Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Nenju ❯ XXII. On a bare branch ( Chapter 22 )

[ 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: Yo. I’m switching update days to Sundays, for the time being — I’m doing some interesting juggling of school, work, real life and writing, and a full weekend in which to write is a very good thing for coherence, yes?

Nenju


“Funny how we keep meeting like this,” Yatsuha told him lightly, moving over so there was room for him next to her on the bench. They were the only two customers there; other, potential customers having been frightened off by the thick layer of dust and sticky feel to the counter, she assumed.

“You know, you’re the only woman I know who goes to sake stands on her own. Don’t you ever have problems, going to these places by yourself?” Mugen sat down next to her and poked a small pile of monme across the counter to the server in exchange for a small pitcher; he settled himself over the bench, as usual taking up enough space for two men.

“Not for long.”

He chuckled. “S’pose not.”

“You’re drinking alone?”

He nodded, turning the cup in his long fingers. “You’re a woman,” he said abruptly.

She raised her eyebrows. “You knew that before, right?”

He mumbled something.

“Sorry?”

“Said, I need to learn how to talk to women.”

Yatsuha watched as the server behind the counter shuffled to the far end. “ . . . oh?”

“Yeah.”
“Right.” She drank off the rest of her sake and held the cup aloft to signal the server. “So, women, as opposed to learning how to talk to a woman?”

“Maybe. Which works better?”

Yatsuha turned her head to look at him; he looked thoughtful, his elbows propped on the counter. “That . . . depends on what you want. And the woman.” The server brought over a pitcher like his, liquid sloshing over the wooden sides as he set it down. She scowled, but paid the man anyway.

Mugen continued as if he hadn’t noticed, but she noticed how the server backed away again when those pale gray eyes flickered over him.

She wondered how it was that his eyes were that color; she’d never seen anything like them, even among the foreigners on their yearly visit to Edo. When she’d seen the foreigners’ eyes — some were properly brown, of course, but so many of them had eyes of an unnerving blue — she’d thought at first that there was something wrong with them, that they’d been diseased in some way. But Mugen — she tried to imagine him with eyes brown like hers, like Hankichi’s, and couldn’t. The gray just . . . fit, somehow. Yatsuha smiled into her cup.

“ . . . what?” He tilted his head, looking at her curiously.

“Sorry,” she said. “My mind was somewhere around Nara. The girl, again?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird. She wasn’t . . . and now she is,” he said. “It was like she grew up when I wasn’t there, and then when I saw her — sounds kinda stupid, when I say it like that.” He didn’t wait for her to offer to serve him, but tipped sake into his own cup.

“You’re still traveling together?” she tried.

Mugen gave her an amused look before taking a long drink. “Problem is,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “I don’t know what to do. Everything I say around her just ends me up in the shit. And she keeps looking at that asshole like he’s Yoshitsune.”

Yatsuha blinked and poured herself another. “You ever try just talking to her? If you were friends before this, it couldn’t be that difficult.”

He rolled his eyes. “She thinks about everything too much, so yeah, it can. I can’t screw this up, either, because if it goes wrong, that’s it. There they are. Not us, not we — them. And this is my last chance, I think. She was interested in me, too, but I messed that up.” Mugen shook his head. “My own damn fault,” he told the cup.

“Hey. It could work,” she said and poked him in the shoulder. “You’re incredible. You beat up gangs on your off days! Now tell me why this wouldn’t work. Is she going somewhere with him you aren’t?” She grinned as engagingly as she knew how to do.
Looking sideways at her, he began to laugh.


Yatsuha could see the lantern still glowing through the open door of the four tatami room. Frowning, she quickened her pace.

It was unusual for Hankichi to still be there this late. By this time of night, he should have been stationed outside the suicide’s school for her to make the handoff to him; instead, he was sitting, reading by lantern light. He looked up, as she made sure to courteously step on the stairs’ squeaky spot and alert him to her presence.

“Hey, where were you?” she asked, slipping her sandals off outside the door. “They’re in for the evening, but unless I have the night watch and you forgot to tell me, you’re late by sort of a lot.”

“Yeah. Waited so I could give you this.” He held the piece of paper he’d been reading — a letter, she saw — out to her. Yatsuha took it and started reading; halfway through, she sat down abruptly.

“This is bad,” she said, when she’d finished. “Why now?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t done anything out of the ordinary; they got to Mihara, they’re staying a couple days before moving on. Unless they changed plans?” He looked over at her.

She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything to me. If there was a change, he wasn’t aware of it.”

Hankichi’s voice was even. “Well, did you ask?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, did you ask?”

“Don’t be an idiot.” She opened the lantern and carefully held a corner of the letter to the tiny flame inside, the paper catching eagerly. “I’m doing my job.”

“Sure,” he said, the low light making shadows of his skeptical face. “My mistake.” He slipped off into the twilight, his green clothing melting against the trees.

Yatsuha swore under her breath as the burning paper singed her fingertips. Dropping it to the ground, she watched it curl dully in on itself, nothing left to show of the message other than ashes. The letter had been short: wandering still/ four crows fly/ to the western temples. Deciphered, it was an instruction to wait and continue their surveillance until their superior officer arrived in four days’ time.

She had no idea why the message left a cold pool in her stomach. It wasn’t as if she could cry off from the mission over being squeamish about what would likely happen to the Kasumi girl; she’d done worse things than pump the Ryukyuan for information. It seemed likely that he knew what she was trying to do — he wasn’t a stupid man, far from it. She’d been surprised, but not terribly so, to hear from Hankichi that Mugen seemed to be literate, based on his visits to the old crank living at Bundai Hall.

Not that it took a scribe to realize that seeing the same ninja over and over again, no matter where the girl and her two bodyguards went, was a highly improbable coincidence.

She wasn’t even sure why it mattered to her what a felon from the islands to the south of Satsuma thought, or why she was feeling this — not sick, exactly, but something — over her father’s arrival in Mihara, which would almost certainly put an end to the Kasumi girl’s journey, and Mugen’s. “It’s for peace,” she said out loud, a mantra against the feeling in her stomach. It almost worked.

Yatsuha carefully scattered the ashes over the hard packed dirt of the courtyard and resigned herself to wakefulness until it was time for her to take over Hankichi’s watch at the school; she doubted sleep would come for her, now.



Notwithstanding the dim lantern that was the only illumination in the long classroom, Bundai was still very much awake, as his only student from Ryukyu discovered.

He had his books for company, as well.


The book hit Mugen in the shoulder. Automatically, he caught it as it fell, his eyes going to the characters written on the front; that — oh, that was just too fucking cute for words. “Ow, bastard! What the hell was that for?”

Bundai scowled. “I was aiming for your head.”

Mugen tossed the book down on the low table. “One more person brings up that damn Tale of Genji to me again, I’m shoving it so far up his ass he’ll burp paper. And then? I’m gonna shove it up a little farther.”

“Which is why you aren’t getting anywhere,” the older man said. “I can see you have ears, so why don’t you use them?”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t have taught you if I’d known you were going to turn out to be such an idiot, boy.” Bundai shook his head. “You started out so well . . . “

”Hey, who’re you calling an idiot?”

“I’m calling you an idiot, idiot. You wouldn’t be back here by yourself, if you got my advice right the first time,” the older man told him. Bundai fumbled in the untidiness of a cabinet filled to overflowing with scrolls, ink pots, and socks, before coming up with a flask. “Ah.”

The stopper came loose with a wet-sounding pop! and Bundai offered it courteously to Mugen first. The younger man shook his head, watching as Bundai tilted the bottle to his mouth. “You planning to drink that whole bottle by yourself?” Mugen asked, wondering for the first time whether the strangely golden cast to the other man’s skin was due entirely to the dim light.

The teacher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whole bottle’s nothing. I drank up almost all of a school by myself,” he said dismissively, and gestured at the rickety tables laden with books and dirty laundry. “That’s not important. You came for more advice on women, I imagine.”

Slowly, Mugen shook his head and sat. “No.”

“What, then?” Bundai set the bottle to the side of the table; his tone was bored, but the Ryukyuan had caught the momentary gleam of interest in his eye as he turned away.

“Need to know about the shogun.”

“Mm?” Bundai paused. “What about?”

“And what happened at Shimabara.” Mugen propped his elbows on his knees, leaning forward casually.

The older man leaned back, all pretense to gruffness gone as his eyebrows rose to the middle of his forehead. “Give a man a fish,” he said, and laughed. “Teach you to fish, there are questions for a lifetime. Not that that’ll be all that long, you ever ask me that question outside the hall.”

“Eh?”

“Never mind. Have you ever heard of places called Spain, or Portugal?”


“Sword practice, this morning?”

“Yeah.” Mugen rolled his shoulders. “I need to go easy on you?”

The ronin smiled.

“Good.” He watched as Jin drew his sword, the katana slipping as easily from the sheath as the ronin would fold his hands in meditation.

They circled round each other, the Ryukyuan learning the feel of the soft wooden boards under his feet. “Careful of the floor on the far side,” the ronin told him. “They give, a little.”

“How long’s it been since you practiced here?”

Jin made a smooth sweep to his right, the tip of the katana describing a perfect silver arc in the light filtering through the paper screen; Mugen spun away. “Seven — no, that’s wrong. Eight years,” the ronin said. “But you never really forget.”

The Ryukyuan chuckled, the longsword flashing up, ringing as the katana blocked it. “Eight years ago, I was smuggling sugar into Taizhou with Mukuro, trying to figure out when he was going to screw me over.”

He moved back, slashing at Jin’s feet; the ronin leapt away from the blade, jumping forward. Mugen somersaulted away, gaining enough space to use the sword before he pushed ahead, bulling in toward the ronin with the sword’s edge. Jin blocked, again, his arms straining to counter Mugen’s weight. “Ah.”

They shoved against each other, neither able to find enough purchase on the soft boards to force a step backwards; the Ryukyuan realized the ronin was angling him toward the treacherous section of floor and grinned. “How dumb do you think I am?”

The ronin snorted gently, one corner of his mouth curving upward.

“Yeah, you keep laughing, asshole.” Mugen shook his head, still smiling, as he let the ronin’s momentum push him backwards; he pivoted fluidly behind Jin, propelling the ronin toward the far side of the dojo by bumping him with his hip, coming up close behind him before Jin caught himself from stepping into the spongy part of the floor.

“You asked,” the ronin said, as he dug his heel into the floor and shoved backward, rolling behind the Ryukyuan. Jin planted his foot squarely in the small of Mugen’s back and sent him flying; Mugen instinctively put his hands out to cushion his fall and yelped as his palm caught one of the old boards, driving a long splinter straight into his hand.

Mugen rolled over to face the ronin, hissing faintly as a muscle along his ribs protested. He was comforted to see that Jin was breathing as heavily as he was. “You notice that there’s less blood when we use swords than there is when we don’t?” he asked, taking the hand the ronin held out to him.

“Mm.” Jin hoisted him to his feet, as the door slid open and Fuu stepped inside. “Fuu,” the ronin said, in the same tone of voice he’d previously saved for tempura, or Masamune.

“Hey. I heard you two beating each other up, and then it stopped,” she said and smiled at him. “I thought I should check to see you were both alive.”

Mugen looked down sardonically at the splinter protruding from the palm of his hand. “Now what’m I supposed to do tonight?”he said.

Jin’s eyebrows twitched.

Fuu looked at him blankly. “What would — I don’t want to know, do I?” she asked. “Come on. I want to see if the twins have any oil in the kitchen.” She grasped the wounded hand carefully and set off toward the rear of the building, leaving Jin to watch as Mugen cast a smug look behind them. They entered a long, twisting hallway, the girl walking briskly ahead of him.

“So why you want some oil? Just pull it out,” the Ryukyuan said toward the hairpins bobbing in front of him.

She gave him a quick, sidelong frown. “Because that’s a stupid idea. Just look at it — if I pull it out, it’s going to break into little splinters and I’m not gonna get all of them. If I put some oil on it, it’ll slide right out. Unless you want to be all manly and stupid about this, too?” She tugged him into the kitchen after her, their feet slapping softly against the stone flags of the floor.

He looked at her narrowly. “You know, you’ve been a real bitch lately, and I don’t just mean the thing with Jin. What’s pissing you off?”

Fuu bit her lip, looking everywhere but at him; he raised an eyebrow as she checked the same set of shelves twice.

“Come on,” he prompted. “What? I know you’re pissed off at me.”

She took the stopper out of a ceramic flask and gingerly checked the contents before pouring a small amount over the splinter into his palm. She shook her head, watching the oil soak into the wood. “I am, a little. But I’m too tired to want to yell at you about it right now.” Her hands were gentle, the splinter easing out almost painlessly.
“You’re tired?” He frowned. “Are you sick, or something?”

“No. It’s just a lot to think about, and I can’t stop thinking. Wish I could, though.” She kept his hand in hers, looking up at him at last with a rueful smile. “I keep following Kazu around so he’ll tell me stories about what he does in Edo, and what Jin was like when he came here to study with their father.”

“Stories . . . ?” Mugen cocked an eyebrow at her. All that he needed to make things that much more complicated was to have the twins chasing after her as well, he thought. Funny, he wouldn’t have pegged them as the type to —

She chuckled. “Not like that. I don’t think Kazu would be interested in me that way, even if I looked like that woman who got you two drunk and ripped us off.”

“So what is it, then?” he prompted, reaching for a cloth that hung neatly over the edge of a basin and using that to wipe the oil away.

She was silent a long moment before answering. Then: “I don’t know if I’m just something else for you and Jin to compete over.”

Oh, shit — of course she would think that, he realized, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Is that what this is?” Fuu asked, when he failed to answer; she took the cloth from him and folded it automatically before setting it aside. “Another way of being better?”

“No, it’s — “

”Because that’s really sick, if that’s what this is.” Her voice was too calm, her shoulders held rigid as she looked up at him.

Not knowing what else to do, Mugen awkwardly pulled her in close. She pushed away a little, and his grip on her tightened.

“I’m not some thing,” she said softly. “You can’t just do this when you feel like it.”

“Yeah,” he said, stooping a little so that his face was level with hers. “I know.” He kissed her gently, his hands cradling her face. Distantly he thought of how she tasted of that morning’s rice, of fresh water —

She hesitated, before breaking the kiss. Frustrated, he made a dissatisfied noise low in his throat, but let her turn her face from him.

Fuu pushed him away again, this time more insistently. He straightened, giving her a questioning look. “I’m sorry. This can’t — ” she said. “I can’t. I have to decide. It’s not fair to either of you if I don’t.” She disengaged herself from him apologetically.
“When?”

“I don’t know.” She passed her hand over her hair. “Soon. When I figure it out.”

“We aren’t that far from Nagasaki,” he told her. “Will you know then?”

“I don’t know. Probably.” She looked up at Mugen, her eyes widening as realization sank in. “You’re not coming with me if it’s not you, are you?”

“Fuu — “ He stuck his hands in his pockets, hating the expression on her face, as if he’d just confessed to having a collection of squirrel pelts he’d been intending to give her. If it was Jin, they’d never manage in Ryukyu, he told himself; better to leave them, force them to settle somewhere they where they could. He’d be drawing out what could not last, if he went with them.

She made an exasperated noise, dark eyes snapping. “You still don’t understand why I want you to be there, do you?”

“It would be a bad idea to have me there, if it’s him,” he said.

“And if it’s you, then what? Do you think I’d just leave either of you here like you were nothing?” Her voice rose stridently. “You don’t know me at all, if you think that.” She walked out, the door rattling in its tracks behind her as she stalked away toward the thin path leading up the hill to the temple.

He watched after her a moment, before lashing out at a post with his foot.

Dammit.