As the foggy haze of the festive New Year's morning dissipated, the court ladies who served in the Tomikoji Palace appeared in the reception hall, competing with each other in the brilliance of their outfits. That morning I was wearing a seven-layer lower robe - the color changed from pale pink to dark red: the dress was purple in color, and another light green and red cape with sleeves. The upper dress was covered with a pattern with branches of flowering plum over a Chinese-style hedge. The ritual of offering the holiday cup to the emperor was performed by my father, a senior state adviser. When I returned to my room, I saw a letter, eight thin underwear, capes, and upper dresses of different colors were attached to it. A sheet of paper with verses was pinned to the sleeve of one of them: “If we are not given, / like birds, soaring side by side, / to connect wings, - / even if at least a crane outfit / reminds of love at times!”

But I wrapped the silk back and sent with a poem: “Ah, did it fit me / to dress in gold-woven dresses, / trusting in love? / As if after tears of fuel / did not have to wash those clothes. "

The sovereign said that he intended to visit our estate in connection with a change of place, as astrologers prescribed in order to avoid unhappiness. Luxurious screens were placed in my bedroom, incense was burned, I was dressed in a white dress and a purple split hakama skirt. My father taught me that I should be gentle, compliant and obey the sovereign in everything. But I did not understand what all his instructions were about, and fell asleep with a sound sleep near the brazier with coal, feeling only vague discontent. When I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, I saw a sovereign next to me, he said that he loved me as a child and for many years hid his feelings, but now the time has come. I was terribly embarrassed and could not answer anything. When the upset sovereign departed, it began to seem to me that this was not the sovereign, but some new, unknown person to me, with whom one should not speak simply as before. And I felt sorry for myself to tears. Then they brought a letter from the sovereign, but I couldn’t even answer, and a message arrived from him, Yukino Akebono, Snow Dawn: “Oh, if you bow to your heart / other, then know: / I’m supposed to be inconsolable. , I’ll die soon, / as if the smoke is melting in the wind ... "

The next day, the emperor again granted, and although I was not able to answer him, everything happened according to his will, and I looked bitterly at a clear month. The night brightened, the dawn bell struck. The sovereign swore to me that our connection would never be interrupted. The moon tended to the west, clouds stretched out on the eastern slope of the sky, and the emperor was beautiful in a green dress and a light gray cloak. “Here it is, the union of men and women,” I thought. I recalled the lines from The Tale of Prince Genji: “Because of the emperor’s love, the sleeves got wet from tears ...” The month turned completely white, and I stood, exhausted from tears, seeing the emperor off, and he suddenly grabbed me in my arms and put me in the carriage. So he took me to the Tomikoji Palace. The emperor spent night after night with me, but it was strange for me why the image of the one who wrote to me lives in my soul: “Oh, if you bow to the other / with your heart, then know ...”

When I returned home, for some reason I began to look forward to messages from the emperor. But evil tongues earned in the palace, the empress treated me worse and worse.

Autumn soon came, and the princess was born to the empress. The sovereign's parent caught and died, with his death, it seemed that the clouds covered the sky, the people sank into grief, the bright dresses were replaced by mourning robes, and the body of the late emperor was transferred to the temple for burning. All voices in the capital were silent; it seemed that plum blossoms would blossom in black. Soon the funeral service ended, and everyone returned to the capital, the fifth moon came, when the sleeves are always wet from spring rains. I felt that I was in a burden, and my father, who bitterly mourned the death of the sovereign and wanted to follow him, when he found out about this, decided not to die. Although the emperor was affectionate with me, I did not know how long his love would last. My father was getting worse and worse, on his deathbed he was sad about my fate, what would happen to an orphan if the sovereign left her, and ordered me to get a haircut in a nun in this case. Soon, his father's body turned into ethereal smoke. Autumn has arrived. Waking up in the middle of a long autumn night, I listened to the dull tapping of wooden valks, yearned for the deceased father. The emperor on the 57th day from the day of his death sent me crystal beads tied to a saffron flower made of gold and silver, and a sheet of paper with verses was attached to it: “In the autumn time / dew always falls / moistening the sleeve, - / but today it is much more abundant / a dew placer on clothes ... "

I replied that I thank and that, of course, my father in the next world rejoices over sovereign affection.

I was visited by a friend of the Akebono family, Snowy Dawn, I could talk to him about anything, sometimes they stayed until the morning. He began to whisper to me about love, so tenderly and passionately that I could not resist, and only was afraid that the sovereign would not see our meeting in a dream. In the morning we exchanged poems. At that time I lived in the house of the nurse, a rather unceremonious person, and even her husband and sons made noise all day and fussed until late at night. So when Akebono appeared, I was ashamed of the loud screams and rumble of a rice mortar. But there were and will not be for me more expensive memories than about these, in essence, painful meetings. Our love was growing stronger, and I did not want to return to the palace to the sovereign. But the emperor insisted, and at the beginning of the eleventh moon I had to move to the palace, where I no longer liked everything. And then I secretly moved to the miserable monastery of Daigo to the nun abbess. We lived poorly and modestly, as at the end of the twelfth moon at night the emperor granted. He looked exquisite and beautiful in a dark robe on the white snow during the month of flaw. The emperor departed, and tears of sorrow remained on my sleeve. At dawn, he sent me a letter: “Farewell to you filled my soul until now with the uncharted charm of sorrow ...” It is dark in the monastery, the water falling from the gutter is frozen, there is deep silence, only in the distance the sound of a lumberjack.

Suddenly - a knock on the door, looking - and this is Akebono, Snow Dawn. Snow was falling, raking everything around underneath, the wind terribly howled. Akebono was handing out gifts, and the day was like a continuous holiday. When he left, the pain of separation was unbearable. In the second moon, I felt the approach of childbirth. The sovereign at that time was very concerned about the affairs of the throne, but he still ordered the monastery of Good and Peace to pray for a safe resolution of the burden. The birth went well, the baby prince was born, but I was tormented by thoughts about my father and my beloved Akebono. He again visited me in the light of a dull winter moon. It all seemed to me that nocturnal birds were shouting, or there were already dawn birds, it was light, it was dangerous to leave me, and we spent the day together, and then they brought an affectionate letter from the sovereign. It turned out that I again suffered from Akebono. Fearing people's gaze, I left the palace and shut myself up, speaking seriously ill. The emperor sent messengers, but I tried to dissuade that the disease was contagious. The baby was secretly born, only Akebono and two maids were with me. Akebono himself cut off the umbilical cord with his sword. I looked at the girl: eyes, hairs, and only then I realized what motherly love was. But my child was taken away from me forever. And it so happened that I lost the little prince that I lived in my uncle’s house, he disappeared like a dewdrop from a leaf of grass. I mourned the father and the boy-prince, mourned the daughter, lamented that Akebono left me in the morning, the emperor was jealous of other women - such was my life at that time. I dreamed about the wilderness of the wilderness, about wanderings: “Oh, if I / there, in Yoshino, in the mountain desert / find a shelter - / to relax in it sometimes / from the worries and sorrows of the world! ..”

The emperor was fond of different women, then a princess, then a young artist, and his hobbies were fleeting, but still hurt me. I was eighteen years old, many noble dignitaries sent me gentle messages, one rector of the temple ignited me with a frantic passion, but she was disgusting to me. He showered me with letters and very skillful poems, arranged for dates - one date even happened in front of the Buddha’s altar - and at one time I succumbed, but then wrote to him: “Well, if one day my feelings change /! / You see how fading / love, disappearing without a trace, / like dew at dawn? .. "

I got sick, and it seemed to me that it was he who, with his curses, sent sickness to me.

Once, the sovereign lost the competition in archery to his elder brother and, as a punishment, he had to introduce to his brother all the court ladies serving at the court. We were dressed as elegant boys by the boys and ordered to play ball in the Pomerantsev Garden. The balls were red, braided with silver and gold thread. Then the ladies acted out scenes from "The Tale of Prince Genji." I had already completely decided to renounce the world, but noticed that I had suffered again. Then I hid in the monastery of Daigo, and no one could find me - neither the sovereign, nor Akebono. Life in the world sent me, regrets about the past tormented my soul. My life was flowing sadly and gloomily, although the emperor sought me out and forced me to return to the palace. Akebono, who was my first true love, gradually moved away from me. I thought about what awaits me, because life is like a short-lived dew.

The abbot, who still passionately loved me, died, sending suicide poems: “Remembering you, / I am leaving my life with hope, / that at least the smoke from the fire, / on which I burn without a trace, / will reach your house. - And attributed; “But, ascending into the void with smoke, I will still cling to you.” Even the sovereign sent me condolences: “After all, he loved you so much ...” I shut myself up in the temple. The sovereign drifted away from me with his heart, the sovereign did not stand me spiritually, Akebono fell out of love, I had to leave the palace, where I spent many years. I was not sorry to part with the vain world, and I settled in the temple of Gion and became a nun. I was called to the palace, but I understood that spiritual grief would be with me everywhere. And I went on a long journey through the temples and caves of the hermits and found myself in the city of Kamakura, where the shogun ruled. Everyone was good at the magnificent capital of the shogun, but it seemed to me that she lacked poetry and grace. So I lived in seclusion when I found out that the sovereign had died. My eyes darkened, and I rushed back to the old capital, in order to even attend an unrecognized funeral. When I saw the smoke of his funeral pyre, everything faded in my life. It is truly impossible to change what is ordained to man by the law of karma.

Note from the scribe: “At this point the manuscript is cut off, and what is written further is unknown.