Hello, Nuriko.
 

    The news just came back officially.
 

    I knew beforehand, of course. I knew when it happened.
 

    They'll be stripping your room tomorrow, so I came in tonight.
 

    If I look around, I can pretend that you're still here. I can pretend that you just stepped out for a moment. I can almost hear you moving around in the other room, about to come out and greet me, apologizing for being so long.
 

    But you won't.
 

    I did NOT give you permission to go off and die, Nuriko!
 

    Well. Now I've said it. Or thought it, rather.
 

    Our ancient forebears thought that to name a thing gave it power. Perhaps they were right.
 

    Your brother told us what things of yours he wanted sent back to your family. It was a very short list. He left the disposal of the rest up to us.
 

    I can't believe they care that little. That he doesn't care enough to go through your possessions himself instead of leaving them to strangers.
 

    Strangers... you had a great many acquaintances at court, but did you have any real friends?
 

    I don't think so. Except for that little maid of yours, and we other seishi, nobody here got close enough to be a real friend to you for some reason. Why was it? Did you keep them off deliberately, afraid to care? Did you offend them by being in many respects utterly honest? How much pain did you need to be in before someone as direct as you could turn subtle?
 

    I told your maid she could have anything of yours which she wanted. I suppose that leaves the rest of the disposal of your things up to me.
 

    I have an urge to do something outrageous with your belongings, just to teach your family a thing or so about proper duty towards a son, even a dead one.
 

    I think perhaps I'll donate your dresses and cosmetics to a lower-middle-class brothel. The young women there will probably never have had such fine things in their lives.
 

    I thought that might tickle your fancy.
 

    Why did you have to die? I need you around to keep me from growing too depressed. To tease me when I'm getting too pompous. To keep me sane.
 

    You were always the best friend I ever had. I would have gladly died in your place if only I were not emperor. Saa, I would have if only there were someone halfway qualified to take my place — I know you and the others would look after that person.
 

    I'm sorry — more sorry than I can say — to speak of conditions at such a time. To you of all people.
 

    But then again, you of all people understand most clearly what it is to BE Emperor without having to be so yourself. I must always be emperor first and man second. Except that with our shared bond, I am Emperor Saihitei first, the shichiseishi Hotohori second, and merely myself a rather distant third. I'm surprised that I ever get to do anything I want to do.
 

    Now I really miss you. You and Miaka are the only ones who can ever cheer me up when I'm like this.
 

    And I'm sorry that I could not love you as you would have liked. I care — cared — about you deeply; you came into my world so slowly and quietly that I did not realize just how deeply you had entrenched yourself until I felt you die. But it wasn't in the way you wanted. Not with desire. Not the way you felt about me.
 

    I am sorry that I did not realize how you felt for a long time. I must have often hurt you unintentionally. I had thought you were teasing me, and I have spent so much time this past year absorbed in Suzaku no Miko that I would be surprised that you had not thrown a plate of food at me long since, if I did not know how great a laughingstock it would make of my beauty.
 

    On second thought, I am surprised that you did not do it anyway. I must have been incredibly annoying, and a beautiful face is no excuse for rude behavior.
 

    It's not fair of you to die before you can see me embarrass myself like a gangly student taking the government examinations, apologizing for something I should have known better than to do in the first place.
 

    I need you to be here, Nuriko. You would come at this time of night and talk to me about all sorts of things, and sometimes I'd listen, and sometimes I'd brush you off. But you kept coming. And I need you to go on doing that. I would — I would marry you tomorrow if it meant you would come back, even if I had to take you barefoot in your underrobe.
 

    But maybe you wouldn't settle for that. You're not — you weren't — an emperor. You didn't have to settle for second best. I doubt you'd have stood for half of the things I have always known that I must probably do someday.
 

    I am NOT going to cry. It is beneath the dignity of an emperor to bawl like a little child whose pet dog has died.
 

    I did not mean to imply that you were in any way a dog or a pet...!
 

    Oh, Gembu take it to the netherhells of ice. I am going to cry. It's all right. No one's here except for you, and you won't tell.
 

    You never did.
 

    I don't want you to be gone. But all the emperors in the world can't order the Yama Kings to give back one thing that they have taken.
 

    That's what my nurse told me when I was small. She was a very great lady. You'll like her if you meet her, there in the land of the dead.
 

    For what it's worth, I would have most likely wed you by now if you'd been a woman in truth. We get along well together. You make me laugh. That's all one can reasonably expect in an imperial marriage, legends aside, and more than is in most.
 

    And also you were — did they make you, in your masquerade as a woman, read Amefuri's Aite no Makura no Soshi in your studies, as my tutors did me? Sailoh positively seems to breed philosophers. I think it has something to do with the winter that sweeps in off the steppes... there can't be much else to do. At least that work wasn't as dry-as-dust-boring as some of the others.
 

    One of the few things in that book which I actually remember was that there are two kinds of family: those you are born with, and those which you choose for yourself.
 

    Well, I choose you. Chose you. I've never had any close relations, unless you count my parents, and they didn't have much time for me even when they were alive. If ever I'm a father, I shall make time to spend with my child. Did you ever know how envious I was of those of you who have or had siblings close to you? Even if you lost them, to have had them...
 

    Nuriko, my graceful willow, I need your shade. And now that I've had it for such a short time, I don't know... what will I do without you to tease us, to almost casually depress my pretensions with your excessive swooning, to be the glue between the Suzaku Shichiseishi in general and between shichiseishi no Hotohori and kohtei no Saihitei in particular?
 

    I have no idea whether or not this is even reaching you in any fashion; it probably isn't. I'm probably just talking to myself and to an empty room redolent of your presence. But if by Suzaku's grace you can somehow hear this, I tell you now before all the gods that I loved you: as a comrade; and as a kinsman; and as a friend.
 

    Bie lao, Nuriko.