Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo.
Roads took people to many places. I wondered where this one would take me. My sandals alone sent up the dust and scraped aside the dirt and pebbles in my path. I wanted to hear voices that were not my own. I wanted to hear two of them in particular.
I could see how it'd happen. We'd walk on separate paths, and these paths would cross one early morning after many summers far apart.
Jin will be coming from the right. His clothes will be worn and in need of a seamstress. His spectacles will be lopsided. His swords will however remain as polished and as new as the day they were smithed for him. Ronins may have forsaken their pride and their honor, but they'll never neglect the blades they trained many years for.
He'll greet me briskly and quietly. He'll suggest that we travel together, for he's a good man who'll protect the defenseless and destitute instead of the haughty lords and rich merchants. A good man too rare these days.
Mugen will be coming from the left. He'll be stumbling. He'll be irritated. He will have had himself thrown out of a restaurant the day before. And a brothel too. He'll have had found someone to share a bed and woke up to find himself broke today. He'll curse his luck when he sees us and he'll complain and be rude with sake on his breath and a finger cleaning his ear.
But he'll still come. Because it was me he wanted to follow.
I'll be arriving in the centre, for amongst us I always stood in the centre. Always. I'll be groaning about my stomach and moaning about my poor feet and my light purse. I'll tell myself my day just got worse when I see the two, for I will have just lost my job as a waitress the day before, and am in no need for company. I'll greet them warmly with a vein pulsing in my forehead and a fist clenched. I'll tell them they can come on the condition they'll not be freeloaders and find work at the next town with me.
I'll try my hardest not to cry at the sore sight of them both. I'll regret my success. Perhaps they will too.
We'll decide to take the road ahead together. Somewhere down the way we'll split again. Maybe it'll the same day. Maybe it'll be next. Or maybe we'll walk till the road ends at the ocean. Either way, we three will travel one more time side by side, as we did the first time as we searched for a man who smelt of sunflowers; a man I came to hate right until the moment I found him.
Yes. I'd like that very much.
Momo squirmed out of my kimono and perched herself at my shoulder to squeak shrilly at my ear. I knew I was smiling. Alright. Us four, Momo. Till then it's just you and me.
You and me and this long road before us.