Cold Wisteria Dreams

Miyazaki Mio's eyelid twitched. It was the right one. The twitch felt ill-omened. Her mood sank with it, like a spring flower already beginning to fail before it had properly bloomed. Yet the spring light outside was brilliant, green haze washing the window, red apricot leaning over the wall.

The man lying on the hospital bed looked like a stone carving. He slept in perfect stillness. He neither ate nor drank nor moved, and that silence was enough to knot the heart. Miyazaki Mio often stood near him, sometimes from a distance, sometimes close enough to murmur words of encouragement by his ear. His name was Todo Teisei. An accident had robbed him of all power of movement. Now, in a coma, he lived only because drugs and machines were holding the remnants of his life together. Miyazaki Mio had been waiting. Waiting for him to wake. When he did, she meant to tell him the answer to the question he had once left behind: Yes. I am willing. Willing to let your face rest at my left side, the place nearest the heart. It is that important. I am willing to cast aside every restraint and begin again with you.

Miyazaki Mio walked down the long, narrow corridor of the hospital. The click of her high heels on the floor only made the surrounding hush feel deeper. Then, all at once, she heard someone call to her. "Miss Miyazaki." She turned instinctively and saw a face she did not know, a face faintly tense and yet strangely pressing, almost aggressive. That was the first time she met Asakura Seiwa. It was awkward, and unpleasant. One could tell at a glance that Asakura Seiwa had come prepared. Miyazaki Mio studied him warily. "How did you know you would find me here?" Asakura gave her a half smile that seemed to hide more than it showed. "Lately I've noticed something very interesting. Wherever there is murder, or danger, you are never far away. It's almost as though you can foresee such things and simply lie in wait for them." Miyazaki Mio's face altered slightly. "Who are you?" she asked. "And what gives you the right to say such a thing?" Asakura Seiwa only shrugged.

"Is that so?" Miyazaki Mio had no wish to waste breath on him and said only, "Coincidence. Nothing more." Which was another way of saying that where she chose to appear was her own freedom and her own right, and had nothing at all to do with him. But Asakura Seiwa refused to yield. Tall, broad-shouldered, and dark, he stood before her like a low mountain. Miyazaki Mio tried to slip past him, but he leaned in even closer. By then she was already at the door of Todo Teisei's hospital room. The slats of the blinds split the dark room into long parallel cracks of light. She was furious at Asakura Seiwa's relentless badgering. At last she snapped, "If you keep harassing me, we can go to the police and settle this there." Then she rushed into the room and slammed the door shut. Asakura Seiwa still prowled the corridor outside. The sound of his footsteps unsettled her badly. Her right eyelid twitched again. She sat down beside Todo Teisei's bed and stared at the sleeping man's face, her own gaze dull with sorrow. Suddenly the wind flung open the glass door to the balcony.

Later she never knew when Asakura Seiwa had finally gone away. The corridor fell quiet. Miyazaki Mio's heartbeat slowly steadied, and she began to think back over everything that had happened between herself and Todo Teisei, every scene, every word, every glance, down to the smallest detail. Without thinking, she reached out and took the hand lying flat by his side. Todo Teisei's hand was burning hot, as if it had just been boiled. The shock sent her springing to her feet. Doctors and nurses came running at once, crowding around the bed, yet even as they arrived the heat faded away. They examined him thoroughly from head to toe, but found not the slightest abnormality.

A few more days passed. It was late March. By the artificial lake in West Suburb Park, a floating corpse caused a sensation like a thunderclap. The onlookers jammed the shore so densely that no water could have slipped through them. Miyazaki Mio was among the crowd. When the body was hauled onto the bank, she saw at close range a pale face, slightly swollen from the water, but not yet too distorted. She recognized it at once. It was the journalist who had hounded her in the hospital only days before. Asakura Seiwa. The whole world seemed to pitch and whirl beneath her feet.

All of it was only a dream of Miyazaki Mio's: visiting Todo Teisei, meeting Asakura Seiwa, the feverish heat in Todo Teisei's hands, Asakura Seiwa floating dead in the lake. None of it had happened yet. It was still only early March. Miyazaki Mio woke drenched in cold sweat. She was on her own sofa, roused from a doze by the heaviness of the afternoon. She knew that the warning in this dream was pointing her toward a troublesome journalist for whom she had no affection at all. Her impression of Asakura Seiwa was terrible. But it was still a human life. She had no choice but to put prejudice aside.

And so the situation became one in which Asakura Seiwa investigated and watched Miyazaki Mio, while Miyazaki Mio in turn secretly looked into Asakura Seiwa's past, his background, his work, his daily life. He was a reporter for a small newspaper. He was stubborn, eccentric, and odd in his habits, with few friends and no shortage of enemies. As for which one of them had come to hate him enough to want him dead, she could not yet sort out a clear line. One day, as Miyazaki Mio emerged from the detective agency, she suddenly saw Asakura Seiwa standing under a signboard across the street, half smiling as he watched her. She pretended not to notice. He crossed over in two or three quick strides and blocked her path. "Have you been investigating me?" he asked. Miyazaki Mio, cool as ever, did not deny it, but only looked at him in silence. It was Asakura Seiwa who seemed to grow uneasy first. "Why investigate me?" he asked. "And you?" she returned. "Why investigate me?" He had confronted her more than half a month earlier than in her dream, and he was clearly not nearly so prepared. Yet after only the briefest pause, he still fixed her with the bright, eager eyes of a reporter about to seize the most sensational story of his life and said the very same words her dream had foretold. Miyazaki Mio still refused to answer.

And yet Asakura Seiwa seemed somehow different now. When Miyazaki Mio looked at him, there was a flicker in his eyes that had not been there before. His words, too, held a strange restraint, as though he wanted to press forward and yet kept pulling himself back. It was unlike the man in her dream, whose presence had been openly threatening. Miyazaki Mio was too tired to dwell on the difference. She had already made her next move. The editor of Asakura Seiwa's newspaper was an old acquaintance of hers. She went to him with a fabricated excuse and persuaded him to send Asakura Seiwa to Nanjing in half a month's time to cover a business summit. The editor pushed up his glasses and agreed readily, smiling all the while. By the time Miyazaki Mio stepped out of the newspaper office, dusk had already gathered. Now and then a cool breeze blew through the street corners. She raised a hand to hail the yellow rickshaw waiting by the slanted road. Then her hand stopped in midair. Beneath the shadow of two ancient intertwined banyan trees stood the outline of a tall man in a long black robe. Was that...? Was that Todo Teisei? Yet his face was as pale as ever, his lips utterly bloodless, his expression blank, his gaze cold as frost. It seemed as though he were looking at Miyazaki Mio. And yet it did not. Miyazaki Mio felt her heart miss a beat. She tried to cross the street, too hurried and too flustered to trust her own steps.

It was only a hallucination. The moment Miyazaki Mio rushed back to the hospital and saw Todo Teisei still lying there asleep, the two words hallucination were enough to calm her taut heart.

Miyazaki Mio continued to keep a close watch on Asakura Seiwa. His days passed in absolute calm, with not the slightest sign of storm. When the appointed time drew near, the newspaper did indeed send him to Nanjing. Broad hat, long coat, large suitcase, a hurried departure. Everything unfolded just as Miyazaki Mio had expected. And yet too much peace was not always a welcome thing. She knew that if she did not find the knot at the heart of all this, then even if Asakura Seiwa escaped this time, there would not necessarily be no next time.

Time became unnaturally quiet. There were no nightmares, no omens, no message from Nanjing concerning Asakura Seiwa. Miyazaki Mio spent most of her time at the hospital, waiting for a miracle. At the end of the month, she had only just stepped out of Todo Teisei's room, and had not even had time to pull the door shut behind her, when someone rushed at her from the left, slammed her hard against the wall, and pinned her there. Miyazaki Mio cried out in terror. The man before her was one of the victims from an earlier vision of hers, or rather, the husband of one. Though Miyazaki Mio had done everything she could to prevent that misfortune, she had still failed to save the woman's life. Her widower understood neither reason nor mercy. He took the agony of losing his wife and hurled it at her instead, even blaming her for the death itself. "Murderer," he howled. "I'll make you pay with your life." His hands closed around Miyazaki Mio's throat as though he meant to snap it in two. People from the hospital rushed over at the noise and managed to drag him away. Her throat felt scorched. She retreated to Todo Teisei's room, locked the door, and only when she saw the peace of his sleeping face did the terror inside her ease a little. Then a gust of wind banged the balcony's glass door open and sent it slamming against the cold wall. The sound rang in Miyazaki Mio's heart like an alarm bell. Suddenly she felt that this scene, this exact scene, was terribly familiar. With dread curling inside her, she reached out and took hold of Todo Teisei's hand.

A few days later, the man who had gone mad with grief over his dead wife was dead himself. He was found drowned in the great water vat in his own courtyard, his whole body bent into a posture like an ostrich burying its head in sand. His fingernails had clawed deep grooves into the inner walls of the vat. It was true that Miyazaki Mio's dreams were not so all-encompassing that they took in every single murder in Shanghai. Still, she could not shake the feeling that this death somehow belonged to her as well. And around that same time, Asakura Seiwa returned from Nanjing. He even brought her a small gift. "This necklace would suit you very well," he said. Miyazaki Mio was struck speechless.

A hard wind swept up fine sand and stung her eyes.

"We've done no more than meet a few times," she said with a smile, trying to refuse. "To say nothing of friendship, we can scarcely even be called acquaintances. Things between us are tense enough as they are. Why spend money on me?" Asakura Seiwa shrugged. "I've always done whatever I feel like doing." After several rounds of pushing and arguing, the necklace still ended up not leaving her hands.

She saw Asakura Seiwa with his limbs spread wide, pinned to the wall like a stretched hide. The pearls from the necklace were rolling everywhere across the floor.

Before him stood a man in a black robe. His face was pale, and there was an expression on it that was half mocking, half mischievous.

She had wanted to cry out to him in excitement, to ask, You're awake? When did you wake? Do you know how long I have waited for this moment? Why are you here? and a hundred other questions besides. Yet when she reached out, trying to catch Todo Teisei, who already seemed poised to flee, she grasped only empty air. All she managed to tear away was one corner of his robe. Then the man vanished into nothing like steam, and the scrap of black cloth in her hand dissolved into mist.

Asakura Seiwa, as if reprieved from execution, broke free of the wall and found he could move again. He stared at Miyazaki Mio in confusion and alarm. "What on earth was that just now?"

"Todo Teisei. Todo Teisei. Yes. He was right there in front of you just now. Didn't you see him?"

Shock was not the only thing in Asakura Seiwa's face. There was dread there too. That uncanny feeling, that nameless sensation of losing control over his own body, had struck him a second time. When had the first been? He could not say. He stared at the pearls scattered all over the floor and said nothing, but only understood more sharply than before how dangerous his situation had become.

Could such a thing truly exist in this world? According to an old Western book Miyazaki Mio found, if a person sank into a very deep coma, and the coma lasted too long, and the force of that person's heart and will remained too strong, too obsessed to be laid to rest, then spirit and flesh might part from one another. What remained would become a drifting, visible form, capable of slipping beyond the limits of time and space, appearing and vanishing at will. People referred to this simply as the soul leaving the body. Only those who had some special tie to the person in question would be able to see with their naked eyes the outline of that untouchable form. And that visible form, too, might use sheer will to control objects and wield strength beyond the ordinary. When spirit and body were separated in such a way, certain bodily abnormalities often followed, among them spasms or fever. In a quiet, secluded corner of the library, Miyazaki Mio sat for an entire afternoon and read the book from beginning to end in one breath. The words seemed to explain with uncanny precision every bizarre thing she had recently encountered. Was it because Todo Teisei clung to her so obsessively that he could not let go? It would have suited his domineering nature well enough. Teasing Asakura Seiwa over that necklace was hardly without precedent; there had been other jealous incidents before. Lost in such thoughts, Miyazaki Mio found herself already at the hospital room door. "Teisei," she called. "If it really is you, if you can hear what I am saying, then show yourself. Let me see you." The room was so quiet that it felt unnatural. The quieter it was, the faster her heart beat, and the stranger the air grew. Suddenly the wind rose again and slammed the balcony door hard enough to make the glass shudder. Miyazaki Mio was just about to test Todo Teisei's temperature when she heard two coughs behind her. She turned around. There, by the window, stood a second Todo Teisei as if he had been copied out of the first.

"So it really is you." Miyazaki Mio could not suppress the agitation and relief in her voice. She wanted to persuade him. "Teisei, you must stop doing this. Every time your will leaves that body, you are only harming yourself. Don't you know that every time you step away from it, your organs are damaged a little more? If this goes on, your body will weaken further, it will become even harder for you to wake, and perhaps you may never wake again." Todo Teisei only gave a faint shrug, his face pale, expressionless, his eyes as hollow and distant as ever. "I just can't stop worrying about you," he said. The words were light. The phrasing was simple. Yet they raised a thousand waves at once. There was already moisture at the corners of Miyazaki Mio's eyes. "I can take care of myself," she said. "I will wait for you to wake." Though Todo Teisei lay in a coma, he could, more or less, hear the things Miyazaki Mio whispered at his bedside. He knew that the question he had once left hanging had already been answered. He knew that Miyazaki Mio had accepted him. And because of that, he found it even harder to let go. His thoughts stayed caught on her, and from time to time he would appear at her side. "I don't like Asakura Seiwa," he said. "So that was why you kept teasing him?" "Mm." "That man is complicated," he said. "I don't know his past. But I keep feeling that he is not as simple as he seems. Be careful." At that very moment, the door opened and a nurse came in carrying medicine. Miyazaki Mio looked at her, then turned back again. Todo Teisei was gone. The temperature in the sleeping man's hands had already returned to normal.

Early summer had only just begun, and already the heat was steadily climbing. Miyazaki Mio came out of a restaurant, crossed a noisy side street, and turned into a narrow, deserted lane. Suddenly the back of her neck went cold. A moment later she collapsed, unconscious. When awareness slowly returned, she opened her eyes to find herself tied to a chair in a little storeroom with all the doors and windows shut. The walls were piled stone. Torches had been thrust into the cracks between them. The light was dim, but bright enough to make every object around her clear. A figure wearing a Peking Opera mask stood across from her, holding a blazing torch. Miyazaki Mio forced herself into calm and asked, "Who are you?" The masked figure did not answer. Then she saw a blur of pale light rise out of the darkness. It slowly gathered into the outline of a man. She knew at once that it was Todo Teisei. Relief flooded her heart and washed away her fear. But what she had never expected was that the Todo Teisei who had only just taken shape would be glowing all over, silver-bright, like a wax figure.

"You are... Asakura Seiwa?" Miyazaki Mio recognized the voice from behind the mask in an instant. Looking more carefully, she saw that the floor of the warehouse was covered in a thin layer of white phosphorus powder. At once she remembered what she had read in that Western book: phosphorus could make the astral shape of a soul visible, and fire could burn it to ash. In that moment she understood everything. This was Asakura Seiwa's trap. He had kidnapped her for no reason except to lure Todo Teisei out, and the torch in his hand had been prepared for that soul alone. He meant to burn it to ash. But why would he be so vicious? Todo Teisei had done no more than tease him once. Could Asakura Seiwa truly be so narrow-hearted? Miyazaki Mio had no time to think further. Before her, Asakura Seiwa had already raised the torch without the least hesitation and turned it toward Todo Teisei. Todo Teisei, for his part, seemed not yet to understand the danger before him. His eyes burned with rage. He looked ready to tear Asakura Seiwa to pieces. "If you dare hurt even a single hair on her head," he roared, "I'll make you wish for death and still deny it to you."

But Asakura Seiwa, too, had started from strange intuitions of his own. After the second bizarre incident, and after the pearl necklace broke, the whole matter had begun to take on the outline of something comprehensible. What Miyazaki Mio had thought of, he had thought of as well. He had found that ancient book and learned how to deal with a person whose soul could leave the body. What he had done beyond Miyazaki Mio was investigate the husband who had died so suspiciously, the one who had tried to harm her and then wound up dead. It was precisely because the man had died after attempting to hurt Miyazaki Mio that Asakura Seiwa began to suspect that the matter might have something to do with her after all. Whether the culprit was Todo Teisei, he thought, one test would tell him. Slowly he removed the mask and cast Miyazaki Mio a cold smile. "Do you know," he said, "that Todo Teisei is a murderer? He was the one who killed that man in the hospital, the one who tried to harm you." Miyazaki Mio went rigid. She looked back at Todo Teisei. There was nothing in his face that resembled denial or self-defense. Only a kind of guilty silence. In that instant Miyazaki Mio understood that the protection he had given her went much farther than she had ever imagined. And yet her heart ached with disappointment all the same. So this was Todo Teisei after all: a man already practiced in moving between light and shadow. Faced with threats, he chose to solve them by means that could not bear daylight. He had never been a purely good man, and the way he handled things was not one Miyazaki Mio could approve. Even if the other side had been wicked, she still believed such matters ought to be settled through the law. The look of reproach on her face fell into his eyes like torture. He did not say a word.

After a long while, it was Miyazaki Mio who spoke first, and she spoke to Asakura Seiwa. "You don't have to dress yourself up in false righteousness," she said. "By using methods as base as this, how are you any different from murderers and arsonists? Why are you doing this? Don't tell me you mean to avenge the dead or uphold justice in their name." Miyazaki Mio was no fool. She had already begun to sense that this matter was stranger than it looked. By all logic, that man's death had had nothing to do with Asakura Seiwa. When he died, Asakura Seiwa had not even been in Shanghai. And yet Asakura Seiwa had still pressed Todo Teisei step by step, spent his mind on tracing out the whole affair, and even gone so far as to risk himself. What, in the end, did he want? She no longer had time to ask. With one lift of his hand, Asakura Seiwa sent the torch flying toward Todo Teisei. Todo Teisei's whole body was dusted with powder that would catch at the smallest touch of flame. The instant the fire reached him, he would burn and then be gone forever in smoke and ash. Perhaps it was sheer terror that drove Miyazaki Mio beyond reason. Chair and all, she lurched to her feet and hurled herself toward that torch. Todo Teisei froze. Even Asakura Seiwa's face changed. The torch was knocked aside from its path and fell a yard away from Todo Teisei instead. But there was phosphorus on the ground there too, and the fire leapt high at once.

Miyazaki Mio suddenly felt as though she had grown too tired to remain awake. She closed her eyes and sank, heavy and deep, into sleep. In her dream, she was back in her own warm bed. It was that darkest hour before dawn when the telephone in the sitting room suddenly rang with a shrill, piercing sound. She stumbled out of her room and snatched up the receiver. The call was from the hospital. The doctor said that the patient had suddenly taken a violent turn for the worse. They had failed to save him. He was dead.

"Teisei!" Miyazaki Mio woke with a cry. She was in a private clinic. Tears shed in the dream were still hanging on her cheeks. Was that only an ordinary dream, or one of her terrible premonitions? Her breathing came quick and ragged. She turned over at once, meaning to get out of bed. Only then did she notice that Asakura Seiwa was still sitting beside her. "The warehouse caught fire and you fainted," he said. "I brought you here. The doctor has already examined you. There's nothing seriously wrong. Where are you going?" "The hospital. I have to go to the hospital." Then, as if waking from another layer of dream, Miyazaki Mio grabbed Asakura Seiwa by the sleeve and demanded, "What about Todo Teisei? Did you burn him?" "No," Asakura Seiwa said, shaking his head. "When I carried you out of the warehouse, he vanished. The fire never touched him."

Miyazaki Mio hurried to the hospital like a madwoman. In the room, Todo Teisei was still lying there, as quietly as before. He was unharmed. Miyazaki Mio let out a long breath and sat weakly by the bed. The temperature of Todo Teisei's hands was normal. She tried calling to him. "Teisei, are you there? As long as you answer me, tell me only that you are safe. Did that fire hurt you at all?" But from beginning to end there was no response. She did not know how much time passed before Asakura Seiwa came as well. He stood at the door, and there was a look in his eyes that was almost grief. Miyazaki Mio lifted her head, saw him there, and felt all her hatred rise like a flood. "You are not welcome here," she said.

Asakura Seiwa was very obedient. He left at once, though he looked dispirited and deeply miserable as he moved slowly through the still corridor of the hospital. The whole of him felt dim and unreal. A cleaning worker pushed a cart past him. For a second he thought he smelled water weeds and frowned, puzzled by how familiar the scent felt. Five steps later, then ten, there came a crashing noise from behind him. Something inside him snapped. He turned and ran with all his might back toward Todo Teisei's room. By then he already understood why the smell of water weeds had felt familiar. He saw the cleaning worker brandishing a long knife and struggling with Miyazaki Mio. He slammed the door wide and leapt in like some gallant hero from a cheap serial. "Zhang Fu, I knew it was you!" Asakura Seiwa shouted. The words stunned Miyazaki Mio. Of course she recognized Zhang Fu: he was the same husband whose wife had died, the same man who had gone mad with grief and then drowned in his own vat. But had he not already died? And the man before her, wearing a hospital cleaner's uniform, looked nothing like Zhang Fu at all. How could it possibly be him? Yet the cleaner did speak, and when he did, his expression was savage. "Miyazaki Mio," he said. "I won't let this go. Even as a ghost I will win justice back for my wife." Miyazaki Mio began to understand. Zhang Fu's soul had possessed the cleaner's body, and borrowed it to take revenge on her once again. Only he was still as irrational and headstrong as he had been alive, with no plan at all, no patience, only a blind headlong fury. The sounds of struggle had already alarmed the whole floor. Patients and doctors were gathering in swarms. Asakura Seiwa had very nearly subdued the man.

And then, without warning, Zhang Fu crumpled to the ground as though struck dead. He stopped moving. Asakura Seiwa bent down to feel for his breath. There was none. He was just about to speak when Todo Teisei, who had been lying on the hospital bed in a coma all this time, sat upright with a jerk. His eyes were ghastly, as though he meant to devour the living. He smiled at Miyazaki Mio, and the smile was more uncanny than anything she had ever seen. She looked from him to the body on the floor and understood at once: Zhang Fu had abandoned the body he had just been using and had leapt instead into Todo Teisei's. He rose unhurriedly and said, "The yin energy I carry is enough to drain every scrap of yang from this body within a few short hours." He pointed toward the cleaner on the floor. "That is your best proof. Unless you are willing to kill Todo Teisei along with me, there is no way for you to avoid me." Then he smiled again, cold and dreadful. By then the doctors and patients pouring in from every direction had already reached the door. In an instant Todo Teisei's expression changed. He stumbled back to the wall in feigned panic, pointing at Miyazaki Mio and Asakura Seiwa. "They... they killed someone." The crowd looked at one another, horrified, doubtful, frightened, every sort of expression there at once. Miyazaki Mio and Asakura Seiwa were shocked to the bone. But how could they explain? Were they supposed to tell everyone that all of this had been the doing of dead Zhang Fu, who had just possessed Todo Teisei's body?

The nightmare seemed to have no end. Just as Miyazaki Mio stood there helpless and at a loss, Asakura Seiwa beside her suddenly sprang forward with astonishing force and speed, straight toward Todo Teisei.

He drove the knife into Todo Teisei's heart. With a strange little smile, he said, "Who says I don't dare touch you? This body belonged to me in the first place. Whether it stays or goes is mine to decide. I won't let you hurt Miyazaki Mio any longer." Zhang Fu's eyes bulged wide. His mouth opened, but he could no longer close it, and no words came out. In the final instant before he dissolved into smoke and was scattered, he understood at last that inside the skin of this journalist there was hidden another soul. It was no stranger at all. It was Todo Teisei.

On bright days, Miyazaki Mio had never known that the Todo Teisei she worried over, the one she kept carrying in her heart, had been right there in front of her the whole time. That was why his gaze had sometimes turned so gentle, why he had become so unlike the Asakura Seiwa she had first met. Todo Teisei had originally believed that occupying Asakura Seiwa's body would be only a temporary expedient, a way to escape the fire in the warehouse before leaving it behind again. Yet once he entered, he found himself as if locked in place, trapped there by force. He had not yet decided how to confess the truth to Miyazaki Mio. Or perhaps he had wanted to wait for a more suitable moment. But change had come too quickly. It was also because he had once used his own will to drown Zhang Fu in the vat that the smell of the few strands of water weeds at the bottom had stayed in his memory. He knew it instantly. That was why, at the hospital, he so quickly guessed that the cleaning worker had been possessed by Zhang Fu.

Todo Teisei's body crashed to the ground as though it had never once been awake. His breathing grew even weaker than before. Miyazaki Mio had already heard the words Asakura Seiwa had spoken to Zhang Fu. She stood caught between the two, and all at once she did not know whether the thing she should touch was the man on the left or the soul on the right. She broke into helpless sobs and asked Asakura Seiwa, "You... what will become of you?" He gave her a desolate smile. For a fleeting instant there were lines at the corners of his brows and eyes that she knew well. She understood then that Todo Teisei was still in there, but only for the blink of an eye. She saw a plume of white smoke rise out of Asakura Seiwa's body, and Asakura Seiwa collapsed unconscious. Then that white smoke drifted to the side of Todo Teisei's body, slowly gathering there into a half-transparent shape.

In the end she still lost him. All the waiting she had done, all the faith she had held, vanished in haste. There had not even been time for a single proper farewell. She would never again sit with him and listen to the music and dancing at the Paramount. The necklace she had cherished like treasure would never again be fastened around her neck by his hands. She felt herself turn barren. It was as though the whole bright world had suddenly ceased to have any room for her at all. Tears poured from her like rain.

Afterward, because the evidence was insufficient, Miyazaki Mio never became a suspect in the killing. Only Asakura Seiwa, because he had stabbed Todo Teisei before the eyes of everyone there, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Miyazaki Mio went to see him once. There was no longer the slightest trace of anything familiar in his face. Though she had always felt some disgust toward him, strictly speaking he had not truly killed anyone, and she could not help carrying a little guilt on that account. Asakura Seiwa, however, quite plainly did not appreciate it. He stared at Miyazaki Mio through the thick glass and iron bars and gave a dark laugh. "Really," he said, "I ought to thank you. If not for you, I should already have died in the artificial lake in the park." Miyazaki Mio was thunderstruck. She stared at him. "How could you know that?" That had existed only in her dream, in her prevision, and nowhere else. Asakura Seiwa laughed again, lifting the corner of his mouth with self-satisfaction. "Miyazaki Mio, I am the same kind of person as you. The things you can foresee, I can foresee too." They had never, in truth, been allies of the same mind. They were natural enemies, set opposite one another. Miyazaki Mio saved people. Asakura Seiwa wanted only to make certain that what he foresaw would come to pass. He believed that everything she did ran counter to the order of nature itself. He had come for her. Yet now he was caged behind iron and stone, and had no move left. What he had never expected was that he himself would become the very person Miyazaki Mio set out to save. Human nature was selfish to begin with. He had not followed the course of his premonition, waiting passively for the death that should have arrived. Instead he accepted Miyazaki Mio's arrangements and fled to Nanjing to escape this disaster. But what tormented him was the question of who had wanted him dead in the first place. He knew very clearly that in his dream, the reason he drowned in the lake was that some uncontrollable force moved his body from the outside and drove him off the bridge. It had looked exactly like suicide. And when he broke the pearl necklace in the alley, that same familiar sense of losing control had come again. He heard Miyazaki Mio call Todo Teisei's name and went away to investigate, consulting ancient books until he could determine with almost perfect certainty that the mysterious force which had tried to drown him came from Todo Teisei, who had been guarding Miyazaki Mio from every side. If he did not get rid of him, his own actions would forever be obstructed, and even his life might again be threatened. That was why he would not let Todo Teisei go. Better to strike first than to live forever in fear. That was why he laid the trap and set fire to the warehouse. But the whole board had never been fully his to control. Todo Teisei's possession of his body, and Zhang Fu's sudden appearance, were both beyond his calculations. He lost, and he lost completely.

The truth was that he, too, had wanted to tell her that he had fallen in love with her. It had begun in the dream itself. He had come to love the painted clarity of her face, the forbearance she carried like a burden, the pale sadness that never quite left her. That was why, once they formally met, there had been more softness in his eyes, and a certain glimmer not present in the dream. Had he not loved her, had he approached her exactly as the dream had first laid out, all sharp elbows and reckless intrusion, his ending would have been no different from Zhang Fu's. Todo Teisei, who protected her too fiercely, would have killed him by sheer force of will. He had once thought it was Miyazaki Mio's arrangement that spared him the fate of drowning. What he never knew was that it was his own love, born outside all calculation, that altered the track of his life. Even if he had never gone to Nanjing, he still might have lived through it safely. Todo Teisei's dislike of him had never gone beyond a few petty pranks in that alley. In the end, it was Asakura Seiwa himself who refused to stop, who stepped further and further into the abyss, until he could no longer turn back. And in the end he never managed to say the words he most wanted to say. She would not come again. He knew he did not deserve anyone's sympathy or remembrance. Yet still he wanted to howl and weep, for the hopelessness of what he had desired, and for the wounds he had taken when his heart first moved.

Fine rain drifted down from the sky. Miyazaki Mio walked slowly over the slick blue-stone road. The scene felt achingly familiar, as though she had once parted from Todo Teisei on a day exactly like this. He must surely be sleeping peacefully now. No more bitter medicine, no more needles stabbing into him, no more drifting away with the wind like a plume of smoke. All his suffering had reached its end. Should that not have been a kind of joy? Yet why was it that when she forced a smile, all she felt was pain? Her face seemed soaked through. Was it the rain? Or had her tears already wet it before the rain ever could? Teisei, she thought. If it is possible, can your soul come back once more and hear the words I never finished telling you? I can overlook the wrong you did. What I cannot bear is only that you loved me, and that I had not yet had time to love you back, in all the joy and bitterness you deserved. She went on thinking that way, helplessly, as though there could never be an end to it.