Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction ❯ Abstinence Education ❯ Part Twenty-Eight ( Chapter 28 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

A transitional chapter; I'm writing the next two parts simultaneously. Those will post in August.

The first week in September is my twelve-month mark for posting this story, and I'd been working on it for a couple of months before that, so I'm already up to a solid year of composition. Ye gads!

Of ghosts and immortality...


The characters and universe of Blade of the Immortal/Mugen no Junin are copyright by Hiroaki Samura and do not belong to me. Not one sen will come into my hands in consequence of this story.

Warnings for sex in various forms, including quasi-incestuous themes and a sixteen-year-old female paired with an adult male. Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic, so be prepared.

Some details of Rin's dream are based on an old Japanese ghost story.


Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga

Part Twenty-Eight




“My little girl's a bride today. Look how pretty she is in her wedding clothes.“

Rin looks down at herself; she's wearing a plain white kosode as if dressed for a funeral. “But...“

“It's all right, dear. I know you thought you needed the money.“ Mother adjusts her gilded hairpins while peering into the small round mirror on the stand.

“I'm sorry, Mama.“ Rin kneels and hangs her head. “I shouldn't have sold your best uchikake to pay off my bodyguard. Even if it did have a lot of gold thread on it and I got a good price. I shouldn't have.“

“I said it was all right, dear. It's not as if I was going to have another occasion to put it on.“ She laughs with a sweet sound, like little bells, and opens her cosmetics case. “There, it's your turn.“

“But...“ Rin is silenced when Mother places the mirror in front of her and begins to paint her lips. A little pot, a brush, a gently circling touch. Her lips part; she stares at the mirror.

“The marriage is still a marriage, even if you can't wear your mother's wedding clothes.“ Father comes in and shuts the shoji against the summer sun; the room goes dim. He's just been to the barber to be shaved, and tiny spots of half-dry blood stand out on his jaw. “Your husband won't mind. He's not marrying a fancy outfit.“

“Who is he, Daddy? Who's my husband?“ She sees a shadowy painted mask in the mirror, her face powdered white and delicate pink, with blood-red lips and brows feathered like the antennae of a moth.

Her parents chuckle and nod at each other, but don't answer. Rin knows they won't tell her; it's that kind of dream. She asks again anyway.

“Did you arrange the marriage? Is he someone you know...or someone I know?“ She rises and goes to the tokonoma. There stands an arrangement of chrysanthemums in a tall white vase and the memorial tablets of her grandfather, father and mother.

“I met your father only once before the wedding, dear.“ Mother smiles at him. “I fell in love the moment I saw him, and I think he'd say the same. Fate and our parents chose very well for us.“

“I know. You always said that. You wanted me to look forward to being a bride...“ She bursts into tears and sinks to her knees in front of the memorial tablets. “You'll never see me grown up. You'll never be at my wedding, or know your grandchildren. Never...“

“Of course not, dear. Now don't cry–you'll spoil your makeup.“

Father gets up to open the door for the bridegroom, though there hasn't been a sound from outside. He's dressed in black like any other bridegroom, but he's wearing a broad basket hat that conceals his face. He gives Father and Mother a brief nod, as if he knows they're only ghosts and don't need much acknowledgement. Behind him are two women who have guided him to the house. They bow and sit by the wall. Both wear their hair chopped short; one carries a samisen, and the other a pair of blood-streaked shido. She knows the first, but who is the other? The stranger looks at her for a moment and it's like looking in the mirror again, slightly distorted. She's a ghost with a white face; she is the little sister her bodyguard couldn't defend.

The bridegroom sits and bows to Rin, hands on the mat on each side of him. She waits for him to raise his head and show his face, but he stays where he is so that all she can see is the top of the hat. What do his hands look like? Fine-wristed and long-fingered, with hard calluses on the palms? Or sun-bronzed and scarred, with a surprising subtlety of gesture? She can't focus on them; her eyes won't stay where she wants them to look, or the objects skitter away at the periphery of her vision.

“I don't like this dream,“ she says to the bridegroom. “I won't make you a good wife.“

“I know,“ he replies, and his voice sounds like nothing. “You have blood on your hands.“

“My...revenge?“

“You've killed a lot of men one way or another, and more will die before you're finished. Lovemaking's too much like mortal combat, and the woman carries more weapons. How do I know you won't kill me too some day?“

“Then why do you want to marry me?“

He doesn't answer.

“You didn't have to say yes. You could have said you'd rather marry another girl.“

“There wasn't a choice. It had to be you.“ He bows a little lower. “Asano Rin no Takayoshi.“

“What's your name?“

“The name you will choose for me.“

She looks at her parents; they are fading into the walls, but still smiling at her. “We know you'll do the right thing,“ they whisper, and they're gone. The women are gone too; they only needed to bring him here and go their ways.

“That doesn't help,“ she says to the void, and then turns to the bridegroom. “Please...show me your face.“

“You'll love it and hate it. No matter who it belongs to.“

“Why?“

“If it's the one, you'll hate me instantly. If it's the other, you'll hate me eventually. Love is only the other side of the page.“

“What?“

“It's fate.“ He stands and extends a hand to her. “It's time.“

“Where are we going?“

“The place where I live.“ Under the hat she sees only shadows.

“Show me your face first.“

“It's not my face that matters.“

“Won't I see it when...when you take me for your wife?“

“Then I'll take you now, since we're married.“

Rin lies on the futon in her white garments and folds her hands over her breasts. The bridegroom removes his clothes; she can't see his body as anything but a man's. He's laid the hat aside but all that he shows of his face with his head bowed is black hair falling forward. As if to brush it back he passes his hand over his face while he raises his head, and as he does so his features vanish. No brows, no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Smooth and white as a ghost. He kneels by the futon and leans down as if to kiss her with that mouthless face and all she hears is a tearing roar in her ears, and the sound of her own horrified screams...

Manji's snore broke off in mid-breath, but he didn't wake up all the way; he must have known even in sleep that she was safe in his bed no matter how she cried out. He grumbled and rolled onto his back, then snugged his arm around her and drew her head to his shoulder. After a few moments the snoring started up again louder than ever, right under her ear.

Rin didn't care–the last thing she wanted to do right now was fall asleep and dream some more. The horror faded quickly along with the details of the dream, but her eyes remained wide open. She felt her bodyguard's bare chest slowly rose and fall in time with his long rumbling breaths. Someone was out on the street below; she heard voices and laughter and a woman's high titter. A teahouse hostess bidding customers good night. So it was either very late or very early. After the customers left and their conversation faded down the street, she heard an odd intermittent thumping somewhere outside; a big moth was beating itself to death against a paper lantern.

Approaching dawn, with the sky just beginning to lighten. She woke from a half-doze to the sound of two sets of hoofbeats coming down the street, fast and faster. Horses hired from the stable at the other end of town, probably. Perhaps the ford could be crossed now and someone had urgent business in town. A man yelled at the riders for nearly running him over; they didn't reply.

Manji sprawled on his back beside her, arm flung out and quilts kicked aside. He was almost nude, retaining only his half-tied loincloth. Rin sat up and gazed at him. In the dimness he looked young and unscarred and softer, nearly handsome. She smiled at the illusion at the same time her heart went out to him. This was still her Manji, after all. Not a man other people would call attractive, and neither romantic nor tactful, nor with any prospects. Just real. Just the man by whose side she would always long to walk.

She ventured a hand towards his, but didn't touch him. She wouldn't know until the sun came up just how great were the implications of the mistake they had made last night. It was impossible to think of it as anything but a mistake; she had known from the moment he entered her that they had gone too far. That hadn't mattered to either of them.

For a few seconds she prayed he wouldn't remember the details, though she knew he hadn't been drunk enough for that. He was going to come back to consciousness with an exact recollection of what he had done to her.

No–what they had done together, with her encouragement. Rin shifted uncomfortably on her backside; it didn't quite hurt, but it definitely felt peculiar. She couldn't escape any of the blame; no matter how upset, she'd been far more in her right mind than he had been. She sighed–Manji certainly liked to get amorous when he was drunk, and that was almost the only time he would admit certain emotions. Maybe she'd taken advantage of him again. Knowing him, he'd be furious with her for a few minutes, then heap coals of fire on his own head and try to dictate terms. She had no desire to listen to him shout right now.

Rin got up and quietly collected the scattered contents of her shoulder bag. She avoided stepping in the smear of sooty sand on the scorched mat, and ignored the empty pot of cream. After dressing, she looked at Manji again before she opened the shoji to go out. A pang struck her at the way he lay now, resting on his side with his arm curved over the empty space where she had been. He didn't look happy, exactly, but there was a set to his jaw even in sleep that said he had arrived at a destination and meant to stay there.

Of course, she had thought he looked that way last night too. He'd made a considered decision to end their arrangement and told her his reasons, and still he had defeated himself so utterly that it was almost impossible not to realize just where his tormented mind had finally come to rest. Rin's stomach cramped. No, he'd prefer her not to be in this room when he woke up; he'd be grateful for just a few minutes alone before he had to face her. She wondered if she even wanted to be in the same town, but rejected the idea at once. Flight wasn't any solution for either of them. She took her grandfather's ornate Chinese sword from her bag and carefully laid it by the bed. Manji would see it when he woke and know she meant to come back. This wasn't a morning to anger or upset him, even for a moment. If he'd tracked her down under impossible circumstances as her bodyguard, he'd be ten times more determined as–

She shut the door and went to the bathhouse.

Chilly water took some of the fuzziness from her head, though it didn't soothe the headache she'd woken with. Probably only sleep would do that, and she wouldn't sleep again until nightfall. Possibly not even then. If the river could be crossed and they got an early start, they'd be home before sunset.

Manji's home–where a man unused to comfort could live alone on the gleanings of pond and woods and a few windfalls of cash, soon gone. Rin carefully bathed her woman's parts and her bottom and sat on a cold cloth for a while. Maybe he'd been happy there, or at least able to exclude himself from the rest of humanity, of which he could speak in only the bitterest of terms. Alone, until she'd come to him and begged for his help, and somehow gained it against his will. She had always undermined his intentions in mysterious ways no matter how confidently he tried to assert them.

What had she done to him by tolerating his crude manners and his scars and ignoring his obvious wish to detach himself from the world in every possible sense? She'd stripped away his armor and left him bare and weaponless, reaching out for another body in the darkness. Joy or poison: she didn't know which she'd offered him now.

Out in the garden on the way back to the room, the sun a few minutes above the horizon, she heard laughter and girls singing an otedama juggling song. The three sat in a group under a tree, tossing colorful little beanbags in the air and applauding each other's dexterity. Rin softly joined in the song as she dawdled on the veranda. The eldest girl looked up and smiled. She was only one or two years younger than Rin, and about the same height.

“Will you play? Show us how good you are!“

Rin slipped on her geta and came down the steps to join the game. She started with the simplest figures so as not to show off, but soon she was juggling three beanbags in one hand, her braids bouncing as she jerked her arm rapidly back and forth to catch and throw. The other players giggled and clapped. Rin finally missed a catch and halted, breathless with laughter and singing.

When she leaned over to pick up the fallen bag, she caught a glimpse of Manji out of the corner of her eye. He stood on the veranda with his pipe in his mouth and a slip of paper in his hand, leaning against a house post and watching her.

Before she fully turned to look at him, she caught a fleeting impression. Half a smile, as if he was amused to see her playing otedama like a child, and half a strange resigned sadness. Not at what he saw, but at what he expected would come to pass.

As if he knew that her youth would grow all too soon to maturity and old age, and that he was fated to watch her slip inexorably away from him. Perhaps he would be able to hold her a little longer, but not forever. They would not complete their lives as companions no matter what they did. As she made her own journey through the future this man would remain exactly what he was, frozen in time and aspect, growing ever more detached from the cycle of life and the changing seasons. She might be his last true link to the human experience of mortality.

At that moment she had little doubt that Manji would outlive her for decades or centuries to come; he was a warrior who harbored no illusions about the rest of the human race. Ahead of him yawned the long march of years, an endless walk into the solitary unknown. Would he ever again open his heart once his 'little sister' had passed out of his life? The tragedy of it struck her with a force that silenced her laughter.

“M-Manji-san?“ She passed the beanbags to another girl and started to get up.

His eye glinted a reflection at her from the darkness under the eaves and then he looked down to tuck the slip of paper in his sleeve. “Nothing. Go on and have a little fun–I'll order up some grub for the road.“ He turned to go and spoke over his shoulder. “Porters say the river's going down fast. Ferries started running at first light.“

With the tiny glow of his pipe accompanying him, he moved down the corridor into shadow.


Continued...