Minari Shigeyuki was the scribe. My handwriting has always been poor, and the thought of showing it to the translator would have added to my discomfort. Also, storytelling was what I knew; story writing was your domain. It soothed me to have a listener as attentive as you had been, Yakumo. Do you remember what you had said about this distant relative of mine when you first met him? You declared in feigned exasperation that I was related to everyone in Japan. Then you noted with admiration that Shigeyuki had the face of a Tokugawa samurai. That stern elongated face hid a nimble, refined intellect that surprised even you, Yakumo. You were pleased to offer the young scholar a room within this house, and he repaid you in kind with the research that he would conduct on your behalf. Fireflies in the poems of yore, you first requested of him. He found them everywhere in the ancient texts, yet he had never seen them before you. “Herun-sensei is a conjurer,” he had confided in me.

Shigeyuki is still employed by the Institute for the Compilation of Historical Materials, Yakumo. He remains unmarried. He and I both know that he will remain so. A remnant of the old way, deviant and degenerate are what some of the Tokyo newspapers write about the practice of nanshoku these days. So many of the modern men of this city seem to agree. No wonder Shigeyuki prefers the archives.

A man who must hide his heart can be trusted with your own, I told myself.

Ochiai Teizaburō, your former student from Tokyo Imperial University, was the translator. He asked nothing by way of compensation. He vowed, Yakumo, that he too would do anything for Herun-sensei. He repeatedly apologized to me for any mistakes that he might have made, as he had completed the translation in such haste. I repeatedly apologized to him, as I was the sole cause of that haste. I had given him the pages of your story with only a month remaining before their English counterpart had to be in your Elizabeth’s hands.

I had wanted to begin that first telling with the day of your final departure, but then I heard your advice, Yakumo—Leave the end for the end, Sweet Wife!—and I began with the introduction in Matsue instead. But soon I became lost in its timeline, revealing and indiscreet.

Shigeyuki, who had been transcribing silently up until then, asked if he could interrupt the recitation of events. “Facts are akin to fish bones,” he said. “If what you want is to serve the flesh, then the bones can be discarded,” he suggested.

A man who must hide his heart is also a skilled storyteller, Yakumo.

I discarded the bones and served forth the following to your Elizabeth: