It was a little past three in the afternoon when I got back to my room. Around the pit of my stomach there was a puddle of water with no temperature. I didn't write anything. Even if I wrote it, it would disappear. My body remembered that. I laid out tonight only inside my head. No matter how many times I rearranged it, the order was the same.
It was past nine at night. I opened the desk drawer. The omamori charm pouch was exactly where it had been since the end of November. I set it on my palm, paper bag and all. I put on my coat and slipped it into the right inside pocket. The same place as on the morning I'd left the house.
Putting on my shoes in the entryway, I checked the cloth-bound book down the hall from the edge of my vision. I didn't reach out a finger. Tonight, its turn to be touched had not yet come.
I got off at the station. Past the foot of the slope, several of the streetlights were out. The hydrangeas over the wall had dried even inside their brown edges. Where there were no streetlights, I couldn't make out the thin shadows of the winter-bare branches.
—This was where she'd said, "The blue is lovely, isn't it."
Once I had remembered, I shook my head once. Tonight was not a night for remembering.
Before the torii gate, from the same angle as on the night of the summer festival, I bowed, deeper than the first time. The gravel approach was the color of night. There was no moon. Only the coldness of the moss on the rim of the water basin was the same as the first time. The grounds opened out in the color of dark gravel, with no lights and no people. Only the thin, dry sounds of a winter night went on beyond the edges of the approach.
I stood before the worship hall. I put nothing in the offering box. I didn't reach for the bell rope either. The legend said nothing about the proper form. Only that one passage, on the paper, spoke in a dry voice.
—To take back the one you love from fate, there is no way but to erase their image from two hearts.
I set it down once, in my heart. I lowered both knees slowly onto the gravel. I didn't touch my forehead to the ground. Tonight I was the one making the offering. An angle short of a full bow left me the outline of what I was holding out. With both hands I took the omamori from my inside pocket. I tightened my grip on it in front of my chest. The corner of the cloth pressed against the pad of my finger. I traced the embroidered characters with the pad of my thumb. The raised stitching no longer pushed back against it. It only felt as though I had traced them. My breath came out white, and the white thinned as soon as it did. Wind came down from beyond the torii gate. It came in at the back of my neck and didn't stop inside my back. Wet snow had begun to fall, heavily. One flake landed on my sleeve and melted at once.
I closed my eyes. One by one, they rose behind my eyelids.
The side of a finger touching the spine of a book on the second shelf from the top, in the folklore studies section—the slight warmth just beside the cold. The night of the summer festival, on the slope down to the foot of the hill, a palm that came to meet mine from half a step behind—the faint dampness at the base of fingers that touched without lacing deeply.
I didn't add any more. If I added more, I would begrudge offering them. I stopped at two.
Inside, I steadied my breath. Before the words left my mouth, there was probably more time than a single breath.
—I cast this away.
—I will erase the one I love.
—So please, send me back.
The cold in my knees on the gravel suddenly grew distant.
Something drained from the bottom of the pit of my stomach in a thin line, out toward the night air. Even as it drained, there was a sense that it hadn't drained out completely. Partway along the line, something had not broken off, and stayed down at the bottom as a small lump. What remained was heavier than what had left. Below my left collarbone, a single point of heat, no bigger than the tip of a needle, remained. If I pressed it with a finger it would surely go away, I thought, and I didn't move my finger. The omamori held in my two hands was still there, still cloth.
—If I save her, I'll know.
The legend said nothing about how to tell whether the offering had been made in full.
The edges of my vision lurched and tilted. A ringing in my ears. Behind my eyelids, the white light grew stronger. The cold of the gravel receded from my knees.
—Back. To that morning.
—I will rescue the one I love.