Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Nenju ❯ XXIII. A crow has alighted ( Chapter 23 )

[ 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: Sorry for the lateness, guys — I ended up returning home from my weekend away a little later than I’d planned. Eep!

Squick warning. Dang plot, making trouble for everyone.

Nenju


Sitting in the long room — Niwa Juunosuke having decided years ago (ever since the incident with Kazunosuke and the wasps’ nest) that his home needed a space where he could work and still keep an eye on his sons at play — Jin marveled again at how very small the space had become, now that the boys had grown.

The ronin watched, hiding a tiny smile, as Tatsunoshin leaned in casually under the guise of saying something to Fuu; her chopsticks flashed out to swat his fingers, forcing him to drop a last bit of melon he’d been filching from her dish. She laughed, as the dark-haired Niwa grinned back at her. Beside Fuu, Mugen burped unheeded, settling himself comfortably after the meal.

“Don’t mind Tatsu,” Kazunosuke said cheerfully. “Greedy.”

Jin winced; it was not a good choice of words, given the situation with the cloth merchant from Edo. Tatsunoshin was still smiling, but there was something slightly forced about his expression.

“So,” Fuu said. She gave Tatsunoshin a mock-stern look. “I think the price for extra melon should be a Jin story, don’t you?”

Kazunosuke crowed with laughter, as his brother pretended to consider this. “That’s fair,” Tatsunoshin agreed as the ronin’s eyebrows twitched. “What would you like to hear?”

“Anything,” she said. “What he was like when he was younger — something like that would be nice.”

Tatsunoshin popped the morsel into his mouth and swallowed. “Mm, I don’t know. What were you like, bro?” he asked. “He talks a lot more now . . . “

Jin snorted, as Mugen and Fuu laughed.

“Like a grownup, but more awesome,” Kazunosuke supplied. “You remember, Tatsu? I mean, there were always students around — a lot of other dojo sent them here for additional lessons — but we woke up one morning and there was this new student from Edo. Not only that, but he was from the Mujuu and he was kin to Mariya-dono.”

“You knew Jin’s master?” Fuu asked.

The twins nodded. “He’d visit, when he could,” Tatsunoshin said. “I think we were eight or nine, the last time. It was right before Jin came to stay.”

“Ah,” the ronin agreed.

“So . . . Jin,” she prompted. “What did he look like? Did he have glasses then?”

“No — mostly, he looked like he does now,” Kazunosuke said, trailing off. “Maybe a little shorter?”

Imperceptibly, the ronin began to relax.

“What about dumb hair? Pimples?” Mugen asked. He shrugged, when Jin gave him an annoyed look. “What? You could’ve been weird-looking.”

“No,” Kazunosuke said, and grinned. “The woman who did the washing used to wait around after bringing the clean things back, until she could get a peek at him while he was having his lessons.”

“You were perfect all the time?” she asked Jin. “That’s . . . kind of boring.”

“Dad taught Jin how to swim when he taught us,” Tatsunoshin offered. “That’s a good story, if you want to hear that?”

“Really?” Fuu perked up. “Yes, please.”

“Hn.” The ronin took his hands out of his sleeves. “Perhaps we should discuss when we will leave here — “ And leave swimming entirely out of this, he added mentally.

”We all went down to the ocean together — Dad said it was easier to float in the ocean than in a lake, for some reason,” Tatsunoshin continued. “I think he probably wanted bro to come along if both Kazu and I started to drown, plus whenever Jin said something, it was always worth paying attention. ‘Those mushrooms are poisonous,’ or ‘if you’re going to hit your brother with the bo, bring your shoulder up like this.’”

“Or ‘duck,’ Kazunosuke added, grinning. “That was always worth paying attention to.”
“Anyway, once Dad decided we were able to float on our own, he gave Jin a quick lesson — not much, because Jin was so amazing, he could’ve probably flown if you gave him a demonstration — and told him to give it a try.”

“I don’t think rocks sink as fast as Jin did,” Kazunosuke said, beginning to laugh with Mugen, who was chortling outright. “Tatsu started yelling for Dad, who managed to fish him out and get him treading water again; Dad showed him again how to float on his back, but when Dad took his arm out from under Jin, bang. Down he went. Again. And again.”

“Hn.” The ronin could feel the muscles in his shoulders bunching up, somewhere around his ears if he was not mistaken. “I was a little tense.”

“Awww.” Fuu leaned over and patted his knee. “You got better, though.”

He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Kind of,” Tatsunoshin told her. “It took a day, but by the time we left the water, Jin could float for a little bit. He could swim a long way, though, even with being. . . . “

”You were kind of skinny,” Kazunosuke said to Jin. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t float?”

Jin gave the blond twin a sour look.

“Or not.”

Fuu laughed. “Tatsu, I still have some melon left,” she said, her eyes mischievous.

The ronin groaned inwardly, wishing that the Niwa custom was to have sake with the evening meal. And where was an earthquake when he needed one?

He knew, the moment he heard the sound of wooden boards creaking underfoot.

Bundai replaced the stopper on his flask and waited.

It had been a matter of time since he’d brought the boy back here, probably since the moment he’d overheard him telling the girl in pink that it was enough to be able to read one character. He’d known that much since last night, when the boy — Bundai’d always thought of him as ‘the angry boy’; angry at life, at circumstance, the world around him for not being what it should, and trying to mask that under a face of surly indifference — had come calling with questions about Shimabara and Christians.

“Out here,” he called, to the person moving quietly through the schoolroom. Frowning, he looked down at the flask; it was probably appropriate that this would happen with a bottle in his hand, but some little part of him had been hoping he’d have been able to trade the bottle for the book. Or anything else, really — story of his life, he supposed. “Just outside the door.”

There was a faint chuckle. “You’re very calm.”

“Drunk, actually,” Bundai lied. “I’d piss myself about now if I was sober.”

“Then you know what I want.”

“I . . . have an idea.” The teacher rolled the neck of the bottle between his fingers. “You’ve come to the wrong place.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t take students, any more,” Bundai said. “I do a little tutoring, from time to time . . . but not presently. I’m very sorry that you’ve come all this way for nothing.“

There was a pause, then: “You’re brave. Foolish, but brave.”

“No.” He had no idea of what to do with his hands, the teacher realized. He set the flask to one side — for some reason, it seemed important to keep it from breaking; as if a puddle of spilled sake could do anything to make him more ridiculous than he already was, he thought. He wondered who would be the one to find him. “Foolish, yes, but a coward. Ask me whatever you want, and I’ll answer.”

“Hm.” The visitor was no longer bothering to mask the sound of his footsteps as he made his way past the long low table piled high with paper and books. “Then tell me about the foreign man who came here last night, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“Foreign man? Ah. He was here only to drink,” Bundai said. “Greedy bastard, he nearly cleaned me out. Very wise of the shogun to keep foreigners out, if only to keep the sake safe.”

“And you talked.”

Bundai sighed. “Not in sentences that begin with conjunctions, no.”

“You should keep in mind that I’ve made you no promises yet.”

“Mm.”

“What did you talk about?”

Bundai grimaced, but left it. “Women. Sake. Literature.”

There was an amused snort.

“Genji, to be honest,” the teacher continued. “I don’t believe he agrees with me on its quality. I will admit that toward the end — “

”Why is he here?”

“He never told me that. I’m not entirely sure I asked. Sometimes,” Bundai said, tapping the side of the flask, “my memory is not as precise as it could be.”

“What did he say about his companions?”

The teacher shrugged. “He said only that one was a woman who was a pain in his ass. I stopped listening after that — women don’t interest me, much.”

“Did he say anything specific about her?”

“I couldn’t say; really, I don’t remember.”

“I see.” Footsteps came to a halt just behind him, his visitor near enough that Bundai heard the man’s stomach gurgling faintly. The teacher kept his eyes fixed firmly on the overgrown garden behind the school, tangled weeds casting long shadows in the watery moonlight. “Where are they going?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long will they be here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah.”

There was a gentle hand that came to rest on the teacher’s head, as if the man was going to ruffle his hair, and then the most curious warmth spread over his chest; Bundai frowned, his fingers coming away sticky and dark from the neck of his haori — oh. He opened his mouth to speak, succeeding only in a gasp as a wave of lightheadedness washed over him.

“It didn’t hurt, did it?” his visitor asked, almost tenderly. “I hate to do this, but I don’t trust you not to tell him about me. It’s not so terrible, I think. Perhaps you’ll be able to ask Lady Murasaki about the end of Genji, if you see her in the next world.”

Blood pattered into his lap. Bundai smiled, as his heart began to slow.

He hoped the angry boy — no, he corrected himself: the angry man. Anyone who could annoy the shogunate so and go on living, deserved every bit of respect he could accord — would think well of him. He wished he’d been able to see him win the girl, and have children with her equally as impossible, equally as rewarding as he had become.

Bundai wished him well.


When the body began to slump backwards — he would not have thought the man to have so much blood in him — the other man caught it with a quick hand and lowered it to the floor, the head lolling on the neck loosely. He looked away from the dead teacher’s unfocused stare, wiping his hands on his thighs before he set to work.

The living man searched the school for the next hour, grimacing when his back twinged as he straightened up from a stack of books as high as his knee. “Were you planning on helping, or are you just here to watch?” he called.

“Just watching.” The second voice was lighter, higher in pitch. “I don’t want anything to do with this one.”

He grunted, beginning to go through the drawers of a small cabinet laden with ink brushes, paper, and an inexplicable pair of socks that he tossed to the side. “He would have talked,” he said. “I would think you’d be the last person to want the foreigner to know.”

“We didn’t need to talk to him in the first place. What would he have known?” The footsteps were softer than his. “Mugen’s smarter than that.”

“You know why we did. Don’t leave any loose ends, isn’t that what Jinpachi told us?”

The second person knelt, carefully closing Bundai’s sightless eyes. “I know he talked to her about the girl, but I don’t think it was about anything we’d be interested in.”

He closed the last drawer and rocked back on his heels. “The monk didn’t bother you, but this one does?”

There was silence for a moment, then: “The monk wasn’t precious to any of them in the way that this man was. This . . . will make Mugen very angry.”

“This one bothers you because of what it will mean to him?” he asked.

“They aren’t aware of the monk. They couldn’t be. Or the rice merchant in Kyoto. But this?” The voice was disapproving. “Once he sees this, he’s going to know what happened — the ronin too. Mugen will want to see this man one more time at least to say goodbye, and this cannot be hidden.”
“We’ll manage. It had to be done,” he said. “Even if this makes him angry. Especially if it makes him angry — if it makes him angry enough to make a mistake, then it will have been worth it a hundred times over.”

The other was quiet, rising from the floor next to the body.

He picked up a book and riffled through the pages. There was a scrap of paper, covered in random characters and tucked between two chapters; a piece of nothing he let flutter to the floor. “I think we need to figure out if you can carry out the mission,” he said finally. “You don’t look at the Ryukyuan like ninja. You look at him like a woman.”

“I know what has to be done.”

“Yatsuha — “ He turned to look, as she walked to the door and paused.

”Did you doubt me this much in Osaka? Without him, you’d be dead by now — maybe me, too. Or did you forget that?”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “That has nothing to do with this.”

Her voice was cold. “If it was anyone else, I think you might have left the teacher alone. So don’t you lecture me about looking at him like ninja, because he’s not your rival. He never was.”

The patter of her soles sounded softly against the path, and she was gone; he cursed and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead to soothe the headache that had sprung up.

Shit.

“Hey.” Fuu’s voice was light, as she paused in the hallway outside the room he shared with Mugen. “Do you need help with that?”

Jin paused, his hair pulled back with one hand. No, the honest part of him wanted to say, and went off on an entirely inappropriate tangent involving her sitting in his lap. “I would like that,” he said instead, holding the tie that had come loose out to her. “Thank you.”

She made a hum of approval low in her throat, kneeling on the tatami behind him. “Back on Ikitsuki, this was one of the things I liked best,” she told him, combing through his hair with her fingers to make it lie smoothly. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“I can’t remember,” he said, her hands tugging pleasantly through the thick black strands. “I remember I woke once when you were doing that.”
“I don’t remember that. Did you mind?”

Jin shook his head. “It was good.”

He wondered idly if that had been the beginning, when he’d woken to find Fuu patiently working tangles out of his hair, the back of his head resting on her thighs. He’d known it was her — he would have known her from the sound of her breathing out of a hundred other women — and hadn’t opened his eyes, content. He’d forgotten what it was like to have another human being touching him, how much he’d pushed down the need for simple human contact and how much he’d craved its comfort.

“Where’d Mugen go?” she asked, pulling his hair back and tying it neatly.

“To see that man,” he told her. “The teacher.”

“Oh.” Fuu gave him a pat, sitting back on her heels. “I thought he might have gone to see that girl.”

Jin turned, looking at her curiously. “How — “

”I can smell her on him,” she said, matter-of-factly. “He smells like sake and rice powder after he meets her.”

“Ah.” He watched her, sitting there calmly. “Fuu, I asked him to meet with her.”

She smiled, her skin warm like peaches in the lantern light. “It’s the one from Osaka, isn’t it? I would’ve been surprised if you hadn’t. But if he was only meeting with her to find out what’s going on, why does he smell like her when he comes back here?” she asked.

The ronin nodded and reached out for her hand, surprised at his own boldness and that she let him. “He does it for you,” Jin said.

“I’d feel better if he couldn’t.” Fuu placed her palm flat against his. Her hand looked like a child’s next to his, he thought, but he would not make the mistake of thinking of her as one again. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” His long fingers began to massage her hand. “Even if the circumstances were different, I believe we would still be friends.”

Fuu mumbled something, her dark eyes hooded and soft as the sleeve fell away from her arm. The fine downy hair glimmered in the dimly lit room, and he wondered if they felt as silky as they looked.

“Hn?”

“Because it feels good.”

“I see.” He rubbed the center of her palm firmly with his thumbs. “I’ll stop, then,” he lied.

“No, it’s all right,” she said. “And I’m sorry I made Tatsu tell the swimming story.”

Jin laughed. “That’s fine, but how many other men do you ask — “

”Mm.” She smiled. “Just you.”

“Not Mugen?”

Fuu shook her head. “He — it’s not like that.”

“Ah.” The ronin’s fingertips grazed the tender skin of her inner wrist, tracing delicately over the vein that ran alongside her tendon. She shivered, but failed to stop him.

“I’m sorry I made Kazu tell the story too about why you don’t eat shark,” she told him, her voice gone soft and slow. “Poor Jin.“

”It’s all right. It was only two days that — “ Jin looked up at the sound of footsteps, expecting one of the twins; his grip tightened on her hand as Mugen stumbled in, gray eyes like holes punched in paper. “What is it?” he asked sharply.

“You’re bleeding! Mugen — “ Fuu looked at the Ryukyuan, her eyes enormous and afraid.

“‘S not mine,” Mugen said, voice dull. “Bundai’s dead.”