Flower Spelling - Chapter 0
Chapter 0 – To the End of Bakumatsu
“No way, a temporary cancellation?”
Upon seeing the bulletin board on campus, a female university student who had just turned 20 this year let out an involuntary gasp. With her straight black hair trimmed below her shoulders, she donned a basic, not overly sweet off-white chiffon blouse and navy pants for ease of movement. In the morning, she took advantage of the fact that she didn’t have any lectures to attend and cozied up until nearly 11:00 am, and in the afternoon, she went out to relax and discovered this.
With the toe of her low-heeled pumps, she kicked the ground aimlessly.
Unexpectedly, a poster next to her drew her attention.
… Heh, the Kyoto National Museum is hosting a special exhibition.
She’s been in Kyoto for a little over a year, having moved here from a minor provincial town to attend university. Despite residing in a city steeped in history, she has yet to visit many of Kyoto’s iconic locations.
Now that she had turned 20 and joined the grown-ups, she might as well take advantage of this opportunity to engage herself in Japanese history and culture for once. She was also encouraged by the fact that the exhibition was scheduled to end today.
Retrieving her phone from her backpack hanging over her shoulder, she began looking for directions to the museum right away.
?
The museum was relatively packed, presumably due to being a weekday.
She ultimately arrived at the corner of the unique exhibition, which was the highlight, after pacing through the display items along the way. Sakamoto Ryoma, a warrior from the end of the Edo era, is this year’s event’s theme.
Although he is a well-known figure, she only recognized his name from school and television.
Brushing aside the letter, which was written in a rambling script that she couldn’t tell was good or bad, she took a position in front of the enormous, two-fold folding screen that had attracted her eye.
‘… Sakamoto Ryoma was talking with Nakaoka Shintaro when he was attacked by assassins and lost his life… This is the folding screen that was presented at the actual assassination spot… You can see the blood trail…’
She followed the description provided and saw reddish-black specks splattering in the left corner where the cat was painted when she drew closer and peered at it.
Wow, it’s true… It’s sort of scary how fresh it is.
As she stepped back in fright, she abruptly felt dizzy, and her bag slipped off her shoulder. The phone shattered against the floor and made a smashing sound as it sprang out from within. Hastily, she crouched down to pick it up, only to find that her vision had become twisted, as though it is stirred by a spoon.
What! What is going on!?
Her palm pierced through the glass and hurtled into the sky as she grasped for the display case to hold her swaying body.
It was as though she had been thrown into viscous water.
Without understanding why, she struggled to get out?and then suddenly she was thrust outside.
“… Eh?”
“Clear the way, clear the way!”
In the flash of an eye, a young man in a loincloth pushed a heavy-looking cart beside her and drove away.
What is this? Where am I?
After the dust had settled, she was welcomed by a landscape that bore little resemblance to the museum she had just been in.
The terrain is bare and unpaved. On both sides of the wide street, there are rows of Japanese houses in a pure Japanese style, and the noren hanging on the eaves of the houses, which appeared to be merchant houses, fluttered in the breeze.
Passersby who had stopped at one point or another surrounded her in the distance. They were whispering to each other in a hushed tone, eyeing her as if they were inspecting a peculiar object.
“Oi, you.”
A young man approached and stepped in front of her, the wind blowing off his shoulders.
“You, you. You’re dressed out of place. Where the hell did you come from? Don’t tell me you’re one of those foreigners we’ve been hearing about?”
“… Ah… that… I am…”
Her tongue was tangled up in a frenzied knot. As if she had flu, her entire body was trembling, and she was on the verge of collapsing to the ground.
“We’re not going anywhere, dammit. For a moment, come over to the guardhouse.”
As he tugged her arm vehemently, she let out a voiceless scream.
That’s when it happened.
“?Wait!”
A pleasant voice reverberated through the area.
The crowd divided to the left and right, and a middle-aged woman in a black haori with a dignified air advanced forth.
“That girl is with me!”
“She’s with Miss?”
“She is the daughter of an acquaintance who took care of me a long time ago. She used to work for a foreigner in Yokohama, but I brought her here for some reason. I’m sorry to have caused such a commotion, everyone.”
The young man in front of her and the others who had assembled nodded as if they understood what was going on, then left one by one, apologizing to her while she remained frozen.
“Come on, let’s go.”
The lady removed her haori and handed it to her, saying, “You’ll stick out like a sore thumb in that clothing,” as she briskly went ahead of her. She was dazed but followed her.
Crossing the street, the bridge, and crossing the street again?
No matter where she goes, there are no asphalt roads, no tall buildings to be looked up at, no trains, no cars.
Where exactly is here?
Is this a dream?
Her heart flooded with questions.
They must have been walking for over an hour now. She was out of breath with her legs throbbing with pain. Regardless, whether she realized it or not, the woman kept moving forward at a constant speed, never glancing back.
When she was about to shout, the woman finally reached a house in the middle of the street.
“I have returned.”
“Welcome back, landlady.”
The woman who greeted her in a soothing voice – she must have been in her mid-twenties – spotted the girl standing there at the entrance and questioned, “Who is that girl?”
“I need to speak with her about something. Please tell everyone not to come upstairs for a bit because I need to speak with her privately.”
“Yes.”
The woman who was referred to as the landlady urged her to come up the side steps with her eyes, and she did so.
“… Please excuse me…”
She followed carefully behind her into a room on the second floor’s backside.
The landlady settled with her back against the alcove, waiting for her to take a seat across from her before opening her mouth.
“Well… First of all, can you let me know your name? My name is Tatsumi. This is Tatsumi Residence. And you are?”
“… I am, I…”
After a beat, she said her name, and the landlady nodded her head and remarked, “I see you can understand me.”
“So, where did you come from? Unless my eyes have gone senile, it seemed to me that you materialized out of the blue.”
“That, that is…” She clenched the palm of her hand on her lap. “I was supposed to be at… a museum in Kyoto. But while I was viewing the folding screen, I suddenly felt sick and thought I was going to collapse, and before I realized it, I was over here…”
“Kyoto, about Kyoto… Unfortunately, this is not the capital of Heaven, but Edo, the capital of Japan.”
“Edo…”
The landlady rose to her feet and opened the shoji window that had been shut.
A gentle breeze blew across the room.
A high, wide, and boundless blue sky.
As far as the eye can perceive, the townscape is full of houses with tiled roofs.
It was certainly different from any view she had ever been exposed to.
Edo… Edo period…?
In a trembling tone, she inquired.
“… Um, what year is it now…?”
“You mean the calendar? Well, the calendar was just changed from Man’en to Bunkyuu a while ago. So it’s the first year of Bunkyuu.”
“Uh… not the original number, but… what year is that in the western calendar?”
“Saireki? What’s that? Is that the calendar of your country?”
This was futile, the conversation was getting nowhere.
She desperately struggled to get her head out of confusion.
“Um, so who’s the shogun now?”
The landlady gave a puzzled look.
“I don’t think the common people would know the name of such a person who is above the clouds… Yes, it must have been two hundred and fifty or sixty years since Lord Tokugawa reigned. You, are you alright? Your complexion seemed pale.”
Two hundred and sixty years… Then I am now at the end of the Edo period… at the Bakumatsu…
Confronted with a reality that she could not deny, the thread of her tense feeling was severed.
She collapsed limply on the spot, and the landlady addressed her in a stern tone.
“Get your act together! I’m not sure what happened, but you’re here now. Then you’ll have to make your home here. I’m not sure what type of environment you were in previously, but here, women and children must work to make a decent living. How long are you planning to stay stupefied? Only a young lady from a major store can sit idly and eat a bun… If you’re willing, I’ll let you work here.”
“… Eh?”
“It’s not like you can’t go home again. If you came here unexpectedly, you could also return home unexpectedly. However, if you die before then, it will be meaningless. It’s only a fluke that I ran into you there.”
‘What do you say?’ replied the landlady by her eyes pressing for an answer.
“…”
She cast a glance down at her smartphone, which had been clutched in her right hand for a long time.
On the phone screen, the word “out of range” flashed ruthlessly.
The faces of her family and friends surfaced in her mind.
Her parents’ house, where she spent many years, the university campus, where she went every day, the modest apartment where she moved out on her own for the first time, and her favorite café, where she spent time with her friends…
If only there is a way to go back to that time again?
She set her phone aside gently and positions both of her hands on the tatami.
Lowering her head profoundly, her rigid motion conveyed as much sincerity as possible.
—This was the dawn of her long, long life at the end of the Edo era.
T/N:
For any upcoming bold text, please refer to translation notes which I will explain in detail
Tatsumi Residence – ????. the word residence here can actually be read as shop, restaurant, store, etc. But I chose residence since she’s going to live there. In romaji, the written word is Tatsumiya
Saireki – ??, Literally western calendar but the word western calendar in Japanese does not exist yet during the time
This was my first translated novel so please be aware that the translation might not be that good and expect inaccuracies regarding the historical facts