DISCLAIMER: Soujirou, Rurouni Kenshin etc belong to Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shonen Jump and whatever animation studio was lucky enough to bag the rights. Not me. This work of fiction is strictly non-profit. Don't bother suing me, I'm not worth it.
Music of the Heart
There was a hut. A small, ramshackle hut, but shelter nonetheless. It stood on a high outlook, silhouetted against the sky. Years of erosion had formed a tall cliff face behind it, and now the back wall of the house was scant centimetres from oblivion. It listed to the side as well; dilapidated, the roof holed and sagging. It looked like nothing so much as a suicide victim ready to leap to it's death, to plummet onto the rocks below.
The figure in front of the house was equally dilapidated, but a good deal more lively. The three bandits with whom he waged an unequal battle were not so ramshackle, thought they also were filthy and unkempt.
"Go away! Please! I've nothing of value to you!" The man swung his staff wildly. It missed one of the bandits by easily a foot. The robber danced away and the man, overbalancing, toppled forward as his staff spun away into the grass. Oh, Kamisama! This is it! They'll kill me now!
"Don't try and fool us, old man! We know your daughter's a Tayu! You musta gotten a fine price for her!"
"He's right! So where's the gold from her sale?"
"It - It's gone. All of it."
"Nani!? The innkeeper said you'd have gotten 30 gold for her, at least! Even if that was fifteen years ago, out here there's nothing to spend it on, so where is it?"
The third bandit, about to offer a similarly jeering comment, turned away abruptly. He thought he'd heard . . . he had.
Standing in the knee-high grass near the house, was a man. No, he's closer to a youth than a man. The faded blue of his hakama and paler blue gi stood out in stark relief against the forest behind him.
Heh. Threadbare rurouni. Not even armed. Not worth the effort of mugging him. But . . .how the hell did he get so close without us noticing? I guess we musta been too busy with the old fool to see. Yeah, yeah, that's it! We got carried away. Uneasily he pushed aside the other notion, the idea that the only reason he'd heard the man now was because the rurouni had opted to let him.
"Oi! You. Get lost. This is none of your business."
The old man forgotten for the moment, all three bandits turned to face this newest threat. The rurouni gave a sunny smile, his hand behind his head, sheepishly. The bandit relaxed. Heh. Stupid Rurouni. They're so damn easy to push around!
"Ara . . . gomen. Is this a mugging I'm interrupting?"
"This old fool is ours, Rurouni! His gold and his life!" The leader snarled. All three contrived to look menacing, an act which usually functioned to scare people off. The youth didn't look frightened, though. His smile stayed affixed to his face.
"So this is a robbery." The bandit leader found the quiet, suddenly expressionless voice unnerving. Alright. I've had it!
"GET HIM!!" With that, all three charged the unarmed man, their katanas glistening silvery in the light. As for the rurouni, he scarcely seemed to move. There was something deceptively slow in the way he stretched unhurriedly, picked up the old man's staff . . . and vanished.
The bandits had no time to think, no time to react to this sudden disappearance, barely even time to see it before they were sent flying. Mere seconds later they landed, in a heap, at the edge of the forest. All three were groaning, all three alive. The rurouni was crouched, his back to them, in a finishing stance, the staff held like a sword.
"You, in the red scarf." The rurouni's voice remained as pleasantly calm as before, though now it held a note of command. "You'll be able to walk in a few minutes. Your friends won't. I suggest you take them off with you and get them some medical care." He turned, smiling. Whatever it was that was in the smile, it terrified the red scarfed bandit. With a whimper he dragged himself to his feet, and pulling his comrades with him, limped into the shelter of the forest. The old man was speechless.
"Daijobu, Ojisan? Here, let me help you into the house." Before the old man could gather his addled wits, he found himself being gently helped into the hut.
Once inside, he got enough of himself together to phrase the first of the many questions teeming in his mind.
"Why did you help me? who are you?"
The rurouni smiled, and considered the questions very seriously.
"I helped you because you needed it. I don't like senseless slaughter. I don't like hopeless battles very much either, and I think that's what you were fighting." He said simply, with almost painful honesty.
"As to your second question; I'm simply a wanderer, trying to figure out who and what I really am, myself. My name is Soujirou." He smiled again, but the old man, not listening to the words anymore, read what the other's eyes told him. In those eyes was pain. A deep hurt under layers of protection that had been built steadily for years and then suddenly stripped away. In life, in experience, the old man realised, this man is no youth. He's been aged by loss and anguish.
"Well, as the man you saved, I'm glad you wandered by. My name is Musahiro." He opted to mirror the rurouni's caution in revealing a last name. We've all got our little secrets, and I don't want anyone else connecting me to my daught- . . . to a high ranking courtesan like those bandits did.
It was gratitude that caused the old man to invite the rurouni to share his food and fire for the night, frugal as both were. But it was what he'd seen in Soujirou's eyes that caused the old man to break out his small stock of sake and share his treasures with the wanderer.
Not gold. His treasures weren't gold. He'd not been lying when he said that was gone. What he shared was his music. Every tune he knew, save one. He kept that one close to his heart, and would never share it. His daughter's melody. The one she'd composed, had delighted in playing. The one she'd finished the final touches on the day before she . . .went away.
He hadn't wanted to sell his daughter. But then, he hadn't wanted his beloved wife to fall ill, either. Nor had he wanted to get into debt over her treatment.
Sometimes things like this just . . . happened.
Not that that platitude had made the slightest difference to way his daughter's face, terrified and hopeless then finally resigned and closed, stayed in his memory. Despite the nearly fifteen years since her sale, her visage was as fresh in his mind as the day she had left, back straight, head held high, with the slavers who would take her to Kyoto and sell her to a pleasure house.
She would, of course, be an excellent courtesan. He had known that even before she'd been sold, it was why he'd been given several offers for her prior to the one he'd accepted.
The one he'd had to accept.
He'd known she would excel because after all, she had a head-start over any other girl the slavers would pick up from the country: In his younger days Musahiro had provided - by fluke rather than skill - a valuable service to his Lord. This "valuable service" involved sufficient financial reward to enable him to visit a pleasure-house and buy out a low-ranking courtesan to be his wife. When their only child, their daughter, had been born, his wife had begun training her in various gentle arts. Ikebana, tea ceremony, the fine art of flattering men's egos. And music. She'd taught the girl on the shamisen, but it had been the simple bamboo flute that her daughter had loved, at which she had truly excelled.
The bamboo flute that was now his only remembrance of both wife and daughter.
He'd ransomed the daughter to pay for the wife's life. To pay for the medicines she so desperately needed. And his wife had died shortly afterwards, mute since the departure of their only child, unwilling and unable to give him another, either a son and heir or a daughter who might share the same fate as the first.
Leaving him alone with his regrets, and the memory of her silent recriminations.
The remaining gold had gone quickly on sake, sake to bring oblivion and with it, sweet forgetfulness.
"Daijobu-ka, Musahiro-ojisan?" Startled out of his reverie, the old man realised he'd forgotten his guest. Said visitor smiled at him enquiringly. Does he ever stop that? But . . . it's like the smile my daughter sometimes wore, when she'd come in from picking wildflowers and had seen something interesting.
"Aa. . .I'm fine."
"Oh, good. When you stopped playing I thought something must be wrong. You really are an excellent musician!"
Maybe it was the sake, maybe it was the day's rescue. Maybe it was simply having pleasant human contact for the first time in a very long while. Whatever the reason, the results were indelible. Almost of it's own accord, Musahiro's hand, holding his precious keepsake of wife and daughter, moved towards Soujirou, offering him the instrument.
"Here, you have a try."
"A-ara. . . demo, I don't know how."
Wordlessly, Musahiro positioned the youth's recalcitrant fingers, showing him the notes and variations, teaching him the melodies.
It was slow, painstaking work that lasted well into the night. As well as complicated and involved, the teaching was also exceptionally rewarding; Soujirou picked up the basic notes and configurations quickly, and had a fine ear for the tunes. Musahiro found himself enjoying himself for the first time in fifteen years.
Then this fragile new arrangement shattered into a million tiny fragments, leaving him clutching at the remnants of his world.
The youth had played.
Not just anything, the youth had carefully and slowly picked out the one tune Musahiro would neither play nor teach him. His daughter's melody. Each note rang true and pure, echoing through his heart and stinging his eyes with tears.
"Wh - where did you learn that?"
"Ara . . . It was from a woman. A woman who loved . . . I guess you could call him my leader. My idol, my saviour, he was all of that, too. But the woman who loved him was the closest I had to an oneesan. She used to play this for him. Only for him whom she loved, but sometimes I would listen in, too, if I was reporting to Sh--, to him. She never minded letting me hear it. She was generous like that, though I was pretty sure she'd never play it just for me even if I asked."
It's her melody! It can't be anyone else!! My daughter! My little Yumi-chan!
"Please, please. . . what happened to her?"
The smile on his guest's face stayed fixed, but unlike the genuine smile he'd worn whilst learning, now it seemed merely a mask, a facade covering the pain of loss, of shattered illusions.
"She died."
For the second time in an evening, the old man felt his world break.
This time, though, it was accompanied by a tearing pain in his chest that shot through him, ripping up to his left shoulder. Though he'd gotten pain like this before, never had it been so bad.
"My little Yumi-chan. My little daughter. . ."
"Ojisan!" He dimly heard his guest cry out as he pitched forward.
He came to sweaty and feverish, his chest in a vice-like grip. I'm going to die. I know it. A soft hand placed a cool, damp cloth on his forhead. Opening his eyes, he realised it was the youth who ministered to him.
"That's . . . twice . . . you've helped me . . . in a crisis."
"Aah. Demo, don't try to speak."
"Listen . . . to me. . . I'm dying. . . But that's alright. I guess . . . it's too much to ask . . . that I see Yumi-chan . . . and . . . my wife . . . when I go to . . . Jigoku. But I want . . . to do something first. . . I want to . . . play my eulogy, and hers, too . . . and I want . . . you to keep . . . the flute after . . . to remember her . . . my little Yumi-chan. If she . . . let you. . . hear that tune. . . it was her way. . . of telling you . . . you're part of her family." Groping blindly, his fingers tightened reflexively when the boy pushed the flute into his hands.
"Part of the family . . . I wish . . . I'd had . . . more time . . . to know you." Ignoring the boy's startled reaction, the reflexive smile that masked deep hurt, he began to play gently. He played Yumi's song, the strands of the melody wafting out of the ramshackle hut and into the crystalline night beyond. For a moment the music wavered, weakening. Then it ceased.
An instant later, it started up again, as strong, confident and pure as it had been fifteen years previously, when a then gentle, beautiful girl had first perfected it.
The piece ended, and the youth pulled the flute from his lips. A short while later, Soujirou left, the hut ablaze behind him - a massive funeral pyre of one body and three tragedies.
On his face was the perennial smile and tucked into his sleeve was a plain bamboo flute.
In his heart was a melody.
END.