BEAUTY SAGA

STORY READER

KTS1 / Episode 9

Stillness

Kodama Takano stepped out of the zazen hall and began walking without a word.

The wooden corridor was cold beneath his feet.
Each step faded into the snow.

He slid open a door.
The air inside felt heavier.

The incense room absorbed sound. Outside, snow must have been falling softly, yet even that presence seemed distant. Sandalwood had settled into tatami and old wood. Light filtered through the lattice, tracing a narrow band across the floor.

Light enters an empty tatami room through the lattice window ahead, with dark wooden posts and beams and sliding doors on either side.

Kodama Takano stood at the center.
There was no posture, no visible tension—only stillness.

Gabriel realized he was gripping the small vial. A faint tremor reached his fingertips. He could not tell whether it came from the liquid or from himself.

Gabi stands in a tatami room in a black hoodie and jacket, holding a small corked vial in one hand and looking ahead at an angle.

Kodama’s gaze rested on it.

“The color of the sea.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“It has deepened.”

Silence followed.

The weave of the tatami suddenly appeared sharper.

A close view of tatami crossed by light and shadow, with a round black incense burner and two slender implements farther back.

“You’ve been listening.”

The air from that street corner—the moment he had been stopped without warning—returned all at once.

Back then, Kodama had said: sometimes you hear what cannot be heard.

Gabriel had not understood. He thought it was about music.

But what he encountered in Kyoto entered him before sound.

The night when rhythm slipped from his body.
The noon when steam rose from soba and words became unnecessary.
The instant when blank space felt denser than ink.
The evening he sensed time itself breathing.

None of it had spoken aloud.

Yet his body had already heard.

A memory montage combines snow and icicles at the eaves, a man playing a flute, a bowl of soba, and a brush above white paper marked by a single drop of ink.

Kodama Takano lifted his eyes.

“Gabriel. The sea-colored water you carry—that is Shisui.”

He gently raised the red vial at his chest. Moonlight slipped through the lattice, red and blue-green briefly aligned.

In a room with lattice windows, Kodama Takano lifts a chain to show Gabi a small vial of red liquid. Facing him, Gabi holds a corked vial containing blue-green liquid.

“Shisui is the water of a Kewaishi.
A Kewaishi is one who tends life back into balance.”

He met Gabriel’s eyes.

“Your mother was one.”

Gabriel’s breath caught.

“The current has not been broken.”

With those words, a distant night rose within him.

It had been dark.
Only one lamp lit the room.
Outside the window was blackness, and as a child, Gabriel had been afraid of that dark.

A stranger sat across from his mother, shoulders shaking.

She did not answer at once.
She simply looked at the woman’s face.

To the child, the silence felt unbearably long.

Then she said quietly,

“It’s alright.”

Nothing more.

The darkness did not change.
But the woman’s breathing slowly steadied.

After a while, she left.

The door closed. The night returned.

Later, Gabriel had asked,

“Why was she crying?”

His mother knelt to meet his eyes.

In a warmly lit room, his mother, wearing a pale patterned top, leans toward young Gabi, whose head is seen in the foreground.

“It’s alright.
For her. And for you.”

With those words, his mother held him close.

In the dark room, only her scent was distinct. It was peaceful.

That scent now overlapped with the fragrance of the incense room.

Kodama Takano lowered his gaze back to the vial.

“Your sea has found its balance.”

He glanced toward the garden.

Kodama Takano stands beside a lattice window and looks outside, with long silver hair, a black coat, dark eyes and a small red vial hanging at his chest.

“Tonight, it just happens to be a full moon.”

For a moment, something softened in his expression.

“Sit.
We begin.”

Gabriel knelt. The cold of the tatami rose through his knees.

Kodama lowered himself opposite him. The boards gave a faint creak.

The air in the incense room tightened.

Kodama enclosed the vial in his hands and placed them gently over Gabriel’s.

The touch was light. Yet unmistakable.

Gabriel closed his eyes. He tried to inhale—and stopped.

The two sit facing each other on tatami. Kodama Takano, seen from behind, places his hands over Gabi’s hands around a small vial. Gabi has his eyes closed, and a thin trail of smoke rises from an incense burner to the right.

The rhythm in his chest grew louder.

In the next instant, a breath fell at the center of his brow.

Sound receded.

His heartbeat faltered once, then shifted. The liquid inside the vial answered.

Clouds moved. Moonlight slid through the lattice, crossing the floor until it reached his forehead and the vial in his hands.

Kodama Takano kept his eyes on Shisui and slowly exhaled.

“Alright.”

The scent of sandalwood seemed to draw nearer.

A thin thread of smoke rises and drifts sideways from a round black incense burner in a dim tatami room, with bands of light falling through a lattice window.

Gabriel opened his eyes.
＊

Kodama looked beyond the lattice.

“The sea does not move alone.

Wind raises the waves.
The sun shapes the currents.
The moon pulls the tide.

When it withdraws, it returns.
When it returns, it withdraws.
When it rages, it settles.
When it settles, it moves again.

This has not changed since long ago.”

A snow-covered garden is seen through a wooden lattice, with snow on a stone lantern and trees and long lattice shadows across the tatami inside.

He lowered his gaze slightly.

“Because of that cycle, life continues.”

Moonlight caught the trembling surface of the vial.

“The sea appears to be moved.

Yet what is supported also supports.
What is moved also generates movement.
What receives light also gives light.”

Moonlight gathered on the sea-colored surface.

A full moon hangs above a dark sea, its reflection forming a path across the water, while the waves in the foreground appear translucent blue-green.

“A Kewaishi is the same.
Restore, and return.”

He looked at Gabriel.

“Polish the color of your sea.”

Moonlight rested on the vial.

Gabriel tightened his grip ever so slightly.

In his chest, a small flame stirred.

It did not feel like standing alone.