“We’re here to help as much as we can, Auntie,” I tell her in my best Japanese. My proficiency has improved over the years, and with the possible exception of my somewhat atrocious accent, I can passably converse in the language. “Tomorrow morning, we intend to go to Mount Fuji and volunteer.”
“Then you must rest well tonight,” Auntie insists. Ever the perfect hostess, she continues, “I know you both insist on paying for your stay each time you visit, but it is my turn to insist that you do not. Your help is payment enough.”
We are shown into our rooms. As in most traditional inns, there is very little furniture in mine, except for a small dresser and a comfortable-looking futon. Some sumi-e paintings are dashed across the wall. A sliding door is all that separates the room from a large hot spring simmering outside, its steam snaking through the cold, brisk air like an ascending dragon.
Auntie bows as I step into the room. “I hope you and Tarquin-san will feel comfortable here, Okiku-chan.”
Auntie has never seen Okiku, though Kagura has told her about my ghost’s presence. I don’t know how much Auntie knew about Kagura’s previous duties as a miko serving at Chinsei, but she never seems bothered by Okiku’s presence, addressing her just like she was another one of the inn’s guests.
“If you need anything else, do not hesitate to ring the bell—or ask Tarquin-san to do so for you—and call for me.”
After Auntie leaves, I change hurriedly into a blue yukata decorated with small, white irises and look around for Okiku. The sliding door has been pulled back slightly to allow a little steam from the spring to drift into the room, and she is sitting beside it, her now-human face almost contemplative. She’s never voiced it aloud, but I suspect Okiku enjoys these trips. Hot springs were something of a luxury back in the older days, I’ve read, and servants would never have been able to afford such visits.
“It is good here,” she says, staring out over the dark water and watching the small ripples.
“Very,” I agree and then hesitate. “Are you still angry with me, Ki?”
She pauses, mulling over the question carefully before turning to me with a small smile on her pink bow mouth. “It is of no consequence,” she says before turning back to ponder the rising steam and the darkening night.
***
Auntie was a well-known chef in Osaka before moving to the Yamanashi Prefecture to run the inn, and dinner is a testament to her skill. Her specialty lies in the kaiseki-ryōri, with each dish carefully selected to complement both the menu and the season and then artistically prepared.
The first course is baby carp simmered in a ginger sauce with salmon roe, black beans in a sweet dressing, and shrimp rolled in kelp. It’s followed by large prawns in fried dumpling strips and rolled omelets with pieces of ginkgo nuts for garnish. I am pretty proud of Callie and me. Not once do we attack the food and swallow everything whole like the hungry barbarians we know foreigners like us can be.
By the time the next course arrives—simmered vegetables with slices of tofu and a rice ball steeped in a thick daikon soup base—we’ve come to the conclusion that Auntie does not want to talk about Kagura while we eat. All it takes is one look from me, and my cousin understands that I’m not willing to talk to Auntie or Saya about the whole McNeil thing either. Instead, we chat about the new improvements to the hot spring baths, Saya’s work at the museum, and Callie’s studies in Boston.
All the while, more food arrives—sweet, red mochi rice that arrives in its own round ceramic bowl, miso soup with an unexpected hint of pumpkin, grilled strips of squid in special vinegar, and raw salmon so fresh I can almost taste its heartbeat. We are effusive in our praises, and a quick, appreciative smile dances across Auntie’s face at our enthusiasm.
“There is something I would like to show all three of you,” she says after dinner. We follow her out of the dining room, down the narrow corridor, and into a small room that I immediately realize is Kagura’s. Japanese rooms are supposed to be sparse to the point of austerity, but books line nearly every wall. Still others are relegated to neat piles in one corner because the shelves can no longer accommodate more.
Most of the books are about Japanese history and ancient philosophies, and many appear to be treatises on Buddhism and Taoism. Kagura has been helping her aunt run the Kamameshi Ryokan for the last two years, but Kagura has also always been the complete epitome of a shrine maiden.
“Kagura has always been a bright girl, so I do not always understand the things she is involved in,” Auntie confesses. “But the night before she disappeared, before she was to show the American crew around Aokigahara, I saw her looking through there.” She points to a small trunk tucked away in another corner of the room. “I have not touched her room since, but I think you three may have a better understanding of what might have happened.”