“It says that the concert doesn’t start until 7:00,” Kouichi said, looking at her ticket. She hesitated. “So do you want to look for him today? Nii-san.”

It never occurred to Yui to disagree. “Let’s go. According to the obaa-san, the address of the cemetery was Hattori Cemetery, located in Osaka itself. We could get a map; take a bus.”

“Mm,” Kouichi nodded. She paused. “Do you think we should…bring flowers?”

“White Egret Orchid,” Yui said simply.

“Of course,” Kouichi agreed again, stowing her ticket into her pocket. “Naturally.”

After exiting the overcrowded bus and buying the flowers from a nearby florist, the twins soon found themselves walking through the arch that towered over one of the cemetery’s several entrances. Taking care to stay on the sidewalk and to not tread on any of the plates that listed the names of the dead, for a few moments they stood in silence, breathing in and observing their environment.

In contrast with their previous surroundings and beating hearts, the quietness of Hattori Cemetery was startlingly salient. Occasionally around them, a light wind blew through the air, swaying the blades of grass in the direction of its path. Above them in the sky, the clouds rolled gently, occasionally joined by a passing bird. But aside from these small movements of nature, the many gravestones that dotted the field remained frozen in an eternal lifelessness.

 There was something humbling about the place that held so many dead. Rows and rows of plaques carved with unfamiliar names stretched out before them, each representing who had once breathed with life. With each stone or metal plate, the lives of thousands were unassumingly summarized, in birth and in death. And as Yui paused, listening to the stillness that not even birds interrupted, she understood.

The fragility of human life, the fleetingness of which people walked the planet, and the inevitability of their deaths—ultimately, what did it matter? Regardless of the kind of life led, or the type of death suffered, the same fate awaited them all. Her young brother’s life was cut short that brutal January day, but in the face of eternity, what difference were a few more decades of life on earth? Her gaze fell on several gravestones—there, a man had passed away at the ripe old age of 95; over there, a few feet away, a little girl had died before her 10^th birthday, and—

Somewhere in this cemetery lay the body of true Tokudaiji Kouichi. She felt it, inexplicably, with a certainty that she couldn’t put to words.

“Somewhere nearby,” Kouichi now said in a soft voice, “he’s here…” She held her flowers tightly to her chest. “That’s what I said. With each cemetery visit, I told myself… that somewhere, somewhere close, nii-san is probably buried…”

Yui allowed themselves another moment of reprieve, and then she spoke again. “Let’s split up.” Her gaze fell upon the scattered graves that dotted the grass, and she hesitated a bit before regaining her courage. “This cemetery is too big. Let’s separate and search on opposite sides. Call if you find anything, okay?” Kouichi nodded.

Two hours later, Yui was reaching the end of her patience and endurance. The high heels she had worn as cemetery etiquette were wearing into her ankles, compounding her already paranoid frame of mind that if the yakuza were to strike now, she would be an easy target.

She was just trying to convince herself that the yakuza wouldn’t really, really stage an attack in a graveyard when her cell-phone rang.

“Yui-chan…”

“Kouichi?” A memory from a not-too-distant past stirred in her mind. Huddled in the trees, shivering in the coldness of a Russian winter, she had received a call from Kouichi, who reported that—

“I-I think I found it…”

“The grave?” Suddenly, the implications of her words sank in, and a thousand potential images suddenly flashed through her mind. What did it look like? she wondered. Had they even given him a proper gravestone marker? Was his a large plaque, in honor of his heritage and past? Or maybe just a small plate, an insignificant nobody in the eyes of his killers?

“No—not yet. But I found the monument.” Kouichi’s voice was so faint. Yet, Yui knew, despite the sure pain her feet must also be feeling, her tonal quality had nothing to do with her physical state of exhaustion. “And that means it’s close.

“Can you come right over right now? I don’t think I can handle the rest by myself—”

Taking off her shoes, Yui stowed them into her bag and ran in tights, following the instructions of her sister through the weak signal that still connected them both together.

Up close, the statue was even more imposing than the way the photo depicted it. The swordsman, dressed as a traditional samurai, posed with his sword drawn, ready to strike. Though carved from stone, the cold, calculating expression in his eyes nonetheless sparked dread in Yui’s heart. It was an intentional design: Rather than using a neutral stance or even a different memorial symbol altogether, the person whom the statue honored wanted to be feared.

Yui stepped up to read the nameplate. Clearly, Matsugoro Ito was to be remembered.

Yui shook her head, trying to control her feelings. Right now, emotionally, she needed to be twice as strong. Standing one foot away, Kouichi still hadn’t moved from the spot where Yui had found her. Hands tightly clutching the bouquet of flowers as though it were a lifeline, she stared at the statue’s eyes, entranced. She was reliving her past.

Yui tore her gaze away and looked down.

And there, she found it.

“Oh my gosh—Kouichi—!”

Resting in the grass, almost lost to anonymity within its surrounding gravestone markers, was a small metal plate, with the letters carved in tiny print:

Tokudaiji Kouichi

1 July 1983 – 11 January 2000

There was an audible gasp; Yui wasn’t sure who it came from. Slowly, she sank to her knees. He was here. He was here. Finally, after over a decade of ignorance and silence, they were reunited at last.

“Onii-chan,” she began, and her voice cracked. Her hand reached out, falteringly, and as her fingers lightly brushed against the metal plate, she heard a thump behind her.

Kouichi had fallen to her knees. Her slightly-too-big suit ballooned a bit at the sudden drop; the flowers had left her hands. Her fingers flew to her face, and for a moment, Yui was sure she was going to cry.

But Kouichi never cries.

“Nii-chan,” she mumbled thickly, before scrambling up and bowing from the waist. Then just as quickly she was back on her knees. “Onii-chan! Kouichi-onii-chan—”

In the silence of a gravesite where thousands lay and not one breathed, all pretenses were dropped at last. “Etsuko, Kouichi-nii-chan,” Yui whispered, unable to hold back a sob, “we’re finally all together at last.” For the first time in twelve years, the three Tokudaiji siblings were in the same place. In spite of their frequent travels in their subsequent years, they had all managed to reunite in the very same country they had left together so many years ago. It was an ironic twist of fate, a bittersweet revelation.

Now Kouichi spoke again. “Nii-chan,” she began, as she picked up her fallen flowers and rearranged them. “Have you been watching us? Have you been well?” Yui watched as she placed the orchids down, one by one, on the grave. “I wonder if you’ve been proud of our decisions…” The flowers circled his name, obscuring his birthday and blotting out his death date. “Have I been doing a good job being you…?”

Yui stared at the arrangement, and then glanced down at her own bouquet. What would he have thought of their recent activities? She wondered. Would he have seen it as noble, or would he have, like their father, condemned them for their passionate actions?

“It was wrong to hate Koreans, all these years,” she murmured aloud. “Because they never did kill you, did they, nii-chan?”

“All that energy we spent, despising people we wronged more than they wronged us,” Kouichi added in a subdued voice. “How could we have been so…wrong?” And Yui knew she wasn’t merely referring to the correctness of their assumptions.

 “I wonder how many years he suffered, watching us like this,” Kouichi said sadly. “Killing the very people he probably died on peaceful terms with, and then hating their memory for the next decade...”

Yui had no words to counter her. Instead, she raised her eyes and glanced around, taking in the scenery around her. Eleven years ago, her older brother had stood tall, at this very spot, seeing what she now saw.

She desperately wanted to know what his last thoughts were, what kinds of feelings coursed through his heart as he bravely faced imminent death.

“But did he really know?” she asked, as a particular thought struck her. “When you were here, all those years ago…you both had thought you were still in Korea, didn’t you?”

Kouichi nodded, her eyes vacant and wide. And then Yui realized she was treading on dangerous ground.

For Kouichi herself now stood at the same place where she herself had nearly lost her life. The psychological implications of such a reminder, along with witnessing the death of the person whose name she now took on as her own, surely brought on the memories she had tried so hard to suppress over a decade ago…

Yui wanted to ask her about the details, about exactly what had happened that fateful January day, but she was scared. She remembered how even two years later, Kouichi would refuse to speak of it; thinking back to those dark and lonely years, Yui herself felt a bitterness rise up to her chest. She closed her eyes, willing the emotions to pass. But it was hard to suppress the scars from two years of silence and isolation.

In the end, the twins had lost much more than just their older brother.

131128 (Th) A/N: I have no excuse. I'm sorry. OTL. I went abroad and came back and am now finishing my last month(s) and preparing for graduation, so life had been hectic (honestly, it still is).  The reason I hadn't touched this story for months was because I've been discouraged/ completely stuck/ unsatisfied with my style. Over the two years since I had started this piece, I wrote a lot of other things and I think my style has matured/ improved (hopefully???), so going back and trying to deal with this story was a bit...frustrating.... anyway...

Thank you to all of those people who haven't unsubscribed yet OTL I promise I'll keep trying to improve >_<