Notes: TRACK 07. HARDEST TO LOVE, by The Weeknd, for episode 7, "A Risky Racket." Yet another sad one where Fuu's friend dies, this time the young pickpocket. Also, greatest thanks to 2Adh13 who has reviewed almost every chapter! You are too generous.
Lost in Japan, A Remix | A pirate and a ronin walk into a young girl's teahouse… sounds like the start of a bad joke. [Collection of in-series drabbles, one for each episode; includes in-between moments, exchanging looks, midnight conversations, unreliable narrators, episode fix-its, some Fuugen of course, and plenty of self-indulgent little scraps]
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TRACK 07. HARDEST TO LOVE
But I've been the hardest to love
You're tryna let me go, yeah
And I can see it, I can see it
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One quick jab of a blade through someone's middle — they fall. Suddenly there's a body in the street, not a person.
Mugen has to drag Fuu away kicking and screaming. She can't pull enough air into her lungs, so she just keeps crying, " No— no, no— " over and over, till Mugen thinks his ears might actually bleed. He growls under his breath, "Stop wriggling you little brat," one arm wrapped firmly around her middle, hauling her like a sack of rice, while the other deftly bats away cops. Still Fuu pushes at his shoulders, slaps his arms, flails from neck to ankles, her little sandals flung away and forgotten.
Mugen never drops her. Finally she just presses the palms of her hands to her eyes and weeps.
Jin meets them on a quiet street not far away. It's nearly dark outside and Mugen wants to use the lack of light to their advantage to flee, but Jin casts one glance at Fuu, now limp in Mugen's arms. He's got her on her own feet, but she's hardly there, throat raw from screaming, eyes big and blank. If not for Mugen's protective arm around her shoulders, she might collapse.
Jin and Mugen meet eyes. Mugen swears again, "The shit we do for this broad."
/
They sneak back to the alley. The crowds have mostly dispersed, but there are cops everywhere, surveying the scene, taping off the area around the body. Mugen has passed Fuu off to Jin while he snaps a few necks to give them privacy. Fuu's eyes flutter at the noise, and she looks to Jin in question. He presses a finger to his lips; then carefully, his hands on hers, Jin steers her toward the boy.
He has not been moved yet, but his blood is dry in the dirt. Both men look away as Fuu sinks to her feet. She pulls his head in her lap, her hands ghosting over his skull, cradling a memory: a shifty-eyed boy with more purpose than meanness in his glare; in better days he might have been called gentle, and in healthier days he might have been called a mother's boy. Fuu thinks of the sick woman in a hut on a hill. Her pale, clammy forehead, the dark circles under her eyes; it's a familiar sight, the way sickness changes a mother's face. "Has he told you anything… new lately?" she'd asked, trying to sound casual, light, in the dim room. No laugh lines here; only fear. "Now he's doing what boys his age do," she'd conceded in the end. Fuu doesn't know what boys his age do, but she does know it isn't this: powder in your sleeve, a knife in your hand, tightness around the mouth. What do boys your age do?
Mugen and Jin manage to buy her three minutes before the cops catch on. Then Mugen hisses, "Girlie, we gotta move—say your good-byes," and Fuu nods numbly. She gently moves his head back to the ground and stands, brushing the dirt off her clothes. Mugen comes up behind her, prepared to haul her off again; she turns into his shoulder, saying, "His name was Shinsuke," before the world goes back.
/
They linger in the town for days, despite the fact that the police are looking for them. At night, the trio stays in the shed by the road, buried under hay. By day, Fuu hides behind a tree near the hut where Shinsuke's mother lives, unable to come into view. She watches the house constantly, but never moves closer or further away. For the first day, Jin hides with her, a shadow at her side. She's still barefoot, toes flexing in the grass anxiously. Jin eyes the dirty soles of her feet, but otherwise says nothing until the afternoon comes and she's still not moved.
"Fuu."
It's just her name, but after hours of silence, it's enough to raise her eyes to his in understanding.
"I need just a little more time," she answers. She's still staring at the hut. "To think of what to say."
At that, Jin nods but doesn't push her. That night Mugen brings fish from the river and fresh water from upstream, and some of the color begins to come back into Fuu's face. No one talks, but Mugen seems to snore extra loud to fill up the silence.
The next day Fuu goes alone to hide behind the tree, and Jin and Mugen don't bother her or ask questions. She wrings her hands and passes them again over that memory of his mother's face, sick and sad; of the shock in his eyes as the knife sank in; of the room where a woman once lay in a bed far, far away. Her memories glow bright green; there's no hiding from the bright light or the truth in the bed. Fuu paces and hides, but the light never turns off, and the woman stays quiet and still in the bed—just like the boy, just like the ogre on the mountain. The third and fourth day passes the same way, with Fuu alone behind the tree, watching and waiting. She wonders if the police would go to a pickpocket's house to tell his mother that they've killed him. As the days go by, it begins to sink in that they never will.
She returns to the shed later and later in the night, long past dinner time and Mugen's eaten all the leftover fish. Fuu collapses into the hay, rolling her sore ankles. A moment later, Mugen steps inside, fresh from a night bath in the river, and Jin exits to take his turn. He's a long, lean shadow moving in the dark, shaking out the water from his hair. He moves to his sleeping quarters, a particularly well-packed bundle of hay, and roots around for something in the mess.
"Are we going to leave this town before the cops find us?" he asks, gruffly.
Fuu flinches at his voice, not having spoken to him in days. "Yes." Her voice is faint, not a promise.
Mugen sighs, "Girlie—"
"Are you going to tell me not to be a puddle again?" she asks, her voice devoid of humor. She's still not looking at him, but her tone is more sad than bitter.
A cry rips from Fuu's throat, and the sobbing begins again. Mugen doesn't stop her, and he doesn't come to her and wrap his arms around her shivering body. Instead he holds his arm out, and Fuu notices that he's holding her little clumsy sandals in his hand, the ones she'd lost in town, and it's so jarring that her eyes actually dry, and she just stares. But Mugen's face in the dark is totally obscured. All Fuu can see is the outline of his lips moving in profile. He says quietly, "I found them in the street." Then Mugen pushes the sandals into her hands and tucks himself into the bed of hay. In a moment, he's snoring loudly.
/
On the fifth day, Fuu wakes up early and goes to the river to wash her feet. She scrubs and scrubs until the black, caked-on dirt finally peels away and her feet are once again pink and soft. She takes a deep breath and pulls on her sandals, then steps up to the hut on the hill.
Mugen and Jin wait behind the tree for her to come back.