The next morning Kino was shocked to find the letter that Takadai had placed under her door.
On reading that Takadai was going to kill himself, Kino rushed to the sea and saw an empty fishing boat about three hundred yards into the sea.
She swam into the boat and she found Takadai's tobacco box and his medicine box.
O Kino looked around the boat and she dived into the water once more and found Takadai’s dead body and brought it to the shore.
Takadai’s body was taken back to Kamakura and was laid to rest there.
O Kino was touched by Takadai's death that she promised herself would never marry anyone. Agreed she did not love Takadai but he had loved and died for her sake. She felt that if she married now, Takadai's spirit would not rest in peace.
As soon as O Kino made herself that promise something strange happened.
Seagulls were not common in Oiso Bay.
But that day seagulls came to the place and a few birds settled over the exact spot where Takadai had jumped into the water.
Fishermen thought that this was extraordinary, but Kino suspected that the spirit of Takadai Jiro had been passed on to the sea gulls.
She regularly prayed at temples and out of her own small savings she made a tomb in the memory of Takadai Jiro.
By the time Kino was twenty years old, she had many offers for marriage.
But Kino decided to be a celibate and refused all the offers of marriage.
The seagulls were always on the spot where Takadai had drowned.
Nine years later when Kino drowned in the sea because of a typhoon, the seagulls disappeared from Oiso Bay.
Adapted from Japanese Folk-lore
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