Hana crouched by the patch and laid her ear against the ground.
“Do you hear anything?” Keishin asked.
Hana pressed her finger to her lips and closed her eyes. Footsteps scampered beneath the flowers. “It sounds like they arerunning around. Playing. Hiroko told us that they were crying when she heard them. I wonder what changed?”
“We won’t find any answers up here,” Keishin said, his eyes fixed on the wildflower patch. “I hope you packed a couple of shovels in your bag.”
“I did not.” Hana stuck her arm into her bag all the way to her elbows and rummaged around. “But my father keeps two in our garden in a little shed near the pond.”
—
The children’s laughter grew louder the deeper they dug. Hana battled the urge to dig slower. The field was their last lead, and if they didn’t find her father or mother here, she had no idea what she was going to do next. She tried to picture them somewhere safe, but her mind could not imagine a world beneath the ground that didn’t make her want to clamber up from the hole she and Keishin were digging.
The laughter fell silent.
Hana squeezed the handle of her shovel. “Why did they stop?”
Keishin leaned his shovel against the wall of the hole and pressed his cheek to the ground. “I can hear some movement. They’re still there, but I think they’re quiet because…they’re listening to us too.”
—
Hana could no longer see the field from where she stood at the bottom of the hole. The sky glowed purple and orange above them. Soon, the hole was going to be too deep to climb out of and the field too dark for them to find their way back to the road. Fleeing was no longer an option no matter what was waiting for them beneath the ground.
Hana wiped the sweat from her forehead and left a streak ofmud on her face. Every muscle was on fire, but it was her raw palms that hurt the most. The makeshift gloves she had fashioned from the strip of cloth she had ripped from the bottom of her blouse hung loosely from her hands, threatening to unravel at any moment.
“You should take a break,” Keishin said.
“I’m fine.” She pushed away the pain and dug.
“Wait.” Keishin planted his shovel on the ground. He took her torn hands in his and gently rewrapped the cloth around her palms. “That should hold for a while.”
“Thank you,” Hana said.
Keishin wiped the dirt from Hana’s face. Blood seeped through the cloth wrapped around his hand.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing,” Keishin said.
“It is strange how ‘nothing’ looks exactly like blood.”
“It’s just a small wound. Nothing worse than the cut you got on your foot at the pawnshop.”
Hana looked up at the darkening sky. “That day feels like a lifetime ago.”
“For me, itwasa lifetime ago. I’m not the same person who showed up at your door. I’ve seen, heard, and”—Keishin’s eyes lingered on Hana—“felt so many things I never imagined were possible. I don’t know what we’re going to find down there or what’s going to happen next. I need you to know that I care about—”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say that you think that you care about me. That night at the ryokan was a mistake. Whatever we feel about each other is an illusion, no matter how real it feels. I told you whenyou first came to my world that nothing here is as it seems. Not the sky. Not this field. Not me. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done, really, I am. But somewhere along the way, we both let ourselves believe that you and I were a possibility. We are not. We can never be.”
Talons burst from the ground and clawed at Keishin’s legs. Hana screamed.
“Run, Hana!” Keishin’s face crumpled as mud-crusted nails dug into his skin. “Run!”
Hana grabbed her shovel and struck at the clawlike hands. They clung to Keishin tighter, pulling him deeper into the ground. Hana hooked her arms around Keishin’s shoulders and anchored her feet against the hole’s crumbling walls. The muddy hands pulled harder, tugging Keishin from her grasp. “No!”
