I was once an ant stepped on by you.

I realized I had been crushed flat and died, so in a way, I think it was a happy way to go.

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 your large form 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 passed away from old age.

---

It all began a thousand years ago.

When I came to court you, you, a daughter of the nobility, said, "If you visit me for a hundred nights."

I dutifully visited you every night, sent waka poems steeped in incense, and snapped off plum blossoms to tie my love letters to.

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

Then, with only seven days remaining, you suddenly died. Taken away so abruptly by an epidemic.

Can you believe it? In that era, three nights of visits meant marriage. And I, foolishly honest, did as I was told for a hundred days. In the end, we were never united.

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

So, this isn't fate. The fact that I could meet you in this life, that we finally met as fellow humans for the first time, is an inevitability I won through my own will.