Chapter 4: Yugao (The Twilight Beauty)

In which shit gets kind of intense

(So let's just ignore the fact that I haven't posted anything in like four years and move on)

Okay, so Genji is visiting his old nurse who is dying.  It's very sad.  So sad, in fact, that it's kind of inappropriate and her family is terribly embarrassed.  But that's okay, because it turns out that her next-door neighbor is a mysterious lady!  Heeeey.

I think what happens is she sees him out the window and of course is undone by his beautifulness so she sends him a poem on a fan.  Which is kind of surprising because it turns out later that what he likes most about her is how she is extremely passive and spineless, but whatever. He is intrigued! He must know who she is, so he gets his buddy Koremitsu to spy on her servants, and I love this, the author says
"Koremitsu, who could not bear to disappoint his lord, marshaled his own wide experience of courtship to devise a way to at last introduce him into the house.  All that makes a long story though, so as usual I have left it out."
I bet there's a whole novel just in those two sentences. Anyway, so get this, it turns out the lady is apparently the ex-lover of Genji's good friend the Secretary Captain!  But Genji is for sure a hos before bros kind of guy so this does not worry him at all and he continues with his courtship full steam ahead.

In the meantime, he is neglecting his other lover, the lady of Rokujo street (an older woman!) and also has a meeting with Nokiba no Ogi from the previous chapter who is now married to someone else and whatever, he's totally over her now.

So anyway, Genji is visiting Yugao all the time and sleeping over, but I'm not sure if that means they're actually having sex or not. But he is definitely staying over because one particular morning there is all this noise from uncouth people in the street talking and people polishing rice and whatnot and it is so embarrassing. So he convinces her that they should go away to (I think) the countryside for basically a sexy weekend, and I'm pretty sure they definitely do have sex.
It's very creepy and strange at the country place, and while Genji is dozing off he has a vision of a woman who is angry at him for being with Yugao instead of her, and then Yugao  just stops breathing and dies.

What. The.

I guess everyone thinks it was a evil spirit or a ghost, I don't know. It's very weird. They take her back to the city and it's all awkward because now Genji is defiled by being near a dead person and he can't go visit the Emperor but he can't explain why, and then he falls ill (of grief, I think). He's very sad that he found this "charmingly frail" woman who he could "form to his will" but she died before he could fully form her. Eventually though, he gets better and then randomly adopts Yugao's daughter that she had with the Secretary Captain!

I swear, this is like reading a book about aliens.