Chapter 18: Phantom Keyboards
The stream was a silver thread unraveling through the mossy stones, its chatter a welcome veil over the silence that had settled between them. Hana sat on a flat rock, her bare feet dangling in the icy current, watching the dappled shadows of cedar branches play on the water. Kage stood a few paces upstream, his posture relaxed but his focus absolute as he tracked the slow drift of a handmade fly. The soldiers were busy setting camp, their distant voices muffled by the forest. Kenji and Jiwoo had gone hunting, their absence a palpable release of pressure.
Hana scooped up a handful of smooth pebbles, letting them click against each other in her palm. The absence of her phone was a physical ache in her hand, a phantom limb. “I miss this app,” she said, her voice cutting through the water’s babble. Her fingers began to dance in the air, thumbs tapping an invisible screen. “You could just… talk to anyone. Someone across the world. At three in the morning, when you can’t sleep.”
Kage glanced over, his expression unreadable. He watched her pantomime with a hunter’s quiet intensity.
“Sometimes,” she continued, a wry smile touching her lips, “you’d just talk to strangers. About nothing. About everything. No consequences.” She shrugged, tossing a pebble. It plunked into a deep pool. “Sometimes it wasn’t so… innocent. People would have these conversations. Flirty. Sensual. They’d send pictures. Of themselves. Of certain… places.” She felt a heat rise to her cheeks, but she held his gaze, challenging the antiquated world with her modern normal.
His hand, which had been poised to flick the fishing line, went still. The focus left the water and settled on her with a weight that stole her breath. His eyes, usually so guarded, darkened with something primal—a mixture of shock, possessiveness, and a raw, kindling heat that was entirely new. The gulf between her casual description and the rigid propriety of his world seemed to widen into a chasm he suddenly wanted to cross.
He moved without a sound. In two strides, he was before her, the fishing forgotten. The forest air grew thick. He took her hand, the one that had been tapping at empty air, and turned it palm-up. His touch was warm, calloused.
“This world has no such… devices,” he said, his voice a low rumble. From the folds of his robe, he produced a small, flat disk of polished black stone, intricately carved with a twisting, serpentine pattern. It was cool and heavy. He pressed it firmly into her palm, closing her fingers around it. His own hand enveloped hers completely. “This is my personal seal. It carries my authority. My name.” He leaned closer, his breath a whisper against her ear. “If you wish to whisper through the night, my guards will carry any message. To me. Only to me.”
The implication burned through her. It wasn't a technological convenience; it was a vow of exclusivity, a thread pulled taut between them in the dark. The heat of his proximity, the intensity in his eyes, the cool stone biting into her skin—it was an answer she hadn’t known she was seeking. A promise.
A crashing in the underbrush shattered the moment. Kage pulled back, his face smoothing into its usual impassive mask just as Kenji burst from the trees, hefting a small boar across his broad shoulders. Jiwoo followed, her expression one of grim satisfaction.
“Dinner,” Kenji announced, his eyes scanning the scene. He saw Hana sitting, Kage standing a respectable distance away, the stream flowing between them. He saw nothing amiss. The seal was a secret weight in Hana’s clenched fist, its impression already searing her skin.
The sixteen-day journey to Kage’s estate became a dance of stolen moments. Jiwoo’s watchful presence was a constant, Kenji’s protective chaperoning a reliable barrier. But the road was long, and routines emerged. Kage would often fall back, checking the perimeter, and Hana would find reasons to lag—adjusting a sandal, admiring a rare flower, waiting for Kitsune who always lingered with her. The fox became their silent accomplice, a fluffy orange sentinel who would give a soft yip if anyone approached.
In these pockets of privacy, the world of the present receded. She tried to explain her music, humming fragments of melodies that felt clunky and alien without their electric backbone. “It’s like… the sound of frustration and hope,” she said one afternoon, walking their horses through a sun-dappled pass. “Loud guitars, driving drums. It’s messy. It’s human.”
“This ‘rock’,” Kage repeated the foreign word slowly. “It is a rebellion?”
“Sometimes. Mostly it’s just feeling too much, too loudly.” She glanced at his profile. “You wouldn’t like it.”
“I might,” he said simply, and the possibility felt more intimate than a touch.
Another day, under the cover of a sudden downpour while they took shelter in a shallow cave, she told him of the museum. The dust, the quiet, the fragments of other people’s lives pressed under glass. “I studied for years to be able to identify a piece of pottery from five hundred years ago,” she said, watching the rain sheet down. “I could tell you its provenance, its composition. But I never knew what it felt like to hold something that old. To know the hands that made it.” She looked at her own hands, still marked with faint, silvery scars from the labyrinth. “I was a cataloguer of purpose. Not a person with one.”
He was silent for a long time, listening to the rain. “My mother,” he said finally, the words seeming torn from a deep, protected place, “was human. She died when I was young.” He paused. “Over a hundred years ago.”
The number hung in the damp air. She had known, intellectually, that he was older. The clues were there—the weight in his eyes, the archaic formality of his speech at times, the way he spoke of history as memory. But hearing it stated so plainly was different. It was a physical blow to her sense of reality. A hundred years. He had seen empires shift, technologies rise and fall that were ancient history to her. He had lived through the events she’d only read about in those museum captions. The man walking beside her, whose sleeve sometimes brushed hers, had watched the world change in ways she could barely comprehend.
She stopped walking. “A hundred years,” she breathed, not a question, just an absorption of the fact.
He looked at her, a flicker of something like fear in his eyes—fear of her recoil. “Does it disturb you?”
Did it? She searched his face, the ageless lines of it, the ancient sorrows and the very present, guarded warmth. “It should,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t. It just makes me sad for you. All that time alone.”
The admission widened the space between them and then immediately closed it. He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, and they walked on, the unspoken truth now a third companion on the path.
Finally, on the sixteenth day, the familiar, somber walls of Kage’s estate came into view. It felt like a lifetime since she had first seen them, a frightened stranger from another world. Now, she returned as something else—a weapon under imperial decree, a woman entangled, a daughter displaced.
The household staff received them with bowed heads and silent efficiency. The aura of the capital—the judgment, the scrutiny—clung to them like fine dust. Kenji immediately headed for the training grounds, a scowl on his face, the boar-driven tension from the first camp still simmering. Jiwoo was given her own guest quarters, her role as observer now formalized within these walls.
A young maid with downcast eyes led Hana to her room. It was the same one she’d used before, overlooking the austere rock garden. As she slid the door open, she heard a surprised intake of breath from behind her.
Jiwoo stood at the entrance to the adjacent room, her travel pack in hand. The general’s sharp eyes flickered from Hana to the room’s interior and back. “You took that room,” she stated, her tone neutral but layered with meaning.
Hana paused, one foot over the threshold. “Yes. Is there a problem?”
Jiwoo studied her for a long moment, as if reassessing a battlefield. “It was your mother’s room. When she visited. Lord Kage always kept it prepared for her.”
The air left Hana’s lungs. She stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the tatami mats, the scroll painting of a lone willow, the simple charcoal brazier. This space hadn’t just been a guest room. It had been a shrine to a memory. Her mother had slept here, breathed this air, looked out at this same garden. The knowledge was a whisper, a ghostly breath on the back of her neck. Kage had put her here, directly in the echo of his past love.
She felt a dizzying mixture of violation and a strange, painful connection. “I see,” she managed, her voice tight.
Jiwoo gave a curt nod, a soldier respecting a private grief. “Goodnight, Hana.”
“Goodnight.”
Hana closed the door and leaned against it, the polished wood cool against her back. For over a day and a night, she did not leave. Servants brought trays of food; she ate little. Kenji came by, worried; she claimed exhaustion, and he, understanding the depth of it, left her alone. Kitsune curled by the door, a silent guardian.
She sat in the center of the room that had once held her mother, and she let the silence press in. She thought of the glowing trees, the unmade yokai, the feeling of her own light burning her from the inside out. She thought of the Emperor’s cold eyes, his hypothetical children in a burning village. She thought of Kage’s hand closing over hers, the weight of the seal, the heat in his gaze by the stream.
But most of all, she thought of the dead. The soldiers who had fallen in the labyrinth, their faces already blurring in her memory. The yokai she had erased, their existence terminated not with violence, but with a thought. Was it cleaner? Was it worse?
She had studied history, the catalogued dead of centuries. Now she had made history. She had added to the tally. The purpose she had longed for had found her, and it was stained with ashes and blinding light. In the quiet of her mother’s room, Hana Sato, who was once Daisy, began the long and lonely work of learning how to live with what she had become.
In the quiet of her mother’s room, Hana Sato, who was once Daisy, began the long and lonely work of learning how to live with what she had become. The silence wasn’t empty; it was full of ghosts and questions. She slept fitfully, tangled in sheets that smelled of cedar and old sadness.
She was running.
The dream was a visceral smear of fear and green. Laughter echoed behind her, bright and sharp, but it was a lie. Her legs pumped through tall, wet grass that clung to her knees, the stream a silver flash to her left. Something panted behind her, a heavy, rhythmic thudding she felt in her teeth. She didn’t dare look back.
The grass blades shimmered, their surfaces hardening into polished glass. She was surrounded by mirrors. In them, her mother’s face flashed, mouth stretched in a silent scream. “Stay away from him!” the reflections mouthed, a chorus of warnings without sound. A shadow, vast and horned, blotted out the moon behind her.
She woke with a jolt, a choked gasp ripping from her throat.
The room was black, swimming in unfamiliar shapes. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The thin cotton sheet was twisted around her legs, soaked through with cold sweat. She kicked it off, the dampness clinging to her skin like a second, chilling layer. She sat up, disoriented.
Was it still night? Pre-dawn? The absolute darkness of this era was profound, a velvet void unbroken by streetlights or digital clocks. Time was a vague, guessed thing. She fumbled for the edge of the bed, her feet hitting the cool tatami.
A month and a half. The fact landed in her groggy mind with a dull thud. Just over six weeks since her world had been ripped from under her. Her father had buried himself in his scrolls the moment they’d returned, searching for a path back. She hadn’t opened a single one. The thought of home felt like remembering a story about someone else.
She stood, the night air raising goosebumps on her sweat-cooled skin. She pulled on the oversized tunic she’d borrowed from Kenji, the fabric smelling of him—oil, steel, a faded hint of maple kind soap. It was a comfort and a confession. She slipped her feet into a pair of geta sandals waiting by the door.
The estate was a tomb of polished wood and shadow. She padded silently through the corridors, past sliding doors behind which servants slept. The main entrance was too loud, its hinges known to sigh. She found a side door used for taking out ashes, its latch lifting with a soft click.
Outside, the world was shades of indigo and deep grey. A sliver of moon gave just enough light to see the gravel path. The air was cool and clean, washing the remnants of the nightmare from her lungs. She walked without thinking, her feet carrying her on a route now familiar.
She found herself at the small torii gate, its vermilion paint darkened to blood-black in the gloom. The shrine built for her mother was a simple, elegant structure. She hadn’t sought it out for comfort before; her connection to her mom had been photos, a faded sweater, a recipe. This was different. This was stone and wood she had touched, air her mother might have breathed.
She sat on the damp stone steps, the chill seeping through the thin cotton of her borrowed shirt that fit like a dress. Dew soaked into the fabric. She took a deep, shaking breath, the scent of moss and night-blooming flowers filling her.
“So,” she whispered to the silent shrine. “The warnings.”
Her voice was too loud in the stillness. She swallowed. “In the dream, it’s you. Telling me to stay away from him.” She picked at a thread on the tunic’s sleeve. “Is that you? Or is that just… me? Am I just scared of what he makes me feel?” The questions hung in the air, unanswered. “What am I doing here?”
A soft wind rustled the trees, a meaningless, natural sound. She felt foolish. Was she expecting a sign? A voice? Her mother was bones in another timeline.
“Right,” she muttered, pushing herself up. The damp had soaked through to her skin. “Stupid.”
She turned to head back, the need for her dry, if haunted, room suddenly urgent. She took two steps toward the path and collided with a solid, warm wall of muscle.
She stumbled back with a yelp. The shadow resolved into a man, shirtless, skin gleaming with a sheen of sweat in the weak moonlight. Kage. He was breathing deeply, the steady rhythm of someone who had been running. His chest rose and fell, drawing her eye down the long, vicious scar that cut across his abdomen, over the layered tapestry of tattoos that coiled around his ribs and over his shoulders. The defined planes of his stomach clenched as he caught his breath.
He looked… devastating. Like a statue of some war god come to life, heat radiating off him in the cool air. Her brain short-circuited, a flush of pure, undiluted attraction swamping the last of her nightmare chill. She choked back a sound.
“Hana?” His voice was low, concerned. He steadied her with a hand on her elbow, his touch electric. “Are you alright?”
She wrenched her gaze up to his face, her cheeks burning. “Y-yes,” she stammered, pulling her arm back as if burned. “Just… couldn’t sleep. Needed air.” She hugged Kenji’s oversized tunic around herself, suddenly acutely aware of how she must look—disheveled, dream-wild, drowning in fabric.
His eyes, dark and assessing, traveled slowly from her face, down the clumsy drape of the tunic, to her bare calves and the simple geta. His concern sharpened into something harder, more immediate. “What are you wearing out here like this?” The question wasn’t curious. It was a demand. “It’s not safe.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, her defiance sparked by his tone. “It’s just the estate grounds.”
He didn’t argue. He moved, fast and decisive. His hand shot out, not to her elbow this time, but around her upper arm. His grip was firm, unbreakable. “You are not.”
He pulled her off the path, not toward the main buildings, but to a nearby sliding door she hadn’t even noticed, half-hidden by a manicured pine. He shoved it open with his shoulder and drew her inside, closing it swiftly behind them.
The room was dark, warm, and smelled distinctly of him—of sandalwood, clean sweat, and the mineral scent of sun-heated stone. It took her eyes a moment to adjust. A low, wide bed. A single, austere scroll on the wall. A stand holding a sheathed katana.
It was his bedroom.
He released her arm, turning to face her in the close, intimate dark. His bare chest was inches from her. The energy in the room compressed, growing thick and charged. Her heart, which had begun to calm, now thundered anew for a completely different reason.