I was once an ant stepped on by you.

Before I knew it, I was crushed flat and dead, so in a way, I think it was a happy way to die.

I was once a flower plucked by you.

As a child, you pulled me out as if tearing me apart, swung me around, and quickly grew bored, tossing me aside.

I was once a mouse eaten by you.

That was my own stupidity. I was so desperate to gather food that I didn't notice you, so large, creeping up from behind.

Once, we were born as the same species.

But our eras were misaligned; by the time I finally found you, you had already died of old age.

---

The whole thing started a thousand years ago.

When I came to woo you, you, a daughter of a noble family, said, "If you visit me for a hundred nights."

I dutifully visited you every night, sent waka poems steeped in incense, and tied love letters to branches of plum blossoms I had snapped off.

(Perhaps being reborn as a flower once was punishment for that?)

Then, with only seven days remaining, you suddenly died. Taken away so easily by a prevailing plague.

Can you believe it? In that era, visiting for three days meant marriage. I, in my foolish honesty, did as I was told for a hundred days. And in the end, we were never joined.

Since then, every time I died, I kept wishing: this time, this time for sure. I prayed to various gods, but none of them truly granted my wish.

So, this isn't fate. The fact that I could meet you in this life, that we finally met as humans for the first time, is a necessity that I fought for and won.