Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Nenju ❯ VII. From time to time ( Chapter 7 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Disclaimer: I don’t own Samurai Champloo or any of its affiliated characters, which belong to Manglobe/Shimoigusa Champloos. Neither do I own the haiku of Matsuo Basho (translation by R.H. Blyth, this chapter).

WARNING: Contains graphic violence, and implied sexual assault.


Nenju


He’d pushed them — hard — to get to Motomachi.

Jin knew he was being unreasonable; it wasn’t as if they had a set date on which they needed to be at the temple grounds. Mugen had stopped speaking to him except when he deemed it absolutely necessary (“Oi. Fish face. We stopping for the night, or you got a bug up your ass about that?”), and Fuu was very quiet. Part of it had been the pace, of course — they’d covered the ground from Kyoto to Motomachi in very little more than a week’s time, which left less breath with which to talk than usual — but most of it was in the ridiculous house of that overly pretty ashigaru. Hn. Give him a decent peasant any day, not some crackbrained rice merchant who was in the habit of proposing to girls under some idiotic willow tree after he’d given them much too much sake.

(Eleven duels, his ass.)

Not that the ashigaru bothered him. Much.

It was the criminal from the Ryukyus that bothered him.

The expression on his face, when Jin had slid back the fusuma, had been more damning than Mugen’s presence in her futon. It wasn’t as if he was surprised — the criminal had made no secret of his attention to Fuu, what with his pointedly bringing her things like plums and apples and fish. She’d looked so panicked, he’d known nothing had happened that he’d have to kill the other man over; it was the idea that Mugen might have been willing to do something they’d planned to kill the ashigaru for doing that had spurred him to yank the other man out of her bed like a puppy.

What would you have done in his place? that little voice at the back of his mind nagged. Shogi lessons?

Shut up, he told the little voice. Mm. Talking to myself now. Good. Excellent. At this rate, I should be as crazy as Yukimaru by next week.
His hand crept up to rub at the bridge of his nose.

Although, it hadn’t been the ashigaru who was responsible for this mess, he could tell that much from the way the man acted around Fuu. Hn. Jin doubted she’d told him much about the journey to Nagasaki. Broad-minded as it was to want to take a former dice roller to wife, he didn’t think that tolerance stretched as far as to cover an ex-brothel girl. On the other hand, a former prostitute wouldn’t bother the Ryukyuan —

Fuu and Mugen exchanged startled glances when the sound of teeth being ground together came from under Jin’s kasa.

— and brothel girls and lecherous samurai were the stuff of jokes, they appeared together in songs and stories so often.

Shit.

“Hey!” he heard Fuu call out excitedly to Mugen. “I can see the temple from here!”

Jin thanked the gods; the monk had been very helpful the last time. And if he could help him sort out a small thing like the duties of a warrior, then women shouldn’t be too difficult. Right? Right.

He stepped lightly onto the wood planks, smiling faintly as he noticed that the planks had become a little more faded than when they’d stayed at the temple. He wondered who Father Zuikou had managed to talk into scrubbing the floors; other travelers? Pilgrims, perhaps. He did like the idea of the shogun’s men stopping here to question the old monk, who would be wily enough to figure out a way to set a gathering of daimyo to do his chores for him. He’d have had Kariya chopping wood, certainly.

Jin put his hand out to the shoji but stopped as he heard the sound of voices inside. The voice of courtesy (which sounded suspiciously like the voice of Mariya-dono, he noted with amusement) asked if he was in such a hurry that he would risk the rudeness of interrupting, and he decided to wait a moment. She had been so intent on coming here in the first place — he heard the familiar clatter of geta behind him. He turned to look at Mugen, who stopped and raised an eyebrow questioningly at him, until he caught the sound of the conversation as well.

“— and Jin and Mugen told me that the shogun’s men were trying to find me again,” she was saying. “I don’t know, though. You’d think they’d have been able to find us by now. I’m starting to think that they’re overreacting a little.”

Mugen gave an irritated sniff, but kept quiet.

“Mm. So I’m harboring fugitives under this roof?” the monk’s voice was warm, and full of humor. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. And that you thought to come here. It is the purpose of a temple, to shelter those who have need. But — if you’ll forgive me, I would have expected you to be a little happier, my dear.”

Jin drew his hand back, as there was silence for a moment. “I was so angry at my father,” Fuu said quietly. “But when I got there, he was so small, and I could smell the sickness on him — all I could say were these terrible things to him. I think — I will feel guilty for saying those things for the rest of my life.”

“Mm. Did he say anything back to you?”

“He said he’d never stopped thinking of us, of me and my mother.”

“Is it so hard to believe, that your father loved you? And that he would have forgiven you for saying what you did?” the monk asked her gently. “You must let go and allow him to complete his journey, of death and rebirth.”

“No, I know he understood. But — “ Awkwardly, she stopped. “I was so foolish, I — ”

“In what you said?”

“It wasn’t — before he died, there was — “

The monk’s voice was puzzled. “He said something to you before that?”

“No. It — it wasn’t him. I couldn’t find my father, and no one would tell me — “

Noiselessly, Jin drew closer to the shoji; he looked over at Mugen, who was staring intently at the screen, his eyebrows knit together in thought.

“But finally, there was this woman who said — and then when I was walking, there were these two men in this field of sunflowers, one who sat in this weird chair, and — there was one with an eyepatch.”

Mugen stiffened; Jin watched as the criminal’s attention fixed on the sound of her voice. The last time Mugen had paid attention to anything that closely, he thought, was when they’d been sitting at the quay in Nagasaki, and that creature with the yellow hair had shown up, taunting him about having the girl. She was talking about those three brothers, the ones Mugen had fought, Jin realized.

The monk made a soft sound of encouragement.

“I tried to run, but I couldn’t get away, and then the one with the eyepatch, he was there, and then he was touching me — he hit me, and then he — his hands, and then he — “ She stopped. Jin could hear her struggling not to cry, and the sound made something fracture inside him. Oh, Fuu — the world around him stilled, condensed into the pinpoint of her voice. “I thought he was going to kill me, after — “

The old monk paused, then spoke. “Your companions — do they know?”

“No. Please, promise me you won’t tell them. Please. I couldn’t — the way they’d look at me. Please.” Her voice was thick. “I’m sorry — “

Stunned, he pushed back against the post, sinking to the floor. He put out his fingers to the planks, the old wood furred and rough. Everything was so clear, so sharp, etching itself into his memory — he realized his hands were shaking. He looked up at Mugen, who was staring at the warm glow of the shoji, eyes filled with screaming, as the longsword fell from his fingers. The Ryukyuan turned and haltingly walked away from the building to the edge of the courtyard that the light did not reach, where he dropped to the ground.

Behind him, he could faintly hear Mugen retching; he wished he could ease his body in that way, but he was frozen, his body heavy as lead, as death, their words as clear to him as if he were seated alongside the monk and the woman. The older man was murmuring to her now, soft words like those for a broken child, as her breathing hitched once, and again. The old Fuu would have cried, he knew, but this one — it was as if the ability to cry had been taken from her as well.

She never said. Not once — how could we not have known? She’d been different, quieter when they’d woken, and he’d put it down to the death of her father and Kariya. Stupid, he was so stupid — there had been the scrapes and bruises on her face, but he’d assumed those had been from when she’d been held at the Christian temple. He hadn’t thought about how it had been a week after that, he’d thought only to ask Mugen if the three men were dead and no longer a threat. After a week, the marks should have faded — try as he might, he couldn’t remember her face when Kariya had backed her onto the cliff’s edge, only her defiant eyes, then the fighting and the darkness and the pain like ice at his heart —

She’d been holding herself stiffly, he remembered that. Gods. He closed his eyes. There were so many points at which he could have done something differently, could have kept her safe; he could have, should have seen through that strange little errand she’d manufactured for them so she could slip away, he could have sent Mugen to the island more quickly, he could have locked his arms around her that night by the river and kept her away from that fucking island —

His face was wet, he realized.

He scrubbed roughly at his eyes with his palms, automatically registering the sound of Mugen getting up and stumbling away toward the center of town. A second later, he understood that Mugen was gone — and with him, the longsword.

In the end, it wasn’t that hard to find him.


“Come on, you bastards!”

The last yakuza Mugen had been fighting looked up at the Ryukyuan, face naked and afraid. “Please — “ the man said brokenly. He screamed then, his hands full of blood, where the longsword came away and he clutched at his stomach. The back alley smelled like a butcher’s, or like Jin would have imagined a battlefield; he’d been in the presence of enough of the dead — he’d created enough of them, he thought — to recognize the loose stink of piss and shit, the thread of iron weaving through to let him know just how much blood had been spilled. A surprising amount, he thought as he stepped around a hand lying open on the ground, but then Mugen had always been a prodigy with a sword.

“Fight me, damn you!” The gray eyes were wide and glazed with the need to hurt, the need to pour pain out and into someone else. “Why won’t you fight me, you son of a bitch? Get up!” He kicked the bloody man, who moaned and curled protectively around his wounds, longsword drawn up for the killing blow.

”Mugen!” Jin shouted. The other man jerked, unseeing, sword slicing the air toward him — the countless hours at the dojo flowed through his fingers, drawing the katana and blocking before he was run through. “Enough!”

The gray eyes flickered, slowing — as Jin pulled back a moment too late to entirely avoid the vicious punch Mugen threw at him. Had it struck him in the chest, he had no doubt there would have been serious damage; he heard the longsword clatter to the ground as he took the brunt of the punch in the shoulder. The ronin dropped his katana; the other man would not draw his sword on him, he’d use his fists or feet instead.

Mugen swung on him, as Jin ducked and struck out at that unprotected middle. He felt ribs give slightly, before the other man tackled him and they rolled on the bloodied ground. Mugen tried to knee him in the groin, but Jin brought his legs to the side and clipped him in the chin with his fist; he felt the skin over his knuckles split on impact — he’d feel that tonight, he thought distantly. Then Mugen smashed him in the mouth with his forehead, and he stopped thinking as the taste of copper filled his mouth. He welcomed the pain, thoughts of the woman receding to a dull, manageable ache.

He brought his thumbs up to gouge at the criminal’s face, hissing as he felt sharp teeth sink into the skin between his thumb and index finger. Jin jammed his forearm against Mugen’s throat, pressing in — then there was a foot in his stomach, flipping him off and over. He rolled up, using the momentum from the throw the way Mariya-dono had taught him, spitting out blood as he dropped into a crouch.

They circled each other warily. The other man’s face was dirty, covered in smears of grit and scarlet, his eyes glittering and wet. He watched Jin strangely, any knowledge of him as friend gone, replaced by awareness of the ronin as threat. He dropped fluidly to his hands, metal edge of those geta slicing out toward the place where Jin’s throat had been a second before. He fell heavily back then, as Jin hit him in the stomach with his shoulder, air being violently driven out of his lungs. He thrashed wildly under the ronin, who knelt on his chest, pinning him to the ground, losing his grip on his shoulders —

“Fuck —“ Mugen gasped, bucking the ronin off. He flipped upright first, Jin gasping now, as he brought his knee up into the gray-clad abdomen. The ronin grunted in pain, but grabbed fistfuls of haori as he went down, swinging the Ryukyuan into the dirt with him. They got to their feet slowly, before Mugen lunged at him and Jin blocked once more. Mugen managed to hit him under the chin, rocking him back on his feet; Jin countered by kicking the other man in the kidneys.

Their kicks and punches were slowing now, the other man drawing in long, sobbing breaths as they tired. “Mugen,” Jin croaked, voice rasping over the swollen flesh of his throat. “You have to stop — “

”It’s my fault,” he heard, before Mugen went for his eyes with those ragged nails of his; Jin’s foot lashed out and caught the other man in the side of the knee, forcing him to stagger.

Jin breathed in, painfully. “Shut up, “ he grated. Gods, he didn’t have much more left — he lurched in the slick and bloodied mud as the other man sagged into him. He caught the front of Mugen’s haori before he fell. “No. Shut up.” They slid to the ground together, breath coming in short jagged pants, Mugen’s chin resting on his shoulder. He could smell bile, rank and bitter, in the other man’s breath. The wounded yakuza had gone, either taken by his comrades or crawled off somewhere to die, he supposed. Jin wiped his thumb across his bottom lip, feeling where the skin had split; he looked down at his hand, unsurprised to find he was just as filthy now as Mugen.

“Asshole,” the Ryukyuan whispered — whether to himself or to Jin, the ronin didn’t know. “They came looking for me. Only reason it happened was because she was with me. She’d of been safe, if I wasn’t anywhere near her. Don’t even try to tell me it’s not my fault.”

Jin closed his eyes. “Don’t — “

“I ever tell you about what they were doing when I got there? He was working her over pretty good — I could tell she’d been spitting up blood. When I got him to let her go, she wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t leave me there, even — ” He pushed the hair away from his face with a shaking hand. “I had to yell at her before she’d go, called her a bitch and told her to run. Even then, I don’t think she would have gone if I hadn’t told her I wasn’t gonna die.”

Calming himself with an effort, Jin said, “It was as much my fault as yours.”

“The fuck you talking about? You gonna try and tell me you were with Mukuro when we hit that sugar shipment, and I just didn’t see you? ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot — new guy, daisho, likes blue a lot’?” Mugen’s voice was irritated, but the strangeness was leaching out. Instead, his voice was tired, almost defeated.

“I knew how I could kill Kariya,” he said. Gods, all he wanted was to sleep, preferably until the next week. “I just — didn’t. Not when I should have.”

Mugen was silent for a moment, still leaning into him; the kimono cloth between them was rumpled and sticky with sweat against Jin’s skin. Finally, the other man asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Jin sighed. Using Mugen’s shoulder to lever himself up, he pushed himself off the ground, offering a hand to the other man once he was standing. His shoulder throbbed painfully and he suppressed a wince as he picked his katana off the ground. “I could have been there sooner.”

The Ryukyuan laughed grimly. “Shit. Big help you would have been, with that hole through your gut.” They set off in the direction of the temple, slowly, both of them moving like old men.

“Not completely unlike the one in yours, as I remember.”

“Mm.”

They trudged back, Jin breaking the silence between them only to ask, “What happened to them?”

“I asked Jerome once, after we woke up again,” Mugen said, referring to Kasumi Seizo’s elderly manservant. “He said that he helped her drag Kariya down to the beach and they burned him with the bodies there.”

The ronin nodded. “Good.”

Neither man spoke again before they reached the temple grounds, both lost in thought.

Fuu was less than pleased when she saw the condition in which they’d returned.

“— were you thinking, Mugen? How could you get that dirty in two hours’ time? It’s like you were rolling around in the mud, or something — “ She chased the Ryukyuan toward Father Zuikou’s bathtub, where she’d efficiently started water heating as soon as she’d set eyes on them. Jin slumped gratefully onto the steps; he could hear the woman’s voice in counterpoint to the sounds of the nighttime temple, a pleasant background of crackling fire, crickets, and the faint tink of bells.

“You’re back.” The monk spoke quietly. The older man had come up behind him, his feet noiseless on the old wood.

“Hn,” the ronin agreed.

The older man took in the extent of his injuries, then nodded. “You should let her draw you a bath before you sleep,” he advised, with the assurance born of years in a dojo. “You’ll be in less pain tomorrow if you do.”

Jin closed his eyes. “No,” he said honestly.

The other man considered him for a moment. “No, I suppose you won’t,” he said, before moving past him, carrying a faded bundle toward the bath.

“Jin?” There was a small hand on his shoulder, shaking him lightly.

Unfortunately, it was the shoulder Mugen had struck, and he winced as he woke from his doze. “Mnhrm?”

“Oh, sorry. You two really got worked over,” she said, giving him a wry little smile. “I should be yelling at you, but after yelling at Mugen, I’m kind of tired. Maybe we can wait until the morning and then I can really give you a hard time. Just remind me, okay?”

“Ah.” He started to get to his feet, but she put a hand on his forearm to stop him.

“Hang on. Mugen’s still soaking — Father Zuikou said he’d keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t fall asleep — but I want to take a look at you, too, considering how much gravel I picked out of him.” Fuu gave him a speculative look, before scooting up next to him so she could examine his face. He went very still as she touched his cheek, before continuing to talk. “He said you ran into some yakuza?”

He made a noncommittal sound, her fingertips drifting to the torn lip. Gods — he could smell the sweetness of oranges on her breath.

“Hn. I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have thought yakuza could do this much damage to the two of you together. Maybe if there were fifty of them, and you had had too much sake,” she gently teased.
He snorted, sending a ripple of air over her fingers. “These were very strong yakuza. At least fifty-one of them,” he agreed, feeling a quiet tickle of gratification steal through his stomach when she smiled.

“Hold still, you have almost as much dirt in your cuts as he did.” She bit her lip as she took his injured hand, holding it close to her eyes as she inspected his knuckles. “I wanted to talk to you, anyway,” she confessed.

His mouth went dry. “Fuu — “

”No. I should have said something right away,” she said, drawing her hand away. She wrapped her arms around her legs and looked at him sheepishly. “You just looked so angry, I didn’t want — I didn’t know if you would believe me.”

Jin frowned. What — how could she think he would be angry with her? It was that piece of garbage at fault, not her —

“I know what you must be thinking, but Mugen was just being stupid when we were talking. He was asking me about — “ she flushed, a pink tide rising over the top of her chest to match the kimono “— um, girl stuff, and I wasn’t telling him and I told him to go to bed, andhegotintobedwithme.”

He blinked, thinking that if Takeda Shingen could have planted Fuu in the ranks of the enemy at Nagashino to confuse them, he’d be a daimyo right now. “What?”

“It wasn’t what it looked like! Really,” she said nervously. “He was just being — well, Mugen.”

He narrowed his eyes, feeling a strange mixture of skepticism and relief, as she talked. She might not have been innocent in body, but if she believed the Ryukyuan got into bed with a woman simply to annoy her — he made a mental note to do something suitably evil to Mugen the next day.

“But — you looked really, really angry, and then you wouldn’t talk — “ Forlorn, she cast her eyes down at her hands.

“Hey.” He was sitting with his good shoulder toward her, so he gave her a nudge; when she looked up, he gave her a little smile. “Not at you. I know you.”

Her face twisted. “Do you?” she asked, bleakly.

“Yes,” he told her. “I do.”

She considered this for a moment. “Mm,” she said, and rested her head against him.

“Hn.” He was bruised, completely filthy, and more content than he had been for months. He allowed himself to rest his cheek against her soft hair briefly — gods only knew what he smelled like to her — before straightening again. It wasn’t completely all right, but it was a start, he thought.

“Oh, I almost forgot. This is for you.” She gave him a soft, folded bundle, which he accepted curiously. “I asked Father Zuikou if there was anything you two could wear after you’d bathed,” she said, grinning impishly.

He unfolded it as Mugen emerged angrily from the tiny bathhouse — what was he wearing? — and stalked over to where they were sitting.

“I bet you think this is funny,” the other man growled at Fuu, who was snickering into her hands — before she began to laugh outright at Jin, who realized what he was holding.

“That’s not very nice,” she told him between giggles. “I don’t know why you’re complaining, Jin’s getting the same.” Mugen’s face quirked, as he gave the ronin a grin of unholy glee.

Jin sniffed disdainfully and made his way toward his waiting bath, as his companions dissolved into helpless laughter behind him.

Had there really, he thought to himself, been nothing else for them to wear but monk’s robes?


A/N: Fuu, I am so sorry; I wish I didn’t think this happened to you.

This chapter is predicated on the last three episodes of Samurai Champloo, the “Evanescent Encounter” story arc; I think it’s obvious that Fuu suffers some physical injury at the hands of the three former Satsumae-han brothers, though Watanabe-dono isn’t particularly clear as to what exactly happened. (And probably for good reason, considering that SC was already airing at a later time in the television schedule due to its graphic content.) The nature of what went on is open to interpretation, but I think my take is a likely one. Any rate, it’s worth going back and watching those episodes again to make up your own mind.

On a lighter note, I believe I’m the first person to write about the old man caring for Kasumi Seizo, so I’m in uncharted waters here; I’m taking the liberty of naming him Jerome, after Amakusa Shiro, who led the force of peasants and ronin that eventually became the Shimabara Rebellion. 3Jane is a huge, huge nerd, but you knew that, right?