The River Kami Asked Before Taking My Hand novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Without a Promise

"I'm not leaving," Akari said quickly. "That's not what I mean. Nagi, look at me."

Nagi was looking at her.

It was not the look of someone who was angry.

It was the look of someone standing very carefully on thin ice.

"I'm nineteen," Akari said. "I don't know where I'll be in ten years. I don't know if I'll teach here or in Nagoya or on the moon. If I stand at that gate and say forever, I'd be saying words I can't see the end of."

"Tomoe said them."

"Tomoe said them because she needed a place to stand. She had you, and a house, and nothing else. I have a mother and a degree and a bus pass." Akari took a breath. "I'm not promising because I'm not stuck. I'd be promising because it feels like what a good person does. That's the exact reason you got six cords and no choice."

The priest rolled the scroll very slowly.

He wanted to be in another village.

"So what do you want?" Nagi asked.

"I want to choose it. Every day. Not once at a gate."

"Every day."

"Every morning I'll wake up, and I'll decide, and I'll tell you. If it's a yes, I'll say yes. I'll bring you tea. If one day it isn't, I'll tell you that too, to your face, before I do anything else." Akari squeezed her hand. "And I'd rather say that every day for sixty years than say one big thing and stop thinking."

The garden was so quiet that the river could be heard turning a stone over.

"Priest-san," Nagi said in a low voice. "Will you leave us a while?"

"Of course." He gathered the scroll and bowed. "I will light the lamp at the shrine. And, Akari-san."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for the no. It was the first honest one the register has ever heard."

He went out through the gate, and it swung shut behind him without a sound.

Nagi did not move.

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