We did the only thing we could agree to do. I would not marry Ansei with the obligations of a traditional wife, but we contracted a union with vows I believed I could honestly keep, Ansei taking my name. I had been so long the subject of so much strategizing; I wished not to be acted upon, but to act myself. And so I negotiated my own terms. What I asked was trifling, really, and Ansei accepted all with characteristic patience.

* * *

The inn’s mistress approached hesitantly, the silk obi trembling in her hands.

“I can manage my own kitsuke without help,” I said, excusing her to leave. “You needn’t endanger your life for a frivolity.”

She left me, rather hastily, to finish dressing by myself.

I could handle a simple knot of the obi without help, tying it first in front, and then slipping the knot around behind. I wanted to look well for Ansei, but I knew a gorgeous kitsuke was unnecessary adornment. He didn’t care so much to have a splendid bride. We agreed that our marriage rite would be spare, simple, but—Ansei insisted—legal.

I thought legality a strange insistence, considering our sedition, but Ansei believed time and justice would ratify his treason. I didn’t know, but I had hoped for audacious things before, and I had not stopped hoping.

When I finished dressing, I stepped outside where Ansei waited.

We would have only the inn’s master, himself a professed revolutionary, for a witness, rather than implicate anyone new to our treason. An Otopponese priest performed the breif rite. And thus, we were united in a ceremony we did not quite understand, making vows not quite matrimonial.

The owners of the inn were sympathizers, and invited us to remain at the inn as we liked, but I had agreed to be with Ansei on the understanding that he would develop an anti-venom. I wouldn’t go near him without it. Staying at the inn was choosing impasse.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

* * *

“Do you remember the night we first talked under the eaves?” I asked Ansei that evening, before we departed from the inn.

Ansei inclined toward me at the kotatsu, his mouth pulling into a shy smile.

“You nearly knocked me off the veranda; I was so surprised to find you there watching me.”

“That seems fair, considering how much the roles were reversed.”

“I can’t argue.”

“You talked about my parents’ love story.”

“Ahh,” he sighed. “The records.”

“How far is the journey?”

His brow creased. “A fair distance. The region is mountainous. And dangerous.”

I paused, waiting to see if he would offer.

“You want to go.”

I averted my eyes because I knew he would not like the idea, and I couldn’t deny my opposite wish.

“I don’t think it best to risk our lives for the records now. And the journey would only delay my resuming work on the anti-venom.”

I nodded agreement with this. The antidote to my poison was all-important.

* * *

Ansei had leased a house outside of Western Capital, connected to an adjacent apothecary.

The house was nothing—a small, spare cottage with very little space. But the garden, even in its wild, overgrown state, was paradise. Ansei and I spent happy hours working there together. As long as we worked, we preserved a smooth veneer of contentment, but it was a shallow peace. Any relaxation—any rest at all—brought us continually into conflict.

Argument with Ansei was dangerous, because it aroused my passion. I would not let him anger me into love making, so I began to avoid him.

Ansei remained patient, even hopeful. He often returned from bathing at the spring alone, chest gleaming, subtle fragrance of sandalwood oil wafting about him, and looking every inch the immortal I had always believed him to be—but he wasn’t.

Eventually, however, I saw little of him. He threw himself to work in the apothecary, working through much of the night and then curling up in a corner of the shop on a thin futon mat.

He gave me the only bedroom in the tiny house, a simple room with a tatami floor and shoji doors. Several cabinets lined one wall. One was sufficient to store everything I had to my name, but he offered me all, except one.

“This one is my private cupboard,” he had said, gesturing to a small cabinet. “I would keep it private, but it has no key, and I would rather trust you than lock it up.”

“I have few possessions. I see no reason to invade your private storage.”

I said this, and meant it, but the promise was rash.