Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Nenju ❯ XIV. A frog jumps in ( Chapter 14 )

[ 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).

A/N: Many thanks again to everyone who’s read the story this far, and my gratitude to everyone who’s reviewed — particularly everyone at aff.net; you’re all a thousand kinds of good, kids. It’s a shorter chapter this time, but I wanted to end it where it does because of what happens next chapter. (All will become clear ... er. Honest.)

Masamune is widely acknowledged as the greatest swordsmith of Japan, and lived roughly three hundred years before this tale is set.

Nenju


Somehow, he had offended the gods more.

How, the ronin wondered, was that even possible?

“Come on, Jin. Pleeeease?”

“Yeah, fish face, read us one of your books. Something about chicks with great big — “

”Mugen!”

“What?”

—

Seawater was fine to use for steaming fish, but for this, he wanted fresh water.

He had become used to shaving himself without a mirror in the first few months after leaving the dojo; he probably could have managed to go more than a few days, but he’d never liked feeling that unkempt. Mugen, on the other hand, could go weeks without shaving himself (though, in all fairness, Jin admitted, the other man was better about bathing than he had been when they’d met in Edo) and never seemed to mind.

Of course, if he was shaving himself with a tanto, too, it would probably be easier to make the decision to go more than a few days.

Jin tucked his hair behind his ears and tilted his head, drawing the small sharp blade over the corner of his jaw —

“Jin! I — oh!”

Ow!

He wiped at the trickle of blood with his thumb — there wasn’t a lot, he was pleased to see — as Fuu stopped dead in her tracks. “”Sorry,” she said, giving him a rueful little smile. “Oh, Jin, you’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing. What is it?“ He pulled his kimono up from where it had been hanging loosely around his waist, slipping his hand into the sleeve.

“Jin — “ She looked at him strangely. “What are you doing?”

He blinked. “It is unseemly — “

”You know, you spent a whole week on Ikitsuki just wearing your hakama,” she told him. “I’ve already seen you like this. And your water’s getting cold.”

“Hn.” The ronin dabbed gingerly at his cut, before giving in and picking up the little blade again, kimono falling down around his hips.

Fuu perched on the trunk of a fallen tree, a few paces away. “And then, while you and Mugen were unconscious, Jerome helped me dress you up like women,” she continued. “You’re a lot prettier than he is.” His eyes flickered over to her; she was grinning wickedly.

Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitched. “Than your father’s servant? Mm.”

She shook her head in mock sadness. ”How did you get to be so — ? Mugen would have been yelling and cursing at me.”

“There was a girl in Edo,” he told her, pulling the skin taut as he scraped the edge over his cheek. “And a coin toss, I believe.” He rinsed the blade with a decisive tap! against the side of the bowl that held his water.

“Yes, but then you would have missed all that wonderful starvation and having a crazy guy almost kill you. Are you saying you didn’t like that?”

He paused, and was about to answer when he glanced over and realized she was staring fixedly at him.

“Fuu?” Was he bleeding again? He brushed his thumb over the cut and looked — no, that wasn’t it.

“Yes?”

“What is it?”

“Your scar.” She got off the tree and came up to him, close enough so that he could see the individual strands in the hair pulled away from her temples; he stood there, conscious of his breathing, as she peered critically at his abdomen where Kariya had run him through.

Ah. That. “I should — “

”It healed really well. I was afraid you were going to have a much bigger scar than this,” she told him. “I was going to ask you before this, but — ” Hesitantly, she touched the long thin silver line on his skin, as he stopped breathing entirely.

At some level, he was conscious of how soft her fingers were; he forced himself to school his body into behaving normally, as he drew a ragged breath. “Fuu,” he said again, and was quiet, having absolutely no idea what to say next. More! seemed inappropriate at the moment. Granted, it would be honest and honesty was one of the great virtues of bushido, and he thanked the gods she was used to his silences, because inside his head he was babbling and if anything further came out of his mouth right now, it would be a wholly emasculating whimper.

Briefly, he wondered how disgraceful it would be to let the next idiot-bent-on-vengeance from the Mujuu just kill him, before she unmanned him completely — oh.

Too late, then.

“It’s not raised or anything, so it should fade,” she was telling him, as her open palm rested against his side and her fingertips traced delicately over the flaw. She was standing close enough that he could hear her breathing (more even than his, damn her) but her arm was held out, bent only slightly as she touched him.

Considerately, he moved closer to her, until he could feel against his chest the faintest movement of air from her breathing, and her arm relaxed. “If I should — “ he said, and fell silent. Should what, he wondered. Kiss her? Take the sticks out of her hair? Run screaming back to the monk at Motomachi and beg to be taken on as a novice before he did something stupid?

“How do you do that?” she asked wistfully.

He frowned a little. “Hm?”

“You never want anything.”

The ronin blinked.

“You never seem to, anyway,” she told him, and rubbed his scar gently with her thumb. “You weren’t even thinking about this scar until I brought it up, were you?”

Jin shook his head; he was having a difficult time thinking of it now.

“I wish — “ She pursed her lips together. “I’m sorry.”

He reached out slowly and touched her arm.

They heard the sharp clatter of geta at the same time, turning their heads as Mugen came around the corner. “Oi — “ He saw them and stopped, before asking pointedly, “Do I need to come back later?”

“What? No!” Fuu told him, letting her hand drop back to her side as she moved away from Jin, who would have cheerfully decapitated the Ryukyuan at that moment. “Geez. Give it a rest, willya?”

“You sure?” The other man sat down comfortably on the fallen tree. “Or I could just wait here.”

Jin snorted derisively, as he started shaving himself again. The water had gone cold while Fuu had been saying . . . whatever it was that she’d been saying (what had she been saying? And he was supposed to be the inscrutable one), he noted with sour amusement.

“You can be such a jerk,” Fuu told Mugen, before sitting on the tree next to him.

The Ryukyuan grinned at the ronin, who looked back at him impassively as the blade scraped over his skin.

He could still feel her hand.

—

“When will you be finished, Fuu?”

She shook her head, not looking up from where she was stitching a crumpled piece of red cloth. “Not before tonight.”

Mugen shrugged. “So we stay here another day. So what?”

“Hn.” By default, the ronin had become their navigator again; he fished the map out of his kimono as the other man came over to look. “Osaka.”

“Yeah? Big place. Good times.”

“No. Big place. Government officials,” Jin corrected him.
Mugen eyed him skeptically. “Thought we figured shogun’s men were using us as bait.”

“Ah,” the ronin agreed. “But Osaka is still an unnecessary risk.”

“We’re pretty close to Kyoto,” Fuu said, flexing her hands. “I’m sure we could — “

”Nope,” Mugen said. “Not going to Kyoto.”

“Why not?”

Because, Jin told her silently.

“Because,” Mugen told her loftily and crossed his arms. “‘S not safe.”

Her face set mutinously, and the ronin hurried to cut off any argument. “We’ll go through the mountains. That is the quickest way, if we are to avoid Osaka.” Jin folded the map carefully and tucked it back into his kimono.

“All right,” she said, shaking out the cloth before giving it to the Ryukyuan. “One haori, done. Now, you two need to leave for a while because I’m not doing mine in front of you.”

“Fine,” Mugen said, shrugging into the sleeves. “Come on, fish face. We’ll find a nice place where you can peep at her.”

“Mugen!”

—

“So,” said the Ryukyuan, once the hut was far enough away that the sound of their voices would not travel back. “Want to tell me what was going on back there?”

Jin grunted. No.

“Or I could just kick your ass, because we haven’t practiced yet this morning.”

“All right.”

The weight of the katana was familiar and soothing in the ronin’s hand, the cloth at the hilt worn from years of use. Idly, he wondered how her father had come by it. It was not as old as his had been, nor was it Masamune — possibly a student of his, though not the master’s work — but it was still remarkably fine, finer than one would expect a man of the waves to be carrying. Of course, he reminded himself, it wasn’t entirely his.

He realized after Mugen’s first move that the other man was distracted, as well.

“Oi,” Jin said, parrying. “Want to tell me what was going on back there?”

“Don’t think so.” The other man slipped into a crouch, striking up and —

The ronin turned, allowing the tip of the European sword to hiss past him harmlessly.

“Ryukyus’re a dumb idea,” Mugen said abruptly. He kicked dust, a cloud rising up where his opponent’s face had been a second before, and grinned. “You’re learning.”

Jin moved behind him and fluidly brought the katana back, just missing the newly heavy edge of the red haori. “How is it, this way?”

Mugen considered. “Not bad. Takes a little getting used to, but Fuu’s a smart girl to come up with this,” he said. “She’s going to kill you if she has to sew that up again.”

“Hn,” the ronin agreed, slashing down as the sound of metal meeting metal chimed out. “The Ryukyus might be the only choice we have.”

Mugen snarled and did a handspring away from him. “Satsuma-han’d be dangerous even without her dad. Bunch of fucks.”

“Satsuma-han or not, we still need to convince the foreigner to help us. We can’t even be sure he did not return to his own country.”

The Ryukyuan stood. “You know, I like you better when you’re not talking.”

Jin nodded. “Mm.”

Mugen scrubbed his hair away from his face, and made a face of disgust. “Problem is, there’s nowhere else. Don’t want to take her west — none of us speak the language — and there’s nothing to the east.”

“No.” The ronin sighed. “She still isn’t sleeping well.”

“Can’t blame her,” the other man observed. He frowned suddenly, looking past Jin’s shoulder, his eyes focused on something in the distance; the ronin turned cautiously — had Mugen learned tactics somewhere? — to see a slight figure approaching.

Behind him, Jin heard Mugen mutter, words in a language he did not recognize but in a tone he did.

The figure closed on them, walking at a steady pace; he cursed inwardly, as recognition came.

Doe’s eyes came up to meet them.
“Hello, Mugen,” Kohza said, and smiled.

—

Fuu squeaked, clutching pink fabric to her chest, as the Ryukyuan strode past her. “Mugen!”

“We’re leaving. Now,” he ground out, tipping the ryu that she hadn’t sewn into their clothes into a sack. “Get your things.”

Jin walked in a moment behind him, collected enough by now that he stopped inside the door when he saw Fuu.

“I’m not — will you two get out of here?” Angry, she picked up the closest thing to hand, and threw it at Mugen.

“Ow! Bitch, what the — oh.” He rubbed his head, her sandal falling to the ground with a muted thud, as he turned to see a furiously blushing woman sitting in her underclothes while gripping a pink kimono in front of her, and a ronin studiously looking at the ceiling.

Grumbling, he allowed a grim Jin to shepherd him outside, where they sat down with their backs against the wall of the hut, Fuu complaining about perverts behind them.

“Why are we leaving? I’m not finished yet,” her voice drifted out from the inside. “I haven’t even started on Jin’s.”

“Got a little problem,” Mugen said, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “Need to leave. Now.”

“What? Is it the shogun’s men?”

“No,” Jin said, as calmly as possible. “We saw the girl from Ryukyu.”

There was silence inside the hut, then Fuu emerged with her clothes tied messily around her, eyes serious and alert. “All right,” she said, nodding at Jin. “You, give me your kimono — I can work on it while he explains.” She looked at Mugen. “And you, start talking. I thought you killed her.”

Mugen sighed, as the ronin stripped to his hakama and gave her his kimono. “I thought I did too.”

—

“So you killed Shiren instead of her,” Jin said. “I see.”
Fuu looked up from where her needle was flashing in and out of the cotton. “She really isn’t that dangerous on her own, is she?” she asked. “I mean, she got other people to do the bad for her. I don’t see how staying one more night would be a problem as long as we just stay away from her.”

Jin nodded. “Hn.”

Mugen glared at them both, before digging in his ear with a long, knobbed finger. “Bitch is bad news,” he said. “I say we get the hell out of here and don’t give her the chance to make trouble.”

“Fuu. How much more is there to do?” Jin looked up at her, as she shook her head.

“About half.”

“We’ll stay, then,” Jin decided, shifting against the wall; something was digging into his back. “She’d have to have found someone after Mukuro and Shiren, but I doubt they’d be able to do much in a matter of hours. Even if we left now, we would still need before long to find a place where Fuu could finish.”

The Ryukyuan snarled in annoyance at their situation. “Fine. Yeah. I don’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

“Good.” She brought the thread to her lips and neatly bit it off. “She just said hello?”

“Left before she could say anything else,” Mugen said. “Fish face and I circled around so she wouldn’t see where we went — got back here, she was gone.”

Fuu made a small noise. “Maybe she’s sorry,” she hazarded.

The Ryukyuan rolled his eyes.

—