Blood Path Fragment 1

"Is there anyone from this house who died alone?"
The ascetic said in a low, cracked voice.
His accent was so thick that it took me a while to understand what he was saying.
The ascetic, who had suddenly knocked on our gate, exhaled a freezing breath as he looked at us sitting around the hearth.
Unlike us, who were wearing padded cotton clothes, the ascetic was very thinly dressed and was a truly strange person, looking as if he were dead while still alive.
"A woman who was barren, suffered from her lungs, and died in the shed in the garden."
There is.
I was the smallest child in the house, so I jumped up.
There is, how did he know? I almost shouted it out.
When I looked at Father and Mother, they were both silent and said nothing. I tugged on Mother's sleeve.
"It's Auntie Osome, isn't it, what the ascetic is talking about. It's Auntie Osome."
"Don't say unnecessary things."
Mother slapped my hand and said quietly.
But the ascetic seemed to have heard clearly and looked toward us.
──Ah, this ascetic is blind.
I was surprised when I saw the ascetic's cloudy eyes.
"I saw that girl standing blankly in the graveyard. Since there was no funeral, it seems she couldn't go anywhere."
"She left the Ooyama house, that's the other family's problem."
Grandmother spat out.
Auntie Osome was Grandmother's younger sister. She married into the Saburo family in the village and died a few years ago. When I visited her after hearing she had died, Auntie Osome was as thin as a mummy, and the collar of her single-layered kimono was frayed.
It was a kimono she had woven when she was at our house. She must have only had that one, wearing it until it wore out.
It was too much.
It was Auntie Osome who taught me, saying, "From now on, even women should know how to read."
She was beautiful, smart, and a wonderful person, but she was thrown away like unsightly trash. Even though she had married, she wasn't even allowed into her husband's family grave.
The ascetic stared at me—though he couldn't really see—and made a whistling sound.
"She is buried under one of the paving stones of the grave where she married into. Please, properly, properly hold a memorial service for her."
"How did you know it was our family?"
"That girl led me straight here from the grave."

After a while, Grandmother took me to the graveyard. She carried a basket as if she were just going to work in the fields.
Then, we went to Auntie Osome's husband's family grave and turned over the paving stones surrounding the grave one by one.
When one of the stones rolled over, I couldn't help but lose my footing.
Auntie Osome was there.
She was buried in the ground, dried up like a mummy. Her eyes were sunken, and her skin was the color of dirt.
She should have turned into a mound of earth years ago.
Could she not return to the earth, nor return home, and was she waiting?
Grandmother reached out her hand gently to Auntie Osome's head. The hair that still remained fell off in clumps.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... Osome."
Grandmother's tears poured down onto Auntie Osome's dried-up face.
"Osome... just because I married you off to ■■... you... you might have been able to escape. It's my fault... my..."
The tears that flowed without soaking in looked as if Auntie Osome herself were crying.

Grandmother and I secretly replaced the stone where Auntie Osome had been buried with a round stone we picked up nearby. That way, we would know immediately.
I don't know if Auntie Osome returned to the earth after that.
The other family didn't seem to be heartless enough to throw away what we secretly offered, so the incense, flowers, and small meal became a way to remember Auntie Osome.
That was the first and last time we disturbed the grave, and that ascetic never came to our house again.