Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Nenju ❯ XXX. This autumn evening ( Chapter 30 )

[ 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: A note regarding place names — Waegwan is Pusan, in old clothes. The Kingdom of Tungning existed for about ten years or so during the time of the telling of this story; readers will know it better as Taiwan, and yes, a Japanese army did attempt to invade it in 1592 and were unsuccessful, owing to malaria and cholera going through the army like Fat Albert through a box of Twinkies. (Remember, kids, only attempt to invade foreign countries under adult supervision!)

As always, beta’ed by FarStrider, who is made entirely of sparkly win.

Nenju


Gingerly, Inuyama pulled his arm from underneath the foreign man’s head.

The chief factor of the Dutch East India Company’s Japanese branch murmured something nearly intelligible in his sleep on being disturbed; he settled back into regular deep breathing, his deep chest rising and falling with the regularity of one of the foreigners’ clocks. The smaller man smiled. It had sounded almost as if he’d asked for water, in Japanese.

It had been easy to civilize the foreigner, as he’d been charged with doing when he’d given up being an assassin for hire in favor of taking the government’s money. It was like leading a thirsty horse to a stream, he thought; the only danger was in keeping the horse from taking in more than was good for him. Given that he’d had almost continual access to the foreign man — made easier still when it turned out that the man shared the same preferences at the pillow as Inuyama, and was enthusiastic about taking a retired assassin to his bed — he’d managed to turn the man into an asset, rather than a performing dog.

Inuyama yawned. Nearly morning, and there were only two more days that the ships could be kept in the harbor: any longer than that, and the Europeans would begin to complain. Much longer, and the Europeans might consider cutting off the flow of goods and information, which had proved to be so useful, and he’d be out of a job he enjoyed. Really, he reflected, who could have known that he would find teaching to be so rewarding —

The European in his futon stretched, blinking his eyes open sleepily. “You’re awake early,” he said, those big hands reaching for Inuyama.

He allowed Isaac to tug him back down, twining over the European’s hip and thighs. “I suppose that ridiculous performance yesterday was for my benefit,” he said. “Was it really necessary to repeat that horrible song that often?”

“Yes.” Isaac closed his eyes, the smile ghosting over his face the only indication that he noticed the subtle way Inuyama was rubbing slowly against his side. “Horrible song, indeed — a king composed that song. It’s about a faithless lover.”

“If he was king, why would his lover be unfaithful?” Inuyama shook his head. “Foolish.”

“Sometimes a song is just a song,” the foreign man said. “You don’t think it’s possible to serve two masters? I would have thought you’d be sympathetic.”

Inuyama exhaled. “I’ve always been honest with you about who sent me here,” he told Isaac. “Do you really think any of us would be allowed near you, if we weren’t approved by the government?’

“Mm.” The European moved his head gently against the pillow.

“Anyway, I would need to be as foolish as your king’s unfaithful lover to want to jeopardize my place here. I’m very happy as I am.”

“Good.” The blue eyes opened, their paleness making them all the more startling.

“And you know enough about me that you could denounce me, as much as I could you. So really, you can tell me anything.” Lazily, the smaller man began to undo his juban as Isaac watched.

“You think so?”

“I know so.” Inuyama leaned in to bite gently at the man’s shoulder, before propping himself on an elbow. The European wasn’t that ugly, just — exotic, he decided, as he rubbed his palm over the thick layer of muscle at the man’s middle. The color of his hair and the strange boniness of his face could even be thought pleasing, if looked at in the right way; if nothing else, the idea of an army of warriors that were all the same size and strength as the European was intriguing. They’d need subtlety, of course — “Speaking of denouncing, will you need me this afternoon? I would like to attend Mass.”

Isaac laughed, his breath quickening as the other man’s hand moved in a more promising direction. “If I can have you this morning, I don’t mind,” he said. “Attend two, if you want.” He gasped suddenly.

Inuyama chuckled, darting fingers easing away to scrape lightly over the other man’s stomach with his short nails. “Maybe I’ll have you this morning instead.”

Isaac’s eyes gleamed. “I wouldn’t mind that, either.”
Idiot.

Why had he agreed, when the European had offered the warehouse to them?

This place made him nervous. There were two of those odd, solid doors — they’d be a distinct advantage for a defense, they’d repel all but the most determined attacks, but it would be very easy to become a prisoner behind them — and those ridiculously small windows, useless for anything except letting in very little fresh air and revealing a light inside to anyone who cared to look. Similarly, the walls were a sturdy mix of wood and plaster, which would keep thieves out but were completely impractical in a land so prone to the earth quaking underfoot.

The opposite side of keeping a threat out was to become trapped by one’s own defenses, Jin thought. Mariya-dono would have had a great deal to say about that.

Seven, eight, nine . . . he counted paces, measuring the inside wall of the warehouse, as Fuu’s voice faded into a pleasant background noise, punctuated by Mugen’s deeper rasp. She wasn’t shouting, even though she had to have been talking to him about that woman.

The thought that he could encourage the other man in his pursuit of the pretty whore (try as he might, he couldn’t think of her as anything else; what sort of ninja watched from the side during a fight?) crossed his mind briefly, and was almost as quickly discarded. Not only would Fuu never forgive him — and she would find out, she always did seem to know him and Mugen better than they knew themselves, somehow — but his own sense of honor dictated that he keep quiet. It would be underhanded, and sly, and worthy only of the worst sort of sneak —

— and he really, really wanted to do it.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . .

If nothing else, it would force her to realize how wrong she’d been, in trying to fulfill a duty to Mugen that hardly existed in the first place. He’d come back for her in the brothel? Fine. She’d saved his life again, and again; that surely released her from any duty she might have had.
And why was his duty to her any less important than her duty to Mugen? Or her duty to herself?

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.

He turned, counting his paces as he walked back along the length of the wall.

And why did he think there was even the remotest possibility of changing her mind?

Idiot.

Changing Fuu’s mind, however, would perhaps be easier than changing Mugen’s.

“You know better than I do what our options are,” Jin said, carefully schooling his tone. “Setting aside Ryukyu for the moment, where then?”

Mugen made a face, digging in his ear with a long, knobbed finger. “Jouji said the ships went south, so we gotta think about that. Definitely knocks out Waegwan, ‘cause that’s west and it’s a bad idea anyway, since the shogun beat us to it and the locals are still kinda pissed off about that — whole country’d be like the Hakone checkpoint. There’s the mainland — I’ve only ever been to Wenzhou and Hangzhou, but pirates like those towns and I think Hangzhou used to burn down a lot. It might be all right, further upriver, but I don’t know for sure. I’d avoid Wenzhou anyway — I dunno what those people speak, but it’s not anything I ever heard before. I think most of ‘em are just making shit up.”

“I see.”

“There’re some big islands to the far south, Tungning and that, but further south than that you start to hit places where no one lives, which got snakes big as you and all kinds of shit animals that eat people.”

“Can we decide that the places with giant snakes are off the list?” Fuu asked, leaning forward. “Because that sounds kind of bad.”

“Course, there’s that Batavia place, wherever that is,” Mugen continued, ignoring her. “I ain’t ever been there, but if the ships sail there regularly, then it can’t be that bad. Regular-type port, sounds like it’d be too big for pirates to attack, plus there’d be enough foreigners there that no one’d notice us.”

“Tungning . . . “ Jin said. It had been mentioned in passing during his lessons at the dojo, but was — “That is very near the mainland, with Europeans there until recently?”

“They were there until maybe ten or fifteen years ago, yeah.”

“Ah. Takasago Koku,” he said to the Ryukyuan. “The country of high sand. I will not take Fuu there.”

“Why not?”

“Before the Tokugawa came to power, Toyotomi Hideyoshi attempted to invade the island with an army. They were defeated — not by an enemy, though those who lived there fought against them — but by disease, the sleeping sickness. I won’t take her away from here only so that she can die.” The ronin turned to the girl. “It’s led by rebels from the mainland — it’s a matter of time before they go to war again. You wouldn’t be safe.”

Mugen crossed his arms. “So that leaves Batavia.”

“And Ryukyu,” Jin reminded him.

The Ryukyuan gave a cranky grunt.

Fuu had been unusually quiet most of the evening, since he’d discreetly left them alone together. Now, she shivered, rubbing her arms in a way that had nothing to do with how the sun had baked its warmth into the wood and plaster of the walls. “Fine. But once we get wherever we’re going — “ she started. “I mean, we talk and talk about where we’re going to go, but we never say anything about what we’re going to do when we are there.”

The two men exchanged glances. “Even after we pay for our passage, I believe there should be enough to buy a small house, with a little left over,” the ronin said. “You . . . could live there.” With Mugen, he added silently. Not me. Don’t ask that of me.

“And what, leave you to sleep on the beach?” she asked. “No, it’s not that — anyway, that money belongs to all of us, so it would be as much your house as mine. I meant, what would you do in Ryukyu or this Batavia place? I keep trying to think what I could do, but I don’t know. I can waitress, and then there’s dice, but what if there aren’t any teahouses or anything?”

“Ryukyu is far away, but not completely foreign. There would be something. And language isn’t a barrier for you,” Jin said to Mugen. “Not all the islands are prison colonies.”

“Not all of ‘em,” Mugen answered grudgingly. “But they still pay tribute to the shogun, even when they aren’t.”

“Mm.” That could be managed, Jin thought. They’d calculated that two hundred ryu would be enough; surely, it would be sufficient to cover any bribes that would ensure that she was untroubled, even in Ryukyu. Mugen wouldn’t be able to be there all the time, and that . . . that would be an extra assurance of her safety.

Yes, that would be best.

He shoved the tiny voice at the back of his mind down, the one that nagged at him that handing her over to the Ryukyuan wasn’t right, down somewhere in with all the other things he would have locked in a chest and thrown with great pleasure into the deepest well he could find. The tiny voice, the one that whispered that Mugen would never take care of her as she deserved, needed to be crushed; it belonged with his memories of Mariya-dono’s face at the precise moment Jin had run him through, the strangest expression of surprise and pain and something like approval, all twisted together. It belonged with the shrill note of panic in Fuu’s voice when she’d thought him leaving her to go to Shino.
Leaving her . . . there was something about Fuu and leaving that uncoiled in the pit of his stomach, but it slipped out of his grasp whenever he tried thinking about it. He set that aside for later — if anything, there was plenty of time in the warehouse for him to attempt to meditate. Mugen was stubbornly clinging to the idea of going anywhere that wasn’t Ryukyu, but the more Jin heard of their other options, the more convinced he was that Ryukyu was the only place they could go: hopefully Jouji would bring the ship’s captain to them, soon.

“He’s gone, isn’t he,” she said quietly.

“Mm.”

“I know he went to see her, Jin.”

The ronin raised his eyebrows. “Why do — ?”

“I keep dreaming about my father,” Fuu told him. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“I’ve had the same dream for years — I’m in the middle of a field and all I can see are sunflowers: they’re so much taller than I am and I realize I’m a little girl again. I’m out there because I’m looking for something I’ve lost, and then he’s there. He doesn’t say anything, he just walks away from me and no matter how fast I run, it’s never enough.”

“How old were you when he left?”

Jin heard the cloth of her kimono whisper against the cotton covering the silk as she shrugged. “I don’t know. Six?”

He thought about it. His parents had died within weeks of each other; he could hardly remember them, but he could remember the sight of his mother’s kimono being packed away as if the silk was right in front of him. If that was how her father had left them, it was no wonder she was dreaming about it. “You know why you dream about it,” the ronin said. “Especially now.”

“I can’t undo it, Jin,” she told him, tiredness coloring her voice. “You’re better off with anyone else. You deserve some nice woman, who’ll make you tempura and keep your clothes clean and who’s never seen a foreigner in her life. She’d make sure you have fat grandchildren at your knee, who you can tell about the girl who tricked you into taking her to Nagasaki and ended up with a pirate who cheated on her every chance he got.”

He snorted. “The Fuu I know would not waste her time on self-pity.”
“Maybe you don’t know her all that well, then,” she shot back. “Anyway, it’s not self-pity, I’m just being honest. This way, I can make sure he’s all right, and that’s enough for me. If there were two of me, I could — but there’s not.”

“No one is born so that they exist only to serve another,” Jin told her strongly. “You aren’t responsible for anyone’s happiness but your own.”

“No? So why are you still here?”

He narrowed his eyes. “You know why.”

Fuu made a little grumping noise that was impossible to read, and even trying to figure out what had brought on this fit of — whatever it was — was making him dizzy, or angry, or some combination of the two that filled his mouth with the bitter taste of bile.

“If you want to throw yourself away, fine,” he said slowly, deliberately. “If you want me to be pleased that that is what you’re doing, you will be disappointed.”

“Sometimes I hate you,” she told him, swallowing.

Jin nodded. “Ah.”


They were staying in a shabby inn near the waterfront; he tapped politely against the door’s wooden frame, even though it had been thrown open to let a pool of sunlight in to where the old woman was sewing.

She looked up at the sound and smiled, her hand going automatically to neaten the loose knot of hair at the base of her skull. “Inuyama,” Maria greeted him. “It’s been too long. You look tired — have you been getting enough sleep?”

He stooped to allow him to fuss over him, folding a packet of tea from the continent into her hands. “I was very sorry to hear what had happened,” he said. “Nagasaki is so dangerous at night, now — “

She nodded. “Matthew has been such a comfort, I don’t know what I would do without him. I know he misses his brother, too — it will be so good for him to see you, it’ll take his mind off it.”

“Is he here? I can’t stay for long, but I wanted to be sure you were both all right.”

“He’s off getting water. We can have it with your wonderful tea,” she told him, sniffing luxuriously at the packet. “We’re going to visit some other Christians this evening. Would you like to come with us? They’re having a service — not a Mass, of course, but I don’t like to miss any chance, these days.”

“So sorry, no.” Inuyama shook his head. “I’m on my way back to Deshima. I work for the foreigners, now.”

“Foreigners?” Matthew appeared, carrying a pot full of hot water. He set it down carefully, before looking up at the other man with a grave smile. “What do you do for them?”

Inuyama paused, before giving him a broad smile. “Nothing very exciting — the foreigners need someone to arrange travel permits for merchants, that sort of thing. Actually, that’s where I heard you were here.”

“Oh?” Maria finished adding the leaves to steep and replaced the lid of the teapot.

“I met some people you know — the daughter of Kasumi Seizo, and her two companions,” Inuyama remarked. “I didn’t see them for very long, but one of them mentioned he’d seen Erasmus not long before . . .” He trailed off awkwardly.

“At Deshima?” She looked at him, shocked. “But — they knew the foreigners are Dutch?”

Inuyama shrugged. “I would think. They apparently knew the chief factor very well; if I’m not mistaken, they’re staying with him while they’re here. Not at Ikitsuki, where Kasumi-san had his house — very strange, but I’m sure they have a good reason.”

Maria sat with her mouth pursed as she thought, and the teapot at her side completely forgotten.

“Now, I really must go. The foreigners are very demanding,” Inuyama said.

Matthew made a face of regret. “If you’re going back to Deshima, I’ll walk with you some of the way. I want some of that castella with our tea,” he said, as Maria nodded. The two men left, carefully discussing the wickedness of the price of sugar as they walked out of the inn’s dusty courtyard.

When the inn was five buildings behind them, Inuyama gave the other man a dirty look. “‘What do you do for the foreigners?’” he mimicked. “I’m tempted to denounce you, the next fumi-e I see.”

“Oh, please do. I can’t begin to tell you how noisy that inn is — I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since Daigoro died,” Matthew said absently. “At least I could have a few hours, in a cell. And now I’m going to be dragged around to every Christian house in Nagasaki, talking about Seizo and how his daughter has taken up with not just any heretics, but Dutch ones: what fun. I take it that that was deliberate?”
Inuyama rolled his eyes. “Must you ask?”

“Mmrhm. If you wanted to give the girl a bad name, you couldn’t have chosen better,” Matthew told him. “The next thing I’ll hear is how she was actually on one of the Dutch ships, one of the same ones used at Shimabara, and how it’s doubtful that those two men she’s with are her yojimbo at all. Hardly any better than a common prostitute, I’m sure, Seizo must be weeping bitter tears. Am I missing anything, do you think?”

“No, I think that should do.”

The Christian cocked his head. “Should I ask if there’s anything I can do to help?”

Inuyama shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I want to cut off any means of escape she might have with the Christians, but I still want to keep you from becoming too involved. Jinpachi likes you. I’m sure he’ll have other work for you in the future.”

“If you’re sure?” When the other man nodded, Matthew shrugged. “I’ll be sure to mention the Dutch when we’re out tonight. It’ll be a nice change not to turn any Christians in — and a good idea, probably. It wouldn’t be good if people started to realize that a visit from my mother meant that the shogun’s men were following her to their door.”

“As long as you’re sure she doesn’t know.”

“Mm. Very sure — I’m careful,” Matthew said. “I don’t mind not doing it, they’re not bad people. I only ever got into this so that Dai and I could save our mother at Ikitsuki, and it just . . . grew, from there.” They had reached the shop with the castella, and the Christian nodded a goodbye before ducking inside.

Inuyama looked up, judging the position of the sun in the sky. One errand done with, he thought, but he still needed to stop in at the government’s offices, and then he’d promised to buy some matsutake, as long as he was out . . . he clicked his tongue, irritated with himself.

Honestly, who would have thought that arranging for the arrest and execution of three people would cut into his day this much?