Three days pass before she speaks to you again.

You maintain your position on the shrine steps each morning, arriving before dawn to sweep the approach with a borrowed broom. The merchants have begun to nod at you. The fishmonger's wife leaves day-old rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves beside your bowl. You eat them slowly, savoring the sourness of fermentation, feeling the grains stick between your teeth.

On the third morning, Lady Akane pauses after her prayers.

"Brother Myōan." She uses your assumed name carefully, having learned it from another. "May I ask you something?"

You show the flat of your palm, a gesture of welcome.

"Do you believe the gods punish us for the sins of others?"

You set down your prayer beads with deliberate grace, counting three breaths before answering.

"I believe we often punish ourselves more harshly than any god would wish."

Her mouth purses up. She leaves that day without another word.

The carefully planned market encounter comes two days later. You kneel beside the pickle vendor's stall, bowl extended, when her shadow falls across yours. She carries a basket with three daikon radishes and a small paper packet that smells of katsuobushi.

"Please." She drops the packet into your bowl.

"Your generosity honors me, Lady--"

"Keiko." The lie comes quickly. Something prepared. "Just Keiko."

You hold the name a few seconds in your mind. How foolish it would be now to let slip her real name and ruin all your work. Greater schemes than this have been foiled by such carelessness.

"Lady Keiko."

She hesitates, clutching her basket. Around you, the market churns with morning commerce. Vendors hawk their wares. Housewives argue over the price of fish. A dog fights with a murder of crows over some rotting entrails.

"I shouldn't burden you," she says.

"A burden shared weighs half as much."

"Pretty words." As before, she speaks too quickly and then is shamed by the lapse of composure. "My grandmother used to say that. Before she discovered some burdens only grow heavier with sharing."

You rise slowly. "Perhaps she never found the right person to share them with."

She fixes her gaze on your crossed shadows, her hands tightening briefly around the basket. Then she offers a curt, stiff bow. "Good day, Brother Myōan."

Rain the next day drives everyone indoors except you and the cats that shelter beneath the shrine's eaves. You sit in zazen, listening to the water stream down into the river. The cold seeps through to your bones.

She appears like a ghost through the downpour, hair plastered to her skull, kimono dark with water. No umbrella. She stumbles up the steps and collapses beside you, rubbing the rain from her soaked shoulders.

You hold your breath. Waiting.

"He sold my grandmother's kanzashi." The words tear from her throat. "The silver ones with the cranes. They were... I have nothing to remember her now."

Still you say nothing.

[Cont.]