Wolf,
Part Two: "Cave"
by Vega
The day that I awoke in that cave, three people's whole worlds changed.
The hikers were a pair of friends who had decided to go 'rough it' for the weekend. The mountain range was advertised by various companies as one of the more eco-pure spots on the island. The boys, both in university, were also historical scholars and had wanted to explore the specific set of caves I had been found in due to it's connection with a certain rebellious group of people during the Meji Era.
These men were samurai of a fashion, it seemed, and supported the old government system that the wars were attempting to usurp, the Tokugawa. Their Daimyo, a young and rash Lord, according to the history books, had refused to give back his land when the Emperor Meji in1868 declared a law obliging him to, when the Capital of Japan was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo. They were therefore set upon by the new western-style military that the government of Japan was using to try to westernize the small country, and therefore create a comparable world-power out of it.
This particular band of samurai called themselves the Ookami Tribes, and hid out in the mountain ranges, desperately and futilely clinging to the past. When the military found them, most of the samurai had already fled into the cities and anonymity, or turned themselves in. All that remained were the Daimyo, their leader, two of his must trusted retainers, and the wife of one of the men.
They fought bravely, the text books say, and honourably. Unfortunately, katana were no match for pistols, and the woman, and two retainers were shot dead. The young Daimyo was captured and bound, taken to the Emperor himself for trying, and his lands seized by the government.
When the corpses of the dead samurai and the woman were removed from the cave, it was rumoured that the men's bodies had transformed into those of blood-matted wolves. Stories began to fly around that these were not men at all, but Youkai, and that's why they had been so hard to kill. Many Japanese saw this as a bad omen for the country - this demolition of sacred beings.
Counter-rumours were spread by the government, saying that Youkai were nothing more than the figments of an earlier era's fairy tales and that the samurai had merely been wearing wolf fur to blend into the environment and to keep themselves warm.
Rumour also stated that as the woman's corpse was carried away, a girl-child ran screaming out of the cave, crying, to the Daimyo's side. The Daimyo begged for the soldiers to not part him from his best friend's child, and both were taken to the court of the Emperor.
There the girl was separated from the young Daimyo and sequestered in the inner imbroglio of the court, where the women belonging to the emperor remained. She grew up, history claims, with little memory of her former mountain home, and as a Hime, or Princess, of the highest rank.
Rumour also had it that the girl had hair the colour of fire and eyes that seemed to glow like a wolf's in the night. Paintings of the woman also always showed her with her hair styled elaborately to always cover the top of her head, and her ears, and despite court fashion, no record of the woman ever wearing earrings was ever found.
Eventually the Emperor gave her away to a powerful business man in the Kyoto district for a political alliance, and it is said that they lived a happy and prosperous life, and that her daughter married well, too, and that her granddaughter was a famous Geisha in the Kyoto District.
As for the Daimyo, the Emperor was said to have locked him away for many years in a small cell with an even smaller window that only allowed moonlight in when the moon itself was full. Rumour states that the Daimyo was heart-stricken with the loss of his friends and the little girl and spent many nights howling like a madman at the silver orb that passed over the bars of his cage.
Gaurds spoke of him stalking the sides of his prison constantly, like a discontented wild animal, just waiting to leap out at his keepers. They say he seemed to restrain himself, and just barely at that, because he seemed like although capable of hurting people, he did not WANT to.
Three years to the day after the Emperor had the Daimyo imprisoned, he had the man released and brought to his great hall. The young man, who remarkably had lost none of his beauty and robust health, was thrown prostrate before the Emperor and forced to apologize.
It took some doing to keep him on his knees.
Now, The Emperor's Chief Councillor of Luxury, who was known within court circles for indulging sporadically in sodomy, was said to have been caught with a fancy for the prisoner, and that night when the guards were to escort the young man back to his tiny cell, the Councillor bribed them handsomely to deliver him to his own private chambers instead.
As the story goes, the Councillor debased and had his way with the young Daimyo.
In the morning when the guards came to fetch the prisoner to take him back to the Emperor for sentencing, the Councillor was found dead on his bed, his throat torn out by some wild beast, his genitals completely removed, spat out upon the floor in a masticated mess, and his window smashed outwards as if someone had crashed through it to escape.
The young Daimyo was never seen again, and rumours that the Daimyo and his two Samurai had been Ookami Youkai surfaced again. People feared for their Emperor's life, for he had been uncourteous to a sacred being.
Eventually, the rumours died away when the expected youkai's vengeance against the Emperor did not come, and people chose instead to believe the court's word that it was just a freak coincidence that the Councillor had been attacked that night.
The two university boys, having read this hap-hazard history in class, piecing together much of the details from digging that they had done on their own, had decided to take a long weekend and hike up to the fabled cave and try to discover if there were any traces left that might either prove or disprove any of the truths in the story.
Instead they found me, dressed in an un-tied, ragged and filthy sky blue kimono, woven in the style of the mid-Sengoku Jidai, the Warring States Period of Japan, crying and screaming out a long forgotten name, flushed and feverish from the infection that had set in on my wounds, and just about ready to pass out.
They had stayed with me, called 911, tried to find this man that I repeatedly cried out for with no luck, and when I went to the hospital, took it upon themselves to contact my nearest relatives themselves.
Of course, I had no ID on me, no wallet, no driver's licence, and to them I looked like a gaijin - a foreigner. The police could do nothing, and I was in too much of a delirium from the morphine and the other drugs that I couldn't give them any names.
The boys took my picture, digitally edited out my bruises, and posted my face all over the Japanese-speaking internet. Eventually a man called them, his voice sounding almost unnaturally deep and smooth on the phone, and identified himself as 'Maru Sesshou', a business man, and claimed that the lost Jane Doe on their website was indeed his niece, who had vanished several months earlier.
The man, who turned out to be a very handsome man in his mid thirties with long white hair, and was also very rich when they met him in person to get him to prove that he was who he said he was, insisted that they take a reward for finding his niece. They declined, but found their tuition completely paid off for the rest of their acedemic careers when next they went to pay off their student loans.
Mr. Maru also inquired as to how exactly it was that they found themselves at that particular cave, and when the boys told him about the story of the Daimyo and the little girl that had survived the massacre, and their urge to discover wether or not there was any truth to the tales, Mr. Maru's face grew grim and he handed them both business cards on which he scribbled "6pm, Saturday," along with an address.
The boys showed up where and when the cards said, only to find themselves in an empty warehouse, alone, with a young man they did not recognize standing in the shadows cast by poor lighting and piles of dusty and forgotten wooden crates.
"I heard you know the story about the Ookami Daimyo," the young man said, and as he stepped into the light the boys could see that his eyes were an unnaturally bright shade of blue. "You're looking for proof that the Ookami Tribe Samurai actually lost their lives in that cave?"
The boys had split a look between themselves, nervous. This was the sort of situation that led to headlines on the eleven o'clock news. But they were deathly curious, nonetheless, and stayed.
The young man pulled something long and dark from the inside of his leather duster, from a belt at his side, and both the boys took a few shaky steps backwards when they realized what he held were two katana. The young man did not unsheathe them, but walked forward and pressed one into each of the boy's hands.
"This belonged to Hakkaku," the young man told the first boy, who looked down at the lacquered green sheath. It was in astonishingly good condition. "He was rash and sometimes stupid, but his heart was pure." The young man turned to the second boy and pressed the red-clad sword into his hands, "And this one was Ginta's. He was a good, good man, and a good father. They both died with honour."
Both the boys itched to pull the blades from the wood but refrained out of awe and respect for the swords before them.
"You must swear to me that these swords will not be used for any sort of evil," the young man then intoned, "but for academic purposes instead. I will know if you do not, and you will not like it. I know the stories of the Wolf Samurai are real, but I want you to prove it to History."
He then reached into his pocket and withdrew a very old, very battered Buddhist rosary made of hand-blown glass beads. "This once belonged to a wise and gentle Miko named Kaede. She was Ginta's wife. It once was the rosary that the Miko Kagome kept the Shikon no Tama on for safe keeping, as well. Kaede-sama died along side her husband. The child from the legends' name was Kitsu, if you can find record of her."
The boy holding Ginta's sword curled his wrists and pressed the weapon tightly against his chest, his eyes wide and his breath caught in his throat. "What about the Daimyo? What's his name?"
The young man just smiled a weak and lopsided smile, one bizarrely long incisor poking out of his mouth and pressing on his lower lip. With that, the young man turned on his heel and walked towards the door.
"Wait!" the first boy, the possessor of Hakkaku's sword, called out. "How do you know all this!? What proof do you have?!"
The young man stopped, and, without turning around, tapped the side of his head with his index finger. Then, in a voice barely loud enough to carry, said, "Because I watched them fall."
When the heavy warehouse door banged shut, it's metallic echos were the only sounds to penetrate the silence for almost five straight minutes.
Then the boys rushed out of the empty building and down the dimly lit street that it bordered, hoping to find the strange young man in the leather duster. He was nowhere in sight.
They returned to the university the next day with their treasures, and within a year proved that this Kaede, Kitsu, Hakkaku, and Ginta had indeed existed and found some of their names referenced as far back as the Sengoku Jidai, in the scrolls of a Houshin named Miroku.
They were unable, of course, to prove that Ginta and Hakkaku were actually the Ookami Youkai that legend stated they were, despite their best efforts, and were never again able to track down the strange dark-haired young man who HAD to be, in their opinions, the lost Youkai Daimyo.
They even tried to call Mr. Maru again, but his phone number seemed to have been disconnected as soon as he had finished his meeting with them.
And the young woman they had saved in the mountains vanished from the general hospital in Tokyo - when they inquired as to her whereabouts the nurses and reception could only say that she had been moved to a private rehabilitation centre, and that her Uncle has left them his thanks, and a note telling them to check their student loan balances.
I, of course, knew nothing about this, as I spent most of those first few months back in a drugged stupor, or under the knife of a cosmetic surgeon, or in the arms of the Daimyo.
Part Two: "Cave"
by Vega
The day that I awoke in that cave, three people's whole worlds changed.
The hikers were a pair of friends who had decided to go 'rough it' for the weekend. The mountain range was advertised by various companies as one of the more eco-pure spots on the island. The boys, both in university, were also historical scholars and had wanted to explore the specific set of caves I had been found in due to it's connection with a certain rebellious group of people during the Meji Era.
These men were samurai of a fashion, it seemed, and supported the old government system that the wars were attempting to usurp, the Tokugawa. Their Daimyo, a young and rash Lord, according to the history books, had refused to give back his land when the Emperor Meji in1868 declared a law obliging him to, when the Capital of Japan was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo. They were therefore set upon by the new western-style military that the government of Japan was using to try to westernize the small country, and therefore create a comparable world-power out of it.
This particular band of samurai called themselves the Ookami Tribes, and hid out in the mountain ranges, desperately and futilely clinging to the past. When the military found them, most of the samurai had already fled into the cities and anonymity, or turned themselves in. All that remained were the Daimyo, their leader, two of his must trusted retainers, and the wife of one of the men.
They fought bravely, the text books say, and honourably. Unfortunately, katana were no match for pistols, and the woman, and two retainers were shot dead. The young Daimyo was captured and bound, taken to the Emperor himself for trying, and his lands seized by the government.
When the corpses of the dead samurai and the woman were removed from the cave, it was rumoured that the men's bodies had transformed into those of blood-matted wolves. Stories began to fly around that these were not men at all, but Youkai, and that's why they had been so hard to kill. Many Japanese saw this as a bad omen for the country - this demolition of sacred beings.
Counter-rumours were spread by the government, saying that Youkai were nothing more than the figments of an earlier era's fairy tales and that the samurai had merely been wearing wolf fur to blend into the environment and to keep themselves warm.
Rumour also stated that as the woman's corpse was carried away, a girl-child ran screaming out of the cave, crying, to the Daimyo's side. The Daimyo begged for the soldiers to not part him from his best friend's child, and both were taken to the court of the Emperor.
There the girl was separated from the young Daimyo and sequestered in the inner imbroglio of the court, where the women belonging to the emperor remained. She grew up, history claims, with little memory of her former mountain home, and as a Hime, or Princess, of the highest rank.
Rumour also had it that the girl had hair the colour of fire and eyes that seemed to glow like a wolf's in the night. Paintings of the woman also always showed her with her hair styled elaborately to always cover the top of her head, and her ears, and despite court fashion, no record of the woman ever wearing earrings was ever found.
Eventually the Emperor gave her away to a powerful business man in the Kyoto district for a political alliance, and it is said that they lived a happy and prosperous life, and that her daughter married well, too, and that her granddaughter was a famous Geisha in the Kyoto District.
As for the Daimyo, the Emperor was said to have locked him away for many years in a small cell with an even smaller window that only allowed moonlight in when the moon itself was full. Rumour states that the Daimyo was heart-stricken with the loss of his friends and the little girl and spent many nights howling like a madman at the silver orb that passed over the bars of his cage.
Gaurds spoke of him stalking the sides of his prison constantly, like a discontented wild animal, just waiting to leap out at his keepers. They say he seemed to restrain himself, and just barely at that, because he seemed like although capable of hurting people, he did not WANT to.
Three years to the day after the Emperor had the Daimyo imprisoned, he had the man released and brought to his great hall. The young man, who remarkably had lost none of his beauty and robust health, was thrown prostrate before the Emperor and forced to apologize.
It took some doing to keep him on his knees.
Now, The Emperor's Chief Councillor of Luxury, who was known within court circles for indulging sporadically in sodomy, was said to have been caught with a fancy for the prisoner, and that night when the guards were to escort the young man back to his tiny cell, the Councillor bribed them handsomely to deliver him to his own private chambers instead.
As the story goes, the Councillor debased and had his way with the young Daimyo.
In the morning when the guards came to fetch the prisoner to take him back to the Emperor for sentencing, the Councillor was found dead on his bed, his throat torn out by some wild beast, his genitals completely removed, spat out upon the floor in a masticated mess, and his window smashed outwards as if someone had crashed through it to escape.
The young Daimyo was never seen again, and rumours that the Daimyo and his two Samurai had been Ookami Youkai surfaced again. People feared for their Emperor's life, for he had been uncourteous to a sacred being.
Eventually, the rumours died away when the expected youkai's vengeance against the Emperor did not come, and people chose instead to believe the court's word that it was just a freak coincidence that the Councillor had been attacked that night.
The two university boys, having read this hap-hazard history in class, piecing together much of the details from digging that they had done on their own, had decided to take a long weekend and hike up to the fabled cave and try to discover if there were any traces left that might either prove or disprove any of the truths in the story.
Instead they found me, dressed in an un-tied, ragged and filthy sky blue kimono, woven in the style of the mid-Sengoku Jidai, the Warring States Period of Japan, crying and screaming out a long forgotten name, flushed and feverish from the infection that had set in on my wounds, and just about ready to pass out.
They had stayed with me, called 911, tried to find this man that I repeatedly cried out for with no luck, and when I went to the hospital, took it upon themselves to contact my nearest relatives themselves.
Of course, I had no ID on me, no wallet, no driver's licence, and to them I looked like a gaijin - a foreigner. The police could do nothing, and I was in too much of a delirium from the morphine and the other drugs that I couldn't give them any names.
The boys took my picture, digitally edited out my bruises, and posted my face all over the Japanese-speaking internet. Eventually a man called them, his voice sounding almost unnaturally deep and smooth on the phone, and identified himself as 'Maru Sesshou', a business man, and claimed that the lost Jane Doe on their website was indeed his niece, who had vanished several months earlier.
The man, who turned out to be a very handsome man in his mid thirties with long white hair, and was also very rich when they met him in person to get him to prove that he was who he said he was, insisted that they take a reward for finding his niece. They declined, but found their tuition completely paid off for the rest of their acedemic careers when next they went to pay off their student loans.
Mr. Maru also inquired as to how exactly it was that they found themselves at that particular cave, and when the boys told him about the story of the Daimyo and the little girl that had survived the massacre, and their urge to discover wether or not there was any truth to the tales, Mr. Maru's face grew grim and he handed them both business cards on which he scribbled "6pm, Saturday," along with an address.
The boys showed up where and when the cards said, only to find themselves in an empty warehouse, alone, with a young man they did not recognize standing in the shadows cast by poor lighting and piles of dusty and forgotten wooden crates.
"I heard you know the story about the Ookami Daimyo," the young man said, and as he stepped into the light the boys could see that his eyes were an unnaturally bright shade of blue. "You're looking for proof that the Ookami Tribe Samurai actually lost their lives in that cave?"
The boys had split a look between themselves, nervous. This was the sort of situation that led to headlines on the eleven o'clock news. But they were deathly curious, nonetheless, and stayed.
The young man pulled something long and dark from the inside of his leather duster, from a belt at his side, and both the boys took a few shaky steps backwards when they realized what he held were two katana. The young man did not unsheathe them, but walked forward and pressed one into each of the boy's hands.
"This belonged to Hakkaku," the young man told the first boy, who looked down at the lacquered green sheath. It was in astonishingly good condition. "He was rash and sometimes stupid, but his heart was pure." The young man turned to the second boy and pressed the red-clad sword into his hands, "And this one was Ginta's. He was a good, good man, and a good father. They both died with honour."
Both the boys itched to pull the blades from the wood but refrained out of awe and respect for the swords before them.
"You must swear to me that these swords will not be used for any sort of evil," the young man then intoned, "but for academic purposes instead. I will know if you do not, and you will not like it. I know the stories of the Wolf Samurai are real, but I want you to prove it to History."
He then reached into his pocket and withdrew a very old, very battered Buddhist rosary made of hand-blown glass beads. "This once belonged to a wise and gentle Miko named Kaede. She was Ginta's wife. It once was the rosary that the Miko Kagome kept the Shikon no Tama on for safe keeping, as well. Kaede-sama died along side her husband. The child from the legends' name was Kitsu, if you can find record of her."
The boy holding Ginta's sword curled his wrists and pressed the weapon tightly against his chest, his eyes wide and his breath caught in his throat. "What about the Daimyo? What's his name?"
The young man just smiled a weak and lopsided smile, one bizarrely long incisor poking out of his mouth and pressing on his lower lip. With that, the young man turned on his heel and walked towards the door.
"Wait!" the first boy, the possessor of Hakkaku's sword, called out. "How do you know all this!? What proof do you have?!"
The young man stopped, and, without turning around, tapped the side of his head with his index finger. Then, in a voice barely loud enough to carry, said, "Because I watched them fall."
When the heavy warehouse door banged shut, it's metallic echos were the only sounds to penetrate the silence for almost five straight minutes.
Then the boys rushed out of the empty building and down the dimly lit street that it bordered, hoping to find the strange young man in the leather duster. He was nowhere in sight.
They returned to the university the next day with their treasures, and within a year proved that this Kaede, Kitsu, Hakkaku, and Ginta had indeed existed and found some of their names referenced as far back as the Sengoku Jidai, in the scrolls of a Houshin named Miroku.
They were unable, of course, to prove that Ginta and Hakkaku were actually the Ookami Youkai that legend stated they were, despite their best efforts, and were never again able to track down the strange dark-haired young man who HAD to be, in their opinions, the lost Youkai Daimyo.
They even tried to call Mr. Maru again, but his phone number seemed to have been disconnected as soon as he had finished his meeting with them.
And the young woman they had saved in the mountains vanished from the general hospital in Tokyo - when they inquired as to her whereabouts the nurses and reception could only say that she had been moved to a private rehabilitation centre, and that her Uncle has left them his thanks, and a note telling them to check their student loan balances.
I, of course, knew nothing about this, as I spent most of those first few months back in a drugged stupor, or under the knife of a cosmetic surgeon, or in the arms of the Daimyo.