A/N: Hello! I'm sorry I haven't been updating, I've had a lot of writer's blocks recently… Anyway, this is another HijiMitsu (with a hint of KonTae, if you will). This is based off a folklore called The White Butterfly but again, I've changed up a couple details. Angst/ romance. Thank you for reading this story!

~meowmeow814

A cool breeze weaved through the columns of cypresses, sweeping away strands of graying hair.

The old man paused to catch his wheezing breath as he finally reached the top of the stone stairs. He then trudged forward, heaving with him the sloshing bucket of water, clenching the blossoming bouquet of snow-white lilies. One step, two step, three step, he dragged himself forward before the dangling iron bell of the shrine and his breath finally gave way.

He had caught pneumonia.

He lay in the cotton sheets, fever and delirium spiraling higher and higher with each passing, smoldering summer day. His former chief and his wife rushed over from Edo, themselves already so much frailer and weaker than in their youth. They desperately tried to lower the climbing fever but nothing could help. Nothing would help.

Such was his fever that he could almost see, feel, a butterfly resting on his chest everyday, wings beating as slowly as his own heart. Otae gently convinced him that no, it was an illusion, there was no butterfly, but what could he believe when he was already sleeping in his own deathbed? Why should he care when there was nothing to care for? Let him live in the delusion, let him live in the fantasy, let him live as one of the insane, he would soon die anyway.

And this was true for in three days, the elder man had passed into the unknown oblivion.

The summer sun blazed on, life bleaching away under its flames. Cicadas shrieked, tears dried, the world moved on.

But a pale saffron butterfly flitted up, glided through the winds, and landed upon her gravestone, her duty now completed.