Before all the fights. Before years so steeped in blood. Before all that killing, so many people. They were just skinny kids. Magatsu had the muscle, Kagehisa the grace. Magatsu's first night. He felt homesick. Anotsu had watched him with fish-flat eyes all night and barely said a word. Grandpa Anotsu slept the next room over. The thin door was pulled closed, with a little gap left open. Kagehisa still watched with the same deadpan stare, sitting up with his sleeping robe fallen open to show his shoulders. There was little light except for the silver fall of moonshine. Kagehisa's eyes bored flatly into Magatsu. "Well, let's see," his voice hardly a breath coming in the still air.
"What?"
"They think you're good. Let's see."
What a weirdo. Magatsu sat up. He didn't feel like getting pushed around for however long by this kid whose ass he could probably kick with one hand tied behind his back.
Magatsu pulled his robe open, his right arm out of its sleeve, held it in front of him. He clenched his hand into a fist, curled up his hand to tense. It wasn't bad, he thought – he'd won fights. His growing muscle stood up like a burl from a tree. His skin prickled in the cold of night air. Kagehisa looked right back into his eyes. Did the same with his robe, his sleeve, his hand cocked up the same. The same muscle stood up. He was leaner than Magatsu, built different. The muscle the same, not the same, distributed different. Magatsu had been chopping wood for a good part of his life. He had some of the bulk for it, not all of it yet. But this kid was supposed to be good. Magatsu glared at him.
Kagehisa smiled a weird smile. It looked like it kind of had a hard time on his face. Magatsu would bet for sure that he'd never got beat on by the big-kid coalition in town, when his dad took him in to help keep an eye on what they were selling.
"Not bad." Kagehisa put his arm back and Magatsu did too, glad of it. It felt like he'd had a long life. He wanted to snuggle under the covers and crash into sleep. But Kagehisa watched with a curious face like a cat's. That was why it was so unnerving. "Welcome to the Itto-ryu. You'll get to try."
"What the hell," Magatsu said. This kid was his sempai now. What the hell.
"I'm supposed to lead it." Kagehisa didn't sound too sure at all. "Congratulations. You'll be part of an effort to revolutionize the country."
"What the hell." No one Magatsu had met talked like that, ever.
"We're going to reawaken the true spirit of swordsmanship in Nippon. It's fallen into decadent worship of techniques that are practically speaking useless." The kid watched him. The words were fervent, the tone went over them sort of by rote. Still, Kagehisa head was tilted, keen and curious. "If they didn't tell you that, why are you here?"
"I just really hate samurai." It came out in a quiet rush. Magatsu didn't know what he expected, but Kagehisa's face went still with thought.
"Oh," the kid said after a moment, without judgment in his tone. "I hate them too."
There wasn't much money around the place, which Magatsu was used to. There were a lot of creepy guys that stayed around and about, which he wasn't. "Allies," Grandpa Anotsu said, when asked. "Aren't you supposed to be chopping wood, you little brat?" There was no mellowness to his tone nor gentleness to his hands to soften the words.
Kagehisa joined Magatsu as acting woodcutter. It was apparently not a chore he'd had before. He was intense, the kind of kid who's chop til his hands bled and then chop a little more. Lucky he already had plenty of calluses. Magatsu got the clear idea without ever being told that Kagehisa didn't spend a lot of time with kids. But they talked, between beating up on each other and the old codger beating up on Kagehisa.
One day they'd just got done splitting wood. It was early fall, and they'd chopped a lot of kindling. Enough Magatsu felt like they were sitting pretty for an entire winter, just like he'd felt when they chopped every other day.
"We're selling it, of course," Kagehisa said when he asked. The ax dropped to the ground. The handle was stained dark from the oils of their hands and Kagehisa's old blood. He'd had calluses but the handle of an ax was different than the handle of a sword. The pressures different.
"I figured. Man, it's shit that we get landed with the whole damn job."
"Don't let grandfather hear you saying that." Kagehisa turned his way with the same smile as usual, glib and dry as a lizard. "Let's let him know we're done."
"Let's not," Magatsu suggested, on impulse. Then went on with haste when Kagehisa stared at him. "He's had us at this shit all day. He's just gonna give us another job. Let's do something else?"
"What stunning diversion would you suggest?" Kagehisa said, by which Magatsu knew he had him.
"Let's walk. Hey, let's explore. We can take our swords. We'll tell him we decided to practice together."
"That's hardly a diversion at all. I expected better from you."
"Yeah, well," Magatsu said, deadpan back, "I'll work with what I've got."
They got their swords. It wasn't that hard. It wasn't hard to sneak off either, gramps off somewhere, probably ruminating bitterly about all he'd lost and how he could make their lives harder to make up for it or something. Besides his being a good swordsman Magatsu was not impressed with him as a sensei.
"I've explored everything already," Kagehisa told him, once they were out of earshot of their little house. "There's not a whole lot around here, anyway. We might as well fight and then go back."
"Dude, I've never been. Don't make me sorry I invited you."
"Sorry to put a damper on your little outing." Kagehisa shrugged, his sword resting on his shoulder bobbing with the motion. They were climbing up a gentle hill now, precursor to a larger mountain. Magatsu didn't feel like a hike, so he led them left and Kagehisa at least didn't complain about that part, just went on: "There's nothing exciting or dangerous to do. Tell me, do you even like being a swordsman?"
"I like it but this training is shitty. No bandits or dogs or anything?"
"Well, there were dogs." Kagehisa's face still like the surface of a morning pond. "But not anymore."
It could have been a pretty walk. What leaves were left colored in red and yellow, branches scratched like ink strokes against the blue sky. The chill in the air even enlivened his skin like the scrape of a blade but Magatsu felt more aware of a hard winter to come and shivered with premonition.
Besides that he kept an eye on Kagehisa. A furtive one. The kid walked with this weird look of still remove. He was always coming across glazed over, or several hundred ri away; a little slow sometimes, maybe. Except with a sword, where he was guaranteed on the ball. "I guess you know around here, huh?" Magatsu said it out a weird impulse to break the silence. "When did the dogs get lost?"
"You talk so much," Kagehisa said. Then, at a glimpse of Magatsu's offended place. "Not like that. Calm yourself."
"I do not," Magatsu said, and sealed his lips up in preparation to maintain a manly silence for the rest of their jaunt. Kagehisa sighed.
"Be an adult. If you have a question, why don't you ask it?"
"I am an adult, and you are a real asshole."
"Speaking as an adult," Kagehisa said with a smirk, "A kindly demeanor doesn't get you far in the real world."
"Shut up."
"Why are you angry?" Kagehisa's tone tended steadily more clipped. "When you're fighting seriously a temper is a liability."
Magatsu knew that. The assumption that he didn't stung. He uncinched his lips to mutter. "We're not fighting seriously."
"You're taking it seriously." Kagehisa shrugged and glanced away. Magatsu thought he'd get ignored until Kagehisa spoke again. "The dogs got killed years ago."
"Some kinda training rite from the old man?"
"Well, he tried." Magatsu could always recognize now when Kagehisa's smiles weren't real ones. "It didn't go so well."
They walked over hill upon hill. Zigzag branches diced up the sky. Up close, black bark shone rich brown or gleamed with blue highlights in the autumn sun. "It's nearby," Kagehisa said eventually, "If you want to see the place."
It was a plateau that opened out into a clearing. "The dogs scavenged from town and came here to bed down at night," Kagehisa said. "But they never found enough. They were always hungry. Sometimes they tried to steal from us. Grandfather finally got tired of it."
"So he helped you fight him." Already, Magatsu could guess that wasn't how it had gone.
"No, he sent me..." There was one tree in the middle of the clearing. Kagehisa went to it and touched it. The touch of an old man, Magatsu thought, or someone blind, reaching to understand...
"There was a girl," Kagehisa said.
"Oh."
"Not like that, would you stop," but Kagehisa's smile lost some of its lines of unfortunate strain there.
–
A moment came. A precipice. Teetered on, and then fallen past. Two old men fought and then only one of them had his blood decorating the ground. That was how it was, that was how it had to be.
Magatsu went to help Abayama. It seemed to have taken it out of the guy, killing Grandpa Anotsu. Magatsu helped him sit. Abayama didn't let go of his sword. Anotsu was still looking at the wreckage of his grandfather with his back to them both. His black ponytail fell limply over his tightly squared shoulders. Magatsu wondered if Abayama would have to kill him next.
Kagehisa turned and his face was wet, white and staring. Tight and confused, horrible with its tears. He stared at both Magatsu and Abayama as if surprised to find them there looking back at him.
"I hated him," Kagehisa said.
"Take it easy, now," Abayama said. "Family's family."
Men got crazy over less, Magatsu thought.
Kagehisa stepped towards them. His eyes were still raw and staring, never having quite let out their tears.
That was the moment that turned them both out into a new life.
From that day they came a long way. It seemed like they were charmed with an easy work, or it was pleasant, as smooth as anyone could have wished. School after school, budding kenshi who'd never have blossomed anyway stamped out, the potentates gathered up. It became a blood-steeped story with more exposed entrails in it than Magatsu really thought there would be. The dead never went away. Not the new crowd, not his old tail. His sister was always at his heels, the flutter of her pink robes grabbing his eye from time to time. He could go a while without thinking of her and then circle back around and contemplate her existence for hours. Back around to her and Kagehisa and O-ren.
Winter nights with their horrendous bite, summer nights slowing the world to a trickle, lulled in deep heat. Or the bitch-slap wind of spring. It came to a spring night with a nervous feel to it like a young horse taming to the saddle. A night at another brothel, one more upon an immeasurable number of flophouses and cheap inns. And nicer places. But the one night in particular: a brothel with a muddy yard, with a budding plum tree at the corner. A little sake for both of them. Half a bowl each.
Magatsu had seen Kagehisa imbibe but they were past things like that. At least now was not the opportune moment for an alcoholic blowout. He who holds earth can conquer heaven but he who is too drunk to stand can't even aim his dick to piss right.
Magatsu would hesitate to say life was good, but it wasn't horrible. And Kagehisa was filled with nervous, fever-bright energy.
It was hard to tell with him but they'd known each other for a long time. Kagehisa could always be controlled but his excitement gleamed in his eyes, the movement of his fingers on the ax-handle, his fixed smile. A warm spring night wouldn't sway him. They drank together squatting in the yard.
"Man, would you cool it?" Magatsu asked him finally. "You're wigging me out."
"You talk so much."
"Yeah, well, try it sometime, maybe you'd scare off fewer women."
That made Kagehisa laugh. He could've pounded his hand bloody on a pulpit somewhere if he'd been raised to talk. Magatsu knew that much. Kagehisa had just been raised for something else.
That was their high-water mark if Magatsu only knew it at the time. Kagehisa gazing up over the wall as the first stars wiped off their faces, Magatsu checking the Turk over, making sure it all fit quick, smooth and easy. They were on a trajectory towards greatness. They had so much to lose but it felt like anything lost would mean nothing. Would only be a move or two away from being won back. It wasn't the first time Magatsu had heard the name Asano but it was the first time it stuck.
"They're not a remarkable school," Kagehisa told him, blasé and easy as always. "You know, it's the one that threw grandfather out. The master has expressed some disrespect towards us now and, well…" His smile ironic: "You could say I'm putting grandfather's soul to rest at last."
"Don't go there, man. He was fucked in the head in the first place."
"Take care how you talk about the dead," Kagehisa said with remarkable mildness, "They always might hear you. The master has a lovely wife and a young daughter, I believe. Almost fourteen. Somewhere thereabouts."
Magatsu thinks about that and then doesn't. Almost fourteen, not much like his own sister at all. She'd be old enough to be wed by now, even. Maybe. Maybe with a child. "That shit's not important. If they stand in front of us, roll 'em over. But don't do it because of your old man's old man."
"I'll do it for the Itto-ryu and the future of the country, not for him." Kagehisa could do a cool snap withdrawal when it suited him. Like now. Magatsu looked sideways at him and Kagehisa looked back, steady.
Family was always family. And, well – it was Magatsu's ugly story too, there. But not all his.
Magatsu likes little girls. In the healthy way, thanks, and he's got the wherewithal to slice anyone who intimated anything nasty about his liking for them in half. He doesn't show it much. It doesn't have much place in the business. Just, he likes little girls, and bigger ones, watching them in the dusty streets, watching them shout at their brothers imperiously. Even the big girls. What his sister could've been.
"That family must be put down," Kagehisa says. He has a good capacity for casual cruelty. More than Magatsu's got, enough like a leader needs.
"Dude, kill who you want. I'm not attached."
"We could spare the girl, if you like." Kagehisa watches him. The offer sounds like it's given without a care. His eyes have got no shine in them sometimes. He's not paranoid but he's always watching, and sometimes – Magatsu hasn't got a hard-on for him. But sometimes it's a look that's vulnerable.
"It doesn't matter," Magatsu returns, keeping the eye contact up, breaking it casually to turn back to the Turk.
He would follow Kagehisa anyway.
It was still the high-water mark. Before he watched his comrades rape a woman and walked away from it. Still there was no telling the future. What came ahead could be as important as anything that came behind.
"I'll keep that in mind," Kagehisa says.
If Magatsu knew what was all to come. If Magatsu knew his life, and the tempestuous years ahead. The whole business, when he stopped doing it to mend sandals or work fields he remembered why he hated it, and then remembered again why he didn't have a taste for the simple life. There was no place for a good man to rest easy.
Thinking like that he'd been on the run for all the part of his life that mattered. On the run, and putting his feet in Kagehisa's footsteps. As terrible as the things they did were, as awkward and bizarre as Kagehisa was, it was just so familiar to be at his back. Magatsu felt sometimes at parting the squeeze of a bitter, fire-forged affection that would never rest easy between them.
It had been more fair than he liked to say it didn't matter what Kagehisa chose to do to the woman, to the girl. What Kagehisa chose to let others do to those women. Magatsu'd come much too far with him to cut it off easy right there, or not to go on with him for longer. They were brothers-in-arms by now.