Takeshi’s mother had heard the cry too, as had her daughters, who rushed to the door to peek outside. Their mother shouted not to open it, but the eldest daughter didn’t listen. She pushed the door open a crack, just enough for three pairs of eyes to see through.

Their mother quickly shooed them away and shut the door. A waft of cold air from outside rushed through the house, making everyone shiver. Takeshi’s mother scolded her daughters as she put on a straw jacket and went outside. The girls went back to the fire and sat facing the door, waiting for their mother to return with news.

Kisuke waited with them, his hands trembling. He hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of death until then. It wasn’t that death was an unfamiliar concept to him.

No, the elders spoke if it time to time, and at least one soul was lost every couple years. But to see Death from afar, to not know if it had come for someone you loved or not is enough to scare even the bravest warrior.

So Kisuke did what children tend to do. He told himself stories.

His father was fine. He must’ve just come back to tell the other women that one of the other two men must’ve died in the night. He and whoever else lived found a small shelter to take refuge from the cold overnight. Now that it was day they’d made their way home, and things could go back to normal. It couldn’t be any other way.

But it was that afternoon Kisuke learned that none of the men had returned to the village, so a search party had been sent out to look for them. Takeshi and his father had gone with them, allowing Kisuke to sleep soundly.

That afternoon the villagers had returned, carrying three bodies covered in snow.

Kisuke’s feet were numb as he stared down at the body of his father. He, along with the two other woodcutters, had perished. The villagers who found them said they’d had to wait some time before bringing them back, for their bodies had been frozen, encased in ice while they slept.

While his mother cried mournfully Kisuke thought to himself how peaceful his father looked, as though dying hadn’t hurt one bit.

Dying was not desired, Kisuke knew, but from what the villagers told him about death, it had all sounded bloody and painful. They made it sound like dying was the end of the world, an end to all the good things you enjoyed in life.

But what was dying, really? Kisuke wondered.

He crouched in the snow, the mourning villagers fading away, and brought a hand to his father’s face. His father’s icy cheek was cold to the touch, sending shivers down Kisuke’s spine.

His father had died. Kisuke was sad, yes, but his father didn’t seem to have suffered the painful and gory death everyone told him would happen.

For a man to have gone so easily without bloodshed, Kisuke wondered for the first time in his life what death was really like, and if it was truly as horrible as everyone said it was.

–––––

Come spring Kisuke often visited where his father was buried. Though his father’s body remained in the ground, Kisuke often found himself wondering what came next. The elders always spoke of the dead coming back to haunt the living, returning as ghosts or forest spirits, so who was to say that Kisuke’s father truly remained in the ground?

Takeshi and the other boys went with him sometimes to the cemetery, but they tired of Kisuke’s talk of ghosts and death. They had other things in mind, like running and playing before they became too old.

Kisuke eventually drifted apart from Takeshi, as the latter began helping his father in the fields. Kisuke found himself apprenticed to an old family friend, a middle-aged man called Fuyuki, who was a woodcutter like his father had been.

The young boy spent his days tailing his mentor into the woods to learn his trade. Like his father before him Kisuke would take up the axe and sell firewood to the neighbouring towns.

Two years after Kisuke’s father died came another cold winter with bitter winds. By this time Kisuke learned how to grieve, learning that pain could also come after death. He stayed close to his mother most of that winter, huddled next to her by the fire covered in a blanket. It was a hard lesson to learn, so Kisuke kept the pain out of his mind, but it was hard when everything he did reminded him of his father.

Kisuke was the one who brought in the firewood, like his father used to do. He was the only one left to care for his mother, and one day he would become man of the house, and she would depend on him. He had to take over all of his father’s duties, and ensure that he would not bring his family to shame. To do this he had to become a good man, and good men didn’t wallow away in grief, so Kisuke steeled himself and didn’t talk about his father’s death again.

It was that same winter when Takeshi’s father succumbed to a cold and died. Kisuke attended the burial with Takeshi, his mother, and his three sisters.

Takeshi refused to cry, muttering that if he cried his tears would only freeze on his face. Aya and Michiru wept softly, for their father would not live to see them marry out. Their mother hugged Kasumi close, afraid that the cold would rob her of another person.

Kisuke had no words for Takeshi, but the two boys exchanged a look that said more than any words of condolences could say.

Kisuke understood the weight that now rested on Takeshi’s shoulders, to look after his mother and sisters in place of his father. And Takeshi understood why Kisuke had been so fascinated with ghosts and death, for he, too, hoped that his father would not stay in the ground to rot.

There had to be another life, a better life after this one ended.

For the rest of that winter Kisuke did whatever he could to help Takeshi and his family. Kisuke’s mother would send him over with the blankets she’d woven. Kisuke would bring firewood and spend time with the family through their grief.

That winter seemed longer, and many evenings Kisuke found himself curled up next to the fire at Takeshi’s house, Kasumi nestled beside him under a warm blanket.

Though Kisuke wished he could stay overnight he knew he shouldn’t. His mother waited for him back home, so those evenings he’d woken up and left without waking anyone, leaving Kasumi by the fire in slumber.