The River Kami Asked Before Taking My Hand novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Companion of the River
The priest came to the house at eight in the morning with two books wrapped in cloth.
He stood at the stone gate holding them against his chest and did not come in.
"May I enter?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," Nagi said from the veranda, and he flinched.
He had clearly not expected an answer.
"Nagi-sama," he said, and bowed deeply. "Akari-san told me to ask you about the rite. I came to do it properly."
"Do you want to?" Nagi said.
"Do I want to?"
"Do you want the rite? You, the man?"
The old priest opened his mouth, shut it, and put the books down on the veranda boards.
"I want what my father wanted," he said slowly. "I want the old things to continue."
"That is not the same as wanting the rite," Nagi said, without any unkindness. "But thank you. It is the first time you have asked me anything in fifty years."
"I am sorry."
"I know."
Akari sat between them with a cup of barley tea, listening.
"You said you'd brought the register," she said to the priest. "Nagi said there's a paper in your hall about the marriage."
"Yes." The priest untied the cloth. "There are two. The old one, from my grandfather's time, and the copy my father made in 1962 when the old book began to fall apart."
He opened the first book.
The paper was brown and soft as cloth.
The brush strokes were faded but neat.
He turned to a page near the end and set it in front of Akari.
"The line is for the first keeper under Nagi-sama's care," he said. "My grandfather wrote it. Read it to me, please."
Akari read.
There was a woman's name, which had been rubbed out, and then two characters beside it.
She knew the first one from school.
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