“He also runs a sword through a straw target every morning before dawn. The noodle cart pays the bills. The sword keeps him alive.” Kazuo looked back at the chrysanthemum. “He will not miss.”
“I have no death poem,” Kazuo said.
The old man felt the weight of the morning settle on his chest. “And the ceremony? The ritual space? The white kimono? The kashiwade—the clapping of hands?”
The blade fell.
The head did not roll. It dropped clean, a perfect cut, and the body knelt for a moment longer, a fountain of red painting the white chrysanthemum, before it toppled forward.
From his sleeve, Kazuo drew a folded paper, creased and re-creased, the ink smudged in places as if from tears or rain. He handed it over. The old man read it slowly. It was a debt notice. The family shrine, the last piece of land, the final anchor to a name that had once made peasants prostrate themselves—all of it would be seized by the end of the month.
“Then write one now,” said the old man, who had seated himself on the veranda, his legs numb from the cold.