chapter Forty-one
Endings
Keishin could not recall how they had gotten from the onsen and onto the floor of their room at the ryokan. He had lived lifetimes inside Hana, and when exhaustion overwhelmed desire, he dissolved, happily, in her embrace. He closed his eyes, enjoying the weight of Hana’s head on his chest.
“Will you ever tell me the end of Taro’s story?” he asked, stroking her arm.
“Why do you want to know?” Hana said, her voice sounding like it came from somewhere more than halfway down the path to sleep.
“Do I need a reason?”
“Yes. The right one.” Hana sat up, pulling her robe around her. “Because if you want to know the end because you think you will die here, then—”
