Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction ❯ Abstinence Education ❯ Part Thirty-One ( Chapter 31 )

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

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
– Buddha

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. Yes, we're getting closer to the real Samura-style mayhem now...

Fox-spirit: Foxes often have supernatural attributes and magical powers in Japanese mythology. A fox-spirit is sometimes said to take the shape of a beautiful woman to entice a man, though not always with malevolent intentions.

Units of distance: Cho = 109 meters/358 feet.
Ri = 36 cho/4 km/2.5 miles, or about one hour’s walk at a moderate pace.


Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga

Part Thirty-One



“Shoo! Shoo!”

Rin picked up a stick and hurled it at the crows robbing her shoulder bag. They rose into the air with hoarse croaks and a rattle of black wings. Still squabbling over the remains of the rice balls she had packed for the journey, they settled down again a little distance away. Rin scooped up the bag and retrieved several other items the birds had scattered. A tear splashed on the ground as she leaned over to pick up her comb. She swiped her sore and stinging eyes with her sleeve. It was time to stop crying.

Perhaps most of an hour had passed since Manji had left her in the woods. She couldn’t lie on the ground and blubber until dark – she needed to think about what she was going to do. Rin cast a look around at the spring and the boulders, her vision wavering. Her head ached from weeping. She wiped her eyes again and put her face in her hands.

“Why did you have to be so awful about this? Why couldn’t you understand how I feel?” She cried out loud, but barely startled the quarreling crows. “Makie was right about how men are, wasn’t she – and so were you!” Rin clenched her fists and pounded them in the air. “Trust you? You weren’t worried even a little bit about making me pregnant, you jerk! When I find you, I’ll – ”

She abruptly fell silent. If her bodyguard had meant to return any time soon, he would have been here already. He might have meant to abandon her for good.

Rin raised her head and pulled in a cold, trembling breath. A terrible payback, the worst she could have imagined. Never see him again? Ever? Her legs wobbled; she bent and braced a hand on a boulder. She took deep sobbing gulps through a burning sensation in her chest. Maybe he’d been angry enough for that. But Manji’s eruptions didn’t always last very long. He’d cool down eventually and reconsider... wouldn’t he?

This hadn’t been one of their ordinary arguments or upsets, to put it mildly.

Rin sank down to sit and put her head on her knees. She bit her lips hard to ward off another crying fit. Without her tagging along at his side, Manji would keep up a much faster pace on the road. He might go twenty ri on that big a load of rage and disappointment...

In which direction? For home? Getting drunk or finding a brothel might be higher on his list right now, so he could have doubled back to the last village or gone off on a side road.

However, she was still carrying all his money, whether he had remembered that or not. Rin burst out in hysterical giggles. Poor Manji!

She calmed herself with an effort, got up and splashed her hot, tear-stained face in the spring. Wandering around looking for him made no sense; she would only lose her direction. If Manji wanted to find her again, he’d find her; she’d do nothing to avoid him. Perhaps he was waiting for her right now around the next bend in the road, tapping his foot and grumbling at the delay.

That thought lent her a little focus. She stuffed her braids into her bun cover to keep them off her sweaty neck, settled the strap of her bag on her shoulder and took the short path out to the road again.

A brush-cutter ambled past with a huge load of sticks on his bent back, but Rin saw no one else in any direction. The road ran straight up a slight hill and vanished over the crest several cho distant, utterly empty.

“Excuse me, please...”

The brush-cutter halted and looked up from under his burden. “Fine afternoon, missy.”

“Yes...um, I’m sorry to bother you, but could you tell me if you’ve passed someone on the road? A samurai with one eye? He was wearing a black and white kosode...”

The brush-cutter raised his brows. “Yer dad, is he?”

“Um, no... he’s not thirty yet. He’s my, uh, yojimbo.”

“No kiddin?” He looked left and right with a skeptical air, as if he couldn’t imagine what dire threat had inspired her to hire protection. “What’s he doin’ walkin’ around without ye, then?”

Rin flushed very hot and looked down. “Have you seen him, please?”

“No, missy, I ain’t.” The brush-cutter slowly shook his head. “But I been workin’ a ways back in the woods, y’see, so I wouldn’t have seen nobody on the road anyhow. Skipped off with yer valuables, has he? Look up the magistrate in Kana village and swear out a complaint.” The brush-cutter nodded back along the way she and Manji had come. “I’m headin’ that way myself, so yer welcome to tag along.”

“Oh – no, that’s all right! He didn’t take anything from – uh... we just got, um... separated.”

“A growed man that gets lost that easy?” The brush-cutter chuckled. “Sounds like he ain’t worth what yer payin’ him, missy.”

“I... um – thank you very much for the information. I’m so sorry to have interrupted your work.” She gave him a quick bow and turned to walk up the road.

She’d traveled many ri without a companion before. If Manji thought he could scare her by disappearing for a while, he had another think coming. Rin tried to work up a little righteous indignation, but dropped her shoulders and sighed. Manji wasn’t like that. He might tease her sometimes, but he didn’t play spiteful tricks.

Rin sniffled and wiped her nose. No, she hadn’t paid much attention to Manji’s struggles while she blundered a wide and careless track through his intentions. He’d tried to break off again and again, and each time he came back to her with redoubled passion. For all his experience, in some ways Manji seemed as ignorant as a child. Rin looked up at the sky, where a few wisps of cloud drifted now. How strange that he had revealed such longings to her; he must hardly have known that he could feel them at all. It couldn’t be her doing. She had only disturbed his surface composure. It was Manji himself who had stirred up this mystery from the depths...

For a couple of hours Rin plodded doggedly along in the dust, her mood volatile and her stomach growling. The crows hadn’t spared anything edible from her bag. She stopped at a farmhouse to buy something for a late lunch and ask directions, and the farmwife told her that the road forked in another half ri. The right-hand way would meet the main highway into Edo itself, and the left-hand way would put her on the road to the village near Manji’s hut. Had she seen a one-eyed samurai? No, she hadn’t. Rin thanked her and went on.

No one she asked remembered noticing Manji, though there weren’t many travelers at this time of day on this lonely stretch of road. With his scars and intimidating air he stood out even in a crowd. Had he come this way at all? It occurred to Rin that he might have kept walking through the dense forest instead of taking the beaten track, but why make it so hard on himself?

To make doubly sure he wouldn’t meet her, of course – and he might have preferred to shield his emotions from public view. Rin gulped hard and stopped in the road for a moment, her sore eyes burning. How could a little fool like her have done this to him?

Then perhaps he didn’t mean to return home for a while, in case she followed him there. Maybe she should take the Edo road to her family’s dojo compound in town. It was an echoing, ghost-ridden place and every squeak of the floorboards called up bad memories, but at least it was hers...

At the fork she halted to survey the diverging ways. After the right-hand road curved away from higher ground on the left, rice paddies filled the low marshland on both sides for as far as Rin could see. Only a few scraggly pine trees protected travelers from the hot sun, and the mosquitoes were probably numerous down there. She waved away whining insects that congregated around her head.

The left-hand road ran up a wooded slope and looked dim and shady. A more comfortable walk, though also less safe – bandits might use the dark forest for cover even in daylight. None of these considerations could make her decision for her: only her ultimate goal. Different houses at the end of each journey.

Rin looked up at the wooded path to the left.

Return to the hut? Sweep the dirt floor and tidy the straw pile and watch with anxious patience for the master of the house to arrive. Run out to greet him, kneel and touch her forehead to the ground. Beg Manji-san for his forgiveness and offer to prove her sincerity in any way he asked.

She couldn’t imagine that he’d hold out against his own desires for more than a day or two, though it might take much longer than that for him to forget this day. Such a blow to a samurai’s pride had to be revenged somehow, even on a woman. Her danna would possess her every time he felt like it, and every time she took the weight of his body on hers and yielded her lips to his kisses, she’d realize that she had done this to herself.

Rin shuddered and clamped her lips together. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and turned to the right and the Edo road. For a moment after her lids opened the bright sun on the white dust dazzled her.

Then make a clean break instead. Forget about him and hope he could forget about her?

She’d never forget Manji. Not even if another man came to her and respectfully begged for her consideration...

His power over her was already vast, because ever since that night he’d been her reason for living. He was subtle, clever, forceful; once she had allowed him to approach and make his suit, surrendering to him might soon seem almost natural. Never to grasp quite how the unimaginable had taken form beside her in the darkness...

Rin shook and gripped her roiling belly.

Endless days and uneasy nights in that man’s company, the immediate fear of death pursuing them both like a spear at their backs. His wrist locked in her grip to keep his arm slung over her shoulder, his slight hard body a dragging weight on her strength. Sweating and shaking beside her while she tried to drip water from a folded leaf between his fever-reddened lips. Watching him fight his illness hand to hand and prevail far longer than she had believed possible, wondering why she admired that hopeless fortitude. Hatred and confused fascination and contempt for her own weakness: his clear pale features outlined in gray morning light like an engraving in ivory. She’d kicked him in the face, hard –

These were her only alternatives? That couldn’t be true – it wasn’t fair. Life couldn’t be like that! One man's bed or the other, and nothing in between? Nothing for herself?

Who did she think she was? What girl could choose between husbands, or even decide for herself whether or not to marry? Even though her parents were dead, the choices they would have made for her should be much more important than her own...whatever any of those really were or would have been.

Rin moaned out loud and held her hands over her ears. She couldn’t bear this. Imagining the worst of all possible futures and fretting herself into a state wouldn’t solve anything – think of something else for a while! Think of comfort...

Rin felt dim and unsteady under a crushing weight.

“I love you.” She repeated it several times in a gradually strengthening whisper. “That’s what you wanted me to say to you, wasn’t it? I tried to tell you before and you didn’t want to listen. When did you know... that you wished I would say it again?”

She closed her burning eyes. She felt Manji’s presence so clearly that he might have been watching her at that moment. In her imagination he struck a familiar stance: weight on one leg, arms folded, head tilted back. Looking down at her with a quirk to his brow, as if he’d just asked her a question and expected a reply...

Rin held out her hands and smiled. A connection seemed to touch her, if only from the vision. Her Manji wasn’t the bitter stranger who’d turned his back on her. This was her dear friend and companion. This was how she’d think of him forever after. She gave a tender sniffle. In her lonely, yearning dreams she'd think of him, tossing and turning in some cold moonlit room far from her lost and lamented lover... well, almost-lover... it had always been difficult to pin down exactly what he was to her. A single tear bedewed Rin’s cheek and she clasped her hands to her heart.

“Manji-san, I love you so much. I always have. Don’t you know that? Sharing your pillow wasn’t why I love you, even though you made that so wonderful for me. You’re my big brother and my yojimbo and my sensei and... and I guess trying to teach me made you think you’d learned something too. I wonder what you would have said to me...”

The weight seemed to lift a little; she could breathe more easily now. A confession she wasn’t free to make, but she’d released it into the air like an exorcised spirit. Her sight cleared. Rin drew herself up straight; she looked between the two ways once more, tried to swallow the lump in her throat and started down the right-hand fork towards Edo.

She’d just reached the flat where the road divided the rice paddies when a movement flickered at the periphery of her vision. She turned her head to look at the trees. Halfway up the slope, just abreast of her. Something neither wholly light nor dark. At a point high in a sturdy oak, it seemed to drop about a man’s height from one branch to another and slip behind the trunk. When she shaded her eyes and looked harder, she could see nothing but the quivering branch, which quickly stilled. She creased her forehead – probably just an animal.

What kind of animal? Squirrels couldn’t shake stout branches, and monkeys always moved around in noisy groups, not as stealthy loners.

The warning note suddenly came to mind. Lying in wait?

Rin gripped the scabbard of her sword and tested the seal of the blade to the mouth. If attackers lurked in the woods that lay between the roads, they’d have a good view in both directions and could move to intercept a traveler who went either way.

Then she’d better stay on the open road where she could see them coming, shouldn’t she? Or resort to the forest where she’d be able to hide from them herself? Rin made an uneasy face and looked all around her as she walked. If only Manji had been here!

Manji...?

Some unexplainable intuition slowed her steps. She glanced at the silent slope again and decided to backtrack to the fork. In a few more minutes she was climbing the left-hand way and passing under the trees.

When she had reached the first bend in the road, she caught a glimpse of the watcher.

He emerged from under the dark eaves of the forest at the very top of the slope, as if he had been following the ridgeline to reach the road. The bright sky behind him flattened him to a silhouette and he was far enough away to be out of earshot. He moved quickly down the other side of the hill, but before he vanished Rin spotted twin swords and a spiky topknot.

Warmth and chill surged together in her breast. She involuntarily quickened her pace. It was Manji! Manji had stopped here and kept a lookout to see which way she would go! He was only a few minutes ahead of her now.

But he hadn’t waited for her to catch up, even though he must have chosen his road based on her decision. Then he still meant to avoid her company for a while?

When she gained the top of the first slope, there he was again, just reaching the crest of the next hill. His black and white clothing was plain when he passed through a sunlit spot, though she couldn’t quite make out the manji on his back. Rin paused while he disappeared once more. He wasn’t watching for her; he never slowed down nor looked back.

They walked in this peculiar separate fashion for at least an hour, Manji staying well out of hailing distance. Rin had few sustained glimpses of him on this hilly and winding track.

As the afternoon wore on, Manji’s pace slacked off and she saw him more often at slightly closer hand. He walked with a stiff hunch in his shoulders, his head down. In the shadiest parts of the road, the larger trees inclined towards each other and interlaced their branches in dark vaults pierced here and there by sunlight. Their great twisting roots invaded the path from the sides, half concealed under heaps of fallen leaves and pine needles. Manji apparently wasn’t paying much attention to where his feet were going, since he blundered into the roots more than once. When he tripped and recovered she could almost hear him swear.

At one particularly violent toe-stubbing, Manji stopped and grabbed his injured foot. After a moment he dropped it, straightened and folded his arms. He tilted his face up and down again, then pressed a hand to his forehead. He might have been trying to quench an unexpected flare of emotion or memory.

Rin advanced on him, her heart rising a little as she drew nearer. Did he mean to let her walk with him now? Talk to him again, explain, apologize, reconcile?

Manji shook himself and started moving again after a minute or two. He didn’t really look like he was anticipating conversation, at least from the back. His gait had a miserable, footsore quality; dust puffed up from his dragging sandals. He raised a hand and gripped the back of his neck as if it ached, then let his arm fall and dangle at his side again. Even without knowing what had happened, she could have read every aspect of his mood. But she’d never seen him look so aimless. As if he had no destination in mind even though he was pointed for home. No one waiting for his return...

With a surge of sympathy Rin realized that Manji was probably very hungry on top of it all, which never improved his disposition. She had wrapped up half of the food she’d bought at the farmhouse, thinking she would eat it later. Surely Manji would accept the offer of a meal. Then she might sit with him while he ate and fetch him some water and ask if she could rub his tired feet...

Somehow could she soothe away just a little of the pain she’d caused? This was all her fault and she’d gladly tell him so. Why had she been so willing to believe he was impervious? Even though Manji had refused to admit that he should guard himself as least as much as he tried to guard her, she had already dimly guessed what he risked.

Rin walked faster, longing to meet him but with her heart palpitating. Her sandal struck a stone in the road and it bounced into another. Manji turned his head at the sound. She was close enough now to see his expression clearly.

Both of them halted. Rin clutched her hands over her fluttering stomach. Manji shook as if he’d suffered a blow to the chest. He gaped at her in surprise and almost-fear. As if he saw not a young woman he knew, but a malicious fox-spirit in female shape.

He’d had no idea she was following him. Rin felt sick. How stupid could she have been? He’d seen her take the road towards town at first, and so had chosen the other route. He’d meant to take his final leave of her. No wonder he’d never looked back.

They stared at each other for a few tense seconds. Unguarded, Manji’s expression contorted as if he held back a groan of pain. He closed his eye and gritted his teeth. After several moments he clamped his lips together, took a deep breath and looked straight at her with studied coldness. He seemed determined to discipline himself, somehow freeze out her influence until the sight of her was as indifferent to him as that of any other object in the road. Still, that look was clearly meant for her and he wanted to see her reaction; if he convinced her that he could extinguish all his warmth for her, perhaps he could convince himself as well.

Rin’s throat felt so tight she couldn’t speak; she sent him a longing, plaintive look, reached out her hands and moved towards him.

Manji’s brows went down. He rolled his shoulders, showed her an ugly scowl and made a jerk of the chin, obviously meant to warn her off. She took a few more steps and with a glare even more savage he abruptly raised an open hand; if she came much closer he would strike her. Rin stopped where she was, her heart pounding. Manji grimaced and tried to recompose his features, but calm utterly eluded him now. He squeezed his eye shut with an expression of helpless frustration, turned and stalked away.

Rin began to sob out loud. In a few moments she felt a shiver that stopped her tears. Where could she go now?

She put her knuckles to her mouth. She couldn’t double back to the fork and try to get to town this late in the afternoon. Dusk would find her unprotected on an unfamiliar road. She’d been very lucky to lose only her cash on her journey to Kaga; there were far greater numbers of bandits and other unscrupulous armed men in the countryside around Edo than on the less-traveled mountain byways. Hadn’t Manji always warned her about them?

“M-Manji-san...” He was still in earshot if she called out. “I – I have your money in my bag – don’t you want – ”

He made a gesture like swatting an annoying insect and kept going.

“Manji-san! Let me just follow behind you until – please, I’m frightened out here all by myself!”

Manji’s shoulders tensed and his head half turned. Then he grabbed the back of his neck again and retreated even faster.

He didn’t care. Rin’s mouth dropped open. Her bodyguard had quit his job for good; to hell with his duty and with her. If she disappeared into these dark woods he’d count it for nothing – he’d already consigned her to the demons.

And for what? Because she wouldn’t submit to his dictatorship? As long as he’d assumed he could eventually claim what he wanted, he’d been willing to put up with female annoyances and restrain his lust for a while. She wasn’t worth the trouble to him now. He’d shown exactly what kind of reward he expected for protecting her.

Rin angrily wiped her wet face with the back of her arm. So now Manji would go home by himself, the way he liked it. He’d smoke his stinky pipe whenever he could scrounge a pinch of stale tobacco, and waste the whole day fishing and snoozing behind his dirty shack, and eat those nauseating grilled frogs that he always managed to burn, and find bugs and mice nesting in the bedding and neglect the sweeping up anyway, and never, ever take another bath as long as he lived, even if it were a thousand years. Fine. Let him! She didn’t need his help and she didn’t need him. If he was going to be like this because she insisted on holding him to his promises, then he’d revealed the true lowness of his character!

“You are such a creep!” she shouted, hoping Manji could still hear. “It’s a good thing I never had any brothers, if they would have been anything like you! Jerk! Dirty-minded old grouch – I’m glad it hurt when I kicked you and I’d do it again! Damn you!”

Rin slumped and gave a dejected sniffle. She felt no better for venting.

To her disgust, she now had no choice. For safety’s sake, she’d have to stay on this path until she reached a place she knew. She’d stop well short of Manji’s hut and find some hidden spot to sleep tonight, like her cozy nook among the high-rooted pines. She gulped – no, not that one, but some place like it. It didn’t look like rain, but she could improvise a shelter if the weather grew wet. She would only have to camp there until morning, and then she could head into town. She’d turn her back on that place forever.

Manji hadn’t quite advanced out of sight yet. She clenched her jaw and walked defiantly fast, though she hadn’t had a rest in hours and her legs ached. This was ridiculous – how dare he treat her like a leper? Maybe she’d made mistakes, but only because she hadn’t learned any better. Manji was the one who had claimed he could handle the situation, and then gotten them in so deep even though he kept reversing direction. The big idiot! Especially after how he’d behaved today, how could he throw all the blame on her? She was going to catch up to him again, and this time she wouldn’t let him intimidate her by making faces. He was going to get a well-pointed piece of her mind!

Rehearsing his dressing-down with energy, Rin managed to shake off most of her fatigue, but Manji was moving very rapidly indeed; he drew ahead and steadily widened the gap between them. Within a quarter of an hour she lost sight of him again except from the hills. This was a long straight stretch over a series of low ridges, and he was a small figure far ahead on the flat when she reached a higher point. He didn’t look back.

Breathing hard and muttering creative insults to herself, Rin at first didn’t pay much attention to a peculiar smell that mingled with the scents of dust and pine. Its unpleasant quality echoed her state of mind; she might almost have conjured it herself. Then a sudden strong waft in the face made her cough; she slowed her steps, raised her head and looked around.

Sharp, chemical, incendiary. The slow match of a teppo musket. Was someone hunting out here? She hadn’t seen pheasants in these woods –

A deafening roar staggered her. Rin screamed and clapped her hands to her ears. The surface of the road a few strides ahead erupted like a small volcano and dirt showered her clothes. In the thundering echoes of the gunshot she heard a loud voice.

“Stop right there, girl!”

Rin bolted and ran without an instant's hesitation. A matchlock took a long time to reload, and bandits probably had only one gun between them. Curses and yells exploded from the trees on each side of the road.

“Shit! She don’t scare so easy – ”

“Idiot! Grab her quick – he’s heard the shot!”

Someone swung down from a high branch and tumbled into the road behind Rin. He scrambled up and pursued her, closely followed by another man who burst from the bushes opposite him. Rin had a start on them and a downslope to help her speed, but another little hill rose in front of her. Gasping, she fled up to the crest and spotted Manji again.

He had turned his head in the direction of the gun's report and slowed down, though he hadn’t come to a full stop yet. When he saw her running so hard he jerked and moved his arms away from his sides. The bandits topped the rise in pursuit.

Manji nearly took flight. He acted too quickly for her to see much more than a blur of black and white, but he seemed to kick off backwards and lunge around in mid-air to reverse his heading. He landed with a skidding spray of gravel, sprang forward and sprinted back down the road towards Rin.

The bandits pounded up right behind her. One grabbed at the flying sleeve of her furisode. Rin flailed her arms and the silk slipped through his fingers. He overextended and stumbled, tripping up the other man before they could avoid each other. She gained a little distance, but in a moment they recovered and chased after her again. She didn’t have a prayer of surpassing their speed –

Manji covered the ground like a war horse at full gallop; she’d never seen him move so fast. It was no good – he was much too far away. The bandits would reach her long before he could. Rin saw a steely flash of reflected sunlight arc across Manji’s torso; he had swung out a blade as he ran.

A hand seized her elbow. The bandit yanked her hard against his chest. All the air expelled from her lungs and her shrieks broke off into struggles for breath. Her vision shattered into whirling black and bright spots. A ghost of Manji’s voice reached her ears, growing louder with every passing instant; he was howling like a wounded animal. As if he’d lost a limb...

Another arm whipped around her waist and swung her off her feet. The second man seized her flailing legs and pinned them under his arms.

“Fuck it, he’s gonna dice us into snakebait! Move your ass!” He ran for the forest with the first man jogging in the rear, Rin suspended and jolting between them.

Though she fought and thrashed in their unyielding grip, the bandits bore her away into the darkness under the trees.


Continued...