Choice

Haruka had no memory of his father.

He was a ghost, a name without a face, a surname he didn’t even know. A complete blank slate. Long before Haruka was born, the man had abandoned his pregnant mother to go and enjoy a life of luxury in the Fujiwara household, leaving them with nothing.

His mother had kept nothing of his, not a photograph, not a letter. She never even spoke his name.

Once, when he was younger, consumed by a desperate, childish curiosity, Haruka had timidly asked his mother who his father was.

Yukishiro Tomoe had simply looked at him with her tired, cloudy eyes and said, her voice cold and final, “Your father is dead.”

Even then, the precocious Haruka sensed there was more to the story, a universe of pain hidden behind those words. He silently buried the question in his heart and never spoke of his father again.

He had never known a father’s love. Even a mother’s love was a rare and precious commodity, rationed out in fleeting moments. Tomoe’s feelings for him were a tumultuous sea of contradictions. She was quick to anger, her words and hands often sharp. But then, in rare, quiet moments, she would show him a tenderness so profound, so heartbreaking, it was almost more painful than the cruelty.

Haruka came to understand. It wasn’t that his mother didn’t want to love him; it was that she couldn’t. This man had wronged her so deeply that Haruka himself, the living proof of that wrong, was a constant, painful reminder.

And what was he to others?

The neighbors pointed and whispered behind their backs, their gossip a constant, buzzing swarm. That woman’s child… no father… If another child ever dared to play with Haruka, their parents would immediately drag them away as if he were contagious.

Some said his father was a murderer. Others said his mother had gotten pregnant by some nameless man. There was even a rumor that it was incest with her brother, who had died long ago.

Tomoe never refuted their gossip. She could have cleared the air with a single sentence, but she remained silent, her face a mask of numb resignation.

But Haruka’s heart had not yet been filled with numbness. To his mother, he was an accident. To others, he was a bastard. To children his own age, he was a plague.

In their dilapidated rented room, Haruka would often sit on the rickety windowsill, holding a broken piece of mirror, its sharp edge cool against his skin. One moment, he would contemplate jumping; the next, he would think of dragging the edge across his wrist.

To be, or not to be. It was a question that haunted his waking hours. If anyone could have peered into his heart, they would have seen the constant, agonizing struggle between life and death.

But then he would look at his mother’s numb, defeated face, and a strange, fierce courage would bloom in his chest. He had to protect her. He had to cherish this one, fragile, broken connection he had in the world.

Haruka would turn the mirror on himself and practice smiling. He had to learn to smile first, to build a mask so that others couldn’t see his thoughts. Then, he would learn to read their expressions, to survive.

……

“My father?” Haruka’s practiced smile returned, as flawless as if he were looking in that same broken mirror. “What does this have to do with my father? Don’t tell me that ‘monster’ is my father’s ghost?”

The miko ignored his sarcasm. “Yukishiro Haruka,” she asked, her voice a dry rasp, “do you truly wish to stay in this house?”

Haruka slowly sat back down. “What difference does it make what I wish?”

The miko’s cloudy white eyes stared at him intently. “I can take you away from here.”

“To where?”

“To the Ise Grand Shrine. A place of peace.”

“You can take me away from the Fujiwara family?” Haruka was deeply skeptical. An old woman against this empire?

“We can leave right now,” the miko said, her voice unwavering.

“Now?” Haruka almost laughed. “And what about the Old Mistress? Your patient?”

“Her fate is no longer our concern.”

“They brought you here to ‘cure’ her.”

“I know. But I am more interested in saving you.”

Haruka’s voice turned cold. “You can’t cure her, can you?”

“Is that important?” the miko countered. “What is important is that you must come with me. It is your only path.”

“Why?” Haruka looked at the miko as if she were a common swindler. It was obvious. She couldn’t cure the Old Mistress, and now she was trying to convince him to run away with her, to cover her failure.

“You are special. The gods have their eyes on you. And only by embracing your fate can you hope to change it,” the old miko chanted, her voice taking on a mystical, prophetic tone like a gypsy fortune-teller.

“I don’t believe in gods.”

“You will learn. There will be plenty of time for that at the shrine.”

Haruka picked up his teacup with a decisive gesture and drained the bitter liquid in one gulp. “I would rather learn to appreciate tea.”

The miko’s expression was calm, as if she had expected this. “So your choice is made.”

“Of course I’m staying,” Haruka said, his tone implying the question was ridiculous. “But Miko-sama, may I ask you a bold question?”

“Speak.”

“Can you really ‘cure’ people?” Haruka asked, his voice deceptively innocent.

“I cannot cure the body. I can only cleanse spiritual filth.”

“Could you demonstrate for me? So that when I hold the sword for you, I will know what to expect.”

“And how would I demonstrate that?”

Haruka stared at the miko. “Then cleanse some ‘filth’ for me to see.”

“The world is not so full of vengeful spirits and demons, child.”

“So the ‘monster’ in the Old Mistress is just a rare anomaly?”

The miko nodded.

“Then what other powers do you possess? How can you prove you are what you say you are?”

The miko smiled, a flicker of annoyance in her cloudy eyes. “A child’s question. I do not need to prove myself.”

Haruka stood up, now absolutely certain she was nothing more than a fraud, a parasite feeding on the fears of the wealthy.

But just as he was about to dismiss her entirely, the miko spoke again, her voice low and compelling. “You want me to prove myself, like asking a monkey to prove it can climb, or a fish to prove it can swim… Very well. I will satisfy your childish curiosity. I will tell you your destiny. But do you dare to hear it?”

“Tell me,” Haruka said, unfazed. He believed she was now reduced to mere empty words, the last resort of a cornered charlatan.

The miko stared at his face, her fish-like eyes unblinking, seeming to look past his skin, past his bones, into the very core of his soul.

“Yukishiro Haruka,” she said, her voice a low chant, filling the quiet room. “I see it… You will obtain everything others can only dream of—wealth, power, beauty… yet you will never have what your heart truly desires.”

“Countless women will fall in love with you, a moth to your tragic flame. But you will be unable to give a single one of them a happy ending.”

Her words were less a prophecy and more a curse, each one a poisoned dart. “And most importantly, you will kill your own father with your own hands… and you will fall in love with your own mother.”

The miko let out a full, triumphant, rattling laugh. Her blackened yellow teeth, her milky white eyes, her sinister smile—none of it frightened Haruka. Instead, it ignited a pure, hot rage within him, a rage he hadn’t felt since his mother’s death.

A bunch of nonsense! he thought, his hands clenching into fists. She’s insane.

He suppressed his anger, concluding that the old woman was simply mad. A fraud and a madwoman.

But as the certainty settled, so did a cold, creeping dread. If this fraud failed to “cure” the Old Mistress… what would become of him?