Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ The Student of No ❯ The Student of No ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

The Student of No

Disclaimer: I don’t actually own Samurai Champloo or any of its affiliated characters, which belong to Manglobe/Shimoigusa Champloos.

A/N: One shot; spoilers through #17.



...

In the first few months, he doesn’t even look at the sword. He doesn’t need to, for death made steel, made clean and sleek and pure, doesn’t need for him to see it to mock him. He knows where his father keeps it, the shelf from which his mother (her worried eyes creep over him everywhere looking for cracks looking for the places where he is not whole) distracts him. No sword, no master, no school; he has become the student of no, of nothing.

In the first few months, he is all eyes and silence. His father made the journey to fetch him with his brothers, as if by their presence they could heal him, the glue with which to put him back together. They know, he realizes. He realizes too they do not know of the lesser things.

In the first few months, their eyes are frightened.

In the first few months as they journey, they do not speak of it. His brothers instead talk of other things, of ships and shoguns, of brothels and babies, as if by burying his wounds under an ocean of other things, he will be made whole. He knows they mean well. He knows that sometimes the dead are buried alive. He smiles and nods when it is appropriate; he will always be broken, always, but he knows that they will never understand the shape of how he has come apart. The place they go is still called home, but the edges are too sharp and he bleeds.

In the first few months, there is nothing.

...

In the first year, he takes his sword down again without a word, and leaves.

...

It is autumn, again, and he is found. The other man is wrong, so wrong, he does not fit into the indigo void left behind, but the man sees the places where he is broken. Shh, the man says. And he is grateful.

It will be all right, the man says, as they kneel in the garden; the man is tenderly planting a frail green sapling.

I have come apart.

I know.

I am nothing.

The man pauses, then his hands busy themselves once more. The small orange tree he is tending is lush and fragrant with fruit. And there is a smile for him, though not the smile he wants. Let me make you something.

...

In the autumn, he says yes.

...

In the second year, he takes down his sword again. This time, the other man is there when he leaves. Shh, the man says to him once more.

He understands. Yes.

...

In the summer, he finds his murdererlover in the mountains, running from him, slipping, slipping, slipping away, water down the waterfall down the river washed away.

He tries to tell his lovermurderer of the void, of how he is broken, but the words are all wrong and he cuts himself once again. He bleeds and falls and joins —

“Yukimaru.”

...

In the summer, in the mountains, he is whole once again.

...

-fin-