"The Dark Side of the Moon"

Prologue

FC 27

The year of FC 27 was a year like any other, and Gunjin Ishikawa was glad for that. Then again, he had no true complaints about his life and as a true soldier he knew he could have done without a lot of what he already had.

Gunjin stood near the window of the military headquarters and gazed out at the blue orb of the Earth, as he was prone to do when he was not on duty. His dark green uniform covered his build excellently, often leading those incompetent privates to believe that he was an ordinary man. He considered himself anything but that, though he did not believe that he was a conceited man. He was simply very good at his job, and his job was as strict and as disciplined as he himself was.

Not like his wife.

He sneered into the reflective glass as he thought back to the willowy woman that he reluctantly called his wife. The woman who, at this very moment, was back at his humble abode caring for his newly born son, Urube. Kiutsu Ishikawa was a small, slight woman of barely 25 years of age with thin dark brown hair and pale blue eyes. Gunjin despised the way she shuffled around the house, looking around nervously like a frightened kitten in her ratty pink bathrobe that seemed to be perpetually stained. He could not even take her out in public without her turning into a waxen figure, often just staring ahead blankly with no expression to speak of on her pallid face.

But nobody could say that Gunjin hadn't tried to make his wife into something, because they didn't know everything he had been through. They didn't know about the numerous times he had tried to have a decent conversation with her only for the room to lapse into silence not five minutes afterward. Even during their wedding, Kiutsu had not said more than a few words to him or to any of the other guests, even those who had known her since childhood. He didn't mind her little quirks, except when they reflected directly on him.

Baring his teeth in silent rage, his thoughts suddenly reverted back to the night she had totally humiliated him. He knew she hadn't done it out of malice (simply because with her, there wasn't anything to be had, not even malice), but it had nearly cost him his job all the same. His job was his life, and he would be damned if he were to lose it because his onna was an airhead. He had been invited to have a few drinks with his Commanding Officer at his apartment, and he had brought his new wife along to get more acquainted with her husband's job.

She had been silent the entire evening, which to Gunjin was not an entirely bad thing, even with the faraway look in her pale eyes. Personally, he hated blabber-mouthed women, but they had their uses he supposed. At least they did according to his lesser-minded comrades who only thought with one part of their anatomy, and it wasn't their brains nor their hearts.

The evening had been going rather smoothly, despite the attempts his Commander had made to speak to Kiutsu being thwarted by her unwillingness to reply. He had sat on the black leather couch next to her, enjoying his sake and chatting animatedly with his Commander, who had given up on her. Without warning, Kiutsu suddenly looked at the older soldier and blurted out something that made Gunjin's heart, which had been trained to stand under death and not flutter, nearly stop in his chest.

"Gunjin likes it when I bite him."

The other man looked at her in blatant surprise, obviously expecting her to let him know that it was a joke; albeit one of poor taste. Kiutsu continued to stare at the man in all seriousness, the untouched drink in her hand tilting to the side in perilous danger of being spilled.

"Would you like me if I bit you too?"

Both men were left speechless for the rest of the visit.

Gunjin had never been so humiliated in all of his life, and had given her a severe reprimanding when they returned home. Kiutsu simply sat and stared at him the entire time as he yelled and slammed his left fist into his open right palm again and again with every point he made. In the end, he had to slap the sense into her, but even that took a while before it settled into her blank mind that she was not to speak unless spoken to by anyone.

Overall, it was pathetic (a lesser man would have even gone so far as to say "sympathetic") to witness, but Gunjin had a firm belief that he had done a great and noble deed by marrying the woman. Her father, an aging senator from back in the time when there was a Senate, had all but begged him to take his "eccentric" daughter off his hands.

Gunjin chuckled as the image of the distraught, white-haired man appeared in the glass before him, his numerous wrinkles glistening with sweat as he pleaded with the young military man; all the while wringing his hands in that annoying way that he had.

The ex-Senator had approached him a few years before the beginning of the FC era, when Gunjin had still fancied himself a man of battle. Though only a lowly 2nd class lieutenant, Gunjin had already made large headway in the military, mostly for his fierce combat demeanor. His commanders had been so impressed with his record that he had even been allowed to be present at the numerous conferences that ultimately lead up to the way things were run now.

But the changing times had been hard on the man, especially since his position had been dissolved to make room for a new kind of order. Gunjin gave the man credit though; he had seemed genuine in wanting his daughter to at least have some kind of stability. In the end, Gunjin did the gentlemanly thing and married the woman, though she didn't seem to mind that she had been betrothed without being notified beforehand.

The image faded away as Gunjin smiled broadly, a feeling of accomplishment and good will blossoming in his chest. He had proven to be a good soldier and a fine man, and was now reaping the rewards that were rightfully his.

Fate had been kind to Gunjin Ishikawa.

And despite her quirks, his wife had given him a fine son, with hair as black as his own and the robust vigor for life that all soldiers needed to survive. Gunjin silently thanked the stars that twinkled all around the glowing blue globe of life that Urube had not inherited his mother's mental weaknesses. Though the pregnancy and birth had been exceptionally hard on the woman both mentally and physically, Kiutsu had managed to pull through, though the doctors advised against having anymore children.

Gunjin didn't care. He had his son, his heir to the Ishikawa name, and one day, the boy would become a man of truly great deeds.