Sen remembered sugarcane in Kura’s tiny hands, her wet smile with fibers caught in her teeth.
A small white hand parted the curtain of darkness and reached out for Sen. Sen couldn’t make out Kura’s face, but she could feel Kura’s stringy hair as it spilled across Sen’s bare legs, Kura’s jagged nails on her calves, Kura’s cold hand on Sen’s arm.
“Kura,” Sen whispered into the darkness. “Chichiue has left me to die.”
The hand tightened on her arm.Why would he do that?
“Because I’m worthless,” Sen said, coughing as she breathed in wet dirt. “Because I’m weak.”
The hand pinched down, fingers biting into Sen’s arm.He does this because you’re strong, Kura said.He does this to show you what you will become if you give in to your weakness.
Then Kura set her hands on Sen’s knees and leaned closer, brushing the darkness aside like a silk curtain.
Kura’s skin pulled taut and gray against her skull, wrinkled as worn leather hide. Her baby teeth hung loose from her gums, tethered by thin ligaments, jingling like wind chimes. Maggots crawled out of her ears and nose, their tiny fangs leaving scars on her face. And worst of all, her eyes had gone cloudy, like she was lost in a dense fog and would never find her way out.
Sato, Kura said.SatoSatoSatoSato.
Sen could do nothing but hold tight to the pieces of herself and wait.
After many years, her father returned and hauled the box back to the surface, removed the lid, and plucked her out.
“Thank you, Chichiue,” Sen said as he set her on unsteady legs. “Thank you for showing me this.”
“And what have I shown you?” her father said.
Sen remembered Kura’s jingling teeth, wet globs of bloody drool that fell to her feet. “That life and death are one and the same,” Sen said. “That I exist because I am strong, and if I give in to fear, I will no longer exist.”
Her father nodded, then turned and gestured for Sen to follow him.
“Wipe your face,” he said. “We have work to do.”
Sen quickly scrubbed her face with her muddy sleeves. It was the last time she ever cried.
The Sen who had tasted death remained in the dirt among the worms, while the rest of Sen followed her father back to the house.
In the morning, Sen pushed the dresser away from the door.
She slid it open a crack, but to her relief, there was only cement behind it.
But there, at the bottom of the door, a mark caught Sen’s eye. She crawled closer and squinted at the scrawl. It was messyand uneven, like something one of her younger brothers would write.
How did you die?
Sen frowned; she reached out to touch the words to make sure they were real, but they were painted on the other side of the door, and she could only touch their echo. What kind of trick was this? There was a ghost in her house, asking her howshedied?
She looked down at her hands, traced the lines on her palm, the calluses from gripping her katana, the crooked fingernails that hadn’t grown back correctly from all the times her father struck her with the hilt of his blade. Her hands looked broken and pieced back together, but they were warm and real and alive. That was what pain meant—that there was still light left in you.
I am not dead, Sen thought, closing her fists.Not yet.
Sen cut a piece of paper from her desk and practiced writing her answer backward. Then she bent down and wrote her answer in tiny, elegant script just below the question.
I will tell you tonight.
Whatever game this ghost wanted to play, she would end it. If light glowed behind the door tonight, as it had last night, Sen would be ready. This time, she would not miss.
Sen moved in a haze through the rest of her day. The sun broke over the horizon just as the tide retreated out to sea, and Sen chased after it with a bucket, digging for sand crabs in the shore. She found nothing but sea glass and stones, so she returned before high tide could sweep her away.
Her arms felt so stiff from chopping wood that she couldhardly move them, but her father showed no mercy when sparring. His blade sliced lines into her dry hands until she couldn’t hold her sword anymore because the handle was wet with blood.
