Kawako knew she wouldn't see her warm bed until late tonight. She sighed, the hearth spit, and the best china tinkled gently as she rose and shuffled into the next room.
On any other night, she'd have been beside herself; men in the inn, and young men at that, meant coins, kisses, horseback rides. At sixteen, with a job and a room of her own, all she could think to want was a young man. Tonight, however, she was in no mood, and it seemed that neither were these three.
The redhead looked right enough with his bright clothes and baubles around his neck, but she got her first good look at his face as she set down their wine. The wild, strange sharpness of it made her stomach do an unpleasant little flip. And the loveliest boy, with caramel hair straggling under his cap, didn't even make a cursory swipe at her after all those gray-eyed leers he'd sent her way. Up close, his ill-fit clothes look rough instead of countrified and innocent. The one-eyed man had already put her off completely, nonetheless, with his vicious scar and monk's robes and outlandish blue quail-hair.
Let them drink and tell their stories all night if they like, she resolved; she could sit in her corner until dawn. Gods knew they looked as if they had enough stories to tell.
Sudden laughter chased her as she retreated to the kitchen. And a toast: "To interesting years."
"Healthy may they be. Though maybe uneventful would be better, ne?" The eldest filled his companions' glasses with wine, moving to the steaming teapot for his own. "It's been a while since I've had to introduce myself…"
"What kind of friend d'you take me for, 'Chiri? This," said the redhead with an expansive gesture, "is no less than the de facto leader of the remainin' Suzaku Seven, the most honorable Chichiri; jack-of-all-supernatural-trades, or, as I like to call 'im, the Mysterious Mister Ri."
"Though I don't go by much of anything these days," Chichiri chuckled. "Who have you been since I last saw you? Genrou?"
"Yeah, but whatever you like." Genrou nodded at the boy in the cap, "Think maybe you'd better do your own honors. Can't embellish what I don't know, ne?"
"My name is Kai." He paused a moment, staring into the middle distance. "I know it's not much, but the rest is a long story. Genrou's got to tell the end before I begin!" He grinned, raising his glass. "To the names our mothers gave us, in all their innocence of who we are now." Chichiri studied the boy carefully as the younger two drank.
"Right! On to the sins and adventures," Genrou cried, "Also, whatever you got up to, 'Chiri. Must be bored without the world needing saving."
"Are you first, then?" Kai leaned back in his chair to look back at Chichiri, flushed slightly.
"I think I'd best, though I'm afraid it's not at all an exciting story. If I may?"
"Yer too modest. What happened to the mask, first? Lost it?"
"Given away. It's a good place to start, though. Has Genrou told you about my eye?"
"Y-es."
"I hate to admit that I'm glad of that. It's not an easy story to tell." Chichiri paused, with his gaze locked on the steam rising from the iron teakettle. His hands moved idly, of their own accord.
"It's interesting that my story, the life of that person called Ri Houjun, always ends after I let go of Hikou; I suppose it makes sense to end a story at its apex, and I always run out of the energy to tell it, there."
"But I've had nearly ten years to relive it, and the part I always fix on is when I stand up, bleeding, and have to decide what I'm going to do next.
"I ran for months, though very slowly, toward the capital. I could only move if I was sure of being able to steal fire and shelter; I had to be able to boil water to bandage my face. I'd heard of men losing limbs from smaller wounds than mine; I knew I didn't have a chance if I fell ill with that fever.
"They were selfish months; I couldn't even consider that I'd murdered my dearest friend, but I certainly considered that his family would be out for my head. Hikou had been the perfect son, he wouldn't be lost easily.
"Well…" He noticed the scores his fingers had been making in the wood, and carefully took his hand away. "I was bound to meet people untrustworthy enough to be trusted. And one of them was bound to know that my entire village had been washed away in the flood, everyone in it drowned.
"Everyone who could have damned me, everyone who could have turned an accusatory eye and demand to know why I had wronged them was dead. There was no one left to blame me but myself.
"That broke me, when the only pursuer was in my own head. Until then, I had still been juggling all the needs and fears that made up the boy named Houjun. Like a juggler with one ball too many, down they all came. I stumbled into Eiyou raving, delirious with the fever I'd been staving off."