The moon was pink.

Violet clouds engulfed its dim shadow and enveloped the castle around her, its karahafu scarlet and stacked above walls of mahogany stockades. 

As she strolled down its hall, wooden planks crackling under her feet, she could feel her kimono flap in the wisps of breeze. Pink petals of the sakura trees beside her landed onto the silvery river around the castle, then coasted down the clouds into a world where they became rain.

At the end of the hallway, she stopped. Before her was a shoji, paper door, that would lead her into a room overlooking the city. The door slid open, and a silver-haired man peeked out and beckoned her in, his withered fingers trembling in the air.

“She has returned home,” he cried aloud, turning back to the swarming clusters of people in front of the castle, their heads canted up at the room. “Princess,” he proclaimed, hands splayed out in the air, “Kaguya.”

***

A few winds down a harbor in Nagasaki, inside a short, gray-roofed house overlooking a fish stall, Koshiro rocked the wooden cradle in front of him, kneeling on the tatami. He was humming a soft tune to himself, his black, tousled hair lit by the flickering bulb hovering above. 

His son Sora ran into the bedroom, a paper plane in his hand. He burbled, mimicking the sound of airplane engines. 

“Was I this tiny when I was born?” He asked Koshiro, crouching down on the tatami. Inside the cradle, his baby sister stirred. Her eyes opened, and the boy stared at them, irises darker than tar, deep and black like glass.

“About the same,” Koshiro said, smiling. He reached his callused hand into the cradle, and his daughter thrusted hers up. Her fingers curled up around his.

The boy picked at his trousers. “Do you have to go?” he asked again. Koshiro rose from the floor, stretching his arms out. 

“It’s for our country,” he said, his voice soft, like lyrics sung at a walking pace. The boy laid down on the tatami and listened to the whacks of the spoon against the pot in the kitchen, slices of onion falling against the wooden cutting board. Soon, the door of the room slid open, and a girl walked in. She was the same age as Sora, the daughter of the fish store owner across from their house.

“Seiko!” Sora shouted and sat up from the floor. She sat down next to him, arms crossed, her white dress cuddled close to her chest. 

“I’m here for another story,” she told him, smiling. Her short, feathery hair quivered in the air, the night breezing slipping in from the opened window. She took the paper plane from him and opened it up. He didn’t argue. He watched her refold it.

“Another story?” Koshiro asked, fondling his son’s hair. He pondered for a moment, scratching his chin, then sat down again on the floor. “What about a story about a princess?”

“A princess?” Sora laid down on the tatami, the July air skidding into his shirt. 

“A princess from the moon,” Koshiro said, gazing out of the window, into the darkness, lantern lights that studded the night sky. “A tale of a bamboo-cutter.” Beside him, Seiko sharpened the folds of the paper in her hand, working her way through its jagged peaks. When she finished, she placed it onto Sora’s palm. Quietly, the boy stared at the paper crane in his hand. “The story of Princess Kaguya,” Koshiro said.

***

At the back of the horse-drawn carriage, rocking and skidding down the pebbled path, Kaguya sat still on her seat, gazing out of its window. 

“Ōjo,” the coachman called her.

She looked up. 

“You don’t look well,” he said. He was draped in a navy-blue robe, a haori, his white trousers, its traditional folds like tides on the ebb, flapped in the air. She sat quietly for a moment. 

“I’m alright,” she said. “It’s just a dream I had yesterday night.”

“A dream?” The coachman asked.

She rested her head against the window, the city flashing by beside them. “I dreamt about the world down there. Underneath the clouds.”

The carriage made a turn to the left.

“It was in ruins,” she said. “There were ashes. Creeks reddened from blood.” She stared at her hands. “The people said that there was a blast.”

The coachman raised his lash. “It was only a dream, Kaguya-hime,” he said. 

But she didn’t say anything. The carriage stopped in front of another castle, a shiro grander than the last one. As she was helped down the coach, she thought about her dream again. There was a boy in it, she remembered. A boy with a paper crane in his hand.

***

On the hallway of a hospital in Tokyo, the floor sky-blue and lit by the planks of LED lights above his head, a man drummed his fingers against his knees. The celadon green door of the room before him was closed, and despite efforts, he could not see the doctors and nurses inside. He had the morning papers with him, folded neatly and cuddled close to his ribs, locked in between his crossed arms and broad chest, but he could not read. Words came in swarming flocks before his eyes, his mind always drifting back to the hospital room, his wife inside. Silently, he counted to himself, staring at his watch.

***

Inside the air raid shelter, under the tang of summer turf, Sora whistled to himself. Seiko sat still behind him, their backs against each other’s. 

“Kamikaze,” she said suddenly.

Sora turned around. The paper crane in his hand was ragged, its beak blunt and wings sagging. 

“Kamikaze pilots,” she told him. 

“Oh,” he said. She was drawing on the dirt with a stick, figures wearing boxy aviator goggles and thick boots. “My father was one,” he said. 

“I know,” she told him. She wrote a name down on the soiled ground, Koshiro Morofushi. “Everybody did.”

“I didn’t,” he said. Behind them, his sister walked over. She was wearing his shirt, the sleeves dangling in the air. “I thought he was only going to war for a while.”

The three sat still under the summer heat, the air damp, its weight slumped down onto the ground like the petals of a wilting flower. Then suddenly, the ground started to shake. The maple trees in front of them, barely visible from their cave shelter, rocked back and forth, its limbs quaking in the air. 

“What’s– happening?” Sora stood up from the ground, but fell back down quickly. Then all of a sudden, something thundered out in the sky, the wave roaring across the city. Streets erupted into whiteness, light blazing their eyes. And everything went black.

***

He didn’t volunteer for it. 

But he wasn’t forced either.

A speech about the country, the Emperor was given, and they were called to be the last defense. Anyone who wanted to quit this could stand up now, the sergeant said. But nobody did. 

“You have a son at home, right, Morofushi?” One of the other pilots asked him after the assembly. There were two flags of Japan on his uniform, red circles enveloping his two arms. 

“A daughter too,” Koshiro said, taking his gloves off. “She was born a month ago.”

“Oh,” said the man. “Congrats.”

“Kaguya,” Koshiro said. He folded and unfolded the pair of leather gloves, its beige contour blurred in the air. 

“Huh?” asked the man.

“I named her Kaguya,” he told him, “after the princess in the story. The princess from the moon.” He gazed up at the sky. It was gray, the color of asphalt roads, and studded with a few patches of woolen clouds. “I named her Kaguya so when I’m going to fly that plane, I’ll know that I’m only getting closer to her. To the moon.”

***

She woke up.

Flecks of light studded the tatami beside her. She stretched her arms out and rose from the floor. Quietly, she opened the paper door and stepped out onto the balcony. The night above her was still dark, the silhouette of stars like strings embedded in white dye. Underneath the lapis-blue duvet, the horizon was glittering in yellow, its contour jagged like a sharp line slicing through the clouds beneath her, beneath the castle. 

“It was beautiful,” she told the coachman later on in the day. 

“Mm?” He asked.

She gazed out of the window of the carriage. “The sora,” she said. The sky.

***

Seiko could hear her own footsteps against the slate ground, the bouquet of chrysanths in her hands flapping in the air. Sora trailed behind her, his hands tucked into the pocket of his gray trousers. He was draped in a brown leather jacket. 

As they turned down another path, she finally stopped before a grave. On the stone was the inscribed word, Morofushi.

Seiko took the flowers out, untying its ribbon. She handed the empty glass vase over to Sora for him to refill the water. 

“You know,” he said, finally taking his hands out of his pockets. She turned around.

“My father named my sister Kaguya,” he said, “after the princes in the folktale. She comes from the moon, he used to say a lot.” She stood still. The sky above was darkening. “I think she’s up there now,” he went on, canting his head up. “Up there, on the clouds. Ready to take a train over to the moon.”

“Do you think she will forget us?” Seiko asked him, thrusting her hands up into the air, her fingers clenched into fists. 

“Maybe,” Sora said, shrugging. “But I think she’ll dream about us, from time to time. Not to remember. Not exactly.” He thought about the blast, his sister, her hair scalped off, swollen arms and bloated face. “But to never forget.” 

***

The door of the hospital room opened. 

The man looked up from his trousers. His newspapers dropped onto the floor. A nurse walked out of it toward him, her round glasses studded with light reflected by the windows behind him. 

“Your daughter is perfectly healthy,” she said. He could see that she was smiling underneath her white mask. “Your wife too.”

The man smiled. He knew that Seiko had always been in good health.

“Your daughter,” the nurse went on, “her name is–?”

“Kaguya,” he said, picking up the papers from the ground. “After my sister. Kaguya Morofushi.” 

– Renee Chen