Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by drowsyivy.
Lake Yatan is a mirror
Peonies fall like summer rain
In the warp and weft of Heaven's River
The Cowherd met the Weaving Maid
— Kawaguchi Yasutaro, "Lake Yatan is a Mirror"
He first meets Hiwara-shonin's daughter during the Dragon Boat Festival, on the fifth day of the fifth month, in a crowd of masked revelers, looking around at the festivities with a sort of wonder.
It is not the first year he has been here in the green city on the lake, but Yanai is the southern capital, known to all as a mortal paradise.
Here in the beauty and elegance of the city, even gods envy mortal men.
And because of the lake and the lake boats, the Dragon Boat Festival is far larger and grander than it ever is at home.
His mother had sent him a corded bracelet of five colored silk, and he had tied it to his wrist for the Dragon Boat Festival despite no longer being a child. In her mind, he supposes, he is still the boy who had left home eight years ago looking back at her through his tears.
He has been back to visit several times, but it had not been the same.
Somehow, his idea of home has twisted and blurred until he does not know where it is anymore.
He'd only noticed her because of the striking red mask she wore and the matching red outfit rollicking with black and gold tigers, passing quite close to him.
He does not know why he turns to look at the two young women passing arm in arm, laughing and talking amongst themselves, because there are plenty of people here dressed more outlandishly for the festival, and plenty of people, including him, are masked. But something compels him, an energy of good fun and mischief that he can barely look away from.
He throws his arm over Saemon's shoulder, where his deskmate is still haggling over the price of steamed red bean zongzi with a vendor. "Who is that?" he asks.
"Who?" Saemon turns to glance into the crowd, a zongzi in either hand, but the two young women have already passed, and there is only the sea of people going about their business on this festival day.
"They've already gone." He shrugs helplessly. "I thought you would know if only because you know far more people and are invited to more places than me."
Saemon's parents lived in the capital city, his father a third level government bureaucrat and the head of a civilian clan, who sent him money and letters every month by way of a servant with instructions on what to read to further his studies, and his mother the daughter of another government bureaucrat who reminded him what people to talk to to learn about the exams.
It made his deskmate popular with all sorts of people in the city.
Everyone had need of a favor or wanted one from someone who worked in the imperial city. Fewer would ever need him for any sort of favor.
But though Saemon is far more fortunate than him, his deskmate had always been generous and good natured. "Ah, what did they look like?" Saemon slings one arm over his shoulder in return, and offers him the red bean zongzi. "Maybe I'd know, even though we're all masked here."
"Two young women arm in arm," he muses. "One of them wearing a red oni mask, she was wearing a daxiushan embroidered with black and gold tigers." This seems rather silly now that he says it out loud. "She had black hair." He shrugs helplessly.
He didn't even see her face.
What strangeness possessed him?
Saemon thinks about it. "That sounds like Hiwara-shonin's older daughter." Saemon glances at him. "Don't be fooled, Yasu, even if she has a sweet surface, that's a tiger in a woman's skin."
"That's unusually harsh, coming from you." He raises a brow, though from behind the white fox mask, Saemon is unlikely to see it.
Saemon pulls him away, into a teahouse, out of the way of prying eyes and ears. "You don't know this, Yasu, since you rarely listen to this sort of gossip," or have a reason to be able to hear it in the first place, "but you have to understand, Hiwara-shonin loves his eldest daughter and has spoiled her to such a degree that she does not understand common sense any longer."
"In what way?" The waiter brings them a pot of tea, and a few light snacks, and they unmask to talk and eat.
"No man in this city is good enough for her," Saemon shrugs again, artlessly. "Some years back, the Uchiha thought about picking her as their heir's wife."
The Uchiha are the provincial administrators, ruling from the estate on the hill just a little ways outside of the city.
Shinobi. Common rumor says that they are not quite men.
But who is he to say?
Kami knows he's never met one.
"She laughed him out of the Hiwara house, and she's been refusing suitors ever since." Saemon sighs. "Just because her father has money and is well respected here in the city and because she has a rumored beauty doesn't mean that such things will carry her for a lifetime."
It feels uncomfortable somehow, listening to this woman be discussed as if that is her only value.
But still, he is curious.
Most women want to marry.
Why does she not?
He asks someone else about Hiwara-shonin's elder daughter and receives a similar if slightly ruder description of her, likening her to some sort of wild she-devil.
He is uncertain how he feels about that as well.
But his father writes him an uncertain letter, hesitantly asking for his opinion, and he sees every line, every misplaced brushstroke and slightly off word, the rustic bur of a country accent clinging even in the written word — and it is not shame he feels exactly, not shame for having such a father, but a sharp stab of shame that he notices such.
That somehow, after so many years here, he has become judgemental.
Enough to notice. Enough to care.
Like there is a gulf here rising, a sheet of still lake water opaque and painful. And he cannot see the proper path forward.
It disquiets him more than he expects.
He escapes out of the house he lodges in and through the streets, out towards the lake, dark clouds rolling in the distance.
Maybe the walk will clear his mind.
Maybe the lake will remind him of the river at home.
He feels the letter burn where he tucked it inside his sleeve against his skin.
Maybe nothing will change, but he still has to go regardless.
He rents a boat to go out on the lake and rows himself out with his pipa leaning against his seat before setting down anchor somewhere farther away from the shore. He strums a few notes while thinking about it, drifting on the green water, watching as the sun slid from directly overhead towards the western horizon.
The answers to his father's questions are easy. Entirely true or not.
He is doing well at the shijuku, though he is less than fond of Goto-san, who had accepted housing him in the city because his father had handed over a large sum of money, and he is less fond of his living circumstances, crammed as he is into a room that seemed more like a jail cell, a single window facing the east with room for a bed and a low desk.
He'd lived here since age twelve, returning home only infrequently for holidays which are the only times he hears from his mother directly.
The circumstances of her life had never afforded her a lady's education, and even now, when her husband is wealthy and landowning, she reads with great difficulty and does not write.
When he has children, if he does, he hopes that they rise high and far, away from these murky roots that he feels ashamed to be ashamed of.
While Saemon has never looked down on him for his family's roots, other people have, and though he has tried to tell himself that he does not want the company of people who would judge him for who his parents are and what they do, he cannot help feeling the sting of rejection and being unreceived in Yanai's wider social circle, to be scoffed at and treated badly for his country manners even by his peers.
He will never give his children such grief.
They will be the sons and daughters of a learned man and a large household, loved and cherished, protected by the weight of stability and assurance.
Or at least, he hopes they will be.
He had discussed with Saemon about asking Saemon's father for a letter of recommendation to be allowed to take the Imperial Exams.
If he places well…
It would change the course of his life and the lives of all who come after him who bear the same name.
"Our miss wants to tell the gentleman that his playing is disturbing her." There's another boat, larger than his with a thatched roof to shield the woman in it from the sun, floating on the lake quite close by, perhaps just a few boat lengths away, and a younger maidservant leans over to speak to him. "She requests that you either stop or adjourn to somewhere else."
"If my playing disturbs her, then she can go float on some other part of this lake." It's rude, but it's also true.
He got here first, and it's not as if Lake Yatan is a small place.
Let someone else have to move or change their habits around his actions for a change. He does enough of it as it is when he lives with Goto-san.
The maid frowns at him. "You are not adhering to the proper rules of conduct, sir."
He turns to look at her dispassionately. "I was here first. Isn't your miss the one who isn't being polite?"
The woman in the thatched shelter waves an idle hand, holding a handkerchief. "Ima, don't bother with him. Someone so rude and bothersome would never see sense anyway."
That sparks a sense of fire in him. "Excuse me?"
The handmaid shakes an oar at him. "Who said you could talk to our miss?"
"I'm still talking to you." Since the other woman in the boat is a 'miss' and clearly from a large household, she is someone's cherished and protected daughter, and young unmarried women from large households do not speak to unrelated men they find floating on lakes.
Therefore, he is still talking to the maid, just intermediately.
The woman in the boat turns to him, and all he sees of her face is a startling flash of blue eyes, for she is wearing a white tiger mask. "A word of advice to the gentleman," she says rather tartly, "if you cannot manage politeness, it is always possible to manage silence."
He splutters, suddenly full of rage for this outrageously rude woman, but her handmaid ups the anchors and rows them away before he locates a proper response.
He returns home still in a foul mood.
He is standing on the sodden pier, contemplating life in the light drizzle while thinking about what Saemon had told him, the regret conveyed not only in the tone of his friend's voice, but also in his eyes.
I'm sorry, Yasu. I know you really wanted my father to sponsor you for the upcoming exams, but I couldn't persuade him to agree to it.
Saemon had not said, in so many words at least, that it was because of his family background that Minister Okui did not wish to sponsor him for the position to take the exams, but the implications were there, and they were heavy.
Those who did not have a clan title or a close relative of the last generation who already served at least in the local bureaucracy had to seek a letter of recommendation from a minister to be allowed to take the exams.
And rare as it is to receive such a letter, it is still possible, sometimes.
Just for men who are not him, men who come from bigger, more reputable households with stronger connections than tenuous asking a classmate.
The dream of his lifetime, gone up in smoke.
What do I fight for? he thinks, still contemplating the green mirror of the lake, bamboo leaning heavy with the weeping rain. What have I come here to study, if not for this?
If not for this, which future is he fighting for? What will he leave his children, whichever children he will have?
He does not know, and the despondency weighs on him.
To the left of him, on the pier, a boat docks, and two women alight from their vessel, arms linked, oil paper umbrellas slightly overlapping.
As they pass, the flash of the white mask stands out, prominent. "So the gentleman is foolish as well as rude," Hiwara-shonin's eldest child says, left arm looped through her handmaid's right arm, and bunching up her long skirts so they are not sodden by the rain. She raises her right hand and tips her umbrella so that it is over his head. "You'll catch a chill, standing out here like this," before looping her umbrella handle over his shoulder and breezing past him, still talking and laughing with her handmaid.
He stands there for a long moment, stunned into silence once again by the change in her mood from the last time they met, mercurial as the tiger mask she wears.
Care. However brief, for a passing stranger she has seen but twice.
Such a rare thing to see in the world.
How long has it been since an unrelated person offered such to him?
How long and what was it? He does not remember.
Despite the deepening chill of the rain, there is the faintest hint of warmth in the world, sodden and gray-green as it is.
And the flash of those deep blue eyes.
He finds his dreams haunted by blue eyes. The umbrella sits by his door, a lady's oil paper umbrella, blue, patterned with peach flowers.
He has not explained to Goto-san or Goto-san's wife as to where he got it from, because in the end, he is not entirely certain himself.
He knows that it had to have been Hiwara-shonin's daughter — there are few people in this city with blue eyes — and he remembers exactly what she had said while hooking it over his shoulder.
He just doesn't know why.
Why would she have done such a thing?
Hadn't Saemon and everyone else told him that she was rude and spoiled, unpleasant company despite her beauty?
Why, then, did she care if he caught a chill or not? It is not as they had any particular connection, having only met long enough for her to think that his musical talent was lacking.
Why did she care enough to have left him her umbrella?
Something so personal and identifying, and yet she had left it with him, uncaring of potential consequences.
He doesn't know if he should try to return it, or if he should try to get rid of it, or if he should keep it.
It haunts him, with its deep blue and rain of pink petals.
The same shade of blue as her eyes.
He'd ended up begging Saemon to take him to a literary gathering of Yanai's old merchant houses, those people who are born to families of local power and prominence enough that they might as well be nobles.
Most of his classmates had come as well, if only because it is rumored that many of Yanai's merchant daughters would be in attendance as well, and even if not all of them are great beauties, a good number of them are, and they are all rich, and if there is anything that starving young scholars want, it's a wealthy wife.
So here they all are, sitting in a scholar's garden, young people talking poetry interspersed with idle gossip.
Or, at least, they were.
Until now, where there is silence.
"Oh?" She turns towards him, as if surprised by his completion of the couplet whose opening line she'd offered. "And who might this gentleman be?"
Hiwara-shonin's elder daughter is a beauty, but a cold one, or, so all the rumors say. Even here, to a gathering of peers, she has worn a mask, a white tiger, carved with wood and painted lacquer.
Whatever expression she might have is only betrayed by her piercing blue eyes.
Men might throw themselves at her feet at her leisure, but she never paid the slightest whit of attention to any of them.
She'd never addressed him directly in public before, despite his pursuit of places where she might be for some weeks now, and despite the one time she'd left her oil paper umbrella for him at the pier and walked home arm in arm with one of her handmaids.
But this time, she has asked for him to talk. And asked for his name no less.
Now that it comes time for it, he finds himself almost tongue tied to the point of rudeness.
"Kawaguchi Yasutaro, Hiwara-san." He bows, not too low, but enough that his sentiment is conveyed.
"Kawaguchi…" she muses, playing with her fan. "I do not believe that I have heard of the House of Kawaguchi before."
The young handmaid at her side leans forward and addresses her in a loud whisper. "He is a student at the Shijuku living with the Goto Household, Miss. They claim merchant roots, but his father is nothing more than a freed servant."
The whole gathering goes silent, as if pulling slowly away from the interloper in their midst, the beggar pretending to be a scholar.
But that is not what he is.
His heart feels as though it has been knifed, but nothing about his face has changed. "Beg pardon," he says, though Saemon is shaking his head furiously from behind yet another of their classmates. "I haven't claimed any roots, though it is true," he raises his voice. Years of taunting barbs from classmates and their families have not taught him to be ashamed. "That my father is a silk merchant, and that we own land on the Mujin."
Years ago, his father had gambled and won, and overnight, a servant had become a free man, with land and money to spend.
There is nothing to be ashamed of in that.
"The Mujin is far from here," she sighs, tapping her fan on the bridge of her nose. "Kawaguchi-san has a silver tongue, to spin a plain-clothed tale so pretty. Worthy of being the son of a silk merchant."
The compliment is backhanded, but he keeps it anyway.
Saemon had told him about Hiwara-shonin's elder daughter, how she was an unusually private woman. No one's seen her face in years, Yasu.
And her father loves her best of all his children.
Winning her favor will be hard indeed.
"We are, admittedly, a less staid people in Chubu," he admits, though he does wish the sharp color he feels in his cheeks is less visible to others. "But that does not mean we tolerate outsiders looking down on us."
She laughs then, a sharp, pretty thing, the way a knife might be pretty in the moment before it slides between one's ribs. "So well spoken, Kawaguchi-san. Chubu is fortunate to have a man like you."
Something about her puts him on the back foot, not because they are of differing social status and background — though outsiders would lump them together all the same — but because she has a quick, sharp wit, and unlike most women with such, unafraid to be just as brazen in public as she is in private with many fewer sets of eyes watching.
It boils his blood and roasts his heart and does all sorts of funny things to his innards.
He still has no idea where this road he is on now will end.
He starts haunting the places he hopes to find her. Knowing that she is fond of the lake, for he has seen her boating several times already, aids him in the process.
Admittedly, it is not, perhaps, the most polite to do these things in hopes that she will be there.
And admittedly, it does no good for his studies, but—
That is one dream buried already, and though it feels like a waste of money to stay…
He cannot quite help it.
"Our miss wants to tell the gentleman he should play some other song." He looks up to find her handmaid standing there, oar in hand. Beyond, under the thatched covering, is Hiwara Maki.
"Does the miss have a preference for music?" He knows any number of songs, not on the qin for he had never had a teacher for the qin, but he plays the pipa because his mother taught him and has learned a number of folk songs by ear.
Hiwara-shonin's daughter turns towards him, head idly propped up on one hand, golden chai in her blue-black hair flashing in the light. "Something livelier, maybe," she says, idly tapping her nails against the delicate pottery. "There is enough grief in this world, wouldn't you say so?"
If she were a polite miss, like ladies of large households ought to be, she wouldn't even be here, since polite ladies from large households do not go out to such public places alone, with only a handmaid as an escort, but even so, if he'd happened to cross paths with a polite lady she wouldn't speak to him directly. Or at all.
That she has progressed to asking him questions and making requests of him…
She really is unique.
And I do not know whether to laugh or cry.
"I do not know if your miss is trying to ask me a question." He directs this at the handmaid, because whilst Hiwara Maki-san could be as flagrant as she liked with her impropriety, he rather imagines that Hiwara-shonin might take offense to it and have him dealt with. "But if it is, it's impolite."
The old man might be interested in organizing matches for his daughters, but that does not mean that he is someone the old merchant would consider a proper match.
Son of a servant, not fit for carrying her sedan chair more likely.
"I see the gentleman must be hard of hearing." She rises, stretching slightly, one hand careful to steady the guzheng on the low table before her. "It can't be helped, I suppose. I hear that studying too many classics rots one's brain and makes one incapable of thought."
She plucks a few notes on the guzheng, half playfully.
And anyone who chooses to play the Guangling Melody after joking about the classics, has, if not at least passingly glanced at the classics, at least done a deep study of military tactics and the writings of past generals.
"The miss needn't tire herself with melodies." He takes up the pipa once more, and strums a few notes to make sure the instrument is in tune before strumming the first note.
The sound echoes over the lake, sharp, discordant, but full of energy and rhythm.
'Ambush from All Sides' is not exactly a proper melody to play when trying to court a lady, but he rather suspects that the woman in the boat opposite him would prefer bloodthirsty melodies about great battles rather than any of the sweet, lovelorn melodies he also knows how to play.
He also rather suspects that romantic ballads would be considered tacky and in poor taste.
He finishes the song to applause.
It is enough.
He arrives to play Go with her wearing a white kitsune mask edged with a tinge of red. If there's propriety and if there's boundaries abroad in the world, he is too far gone to heed them.
Saemon had begged him not to go. She's only toying with your feelings, Yasu. It's what she does.
But he is too far gone to heed that as well.
Up ahead, he sees her seated at the willow pavilion, dressed today in pale greens and yellows, and sleeves edged with dark purple, collar and cord ties embroidered with tiny wisteria flowers.
Spring color, for it is spring once more.
Her handmaid is frowning when he arrives, though she sits there defiantly, back straight and facing forward.
It must be about meeting him in public then, even though this isn't nearly as bad as meeting where no one else could conceivably see them, and she does not appear to be one for rumors.
"The Old Master wouldn't like it," Ima mutters. "Miss, you've got to realize that."
Maki waves a hand, seemingly dismissive of the idea of anything her father might think of this. "And his judgement is one I should listen to, of course." So having dismissed this, she turns to him. "And why did you choose the mask you wear, Kitsune-san?" She is still wearing the white tiger mask, face propped up on one hand.
It sounds ridiculous, how haunted he is by a woman who he has barely spoken to a handful of times over the course of a year or so. He has never seen her face.
But that does not matter.
Whether she is a beauty or not does not matter. If she is rich or powerful, if her time has a high asking price, they all don't matter.
"Because I aim to steal your heart, Byakko." He has chosen the mask he wears now with care. The fox is a trickster, a heart stealer, beguiling, beautiful woman in mythology.
Neither good nor evil, but a heart stealer all the same.
And he intends to leave Yanai with the tiger's heart.
"Oh?" She sounds amused, rolling several Go stones together in her hand, the clack and clatter of them loud in this pavilion where they are sitting. "And how do you know I am the byakko that you're looking for?"
Ima slides the box of black stones across the table at him. "Kitsune-san can go first, then." Though the handmaid is still deeply upset, mouth pursed in a frown.
"I would know you anywhere, no matter the mask you wear." And without the mask too, if it comes down to that, for no one else can carry your swagger.
He sets the first stone down.
"Sweet words from a flatterer, I see." There's an edge of amusement to her when she sets her opening stone down on the board with an assured click.
"They were not meant to be flattering." He observes the board for a moment before making his first move. "Nor were they meant to be sweet."
This confuses her into silence for a moment, but it is true that he had meant neither meaning.
She is more than merely sweet, and his words are not meant to be compliments. She has stolen into every aspect of his life, sleeping or waking, studying or eating, sitting or standing, walking or running.
That is not someone he means to flatter.
He taps his fingers against his paper mask and listens to the wind.
The sun has almost left the sky by the time she wins.
She laughs, delighted, and beneath his mask, he smiles.
He writes home to his father, slowly, because he is not quite sure how to describe what has happened to him.
This haunting pulls at him, like a wave determined to drag him beneath the depths of the water. He could drown in the depths of those eyes.
For all that she is precious and spoiled, for all that she is imperious and rude, for all that she is generous and unreadable, for all that she is all these things, a tigress with jaws like a trap, he is haunted by her, haunted by what she has done and has yet to do.
"With your permission," he reads, because it will have to be with his father's permission. He is not the head of any household. Any additions to his father's household, like a daughter-in-law, will have to be made with his father's permission and approval. "I would like to ask Hiwara Toyomatsu-shonin if I may marry his eldest daughter."
He can offer no excuses, no explanations, and no sense for his decision.
Her oil paper umbrella is still propped up on a shelf behind a thick stack of books. Thus disguised, it may persuade the unobservant viewer that it is his.
He cannot display it openly, just as he cannot display his regard for Hiwara-shonin's favorite child openly and without remorse for the world to see.
In life, there is a proper order to things, decorum and rules to be observed. Only the very powerful and the very uncaring can break them.
He is neither, and yet, he writes to his father, more a hopeful plea than a request.
With your permission, I would like to ask Hiwara Toyomatsu-shonin if I may marry his eldest daughter.
He signs and seals it, and sends it, wondering if he will ever bear the weight of disappointment in the response.
But for many days, there is no response.
He meets her again at the willow pavilion by the lake.
There is a young man there — someone he does not know — kneeling in the dust, making some sort of entreaty.
He can suspect what sort of entreaty this was, though he doesn't know why it brings him sudden heat.
He watches, as she laughs, a few words spoken, sharp and cutting. "It's for Chichi's money, isn't it?"
The young man flushes, hurriedly rising, spitting something back that he does not quite catch.
She waves a hand at her handmaid. "Ima-chan, send the guest out. I tire of looking at his face."
He climbs the steps of the pavilion as the other man is being hustled away, still shocked.
"Another family offended…" she muses, toying with a Go stone. "Soon, I shall run out of families to offend for good."
It is on the tip of his tongue to joke that she has yet to offend his family, but he rather suspects that she has given no thought to his family, having asked where he was from once and then never bothered to ask him about his family ever again.
"And what will you do when you have driven away all your suitors?" This seems a safer question to ask.
She considers it, golden chai flashing in the sun, jade buyao clattering as she turns her head, fingers tapping against her mask. "I will go sailing on the lake," she muses, eyes far away, Go stone turned over and over in her hand. "I will live far away from people, spend my days writing music and composing verses like the scholars do."
If she had been born a man, she would've been well respected, the perfect, ideal man with a scholar's lofty outlook and unconcern for the world and a young master's high strung temperament and pride. Perhaps, in that other world, they would've been classmates and friends, comrades who could sail Lake Yatan together composing music and ignoring the cares of this dusty mortal realm. They would've called that version of her an example, written her name in the local histories to preserve.
But she was born a woman, and this world of wagging tongues and idle gossip is not kind to women with more pride and intelligence than the men in her life.
"And I suppose when I am finished with my studies, I will go home to Shunan, to manage the family business." They'd met here, to be friends for a brief span of two years or so, like the brief meeting of lines.
But they sit in the traveler's pavilion here, in their typical meeting spot, by the lake and the willow tree, and travelers, unless they are companions, are bound to take their separate paths, meeting briefly and then parting forever.
And unlike the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid who meet every year on seven-seven, they, in the end, will never meet again.
She snorts, placing a stone on the board. "You look morose."
"I do not know how to love them properly." And it is true that after years here, he is different. Different from his parents, the fabric of the city and the upper class lifestyle they'd always aspired to seeping into the fabric of him.
And though cut of the same cloth, he has been dyed a different hue.
"Who?" she asks, eyeing him, interested.
"My parents." And it is true that he does love them. He loves them with a choking gratitude, a withering weight. But he does not know how to love them properly as people who had sent him up the mountain to see different heights, well aware that they would never share the same view ever again.
She shrugs lightly. "Wouldn't they be proud of your education? After all, they were the ones to send you here."
She does not understand, does not see it.
He is ashamed to be ashamed of his roots.
And more ashamed that he is different from the child he'd been when he'd left Shunan for Yanai.
She does not understand, but then, he cannot expect her to. She and her father are cut of the same cloth and so similar in hue that they might as well be indistinguishable.
"It is not so simple," he whispers and wishes he could leave it at that. "It is not so simple, but I fear I have no words for it."
She observes him for a moment before considering the board once more, in the deep blue of her eyes a curious, shining light. But this cuts through the warp and weft of him, straight through the ribcage to the heart, and in a brief, odd moment of mercy, she asks no questions, and he offers no answers.
The willow pavilion is silent except for the movement of stones.
His father comes up to Yanai on a business trip and visits with him briefly, not at Goto-san's boarding house, but in a local teahouse.
"Hiwara-shonin's older daughter, eh?" His father looks up at him, over the rim of his gaiwan blowing on the tea. There's a twinkle in his eye, however, and his father smiles a sharp-edged smile.
Kawaguchi Hakumuso has been many things in his life, and his intelligence and shrewdness are second to none.
He'd won his life at the gambling table and kept it only by the strength of his brilliance, a head for numbers and a quick tongue. There is a sharp spark of upward mobility to him, a burning and a fire that his rough accent and wide smile cannot hide.
"Hiwara-shonin's elder daughter." Yasutaro does not speak so loudly, nor truly want to talk about this in public, but his father clearly sees nothing wrong with this, so here they are, in a public teahouse, speaking of things that ought not really be spoken aloud.
"And what does the girl in question think of the whole affair?"
The girl in question knows nothing of it.
"I hear she's a looker," his father continues, absently still trying to cool his tea. "But at the same time, hear she's a man eating tigress." Sharp eyes turn to look at him again, a hint of a crooked smile peeking out from behind the gaiwan. "Now, how'd you end up loving a girl like that?"
He shifts uneasily in his chair. "It's complicated."
"Love often is," his father nods his agreement, watching steam rise from the hot tea. "You sure you're not going to be her next victim eaten whole?"
"If I am, then I accept it." When you stare into the tiger's mouth, there's always some amount of risk.
"Good!" His father slaps the table to the clattering of plates, calling the waiter over for another round of dishes, money spent freely as water flows downstream on tips and food and high grade tea. "You've got conviction about it in a way you didn't write to me about in that letter of yours, what with asking me for permission and all." A sharp, crooked smile, delighted in all ways. "I like it."
Is that really all it takes? "So you give me permission?"
His father sets his elbow on the table and leans in, using his knuckles to prop up his chin. "What did I say about permission? I'm not marrying her. You are." The laughter startles the other patrons, but his father does not seem to notice or care. "And if she eats you, mind, it'll be a good show."
He can't help it anymore. His own laughter bubbles up from within him, and sets free the knot in his chest.
He returns home briefly that summer to see his little brothers and his parents.
One evening, soon before he has to leave again to return to the shijuku, his mother pulls him aside. "Yasu?"
"Yes?"
She smooths down his collar, looking up at him, and for a sudden moment, he feels as though he should be shorter, younger, somehow, unused to looking down on her. "Your father says that you have written to him asking for his permission to request Hiwara Toyomatsu-shonin's daughter's hand in marriage?"
"Yes." He had written, and his father had arrived, loud and amused with him. He had written, there is no doubt.
His mother sighs and sits down at her loom. He moves to help her warp the loom. "I have heard some of the news coming out of Yanai these days through friends." She looks up at him, and though it is not sorrow he reads in her features, it is caution. "The eldest Hiwara daughter is famous, my son. She will cost you as she has cost her father and every other man who has tried to love her."
When you ride the tiger's back, do not be surprised when she eats you alive.
He looks down and wonders when it was that he has started to disagree with his mother on such important things in life. "I would've already been dead by now without her." He pushes on, ignoring the widening of his mother's eyes, or her gasp. "If she will cost me, then so be it. I will pay any price to spend what years I have in her company."
Because it is her company and her regard that he craves most of all.
If that means marriage so that the world may understand some reason as to why, for a man and a woman could never be unmarried friends, then that is what he will ask for.
"Come away with me." They are at the willow pavilion again. He stands by the tree, a little ways from the reach of the roof's shadow.
She sits under the shade, at the table. "Why?"
It is true that she has never said that she loves him.
Not like he loves her, beyond all propriety and common sense, beyond logic or reason.
It is true, but nevertheless, he must ask, even though he knows she has never said yes to a suitor.
If rich men could not move her, if powerful men could not sway her, if accomplished men could not tempt her, and handsome men could not flatter her, what hope does he have?
What hope does he have? He who is none of these things?
What can he say?
Because I love you.
But other men have said this to her before. Their words were false, and his are true, but she will not believe him.
Slowly, he climbs the three steps up into the pavilion, and sits down at the seat across from her. "Don't you want to go away?" You are unhappy here, always chafing at the bounds of what is expected of you, never able to be who you want to be.
"Even if I did, why you?" She strums a few chords on her qin. Through eighty-one tribulations, we shall see how it goes.
Because I want you to be happy.
But others have told her this before, and did not mean it.
"Because you'll be free of the old ladies here and their opinions of you." The older generation cannot bear her with her wild ways, her imperious nature, and her mystery tempting all of their sons for reasons beyond her control.
They had hated her mother too, the mysterious and scandalous Water Country woman her father had married, who had, many years ago, drowned in the lake.
It is a wonder she still loves the water.
"Old ladies will talk wherever I go." She props her head up on her fist, other hand laid across her qin in a profusion of sleeves and silk, flashing in the noon sun. "If the long reach of my father's name cannot hope to save me from them, what makes you think you can?"
And that, he has pondered over for a long time.
For Hiwara Toyomatsu loves his eldest child and has spoiled her at every turn.
And yet, at times, despite loving her, he could not accept her. Her actions are still judged on a scale of acceptable versus unacceptable.
She is loved and spoiled, but she is not free.
"I might never be able to spare you from hearing their words, but at least I will never agree with them." He finds her charming, and that will not end. Not this year, not in ten years, not in a lifetime.
He has no old or proud name that he is too afraid to sully with her high strung temper, no people he fears offending with her easy, unabashed way of speaking. He will never agree with the old ladies and their assessment of her.
There is silence for so long that he fears he has offended her one final time.
But after the silence, she turns her gaze up to his face, and asks him something in a tone he cannot place. "Then tell me three things I don't know about myself."
Three things she does not know about herself…
Or three things no man has ever told her about herself in any way meant to be kind. "You are deeply unhappy with your life, because you have always hungered for more." She is brazen and spoiled, impetuous and strong willed, but what she wants the most is to be freed from the bounds of proper society rather than to be loved. He cannot exactly say that he will free her, but in his household there will be no judgement of her wish to be free. "You never wanted to be a lady, and you are afraid of falling in love."
She holds herself so far apart from the rest of their society, so prickly, precious, prized and beloved by the only man who matters in her life, but she does not give or seek the love of others.
Because she is afraid of being known to others.
She flinches as though struck.
"They always say that lapis lazuli is a rich man's stone." And though her words are meant to be unkind, he reads her wavering in their tremble. She is a lonely young woman, so she is, without friends. Without the ability to trust. And yet still so kind underneath it all. Distantly, her oil paper umbrella looms, the same lapis lazuli blue as her eyes. "Are you rich enough to pay the price?"
Can he pay the price of loving her, knowing she does not quite love him and might never love him?
Could he pay the price of having an unconventional wife?
"It would be my highest honor." And he means every word. Every word, no matter what he has to pay to keep her.
He sees the moment where she must decide, where she wavers, the moment she hangs there, suspended between two roads, trying to weigh which one would give her safety.
But there is no road in life that is truly completely safe.
When her next words come, they are quiet. "Then persuade my father, and I will go home with you, danna."
And he knows, through his elation, that this fight is not over yet.
He comes to the Hiwara residence one bright summer day, and Ima harranges the gate guards into letting him in, but only just.
"Please," he falls to his knees outside the closed study door. "Hiwara-san, please let me speak to you, just one conversation would be enough."
Ima had let him inside the house, but that does not mean he has won.
Maki had agreed to marry him, but that does mean they are already wed.
His father had promised him a dowry fit for the daughter of an old household, but that does not mean everything is settled.
The only person who could really decide this whole affair is the Hiwara patriarch, who still had to be persuaded to part with his favorite child. So far, that crucial step has not been going well.
The study door had been closed to him when he arrived, and it seems as though it will remain closed.
A manservant comes out and closes the door behind him.
"Our old master says definitely not." A nod to him. "Good day, sir. I won't walk you out."
"Please tell Hiwara-san that I won't leave until he speaks to me." Whatever it takes.
"Then you'll be waiting for a long time." the manservant shrugs. "If I were you, I'd leave. Miss Maki isn't ever going to look well on someone like you."
They'll see about that. "I'm troubling you to tell Hiwara-san that I won't leave unless he speaks to me, or I'm dragged out the front door."
Persuade my father, and I will go home with you, danna.
The manservant sighs and shrugs. "It's your funeral," he mutters as he retreats back into the study.
And so he waits.
He had arrived at mid morning, but it is slightly past the noonday meal now when Maki arrives, for the first time, not wearing a mask.
He almost doesn't recognize her at first, having never seen her face before this, but she tugs at his arm. "Yasu, what are you doing, get up. You can stand. It's fine."
He shakes his head. "No, I can't."
The corners of her mouth turn down as her mouth thins to a hard line. "I'll go in and talk to Chichi-ue then. She turns to Ima. "Fetch him some tea at least, he might be here for some time yet."
The manservant opens the door a hair of a crack. "Miss Maki, the Old Master says no one is allowed to feed the ruffian there, or bring him any tea either."
Maki's frown turns thunderous. "Are we in the process of starving and depriving guests now? Where are we putting our reputation?" She starts forward. "Step aside, Saneo. I'm going to talk to Chichi-ue myself."
The manservant flinches, but holds the door open only a crack. "Miss, please, the Old Master's trying to nap."
"No, he isn't." Maki makes a vague, strangling motion with her hand. "Let me in, Saneo."
"This one apologizes!" Saneo quickly shuts the door.
Maki pounds on the door for a while, but finding that it is closed and locked and does not seem to be opening at all, huffs, still frowning heavily.
Ima comes back without a tea tray. "Miss, the kitchen wouldn't give me any tea."
"Have they all lost their minds?" Maki huffs again, the swish of her wide orange and gold skirt flaring out as she turns. "Wait here, Yasu. I'll go find you something."
He nods, having nowhere to go anyway. "I'll be here."
It is evening by the time she arrives again, after the evening meal with a few pastries that she'd wrapped in a handkerchief and stuffed in her sleeve.
But he refuses to eat them, if only because he has principles. If the old man inside the study wasn't going to eat, then he isn't going to either. They'll see who wins.
"You're so stupid, Yasu." She dabs at his forehead with her handkerchief. "He's much better fed than you are normally." So she knows that sometimes he doesn't eat.
He wonders where she heard that from and just what else of him she's noticed and judged.
He glances at her again, still unused to the sight of just her face where she'd always worn a tiger mask before. "You look different than how I thought you would."
And indeed she does, features much softer and far more tender than he had ever pictured them.
They said that Hiwara-shonin's daughter is a cold beauty, but they said wrong.
"What?" she asks, half pouting. "Do I not look beautiful enough for you?"
He shakes his head, half sighing. "It's not about beauty." It had never been about beauty. It'd been about…
Well, such things are hard to explain, aren't they?
Name and number them, give them form, give them boundaries — what the heart loves has no boundaries and no form.
"Oh," she says, half laughing, "but you could not have loved me for my charming personality."
But it is, in a way, because she is both kind and cruel, because she is both brash and observant, because she is nothing much like any other woman he has met before, he does find her personality charming, just at the same time that he finds it infuriating and painful.
It is, but not in the way she means.
"You do," he says, still staring at the closed door before him, "charm me, much the same way a snake charms a mouse right before it strikes."
She laughs, patting him on the shoulder. "I am unsure if to take that as a compliment."
She sits with him for a long time that evening and well into the night, on the walkway, knees drawn up to her chest, attempting to tempt him with bits of pastries and the newest and highest grade of shincha.
But finding that he will not budge, she goes away for a brief time, and brings back her guzheng to play him music while sitting there, legs dangling off the edge of the walkway.
If she means to make her position on who she agrees with clear to her father, two hours of music before she leaves again for bed ought to be abundantly clear.
And yet, the door does not open for him.
Another day passes, hours creeping by with servants passing him by on the walk.
His stomach insists that it is hungry.
He insists he is not.
Maki sits with him that evening again, playing softer songs while leaning against a pillar.
"Don't your knees hurt?" she asks him, concerned.
Her emotions show so easily and obviously on her face that he suddenly understands why she wore the tiger mask outside.
No one would find her hard to read without it.
"Yes, but only for the first few hours." By this point, they've gone numb, as have the rest of his legs. He'd fallen asleep in this position before the study door and maintained it exactly as he had when he first knelt. If Hiwara-shonin were to come outside, he is unclear of his ability to stand.
But he will not admit that.
The second night creeps by him, and he weakly drifts off into a half slumber before Maki leaves him, the vague feeling of her lips on his temple the only indication of her turning in for the night.
The third day sets a bloody red, and he watches it with tired eyes. Some part of him is very spent.
Behind him, the house prepares for the evening, the sound of horses and servants footsteps going to and fro, as he sways there, unsteadily, sounds loud and quiet all at once, passing through him as though through water, all fast and slow.
His eyes keep falling closed although it is not sleep he wants.
And yet, still some part of him burns, hungry, willing to fight for the moment the door opens.
He, outside the door, is young and active.
Hiwara-shonin on the other side of the door is much older and used to far more comforts than him.
It cannot be comfortable inside there.
His gaze is affixed on the door when he feels Maki's hand on his shoulder. "Yasu?"
"Mmm?"
The door creaks open a hairline crack.
He waits, vision wobbling.
It opens further, further, dark all the way to the edge of his vision.
"Yasu?" So far away, there seems to be the distant sound of someone calling him.
"Yasu!"
The wooden boards of the walkway rise up to meet him, the faint sounds of a commotion going on above.
He sinks beneath the surface.
He comes to in a bed, not his own.
Maki is sitting there though, in the chair next to his bedside, fussing. She would not call it that though, because as soon as she realizes he is awake, she pulls away, and makes a face at him. "We had to call a doctor because you fainted as soon as Chichi-ue opened the door." She glances down at him, looking very frustrated indeed. "Did you really not change positions even once? The doctor said your knees were all bruised."
He still has no idea what Hiwara-shonin had wanted to say to him.
He wishes he'd stayed awake for a little while longer to hear about it.
"Why would I have?"
She huffs. "Well, for one, it would've prevented you from fainting. Did you really think that Chichi-ue was torturing himself inside that room?"
He was not torturing himself.
He props himself up with his elbows, moving slowly because while his legs are probably no longer going to give out on him should he try to stand, he still doesn't want to test that theory. "He is much older than I am." And it is true that Hiwara-shonin is. "I am sure it could not have been comfortable."
However he feels about Hiwara-shonin, it is true that a man over fifty will have had a hard several nights confined to a single room, especially if that man is used to commanding the attention of an entire household and being much respected outside of it.
"He wouldn't decide to marry me off because he is uncomfortable." She shrugs, still thinking. "You know, he asked me if I really wanted to marry you if you were such a hopeful fool."
"And what did you tell him about this fool?"
He wonders, because the only thing that will get him to revoke his question is if she says no, she no longer wishes to marry him.
"I told him either I would marry you or not at all."
That settles him, for while she is impetuous by nature, she does not revoke statements made so baldly and definitively.
"And what did Hiwara-shonin say to that?"
"Hiwara-shonin," a man's voice cuts in, and he turns his head to find the man himself standing there in the doorway, an impressively dark frown carved upon the man's face, "says that the young fool ought to call him gifu and be done with it."
Permission he has sought, and permission he has been granted.
What beauty there is, to the morning light, to this moment, and to her eyes, her assurance a mirror of his own.
His father all but swaggers to the gate of the Hiwara residence after he finishes his business in the city and nods a friendly greeting to the servant on duty at the gate, "Brother, how are you today?" who all but turns and stares, open mouthed as he passes.
They receive no response, but his father is seeking none, and continues on his way.
Kawaguchi Hakumuso is many things, but self-effacing he is not.
He's not quiet either, the commotion he causes reverberates through the walkways and gardens, carried to and fro by the hordes of servants that pause to stop and gawk.
Once, only several decades ago, his father had been a servant much like them in a household far, far grander than this.
And yet now they go to treat with the master of a very old merchant family.
He follows behind and tries not to feel self conscious.
The trail of engagement presents carried by various servants follows them in and breaks off for the main courtyard where they will be unpacked and artfully arranged to be looked at later.
This is, after all, the path he has chosen for himself.
"Toyomatsu, how good to see you." Chichi-ue cups his hands together, the barest briefest exchange of courtesies before promptly sitting down.
Hiwara-shonin's smile is wire thin and growing thinner all the while. "Kawaguchi-san, how are you?"
"Let's skip the pleasantries. I was told we were meeting here today to discuss an agreement between your family and mine."
"Yes," Hiwara-shonin also sits, glancing briefly up at him and then directs the bulk of his unimpressed feelings back to Chichi-ue. "An engagement. Between your son and my daughter."
"Funny how these things are, aren't they?" Chichi-ue matches Hiwara-shonin's rapidly thinning smile with a wide one of his own that only grows more crooked over time. "Where is she, by the way?"
"Who?"
"Your daughter. The one getting engaged today." He gathers that Chichi-ue is distinctly unimpressed with Hiwara-shonin and now wishes to ascertain that his future daughter-in-law is not also somehow unimpressive.
Then again, he should've reassured his father that Maki is very little like Hiwara-shonin except slightly around the eyes.
"She will not be joining us today." Hiwara-shonin hands over an engagement agreement to the young man known as Saneo and it is passed over to Chichi-ue who glances at it and then hands it to him.
"No one can get engaged without being here." Chichi-ue's smile grows sharper. "After all, the engaged parties must sign, no? Else it would hardly be legal."
Saneo wrings his hands.
Hiwara-shonin sighs deeply. "Well, Saneo? Fetch the First Miss, will you? She might as well meet her future father-in-law now."
It does not take long for Maki to arrive, eyes spitting fire.
Chichi-ue glances at her, weighing, as he does often when meeting new people he has not yet decided to like or dislike, dark eyes sharp like a sparrow's, and for a moment, he fears they will not get along.
A corner of Chichi-ue's mouth tilts down, half-crooked. "Say, why don't we play a game?"
Dice rattle.
Maki considers it, eyes narrowed before reaching out. "Give them here. If you're going to gamble the life of your son, I might as well win him from you."
He half protests, but it's half true, and that does not sting so much as it amuses.
It is some months after they are married, when he is sitting in the courtyard garden one summer day, calculating accounts that she comes out, holding the old umbrella. "You kept this?"
"It belongs to the person who saved my life." He remembers the day on the pier, in the rain, clear as if he still lives there though it has been years since. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Saved your life?" She frowns and opens the umbrella to look at it. "But this was mine?" She twirls it around. "Unless someone else gave you an umbrella?"
"You did." He sighs, and sets the accounts aside for a moment. "I'd just been told that I would never take the exams that day." He still considers it a painful moment, a wound never entirely healed, but it is no longer so gutting as it was in the past. "If you had not done that, I do not know where I would be now."
In the lake, perhaps.
Gone, perhaps.
More bitter, perhaps.
But he is none of those things, for she had, in a moment clearly thoughtless, left him her umbrella.
She comes to sit next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. "How funny," she says, picking up the ink stick and idly grinding it against the ink stone. "I barely remember it."
"No, I didn't think you did."
He remembers the outline of her back on that day, as she and Ima had walked off, arm in arm, how both of them would be half soaked by the time they returned.
Remembers her chatter and her laughter.
Remembers what color she wore and how she did her hair, the sweep of her wide sleeves.
She did not think much of it, but the trajectory of his life had been irrevocably altered.
"I wish I did." She sighs and frowns as she thinks, brow furrowed. "Something so important to you, and I don't even remember what I was thinking about."
He nudges a strand of her hair back behind her ear. "It doesn't matter if you do or not." It had happened as it did, and he remembers it because it is not like him to forget a kindness.
"Can I measure you this morning?"
She'd been invited out to a polo match with the Hondo family, dressed in ruqun — dark blue skirt embroidered with silver butterflies and peonies, light pastel blue blouse, pastel green daxiushan embroidered with curling vines and a thousand little green leaves, twirling a new oil paper umbrella patterned with a pair of butterflies — but she turns back to look at him.
"What does my husband want my measurements for?"
"I want to make you an outfit." She would look good in anything, but he rather wants to make her something from their family's wares.
He wants to pick the dye lots and the patterns, the silk thread and the embroidery.
For all that she likes the tiger mask she'd worn prior to marriage, she has never had an orange tiger outfit, and he might be sentimental enough to make her one.
"You?" She comes back, putting the umbrella down in the doorway. "Kitsune-san," she says, only half teasingly. "You have been at a gentleman's school for nearly a decade now. When did you learn to make ladies' outfits?"
He makes a face at her. "Woe be it for Byakko-hime to doubt me."
He'd grown up sewing with his mother, her oldest child and best helper before his father had gotten new ideas and asked everywhere after where to send him to school.
Only with the learning of an educated gentleman will you ever be properly free, do you understand?
And so at twelve, he had been sent away.
He'd spent over a decade there, in the city of Yanai, living with a man who made money off of ministry scholar hopefuls, and he had loved it there, with a wistful sort of love, but it had never been home, not like Shunan is home.
She shrugs and laughs easily. "Well, if Kitsune-san wants them, he may have them."
The corners of his mouth tilt down as he tries not to laugh. "Byakko-hime is most gracious indeed."
"You're right." She tells him, still laughing, her arms wide as he fetches the measuring tape. "I am most gracious and generous." There is a moment here where fondness surfaces in her eyes, chief of her expression.
She is not used to attention like this, having rarely been properly seen in all the years of her childhood by either peers or elders or associates.
He brushes a tiny mote of dust off of her shoulder. "It will be good for a laugh at the very least, if I do not remember how to tailor an outfit."
"Hmmm," she agrees most pleasantly. "Is the design going to be a surprise?"
He laughs. "I doubt I could keep it from you for long."
She kisses the tip of his nose, a vibrant, shining smile, umbrella slipping off her shoulder and landing on the ground. "I will have to anticipate it, then."
She does laugh when he finally shows it to her, admiring the tiger's stripes all along the back.
And if she wears out more than a handful of times and keeps it to look at for a long time after, it is only to humor him.
The years pass.
A son is born, and then a daughter.
And before long, he is taking on the traveling his father used to do.
"Chichi-ue!" Jisuke appears from around the corner of the walkway as he alights from his carriage. "Chichi-ue's home!" his son calls, peering back around the building at what must be Hisa, for there is giggling coming from that direction before hurtling towards him. "Chichi-ue! You were gone for long this time!"
Jisuke had trailed a series of muddy, squelchy footprints towards him, but looks otherwise pristine.
He has no such hopes for Hisa, who, by fortune of many events, did not quite seem to care if she rolled about in the garden.
"Yes," he pats Jisuke's head, aware that Hisa is just around the corner… "I was gone for longer than usual this—" There, past the garden bench and quite suddenly slamming into his side.
"Chichi!" she laughs, chortling, sticking fingers making their way across his front because he has at least picked up his muddy child.
"Now," he asks. "What have you two been doing to become so terribly muddy?"
They look at each other, giggly. "Can't say!"
It is only when Maki also rounds the corner, twigs in her hair and her sleeves rolled up does he suspect that it was not quite the children's idea. "Welcome home!" She smiles. "We found a bird's nest in the peach tree in the garden."
That would explain things.
He raises one eyebrow. "Aren't you supposed to model good behavior for these two?" It is an ask made in jest. They are not important enough a household for this to be of any import. He bounces Hisa once, prompting another round of giggles and chatter.
Maki looks about as if searching for someone else he is addressing. "Me? Your Byakko-hime?" Mock affront and genuine amusement. "Kitsune-san's travels must've addled him to the nature of tigers!"
He laughs, brushing his lips against her temple, and then each knuckle of the hand she offers him in turn.
"Chichi-ue," Jisuke asks, with very big eyes, "where did you go?"
"To the capital." The four of them head up the walk into the house. "I brought presents, do you two want to see?"
"Presents! Presents!"
The courtyard is full of happy children's voices, small chatter for small presents and little things. He delights in them, and the thought of a growing number of small chatterers.
Two more blank tablets join the first in the shrine, every tiny coffin a regret, every stick of incense a burden, every line on his face worn thin from the chill. But this is heaven's will.
This is heaven's will, and he bends his head so that the children watching these memorial tablets from up above will not see his tears.
But that does not mean there are none.
His son is eleven when a horse, startled by a grass snake slithering out from beneath the leaves, throws the child.
And this too, might be heaven's will. It might be, but he cannot bear the weight of this, so heavy and suffocating a weight that he cannot breathe.
He cannot breathe, grief caught in his throat.
Some men live ninety years and die surrounded by friends and family, children to fill a whole hall and sample all of life's ups and downs in equal measure.
Some live only eleven.
What does it mean, when the King of Hell calls a boy, only eleven?
Banryu carries Jisuke in, and they sit with him.
Jizen-sensei shakes his head.
A boy's voice, thin and frail, asking if his new books had arrived yet.
The sound of breathing.
He attends to tasks. He sits there.
The sound of breathing.
The King of Hell calls the name of a boy, aged eleven.
He does not stop for grief.
He travels to the capital later that year for Jisuke's books, unwilling to leave the bookseller without his payment.
It is not the bookseller's fault that Jisuke will never see them.
The carriage ride into the city is grim, the wane of the evening giving everything a faint gray-blue cast. He prefers this to when the sun is high swaying slightly with the movement wheels and wagon train creaking.
The dusk of each day brings more relief than the light of dawn.
At night, at least, his face could hide. There is no need to put on a mask for others, to assure them that all is well.
"I just want to eat!"
The commotion outside startles him from his thoughts upon meeting the bookseller. He pulls back the cloth covering the window.
There, Toshi's holding a boy by the back of his collar, shaking him.
A thief then, one more motivated by hunger than riches if the gauntness of this boy's grimy cheeks says anything.
"You can afford it!" The struggle is futile here. Toshi is far larger and better adept at handling thieves and fighting than this child is. "You've got so much money!"
"Let me go! Let me go!" The struggles border on panic now.
And while he has never been a street boy — has never known that pain — he does know hunger. And he does know grief, for it is grief that has sent this boy here, stealing from his caravan.
"Toshi?" He climbed out of the carriage.
"Just sorting out a little thief, Yasu." Toshi shrugs, a quick thing, but doesn't let go of the child.
Just a boy.
Hand sewn shoes falling apart on his feet.
"Let him go, Toshi. It's only a boy." Only a boy, a little older than Jisuke. "What does he know of these things?"
What can this child know about this?
Toshi sets him down, still displeased about the matter. "No sense of morals in this one."
"Toshi, look at him." He holds up a hand to forestall more argument. "No, really, look at him."
There is no one left for this child, no one left to love him or he would not be here.
"Let him go." He is tired, so he is. Tired and full of dead dreams unwaking. "Someone has loved him, and they are no longer of this world. Let the sleeping ghosts lie."
"How did you know that?" Sharp words from a sharp boy, but he has perhaps, slipped a little bit and let too much of what he sees through.
Hand sewn shoes.
He'd not had a pair sewn directly for his feet since his mother died. "She handmade your shoes, didn't she? Every stitch, every scrap of cloth. The work for a pair of shoes is no hour of idle leisure. What is that if not love?"
"And that she is gone?"
He has hit too hard by accident.
He did not mean to harm a child, but his mouth has no gatekeeper anymore, that having died with his son.
He does not mean harm, but he has caused it, for it is never kind to state things so plainly in casual conversation, never gentle to cut to the heart of people without them asking for it.
"Look at the state of your shoes."
He does not know who has made shoes for this boy, if it was a mother, an aunt or a sister, but she is gone and this boy remains, broken toenails, grime and all.
"She said someone would come for me."
A mother then, who had known that this boy has a father who yet lived.
"And someone has." He is not this boy's father, but he is a father grieving a son, and this a son missing a father. "I hope you don't mind; I seem to be a little late."
He takes Hiko home to his wife, whose gaze at once reproaches him for thinking that one boy could ever replace another.
But that is not entirely what he means.
It is not entirely what he means, and in the end, even he thaws.
He sends the children away to Yanai in a cart driven by Banryu. None of them know it yet, but Heihachi had left for the underworld just that morning. His littlest brother had died asking after his only child.
He had no tears, only an empty hollow in the base of his throat.
The last he sees of the children is Hiko's arm wrapped around Hisa's thin shoulders, their heads bowed together, Kimei leaning against Hisa. Little Retsu holding Toraki-kun and even littler Somei fast asleep.
Hisa turns back towards him, a face full of tears, mouth open, but her words are lost to the wind.
He waves her on.
There are no places for the children in this household of death.
They will see each other again when the storm has passed, and things are smooth once more.
In the mid afternoon, Chiba Sahei arrives with food and water. "Yasu!" he calls, standing in the doorway. "If you're not coming out, I'm coming in!"
"For Guanyin's sake," he hurries out. "Don't. Stay where you are, and put the basket down, please."
His childhood friend likes hugging. He will not have that be past tense because the man is dead.
There is a sickness spreading here; his second sister-in-law had suddenly fallen ill as well.
He was right to send the children away.
He sees the mulish set of Sahei's jaw and shakes his head. "Look, everyone out there is giving this doorway a wide berth. Don't come, I already have enough to grieve without losing you."
He has so much to grieve, so much to grieve that he would rather—
No.
Hisa.
The children.
No.
He would not rather.
Not at all.
Sahei sighs, more angry than resigned, but that is Sahei's nature. "I'll leave it out here, then." His childhood friend turns back to him, carefully observing him through hooded, unblinking eyes. "Take care of yourself, Yasu. There's more in the city that are sick, and I'll be out to see them next."
He has not been out since the sickness started, spreading rapidly among both the household staff and his own family.
He has not been further than his own doorstep, since the sickness started, he did not know until Sahei told him that it'd taken more.
It lingers there, tiredly, in the space that Sahei leaves.
He does not speak of it to Maki, nor indeed, any other.
Three days.
Toemon is gone.
And now he sits with Maki, who, between one day and the next, has fallen ill.
And yet she was always stronger than him.
What will he do if her number is called?
"I am sorry to have cost you, danna." She turns to him, reaching for his hand.
He gives it to her, though he knows he shouldn't.
"Never more than I wished to give."
Never more.
Never, for once, long ago, he'd vowed that he would bear whichever costs came his way.
He has borne those costs and those blessings for many years now, and wishes he could bear those same costs and blessings for longer.
And yet, he fears her loss and fears more having to face so many more long years without her.
He would trade much for longer.
Yet, he is mortal.
Yet, he cannot deny what will be, and what will not be.
The King of Hell calls.
The white tigress turns to look.
Their time is up.
Night fades and magpies take their leave
In the east, dawn rises, in the west, Byakko sets
So what of Heaven's River?
It cuts twain the lovers.
— Kawaguchi Yasutaro "Heaven's River"
A.N. Thanks for reading!
~Tav (Leaf)