Thousand Cranes - Closing

He wiped his face with his handkerchief. The blood seemed to leave as he wiped, and he wiped more violently. The handkerchief was wet and dark. He felt a cold sweat at his back.
"She has no reason to die," he muttered.
There was no reason for Fumiko to die, Fumiko who had brought him to life.
But had the simple directness of the evening before been the directness of death?
Was she, like her mother, guilt-ridden, afraid of the directness?
"And only Kurimoto is left." As if spitting out all the accumulated venom on the woman he took for his enemy, Kikuji hurried into the shade of the park.