“The kind of person I would envy very much,” Keishin said.
“Envy? Why? I imagine that your mind would be filled with nothing but stars too.”
“I wish it was. But sadly, it’s probably just a gray room with poor lighting littered with numbers and charts. And maybe a chair. And an empty bag of Funyuns. Or two.”
“Funyuns? Do I want to know what that is?”
“You don’t. It’s a horrible addiction. I can’t work without them. I packed a suitcase full of them because I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to find them in Japan. And now that I’ve said it out loud, it sounds like the silliest thing in the world to worry about.” Keishin stared up at the stars. “It’s funny how the mind finds ways to fill itself up with worthless things as though it was afraid of being empty.”
“Or quiet,” Hana said.
The orb shook. Light broke through its crystal.
Keishin clasped Hana’s hand. “Let’s go,” he said, stepping into the light.
—
It was impossible to tell where the wildflowers ended and the sky began. The blue of the petals matched the cloudless horizon perfectly. Keishin did not question how the flowers bloomed in autumn. He was just grateful that they did.
The rumor had dropped them off on a dirt road along the valley of wildflowers when a farmer could find no one to share it with but his cart horse. The horse had neighed and swished its tail, brushing the rumor off like a fly. It cared little about a man named Minatozaki Keishin and less about the world he came from. All it cared about was getting home to its warm stall on its master’s farm, away from a sprawling blue field that made it sneeze. The rumor hung in the air between the farmer and his horse, swirled for a moment, and drifted away with the wind.
Hana’s mouth fell open when she had formed a jaw to drop. “We’re here.”
“We should start walking if we’re going to find the temple and the stream,” Keishin said. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“This place is a lot bigger than I imagined. Where do we even start?”
A strong wind blew in their direction, sending ripples through the wildflowers.
Hana cocked her head. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
The wind whipped Hana’s hair. Hana gathered the loose strands back into her ponytail. “Nothing. It was just the wind.”
A breeze kissed Keishin’s cheek and carried the sound of children’s laughter past his ears. He froze mid-step. “Hana…”
Hana locked eyes with him. “I heard it too.”
Chapter Forty-seven
Beneath the Wildflowers
Only the temple’s torii, stone gates that marked the border between the secular and the sacred, remained. To step through them was to enter the world of the spirits. But as Hana passed through the gates and crossed a stream that cut through the ruins of the temple, she did not feel like she was in the company of any god she knew. The beauty of the field was equal only to how oppressively desolate and cold it felt beyond the threshold of the temple.
“I do not like it here.” Hana hugged her arms to her chest.
“That makes two of us,” Keishin said.
“I cannot hear them anymore. Do you think we are in the wrong place?”
“This place matches Hiroko’s description. It has to be it.”
A muffled giggle rose from the ground.
Hana jumped.
“It’s coming from over there.” Keishin pointed to a patch of wildflowers that were paler but grew thicker than the rest of the field.
