"Purple Days"

My clothes, my hair, my shoes, everything - completely drenched, completely soaked. There’s no good way to escape the rain; I hide under a cluster of trees, but I don’t risk straying too far from the clearing. As for Eguchi himself, the ex-governor stands on the grass, his arms stretched wide like a prophet, tilting his head toward the sky, water falling down him in long waves. The flame has certainly gone out by this point, the temple certainly destroyed, but he’s standing there, washing himself anew.

I step away from the trees to join him. I’m already drenched to the bone, a little more can’t hurt. I arrive next to him, mimic him, stretching my arms wide, in this place and time that exists outside of normal boundaries. People are walking through Shinjuku right now; Harajuku’s certainly crowded; people cross the street in Shibuya. The vanilla truck rumbles down the Mabuchi avenue; kids play on the Kenji Field; farmers sickle and weave their way through the golden fields of Tsukamoto. There’s a convenience store in Hoshinomori, all lit up; there are swan boats at Lake Chikuma; people point at the Soga Screen. Life exists simultaneously in all these different moments - we are nothing but ships passing in the night.

But sometimes, you find ships heading in the same direction as you. They come and go, in and out, but sometimes, a ship stays close, and you end up in the same harbor. Life is unending, ceaseless, breathless, simultaneously everywhere and everything.

And, if all goes well, I got sixty more years of it. You might say the future isn’t guaranteed. If that’s the case, I just gotta hope that all goes well. And even if it doesn't, even if things go wrong, there's still a good chance I got sixty years more of the present. I’m ready to get after them. Maybe it’s the feeling of rain on you. When’s the last time you felt a thunderstorm on your skin?

I can’t tell if this storm belongs to summer or autumn. Perhaps both, existing on the hinge of the seasons. A gray zone, a twilight era, and I take a deep breath and feel rain wash down my face.

And then it stops.

Just like that, the rain lets up. The clouds briefly break apart like sunken battleships, revealing the summer sun, sending gold ingots of light onto the clearing. But it’s clear that this is an old sun. It’s already setting, and when it sets this early, that can only mean that summer is at its end.

I check my phone. And my God, I’ve been up here for over a day now. 

I leave for Tokyo tomorrow. 

Tomorrow! I wipe my face. Where did the time go? I hadn’t checked my phone, since there was no service, just rain and endless forest, and perhaps the spirits of the ancients captured me here. Time moves, whether we measure it or not, and between Eguchi’s lectures, the smell of the halfway house, and existing beyond the edge of existence - it was now the evening of August 30th.

“We gotta get out of here!” I tell Eguchi. “I got someone important waiting for me!”

“And I got a whole prefecture’s worth of grass to touch,” Eguchi answers, shaking his body, whipping away rain like a dog. “Let’s hurry.”

He dashes off, much like Kanako did, but comparisons and memories like that don’t hurt me anymore. I’ve grown up, too - rather than chase after Kanako, I run alongside Eguchi. The collapsed temple, the old era, the hidden chalice with the burn-out eternal flame - we leave them behind, and they recede into history and shadow. Your eternal flame goes out? Your candle goes out? Just light a new one. That’s all there is to it. You won’t forget the old one, nor should you, but there’s always more candles to light.

We race through the endless forest path, underneath red Torii gates. “How are you in such good shape?” I question, since he’s running like a man seventy years younger than his current age.

He grins. “I love life. But I didn’t realize until today that I’ve only been living a half-life. I got decades' worth of new things to see, Shunsuke. I could live another thirty years with motivation like that!”

We make it down to the first temple, the dock at the river inlet. The sky’s a sherbet color now, the oranges transitioning into deep purples and cotton candy pinks, the type of colors that only appear when summer makes one last gasp before slipping away back into its slumber for another year. But this season will come around again.

Miyagawa said he’d come get me when the storm ends, but there are no boats in sight. I’m antsy, standing there on slick stones, at the mouth of a primordial river. Eguchi waltzes off the stone pathway, onto patches of grass and dirt, shuffling his feet, doing hop-steps, giggling like a child every time he doesn’t explode into a red mist. He walks in circles around the giant trunk of a tree, laughing when a pool of water slips off a leaf and onto his red face.

“You people walk across grass every day?” Eguchi says in amazement. “Wild grasses, meadows, marshes, forest floors covered in auburn pine needles.”

I take a seat on the dock, looking at the river bend in the distance. “Funnily enough, I’m not so sure about that. You gotta go out of your way to walk on any grass in Tokyo.”

“Do you ever go out of your way, then?”

“I used too. Not so much recently before I came to Yoshiaki. But when I get back, you can bet I’ll be going out of my way every day.” I wipe my face, feeling the pressure mount on my shoulders. “I have to get back first, though. And not just to Tokyo. There’s a woman waiting for me downriver and then some. Or maybe, I’m waiting to get back to her. I’m glad I came here, I feel like I’ve settled things, but it feels like…”

“Like you’re in the womb?” Eguchi supposes. “Kicking the walls right now, waiting to get out there and start living?”

He’s a poet, alright. 

“Yeah, something like that.” I rock my legs on the edge of the dock, see my reflection dipped in purple light on the water below. “Did I make the wrong choice coming out here? Was it selfish?”

“You made a choice, my friend. And now you must follow it through. But, if this woman is into you even just a fraction of how much you’re into her, then she’ll understand. Not going back to her, now that would be selfish.”

“You’re a wise old man,” I tell him. But the undercurrent of our meeting finally breaks through to the surface. “A wise old man guilty of corruption and environmental destruction.”

His shoulders slump; the death of the Yoshiaki Crimson Sparrow weighs on him. “I suppose that’s true. I can’t undo my choices, either.”

“You’re almost a hundred.” I stare at him hard; my voice blurs. “So I won't tell nobody. I’ll let you live out your remaining years in peace. But only if you promise to do something nice each day. To meet someone new, to make someone happy. If you’re going to wander around Yoshiaki a free man, then that’s the least you can do. To atone for what you’ve done.”

Eguchi solemnly nods. “I can do that, Shun Shunsuke. The kindness you’ve shown to me today, I will show that same kindness to the world. I can’t preserve the old Yoshiaki. But I can do little things, here and there, to make the new Yoshiaki a damn good place to live.”

“All it takes is a single step.”

He looks down at his sandals on the grass. “Indeed.”

And that’s when we hear the sound of a boat approaching. The sunset is dominated by purple hues as Miyagawa pilots his boat around the bend, rock music blaring across the landscape. He sees both of us on the shore and waves. Eguchi joins me on the dock as the boat pulls along the side.

Shizuko, I’ll be there soon.