Who would have thought you’d be the reason why I stay home all day, waiting for you to come home and plant yourself under our covers? Who would have thought you are the reason why I decided to learn how to cook and clean our house so that when you come home the first thing you see is a cozy, little house? Who would have thought that never lifting a sword in a day, weeks, months, years, is such an easy task? Who would have thought that one day I don’t need to savour the thick, milky blood to fall asleep every night?

I will wait for you every night, my dear, for your return from the battlefield. If one day I receive news that you will never be returning, if our ‘red string’ is cut by some peasant, I will cut every string that is holding me back, I will burn the world to the ground and bury everyone under our corpses, so that when we cultivate into a cherry blossom tree we will be, together, on the top of the world, watching the petals flutter onto the bones of the ones who dared to touch our red line. But until then, I will sit quietly under the moon, praising its beauty, while hearing the winds blow past my ears and the sound of your boots clicking in our cherry blossom yard.

-Yogo Mizuki