The breeze carried the scent of plum blossoms through the open window. Soft, pale petals scattered along the wooden porch like paper prayers, whispering over time-worn grain. Somewhere beyond the hill, children laughed.
Two of them, hers, their voices as clear as temple bells after rain.
Aika sat with her knees tucked beneath her, a kettle gently steaming beside her. The room was humble, washed in the light of early afternoon. Simple, clean, lived in. Not a single ornament on the wall save for a faded painting of koi swimming beneath a cherry bough.
Across from her, dressed in a dark grey kimono with a crane pin at her collar, sat Madame Sumire.
Her hair, once the color of ink, now shimmered silver beneath the daylight. But her gaze, Sharp and unflinching, was just as Aika remembered. The way her hands folded over the tea cup had not changed either. Controlled. Regal. As though she still sat atop the pecking order of the Hanabira Teahouse, even here, surrounded by silence and mountain wind.
Sumire took a sip.
Aika waited.
And when the cup was returned to the tray, she began to speak.
"You told me once... that I would bloom only at night."
Sumire raised a brow but said nothing. The sound of cicadas swelled faintly beyond the screens.
"That if I smiled just right—someone might pluck me from the darkness."
Her voice wasn't bitter. It was almost... fond.
She smiled, looking out toward the yard where the old plum tree bloomed in full.
"It happened. Just not the way you imagined."
Sumire's lips parted slightly. She did not answer. Perhaps out of pride, or perhaps because she hadn't expected to be remembered that clearly.
Aika continued, her hands still cradling her cup:
"I was seven when Father died. I barely understood what debt meant. Only that my mother stopped singing in the mornings, and started crying at night. Then you came.
You wore white then. Like a priestess. You smiled at her like you were saving her, but your eyes were only on me.
You said... 'She'll be safer at Hanabira. I'll teach her to survive.' And I believed you."
The matron's expression did not change. Her silence pressed against the walls like heat.
Aika's voice softened.
"And you did. In your way."
She glanced at the kettle, now hissing low.
"You taught me how to smile. How to hide pain. How to bow and bend and never break. I learned to laugh without joy. To cry without tears. And I survived... until the night I stopped wanting to."
"Then he came." Aika didn't have to name him. The warmth in her voice was enough to paint his shape in the steam between them.
"He never asked for my smile. Never made me feel like a vase waiting to be emptied. He just... listened."
Sumire's eyes finally narrowed, as if some small part of her hardened shell cracked.
"Did he pay well?" she asked, almost dryly.
Aika laughed—not with cruelty, but with something soft and bright.
"No. Barely tipped."
"Then what did he give you that I didn't?"
The question wasn't spoken cruelly. It sounded genuine.
Aika thought for a moment. Then answered, as the wind stirred a loose petal between them.
"A name I didn't have to earn. A life I didn't have to sell myself for. And a silence... that didn't feel empty."
For the first time in their long, complicated relationship, Sumire looked away.
Aika placed a second cup in front of her.
"Do you want to meet them?" she asked.
Sumire blinked.
"The children?"
Aika smiled again.
"The ones who never have to learn how to smile the way you taught me."
Outside, the laughter of children echoed down the hillside, and from beneath the blossoming plum tree, a boy's voice called—
"Mama, come play!"
Aika stood.
Sumire remained seated, her back straight, her face unreadable.
"You've changed," the matron said.
Aika paused at the doorway, glancing back with that same gentle, downward gaze she had once mastered. But now... now it held something more.
"No," she said. "I just bloomed somewhere else."
And with that, she stepped into the light.
The petals followed.
(Fin)