Year of the Boar, Thirteenth Month, Day 16. Postscript.

 I decided that I would try to talk to Airi again this afternoon but when I went to find her, she was kneeling over her trunk, sobbing. 

I asked her whatever was the matter and wordlessly, she held out some paper . It was a crumpled mess but I could see the seals of Pale Twilight and Silent Thunder. The letters... I had forgotten about them in my concern for her and then because of my preoccupation with what passed between us. There appeared to be a third, too, with a seal I did not recognise. She told me that she had forgotten she had the third. She had meant to give it to me when she arrived at Dying Crane the first time but she had been carrying it around for so long that she did not remember... 

I did not understand why the letters would make her cry and she said that she had ruined them. She had made a promise to bring them to me and they were ruined. I could not believe that there was nothing more to it than that. It was not her fault. I took them from her gently and said that it did not matter but she would not be consoled. 

I knelt with her until the crying stilled and then held out a hand to her to help her up. We went into the main room together and I attempted to salvage the letters. I was able to get the gist of Seira's letter although it appears that she was either very drunk when she wrote it or she never learned to write properly... I handed it straight to Atsuko sighing heavily. Seira does not intend to return to Dying Crane. She says is disappointed that she has failed to be of help to me and she is sorry. So now I must find another way to manage my House. I thought she was my friend... but evidently, I was wrong...

Kaede's letter was stranger. It was difficult to decipher due to smudges and water damage but it seems that she has written to all of the Houses to express concern that Rani is not who she says she is. Rani... her visit seems like it was aeons ago; I barely remember it although I am sure that if I leaf through the pages of my journal from that time, I will have written something about her. I gave that to Atsuko as well. I am uncertain how I should proceed.

Finally, I turned over the third letter; despite being carried around by Airi for months on end and then being soaked in the ruined trunk, the seal was still intact save for the tiniest chip in the deep green wax but I did not recognise the crescent design at all. I felt anxious about opening it; afraid of what I might read in it. What if it Shigeru were masquerading as someone else...? What if he had simply designed a new seal for himself so that he could send anonymous threats...? I felt my head spinning and my breath coming shallowly. Eventually, after staring at it for some time, I handed it to Atsuko muttering that I could not... 

After a few fractions of a stick, Atsuko handed it back to me, grinning. Broken Rampart, she said.

Broken Rampart. He had not forgotten me  and he had not abandoned me after all. He wrote that he is well and he had uncovered some of the information he had been seeking although he did not say what. He said he hoped to return to Dying Crane and offered good wishes for my health and so on... 

I looked at Airi, questioning how she had come by a letter from Broken Rampart and was flabbergasted to discover that they were great friends. They had been in a relationship for a brief time before Airi decided to pursue music properly. They do not see each other often due to their itinerant lifestyles but they remain close in spirit. He had been in Laughing Spider's Lands when she performed there last and had asked her to get the letter to me.

It was as if the gods had finally said their piece. The one friend I had trusted with my darkest secrets had sent me another... When my eyes welled with tears, they were from happiness for the first time in as long as I can remember.