The Burial

A silent, venomous rage surged in Haruka’s heart. That scum who abandoned his wife and child, he thought, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, is he even worthy of being buried next to my mother?

He was about to refuse, the word “no” a hot coal in his throat. But the word caught, snagged on a memory—the look on his mother’s face in her final, lucid moments. The weariness, the pain, but underneath it all, a stubborn, flickering ember of something he had never understood. Even at the very end, he thought with a sense of weary, soul-crushing resignation, she probably still loved him.

“Where do you want to bury her?” Lady Murasaki asked, her voice a soft, patient murmur.

Haruka stared at his father’s gravestone for a long, silent moment. In life, you did everything you could to cast my mother aside, he thought bitterly. Forcing you to spend eternity with her after death… that could be considered a punishment of its own. It was a cruel, twisted thought, a Fujiwara thought.

And so, he said, his voice flat, “I want her to be buried next to my father.”

“Very well,” Lady Murasaki replied, her tone perfectly even, betraying nothing. “I will grant your wish.”

A strange feeling, like a cold draft on a summer day, crept over him. He suddenly remembered that Lady Murasaki and Yukishiro Tomoe had been bitter rivals. “Is that… really okay?” he asked, the question laced with a suspicion he couldn’t quite name.

Lady Murasaki smiled, a slow, radiant unfolding of her lips. “Of course it’s not okay. But for your sake, I can allow them to be buried together.”

Haruka couldn’t bring himself to look at her smile. Tomoe had been beautiful, too, but he had never felt this kind of shy, dizzying confusion in her presence. Is she really my biological mother? he thought, stealing a glance at her perfect profile. She was too beautiful, too powerful, too much like a goddess to be a mother.

Lady Murasaki beckoned a bodyguard and told him to have the undertakers proceed with the burial.

Haruka stared at the empty pit beside his father’s grave, his thoughts drifting. “After my mother is buried here,” he murmured, the words escaping him before he could stop them, “where will I be buried when I die?”

“So young, and already thinking about life and death?” Lady Murasaki wrapped her arms around him from behind, her hands stroking his head with a practiced, possessive gentleness.

Haruka didn’t speak. This was not the first time he had thought about death. He felt a warm, intoxicating embrace surrounding him, a hot current of air brushing against his ear as she leaned in. “Don’t think about dying,” she whispered. “I want you to live.”

Haruka stood frozen. The sun was high in the sky, its rays gradually warming his skin, but the heat from her embrace felt even hotter, as if it could melt him completely, dissolving the boy he was into something new and unrecognizable.

“Mm…”

He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t dare turn his head to look at her face, so he stared at the gravel on the ground. A few black ants were diligently carrying the carcass of a dead insect. A dark shadow fell over them, and a polished black leather shoe crushed them into oblivion.

A bodyguard stood before Lady Murasaki like a rusted iron nail. “My Lady, everything is ready.”

Haruka looked into the distance, where the team of undertakers was carrying the coffin toward the grave. He looked up at the vast, empty sky and felt as if a giant foot were about to step down on him.

Lady Murasaki saw that the coffin had been brought to the edge of the pit. “Do you want to see your former mother one last time?” she asked.

Haruka shook his head. “Bury her.”

The undertakers efficiently lowered the coffin into the grave. Haruka forced himself to watch. Lady Murasaki’s voice was a constant, soothing murmur in his ear. “You can go back to the car.”

“I’ll still be able to hear it, even in the car,” Haruka said, his voice hollow.

“Hear what?”

“The sound of them burying my mother.”

“After she is buried, she will no longer be your mother.”

“Then who will be my mother?”

“The one who is still alive.”

Haruka turned his head. Lady Murasaki’s face was more dazzling than the sun. She seemed as if she wanted to rise even higher, but then she hesitated and lowered her head, casting his face in her shadow. Haruka stared at her, the rhythmic thud of earth hitting wood filling his ears.

Simply by standing there, Lady Murasaki seemed to command the world. This peerless woman was unlike anyone else. She had Haruka stand beside her, a prince to her queen. “You can only be my son,” she said in a low voice. “Forget everything that came before. From this day forward, you are the young master of the Fujiwara family.”

“I understand, Mama,” Haruka said, the word a final surrender.

Lady Murasaki gently, possessively, kissed his forehead. She could feel his submission, and it was more refreshing than a gentle breeze on a sweltering day.

She looked back. The grave was filled, the earth packed down. If it weren’t for the newly erected, blank gravestone, who would even know that a person had once lived, had once loved and suffered?

“Come back to the car with me.”

Haruka took Lady Murasaki’s hand. As they passed his father’s grave, he noticed that the ground to the right of it had also been disturbed, as if another pit were about to be dug. “Is someone else going to be buried here?” he asked.

Lady Murasaki smiled mysteriously and didn’t answer.

Is she preparing it in advance, Haruka wondered, for when she dies, so she can be buried here too? Even if it wasn’t true, the thought alone was unbearable. That scum who had abandoned his wife and child… would he enjoy such good fortune even in death, flanked by two peerless beauties? If he weren’t already dead, Haruka would have dragged him to his mother’s grave and forced him to atone.

Forget it, he thought. It was just Mama’s bitter fate.

Looking at Lady Murasaki’s beautiful, inscrutable profile, he felt even more unsettled. “Mama, when did you meet him?”

“Who?” Lady Murasaki asked, feigning confusion.

Haruka didn’t answer, simply turning his head. Lady Murasaki followed his gaze to his father’s grave, a puzzled look on her face, as if she were wondering why Haruka was asking such an irrelevant question. Then, she seemed to remember her role. “I don’t remember,” she said coldly.

He only died three years ago, Haruka thought. How could she not remember? My mother spoke of him constantly. Even if she never told me the details, I know she remembered everything.

He assumed she simply didn’t want to talk about it, which only made him feel more suffocated.

They arrived back at the limousine. Fujiwara Hitomi was waiting for them, a living embodiment of sycophancy. She held out a phone with a fawning smile. “My Lady, someone is calling for you.”

Lady Murasaki nodded and took the phone. Hitomi seemed to want to get into the car with them. Haruka, in his foul mood, disliked her even more. “Hitomi,” he said, “could you leave me and my mother alone?”

Hitomi froze, then her smile became even more obsequious. “Of course, Young Master.”

Lady Murasaki leaned close to his ear, her breath a warm whisper. “You don’t like her?”

Haruka’s heart skipped a beat. He remembered how she had asked him the same question before “taking care of” Fujiwara Asou. He answered reflexively, “I don’t want her to die.”

“She hasn’t offended you or me. Why would she die?” Lady Murasaki laughed, a soft, dangerous sound. “If you don’t like her, then punish her.”

Haruka’s heart pounded in his chest. Her words were a potent, irresistible temptation. “You could make her crawl on the ground like a dog,” she whispered, planting the seed of cruelty.

“What is it, Young Master?” Hitomi didn’t know what they were talking about and forced an even more fawning smile. It was a large, grotesque smile that crinkled her whole face, creating a roadmap of wrinkles, crow’s feet, and fine lines, like a crumpled piece of paper.

Haruka, in his foul mood and overcome with a sudden, suffocating disgust, found himself yielding to Lady Murasaki’s poisonous suggestion. “Hitomi,” he said.

“Young Master?”

He had only spoken one word, but his voice was as hoarse and unfamiliar as a man lost in the desert. “I’m in a bad mood,” he said. “Get on the ground and bark like a dog for me.”