This is an AU fic set in pre-Edo Japan. And yay! The seishi are literally and figuratively 'stars', too. Mostly Hotohori/Nuriko and some Tasuki/Nuriko, but may imply traces of other yaoi/(het) pairings.

Haruma is to be thanked for doing beta on this one. Sinful1, for pre-reading.

Kuruwa Bunsho

By Deep Color

-Chapter 1-

I wondered if I had somehow reached the Capital.

It was certainly brighter than any other town I've visited, and people here wore more colorful and elaborate clothing. And the place was more populated than the last fishing village, so…

"Hey, you over there! Mister!" the voice was barely audible in the noise of the mid-day crowd. I wasn't sure if the lad had been calling to me, so I decided to ignore it, until, "Hey, wait up, China-sir!"

I spun around to look at the source of the voice over my shoulder, instinctively clutching my travel bag closer to me for fear of pickpockets. "Yes?"

"Oh, wow, you speak Japanese," she commented. Well, my current Japanese skills were not something I could possibly brag about, but I certainly learned languages fast. I'd only been here for a year or so.

"Not very much, but thank you," I said. The brown-haired girl looked at me with sparkling eyes, perhaps adoring my beauty, perhaps amazed that a 'China-sir' would speak in her tongue. "What is it?" I asked, a little disturbed by all her staring.

"Please watch our Kabuki! Kuruwa Bunsho!" she cheered on.

For all her praising me a while ago, I couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't understand a word of what she said. "Kuru—e-excuse me…?" I asked.

"Kuruwa Bunsho—it's the title of our yearly Kabuki production," she said, as if that was the most obvious thing to ever grace the continent of Asia. "It's gonna be reeeally amazing, so you better be there and tell your folks back in China how great our Kabuki is!" She had to pause immediately after the last syllable to catch her breath.

I suddenly found myself fumbling for words. I was astounded by her spirit—something I myself lacked in the past few depressing days of my solitary travels. "I-I'm sorry, Little Miss… I have to go to the Capital…"

Her jolly face fell, and she pouted at me. "Why do you have to go there? It's better here. All you'll ever find at the Capital are samurai, ninja, and merchants. It's too boring to bother going there." She wrinkled her nose for effect.

A sly, victorious smile made its way to my lips, "But I am a merchant."

Dumbstruck, she had no choice but to pout at me again. "Aw, come on! It won't take long! It's tonight, at the Himawari shrine at sunset." I was about to speak another protest when she shoved a piece of paper in my hand. I recognized it immediately—a woodblock print. After all, it was my source of business—woodblock prints.

The title, printed in bright red, was 'Guo Shou' in Chinese, but apart from the Chinese characters, I was illiterate in Japanese. What was this 'Kabuki' anyway? Why did this print contain pictures of… white-faced demons?

I tore my eyes from the print to look up at the girl, queuing all the questions I wanted to ask in single file in my mind, but before I could do anything else, she was waving at me, "See you then, China-sir!" and she disappeared in the crowd.

----------

That is how I got here.

After much inquisition, I came to the solid conclusion that this place—called 'Osaka'—was not the Capital at all. It was a major city, though, and was pretty close to the Capital than any province I've trekked so far.

I realized, too, that deciding to spend a night here was not one of my cleverer ideas. Considering that I have only a few Yen left in my hands, I couldn't afford to be slacking off. At this point, an inn would even be too expensive. However, it was nearly sunset, and soon, the night would be too deep for me to continue my journey.

I sighed in the midst of the crowd, a heavy feeling of loss (or maybe hunger), settling in the bottom of my stomach.

Two days ago, I mysteriously lost all the money I had with me, which was a pretty big sum for a traveler to carry, I must say. That was all my money from day one—what I had just earned during my travels. I had to live on bread for weeks to save that amount up! Customers for my family's art were rare in the rural parts, and it cost me my precious meals and beauty sleeps to be able to maintain that monetary balance. If anything, I grew up being dependent on financial security. A mere moment of negligence to my travel bag had relentlessly crushed all those efforts to stay affluent.

Before sunset came, I started to ask around for Himawari shrine, for lack of anything better to do, and for something to occupy my mind other than my lost fortune. It wasn't hard to do, because apparently, the whole town was readying to go to the said shrine too.

It turned out that I was already a little behind call time when I finally got there. Whatever it was I came here for was already starting.

It was a performance of sorts—colorful actors in elaborate clothing. Its popularity with the masses was worth noting as well. The wooden stools lined up in front of the stage were all full, and some people, such as myself, already had to be contented with standing, even though I was probably only a few minutes late.

Now, usually, I wouldn't have minded the inconvenience of having to find my own place in a huge crowd, and probably would have even offered my spot to some of the shorter women and children who were craning over my shoulders, desperate to see something. So let's just blame it on my current disposition, shall we? And also that I couldn't see anything of the performance, being as far from the podium as I was. So one would excuse my lack of civilized, educated manners when I decided to go out of my way to squeeze through the dense crowd of villagers, all immersed in whatever kind of play this Kabuki was, just so I could get the best view possible.

I reached the torch nearest the stage and settled for that spot without anyone seeming to mind at all (maybe because I was kind enough to actually crouch for the benefit of those who were shorter than me). I smiled to myself at the little victory I claimed for myself, and turned to set my eyes on whatever was now happening onstage.

Funny, but I almost fell back on my behind as a white face loomed down on the audience, a little too heavily around my area. I thought it was rather unprofessional of that actor to adore my beauty during a performance, but I give him credit. He seems to know beauty when he sees it.

Looking around, I notice that all of the actors wore heavy white paints on their faces, with weird-colored accents for cheeks, eyebrows, noses and lips. The way the faces looked really unsettled me and I couldn't help feeling a little wary. What if this was a ritual to call out demons?

Were they possibly going to offer me—an unknowing, beautiful, fit, and ideal man—as a sacrifice?

The audience didn't seem to notice my momentary paranoia, but the performer did, seeing as he had not stopped looming over my spot as he kept delivering his lines in classical Japanese. I did not understand much of it at all, except that he kept mentioning the words 'Izaemon' and the more familiar term, 'ai', which I had learned earlier in my travels to mean the same as its Chinese homonym for 'love'.

The tone in which the character spoke suggested he was portraying an unearthly, spirit-like creature—he spoke and spoke but no one else in the scene seemed to be paying attention to him. He then slid beside the graceful form of what I took to be a girl, seemingly trying to tempt or persuade her to do something. The lady quietly sipped on her tea, the man beside her occasionally commenting on how beautiful she was. The linear paint designs on the lady's face accentuated her beautifully sorrowful expression, which I had felt really strongly for some reason or another.

…And no, I refuse to believe that my heart was going out to a fictional character, thank you very much. It was probably my neglected hunger taking over my usually tamed, well-read, and logical mind. But then again, perhaps I was only being my usual beautiful, chivalrous, knight-in-shining-armor self…

It went on like that for a long part of the play, me watching silently as they babbled on in a form of Japanese I found rather difficult to understand, and me trying to guess what those words meant. A charade of sorts. I wasn't really into the story; just found it a little addicting to keep guessing etymology, especially when there were dull, seemingly pointless scenes.

Towards the climax, the music started to pull me completely into the performance. If I said I disliked the 'art' in their costume and face-paint, I stayed for the music. Ensembles of large and medium-sized drums provided strong beats, and a Japanese version of the Chinese Pipa, the Shamisen guitar, was playing out of rhythm purposefully, and it drew a sort of exotic melody to it. Fast, exciting...

Actors were running in a mangled dance around the stage with this music, and only one of them—a flame-haired man—was walking calmly, albeit acting confused, over the hullabaloo. I learned earlier that this was the man called 'Izaemon'—he was the protagonist. The scene seemed to be a creative simulation of the noisy and chaotic village, with people coming and going but not caring about Izaemon's breaking heart for the girl from a while ago, who was called 'Yugiri'.

When the scene shifted to the next, I was completely immersed in the intensity of the performance. My heart was beating fast, wanting to catch up on the story I had interpreted by myself as I eagerly awaited the visual scenes, from which I could base the progress of the story on.

Just when I thought my heart had had its break from the passionate drum ensemble, ten shamisen players onstage were playing again. The entire place had gone quiet to listen, save for the evening crickets that came by to watch. A solo drum started to dance with the melody of a solo guitar, and the lady called 'Yugiri' had come out onto the center of the stage.

She took a step, danced, and the world, as I saw it, had completely frozen over.

At that time, looking like how I did was far from being laughable. My mouth was slightly open and my eyes were unblinking as I watched her dance. Yugiri was dancing an enticing, erotic dance, probably based on the narration of the background singers. And she was beautiful. So beautiful. If I need to stress that any more than my having said it twice, please let me know. Because heaven knows how I could ever describe that beauty with mere words…

I looked around at my fellow observers and saw, not to my surprise, that all male members of the audience had several variations of the same… affected look that I had. The females had not lost their touch with the glazed and spirituous look of excitement in their eyes as well.

Although her face was painted with white and highlights of red and black that concealed her real face, she still struck me as being oddly beautiful. The dance was probably the culprit. Her movements were lithe, graceful, but quick and defined. The way her hands and arms flew about her created in me a wave of beautiful sadness, unmatched by any other dance I have seen in all my traveling.

And she was just so beautiful…

----------

I had not been the only one who wanted a peek at the actors after the Kabuki play had ended. It seems that Kabuki actors were rather famous. Some of the audiences had come to wait at the back of the actors' tents to ogle them. Strangely, so had I. Since that dance, I have not taken my mind off the beautiful form of Yugiri; her movements were still resting at the front of my mind, like some vivid nightmare that did not want to be forgotten.

But, of course, if someone familiar had bumped into you, you would forget all about it too, as I had.

"You," it was not a question. I was acknowledging that I knew her, whatever her name was—that girl who invited me to watch this performance.

"Me?" she relayed, and I smiled in relief. She was a breath of fresh air after that intoxicating stage. "So, did you like it, huh?"

I didn't know how to answer. I didn't understand the story largely; I found the make-up a little repulsive; I thought I was going to be offered to the Shinto gods; my back ached from all the crouching I did to see it… "Yes, I liked it very much," I heard myself announce.

"Great! Now you go on and tell other China-men to come watch next year, ne?"

My heart fell. Would there be no chance for me to see Yugiri until next year? The young lady must have seen the expression of confusion on my face, because she quickly added, "What? You don't expect you can go back to China and bring your friends here by next week, do you? Is China really that close by? Besides, we make Kabuki only once a year—a different story for each year. You China-men can watch the next one next year, because I just know it will be a world better than this year's," she explained, clasping her hands together in excitement.

"There's another one next week?" I asked, rather dumbly.

"Of course. We do repeats three times during the Lunar New Year month."

"…"

"…?"

"…"

"…?"

At long last, I broke the awkward silence. "…Can you take me to… to see 'Yugiri?'" I blurted out, completely embarrassed.

She was silent for a while, regarding me. She seemed to be having a debate with herself about whether she would tease me or help me.

The flushed color that was probably all over my face now must have been very strong for her to speak like so: "Sure! I'll take you to that beautiful superstar. Only because you're also so beeeeeyoootifullll" she said mischievously, making waves in her voice as she emphasized some words. She also ran her fingers through my long, chestnut hair for further emphasis, though I might have disappointed her with a few tangles she came across in my tresses. What was a nomadic, hungry merchant to do?

I felt my chest lightening as her words registered in my mind. I was robbed of the chance to thank the girl who I did not even know the name of because she had grabbed me by my wrist and pulled me into the thicker crowds towards the actors' tents.

"Nuriko-chaaaaan" she called, but there was no answer. My head was spinning from the unexpected luck that smiled on me. So her name is Nuriko? When no one answered, the little youth took a peek inside the tent and went back out just as quickly, sighing. "Sorry, not here. 'Must've run off somewhere to avoid situations such as this. Very popular with older men, that Nuriko," she shook her head. I winced at the last comment, wondering if all my traveling had caused wrinkles to form over my face, or something.

"Come back next week and watch again, I'll go tell 'Yugiri' to stay behind for you," she winked and waved goodbye. "By the way, I'm Miaka! Look for the beautiful girl named 'Miaka' next week, okay, so you can come see the princess!"

----------

I walked away from the tents and the crowds, disappointed. I didn't get to see her after all. And I doubt I'll be here to catch the next repeat; I have no more money to stay in cozy inns for more than a night or two.

I sighed. I would definitely have to make money from my woodblock prints in this town, if I wanted to see Yugiri—no, Nuriko—again. I looked over the dark waters ahead of me, the wooden bridge that I was standing on creaking slightly under my weight. Seeing my beautiful face reflected in the waters had instantly reminded me again of Yugiri's beautiful dancing form. I tried my best to savor the memory of the moment as best as I could…

But, no… I have no time for this. I have to start working now if I wanted to get anywhere. Turning my attention to the passersby, I readied myself mentally.

Now, usually, I screen big crowds for possible customers by looking at two things—one, the way they dress (which tells you if they have money for silk and such fabrics), and two, whether they look vain enough to buy prints of themselves by bulk or not.

Fortunately enough, my eyes landed on one perfect catch.

"Hello, Miss, good evening," I greeted, smiling best as I could on an empty stomach. I had eaten nothing the whole day, in case there is a need to remind the world.

The lady, reaching up to my shoulder in her best posture, had cowered and slightly staggered backwards upon hearing me.

"…Yes? Do I… know you?" she asked uncertainly, the almost pleading look on her face overpowering her façade of confidence and strength. If I could make a guess, I think she had been expecting something bad to happen, and that that moment was this.

With her looking like that, I couldn't bring myself to ask her what I had come to ask her. I lost all momentum and backtracked. Instead, I blurted out what came to mind first.

"Beautiful…"

That was probably not the best thing to say to a lone, helpless woman in a dark, relatively empty, cheap makeshift bridge such as the one we were on. I stumbled over my tongue to quickly correct myself, accidentally using my native dialect in a vain attempt to be on time, before she thought…

"Chiya—Tuey pu tsu! Gua…" I stopped mid-sentence as I saw her surprised eyes, staring wide at me in utter disbelief.

I wondered if I had perhaps said anything worth that look of surprise, other than, of course, having just apologized in another language. "I mean, I'm sorry—"

"Di si siya mi lang?" she backed off slowly, a mixture of fear and caution in her voice as she spoke back to me in that same native tongue I used. I must have taken a while to answer, maybe because the weird question caught me off-guard, or maybe because I was just too shocked to know that she spoke my provincial dialect.

She had asked me for what person I was. What person am I? Well, that was a weird reaction, compared to a supposed, Wow! You speak my language! …Was she suspecting me to be some sort of accomplice for her complicated abduction, I wonder? Perhaps she thought a rich, Chinese man had sent me to forcefully kidnap her to be his wife, when she didn't want to. Did I look that much of a bad guy?

Out of nowhere, I found myself recalling the story of Yugiri and Izaemon, for they had gone through the same thing. Another man had claimed Yugiri when Izaemon had been prevented by his mother to marry her, because Yugiri was from some harem.

I found myself frowning in frustration for thinking of those things in this situation—the lady I scared off was going to go crazy anytime soon if I didn't rectify things. She was being so defensive ever since I spoke to her, and it didn't look like she was going to be kind to me with that umbrella clutched tightly in her hands.

I tried to explain things. Really, I did. Every time I took steps to get near her, she would walk backward, equally one step for another. "No, listen, I'm not a bad pers—" I figured it would be better to not speak in Chinese, because I think she was finding that most unsettling of all. But too late—she had already lost her footing and fallen into the water before I could finish explaining.

"Miss!"

I ran over to the edge of the bridge, cursing the unstable fence that served to 'protect' people from falling into the water, because it certainly did not protect the lady now wading in the water. My mind raced with untamed thoughts of there being a strong current that might kill her, of her not being able to swim, of her dying because I thought her vain enough to buy prints of herself in bulk.

Her shriek of disgust and frustration at having landed in muddy water had caused me to break out of my mental ranting and I instinctively reached out my hand for her to take. Thankfully, the water had been very low, barely knee-level. Shaken, she took my offered hand and stood up, and the next few seconds was a blur.

I think she yanked my hand, pulling me into the murky water as she hurried to get back on the bridge, or maybe I just fell down by myself.

Parasol resting firmly in her grip, she hit me with it over the head a few times before I could raise my arms to block out the painful assaults.

"Ei!" I called out in the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese 'Oi!', not really caring that I didn't adjust my language settings for her to bear, seeing as that she was doing quite well hitting me on her own. Well, if she wanted it that way, then…

I blinked the muddy water droplets away from my eyes and assured myself that I had surely not trained for years in martial arts for nothingI grabbed the rabid umbrella in place above my head, in time to prevent a painful blow from wrecking permanent brain damage. An unforgiving tug of war ensued.

I was half-mortified, half-embarrassed that she was actually faring quite well against my proud manly strength. I tried to convince myself that it was because she had already hit me so many times in the head.

"LET GO!" she screeched, her fighting spirit sparkling in her eyes even in this dimness.

I pulled on the parasol violently, but it was met with equal resistance.

"No! You're going to kill me if I do!" I retorted, again in Chinese.

"Let go! I'm going to kill you!" she replied, using the same tongue as I had.

"That's what I said! That's not exactly very encouraging too!"

"You pathetic scum! Go back to China and tell him I'll kill him for killing my sister!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"AAAAAAGH!" she screamed mighty havoc, tugged on the umbrella a little more forcefully than before, and I was pulled forward.

I adjusted my grip to a firmer bearing as the wild exchange continued, "I don't even know you, Miss!" I said, hoping to knock some sense into this crazy lady. What had been a quest for a customer had turned into a death match with a mentally disabled woman. And she had been a pretty one, at that.

"Don't you 'Miss' me! Let go of my parasol!" she commanded, this time switching back to Japanese mode.

I was hungry, broke, and most unwilling. "Why do you even carry one? It's evening!"

The conviction in her voice when she answered was praiseworthy. "So I can hit people like you on the head when I need to!"

She had said that Japanese phrase so fast in her fury that I didn't catch it. "What?"

"Let go!"

And I did, and she stumbled backwards to destroy the other set of fences on the opposite side of the bridge. For a while, all that could be heard was the sound of something heavy falling down on shallow water.

"Why did you let go!" she roared, but I couldn't see her face, my head being a little above the edge of the bridge. She was too short to reach my line of vision.

"Because you told me to—it's just wrong to disrespect women," I said, standing up. I wondered for a while if I should make a run for it, but then I saw her pathetic form on the other side, cowering over my higher stature.

She shut her eyes tightly, as if awaiting a blow. "Alright, take me to him, but don't hurt me or my friends!" she pleaded.

"Miss, calm down, I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm just a woodblock artist headed for the Capital," I explained, feeling calm start to wash the adrenaline away from my blood. Unfortunately, with the adrenaline level down, I started becoming aware of the disgusting mud and water-stuff clinging onto me, my clothes, and gods—on my hair!

She looked lifeless after I had let that out. "You mean you…"

"Yes, I'm not a thug, assassin, or whatever you were thinking," I finished for her, reaching out my generous hand again to help her up and out of the filthy water.

Understanding overtook her bemused features, and she raised her hand to take a hold of mine.

And she pulled me into the water again.

Being a gentleman hurts.

"Ei—"

"That's for worrying me, you jerk! Don't go thinking you're innocent," she reprimanded, her voice a little shaky. Perhaps I was imagining it, or it might have been water from the river and the trick of the moonlight, but I know I just saw a tear trickle down the side of her face.

I didn't protest for fear of what she might do. I've seen enough of her violent tendencies to judge against crossing her.

Thankfully, she had not hit me in the head with the parasol for not apologizing or whatnot.

It was her who spoke first. She folded her hands on her knees in a casual manner. "Okay, now that we're on equal footing, how do you know that I'm from China?"

I scowled inwardly, knowing that we were far from being on equal terms. She had hit me several times in the head before, remember? Nevertheless, I kept my composure, trying to induce the civilized conversation that seemed to be coming our way.

"I didn't. I spoke in Chinese out of panic; I'm still not used to using Japanese, you see. I… didn't quite expect you to understand what I said, though," I explained.

She chuckled. It was music, if only I could forget that she wanted to kill me earlier. "So you're from South China too?"

My eyes lit up as I remembered that I have not seen any South native since I left the mainland, years ago. "Yes. From Fujian to be exact," I added excitedly.

"Hey, I'm from Fujian too!" she said, for once sounding happy to see me.

"Well then, it's nice to meet you, Miss. I'm known in Japan as Saihitei. And you…?" I offered her my best smile, my head feeling a little light from all the unexpected turns of this day.

She smiled back. "They call me Nuriko here."

-

-

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/to be continued

Notes:

1. Kuruwa Bunsho (A Tale of Love in the Gay Quarters) is a real Kabuki piece. I'll ask Nuriko to tell you the story in the next chapters.

2. Fujian is a big province in southern China, and their dialect is known as Fujianese, or simply Fookien. Some Chinese communities in Asia outside China speak Fookien/Hokkien more than Mandarin. It is another language form based on Mandrin, but with traces of Cantonese phonetics. I have good reason to NOT make Saihitei a Beijing man, trust me.

3. Saihitei said that the Japanese call him 'Saihitei'. Why? Because that is, and forever will be, a mere Japanese-zation of his true Chinese name, which I have no idea of. I didn't want to have to invent a Chinese name for him, because it's lousy, and well, annoying. ("San-Ho!" or "Sai-He!" for Mandarin lovers) Nuriko is supposed to be named Ryuuen in the Japanese tongue, but again, I didn't want to insist that it was "Lao-Ran" or "Liu-Wen" or something. :shudders: As to why Saihitei doesn't go by the name 'Hotohori', I'll tell you pretty soon, ok? p

4. Background info on Kabuki: actors are all male, and female roles are done by men called "Onnagata". Nuriko, in this story, is onnagata. Actors wear heavy paint-make-up, and the performance is composed of a number of dances and songs and narratives.

That's all for now. I promise I'm getting somewhere. There's a plot! Meanwhile, I need feedback. Review, please. :)