Late September, 1915, Tokyo
“Where are we going, Papa?” The little girl reached up and slid her little hand into her father’s gloved one. He had such big hands, and holding them made her feel very safe and very happy. They were warm, not at all like her mother’s hands, which were always cold for no particular reason, even in the middle of summer. Miyuki smiled a large, mostly toothy grin. She was six. And yesterday one of her baby teeth had fallen out. It made her quite proud, and she showed it off whenever possible. “Papa?”
Tsuyoshi smiled and bent down to lift Miyuki up, tossing her onto his shoulders with ease. “We’re going to see your grandpa Fujita and grandma Tokio, hmm? Remember?”
Miyuki did, in fact, remember. She just wanted to make sure her father remembered and that he was going to the right place. Mimi-chan giggled from her viewpoint at the summit of Mt. Papa. He was very tall. He was the tallest person Miyuki knew, and she knew a lot of people. She knew Papa and Mama and her older brother and her friends from school and Kumachi-sensei and Uncle Tsutomu and his family and Uncle Tatsuo and Uncle Eiji and Grandma and Grandpa and, well … lots more people. But none of them were as tall as her father.
Well, Grandpa Fujita was almost as tall but not quite.
Miyuki watched as a policeman walked past. She waved at him, showing off her toothy grin. He winked in return. Miyuki liked policemen. Her uncle Tsutomu was the greatest policeman ever because he once saved her friend Kitoyo from some bad men who wanted to steal Kitoyo-chan’s necklace. When she grew up, Miyuki definitely would become a policeman. Or, maybe, she might also become a great dojo master, like her papa. Well, she still had some time to think about it. Right now, though, she wanted to think about getting to her grandma’s house.
“Now, which house is it, Mimi-chan? Do you remember?”
Miyuki put her fingers to her lips and with a prolonged “Hmmmm” looked around Taito Street. Aha! “That one, Papa, that one! Oh, look, there’s Uncle Tatsuo! Uncle Tatsuo! Hellooo!”
Uncle Tatsuo, who had been walking up the street in the other direction, his nose buried in a book, looked up and waved. Uncle Tatsuo was her papa’s little brother. Miyuki didn’t have a little brother or sister, but she was going to very soon, which was why her mama was still at home.
Miyuki squirmed and wiggled until she found herself being placed on the ground. She ran up to her uncle and tugged gently on his hakama. Sometimes, her papa said that Uncle Tatsuo was a very important sensei at the big school for older girls. But then, other times, he called Uncle Tatsuo a witless baka without enough sense to come in from the rain. Either way, Miyuki liked Uncle Tatsuo very much. He taught reading, and because of this, he knew lots of great stories from old books.
“Will you tell me a story later, Uncle Tatsuo?”
“Of course, of course, Mimi-chan. Now, look at that! One of your teeth fell out, didn’t it?”
“Un!” Miyuki replied, nodding furiously.
Tatsuo patted her head, grinning at his brother in greeting.
“Why don’t you go on in, Mimi-chan? I bet if you find your grandma …”
But Miyuki was already gone, flying down the front path of the Fujita home with excited abandon.
Behind her, Tatsuo straightened up, the smile falling from his face as he looked at his brother.
“How is he?” Tsuyoshi asked.
“Who can tell?” Tatsuo replied, removing his glasses to clean them with the sleeve of his gi. “He won’t stay in bed, and he refuses to allow me to fetch a doctor. Mother is useless in the matter. She says that Father has never liked doctors, and there is no use in trying to change him now.”
“The old fool.” Tsuyoshi shook his head, but he knew his mother’s words to be the truth. His father wasn’t going to just lie around like an invalid, even if he was in pain. “That damn old fool …”
“Oi! Not so loud.” Tatsuo looked around carefully. “He still has the hearing of a wolf.”
Inside the courtyard, Miyuki skipped up the path. She found her grandpa sitting on the engawa, playing shogi with old Okita-san. Miyuki liked Okita-san too. She, Okita-san, and Grandma were the only people not afraid of Grandpa Fujita, it sometimes seemed.
“Grandpa! Grandpa! Mimi-chan’s here!”
Saitou quirked one eyebrow without looking up from the shogi board. “Did you hear a monkey, Okita?”
“Hmmmm?” Okita, playing along, tilted his ear upward. “A monkey, you say?”
“Oi, oi! I’m not a monkey. I’m a little girl. It’s me, Mimi-chan!”
“Damnable zookeepers must have fallen asleep on the job again.”
Miyuki put her hands on her hips and pouted. But seeing that neither man was going to pay her the slightest bit of attention, she changed her tactic and decided to crawl up onto the engawa. She sat down next to her grandfather and placed her head in his lap, blinking up at him until he looked down.
“Aha. Mimi-saru. There’s the monkey in question.”
“Hello, Grandpa. Hello, Okita-san.” Miyuki smiled grandly, showing off her lost tooth. “Look!”
“Lost a tooth, did you?” Saitou leaned forward, moving one of the tiles with an evil glare at Okita. When he leaned back, he looked down at his granddaughter again and chuckled. “Did you get in a fight?”
“No. It just came out the normal way.” Miyuki sat back up. She blinked several times in thought. “Did you ever lose a tooth in a fight, Grandpa?”
“Aa. Once.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Not as much as what I did to the other guy.”
Miyuki thought about this for a while and then looked at Okita. “Did you ever lose a tooth in a fight, Okita-san?”
Okita laughed, making his move on the shogi board with excessively wicked glee. “No, Mimi-chan, though I lost one when I fell off the roof.”
“You fell off the roof, Okita-san? Why?”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Saitou replied without missing a beat. “Now go inside and pester your grandmother. Maybe she’ll give you a banana.”
Miyuki stood up and toddled into the house, scowling a little monkey scowl back at her grandpa and Okita before leaving. Once inside, Miyuki took a deep breath, smelling her grandparents’ house. It always smelled good in here. Yes. Grandma’s house smelled much better than her own stinky home, which smelled like sweat half the time because of all the students running around.
Back on the porch, Okita said quietly, “You shouldn’t let her crawl around on you like that … in your condition.”
“Shut up, Okita. If you want someone to nag, go get married,” Saitou replied.
“You’re not twenty anymore, old wolf.”
“No? But I did beat a potential thief senseless at the museum last week. And he was twenty.” Saitou made another move on the shogi board. He’d been working at the Tokyo Education Museum as a security guard for some years now, having finally given up his teaching position at the university to Narajirou Fujiko.
Miyuki found her grandmother no place else but the kitchen. Miyuki liked a lot of people—Mama and Papa; sometimes her big brother; her uncles Tatsuo, Tsutomu, and Eiji; and Grandpa Fujita … but she couldn’t say she liked anyone quite so much as her grandma. Her grandma loved to show her everything fun, how to cook, and how to sew, how to do up your hair like fine ladies, how to make flower arrangements, and how to pick the best vegetables at the market.
Her grandma even showed her how to whistle.
Her mama said that Grandma Tokio didn’t have any daughters, and she had only one granddaughter. That was Miyuki. So Mimi-chan knew she was pretty special to her grandma too.
“Grandma! Grandma!”
“Oh, Mimi-chan, look at you! Aren’t you getting big?” Tokio leaned down to look at her granddaughter, only to have the little girl whisper something in her ear.
“You lost a tooth? My goodness. Well, we should celebrate with some raisin jam, ne? But, shh, don’t say anything or Okita-san will come in here and gobble it all up.” Tokio tapped the little girl on the nose and set about finding her a treat. So perhaps she did spoil Miyuki a bit. It was a grandmother’s right to do so if she pleased. Tokio handed a little rice cake smeared with jam to Miyuki. “How is your mama doing?”
“She’s huge!” Miyuki declared, stretching out her arms and puffing up her cheeks to demonstrate. “My new baby brother or sister is going to be as big as a whale.”
“So ka? Well, I suppose we’ll have to make some food for you to take to her before you go home.”
Mimi-chan nodded, her mouth too full to make a reply. Grandma Tokio took Miyuki’s little apron off the peg on the kitchen wall. Miyuki knew that this meant they were going to cook, and cooking was always quite fun with Grandma. The pair bustled around the kitchen together, making great bowls and pots of this or that. Miyuki told her grandma all about school and her papa’s dojo and about how stupid her brother could sometimes be. Yes. Being with Grandma was the best thing in the whole world.
“Grandma?”
“Yes, Mimi-chan?”
“I thought I might want to be a policeman like Uncle Tsutomu or a great kenjutsu teacher like Papa. But now, now I think I want to be just like you when I grow up.”
Tokio smiled as her granddaughter hugged her waist. “That’s just fine, Mimi-chan. You be whatever you want to be. In this age, girls are going to be able to be so much more than when I was little. You just put your mind to it and never give up, all right?”
“Okay!”
Tokio felt a sudden wave of sadness wash over her. There were so many possibilities for Miyuki. She lived in a world made safe, a world without slavery, and where crime and rampant prostitution were in decline. It was a civilized world now, one where man had learned to fly, where science made new discoveries each day in every field. Sure, there were still problems in the world, but little Miyuki could walk the streets, her head held high, proud to be who she was. She’d be a fine woman, Tokio knew, and probably do and see things Tokio could never even begin to imagine.
Miyuki lived in a wonderful world—a world that her grandfather and grandmother had helped to make.
Tokio closed her eyes as she heard the pounding footsteps approach the kitchen.
No. Not yet.
“Mother! Oh, Kami-sama … Mother …” Tatsuo slid the shoji of the kitchen open with a snap. He stood there, panting, strangely out of breath for how short a distance he would have had to run.
Tokio opened her eyes, looking up from her cooking as she placed her paring knife aside.
“It’s …”
She had hoped the family could have a few more meals together.
“Father …”
Just one, at least. One more meal before saying good-bye.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Tokio sat in the corner of her room, her sleeping granddaughter curled in her lap. After they had brought Hajime, who still insisted he could “walk his goddamn self” to the room, Tsuyoshi had gone to fetch everyone else. The house was crowded, overflowing with the dark whispers of family and friends. The sounds of feet and hushed voices pounded into her mind, intruding upon her thoughts, keeping her from thinking of much of anything.
Hajime looked … like Hajime, except his skin seemed a bit grayer, his commanding voice just a smidgen less cutting. He lay propped up on the futon, asking occasionally for a cigarette and being firmly denied by anyone in the room.
As night fell, only a single lamp lit their bedroom on Taito Street. Someone had suggested incense, but Hajime had called that person a moron and shouted him out of the room.
One by one, people came to say their good-byes. Or rather, Saitou sent for them. He had a few choice last words here, a piece of his mind there, to give to people before he would consent to rest.
He told Naoya that she was a rat-girl, through and through. Nonetheless, she’d done far better for herself than he’d ever expected. She was the daughter, he said, that he never wanted and just couldn’t seem to get rid of.
He told Chou to cut his goddamn hair. And he told the man from Kansai that he hadn’t always been a horrible employee, just usually.
To his sons, Saitou gave practical advice. Among other things, he said, “Never hit a woman. Never drink to excess. And practice your kata, because you never know when your country will need you.”
Tokio wasn’t in the room when Saitou spoke to Eiji but noted that the gentle gardener had a strange look on his face when he left.
What he said to Jikiri was also a mystery, which was whispered in her ear. Tokio caught only two words. “Your father.”
And then, sometime after midnight, Saitou sent for Okita. The short man entered, his face red and puffy from crying. Okita knelt beside the futon, his hands folded in his lap, looking down at his dying friend with tremendous sadness welling from his eyes.
“Well, Okita …”
“Yes, Saitou-kun?”
Saitou’s eyes darted toward the corner where Tokio had been sitting all evening. He was quiet for quite some time, letting seconds pass into minutes before his gaze returned to his friend. “To the very end, Okita, I will live to the very end without a single drop of guilt, dishonor, or regret.”
“I know, my friend. I know. I am so glad to have known a man like you.”
“Aa, Okita. As much as it pains me to say it, I feel the same way.” Saitou winced, not from the admission, but from the pain laying havoc to his gut. Well. It didn’t feel quite as bad as being shot in the leg, but this one wasn’t going to heal with a bandage and some stitches. And neither that injury nor this ailment was going to hurt as much as the one person left, the one person still waiting to be called to his side. “Okita. Bring Tokio.”
Okita stood and walked to the corner of the room where Tokio lay in a half-zombielike state of physical and emotional exhaustion. He helped her put the sleeping Miyuki aside and stand.
Together, they made their way to the side of the futon. Tokio knelt near her husband’s chest and Okita beside her. Unsure of what to say, Tokio slipped her left hand into her husband’s and used her right to brush back the sweat-slicked hair at his forehead. He watched her evenly, his eyes still as clear and keen as the first day they met, though now they were surrounded with cutting lines from age.
“Tokio …”
“Yes, Hajime?”
“No crying. It is forbidden in this house.”
Tokio nodded, trying her hardest to hold back her tears. She bent her head down, pressing her cheek to her husband’s. She found his ear and whispered, “You weren’t supposed to die before me, Hajime. I don’t know … I don’t know if I can take you leaving me … for good …”
Tokio found her chin being pried away from his cheek. Saitou gnashed his teeth at the pain of moving, his nostrils flaring as he held his wife’s face with a grip that never faltered. “I know what you are thinking, Tokio. Don’t you dare even consider it.”
“I … Hajime … I don’t want to say … good-bye …”
“No. We’ve never said that, have we?” With what remained of his strength, he pulled her close, kissing her softly, gently, finding her lips as delightful and giving as ever they had been. He felt Tokio sigh, losing herself in their last moments together. She became, just for a moment, not a woman losing her husband, but a woman kissing her beloved. It felt like an instant and at the same time, like an eternity.
“Tokio …”
“Yes?”
He closed his eyes, his body becoming strangely still. “I will return.”
“Yes, Hajime. I know.” Tokio watched as her husband’s breathing disappeared into nothingness. “I will be waiting.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Miyuki woke up in the middle of the night. Or, at least, it seemed like it must be the middle of the night. The house was very, very quiet and very dark. A lamp was burning in the room where she had been sleeping, and next to it, her grandma Tokio was sitting, some cloth draped over her lap.
“Grandma …” Miyuki said sleepily, crawling across the tatami to lean her head against Tokio’s knee. “Everyone was so sad today. Are you sad too, Grandma?”
“A little, Mimi-chan, I am a little sad,” Tokio replied quietly. She turned over her embroidery to pull her stitch through on the other side. Miyuki held up her fingers to touch the silky cloth. It was white, but it seemed to shimmer a million colors even in the dim lamplight. Her grandmother had embroidered gray and black snowflakes up the side, creating a beautiful winter scene with her needle and thread.
“Pretty, Grandma. What’s it for?”
“It is for a lady going on a very long journey, Mimi-chan. She has to be dressed very pretty, because the man she loves went on the journey before her. She wants to make sure he recognizes her when she gets there and to make sure he forgives her, because he told her to stay and wait for him to return.”
“Oh.” Miyuki’s mouth formed the word, but she didn’t seem to understand. It was very late, and she was very tired. She rubbed her eyes, trying to stay awake to watch her grandmother sew, but ended up yawning. Her eyes fluttered open and closed, taking sleepy snapshots of her grandmother as she fought off the world of dreams.
Sometime later, Miyuki found herself being carried into the other room and gently tucked into a soft futon. Her grandma smiled at her, kissed her on the cheek, and told her to go back to sleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Eiji found Tokio the next morning. She wore a white kimono, decorated in tiny snowflakes at the hem and sleeves, and a deep-blue obi the color of midnight. Her face was pressed into the crook of her husband’s neck, her hands holding his.
Beside her was an empty basket. It had once contained candies so sweet …
She never tasted the poison.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A great many people came to the funeral of Saitou Hajime and Saitou Tokio. Strange, they said, that a lone wolf and his quiet wife could have known so many people. It took place in early October, amid a sudden cold snap that overtook Tokyo as if from nowhere.
Among the people who came were Sawageou Chou and Naoya, along with their daughter, Eiko. Narajirou Kozue and his three daughters, Fujiko, Ichimi, and Ayami, also attended. Unfortunately, Narajirou Kume could not come, having died the previous year in a fire. Myojin Yahiko and his wife, Tsubame, along with their children, came. Himura Kenji, too, came, along with his wife and children. Takani Megumi came alone and told Okita that she had sent word of his friends’ passing to Sagara Sanosuke. Also in attendance were Fujita Tsutomu, his wife, and their two sons and Fujita Tsuyoshi, his wife, his daughter, Miyuki, and his son, Jirou. Fujita Tatsuo arrived but had to be taken away from the scene quickly because of being overcome with emotion.
Harada Shikiko, having come back to Japan to pursue her studies, attended the funeral on the behalf of her father.
Several remaining members and the children and grandchildren of certain members of the Shinsengumi were in attendance.
Members of two ninja groups, the Oniwabanshuu and the Hachinisasareru, were said to be in attendance. But, being ninjas, no one saw them or could substantiate the claim.
Many of the faculty of the Tokyo Women’s University, the Tokyo Educational Museum, and the Tokyo Police Department came to the funeral.
A great number of market vendors, as well as longtime customers of Snowflake Sweets also arrived.
Okita Jikiri, Mishima Eiji, and Okita Souji arrived together. Eiji and Souji took turns giving the eulogy, with Okita reading a few bits of poetry and Eiji relating fond memories of his adoptive parents.
In the end, their ashes were interred in Tokyo Cemetery. The stones read,
Saitou Hajime (Jan. 1, 1844–Sep. 27, 1915) One sword, one ideal, one woman.
Saitou “Kitty” Tokio (Feb 12, 1857–Sep. 27, 1915) One step behind the man she loved.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~