“No. I’ll never get it out of my head. Toward the end, when she shouldn’t have been able to say anything at all anymore, the Monk reached a hand up to my face. Touched my cheek, like a lover does. And she said, ‘Stop’—but I didn’t stop.”

“You had to do it.”

“Yes. I had to do it. By then, she would have died anyway. And others with her. I had to finish what I started. But I didn’t have to start down that path—the path of violence. Of murder. And now I know it was all for nothing. The guards were only here for show. They weren’t the real enemy. They never were. They were just people, like us. People who went down a path—went farther and farther down it, until they couldn’t find their way back home.”

“You were trying to save us. All of us. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Once the Monk was dead, the others got brave, and we killed the rest of the guards together. But the others were too hesitant. Their blows were too soft. It fell to me to finish it. And I did—again and again. Now I know who I am.”

“That’s not who you are.”

“What more are we? Our memories, our actions, our memories of our actions. Nothing more than that.”

“Is there someone who cares about you? In the other world? The one we all want to get back to?”

Indra shrugged. “There are people waiting for the old Indra. But no one is waiting for this Indra.”

“I want there to be something I can say to make you feel better. But I think nothing will make it better but time. You have to give it time.”

Given time, even the stones will flow.

What was that? A fragment of a half-forgotten poem. But it was true. Time.

“It sounds like a cliché. But it is not. Time is what is needed.”

But Eiko had his doubts: the Minaguchi-ya had burned, but the memories were still there. He could not tell Indra that: it would not help. And what he also did not tell Indra was that he had begun to build a new memory palace. It was humble—nothing but a cabin on an Okinawa hillside—a single room with a cot, a chest of drawers, a rolltop desk, and a rough-hewn, scratched table with a lantern on it by which to read. It was always evening there, and the rainy season fireflies danced outside the window.