1. Many thanks for timmonsgray's fic, Beneath the Skin, for the scar-chakra parallel idea. I couldn't think of any method to bond Sanzo with Gojyo. They're a really funny pair, especially in the manga (well, as far as I've read), but I couldn't find any ground for angst. You can tell I haven't been reading far.
2. I have no idea if Minekura invents her own day and date system for the Saiyuki world, so I reverted to using our own. Correct me if I'm wrong.
3. I have trouble imagining conversations. In my head, they're talking in Japanese, but I'm writing their conversation out in English. Very unsettling. I use italics and dashes because it doesn't give the literal solidness the way inverted commas do. I got the idea from James Joyce. He's lovely.
4. Sorry for being late. Mother's Day is over by about half an hour in my part of the world when I posted this.
5. Saiyuki is the rightful property of Minekura Kazuya.
6. Corrections, comments and criticsms welcome. Especially corrections. I probably made a mistake of the canon somewhere, and that would be highly embarassing.
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Update notes:
1. Thanks UltraM2000, who pointed
out that Sanzo smokes red, not blue. Actually, when I was writing this,
the image in my head was the scene where Sanzo-ikkou get trapped in a deserted
town as part of the Homura arc. Sanzo distinctively smoked a blue there.
In Minekura's artworks Sanzo is often holding a red though. I guess where
discrepancies between canon are concerned, Minekura's words should outweigh
those of the anime writers.