The Bride Who Read the Contract novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Red Cord

On Mount Kurai she takes the empty east wing and the only keys to its lock, her father ties the red wedding cords himself and tells her never to take hers off, and that night she finds her husband coughing blood on the veranda.

"My father offered me to you?" Fumika said. "In a letter?"

"In a very long letter." Ibuki turned the car onto the north road. "Two pages on your sister's gifts. Four lines on you."

"What did the four lines say?"

"That you were quiet, healthy, and wouldn't be missed."

The envoy snorted in the back seat.

Fumika looked out at the dark rice fields.

She wasn't hurt. She had stopped being hurt by her father years ago. She was only surprised he had spent four lines.

"Why now?" she asked. "There hasn't been a Hinase bride in sixty years."

"There was one in my house until this winter," he said. "My grandfather's wife. She died in the first snow."

"I didn't know."

"Your father's letter came a month after the funeral."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I. She made terrible rice crackers. I ate every one."

The road began to climb.

Cedars closed over the car, black and enormous, and the air through the window turned cold and wet and green.

"Suzuna," he said, "you haven't introduced yourself to my wife."

"I was eating." The envoy leaned forward between the seats. "Suzuna Tsukimori. His cousin. I run his house, because Ibuki can't find his own socks."

"Fumika," Fumika said.

"I know. I read your terms out. Forty yen." Suzuna grinned. "I'm paid thirty-five. I'm going to ask for a raise."

"You're family," Ibuki said. "You're paid in sweets."

The house came out of the trees at the top of the road.

It was enormous and old, all dark cedar beams and deep eaves and paper lanterns.

A newer Western wing of grey stone was stuck onto one side.

Servants were waiting in the lantern light at the gate.

Every one of them had horns.

Fumika held her coat tighter.

"Choose your room," Ibuki said, when they were inside. "Any one in the house."

He meant it. He walked her through the whole of it at midnight with a lamp.

She chose the east wing.

It was small and quiet at the end of a long veranda, three rooms of old tatami that smelled of dried chrysanthemums.

"This was hers," Fumika said. "Wasn't it. Your grandmother's."

"Step-grandmother. Yes." He stood in the doorway with the lamp. "Nobody's slept here since."

"Do you mind?"

He looked around at the empty rooms for a while.

"No," he said. "She'd have liked you. She read everything too."

The paper doors had no lock.

He went away and came back twenty minutes later with a brass Western lock, a screwdriver and a hand drill.

He fitted it to the outer door himself, kneeling on the veranda in his scorched haori with his hair coming loose.

Then he turned the key twice, took it out, and put it in her palm with its only twin.

"Both," he said. "Your term."

Fumika closed her fingers on the two keys.

Nobody had ever given her the key to anything.

They were married at noon the next day in the house's own hall, under the black crescent banner.

Genzo came up the mountain to perform the Hinase rite, because the pact said a Hinase priest must.

Kinue came with him in purple, powdered white, her eyes moving over the oni servants.

Kaede came last, in pale green, and kept her gaze on the floor.

Genzo poured the sake and said the words.

Then he took two red silk cords from a box, plaited and knotted with the Hinase knot.

He tied one round Ibuki's left wrist himself.

He tied the other round Fumika's.

He pulled the knot very tight.

"A Hinase bride never takes it off," he said, low, just to her. "Never. Do you understand?"

"I've read about the custom, Father."

"Read it again."

He didn't let go of her wrist until she nodded.

Ibuki watched him over her head.

"Is the knot supposed to stop her blood?" he asked mildly. "I only ask because her hand's gone white."

Genzo let go and smiled for the oni guests.

At the feast Kinue picked up a piece of grilled fish with her chopsticks, sniffed it and put it down.

"Mountain food," she said to Fumika. "You'll be at home. You always ate in the kitchen."

"I did," Fumika said. "The kitchen had better company."

Suzuna laughed so hard she choked on her rice.

Kinue snapped her fan shut.

The Hinase left before sunset.

Genzo said the road was dangerous in the dark.

He looked at the cord on Fumika's wrist one more time before he got into the car.

That night she locked her door with her own key and lay awake in a dead woman's rooms, listening to the cedars.

At some time past one she heard coughing.

It went on and on, wet and harsh, somewhere along the veranda.

Fumika got up, unlocked the door and went out barefoot in her sleeping kimono.

Ibuki was sitting on the edge of the long veranda in the moonlight.

His back was to her, and his feet hung over the dark garden.

He was bent double.

When she came close he straightened quickly and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

The sleeve came away black in the moonlight.

Then she smelled it. Blood.

"Go back to bed," he said. "You'll freeze."

"You're bleeding."

"I'm coughing. It's different."

He tried to smile and coughed again, and more came.

He looked at it on his sleeve with distaste. "Well. It's a little bit the same."

Fumika knelt beside him and gave him her sleeve.

He hesitated, then took it.

On his wrist the red cord was gone.

In its place, under the skin, was a thin red line.

"How long has this been happening?" she asked.

"Since I was twenty." He folded her sleeve over the stain so she wouldn't see it. "It stopped this winter. I thought I'd been lucky."

He looked out at the black cedars.

"Tsukimori lords don't see forty, Fumika. My father didn't. His father didn't. I'm thirty-one."

He handed back her sleeve.

"You asked for a year," he said. "You might get exactly that."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend