All The Makings
By Naoko Asakura
Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo!
Chapter Two: The Makings of a Girl
Girls are like… a waste of time, or something. Women! Now that's where it's at! Real women—not too young and not too old; Big in all the right places! Am I right or am I right here? Girls are made up of flower petals and butterflies and hopes and dreams and basically all the things I dislike about this world. They aren't realistic! Women (my kind, anyway) are made from fire: hot, fervent and deadly all at once.
Now tell me which sounds more appealing… That's what I thought.
Admittedly, most of the women I've had are like battered steel. They're old swords with all kinds of defects. I'll never admit that to either of my traveling companions, and I'd never tell them about the semi-rare occasion when a brothel bitch would just snap on me. By snap, I mean she'd get all weepy and sad, telling me that I look like her dead husband or some lover they'd been abandoned by. Plus, there've been too many times, where I've found myself trapped between a tatami mat and a knife's point. They'll try and escape their lusty prison sometimes… Too bad they seem to pick the wrong guy to jump every time.
I always order the madam of whatever cathouse I'm in to get me a new girl. There's no way I'm going to rape anyone, whether they're conscious or not—that shit doesn't turn me on, as some people might think.
Either way, I always get what I want. Looking the way I do, it's comes pretty easy.
So anyway, about girls… I don't fiddle around with 'em. It's too much trouble, and I found that out long ago. The whole "love and leave" concept is definitely not as easy as it sounds—if they really like you, they find you. If they hate you for what you've done, they find you. If you've even got any scrap of a conscience, it'll find you. Contrary to popular belief, I still got a bit of that shit left in me.
It's all her fault, you know?
She's all the things that make up a girl and even more than what's expected: trouble. Oh fuck, so much trouble. Sometimes I can't even stand it, but I know it's a promise I made to her, and that stupid little bit of conscience puts that on me. I have to save her. It's me who has to protect her. Who even cares about that fish-faced tightwad? She asked me to do the job first, and fuck, I'm gonna be the one to stick my neck out for the annoying little twit.
The annoying little girl…
GIRLS. Damn it! She's just a kid! What was she when we just started out, like fifteen? Well it's been a while since the end of that bullshit island "adventure". She has to be something like seventeen or eighteen now. Fuck if I know. She'll always be a girl to me. A girly-girly-girly-girl. One that can't keep her trap shut. One who sometimes can't pick up on other people's emotions.
It's not as if I've got many of those, just my base instincts. The only ones really worth keeping hold of, in my opinion. She brings all the worst out in me. If she even had one shred of social tact, she'd see that I do more for her than anybody she's ever met. She's just an ungrateful brat. She'd bend over backwards for that guy—all I am is her pet. Her dog! It's fuckin' stupid how she's always making me out to be the bad guy, and she's always thinking about making out with him. Gross... I don't even want to think about that.
The last thing I'll ever be is a third wheel! Leaving would be a better option than sleeping with my back facing a pair of retards in love. I don't even want to imagine what their kids would look like. I just can't visualize it! Now if I gave her kids, she'd be kneeling and kissing my toes in thanks for the gift I'd have given her. Sometimes, I just sit staring into the campfire, envisioning what it would look like. It always changes-- especially depending on my mood... You know, if I'm in the mood for having a girl, or if I'm in the mood for having a boy. Sometimes, I think about it enough to want one of each. Maybe sometimes they'd bicker over something and they'd come to me for help, and that's usually where the whole imagining thing comes to an end. From somebody else's perspective (hers, mostly), it probably looks like I'm laughing to myself about some lewd joke I'd put together, or just thinking about some prostitute I bedded in the last town we stayed in.
I can't help it if I need to cut loose sometimes.
Why do I even bother thinking about a future with her, when all she is to me is a stupid girl? No woman in her at all, let me tell you. She's almost severely lacking in the figure department, and she's full of dreams and hopes and flower petals and butterflies... Everything I don't like. I can't be attracted to her, if I can't win her over or seduce her the way I do with women. I don't want to be attracted to somebody so flawed! All it brings about is annoyance and regret, and these are two things I've got too much of already even as a mere traveling companion.
There's absolutely no point.
There is absolutely no point in fantasizing about a future with her, because there is none.