I had a brother, one cycle of the Chinese Zodiac older than me.

His name, Norimichi.

Smart and serious - so serious he could be a bit high-strung - but he was always a kind brother to me.

Our parents were proud that he was their son. They seemed worried that his body wasn"t that strong, but it"s not as though they wished for him to be an Olympic athlete, for to do so would be to incur divine punishment. I think they would have been happy just for him to inherit the temple, which has been in our family for generations.

So, when my older brother was 12 years old and I, the second son, was conceived by chance and born, my mother and father were simply happy that I was healthy, and didn"t have any great expectations of me in terms of studying, or following the path of Buddha. A nice thing about that was that I spent my childhood running free across the hills and fields. Whenever he saw my cuts and sc.r.a.pes, or the insects or plants that I"d brought home as souvenirs, he"d smile at me.

"Masafumi, you"re such a free spirit."

When he ruffled my hair, his hands were already the size of an adult"s.

My wonderful brother decided, when he was still in school, that he would enter the priesthood and become a Buddhist priest. After graduating from university and while a.s.sisting our father, the chief priest, in his duties, he zealously pursued the trainings required to become a chief priest. For my brother, born and raised in the temple, learning the doctrine and the customs would not have been too hard. But the ten day ascetic retreats at places cut off from the outside world were about the limit of what his body could endure. They were far more severe than the trainings he had undertaken when he first joined the priesthood.

When I was in fifth grade, my brother spent a few days away from home. I seem to remember there was some religious training event nearby, or he was partic.i.p.ating in some group activity, and then he was planning on visiting the temples of his school friends. Originally, he was supposed to return after three days, but by the time he arrived home ten days had elapsed. Since my brother was so serious, naturally he"d informed my parents that his return would be delayed. But it seems he didn"t say a word about why it was delayed.

On the afternoon of the tenth day, my brother returned. I was at school when he arrived home, so I"m not sure exactly what happened. But, according to the people that help out around the temple, he had been earnestly apologetic.

That evening, my brother didn"t sit down with us for dinner. I felt uneasy about this, but my brother usually ate very little, and when he wasn"t feeling well his appet.i.te disappeared completely. I thought perhaps exhaustion from the trip had caught up with him.

When I returned from my bath, my brother was waiting for me in front of my room.

"Have you got a minute?"

I hadn"t seen him in a while, and his face looked gaunt. His face was gaunt, but his expression was gentle. I"m not sure if the comparison is appropriate or not, but his expression was that of an angelic maiden. I suppose you could call it ephemeral.

I nodded, and opened the door to my room. He sat down on the cushion I offered him, and slowly surveyed my room. Then he straightened his back, turned to me and with a serene look on his face he informed me:

"Masafumi. I must apologize to you."

This was a sudden apology. Of course, I had no idea why he was apologizing. My brother was always honorable. I couldn"t think of a single time that he had been unreasonable.

"I"ve decided to leave home."

"Huh?"

I couldn"t believe my ears. The only way I could make sense of what he said was if he was leaving to enter the Buddhist priesthood.

"And by leaving home, I mean I"ll be leaving the temple."

My brother slowly and calmly explained.

"You"re in fifth grade now Masafumi, so you should understand what it will mean when I leave the temple."

"That you won"t inherit the temple. Is that what you mean?"

"Indeed."

My brother nodded, then continued with, "And then."

"With me not inheriting the temple, people will probably expect that you will. And so, I apologize for all the trouble that will cause you. With me disappearing from the picture, it will also fall to you alone to honor and care for our parents. I think I should apologize for that too."

Slowly, I began to realize that he really was planning to leave home.

"Are you going away forever, is that what you"re saying?"

Leaving home. Leaving the temple. Not just that, it seemed like he was going to disappear from the world entirely. That"s probably what his "leaving home" was.

"Don"t make that face. I"m not suicidal, or anything like that. I"m leaving so that I can live a new life."

"I don"t understand. Can"t you live your new life without saying farewell to dad and mom and me? Leave home, say you won"t inherit the temple, but can"t you still come back home from time to time?"

I desperately wanted my brother to stay. But if that wish wasn"t to be granted, at least let him remain connected to us in some form. But my brother wouldn"t agree.

"For someone who expected to inherit the temple, and then threw it all away. I don"t think I"ll be able to come back here any more."

"Do you hate this temple?"

"It"s not a matter of hating it or not. It"s just that there"s a reason why I have to cast it aside. Something that means I can"t become a priest."

"And what"s that?"

My brother smiled, then shook his head. I don"t know if it was because he thought I was too immature to be told, or if it wasn"t something he wanted to talk about just then.

"What did dad have to say?"

"Well, he was opposed to it. But, that"s fine. It would have been worse if he was for it, because it meant he wanted to disinherit me."

When I heard that, it made my blood boil.

"You"re just being selfish."

"I know. I"m selfish. Selfish, but I still came to apologize to you. I didn"t expect you to understand."

I didn"t respond. I couldn"t express what I was feeling in words. I remained like that until my brother left the room, my hands balled into fists and my lips closed tight.

After that, it seemed my brother talked late into the night with our father in his room. By the time I awoke the next day, my brother was no longer around.

My father said to me:

"Forget that you ever had a brother."

I thought it was also selfish of him to say that to me. What about the ten years that I had spent with my brother? There"s no way I could ever forget about him.

My brother"s room was cleared. His belongings were put into a trunk and cardboard boxes, and then shut away in a closet. But, by no means were they thrown away. My mother and father still believed that he would see the error of his ways and return home.

Just like my brother had predicted, when the parishioners learned that my brother had left home they started looking at me as though I were the natural successor. My father didn"t say anything, but I had no doubt who he secretly hoped would inherit the temple. He was probably waiting for the day my brother returned home, but he couldn"t cling to such an aimless future.

About six months later, I don"t know how he came across this, but an acquaintance of my father brought us news that my brother was married and had a job. It seemed his bride was a Christian. It looked like that was a part of why my brother had to leave our house.

My brother had chosen her and cast aside his family. Consequently, he probably wouldn"t be coming home. It seemed this person had also learned where my brother was living, but my parents didn"t presume to ask for his address or telephone number. I think they gave up on him.

And yet, my brother did return. When I was in my first year of middle school.

He wasn"t alone, he brought with him a baby, about a year old. My brother"s daughter.

"I never thought I"d cross the threshold of this house ever again."

My brother bowed deeply before our parents. No, it wasn"t something as simple as that. He pressed his head against the tatami mat and didn"t raise it for a very long time. He said that he was paying the price for his shame. After that, he broached the topic of why he hadn"t been able to return home before then.

"Can this child, &h.e.l.lip; can Shimako be brought up here?"

"What about her mother?"

My father asked, his face hard.

"She died, less than a month after giving birth."

He said something about postpartum recovery, but it didn"t hold any meaning to me at the time.

"Why can"t you raise her?"

My father asked, again.

"If I could raise her, I"d want to do that."

He gently brushed Shimako"s arms as she dozed, leaning against his leg.

"Is there a reason you can"t?"

"My body"s wracked with disease."

Then, from my mother, seated beside my father, came a sound that was part exhalation and part sob.

The three of them, well, four if you count Shimako, were sitting together a short distance away from where I was allowed to sit, and as the conversation continued, my head pounded.

What do you mean, your body"s wracked with disease? If you go to hospital, can you be cured? Can you be saved with surgery?

But, after seeing my brother return home, discovering that he had a daughter, and that his daughter"s mother had died, I couldn"t control the bewildering thoughts swirling around my head.

At that point, my father was composed.

"Alright. But on one condition."

It may have been a feigned composure, but it was still magnificent.

"Anything, just tell me what it is."

He was obviously resolved to do whatever it took for his daughter. That he had returned home after vowing never to do so was proof enough of that.

"That you go straight to hospital, and follow whatever treatment the doctor lays out. So that you can dedicate yourself to the treatment, we"ll look after your child. But, we"re only looking after her for you. When you"re better, we"ll return her. Understood? You"ll have to work hard, for her sake, to beat the illness."

I wonder if my brother could have objected. The still sleeping Shimako was handed over to my mother, and my brother was booked into hospital that very day.

I couldn"t visit my brother for about a week, while they ran tests and performed scans on him. My mother took Shimako to visit him every day, but after a while he said they didn"t have to come any more. Since it was staffed primarily by nurses, there was no-one to chaperone her. Plus, he said that he"d rather Shimako played at the temple.

The results of the tests proved that my brother"s body was in an unexpectedly poor condition. I didn"t ask them directly, but could tell by the expression on my parent"s face after they met with his attending physician.

I considered that it might not be long until I lost my brother. That was incredibly disheartening to me. When my brother left two years ago, naturally I"d been upset, but I never thought that he might die - which provided a small amount of comfort. As long as he was alive, circ.u.mstances could change. But if he died, what then.

I looked at Shimako"s face as she was sleeping, oblivious, in the living room and the tears flowed.

To have lost her mother just after being born, and then to be losing her father. All while she was still small enough to use one of the cushions as a bed for an afternoon nap. All while her hands, balled together as she slept, were so tiny.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, I went to visit my brother in hospital on the way home from school. I was a bit scared of seeing him, but my mother said that I should visit him some time.

My brother had a bed by the window in a four-person hospital room. When I arrived, he was sleeping with the curtain still open. I didn"t see anyone in death"s thrall. It felt like G.o.d and man were in close attendance.

"Masafumi."

Before long, my brother awoke and smiled when he saw my face. When he looked at me, it was as though he said, "What should we play today, now that you"re here?"

"I"ve been wanting to see you. You should stop by more often."

"&h.e.l.lip; Yeah."

My brother sat up in bed, so I sat down on the chair beside him. It was the first time we"d sat down together and talked since the day he left. There must have been plenty of things I wanted to ask him, and plenty of things I wanted to tell him, but I didn"t know where to begin. So I told him about my cla.s.ses from that day, and the plants that I"d seen on the walk to the hospital.

He smiled as he listened to my stories.

"Masafumi, you"re a scholar of the outdoors. Someday soon, I hope you"ll teach this to Shimako."

It was said sorrowfully, implying, "Because I won"t be around to." Then, as though in a daze, I quickly changed topics.

"Did you leave home so that you could marry Shimako"s mother?"

"That"s right."

This time around, he said what he couldn"t say two years ago. So I continued to question him. I thought, at this point, he"d answer whatever I asked.

"Was she really a Christian? Did you become a Christian too? Was that why you didn"t want to live at the temple?"

"That"s not it."

My brother flatly corrected me.

"So we could be together, we both agreed to set aside the religion we believed in."

"But in this day and age, there"s plenty of married couples with different faiths."

I said. Because I thought that if you really loved someone, then it was silly to let religion stand in your way.

"That"s true. But in our case, it was something bigger than that."

My brother smirked. Then he looked out the window, and quietly said:

"Shimako"s mother was a member of a convent."

"She was a nun?"

"She was on the road to becoming one. We met on the journey, became captivated by each other, and fell in love."

So he"d cast aside his faith to follow that love. They"d both looked deep into their hearts, and chosen love. Consequently, they both chose to discard their faith. That determination was typical of my overly serious older brother.

"What was her name?"

"Sasahara Yuria. When we got married, she changed her name, becoming Toudou Yuria."

"That"s a foreign sounding name."

Finding out that some woman I"d never met shared the same surname as me made me feel somehow ticklish, and I blurted out those words in an attempt to hide my embarra.s.sment.

"She was j.a.panese. I saw her birth certificate, so there"s no doubt about it."

My brother opened the drawer beside the bed, took out a photograph and showed it to me. She was a beautiful woman with pale complexion and light brown hair. She fitted the image I had of Shimako"s mother.

"And she died, right? Where was she buried?"

"Her older sister took care of the arrangements. Their mother is interred in a church near their family home in Kyushu, so they decided to bury her there too."

"You were okay with that?"

They were the remains of someone he held dear, so I thought he would have wanted to keep them close to himself. But if she were buried in some far-off place, like a church near the family home in Kyushu, then he"d hardly ever get to visit.

"I was. At first, I thought about buying a plot in a non-religious cemetery, so that we could be buried together, but I came across this when I was sorting through her belongings."

From the still open drawer, my brother took out a small article wrapped in cloth. Inside was something that looked like a necklace.

"What is &h.e.l.lip; ?"

"It"s a rosary. It"s something Christians use to pray. When we got married, we got rid of all of our religious artifacts. But, secretly, Yuria still held on to this. Right up to the very end, she couldn"t renounce her religion. I regret that she couldn"t call for a priest in her final moments, but it was too late. I"d realized that there was no reason she had to keep our promise right up to her death. So I decided to return her to Jesus."

So Shimako"s mother had held onto this rosary the entire time? Had she taken it out, from time to time, and looked at it? Or had she simply kept it, never taking it out of its wrapping?

"There"s no reason to condemn her for this. I too kept a single juzu. It was one I"d inherited from our grandmother. And, sure enough, as I"m reaching the end of my life, I"ve returned to our temple. And although he doesn"t have to perform my funeral, our father will probably read from the Buddhist scriptures at it."

I listened to my brother, unable to say anything. Incapable even of politely nodding.

"When Yuria died, I blamed myself. If we hadn"t met, she would have been a nun by then. She would have been spending her days in the service of her G.o.d. Whether it was G.o.d or Buddha, I don"t know, but why were we joined together? Was it all just a prank? Had she really been happy marrying me? Right at the end, she smiled as she embarked on that final journey, but surely she must have been sighing inside to leave behind the child that she had only just given birth to."

After he said that, all the strength drained from my brother"s body.

"But, I kind of understand now. If we hadn"t met, then Shimako wouldn"t exist in this world. So it"s okay."

My brother did what he had to for Shimako to remain. Being in the same position as Shimako"s mother, perhaps he understood her true feelings.

Probably exhausted from talking, my brother returned the rosary and photograph to the drawer, then lay down on his side.

"Masafumi."

Hearing my name called, I looked up.

"I was allowed to live my life the way I wanted. So you should live your life the way you want too."

" &h.e.l.lip; Brother?"

"When I die, it"s likely that the temple, our parents, and everything else, will fall on your shoulders. You should do what you want, whether that be to accept it or to reject it."

My brother closed his eyes.

"That was all I wanted to tell you."

"Are you saying that it"s okay for me not to inherit the temple? Because there"s Shimako?"

I knew that talking further would be a burden on him, but I had to ask. The true meaning of his words. If I missed this chance, I may not have received a second opportunity.

"I think Shimako should do whatever she wants too. If I got the chance, I"d tell her that too."

"But if we both do what we want, what will happen to the Shouguu temple?"

"Our father"s still healthy. Don"t worry about what happens after that. The temple"s been in our family for generations, but we don"t have to obsess over it. We can always accept a chief priest into the family."

My brother had changed. His usual stubbornness was gone.

There was no longer just one straight path. There were plenty of forks in the road, and it was fine to retrace your steps if you"d gone the wrong way. Perhaps this was what he learned during his two years of struggle.

My brother pa.s.sed away about six months after that.

Smiling as he began that journey.

I thought he had probably gone to meet Yuria-san.

I had faith that the Christian heaven and the Buddhist paradise were one and the same. That it was a place without distinction between religion.

Instead of losing an older brother, I gained a younger sister.

A sister, one cycle of the Chinese zodiac younger than me.

Since my brother had told me to do whatever I wanted, I have decided to become a monk. Soon enough I will begin that training, and in time I plan to qualify as a chief priest.

When Shimako grows up, when she"s old enough to have hopes for the future, I want her to be able to make that choice freely.

If she chooses the path that her older brother walks down, to become a chief priest, to marry a priest, then I will turn the temple over to her, and all will be well.

But if Shimako, like my brother, chooses a different path, then I will take responsibility for the temple.

That"s my "what I want to do."

That"s my free choice.