The Stepsister Who Followed Me Through the Shrine Gate novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Ink

The new book was bound in plain blue cloth, and its pages were blank.

Odile set it on the writing desk in the Saint's House.

She laid beside it an ink stone, a stick of black ink and two brushes of different sizes.

"The Temple will witness it in two days," she said. "What you write tonight, you will read aloud then, and sign."

"What do we write?" Hinata asked.

"Whatever is true."

Odile bowed to both of them and left.

Mai ground the ink herself, with a few drops of water on the stone, slowly, until it was thick and black and smelled of smoke.

Hinata sat down at the desk with the brush in her hand and her tongue between her teeth.

She wrote Mai's name first, in the careful hand of a shrine maiden who had copied prayers since she was six.

Kurosawa Mai.

Under it she wrote her own.

Aizawa Hinata.

Then she stopped.

"The line for how we're related," she said. "What do I put?"

"Whatever is true."

"I can't put stepsister."

"No."

"I won't."

Mai took the brush from her fingers.

Her hand shook a little, so she braced her wrist on the desk and wrote, small and clear, under each name.

Hinata read them, and her eyes flooded.

"Wife," she whispered.

"Wife."

"You've spelled it correctly."

"I'm a pharmacist. I check my spelling."

Hinata laughed through her tears and snatched the brush back.

She wrote the same word under her own name, with a flourish.

Then they each pressed a thumb in the ink and set a print beside it.

Black circles on the blue-white page, two small whorls, side by side.

Mai blew on them until they dried.

"That's it?" she asked.

"That's it. It's done."

"It feels like a lot of ink to carry a whole gate."

Hinata set the brush in its rest.

She stood, took Mai by the hand, and walked her backward to the bed, and the lamp threw both their shadows huge on the wall.

"Tonight," Hinata said, "is for you."

"I thought it was for us."

"It's for you first. I've been watching you."

She pushed Mai gently to sit.

"You've been rubbing your shoulder for a week. You have ink on your fingers."

"You've been up at dawn and in the shed at night."

"It's just work."

"It's you holding the whole sky. Take off your clothes, Onee-san."

Mai undressed with her ears burning.

Hinata took a small blue glass bottle from the nightstand and warmed it between her palms.

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