Butterflies Over the Sweet Grass

Behind the ballroom there was a dressing room. The lights were bright, people coming and going. Miyazaki Mio had been shaping the brows of an opera actress, one stroke at a time, utterly focused, when suddenly her hand trembled and the tail of the brow flew up into the woman's temple. Mio collapsed to the floor. There was nothing terrifying in the way she fell. Her face remained peaceful, as though she had only gone to sleep and begun to dream. In the dream she found herself in a stretch of green grass under a sky thick with butterflies. Beneath the butterflies lay the corner of a girl's dress. Mio walked closer and saw the girl lying there serenely, already dead, a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. The body was cold and stiff. That single image was enough. Mio woke. People from the troupe crowded around her, some asking anxiously whether she was ill. Mio rose, shook her head, and said she was probably only exhausted. She knew what it really was: her gift of foresight. Only this time it had struck suddenly, outside the hours when she usually slept.

That girl on the grass, in other words, was going to be murdered. In the past, whenever Miyazaki Mio entered such dreams, she also sensed the place and time of death. This time was different. The butterfly-covered field was only an illusion. She did not know where the girl would die. She knew only the time: October fourth, at six thirty-seven in the evening. Less than twenty-four hours remained.

The drums and gongs had already begun in the front hall. A Western-style banquet with a Chinese opera troupe hired for entertainment made for a lively, unusual spectacle. The guests were all connoisseurs with a taste for antiques. Miyazaki Mio was only a temporary makeup artist the troupe had hired. Her work finished, she picked up her makeup case and prepared to leave, still thinking about how she might contact the girl from the dream. Then, in the corridor, she saw a group of people coming toward her, and among them a face she knew. Kurosawa Asaki, as ever, wore his suit with crisp elegance and looked full of energy. Their eyes met. Surprise and awkwardness flickered between them. Because of the misunderstanding that had driven them apart, they had not seen each other for two months. Now that chance had brought them face to face again, all the old grievances stayed unspoken. Their eyes met, and they said at the same time, "How have you been?" The words sounded distant. Their smiles didn't quite land. Then someone from Kurosawa Asaki's group came a little closer and asked softly, "Asaki, is this your friend?" Mio followed the voice and, the instant she saw the speaker, felt every hair on her body rise. It was the girl from the dream: Amamiya Aoi.

Less than twenty-four hours remained. Kurosawa Asaki frowned slightly as he listened to Miyazaki Mio. He knew about her strange ability to dream of deaths before they happened. Once, when they had been close, he had been the only person in the world who knew her terrible secret. In the past they had even worked together, saving people from disasters she had foreseen. Time after time they had succeeded. But fate had its jokes. They had separated, body and heart alike. The one Mio loved now was no longer him. If they could not retreat to friendship, then they were fated to become the most familiar of strangers. Even they seemed unable to define what they were to one another now. But the situation before them felt eerily like old times. Mio carefully explained her vision. As far as Kurosawa knew, Aoi was a young woman living alone in Kobe, from elsewhere, and he knew almost nothing more about her. "Then let's do as we always did," he said. "If we can make certain that at six thirty-seven tomorrow she is somewhere absolutely safe, she should escape disaster." It sounded simple. Cases like that were what he and Mio once handled all the time. He smiled and snapped his fingers gently in front of her face, as if to pull her out of her daze. Mio only shrugged. "I hope so," she said. "But you have to be careful."

Because he had won an antique Ming vase at the banquet, and because Amamiya Aoi had shown unusual fondness for it, Kurosawa Asaki invited her to his apartment to see it. Where could be safer than a high courtyard wall and a locked iron gate? There was no danger there, no strangers, only Kurosawa Asaki and Amamiya Aoi in a stillness so spotless it seemed impossible for violence to enter. Aoi was delighted. She circled the vase again and again, leaned close to stroke it, even looked as though she wanted to gather it into her arms. Her eyes shone like peach blossoms, her cheeks pink, her smile radiant. Time slipped quietly by. The wall clock struck seven. Six thirty-seven had long since passed. Still slightly dazed, Aoi shifted the coffee cup on the table and pushed it toward Kurosawa. "Drink. It'll get cold," she said, stars alive in her eyes. Watching the coffee ripple, Kurosawa suddenly remembered the old afternoons in the detective agency, when Miyazaki Mio used to make him thick, fragrant coffee. He had grown used to it, and because he had grown used to it, he assumed it would always be there. Only after losing it did he understand how much it hurt. Then his face warmed. Soft, warm lips had pecked his cheek. He stiffened in shock and looked up to see Amamiya Aoi lowering her head with shy delight. "I like you," she said. "I've liked you since the first day I met you." The lights had just come on. Only the gramophone was still singing, and the whole world seemed narrowed to the two of them, he looking at her, she looking at him, all words gone into silence.

Kurosawa Asaki called Miyazaki Mio and told her everything had gone smoothly, that Aoi was safe. Mio let out a small breath, took a sip of tea, and picked up the newspaper beside her. The instant the huge headline on the front page came into focus, her hand went slack, spilling tea and cup alike into her lap. She didn't even notice. Clutching the paper, still in her nightclothes, hair loose, face bare and pale, sweat cold on her forehead, she ran out the door and all the way to Kurosawa Asaki's gate. He was just coming out of the house. They nearly collided. "Look at this," Mio stammered. He saw the panic in her face, took the paper, and felt a bad premonition immediately. But at that very moment a rickshaw pulled up outside, and out stepped Amamiya Aoi. She and Kurosawa had arranged to have tea together, and because she thought there was still time, she had come early to wait for him. Kurosawa greeted her awkwardly, then looked back down at the paper. His face changed just as sharply as Mio's had. Aoi, not understanding, leaned over and read the headline aloud: Jewelry shop robbery in Fengyue district leaves innocent customer dead. Gunshot to forehead. Time of incident: around six-thirty last night. The paper even included a photograph from the scene. There, with a bullet hole in the center of the brow, was the dead victim. Aoi stared, then said in horror, "Yesterday evening I had meant to go to Fengyue and talk to the old goldsmith about repairing some family jewelry. If you hadn't called me away, Asaki, I'd have walked straight into that bullet. How dangerous... That means you saved my life." She even tried to smile playfully. But Kurosawa Asaki could not smile at all. He looked only at Miyazaki Mio standing in the morning fog, thin and shaking, red-rimmed eyes huge in her pale face, too grief-stricken even to cry. Around her, she thought she could see butterflies gathering, from two or three to a whole skyful, blotting out the day until the heavens looked ready to collapse.

Then a crack of thunder split the clear sky. The butterflies, the passersby, the houses, the streets, all vanished. The scene changed in an instant. Miyazaki Mio found herself back in the dressing room behind the banquet hall. The people from the troupe were still gathered around her, saying things like, "Why did you faint out of nowhere?" and "Has someone fetched a doctor?" She drew in a sharp breath and opened her eyes fully. Only then did she understand. The "awakening" she had thought she'd experienced before had never been real. She had still been inside the dream. Everything after that, all of it, had only happened in the dream and had not yet taken place.

Now the cause of Aoi's death was clear. At the time of the robbery she would go to the gold shop and be shot by the bandit. But even if someone prevented her from going, the robbery would still happen and another person would die in her place. That bullet to the forehead would still be fired. So the only real way to remove the danger was not merely to save Amamiya Aoi, but to stop the robbery itself. Kurosawa Asaki came to the same conclusion. Then Miyazaki Mio remembered the newspaper photograph from the dream and felt alternately frozen to the point of cracking and hot enough to burst apart. Kurosawa noticed at once. "Is there something else you haven't told me?" he asked. Mio nodded hard. "I saw the picture of the other dead victim too," she said. "It's someone both of us know."

Kanzaki Kageomi had no idea his body had become a vessel. Somewhere inside him, in some unreachable corner, another soul was living there too: the soul of the man Miyazaki Mio loved, Todo Teisei, who had died in an accident. By some freak bend of fate, Todo Teisei's spirit had hidden itself inside Kanzaki Kageomi's body, trapped there like a prisoner. Kanzaki himself knew nothing of it. Only Miyazaki Mio and Kurosawa Asaki knew that secret. Kanzaki's life had changed because of it. Miyazaki Mio had once lost all trace of him, and when she found him again it was only to learn he was about to walk into danger. If Kanzaki died, Todo Teisei's soul would vanish with him. He was her last hope of seeing Todo return. He had to live if Miyazaki Mio was to go on living herself. From the jeweler she learned that Kanzaki had brought in an ancestral ring for repair. The receipt stated it would be ready on the evening of the fourth. From the shop assistant she also obtained his address. However embarrassed and uneasy she felt, she forced herself to go. Kanzaki Kageomi had not expected to open the door and find Miyazaki Mio there. He had always felt that her words and actions were strangely deep, beyond any common logic, not knowing that every time she looked at him she was seeing through him to the soul of the man she loved. "Why are you here?" he asked. Mio answered directly. "Please don't go to Fengyue Gold tomorrow." Of course she couldn't simply explain that she had foreseen the future, so she could only say, "You'll be in danger. You may even die. You can't go." That only made Kanzaki colder. "You and I owe each other nothing," he said. "Why are you finding excuses to come near me? You're a very strange person. What next, you'll tell me you can pinch your fingers together and calculate that someone is going to point a gun at my head?" But that was exactly what would happen. Mio stamped her foot in frustration, unable to say what she meant. Kanzaki dismissed her with a curt "Please leave," and the words felt to her like being shoved off a cliff. She left him dazed and broken. At his front gate she found Kurosawa Asaki waiting. "You went to see him?" he asked. She nodded, choking on tears. "He wouldn't believe me." Kurosawa's heart hurt at the sight. Once, long ago, they had loved one another. That was the past, a past they could never return to. And now here she was crying over another man, and all he could offer was steadiness and comfort. He patted her shoulder lightly and said, "You know I understand how important he is to you. Even if one life has to pay for another, I'll make sure he lives." Miyazaki Mio could only look at him in gratitude and then away again. She saw in Kurosawa's black eyes a love too deep to measure, and knew she could never answer it. Though Miyazaki Mio had not seen the robber's true face in the dream, she knew he would wear a Peking-opera mask, which at least made him easy to recognize. Kurosawa said he would wait inside the gold shop. The moment the bandit appeared, he'd move first and the man wouldn't even have time to draw his gun. He was quick, he said, and used to dangerous situations. He spoke without boasting, and Miyazaki Mio believed him. But believing him didn't mean she could really stay away. She went to the shop too.

Kurosawa Asaki's plan was simple. While he waited in the jewelry shop for the masked robber to appear, Miyazaki Mio would stay with Amamiya Aoi. But in the real world, plans are forever leaving out the streets that cross unexpectedly. Aoi never made it to the French restaurant where Mio, pretending to be Kurosawa, had lured her. On the way there she happened to pass Fengyue Gold, looked through the window, and instantly lit up when she saw Kurosawa. Mio's careful plan had missed that single possibility. There stood Aoi in front of the shop, smiling, not noticing the armed robber right beside her. "What are you all doing?" she asked brightly. "Why is everyone crouching down?" Everyone inside the shop stopped breathing. The eyes behind the mask had already turned toward her. Kurosawa was too far away to reach her in time, but Miyazaki Mio was close. She lunged, shoved Aoi aside, and shouted for her to run. In that one brief shift of bodies, the masked robber missed Aoi and had to settle for Mio. He locked an arm around her neck and pressed the gun to her temple, roaring that if anyone moved, he would shoot her at once. The owner collapsed weak-kneed. Aoi crumpled into a corner, too terrified to breathe. Of everyone there, Kurosawa Asaki was the most horrified. If Miyazaki Mio was hurt because of him, how could the rest of his life ever know sunlight again?

Then, at the most critical instant, the robber suddenly shuddered, dropped to one knee, and let Miyazaki Mio go. His gun fell to the floor. Later, at the hospital where she accompanied Kanzaki Kageomi to have the small scrape on his arm dressed, Miyazaki Mio looked at him with bright laughter in her eyes and said, "Nobody goes to a jewelry shop carrying a knife unless they half believe someone's warning." Kanzaki was embarrassed, but she wouldn't let him off. "You did believe me a little. That's why you brought the knife for protection, isn't it?" He glanced at her, sighed, and said slowly, "I don't know why. Everything you said sounded absurd, but I couldn't truly ignore it. So I deliberately went to the gold shop at the exact time you named. I wanted to see whether what you, this little fortune-teller, had predicted would really come true." He paused, then added, "But why did you know there would be a robbery? Can you really tell the future?" Miyazaki Mio's eyes filled at once, because she knew the answer. It was Todo Teisei, hidden inside him, who had made him unable to forget her words. Todo's presence was growing. Even the way Kanzaki walked and spoke had begun to resemble him. Perhaps one day he would remember everything. Perhaps one day he would remember her. If that day came, Todo Teisei would truly be reborn, and she would at last see the clouds break. She would never lose him again. Tears trembled on her lashes. Kanzaki looked baffled and muttered, "Why were you smiling just now and suddenly you're crying? You haven't changed at all. You're still impossible to understand with ordinary logic." Mio laughed through her tears. "And you haven't changed either. You still misuse idioms." He answered quickly, "My dictionary of idioms got lost." The day was soft and warm. Even the scent of the roadside grass seemed unusually lush.

That same afternoon Miyazaki Mio was reading the paper with great satisfaction when the telephone rang. Kurosawa Asaki's voice came through, anxious. "You really smeared the robber's hand with Mingkui cream?" "Of course," she said, lifting an eyebrow. The paper she held carried a full report of the Fengyue robbery. Before that, Mio had gone to the press herself and told one reporter that while she had been held hostage she had managed to smear the criminal's left hand with Mingkui cream, a medicine a friend in medical research had once given her. It looked like ordinary cold cream, but once skin treated with it was exposed to sunlight, it flared red as if burned. That would let the police trace the fleeing robber and recover the stolen jewelry. She had also made sure to mention that the cream could only be removed with a special diluting agent and that she kept that agent in her own apartment. Her intention was obvious. She was setting a trap and inviting the bandit to walk into it. Kurosawa Asaki couldn't understand why she insisted on dragging herself so deeply into the case. Mio answered that the butterflies still wouldn't leave her dreams. Her instincts told her the matter wasn't truly finished. Kurosawa understood then that the case touched Kanzaki Kageomi, and therefore Todo Teisei, and unless she could be one hundred percent certain the danger had passed, she would never stop. "You really mean to watch the killer be caught?" he asked. "Yes," she said. "Unless he can live with the pain of every ray of sunlight feeling like fire on his skin, he'll come for me. And the police want him too. They've posted men in disguise all around the street. Don't worry. I'll be all right." Her voice was utterly steady.

On the evening of October sixth, with wind in the air and the city steeped in a gray sadness, Miyazaki Mio kept a pistol at her side and watched through the window as plainclothes officers disguised as peddlers and passersby drifted through the street. Her heart beat like a drum. Then the bell at the iron gate began to ring. She jumped from the sofa at once, only to find Kanzaki Kageomi's anxious face beyond the bars. "What are you doing here?" she cried. He brandished that day's newspaper and struck the gate. "I saw it. I know what you're trying to do. Have you lost all interest in staying alive?" Oddly enough, his panic warmed her. "You're worried about me?" He hesitated, then stammered, "Maybe I shouldn't still hold your past nonsense against you. But... I do think of you as a friend. And..." He faltered, then forced the words out. "And I always worry about you too much. In a way that feels excessive. Strange. I don't know why." For one instant Miyazaki Mio thought she saw Todo Teisei's smile overlay his face. Her eyes reddened and she lowered them quickly. But Kanzaki went on, "Let me in. I'll hide in your house and act as your bodyguard." Mio was too stunned to answer. "No. I can't let you risk yourself with me." Before she finished, Kanzaki had already pushed past her and gone inside. There was no longer any way to drive him out. She stood watching him as he settled on the sofa, poured himself tea, and sipped it as though he'd come for an ordinary visit. She sat down beside him and suddenly found herself unable to say a word. What she did not know was that Kurosawa Asaki had come too, only a little later, and had reached the corner opposite her apartment just in time to see Kanzaki enter and the gate close behind him. Standing outside, separated by one wall and one door, Kurosawa felt as though his eyes could pass through solid stone and see the woman he loved leaning gently against another man's shoulder while that man whispered that she need not fear because he was there. It had once been the role he himself longed to play. Now he had no chance left. All he could do was drift outside like the most humble of guardians, the way dew guards a begonia still sleeping in spring. Even if he evaporated, even if he fell into dust, even if her eyes never once met his, he would have no regret. Only the autumn wind shivered through the pain he hid.

The masked man appeared late that night. There was only one dim lamp in the sitting room. Exhausted, Miyazaki Mio had fallen asleep on the sofa, old scenes crossing and tangling in her mind like a fever dream. In sleep she caught hold of a warm hand and murmured, "Tingsheng..." When she opened her eyes, she found only Kanzaki Kageomi's startled expression and withdrew her hand in embarrassment, though not without reluctance. They were both still wondering how to begin speaking again when the masked intruder appeared. Mio whipped out her gun and fired, but she was not skilled with it, and the bullet went wide. The shot was enough to alert the police waiting outside and send half of Kurosawa Asaki's soul flying from his body. The plan itself succeeded. No one had yet been hurt. The mask-wearing robber found a gun at his temple and did not dare move. Miyazaki Mio's panicked heart finally began to steady. Furious, Kanzaki ripped off the opera mask. The face underneath was unfamiliar and yet vaguely recognizable. The black night held them in its weak light. They thought the matter was over. The officers were already taking out handcuffs when, from behind them, a voice colder than a ghost said, "If you don't let him go, I'll shoot."

Miyazaki Mio turned and saw Amamiya Aoi. She had a pistol pointed straight at Kurosawa Asaki. Everything had happened too fast. Mio hadn't even noticed that Kurosawa himself had slipped among the plainclothes officers. None of them knew when Aoi had appeared. In truth she had been waiting nearby all along. The moment the robber was caught, she took her chance and seized Kurosawa before anyone could react. "Aoi, what are you doing?" Kurosawa asked, still calm. Aoi glared at Miyazaki Mio and said proudly, "Let him go. One life for one life." Until that moment Mio had not understood at all. In the original version of events, Aoi had not simply been an innocent bystander. She had been on her way into Fengyue Gold at the very moment the robbery began. The masked robber was her older brother, Tao Qingwei. Even with the mask on, she recognized him from the birthmark on his hand and the sound of his voice. Seeing the police gather outside, she pretended to be one more hostage, hoping to help him escape. But in the chaos he panicked, and the bullet meant to frighten the room tore through his own sister instead. If Kurosawa Asaki had merely led her away, the robbery would still have happened. Under the same pressure, Tao Qingwei would have seized another hostage. In that version, Kanzaki Kageomi died in Aoi's place. Only by intervening directly in the robbery had Miyazaki Mio and Kurosawa truly changed fate. Tao Qingwei knew it was a trap, but the torment of the cream burning in sunlight left him desperate enough to come anyway. Aoi, terrified her reckless brother would still throw himself into danger, had watched from the shadows like a yellow bird watching a mantis. Kurosawa had never guarded against her. He had only been surprised to see her until the gun pressed against his temple. Then he understood too late how careless he had been.

Miyazaki Mio let her own gun fall. Tao Qingwei climbed to his feet with a triumphant sneer and strode toward Aoi. Under her threat, Kurosawa Asaki had already been forced to open the car and hand over the keys. The street lay silent as a battlefield after smoke clears. Then, just as Tao Qingwei bent to get into the car, two shots rang out. One of the officers, desperate to seize credit, had fired at him without regard for the hostage. Miyazaki Mio and Kanzaki Kageomi both went white. Seeing her brother fall, Aoi began to tremble all over. Her finger on the trigger no longer knew whether to grip or release. She knew perfectly well that she could only use Kurosawa as a bargaining chip; she would never truly hurt him. Blood cried inside her. She called for her brother and looked around at the police with wild terror. Kurosawa tried to calm her, tried to take the gun, but at that instant her finger slipped. The bullet flew straight for Miyazaki Mio. It happened so quickly, like lightning, like a falling star. Mio seemed too shocked even to move. But the bullet stopped in the air before it reached her, hanging there like a suspended tear before dropping harmlessly to the ground. No one present understood what they had just seen. It was the most magnificent miracle any of them would ever witness. Miyazaki Mio was unharmed. Then someone beside her dropped to his knees. Kanzaki Kageomi was white as paper, cold sweat streaming down his forehead, his face drained of blood. He looked up at Mio with pure relief and said, "You're all right." She fell beside him at once and caught his shoulders, but there was no wound on him, no blood, only a terrible emptiness, as if something inside him had been scooped away. "What happened to you?" she cried. He said weakly, "I was terrified. I kept begging for the bullet to stop, not to go through you. I was only imagining a miracle. But it feels as though it took all my strength." At once Miyazaki Mio remembered how, when Todo Teisei had once lain unconscious, his attachment to her had been so strong that his spirit had stepped free of his body to protect her. Was this new miracle another act of Todo's will? A stronger, stranger one than before? Did it mean he was moving closer to awakening in full?

The night, thick with blood and terror, seemed briefly to hold its breath. Then came the third shot. Tao Qingwei cried out, "Sister!" and Amamiya Aoi, with unbearable pain already in her face, gave a faint, exhausted smile and looked at Kurosawa Asaki. "I'm sorry," she said. Then she used her own body as a shield and took the fatal bullet meant for the man she loved. From beginning to end she had been the most innocent victim there. She closed her eyes sadly and collapsed into Kurosawa Asaki's arms. Silent tears spilled down his face. Their connection had not run deep. She had left only one light kiss on his cheek. She had only once said, I like you. She had loved him like a quiet angel, waiting beside him, content with whatever crumbs of notice he gave. She knew there was someone else in his heart and never asked about it. As long as she could see him, talk with him, sit with him, walk beside him, she treated it as a kind of private blessing. It was the same posture of love with which he loved Miyazaki Mio. All of them adrift under the same sky, separated by impossible distances of the heart.

Miyazaki Mio had lost count of how many times she went to the graveyard afterward. Aoi and Tao Qingwei were buried together. Butterflies circled their shared tombstone. Butterflies frightened her now. To the very end she never understood what connection, if any, existed between the butterflies and Amamiya Aoi. Perhaps there had never been one. Perhaps it had all been only coincidence, mere stage scenery. She no longer wished to think about it. When she left the grave one day, Kurosawa Asaki arrived by another path, and a screen of dense branches kept them from seeing one another. They passed by without meeting. Kanzaki Kageomi still slept. His body showed no abnormality at all and remained perfectly healthy, yet he would not wake. Perhaps, as he himself had once said, he was simply too tired and needed a long, ruthless rest. In the midst of a city brilliant with flowers and neon, Miyazaki Mio suddenly felt her heart racing. For a moment she thought she saw Kanzaki open his eyes. She thought she heard him call her name. And then, in that vision, she asked him, "Who are you?" He looked at her in astonishment and said, "You've forgotten even me?" The one who would wake next, when he finally woke, who would he be? Kanzaki Kageomi? Or the Todo Teisei Miyazaki Mio had waited for all this time, taking back the body that had so long belonged to another?