Chapter Thirty Sen
On the last day of her life, Sen went to her mother.
Her voice carried through the yard, bright with laughter. Sen followed the sound across the porch and found her mother sitting
in the dirt, watching Kotaro pluck flowers and present them to her one by one. Seijiro swung from the branches of a tree at
the edge of the forest, calling for their mother to look at him as he climbed higher and higher.
Sen felt as much a stranger to this world as she did to Lee Turner’s world. Had she ever been this young? Had she ever laughed
this loudly without her father grabbing her throat to silence her? As the clouds rolled past the sun and its warm light illuminated
the smiles on her brothers’ faces, Sen felt like the ghost she was doomed to become. Here she was, lingering at the edge of
a world she would never have. Unseen, unwanted.
She shut the porch door and returned to her room, then sat alone in the dark. Sen felt as though she was on a distant island
surrounded by black sea. She could call out to the endlessness of the ocean, but no matter how loud she screamed, no one would
hear her.
She remembered the years before her brothers were born, before she was old enough to hold a sword, before her father had found the Hagakure . Her mother had held her close to her heart and told her stories as she fell asleep. One night, she told Sen the tale of
a fisherman who rode a turtle to the bottom of the sea, only to return three hundred years later and find his world irrevocably
changed, his mother long dead.
Sen had cried so hard that her mother hadn’t even been able to finish the story that night. Back then, the thought of losing
her mother was unbearable. But now, the day of her mother’s death had arrived, and Sen felt nothing at all. She was a torn
piece of fabric and the wind blew straight through her. It was as if all of them had died long ago, and this last step was
only a formality.
“My lady,” said a voice in the doorway.
Sen turned to Youna, who was lingering in the doorway with a cup of tea.
“You seem unsettled,” Youna said, placing the tea beside Sen on the porch. Sen watched the steam spiral and disappear in the
white sky. Soon, night would fall, and the end would come.
“Youna,” Sen said. “Pack your things and leave.”
Youna stilled. “My lady?”
“The other servants too,” Sen said. “I want you all to pack and leave within the hour.”
“My lady, have I upset you?” Youna said, folding into a bow.
Sen shook her head. She could see it now—all the servants slaughtered in the halls when the soldiers came for the Iwasaki
family. Youna’s family had not been dishonored. She didn’t have to die with them.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Sen said. “Please, do as I say.”
Youna was a faithful servant, usually good at following orders. But as she rose from her bow, a deep frown creased her brow.
“My lady, I cannot,” she said. “I must stay here with you.”
“You must do as I say,” Sen said.
“But your father—”
“My father is my problem,” Sen said. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
Youna’s hand closed around Sen’s wrist. Sen flinched and drew back, but Youna clung to her. “Please, Sen,” Youna said.
“ Sen? ” she echoed, reeling back.
“My lady,” Youna amended quickly. “I won’t leave you. Everything will be fine if I am by your side.”
“It won’t!” Sen said, trying to tear her arm away. Why was Youna resisting her now? Sen tried to pull away again, but when
it didn’t work, she reeled back and slapped Youna across the face. The sound echoed across the forest.
“ Get out of my house! ” Sen shouted. “That’s an order!”
Youna stood stunned, one hand on her red cheek. Tears burned at her eyes, and she dropped into a bow. “Yes, my lady,” she
whispered. Then she turned back to the house, shutting the door behind her.
The end came an hour later.
Sen was on her third circuit when she heard shouting by her house. The trees shivered at the echoes of her father’s enraged
voice, though she couldn’t decipher his words from a distance.
It’s started , Sen thought, running toward the house. She would meet her death standing up, a sword in her hand. She would not die in hiding,
or on her knees. As the sun rose higher in the sky and its warmth held her face like her mother’s hands once had, back when
she’d loved her, Sen felt ready at last.
Come and get me , she thought. I’m already dead.
She emerged from the woods with her sword drawn, prepared for the sight of enemy soldiers, but the yard was empty.
She quickly rounded the house, where she found her father raising his blade to a man without armor, covered in blood.
At first, she thought he was another spy.
But as the man held up a trembling hand, blood spiraling in ribbons down his thin wrist, Sen met his bright green eyes.
Lee.
“Stop!” she shouted.
Her father froze, his blade catching the glint of the sun. He turned to Sen questioningly as she ran toward him, lowering
his blade only slightly.
“He’s no enemy,” Sen said, standing between her father and Lee. “I know him. He helped me.”
As fire seared across her father’s vision, she realized it was the worst thing she could have said.
“You allowed a foreigner into my house?” he said, his words echoing across the yard. “After all that they took from me?”
“Yes,” Sen said unsteadily. It was the wrong answer, but the only one she could offer. Her silence would only anger him more.
Her father raised his hand and struck her across the face. The impact jolted her teeth and she bit her tongue, hot blood filling
her mouth, but she remained on her feet.
“If this curse is your doing, then you will be the one to undo it,” her father said.
Sen’s ears were still ringing from her father’s blow, and she didn’t realize at first what he meant. Then he sheathed his
blade and stepped aside, crossing his arms and looking at Sen expectantly.
She swallowed blood and looked down at Lee, trembling in the dirt, his eyes starkly green against the mask of blood. Lee Turner
was a liar, but he did not deserve death just because Sen’s father demanded it.
“Chichiue,” Sen said, bowing her head in subservience, “I—”
Her father seized her hair, jerking her head to the side. “ Do it, or I will ,” he said. “And if I must do it, I will kill you too, for defying me.”
He released her hair, tossing her to the ground.
She dug her fingers into the dirt, trying to swallow her tears.
“ What have I done wrong? ” she said. Her father frowned as she raised her voice at him, but if she didn’t yell, she would cry.
“Where in the Hagakure does it say I’m not allowed a friend? ”
She tried to rise to her feet, but her father shoved her back down. His shadow fell over her, his stance squared and one hand
on the hilt of his katana.
“I raised you as a samurai despite all your flaws,” he said. “Is that not what you wanted? Did you want me to sell you off
to spread your legs to a farm boy? I thought you wanted to be a warrior, not to bend over for men. But I guess I was wrong.”
Then her father drew his sword and raised the point just beneath her chin, forcing her to lift her face and look him in the
eye. Now she couldn’t hide the tears that streaked down her face, the tears she knew her father would despise, just like he
despised every true part of her. He’d only ever loved her lies.
“I don’t want to kill you, Sen,” he said. “If I do, there’s one less person to defend your brothers when the soldiers come.
Do you have any idea what they’ll do to them?”
Sen couldn’t have responded even if she’d wanted to, for her father’s blade was so perilously close to her throat that a single
breath would have been her end. One of her tears reached his blade and slid down its length.
“They will disembowel your mother in front of them, then pull your brothers apart limb from limb and roast them on a spit,”
her father said. “I know because that’s what they did to my friends, all the men who died so you could call yourself a warrior.
What right do you have to a friend when all my friends died for you?”
He lowered his sword. Sen let out a breath, folding forward. “Chichiue—”
“Kill him,” her father said. “It is the last time I will ask.”
A cold wind tore through the clearing, the ghosts of Sen’s tears bright and cold on her cheeks.
Lee shouldn’t have come here.
He had known from the start that Sen and her father’s soul were one and the same, that she would follow him to hell. She took
a step forward and Lee tensed as her shadow fell over him. As he trembled in fear of her, like he should have done long ago,
Sen saw her own ghost story begin to write itself in the empty white sky. She understood, at last, why she had haunted this
house.
Not because she had failed her father, or her mother, or her siblings. But because she had betrayed her only friend.
“Lee,” Sen said quietly. “I wish...” She shook her head, extinguishing the thought. It was no use missing a life she would
never get to have.
Lee had gone limp in the grass, perfectly still as he looked up at her. “Sen,” he said quietly, “it’s okay.”
She shook her head, even as she sensed her father’s impatient glare behind her. “It’s not okay,” she said.
Lee reached up for Sen, but she couldn’t bear to bend down to meet his bloody hand halfway, so it fell back to the grass.
“Sen,” he said, “I understand, and I forgive you. When you die, please remember that.”
Sen stilled. Her blade felt impossibly heavy in her hands, her fingers locked tight around it. “What?” she whispered. “Why
would you...”
As his words sank in, her trembling hands stilled.
He was setting her free.
She wouldn’t die carrying a debt to him. All she had to do now was stay and fight with her father, and she would die with
honor.
And if she died with honor, she wouldn’t become a ghost at all.
She would never see Lee Turner in her window, never follow him into a world one hundred and forty years in the future, never