My Name Forevermore
Karai had another name, once. But that belonged to another little girl-one who captured crickets by the stream and made balls out of paper. That little girl hadn't wielded a katana-or been taken under the wing ofJapan's most feared crime lord, Oroku Saki.
Hey, everyone. Admittedly, this is darker then most of the material I write, but I wanted to write Karai's backstory-and portray her in a little bit more of a sympathetic light, even if she becomes a monster later on. D8 The Song Fic Part comes in Part II.
I do not own TMNT. And as you can guess, yes, Ayumu is Karai.
Prologue: Ayumu the Samurai
Quote:
"She put the wedge beside my heart,
And then she brought the mallet down
She sang no song to guide her work-
I lost my heart without a sound."
All things considered, her family hadn't been very badly off at all, in the beginning. Certainly, Oka-san could smile more, and Oto-san could spend a little less time with his friends and his pipe-and then, Ayumu could call her life perfect.
But, as she didn't spend much time dwelling over such matters, she slept peacefully at night, listening to the wind rustle the long grass outside of their country home, and the occasional frog splashing into their goldfish pond out in the cool, evening air. She went to bed with a satisfied stomach-which, her mother did assure her was a luxury-and spent her days outside of school playing with her friends in the forest, running barefoot on the cracked Earth and in the marshy swampland. Her mother would shake her head when she came home with scratches all over her legs, and her tough little feet an absolute mess. Ayumu kicked off her shoes at every given opportunity, and often preferred to carry them home rather then wear them-even if it meant going through mud.
Especially if it meant going through mud.
On the days Ayumu didn't have school, she'd run to the pond out back, and try to catch the brown grasshoppers springing through the grass-or better yet, one of the younger, greener ones. There was a sense of pride in showing off your newfound capture to your friends-before you let it go once again. Oto-san was a Buddhist, and told Ayumu that she could very well end up as one of the little grasshoppers children chased one day.
Ayumu had laughed at this, but she always made sure to let them go again, anyway.
In the evenings, whenever Oto-san was away at the local inn drinking sake, Ayumu's mother would sit with her on the porch, and the two would throw leftover rice grains from their supper into the pond, watching hungry goldfish eagerly slurp at the surface, and eat pesky insects foolish enough to settle by the water. Oka-san had told her daughter that having a pond was usually a wise investment.
After they had finished with that particular entertainment, Oka-san would work on her fabric binding, spinning lovely colors and patterns together. Ayumu would dream of where some of their finer materials would be shipped off to-to the City, where kimonos were regularly commissioned? Or maybe out the country altogether-toAmerica, who was slowly withdrawing out of their Occupation?
When asked, Oka-san said she didn't know. But all the same, Ayumu loved to watch her mother work-to watch those clever fingertips fly over the cloth, as though her mother were the spider kame rather then a human. Ayumu tried to help, but she certainly wasn't very good; her weaving left knot after knot that her mother had had to pick apart with a pin. But mother had told her that she would one day teach her how to spin material as though it were second nature-like a lady.
Ayumu didn't know if she really wanted to be a lady, but she still watched, and waited. Once her Mother was finished with the day's work, she would sometimes brush her daughter's hair. Always initially, it was a sort of unpleasant task, as Ayumu's long, dark hair was continuously tangled, and Oka-san had to again dig out knots. But Oka-san was always gentle, and soon enough, the brush pulled languidly out Ayumu's hair like a pin through silk.
When Oto-san came home-if he wasn't stumbling rather a lot or his breath didn't smell too funny-he would tell Ayumu stories-such as the one about the old man in the moon and the rabbit, or the one about the boy born out of a peach.
And Ayumu would be left vaguely pondering these fairy tales as she sleepily staggered off to bed that evening, after respectfully bidding her parents konbanwa for the evening.
WhenJapanslowly began to pull out of the post-war depression, attraction began to flurry at the cities-and thus, business for Oto-san's fabric breaking business started to wane. Everywhere you looked, people were packing their belongings in the villages, keen on making an easier existence for themselves, and their families. Many of the poor whom Ayumu had known talked almost fanatically of never having to labor in fields of rice paddies ever again-of never having heartless tax collectors take a third, or sometimes more-of their hard-reaped labor.
One by one, the neighbors began to leave. And Ayumu's friends went alongside them. The old school nearby closed down. There were less people for the little girl to catch fireflies with at night. And, soon enough, she started to hear her parents bicker with one another when they thought she was sleeping. Ayumu was too young to understand too much, but she could make out this much: Oto-san wanted to try their luck in a City life. Oka-san was reluctant to leave the countryside, and thought that their fortunes would turn around once people started to come back from the factories, discouraged. She thought that people would hardly accept laboring in something called a 'sweatshop' all day with less then a satisfactory amount of food to fill their stomachs. At least in the Country, you could eat what the tax collectors did not take-and did not have to pay rent for one ofTokyo's orKyoto's Apartments or homes. People had children, she said-children whom they wanted to clothe and feed. They would come back.
But Oto-san had grown tired of his wife's arguments. He said that too, had a child to feed-and no grain fields with which to do so. No one had bought cloth from the business in days; not one farmer commissioned an order for a new blanket or new clothes.
While they had lived comfortably enough on their savings, they now pinched every last copper zeni until it squealed, and there was much less on their plates then normal. Ayumu hadn't noticed too much-aside from the fact that there were no more grains on her plate to feed the fish, and that she scraped it a lot more then usual with her chopsticks.
They argued; but in the mornings, all seemed thankfully fine. Yes, Father often gulped down his breakfast without a word of thanks before storming to theInnagain, and Mother's lips were pursed into a thin, sullen line-but Ayumu could still escape outside into the fresh morning air.
There, Ayumu was free to forget-free to pretend that she was a renegade samurai at war against neighboring Crime Lords (Which, in this case, meant the frogs sleepily croaking in the pond.)
But the arguing did not go away.
Oto-san accused Oka-san of trying to starve them all. Oka-san would retort that she didn't want anyone to starve-but if they were going to, it would because Oka-san 'drank up geta,' whatever that meant.
It was around that time that Ayumu began to hear funny noises outside her bedroom tatami door-like a whip suddenly cracking through the air to land on skin. But that couldn't be right-her parents had told her off very harshly when they'd found her scuffling with a village boy. The boy had called her a scurvy pond wench, so of course, Ayumu believed that merited a black eye and a bloody nose. But Oto-san told her that it was wrong to hit anyone, and Oka-san had sent her to bed with a palm lashing and no supper.
So what were these noises exploding outside? Sometimes, she would crack open the sliding door just a bit-just in time to see a flying piece of pottery heading straight towards the rice-paper doors.
She would then slam the door shut, just as the clay crashed into the wooden frame, before shattering on the floor, sending the entire door shaking.
There was soon less and less to eat. Oka-san did not spin fabric as she used to, nor would she make paper balls for Ayumu to throw. When asked why they didn't have as much to eat, Oka-san's face darkened, but she told her daughter to never mind; food would come.
"Just remain strong, Ayumu-chan," Oka-san had said, while she handed the tiny girl a cup of tea. Tea, at the very least, was cheap.
"We will eat as we used to very, very soon. Wait, like the Bushido wait for their victory after the storm passes." She had pinched her child's place playfully.
Having never been called a bushido before, and finding it very agreeable, she took her cup of green tea without complaint, although it only mildly soothed the sharp pangs of hunger she felt inside.
And so, Ayumu waited…
…but food did not come.
Her father spent less and less time in the house, and Ayumu did her best to avoid him these days. He had a slow sense of mind whenever his breath smelled of sake, but a fast, fast hand.
Instead of re-enacting the old adventure stories her parents had told her, these days, Ayumu spent her days re-calling the ones about the Princes and Princesses, who had a servant following them at old times (In Ayumu's case, it was her doll, Sachiko), who served yummy odango, onigiri, and ame, whenever they asked.
But soon enough, Ayumu spent her days daydreaming about rice-only rice, and pretended to eat a mountainful with a pair of sticks she'd found floating in the water.
The fish no longer visited in the evening, although luckily for them, they could eat insects. Ayumu thought about eating the grasshoppers she sometimes caught, but the thought made her stomach roll, and she would soon let them hop out of her hands once again, watching as they scuttled into the long grass, out of sight.
She supposed, deep down, it was inevitable. It was either this, or starve.
One day, she came home from the wood with a bouquet full of purple Hanakotoba for Oka-san, only to find both of her parents home, unusually enough. They were loading whatever material they had left-whatever of their belongings they hadn't already sold at lackluster prices-into a small, wooden cart.
Without much argument, Ayumu helped them load the cart, though she watched their old house disappear with large eyes as the family disappeared into the wood.
Perhaps Oto-san was right. Things could only get better in the city.
While there were motors honking and squealing everywhere, and Ayumu felt instantly ashamed of her peasant-like clothing, the city was alive with lights and noises. There was sidewalk instead of grass, and two story walk-ups rather then trees, but it was difficult to mind terribly when the family got settled in an apartment, and Mother sold two of her last silk boughs to bring home food. Food, food, glorious food!
While Ayumu had never had something quite as tasty as city deep-fried takoyaki, she forced herself to eat slowly, though she could have devoured her entire box in seconds.
After all, she was a samurai now. This had to be the end of the storm. Why else would the light be gleaming off the buildings the way it was?