Notes: TRACK 08, ELECTRIC, for episode 8, "The Art of Altercation." This episode is so weird and wonderful, between the boys getting drugged and Fuu getting chased by that goofball - but it's also surprisingly serious. I hope I tapped into some of that energy here. And as always, thank you thank you to those who review. It really lifts my spirits.
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 08. ELECTRIC
Darker than the ocean, deeper than the sea,
You got everything I want, what I need
Touch me, you're electric, babe
/
In their first few hours in Edo, Jin and Mugen manage to ditch her for some sexy broad. Fuu fumes as she marches down the street, muttering "those no-good bozos," under her breath, but she can't quite put shape to her immense humiliation. She's not sure if her feelings are hurt, or if she's just frightened to be alone in the big city. Either way, she's moving purposefully toward the bridge, seeking out that brash samurai who'd made a pass at her in the restaurant. By this point in their journey, Fuu is so starved for compliments that she'd considered his advances a touch flattering, but the sweetness of that feeling melted entirely away once Mugen started chatting with the woman calling herself Grape Fang.
"My god, it's so hard being a man with sex appeal," Mugen sighed, levelling Fuu with a shiteating grin before racing out the door with Jin in tow.
Well two can play at that game, Fuu grimaces as she nears the crowd.
/
The man — he calls himself Nagamitsu — invites her to Roppongi Hills at night. He is tall, and probably old, and his hairstyle isn't doing him any favors, but Fuu thinks he looks pretty harmless despite his insistence on being "big," whatever that means. Fuu sits, folded neatly on the hill to get a good view, while Nagamitsu stands above her with both hands on his sword hilt and monologues to the beat of his posse's beatboxing.
"I'm going to live in that house!" he shouts, loud enough for the whole city to hear. He points at Edo Castle, but then glances down at her with a coy smile. His voice softens. "And when I do, will you be the Harem of My Heart?"
Fuu's not really sure what he means — what's a harem anyway? — but she listens while he talks, although she can't entirely control her facial expressions as his rants get more and more asinine. In ten minutes, she's learned more about this stranger than she's learned about Jin and Mugen in all their time together. She knows where he's from (Aki province), how many bowls of egg on rice he eats per day (fifteen, he swears), and how many enemies he's defeated in the last month (forty, according to his posse). Next he begins recounting the tale of how he tried to defeat Mariya Enshiro, the powerful leader of the Kisarazu Mujushin Kenjutsu School, winner of one thousand victories, only to find he'd been beaten to that accomplishment by someone else.
"After that, I added a new entry to my autobiography," Nagamitsu continues soulfully, pointing with his sword. In big, sloppy kanji: Slay the betrayer of the man of the undefeated legend!
Fuu sighs, feeling a vein in her temple throb, and just when she's about to start blocking him out entirely, Nagamitsu says, "I know that this samurai I seek wears glasses, which is rare even in Edo. And this man's name is—"
"J-J-Jin," the beatboxer finishes.
The blood drains from her cheeks. "Ah?"
The beatboxer repeats, hands whipping and flourishing, "J-J-Jin."
Fuu's head swims. Jin? That gentle young man with the scholar's face and the poet's hands? Jin, with his hair tied neatly back, his head lowered in meditation? Jin wanders the countryside with his wide-rimmed hat, protecting humble farmers and their daughters from being molested by local magistrates. Jin doesn't prowl in dark rooms, waiting for his chance to strike. Jin doesn't have a teacher's corpse at his feet; it's a stranger's face there in Nagamitsu's story of Mariya Enshiro's demise.
But coldness seeps into her bones, like she's slowly sinking underwater.
/
In the morning, the men covered in sweat and vomit by her door do not resemble the men she came into town with. They're pale, haggard, and broker than usual, and Fuu's so furious she can barely speak to them. Still, it gives her no small satisfaction to learn that the Grape Fang lured them out only to rob them blind.
But Fuu peers up more carefully at Jin's face, which is blurry from lack of sleep and squinting hard without his glasses. He looks puckered and dry, irritable but not dangerous. She tries to find some relief in this image, but her relief still smells sour, a backwashed betrayal.
At her side, Mugen groans and rubs his head; Fuu motions to him and he leans down. "Has Jin ever told you anything about his past?" she whispers, her hand cupped against his ear.
Mugen's eyes narrow, seeing something she hadn't intended. He makes a sound of annoyance and jerks his thumb in Jin's direction. "Why don't you ask him?"
/
It is an impossible request, to talk to Jin. In all their time together, Fuu has never been able to coax more than a few sentences at a time out of the man, and nothing remotely as personal as this. Mugen reveals things about himself by accident, but Jin is tightly wound, a bottle stoppered shut. She has no idea how to force the lid off, or what its contents might taste like. So Fuu decides to believe, emphatically, that Jin is not the kind of person who would kill his teacher, and even if, even if he did — she can't finish the thought. It's Jin's story, not hers. She shuts the lid firmly. It's not hers.
But the bottle is broken. Smashed to pieces, its jagged edges grinning like savage teeth. In broad daylight, on the streets of Edo, a man she's never seen before calls Jin a murderer and swears to avenge Mariya Enshiro. Fuu watches at the sidelines, waiting, her hands clutching at Mugen's sleeve. Say he's wrong, Jin, she wills. Say—
But Jin says nothing of the sort. First, "Let's step outside." Then, with his graceful hand on the hilt of his sword, he declares in a voice solemn and still: "I was not the one who betrayed him. In any case, the fact of the matter is that I am the one who killed him."
And then Jin's posture pulls forward, shifts into another plane entirely, becomes focused and sharp as a blade. He's more weapon than flesh in that moment.
Fuu's seen Jin scuffle with Mugen countless times, but this—? She blinks, there's a flicker, Jin's body disappears and reappears several yards away. His sword is drawn, his body taut. He doesn't have a hair out of place, nor a bead of sweat on his cool pale brow. He is the picture of a still but deep pond, waters too murky to comprehend.
The breath rushes from her lungs like she's suddenly plunged under, and Fuu feels ferociously out of her depth. When were you going to tell us? She wonders. When were you — and she could kick herself, for being so stupid, so naive. How could she have gone unknowingly so many months with a man who could wield a sword like that? Slicing pears blindfolded is nothing, a party trick. She thinks of all the times Jin's sword stayed still in its scabbard when he could have used it. It is not an axe, or a knife, he reminded her patiently. It is the soul of a samurai.
Next to her, Mugen is quivering from head to toe, a grin pulling at his lips. He's itching to join, to throw his body in the way, and Fuu takes a step away from him too. How could they suddenly be strangers to her? And this — this is the difference between honed fighters like Jin and Mugen and soft teahouse waitresses like Fuu: she doesn't have the lightning in her step, the ability to multiply herself, branching off in any direction, assessing, anticipating, acting without restraint or fear. It's the roar of fate, the way Jin and Mugen move when they mean it. Decisive. Lethal. It's nothing like Fuu's clumsy steps, tripping and falling constantly, needing to be helped back up. Still, she thinks she might have known an inkling of this power on that first day: standing on the roof of a government building, three men's height in the air with bombs in her hands, she'd never been so exhilarated —Is this what it means, to go on an adventure? And with that taste on her tongue, she lit the city on fire.
It was that quick, a decision to throw two bombs into a crowd, just as Jin's to pull his sword from its sheath. If Fuu had blinked, she might have missed it, but she doesn't: Jin flexes his hands, watches the man race toward him, then neatly steps forward and knocks him off balance. The next moment, he is on his back with the tip of Jin's blade in his face.
"I will let you live today," Jin says quietly. "Tell the others that they can come. I've made my peace with it."
And that's another decision Jin makes, so swiftly that it pulls the breath from her lungs again. In the space of two heartbeats, Jin becomes the man who murdered his teacher but also the man who lets the avenger live. He sheathes his sword without another glance backward, and the next moment his eyes land on Fuu. She's not sure what she sees there: Jin's face is still a silent pond. But it's some comfort that his next step is in her direction.