Kaito fell to his knees, clutching the half-eaten fruit. The vision didn't end. It multiplied. He saw his mother’s heart break when he left for the city at eighteen—not because she was angry, but because she knew he would never come back to live. He saw his childhood friend’s heart break when he chose Hana over her, a choice he had never even realized was a choice. He saw the village elder’s heart break forty years ago, when his dog had run into a hunter’s snare and the elder had been too slow to save it.
Kaito lived with that knowledge for forty more years. He watched Yuki grow, marry the kind man with glasses, have children of her own. He watched her heart crack and mend and crack again. And every time, he was there with warm rice porridge and a quiet hand on her shoulder. yama hime no mi
He knelt in front of her, took her cold little hands, and said, "Yuki, I know. I know you tried to take care of me. But that was never your job. I am your father. It is my job to take care of you. And I failed. I walked past your mother. I didn't see her kimono. I didn't see you breaking. But I see it now." Kaito fell to his knees, clutching the half-eaten fruit
He never told her about the fruit. But one evening, when she was in her forties, she found him sitting on the porch, staring at Mount Kurama. He saw his mother’s heart break when he
The story they told was always the same. The princess, whose name was lost to time, had loved a mortal hunter. When the hunter was slain by a boar god, she climbed to the highest peak and wept for three hundred days. On the last day, her tears turned to blood, and her body dissolved into the roots of a single tree. That tree, they said, bore a fruit once every century: the Yama Hime no Mi . It was the color of a sunset bruise, and it smelled like longing.
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