Taisetsu (Book 1.5 of the Kakureta Hana series)

I: Farewells

My dear, dear daughter,

I wish it did not have to end this way.  I wish that your father and I could have found another way, found a way where we can be there to watch you grow up.  However, it is not to be.  The men who hunt us are growing ever closer, and I fear that sending you with Emi to Sakura and Ryuu is the only way to keep you alive.

I did not know the world that I was born into initially.  My four older brothers doted on me whenever they were not gone to battle, but I did not understand that the only thing they had ever known was blood and violence.  I was the youngest, the only girl that my mother gave birth to.

My mother and father, your grandparents, were not in love when they first got married.  In fact, their clans had been enemies for decades, and their marriage was meant to seal the new alliance that had been forged between them.  My parents understood duty, and they passed this sense of duty onto all five of their children.

I always knew that my own marriage would be forged because of alliances and duties, but I never expected my heart to be stolen long before I was meant to be wed.  My heart never longed for the embrace of a man accustomed to war and violence.  It pined for the soft embrace of a man who loved the quiet and peace, but the fickle thing could never have what it wanted because the daughter of a shogun must follow her father's wishes above her own.

My father, especially after my mother died, was not going to marry me off to someone only to seal an alliance.  He was going to allow me some choice in the matter, to pick someone that I felt that someday I could grow to love.  He did not know at that point, I had already fallen in love with someone, the man who was in a position to become my eldest brother's most trusted confidant.

When I thought your father had died in battle, protecting your uncle, I felt my heart break into more pieces than I ever thought possible.  I thought no one could ever teach me how to love again, but I was duty bound to marry someone, to have children with them.  Thus, I chose Amachi Junichi, a man very similar in looks and stature to the man I had loved.

Then Junichi, a friend that I had grown up with, revealed to me that he was a woman, raised as a boy in order to cover the Amachi's failure to produce a male child.  Jun told me that she had been approached by a clan of shinobi, who had told her that there was a man who they were training to take her place and that she needed my help to learn how to be the woman she had been forced to hide.

My heart dared to hope at her words.  Who else could the shinobi being speaking of but Maro Tadashi, the man that I had thought long dead?  The man that my heart still longed for after all this time.  So I agreed to help Jun, not knowing where it would lead.

Even now, though, as my beloved husband, your father, and I are being hunted down, I regret none of my decisions.  Without them, I would not have married my love, and we would not have had you, the daughter of my heart.  I only pray that all the sacrifices that we have made to keep you safe will not be in vain.

Please do not hate me for making the choices I did.  I know that they will likely leave you an orphan long before you understand the word, but I have faith that Ryuu and Sakura will raise you as dearly as they will their own child.  I only pray that if you find anger in your heart because your father and I left you that one day you understand the sacrifices that love demands.  And I hope that you find someone that you are willing to die for, though I pray that you live a long life, one that outlasts the span of my own days.

We will always love you, and even though we may be far away, you will always carry us with you.  You are my dear Moriko, my daughter who has the blood of both a shogun and a man desiring peace flowing through your veins.  You may help accomplish what we could not do with all the battles fought.

Forever your mother and with love,

Fujioka Rika