Soul-bound

17. Somewhere where the crickets sing

I didn't notice it at first.

The fact that I couldn't hear the crickets anymore.

It was a summer memory from my childhood,  being out when it was dark with my best friend, looking up the sky counting stars, listening to their low yet ear-splitting song.

Now, I couldn't hear them anymore. And as I thought about it, I realised I hadn't been able to hear them for many, many years. I guess you could even say it wasn't a t think of old age, but just age, I thought and I smiled contentedly as I put our kettle on the stove to heat it up.

Well, technically, it wasn't our kettle anymore, but only mine. I smiled a little at this, too. Even after all these years, I struggled with the correct naming of things. Mine. Not ours.

I looked down on my hands as I always did when I was sentimental. There, on my hands, I could find some familiarity. They were lined with the traces of age, but not enough so that he wouldn't recognise them.

I was sentimental now. Sentimental, but not sad. Nowadays. I even got a warm sensation in my heart as I thought about our life together.

It had been a good life. We'd had a wonderful life together, and a wonderful marriage. Of course, we had hurt one another. Many times. But that was part of being in a close relationship with someone. You hurt each other. But all in all, we'd been good to one another, and that was the important part.

I poured the tea into a mug, took it with me out the door. With the light from the cottage windows, I could only see a bit into the forest, but I found that comforting somehow. I liked sitting down on the porch in the dark summer heat, contemplating what could lay beyond the thick blanket that was the absence of the sun. I did that now.

I did not hear the crickets.

But I looked up onto the stars, the stars we'd looked at as children together, and I smiled.

Are you out there somewhere, beloved? Are you out there, watching over me?

It had been years since he died. He had died a beautiful death in battle, not a spectacular one but an important one, as was befitted of someone like him. Someone amazing. In the end, he had gone to our old village when they had pleaded him for help as they were under attack. Hashirama didn't hesitate for even a second before he accepted.

"You don't owe those people anything", I had told him.

"I don't do this because I'm in debt to anyone", he'd said, taking me into his arms. "But because I love it. We built it together, you and I."

"Let me come with you", I begged.

He had smiled and kissed me.

"No. You won't be needed. You stay here and rest."

I would have come. Of course I would. But at the time, I had had a bad infection in my skeleton, rendering me completely useless. In a way, I believe Hashirama thought it was a relief, that I couldn't join. I believe he was frightened what I would hear the villagers say about me, and how that would affect me. I was sensitive to words in a way Hashirama was not. Besides, Hashirama was a pill that was much easier to swallow than I was; there was a reason why the village had asked him for help, and him alone.

So I stayed behind, waiting for my husband.

But my husband never came back.

That infection had finally cost me my leg beneath my knee, but it honestly didn't bother me that much. I was ashamed to admit it was a relief, somehow, because I had a reason not to strain myself so much, to yearn for improvement and for battle. I could finally rest.

I sipped my tea, remembering the melancholy of that time. It had taken me days to even understand he was dead. Not until I had seen his burned body did I understand he was truly gone. His body was badly burned, but I still recognised him. And I heard he had saved the entire village by his death.

Was it worth it, my beloved? Are you somewhere now where the crickets sing?

It didn't hurt anymore. But I still missed him. I still found myself turning around to the living room in the cottage where I still lived to tell him something funny that had happened, only to realise he wasn't there. Soulmate, he'd called me once. If a soulmate was someone you never fought with, me and Hashirama weren't it. But we were soul-bound, meant to be with the other, needing the other to become who we were meant to be, from the beginning.

And now, I was alone. Where I had started. But I was happy. Happy in a way I hadn't been when I first fell in love with Hashirama, before I got him. Because now, I had had him. He'd been mine.

And I was content.

I finished my tea, then stood up and went into the cottage which Hashirama had built for us.

I closed the door behind me, and continued my happy little life completely on my own.