The Arts
"When Jupiter wooed a heroine, he went to her as a suppliant - no girl seduced great Jupiter."
Ovid, "The Art of Love"
"For these two forces are mutually reproductive; their interaction as endless as that of interlocked rings. Who can determine where one ends and another begins?"
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Chapter Three: The One won't understand the Other, because...
Shinji, for what seemed like the thousandth time that night, wished he had found a better place to hide.
The wine barrel had seemed like a good hiding spot at first glance, but it was lacking in the comfort one would expect from an all day hideout. His legs had fallen asleep within the first fifteen minutes and the smell of wine had sickened him immediately. On top of that, the barrel wasn't even completely empty. Still, he had felt that he had no choice except to wait there for hours on end, watching through a tiny hole on the side of the barrel as a countless number of people walked by. He had been convinced that he would be recognized instantly if he so much as poked his head out.
Not to say that Shinji was particularly unhappy at that point, just very uncomfortable. Night had arrived a couple hours earlier and there wasn't a person in sight. All he had to do was be out of Rome before the sun rose.
He was as good as gone.
Finally judging that it was safe, Shinji climbed out of the barrel and immediately fell to his hands and knees. Breathing in the fresh air deeply and thankfully, he managed to stagger to his feet, supporting himself on the wall of a nearby building.
Scaling the city's wall would be no problem. Avoiding the guards would be easy. It was just a matter of running to the edge of the city and escaping into the surrounding countryside, where he could probably find a horse and ride away to some far off place.
-I've really escaped.-
But that was only if he could ignore what he had left behind, in his cowardice.
-"'Wait?' You say, 'Wait'? The guards are coming down the hall right now! I'm getting out of this damned place!" said Asuka, in the same loud and threatening whisper.
"Please. Just wait. Please," Shinji begged.
-
There had been no obligation for him to help her in her plan to escape. It was her idea, not his. Shinji didn't have any responsibility to her. He hadn't thrown her in the prison. If she was executed, it was her own fault. She had gotten herself thrown into that particular pit of despair.
-A pit of despair.-
Unbidden, an image rose in Shinji's mind.
Asuka, in deep pit, hanging helplessly. Tied to a frayed rope that would break any moment. Himself, standing at the edge, secured to a stronger rope. Asuka, preparing herself for death as her rope breaks. Into the endless black.
This strange image was frighteningly real, like a waking dream.
Asuka was a girl that had given him nothing but trouble during what were to be his last days on Earth, tormenting him, teasing him, and even attacking him. She had made things more interesting for a little while, sure, but she hadn't exactly gone out of her way for him. He had no reason to want to risk his life to save hers. No reason at all. No one had ever really done anything for him, and she was no exception.
'You're disgusting.'
Hatred.
(Attack where he is unprepared; sally out when he does not expect you.)
'I hate your type.'
Disgust.
(Keep him under a strain and wear him down.)
'You're joking, right?'
Immaturity.
(All warfare is based on deception.)
'Who do you fight, eight year old girls?'
Just an insult.
(One defends when strength is inadequate and attacks when it is abundant)
'Well, aren't you the mysterious one.'
Confusion.
(The reason troops slay the enemy is because they are enraged.)
'What's wrong with you?'
A mystery...
(Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.)
'Well? Are you gonna jump in the pit, or run away?'
-
Shinji ran as quickly as his legs would carry him, an invisible blur in the night.
He approached the Flavian amphitheatre, the great colloseum, using it as a reference point to find the prison, which he'd lost sight of during his frantic escape from the guards. Closing in on the amphitheatre, he made a sharp turn to the right, heading directly towards the prison house, which he could barely detect in the darkness.
-
With a furious yell, Asuka charged towards the weakened door. Unable to resist another impact from her slender frame, the door splintered, and she burst through. There were guards coming toward her, eight of them, all armed with short gladius swords. Two of them to her right and six to her left. The hallway, lit with torches, was immediately familiar to her, and she lost none of her momentum as she went charging down the hallway, turning towards the right.
The first of the two slashed widely at her, surprised by the sudden movement, and she met his downward swinging hand with her own knuckles, sending the blade flying and causing the man to scream in pain as he clutched his bloody fist. Nimbly ducking past the agonized man, she grabbed the still-clattering blade off the ground, simultaneously snapping a kick backward at the second man, hitting the back of his right leg and sending him sprawling to his hands and knees. Springing to her feet, she stomped on the man's wrist, and grabbed up his weapon in her her left hand.
She shouldered her way past the two men, who were no longer much of a threat, and ran toward the other group of guards. All of them were watching her, standing in a defensive line, unmoving, shoulder to shoulder.
Unperturbed, Asuka dropped both of her weapons and slid underneath the human wall. The men, not having expected such a ridiculous tactic, were unable to stop the girl, who was already beyond their reach. Asuka, running toward the doorway at the end of the hall, found her path blocked by yet another guard, slower to react then the others.
-
Shinji's plan was not foolproof, in that it was vague and ended with his own death. He would break past the guards out front easily enough; they were too slow to stop him, steal a set of keys somehow, break Asuka out, and most likely end up dead. Getting in would be easy. Getting out...
But he didn't reconsider. He had made his decision.
-Just this once. Just this once, I won't run away. Just this once I'll-
"YEAAAAAH!" a high-pitched scream interrupted his thoughts and stopped him in his tracks, nearly causing him to lose his balance completely. He looked wildly in all directions, sure that he had been spotted by someone.
"YAAAAAAAAAHHH!" he heard again, recognizing the voice this time.
It was Asuka.
-She couldn't have...-
-
Asuka burst through the front door, closely followed by the guards.
-Ha! I didn't need that idiot after all!-
She flew down the front stairway, nearly clearing the steps in a single bound, leaving the guards further and further behind her with each step. She took great leaps, vaulting herself through the air as she ran, pushing forward with inhuman strength. She glanced backwards at the pursuing Romans, and grinned as she saw that they stopped running, realizing that she had already escaped.
Facing forward again, she leapt headlong into Shinji, crashing into him at great speed. Taken completely by surprise, both of them ended up rolling on the ground, coming to a stop in a tangled heap. Asuka, quickly evaluating the situation, pulled herself to her feet.
"Shinji. Follow me," she said calmly, and took off again.
--
Asuka, with a ferocious yell, charged towards the man, who didn't seem to be taking her seriously at all. Weight played a large role in wrestling, no matter how you look at it, and she simply wasn't threatening. He met her fierce expression with a confident smile. He was non-chalant, ready for an easy victory.
He blinked in confusion as she slipped between his legs, grabbing his ankles as she passed under him. Before he could react further to this, she dug her heels into the ground and stood up, lifting his ankles clear off the ground. The man, through sheer luck and wild movements, somehow managed to take her down with him, and she fell to her knees, his arm gripping her shoulder. Furious, she leapt to her feet and squatted down next to the dazed man, grabbing for his arms.
The onlooking men that surrounded the two looked on in amazement as she, holding the unfortunate man by his armpits, tossed him through the air and over their heads.
Breathing heavily with anger, she grimaced and clenched her fists tightly as her anger gradually cooled.
Stilicho laughed loudly, and then spoke out even more loudly as he put his arm around Asuka's shoulders, "Did you see that, men! My boy Asuka is the strongest there is! Should I even ask if anyone else wants to try?"
Asuka didn't listen to the man's booming voice, instead staring in horror at the fallen man, who lay nearly twenty meters from where she was standing. He was dead.
--
"I knocked the door down," she explained simply, as the two of them rode through the countryside.
"You... knocked the door down?" Shinji asked, finding the idea a little hard to believe. The prison, like any Roman building, had been built to last.
Shrugging, she smiled. "I told you, I'm stronger than I look. It took me a few tries, but it came down. No prison's been made that can hold Asuka Sodyu!" She proclaimed proudly. "How did you escape, anyway?"
"I said I had to go to the bathroom, and I ran away when they took my chains off," he explained, "They... couldn't really catch me once I started running."
She glanced at him skeptically. "Chains? What does that have to do with anything?" she asked with an irritated expression as she swatted at a gnat with her free hand, "You could have run away the first time they took you out."
"But if I was wearing chains..." he murmured, eyes shifting downward.
"You could have still ran. You could have even ran away before they put them on, like I did," she said, snatching the tiny insect out of the air, "Hell, I didn't even need them to open the door. You're just a coward, that's all.
"You were just afraid that they would kill you if you tried anything, weren't you?" she continued, shaking her head in disgust as she crushed the annoying insect in her palm. "So you just put it off until you didn't have a choice anymore. Stupid."
He didn't reply, and the two of them rode in silence for a little while.
"Um... where are we going?" asked Shinji.
"Where do you think? We're getting out of this god-forsaken empire," Asuka said, with a very slight hint of defensiveness in her voice, "Then, I was thinking we could go to this 'Rubbin' place that you come from,"
"Riben? Why do you want to go there?" Shinji asked. It seemed strange that she would want to go to his country. He didn't have any desire to go there, and it was his homeland. It made no sense that she would want to see it.
She shrugged. "I like to visit new places."
-And I want to get as far away from here as possible.-
--
The tone of Stilicho's voice as he shouted at her back, the combination of anger, sadness and shame, would not be easily forgotten. It would later come to haunt her, to taunt her.
-'ASUKA! You betray me! I will never forgive this, Asuka!'-
--
"But... wouldn't that take a really long time? It's so far away," Shinji said skeptically, thinking that she might be teasing him again.
She shrugged. "You got something better to do? You should be thanking the Gods that I'm even willing to put up with you. You know how to get there, right?"
He hesitated a moment, then nodded silently. Getting to Riben would be no problem. It's direction was always known to him. The place pulled at him somehow. Even so, when he ran away from China he had gone in the opposite direction, and had never planned to return. He had no reason to go there. It wasn't his home. He didn't have a home.
"You're so gloomy all the time," she noted, frowning. "Are you still messed up from before? You know, you never really answered me before, about why you were there in the first place."
"But... I already said that it was because I killed someone."
"Care to be a little more specific? Give me some details? You don't look much like a cold-blooded murderer, you know."
"Well... it was an accident," Shinji said, blushing.
Hearing this, she started laughing uncontrollably, leaning forward on the horse for support.
"I should have known!" she said, still laughing.
-
Holding the knife firmly in his hand Shinji cut the fresh coriander leaves quickly and efficiently. It was a simple job, and one that he enjoyed. He worked alone, had enough to eat, and even had his own room. He also knew that, in time, he would eventually earn his freedom.
"Slave boy! Get out of my way!" shouted the visiting senator, drunk out of his wits, as he stomped into the kitchen. The man grabbed Shinji by the shoulders, meaning to toss him to the side, and Shinji deftly ducked underneath him...
-
"I didn't mean to do it," Shinji insisted. "I was just going to crawl under his legs and run away, but he tripped and fell on the knife. I didn't mean to kill him."
Asuka, her body shaking with amusement, shook her head in disbelief. "You're one of a kind Shinji, I'll give you that."
"Uh, how about you? How'd you end up here?" Shinji asked awkwardly.
"I deserted," she said, responding immediately. There was a moment of silence, and Shinji shifted nervously as the horses plodded forward. She continued, "They thought I was one of the survivors," she said harshly, still slightly angry at the memory. "They said I was a 'prisoner of war', like they'd taken me right off a battlefield. And all because some stupid Roman soldier recognized me...".
-Speaking of Roman soldiers…-
"Umm… shouldn't we be going a little faster?" asked Shinji.
"You want to kill these horses? We've been riding all night," she said, sighing at his stupidity. "We want to get a good lead, but that doesn't mean we can afford to let these horses collapse from exhaustion. Don't you know anything?"
"Oh," said Shinji, wishing he could be embarrassed about his lack of knowledge, if only because she wanted him to be.
"So, what's this 'Riben' place like, anyway?" asked Asuka, once again lightening the tone of the conversation.
"I don't really know," said Shinji. "I haven't really ever been there, except when I was too young to remember." His earliest memories were of his time aboard a ship sailing to China, a ship owned by his enigmatic father.
"But you've heard about it right?" Asuka said persistently, "You said your people were barbarians. You must know something."
"That's pretty much all I know about them," Shinji said. Hesitantly, he continued, "They eat fish and rice... They live in primitive houses. They don't know how to dye their clothing, so they can only wear white silk. That's why the Chinese call us barbarians."
Asuka wasn't particularly sympathetic. "Guess you had to put up with a lot of crap, huh? Get used to it," she said, her face darkening slightly.
"Why do you want to go Riben, anyway?" he asked, his tone gaining a bit more confidence.
"I already told you. I like to visit new places," she explained, as if that was all the reason she needed..
"But…"
"But what?" she asked.
"Are you... really sure you want to go?"
"Of course," she said confidently, "Once I make a decision, it's as good as a fact. We're going."
"Oh." He tilted his head forward, and his hair covered his eyes.
Noticing this, she frowned in irritation. "You've never been to this place anyway, right?" she asked, "Don't you want to go?"
Vague and hidden memories threatened to surface, and Shinji, nervously silent, was unable to come up with an immediate answer for her.
"Well?" Asuka asked in irritation, leaning towards him with a scowl on her face, "Can't you even answer a simple question?
"I... I guess we could to go there..." he half-mumbled.
"We've already decided that, stupid," she said, her tone rising in pitch annoyingly, "I asked if YOU wanted to go. What's so hard about that?"
"W-well... I guess..." he said, reddening slightly at the unwanted attention from the impatient girl.
"Just tell me me for God's sake," she said, exasperated.
"I just... I just don't really want to go there," he admitted. "That's all."
"Okay, that's fine," she said, "You can leave right after you show me where it is then."
"But, I don't..." he said, trailing off, a weak protest.
"Doesn't matter. You're so hopeless, you obviously need to get back to your roots," she said, and the confidence in her tone swept his weak protestations aside, "I did it a few years ago. It wasn't fun for me either, you know."
"But... didn't you just say that I could leave after I show you where it is?" he asked, confused.
"Well, if you want to do that even after all the trouble I go through in getting you there, it's your loss." She shrugged. "I guess you're just plain ungrateful."
Shinji was still confused.
End Chapter Three
"When Jupiter wooed a heroine, he went to her as a suppliant - no girl seduced great Jupiter."
Ovid, "The Art of Love"
"For these two forces are mutually reproductive; their interaction as endless as that of interlocked rings. Who can determine where one ends and another begins?"
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Chapter Three: The One won't understand the Other, because...
Shinji, for what seemed like the thousandth time that night, wished he had found a better place to hide.
The wine barrel had seemed like a good hiding spot at first glance, but it was lacking in the comfort one would expect from an all day hideout. His legs had fallen asleep within the first fifteen minutes and the smell of wine had sickened him immediately. On top of that, the barrel wasn't even completely empty. Still, he had felt that he had no choice except to wait there for hours on end, watching through a tiny hole on the side of the barrel as a countless number of people walked by. He had been convinced that he would be recognized instantly if he so much as poked his head out.
Not to say that Shinji was particularly unhappy at that point, just very uncomfortable. Night had arrived a couple hours earlier and there wasn't a person in sight. All he had to do was be out of Rome before the sun rose.
He was as good as gone.
Finally judging that it was safe, Shinji climbed out of the barrel and immediately fell to his hands and knees. Breathing in the fresh air deeply and thankfully, he managed to stagger to his feet, supporting himself on the wall of a nearby building.
Scaling the city's wall would be no problem. Avoiding the guards would be easy. It was just a matter of running to the edge of the city and escaping into the surrounding countryside, where he could probably find a horse and ride away to some far off place.
-I've really escaped.-
But that was only if he could ignore what he had left behind, in his cowardice.
-"'Wait?' You say, 'Wait'? The guards are coming down the hall right now! I'm getting out of this damned place!" said Asuka, in the same loud and threatening whisper.
"Please. Just wait. Please," Shinji begged.
-
There had been no obligation for him to help her in her plan to escape. It was her idea, not his. Shinji didn't have any responsibility to her. He hadn't thrown her in the prison. If she was executed, it was her own fault. She had gotten herself thrown into that particular pit of despair.
-A pit of despair.-
Unbidden, an image rose in Shinji's mind.
Asuka, in deep pit, hanging helplessly. Tied to a frayed rope that would break any moment. Himself, standing at the edge, secured to a stronger rope. Asuka, preparing herself for death as her rope breaks. Into the endless black.
This strange image was frighteningly real, like a waking dream.
Asuka was a girl that had given him nothing but trouble during what were to be his last days on Earth, tormenting him, teasing him, and even attacking him. She had made things more interesting for a little while, sure, but she hadn't exactly gone out of her way for him. He had no reason to want to risk his life to save hers. No reason at all. No one had ever really done anything for him, and she was no exception.
'You're disgusting.'
Hatred.
(Attack where he is unprepared; sally out when he does not expect you.)
'I hate your type.'
Disgust.
(Keep him under a strain and wear him down.)
'You're joking, right?'
Immaturity.
(All warfare is based on deception.)
'Who do you fight, eight year old girls?'
Just an insult.
(One defends when strength is inadequate and attacks when it is abundant)
'Well, aren't you the mysterious one.'
Confusion.
(The reason troops slay the enemy is because they are enraged.)
'What's wrong with you?'
A mystery...
(Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.)
'Well? Are you gonna jump in the pit, or run away?'
-
Shinji ran as quickly as his legs would carry him, an invisible blur in the night.
He approached the Flavian amphitheatre, the great colloseum, using it as a reference point to find the prison, which he'd lost sight of during his frantic escape from the guards. Closing in on the amphitheatre, he made a sharp turn to the right, heading directly towards the prison house, which he could barely detect in the darkness.
-
With a furious yell, Asuka charged towards the weakened door. Unable to resist another impact from her slender frame, the door splintered, and she burst through. There were guards coming toward her, eight of them, all armed with short gladius swords. Two of them to her right and six to her left. The hallway, lit with torches, was immediately familiar to her, and she lost none of her momentum as she went charging down the hallway, turning towards the right.
The first of the two slashed widely at her, surprised by the sudden movement, and she met his downward swinging hand with her own knuckles, sending the blade flying and causing the man to scream in pain as he clutched his bloody fist. Nimbly ducking past the agonized man, she grabbed the still-clattering blade off the ground, simultaneously snapping a kick backward at the second man, hitting the back of his right leg and sending him sprawling to his hands and knees. Springing to her feet, she stomped on the man's wrist, and grabbed up his weapon in her her left hand.
She shouldered her way past the two men, who were no longer much of a threat, and ran toward the other group of guards. All of them were watching her, standing in a defensive line, unmoving, shoulder to shoulder.
Unperturbed, Asuka dropped both of her weapons and slid underneath the human wall. The men, not having expected such a ridiculous tactic, were unable to stop the girl, who was already beyond their reach. Asuka, running toward the doorway at the end of the hall, found her path blocked by yet another guard, slower to react then the others.
-
Shinji's plan was not foolproof, in that it was vague and ended with his own death. He would break past the guards out front easily enough; they were too slow to stop him, steal a set of keys somehow, break Asuka out, and most likely end up dead. Getting in would be easy. Getting out...
But he didn't reconsider. He had made his decision.
-Just this once. Just this once, I won't run away. Just this once I'll-
"YEAAAAAH!" a high-pitched scream interrupted his thoughts and stopped him in his tracks, nearly causing him to lose his balance completely. He looked wildly in all directions, sure that he had been spotted by someone.
"YAAAAAAAAAHHH!" he heard again, recognizing the voice this time.
It was Asuka.
-She couldn't have...-
-
Asuka burst through the front door, closely followed by the guards.
-Ha! I didn't need that idiot after all!-
She flew down the front stairway, nearly clearing the steps in a single bound, leaving the guards further and further behind her with each step. She took great leaps, vaulting herself through the air as she ran, pushing forward with inhuman strength. She glanced backwards at the pursuing Romans, and grinned as she saw that they stopped running, realizing that she had already escaped.
Facing forward again, she leapt headlong into Shinji, crashing into him at great speed. Taken completely by surprise, both of them ended up rolling on the ground, coming to a stop in a tangled heap. Asuka, quickly evaluating the situation, pulled herself to her feet.
"Shinji. Follow me," she said calmly, and took off again.
--
Asuka, with a ferocious yell, charged towards the man, who didn't seem to be taking her seriously at all. Weight played a large role in wrestling, no matter how you look at it, and she simply wasn't threatening. He met her fierce expression with a confident smile. He was non-chalant, ready for an easy victory.
He blinked in confusion as she slipped between his legs, grabbing his ankles as she passed under him. Before he could react further to this, she dug her heels into the ground and stood up, lifting his ankles clear off the ground. The man, through sheer luck and wild movements, somehow managed to take her down with him, and she fell to her knees, his arm gripping her shoulder. Furious, she leapt to her feet and squatted down next to the dazed man, grabbing for his arms.
The onlooking men that surrounded the two looked on in amazement as she, holding the unfortunate man by his armpits, tossed him through the air and over their heads.
Breathing heavily with anger, she grimaced and clenched her fists tightly as her anger gradually cooled.
Stilicho laughed loudly, and then spoke out even more loudly as he put his arm around Asuka's shoulders, "Did you see that, men! My boy Asuka is the strongest there is! Should I even ask if anyone else wants to try?"
Asuka didn't listen to the man's booming voice, instead staring in horror at the fallen man, who lay nearly twenty meters from where she was standing. He was dead.
--
"I knocked the door down," she explained simply, as the two of them rode through the countryside.
"You... knocked the door down?" Shinji asked, finding the idea a little hard to believe. The prison, like any Roman building, had been built to last.
Shrugging, she smiled. "I told you, I'm stronger than I look. It took me a few tries, but it came down. No prison's been made that can hold Asuka Sodyu!" She proclaimed proudly. "How did you escape, anyway?"
"I said I had to go to the bathroom, and I ran away when they took my chains off," he explained, "They... couldn't really catch me once I started running."
She glanced at him skeptically. "Chains? What does that have to do with anything?" she asked with an irritated expression as she swatted at a gnat with her free hand, "You could have run away the first time they took you out."
"But if I was wearing chains..." he murmured, eyes shifting downward.
"You could have still ran. You could have even ran away before they put them on, like I did," she said, snatching the tiny insect out of the air, "Hell, I didn't even need them to open the door. You're just a coward, that's all.
"You were just afraid that they would kill you if you tried anything, weren't you?" she continued, shaking her head in disgust as she crushed the annoying insect in her palm. "So you just put it off until you didn't have a choice anymore. Stupid."
He didn't reply, and the two of them rode in silence for a little while.
"Um... where are we going?" asked Shinji.
"Where do you think? We're getting out of this god-forsaken empire," Asuka said, with a very slight hint of defensiveness in her voice, "Then, I was thinking we could go to this 'Rubbin' place that you come from,"
"Riben? Why do you want to go there?" Shinji asked. It seemed strange that she would want to go to his country. He didn't have any desire to go there, and it was his homeland. It made no sense that she would want to see it.
She shrugged. "I like to visit new places."
-And I want to get as far away from here as possible.-
--
The tone of Stilicho's voice as he shouted at her back, the combination of anger, sadness and shame, would not be easily forgotten. It would later come to haunt her, to taunt her.
-'ASUKA! You betray me! I will never forgive this, Asuka!'-
--
"But... wouldn't that take a really long time? It's so far away," Shinji said skeptically, thinking that she might be teasing him again.
She shrugged. "You got something better to do? You should be thanking the Gods that I'm even willing to put up with you. You know how to get there, right?"
He hesitated a moment, then nodded silently. Getting to Riben would be no problem. It's direction was always known to him. The place pulled at him somehow. Even so, when he ran away from China he had gone in the opposite direction, and had never planned to return. He had no reason to go there. It wasn't his home. He didn't have a home.
"You're so gloomy all the time," she noted, frowning. "Are you still messed up from before? You know, you never really answered me before, about why you were there in the first place."
"But... I already said that it was because I killed someone."
"Care to be a little more specific? Give me some details? You don't look much like a cold-blooded murderer, you know."
"Well... it was an accident," Shinji said, blushing.
Hearing this, she started laughing uncontrollably, leaning forward on the horse for support.
"I should have known!" she said, still laughing.
-
Holding the knife firmly in his hand Shinji cut the fresh coriander leaves quickly and efficiently. It was a simple job, and one that he enjoyed. He worked alone, had enough to eat, and even had his own room. He also knew that, in time, he would eventually earn his freedom.
"Slave boy! Get out of my way!" shouted the visiting senator, drunk out of his wits, as he stomped into the kitchen. The man grabbed Shinji by the shoulders, meaning to toss him to the side, and Shinji deftly ducked underneath him...
-
"I didn't mean to do it," Shinji insisted. "I was just going to crawl under his legs and run away, but he tripped and fell on the knife. I didn't mean to kill him."
Asuka, her body shaking with amusement, shook her head in disbelief. "You're one of a kind Shinji, I'll give you that."
"Uh, how about you? How'd you end up here?" Shinji asked awkwardly.
"I deserted," she said, responding immediately. There was a moment of silence, and Shinji shifted nervously as the horses plodded forward. She continued, "They thought I was one of the survivors," she said harshly, still slightly angry at the memory. "They said I was a 'prisoner of war', like they'd taken me right off a battlefield. And all because some stupid Roman soldier recognized me...".
-Speaking of Roman soldiers…-
"Umm… shouldn't we be going a little faster?" asked Shinji.
"You want to kill these horses? We've been riding all night," she said, sighing at his stupidity. "We want to get a good lead, but that doesn't mean we can afford to let these horses collapse from exhaustion. Don't you know anything?"
"Oh," said Shinji, wishing he could be embarrassed about his lack of knowledge, if only because she wanted him to be.
"So, what's this 'Riben' place like, anyway?" asked Asuka, once again lightening the tone of the conversation.
"I don't really know," said Shinji. "I haven't really ever been there, except when I was too young to remember." His earliest memories were of his time aboard a ship sailing to China, a ship owned by his enigmatic father.
"But you've heard about it right?" Asuka said persistently, "You said your people were barbarians. You must know something."
"That's pretty much all I know about them," Shinji said. Hesitantly, he continued, "They eat fish and rice... They live in primitive houses. They don't know how to dye their clothing, so they can only wear white silk. That's why the Chinese call us barbarians."
Asuka wasn't particularly sympathetic. "Guess you had to put up with a lot of crap, huh? Get used to it," she said, her face darkening slightly.
"Why do you want to go Riben, anyway?" he asked, his tone gaining a bit more confidence.
"I already told you. I like to visit new places," she explained, as if that was all the reason she needed..
"But…"
"But what?" she asked.
"Are you... really sure you want to go?"
"Of course," she said confidently, "Once I make a decision, it's as good as a fact. We're going."
"Oh." He tilted his head forward, and his hair covered his eyes.
Noticing this, she frowned in irritation. "You've never been to this place anyway, right?" she asked, "Don't you want to go?"
Vague and hidden memories threatened to surface, and Shinji, nervously silent, was unable to come up with an immediate answer for her.
"Well?" Asuka asked in irritation, leaning towards him with a scowl on her face, "Can't you even answer a simple question?
"I... I guess we could to go there..." he half-mumbled.
"We've already decided that, stupid," she said, her tone rising in pitch annoyingly, "I asked if YOU wanted to go. What's so hard about that?"
"W-well... I guess..." he said, reddening slightly at the unwanted attention from the impatient girl.
"Just tell me me for God's sake," she said, exasperated.
"I just... I just don't really want to go there," he admitted. "That's all."
"Okay, that's fine," she said, "You can leave right after you show me where it is then."
"But, I don't..." he said, trailing off, a weak protest.
"Doesn't matter. You're so hopeless, you obviously need to get back to your roots," she said, and the confidence in her tone swept his weak protestations aside, "I did it a few years ago. It wasn't fun for me either, you know."
"But... didn't you just say that I could leave after I show you where it is?" he asked, confused.
"Well, if you want to do that even after all the trouble I go through in getting you there, it's your loss." She shrugged. "I guess you're just plain ungrateful."
Shinji was still confused.
End Chapter Three