Disclaimer: still doesn't own Naruto. Beta'd by drowsyivy and UmbreonGurl.
"There is nothing you can see
That is not a flower.
There is nothing you can think
That is not the moon."
— Matsuo Basho
Your father is an important man, Hiko-kun. He holds onto this when he has nothing else, when he is alone and friendless, driven from place to place by men larger than he who begged at better places than he could. And one day he will come for us. You'll see.
One day he will come for us.
But there is no longer any 'us' to speak of.
"Now see here, you little rat." A large hand descends on the back of his collar, hauling him away from the wagon he'd reached up into.
"I just want to eat!" No meals for days now, not even the older sisters at the house would give him anything anymore, having been caught by the madam, and now their food is rationed, to prevent the house from 'raising unwanted strays'.
Never mind that Haha-ue had worked at the house. Never mind that he had lived there.
"That's what they all say." The hand turns him around to face a broad shouldered middle aged man. "Do you think we all don't need to eat?"
"You can afford it!" He kicks his feet, wondering when the merchant will let go of him. "You've got so much money!"
He'd only tried because he was hungry.
He is hungry, and surely, surely, there is food to spare here, among people who look so wealthy and have so much.
The man shakes him back and forth, rattling him like a beaten dog. "If only we could say the same of every street rat."
"Let me go! Let me go!" If he makes enough of a ruckus, surely someone will hear him.
No one will hear me. I'll die here like this, all alone in the world, forgotten.
The madam was right. I'll never be anything or any—
"Toshi?" Another man climbs out of the carriage, dressed in brown silks of much richer variety than the man who'd been shaking him. "What's the matter?"
The man — Toshi — straightens himself out, before bobbing a quick bow to the man that had just appeared. "Just sorting out a little thief, Yasu."
Yasu-san turns to him, a contemplative look in ink dark eyes.
It is twilight upon the world now; surely, the magistrate's office is closed.
But with the new dawn rising…
He knows that there is only one path now that he's been caught stealing.
Who would believe the protests of a gutter boy?
Who would be the one to plead his case?
Please sir, I am starving, is never enough.
Those dark eyes soften. "Let him go, Toshi. It's only a boy." The merchant — and surely, this must be the merchant who has so much — turns away. "What does he know of these things?"
Toshi sniffs but sets him on the ground. "No sense of morals in this one." The hand on his collar remains however.
That isn't the same as letting him go, but small mercies, small mercies if the merchant will not drag him off to the magistrate immediately.
There is still time to escape during the night.
The merchant sighs, turns back to them. "Toshi, look at him." He holds up a hand to forestall more argument. "No, really, look at him."
He is suddenly aware of being more ragged and miserable than he was just a moment ago, shoes falling apart on his feet, the grime and filth, his knotted hair and hunger.
"Let him go," the merchant says again, softer this time. "Someone has loved him, and they are no longer of this world. Let the sleeping ghosts lie."
One day, he will come for you. You'll see.
The hand on the back of his collar releases him.
He should run, should get away, careful to make sure that no one can take back this little gift of mercy, but, but—
But.
"How did you know that?" The words are sharper than he intends, but no one has ever loved him, except Haha-ue.
How did this man he has never seen before know that? How did he know she is—
Dead, his mind finishes for him. She is dead, and you took care of her last rites.
They may have kicked you out of the temple when you tried to visit, but you did that at the very least.
The merchant turns to him, hands clasped behind his back, dark eyes almost sad. "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?" Something like a choked sob wails in his throat, but he cannot let it out.
The merchant looks down, almost smiles, though that is not happy either. "Look at the state of your shoes."
He chokes, not sure if he doesn't hate the man who has, just with one glance, unveiled all his secrets to the world and shaken them out for all to see.
"She said someone would come for me."
Did he know that too? This man who sees everything?
"And someone has." The corners of Yasu-san's mouth tilts down. "I hope you don't mind; I seem to be a little late."
The merchant, Kawaguchi Yasutaro, is a silk merchant, not a dweller of the capital city he'd been born to and lived in all his life, and yet, he has a residence in the city, larger than any place Hiko has been in before except the house.
He is not the one that Hiko has been waiting for his entire life, but he is the one who has arrived.
It will have to be enough.
In the merchant's house, there is no cook, but the man named Toshi is sent out to some restaurant that is familiar to both Kawaguchi-san and Toshi, because there'd been merely an exchange of glances, a question of whether or not to order the usual, and a few dishes he's heard of but never seen added to the list.
He is about to ask Kawaguchi-san something, but there is another man coming in to speak to Kawaguchi-san.
"The bookseller is here." The man sighs and shakes his head. "Should I go tell him that his services are no longer necessary?"
Something freezes in Kawaguchi-san's face. It is the sharp catching knife of grief, stabbed through the throat. "No," Kawaguchi-san shakes his head. "Tell him to come in. It must've cost him a pretty ryo to hold those books for me. They'll see some use either way."
The small stack of books and scrolls the newest visitor brings in are examined and approved, the bookseller beaming all the while. "And how is the young master, Kawaguchi-san? His studies must be going well."
Kawaguchi-san is silent for a moment at this, his tea set aside, hands clasped together in his lap. "I thank you for your regard for my son. He had an accident earlier this year. I," and here, a sigh that reigns in the sadness, "I thank you, because he cannot."
A light goes out behind the bookseller's eyes, suddenly aware of how he has misstepped. "My apologies."
And Hiko wonders, being present for this, what exactly this means.
There is grief here, and loss, and yet, the books had been bought anyway, though he doesn't doubt that Kawaguchi-san's son will not be using them any longer.
After the bookseller has gone, bowing and gratitude upon his lips, Toshi returns with food that Kawaguchi-san lays out on a table that he's invited to sit at.
The merchant watches him, chin resting on clasped hands, gaze almost fond.
It's the first good meal he's had in weeks, uncertain what it exactly means.
He eats slowly though, remembering what had happened to the beggars who had received, perhaps, a little too much in terms of alms and had been unable to enjoy it.
There is meat here too, on this table, noodles and steamed buns, vegetables and stewed broth, rice, white and puffy, and so soft without hulls.
And it is rude to eat so fast that his chopsticks clink against the bowl, but what is he if not a beggar, even if Haha-ue had taught him better?
Toshi watches him too, and that makes him flush.
But oddly enough, no one says anything about him, rude or otherwise.
Kawaguchi-san names a place he has never heard of before as where they are going now, after too large clothing had been found for him, and his hair had been brushed out, the grime removed best as possible from his hands and face.
He keeps his shoes though, though his feet had long outgrown them, the only remnant of the boy he used to be.
When the city rises on the horizon, curved tile roofs and the rushing bend of the river, he doesn't know entirely what he expected.
It is not as large as where he is from, slightly less busy, but looks more prosperous.
Even though the capital is the front doorstep of the son of heaven, it has its fair share of brothel houses and beggars, children with hollow eyes and thieves.
From the path they have taken so far, with him peering out of Kawaguchi-san's carriage, looking out at the city even as the sun sets, it is not so bad a place.
Then, maybe he is only looking at surfaces at this moment.
Maybe he is only looking at Kawaguchi-san's surface too. He does not know what the man intends for him.
"Hiko?"
He turns to the silk merchant, who has his eyes closed, hands clasped in his lap as they sit in the carriage, swaying with the movement of the wooden box they find themselves in.
"Yes, Kawaguchi-san?"
"In matters of the house, my wife's word is law."
Wife.
And he had used such a gentle word for wife too. Aisai. Beloved wife.
"You will be in her care for a time, until she thinks of a place that would best suit you."
So he is to be a servant then, his contract sold to the household of Kawaguchi.
It is better than what he would have before.
"This one—"
"I." The correction is gentle, but a river current runs under it, hard as iron shackles. "You are not a lesser human being. We are all men in this world. There is no need for self abasement."
"I'm thankful." He settles for this instead, a lump in his throat as he stares at his hands.
"And who is this, danna?" The woman who appears from the room beyond the door is well dressed, with a face that's lit like a lantern and tearstained eyes as though she had not bothered to hide that she'd been crying.
Behind him, Kawaguchi-san sighs. "He had nowhere else to go, so I thought he could stay with us for a time."
"Hiko." He turns his face up to her, this new and unfamiliar big madam of the household he is now to stay in and wonders how quickly her kind visage will turn cruel when she learns of his shortcomings. Behind him, the master of the house says nothing more. "Hikotori."
"Oh?" she takes his face in her hands, bending so that they are eye to eye. "So thin..." she muses. "I will have to ask Kuma to feed you more. Boys ought to remember that they're growing." She smiles, and it is like the sun appearing from behind the clouds. "I've forgotten to introduce myself haven't I? My name is Maki."
The master of the house is already Kawaguchi-san, and he does not know this woman's maiden name. "I promise to work very hard, Big Madam."
Surely, she could be no worse than the madam who ran the house and held that position over the heads of every big sister who worked there, selling their bodies in the hopes that it would bring in a little money to send their families.
"Mmm," she turns his face slightly, amused smile at odds with her tearstained face. "I have no doubt that you can, although I sincerely doubt that such is the reason my danna brought you home to me."
Behind him, Kawaguchi turns away, hiding a slight cough behind his hand. "Byakko," it is such a little word for it to hold so much reverence, almost placatory, a man before a maneater.
The legendary white tiger of the west.
Maki-san smiles, blue eyes alight with an energy that could not exactly be called ladylike, showing a little too much teeth. "Kitsune-san," she says, no louder than a whisper, a voice more frigid than the north wind. "I think you and I must have a little talk tonight."
To this, all Kawaguchi-san does is laugh, not a word spoken, not a shred of fear.
He begins to wonder what sort of household he has come to.
He learns that the young master of the house died just a few months ago, in the start of spring when the plum flowers were blooming from the little girl who is the second miss's handmaid. His name had been Kawaguchi Jisuke.
He'd been eleven years old, very bright,
He had...if not expected such a fact, did not expect it to be stated so plainly.
"Anyway," the girl says, as if that is enough segue from the matter. "You are a member of our family now, so I suppose it is nothing strange to tell you this." She swings her feet back and forth, pastel green skirt fluttering as she does so, tiny black shoes peeking out from beneath the edges of the voluminous cloth. "Say, do you like poetry?"
"Poetry?" The patrons of the house would often show off their word skills if they claimed to be scholars.
But it's been years since he lived in the house.
"Jisuke-kun was fond of writing poems," Kimei says, before bursting into tears, covering her face with her hands. "I miss him."
"Was he nice?" Everyone had something to say about the former young master, it would seem. He was the only son of Kawaguchi-san to live past a month old; if he had not died, he would've grown up to be a famous scholar; he'd been a handsome boy.
But very little had been said about Kawaguchi Jisuke's personality.
"He was very nice." Kimei sniffs, angrily rubbing at her eyes. "It isn't fair."
Very little about life is.
He catches her wrist. Her eyes are already red and puffy, but at least this way she won't be able to irritate them further. "Life isn't very fair," he says, though this isn't the right thing to say either. "But I'm sorry he's dead."
If he had to give a reason for why Kawaguchi-san brought him home like some sort of present to the big madam of the household, he would say very simply: Kawaguchi-san missed his own son terribly, and wished that Hiko could somehow be that son.
He is at a loss to explain why that would never be so.
Someone would come for him, indeed.
Another two months later, in Yanai, in an inhospitable estate ruled by a cruel man, the letter arrives from Shunan, written in Kawaguchi-san's hand.
Hiwara Maki is dead.
Without goodbyes said, without warning, without some last heroic act, or loving gesture.
She'd been healthy when they left, standing in the doorway, waving at them as they looked back, one of his arms wrapped around Hisa, the other around Kimei-chan.
But had there been a shadow on her face even back then?
Had she looked into the future and seen how the sickness that riddled the household, affecting her youngest brother-in-law would go on to infect her?
She could not have, or she would've said something more.
She is gone.
She will not return.
No final word, no last moments, no wake to sit for her, no funeral parade to walk.
Just the turning of another page in the book of life.
Her number had come up.
The King of Hell had beckoned, and the white tigress had turned her face to look.
She had not looked away in time.
And even though he has already lost a mother, he weeps anyway.
At the close of the day, he finds Hisa in the garden, where she has fallen asleep leaning against a pillar.
Kimei puts a finger to her lips, hisses something at him, but he passes the threshold anyway, and pauses for a brief moment to observe her, asleep among the summer flowers.
The delicate lines of her face, skin fair as porcelain, long lashes as though painted from an artist's brush, pale lips.
A stained hand rests on the peonies.
She is tired, perhaps because she had not solicited his help to stir the vats today, old undyed linen stained with more than the work of one day.
He makes his way across the garden, kept the same way that Maki-san would've liked it, and leans over her, smiling wickedly before tapping her on the nose. "Little tiger, you've fallen asleep in the wrong place."
She jumps, coming awake all at once. "Hiko!" One of her hands catches the front of his yichang. "You are very mean."
"And here I was, thinking I was being nice." He puts on a show of hurt, a hand across his brow, overdramatic woe like one of those theatre players. "Oh! How cruel it is! How cruel!"
She pouts at him. "I'm the cruel one?" You're the one going around disturbing people from their rest."
He offers her an arm to help her up. "I thought you might want to know." And here he laughs, a little at himself, a little at the curiosity in her eyes. "Kawaguchi-san is home."
"Chichi-ue's home?" She gathers her skirts around her in one hand, forcibly shoving her feet back into her shoes, suddenly all aflutter.
He catches her by the elbows when she inevitably loses her balance, and rights her, light as she is, she might have hollow bones. "And now look at you, so eager to be off despite being so upset about being awoken."
She flaps a hand at him, uncaring and unbothered by his splitting of hairs and insistence on pedantry, still trying to shove her feet back into her shoes.
And for a moment, all is golden.
The autumn night is deepening, an evening frost stealing across the landscape when he steps out of the shrine, three sticks of incense lit for a woman who was not his mother — could never be his mother — but who had given him so much on the eleventh year of his arrival home.
Across the clearing, the light is still on in Kawaguchi-san's study, and he walks across to look.
There, Kawaguchi-san asleep in his chair, a scroll of poetry held loosely in his lap. Ah, worked too late again.
Even in rest, he looks composed, not a strand of hair missing from his topknot, collar straightened, sleeves slightly covering his hands.
Hiko straightens his own sleeves for a moment, before smiling, half rueful. I suppose our inner character will always show. Quietly, he steals across the floor to release the scroll from Kawaguchi-san's hands, careful to set it on the table, open to the same section it'd been when he first touched it.
There is a frost upon the year, and something like frost creeping across Kawaguchi-san's brow as well, streaks of gray in once black hair.
He shrugs off his own dachang and drapes it over Kawaguchi-san's shoulders. He will be going to rest soon, and his own room is only a short walk away, in the eastern courtyard. I won't need it.
He leans over to blow out the oil lamp and put away the lamp shield. No need to leave a fire hazard in the house even though such things are, for the most part, safe.
"So filial, Hiko." The softness of the comment makes him pause before the lamp goes out. "You're a good young man."
"I knew I should've been quieter." He turns back to Kawaguchi-san, who sits as he had been before, eyes half closed, watching him. "I'm sorry for waking you."
Kawaguchi-san smiles, fishtail wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes. "The night is not yet so deep." He rises, holding out Hiko's dachang. "It's cold out tonight."
He laughs and shakes his head, throwing the robe over his shoulders. "Will you ever let someone take care of you? Hisa often complains about how you will not let her do so, and I find I am in agreement on that front."
"Ah, but to do that would imply that you both are no longer children." Kawaguchi-san straightens his collar, turning out the peach blossom lining, and smoothing down an errant wrinkle, looks up at him with a fondness he has, perhaps, been too spoiled in seeing. "Even if you are grown, you are still beloved."
A little boy with hand stitched shoes.
A young man with embroidered cuffs.
He has not changed so much in eleven years.
"Seek not to follow
In the footsteps of men of old
Seek what they sought."
— Matsuo Basho
A.N. Slightly late on the update here bc of ffnet wonking out last week or so when I updated this on AO3!
~Tav (Leaf)