Chapter Ten: Full Frontal: The Naked and the Unafraid
Shingen was naked. And completely nonchalant about it.
Well, now you know he's in proportion to his height was my semi-hysterical thought.
Fixing my eyes on the wall to the left of his shoulder was the best I could do. But the afterimage was burned into my retinas, probably with a mental half-life of at least six months.
He shrugged into a yukata – which covered his shoulders and arms and back and… not the area I was doing my absolute best to avoid staring at. "What is it? Did someone find her already?"
Find who? Between the attempt on Mai's life and the full monty right in front of me, I wasn't sure I had enough brain cells left to carry on a conversation. Focus. Focus. Don't say naked. Don't say penis. Don't …. Augh!
I took a deep breath and held out the arrow. "Someone shot this over the wall at Mai." Ok, managed a sentence with eight words. A coherent sentence, even.
His demeanor changed instantly from semi-relaxed to intent. Those grey eyes of his narrowed with concern (ten points for looking at his eyes, Katsuko!). Not even bothering to finish dressing, or fasten the yukata, he strode over and took the arrow. "Was she hurt?"
"No. Yoshimoto saved her life." I explained in more detail what had happened. "She refuses to tell Kenshin, but … Yoshimoto and I felt someone in authority needed to know."
Shingen examined the arrow. "This isn't from the Kasugayama armory."
"Sea eagle feathers are fairly easy to obtain around here, though." Eager for something concrete to do – and remove myself from the naked – I offered to search through the area blacksmiths to see if anyone recognized it.
"You can do that later." He went to the desk and found a clean piece of paper and a brush. "Can you draw?"
"Not at all." I felt the need to apologize for my lack of drafting skills. But Katsu would not do that either. Nor would Katsu continue to side eye the naked, so stop that!
He bent over the desk, the yukata sliding forward to provide more coverage (Damn… I mean yay!), and roughly sketched out a map of the archery grounds. "Show me where everyone was standing."
I knelt in front of the desk and drew barely recognizable stick figures where Yoshimoto, Mai, and I had been standing, then added some curly flourishes near the wall to represent where the tree line was visible over the wall.
He leaned over me (oh dear God) and pointed to my happy little trees. "The arrow came from there?"
Gah! He was too close! And too naked. I threw up a mental block and imaginary blinders and concentrated on making sense. It helped to remember that moment of shock when the arrow had come zipping out of the sky, and the fear I'd felt when I'd realized how close Mai had come to being killed.
"Um. Around there, yeah. This one, probably." I put my finger on the spot, then traced an invisible line through the air toward the place where we had been standing. "One of these trees had to be it. There's a lot of cover – I climbed the wall, but he was gone when I got there. Or well hidden."
He was silent long enough for me to wonder what he was thinking. I turned my head to look up at him, and he finally stepped back and fastened the yukata. I couldn't interpret the expression on his face, but there was enough sternness that this time I did apologize. "I should have searched the woods. Now it's too late. I'm sorry."
"Don't be so hard on yourself. I doubt he stuck around after that one shot. He was likely gone before you even got to the wall." He patted me on the shoulder in a manner that felt distinctly fatherly. Ok. Yes. That's a good way to think about him. A father figure. A naked father figure. No! Not a good way! No one wants to see their father naked!
If I ever get back to my own time, I'm going to need years of therapy.
"I'll go take a look around anyway," I said, looking for any excuse to get out of this room, and the wearing-almost-nothing Shingen.
"That's a good idea – I'd like to do that as well, if you don't mind showing me." He walked toward his door. Ummm. Had he forgotten?
"I don't mind, but you might want to get dressed. Or at least put some outside sandals on." Wouldn't want you to step on another ground spike.
He turned around and I edged toward the door before he could flash me again. "I'll get Yoshimoto, since he might have seen something I didn't, and meet you there." I fled before he could say anything else.
And then-
WHAM!
I crashed right into an unsuspecting Sasuke as he rounded the corner. The force of our impact sent us both tumbling to the floor. Sasuke's glasses flew off, while I smacked my head against the wall.
"Ow." If there were a cartoon version of me, it would have stars circling my head. Except in my case, there would be tiny naked Shingens circling, and … "bunnies?"
"What?" Sasuke asked, squinting at me.
"Are hallucinations a symptom of head injury? I'm seeing things, right? Because there's no way Kenshin is walking across the garden, leading a parade of rabbits." Decades of therapy, I decided.
"Actually, he does that. They've imprinted on him." He pulled himself up to a sitting position. Wow, I really had slammed into him.
"I thought that was ducks."
"If you're seeing ducks, then yes, I would diagnose head injury." Sasuke patted the ground around him – oh, he must be looking for his glasses. They had landed near me, so I picked them up, hoping they weren't cracked, as he obviously needed them. I held them up to the light and didn't see any scratches.
"Here you go – it doesn't look like they suffered any damage. Sorry about that." I placed the glasses in his hand.
He put them back on. "What were you running from?"
"I was running to, not from," I said as I got to my feet. "I need to go find Yosh-." I paused and looked at Sasuke. It felt like my mind was trying to tell me something, but it was stuck behind a door. Like trying to remember the name of a song you know, but for some reason you can't. It was something about-
Shingen, now completely dressed, came around the corner, which reminded me that there were other pressing matter that need dealt with. Whatever my mind was trying to tell me, it would hopefully spit out later. Probably the same exit chute that had given me the name of the Star Wars Fish Alien in the middle of the night.
"This is probably it, don't you think?" I asked Yoshimoto.
He, Shingen and I gazed up at a tree that towered over the West side of the castle wall.
"It seems to be." Yoshimoto made a cursory glance at the outstretched branches that nearly touched the stone of the wall.
The ground under the tree was carpeted in grass, so if the archer had been here, he was unlikely to have left any footprints. In spite of that, Shingen knelt on the ground and examined the underbrush. Since he was occupied with the ground level search, I concentrated my efforts on the tree. I squinted up at it. The midday sun was directly above, making it impossible to see anything from this angle. "Maybe we'll be lucky and he snagged his clothing in the tree?" Could happen. Well, it had happened to Sasuke once.
I stalked around the tree, looking for the most efficient way up, before using an adjacent tree as a springboard to vault myself to the lowest branch. Then I scampered up until I reached a place where I could see over the castle wall into the training yard. The branch was thick enough to probably hold someone twice my weight.
"I'm pretty sure this is it. I can see the entire training field." I went through the motions of drawing an invisible bow and picturing a shot I would take.
"How difficult would it be from where you are standing, to hit a moving target?" Shingen asked.
"It's doable. We weren't moving around all that much. A heavier arrow, like the one we found, could travel further than where we were standing. I mean, it wouldn't be the easiest, but any experienced archer could do it." It had been windy though, which would have made things harder. "Yoshimoto could you come up here and see if you agree?"
Yoshimoto had taken his fan out and seemed to be examining the painting on it. He paused, looked up at me, and said, "No."
"You don't think you could make that shot?" His answer surprised me. As far as I could tell, Yoshimoto was one of the best archers in Kasugayama.
"Oh, I could probably make the shot. I could not, however, climb that tree." He gave a delicate shudder. He wasn't fooling me any longer. He might pretend to be lazy, but I had seen him yank Mai out of the way of a speeding arrow. "With the wind the way it was, though, do you think he was aiming for Mai, or you, or me?"
"Or he didn't care which one of…" Wait. Was that a piece of material snagged on the branch above? Would we get that lucky? I walked further along the branch, trying to reach that scrap of whatever.
"It's possible it was meant as a threat to unsettle Ke- what the hell are you doing, Katsu?" There was a sharp edge to Shingen's voice, but I was too focused on the scrap to delve into that.
I jumped to grab hold of the scrap, landing lightly back onto the branch, which dipped and swayed in response. I looked at the- "Damn. It's just a leaf."
Shingen yelled from below. "Get down from there!"
"Alright." I hung off from the branch, then dropped the rest of the way down, absorbing the landing with a tuck and roll.
"Why cousin, you sounded practically paternal," Yoshimoto said, while he gracefully fanned himself.
I stood up and dusted my hands off on my kimono. "What were you saying?" I asked Shingen.
He was frowning and his eyes had darkened. Wait. Was he really upset? "Get down fr-"
"No, before that." I know it was rude to interrupt him, but I wanted to move the conversation back to a more productive path. "Something about a threat?"
"I don't recall. Your daredevil stunt knocked it right out of my head." He ran his hands through his hair. The hair, naturally, flopped right back into place. "I thought you were going to fall to your death."
"What? From that height?" I glanced up. It wasn't more than three or four meters off the ground. "I didn't, so-"
Out of breath, I slammed a water while Tosh recalled the drone and played back the footage. "Fuck!" He frowned into the camera.
"What, didn't it record?" I rested my chin on his shoulder to peer at the replay. It looked like it recorded. It was already uploaded to the cloud, in fact.
"It recorded." He rewound the video to the moment where it looked like I had almost fallen off the roof railing. "Katsuko – you could have been killed."
"I wasn't, though." I broke into my energy bar stash and offered him one.
He pushed it away. "I'm done."
I didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Wait. Don't. I'm sorry."
"No, you're not." But he hugged me in spite of his harsh tone. "I can't keep watching you chase death."
I've had this conversation before.
"So…?" Yoshimoto prompted.
I shook my head. "It's… I had a similar discussion with my brother on the last day that I saw him."
"If that is the case, then you ought to think long and hard before taking unnecessary risks with your life," Shingen said. Without another word, he turned and headed back to the castle, the bottom edge of his kimono flapping in the breeze.
"What's up with him?" I was mostly talking to myself, but Yoshimoto answered me anyway.
"If I might interject…"
"You would anyway, even if I said no, so go on ahead." We headed back to the castle entrance. Shingen's long strides had already taken him out of view.
"Your circus stunt scared him, then his reaction to that scared him even more. As you may have noticed, he takes a fatherly interest in Yukimura, and unfortunately sometimes me, and now also to you." Yoshimoto seemed to be carefully choosing his words. "He has strong feelings about people… wasting their lives."
I looked over my shoulder at the tree. It looked even smaller from this distance. "I wasn't even…" I paused to do the conversion in my head. Even after seven years, their system of measurement sometimes threw me. I gave up on the calculation. "That far off the ground. Even if I had fallen, which I would not have, it wouldn't have been fatal." Unless I had fallen on my head, but I would not have done that either.
"Agreed, but in the moment, it appeared to be more dangerous." Yoshimoto also glanced back at the tree, which was now whipping about as the wind picked up.
"Does he wrap Yuki in silk padding before he goes into battle? I'm perfectly capable of climbing a tree, and he isn't my father anyway," not that my bio dad had bothered to stick around long enough to meet me, let alone worry about my health. "He'd have to have been extremely precocious to have pulled that one off."
Or to have lived well into his 400s, but… details.
Yoshimoto hummed in agreement, which I believe was his version of smiling and nodding.
Aware that I was beginning to vent unnecessarily, I took a deep breath. "Anyway, I was just trying to help."
"Yes." Yoshimoto's deadpan tone gave nothing away.
I took another deep breath. "And there is no reason for me to turn someone else's – unreasonable-" (Snit) "anger at me into additional anger."
"Agreed."
"Even though one would think that my successful exit from said tree would have proven my skills sufficiently." The deep breaths were not helping. I kicked a rock out of my path. That helped a little. I kicked another one.
"One would think so, yes." I had a feeling he was laughing at me.
"Are you going to add anything of substance, or just be my own personal Greek chorus?"
Yoshimoto flapped that dang fan at me. "The latter. It does add a rather heightened sense of drama to this whole discussion, don't you think?"