wanderer's moon | kaedehara kazuha

06 | my days without you are so vapid (i)

3 days later

The heart-breaking simplicity of ordinary things is a harsh reminder for someone who lives an ordinary life.

After getting to know Kazuha on chancing days, Nara's life is dull compared to his. Without him by her side, whether it's teaching him how to make flower crowns, or drinking tea in the backyard of her cabin; seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, and hours become days. Stagnancy becomes clamant when she has no errands in between errands which speaks so much about one's flaws; she is simply restless, refusing to sit by and waste one's time.

Most living things do not need to remind themselves that life is precious. They simply pass the time. A kitsune can sit on the stone steps that lead to the abandoned shrine, watching people walk by idly in their daily lives. And that's alright. It's not such a bad way to live.

So much of life is spent this way, in ordinary time. There is no grand struggle, no sacraments, no epiphanies. Just simple domesticity, captured in little images, here and there. All the cheap little objects.

But in a couple of hundred years, the world will turn over to a completely different cast of characters. They won't look back and wonder who won the battles or when. Instead, they will try to imagine how we lived day to day, gathering precious artefacts of the world as it once was, in all its heart-breaking little details. They will look for the charms tied to dead tree branches. They will wonder what lives the villagers of Konda do—which leaves Nara sometimes to scoff at the idea of her own biography a century from now.

Perhaps such thoughts that cloud her mind on days like this led her to a perpetual alley of questions for the future—since when is she not thinking about the future? Perhaps the cause of this effect is upon crossing paths with a samurai wanderer, the vermillion signature streak clear in her head.

And so, Nara began her path to nowhere after contemplating for far too long; what to do with her day. Saimon Eri had nagged at her far too many times in a span of two days when Nara kept tending to the village's needs without them asking. It's my job, Nara once said, only to get a light slap on the arm from the frail old lady.

There are days when Nara has work to do, she tends to take it at a normal pace as a normal person does. But on days when there is little to no task at all, she tends to push herself, thinking that perhaps, such tasks require more effort and time when she was only extending insignificant matters to make use of her time.

"I never stay in a single place for very long. Stagnancy dulls both my connection with nature and the blade I wield."

Nara understood that the moment he left for his next journey. As she trudges forward along the dirty path to no place in mind, she thought, what was she thinking? She is a mere villager with no aspirations and an undetermined purpose. Was Saimon Eri right after all? Would she prefer to live in an unknown future alone and die in vain?

Will there be a day Nara can look forward to? Will there be someone who is willing to endure the pain she suppressed when her heart is not willing to?

Before she even knew it, Nara has stopped in her tracks, peeling her gaze off the ground, surprising herself when the sight before her left her in speechless awe.

Upon observing her surroundings, her gaze gravitates toward the glow of cerulean flowers scattered everywhere, random eroded tanuki statues laying around, and the trickling sound of a cascading stream slowly coming to her senses as she looked up to the 'night' sky.

Ah. She brought herself to Chinju Forest.

The last time she came here was when her parents were full of life—the past far from the unfortunate future. Nara of the past had no clue she would be standing alone here.