Chapter 5: The Third-Day Visit

"Good," Kinue said. "You've kept it on."

"It's been three days."

"Some girls are careless." She snapped her fan open. "Show me where they're keeping you."

She didn't wait to be shown.

She walked straight past the oni servants at the gate, and up onto the veranda in her sandals.

A maid ran after her with slippers.

Kinue didn't take them.

Kaede followed slowly, holding her pink skirts clear of the gravel, looking at every horned head with wide eyes.

Kinue found the east wing on her own.

She stopped at the outer door and looked at the brass lock.

"What's this?"

"Mine," Fumika said. "You don't get to open what isn't yours."

"So he doesn't come to you." Kinue laughed. "Of course he doesn't. Look at you."

She slid the door open and walked in.

Fumika's mother's red chest stood open by the window, where Fumika had been airing the scorched notebook.

A little charcoal brazier was burning beside it for her tea.

Kinue picked up the top notebook.

"Her scribbles," she said. "Still."

"Put it down, please."

"Your father should have burned the lot years ago. I told him so."

"You told the steward too," Fumika said. "On the night of the banquet."

Kinue's face didn't change under the powder.

She held the notebook out over the brazier between two fingers.

"Mother," Kaede said from the doorway, very quietly.

Kinue opened her fingers.

The notebook fell into the coals.

The edge of it caught at once.

Fumika put her hand into the brazier and took it out.

She didn't think about it.

Her hand was simply there, in the coals.

Then the book was in her lap and she was beating the flame out on her knee.

The pain came a moment after, white and enormous.

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