Locally, in the valley far from Tokyo that she had left long ago, it was known as yamatsumi-sou, which means "flower of the mountain spirit." It was like a small lily, with tapering, yellow petals warmed on the upper surface by a blush of violet. According to legend, it was found only in those particular hills on the north side of Honshu--a visible expression of the deity that had dwelt around the village of kimikaye-no-sato and protected its inhabitants since ancient times, whose name was Kyo. When the violet was strong and vivid, it meant that Kyo was cheerful and in good health, and the future was secure. When the violet waned pale and cloudy, troubled times lay ahead. Right at this moment, Kyo was looking very sorry for himself indeed.
The old woman's name was Chifumi Shimoto. She hadn't seen a yamatsumi-sou since those long-gone childhood days that everyone remembers as the time when life was simple and carefree--before Japan became just a province in some vaster scheme that she didn't understand, and everyone found themselves affected to some degree or other by rules borrowed from foreigners with doubtful values and different ways. How it came to be growing in the yard enclosed by the gaunt, gray concrete cliffs forming the rear of the Nagomi Building was anybody's guess.
She saw it when she came out with a bag of trash from the bins in the offices upstairs, where she cleaned after the day staff had gone home. It was clinging to life bravely in a patch of cracked asphalt behind the parked trucks, having barely escaped being crushed by a piece of steel pipe thrown down on one side, and smothered by a pile of rubble encroaching from the other. Although small, it looked already exhausted, grown to the limit that its meager niche could sustain. The yard trapped bad air and exhaust fumes, and at ground level was all but sunless. Leaking oil and grime hosed off the vehicles was turning what earth there was into sticky sludge. Kyo needed a better home if he was to survive.
Potted plants of various kinds adorned shelves and window ledges throughout the offices. When she had washed the cups and ashtrays from the desks and finished vacuuming between the blue-painted computer cabinets and consoles, Chifumi searched and found some empty pots beneath the sink in one of the kitchen areas. She filled one of the smaller pots with soil, using a spoon to take a little from each of many plants, then went back downstairs with it and outside to the yard. Kneeling on the rough ground, she carefully worked the flower with its roots loose from its precarious lodgement, transferred it to the pot that she had prepared, and carried it inside. Back upstairs, she fed it with fresh water and cleaned off its leaves. Finally, she placed it in the window of an office high up in the building, facing the sun. Whoever worked in that office had been away for several days. With luck, the flower would remain undisturbed for a while longer to gain strength and recover. Also, there were no other plants in the room. Perhaps, Chifumi thought to herself, that would make it all the more appreciated when the occupant returned.
She locked the cleaning materials and equipment back in the closet by the rear stairs, took the service elevator back down to the ground floor, and returned the keys to the security desk at the side entrance. The duty officer checked her pass and ID and the shopping bag containing groceries and some vegetables that she had bought on the way in, and then let her out to the lobby area, where the cleaners from other floors were assembling. Five minutes later, the bus that would run them back to their abodes around the city drew up outside the door.
The offices in the part of the Nagomi Building that Chifumi had been assigned to had something to do with taxes and accounting. That was what all the trouble was supposed to be about between the federal authorities and others in faraway places among the stars. She heard things about freedom and individualism, and people wanting to live as they chose to, away from the government--which the young seemed to imagine they were the first ever to have thought of. It all sounded very much like the same, age-old story of who created the wealth and how it should be shared out, to her. She had never understood it, and did so even less now. Surely there were enough stars in the sky for everyone.
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