宮本笙
Miyamoto Shō
"palace, instrument"
A boyish name, Miyamoto Shō is. 'Miyamoto' as in Miyamoto Musashi and 'Shō' as in that one reed instrument. Yet she was perhaps the girliest-girl I've known all my life. Though I never loved her – believe me, there were those who did – in-and-out, subjectively and objectively, true to Kanae's words:
She was very nice.
Very sweet.
Very pretty.
…And from the one moment I saw Miyamoto Shō I was as smitten as a junior is to his benevolent senior.
The door opened soundlessly, and a tall, fine lady appeared, with eyes blue as jade, hair that went down to her shoulders like black branches, and the immediate image of comparison it brought to my mind was that of an adult Makomo, orange, flower-patterned haori and all. She looked not five years older than me, on the border of adolescent and adult, and I could've sworn she smiled when she saw me then because I was smiling and I only smile when other people smile at me, among other rare, rare circumstances.
"Come in," Miyamoto said, and she stepped out of the way.
Kanae and I entered a space where the smell of honey remained but the stifling humidity did not. It was a lobby in theory, but it was not disconnected from the rest of the office parallel the door enough that it was a separate room. We took off our shoes and followed Miyamoto's motion to sit on a bench against a wall. Kanae kicked up her feet and let it rest on the cool metal railing. My legs, stuck from excitement, would not do the same. I observed the bleak interior and saw that it was a study kept in a rudimentary order, neat only for the fact that there was little in it but neat nonetheless. There was an old desk laden with a fabric cloth kept on the far side of it: on top, a vase of flowers, a wad of paper, a dried-up inkwell, a shriveled quill. For reasons which escape me now I found the lattermost, most depressing. Aside from that, there was nothing. Miyamoto came to the middle of the room and talked to us standing up with her hands in her pockets.
"What's your name?"
She was looking at me.
"Giyuu…"
"Surname?"
"Tomioka."
Kanae interrupted. "Didn't Tsubone tell you in the letter–"
"Yes, but I wanted to hear how he says it. So it's Tomioka instead of Tomioka. And Giyuu instead of Giyuu. So Giyuu Tomioka."
She made a dragging sound with my name. Kanae fell silent in her seat.
"You've come to train?" Miyamoto continued.
"Spar," I corrected, falsely.
"Train," Miyamoto corrected, correctly. Then she took a letter out of her pocket and folded it out for me to read. It was written in immaculate script. She trailed the part I was meant to see with her finger.
"…I'm sending Giyuu to train with you…"
"Train, spar, whatever," Kanae said, "it won't take too long, if, you know, that's what you're worried about. Like, one chapter… or two..."
"But how many words will it be?" Miyamoto asked. Then she shook her head. "No. No matter. What were we talking about? Oh, training. First of all –"
She got real close to me.
"You don't breathe like a normal person… I'm guessing you've mastered Total Concentration Breathing: Constant?"
"C-come again?" I said.
"Total Concentration Breathing: Constant."
A definition did not follow, so I assumed that she assumed that I knew. Nonetheless, I realised this too late, and blew my cover by asking. Miyamoto pulled away.
"You don't know what that is?" she mused. "Why would Tsubone get a Tsuguko who doesn't know what that is…? Oh, did I say that too loud? Sorry. Anyway, it's when you do Total Concentration Breathing… constantly. 24/7. When you're awake and when you're asleep. Were you… really not able to make that connection?"
"I figured that it'd only make sense if I trained to improve how long I can keep doing a breath, but I never attributed any name to it…" Actually, it was Youma who came up with the idea. So it was a white lie.
"Mm-hmm. That's good. But then how long can you do it for?"
"…Max half-an-hour."
"Oh no," Miyamoto and Kanae trembled, simultaneously. "That's not good at all." The humiliation came down on me like lightning. I became a little country in my seat caught between these two empire-ical, evil women.
"But we won't rectify that," Miyamoto said. "Half-an-hour's well enough, for now. Good enough for what I'm about to do. Follow me."
She made a come, come motion to Kanae and I and padded out the door from where we came. Back in the searing outback and on a jungle road, she made a right, a left, another left, right, right, and then I lost track. Like this, swallowed in wild nature and uncertain of our destination, we talked.
Transcript of a conversation between Giyuu Tomioka, Miyamoto Shō and Kanae Kochou
GIYUU
Was that your office just now?
MIYAMOTO
Yeah.
GIYUU
…What kind of work you do?
MIYAMOTO
Whatever work my Hashira does. For example, Tsubone's in charge of the medical faculty. So she's slowly pushing over responsibility to Kanae, her Tsuguko. As for me, my Hashira's in charge of admin'ing this organisation, so I help him with paperwork and things…
GIYUU
What? Her Tsuguko?
KANAE
Uh-huh. A Hashira can have two Tsuguko at a time, did you know? But max two. And they don't have to practice the same breath style, either.
GIYUU
Then what's Shinobu?
KANAE
An informal kind of Tsuguko. I donno. Nobody's really bothered to give a label.
GIYUU
By the way, Miyamoto, whose Tsuguko are you?
MIYAMOTO
A Hashira's.
GIYUU
…
MIYAMOTO
A joke. I'll tell you later.
GIYUU
At least, what breath style do you use?
MIYAMOTO
Look up. What's there?
GIYUU
The sky? Breath… of the sky?
MIYAMOTO
No! That sounds stupid! But hold that thought…
"Because we've arrived."
An interminable field of patchwork wooden beams, white cord and the clothes which hung on them came before us, and the air became cool and suddenly we couldn't feel the humidity anymore.
"This is where the washing's hanged to dry," Miyamoto explained, pointing over. "Look. That's your thing."
The space was skinned from the surface of the jungle. Almost in sync, clothes, blankets, whatever, fluttered with the wind on the lines, over our heads as we weaved our way through the laundry-posts, following Miyamoto. Then she stopped and pulled off a red garment from above her. In her hands, she extended it to me.
"Yours, right?" she said.
"What?" I replied.
"A red haori… or kimono, whatever." She pinched the corners and pulled it out. "See?" And indeed it was fully red.
"No, no," I said. "I have a half-half haori. Half green-and-yellow… half red."
"But that was with you," Kanae added. "When Shinobu dragged you in. A red haori. Nothing else."
Was it somehow left on the street? Somehow mixed up with someone else's laundry? I wouldn't know. Perhaps it was the lack of an explicit mentioning of the haori's condition that I could have chosen not to pay too much mind to it. Maybe I shouldn't have, considering sentimental value and all that, but it didn't stop me. I still had the other halves of them, so I'd just weave a new one, I reckoned.
"But just take it, to check," Miyamoto said, and she gave it to me. I felt it in my hands and the texture was strikingly similar to my own, yes, but most haori were. Then I turned it inside out, and saw embroidered in the mantle of it the all-too familiar three kanji:
報怨 孙
Baoyuan Sun
Or –
The name my sister received when she was due to be married.
"Youma," I once asked. "What's this word mean, here?" I folded the haori out, and showed him the characters crocheted in white linen for purity.
"That ain't no word," he replied. "That's a name." Then he sat up straight and told me to do the same.
"First, read it out to me," Youma said.
"It's… 'retribution' something," I said. "I can't read all of it."
"That's 'cause it's Chinese," he explained. "Long ago we borrowed half our writing from them. And only some characters. And what we do share doesn't necessarily have the same meaning in either language."
"Then what is it?" I asked.
"The name she got when she was engaged, per custom. She didn't tell me much, but apparently… and only apparently… it's the name of some king who lived way back when. The king – of a great nation. A king she was a fan of. Though it did take her a while to decide on that engagement name, and get it embroidered…" And that was that.
Great nation, huh?
I remember hearing something along those lines.
It was in this really realistic dream…
Where I was watching myself fight…
Fight Nishimon.
And he kept on uttering this one phrase:
"Our mission…"
His mission what?
"Our mission…
to restore
the great nation
of Yan."
"In any case… lower and Upper…" Miyamoto said. "This is also where we'll be training. Or sparring. Pick one, and stick with it."
Miyamoto left her haori to Kanae and rolled up her sleeves and her forearms were so uncannily powerful it shocked me, and because I was a fool when I was younger, the realisation hit me only then: that I had become a Tsuguko through course of misunderstanding, and that because of it I was now due to fight someone I had no chance of beating.
But I'll say it again.
Where do I get off being a pessimist?
I'm a man, right?
And right now – the only way to validate that is to staunch these hands and face the enemy.
Q: what determines the winner of the sparring session?
A: get your opponent down without hitting any of the washing poles.
With the furious velocity of predator on prey Kanae threw down her arms to start the fight, and with the equally furious velocity of prey fleeing from predator, Miyamoto came forward and swept my one foot from the ground with her own, and nearly my other if not for her hair being caught in one of the lines.
Instead of taking the chance to down her, I sped away. Miyamoto freed herself and gave me this 'I won't do that again/let that happen again' look and began to chase me. She was deadly quick. She had punches like bullets and kicks like sweeping swords. There wasn't the cliché of 'they were too fast for me to see', because Miyamoto's movements could be seen if I stood still, but exactly that. Being still would mean the end for me, I inferred, and thus I had no choice but to flee.
I tumbled into the women's section of the laundry yard and suddenly I was very wary of the clothing around me, and this slowed me down immensely, but I managed to escape back into the men's section and suddenly Miyamoto was very wary of the clothing around her, and this slowed her down immensely. Then we came into the bedding area and all was equal game again. Cue a standstill.
"You've done nothing but run…" Miyamoto said. "But you're all sweaty now. And slowing down. You're tired."
"You too…" I pointed out.
"I'm doing it 'cause it's summer. You're doing it 'cause you're tired. We are not the same. We should be, but… were you really the one who beat Lower Moon One?"
"Uh, yeah?"
"Then come on!" she shouted. With a final force of irritation she dived forward onto her hands and in a freakish display of human fitness, kicked my arms away. Now what came next I could not see. All that could be felt was a buckling sensation in my legs, then a falling one, and then the crashing of earth against my cheek and side. Instinctively I had closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I saw Miyamoto standing above me, Kanae in the far corner, myself on the ground, and I realised I had lost.
"Giyuu!"
A girly little voice called out to me, and I knew at once who it was. So, Shinobu again.
"I heard everything. You're back from Miyamoto?"
I'm back at the Endou estate, in the lobby of the house proper, and Shinobu's sat there, waiting for something or someone, me or another.
"Back…" I repeated. Then I processed it. "Yes, I'm back."
"What's wrong? You ti-red?"
I won't lie when I say it was good to see her. Neither will I lie when I say the fatigue of a day spent sleeping and a day spent training had finally caught up to me. After the first match, Miyamoto and I battled five more times, and I lost all. Only halfway through the sixth, she threw down her hands, declared the 7 o'clock time, and told me to go 'home'. And by the tenth hour of the next day, I was to reappear in that laundry field to do everything over again.
"Oh, oh, by the way..." Shinobu said to me. "You're gonna be staying here from now on."
"What?" I replied, without thinking.
"You knew that, right?" she continued. "Can I show you your room? It can be me or Kanae, but I wanna."
"It'll be you," Kanae said. "I've got… work to do. Uh, but I'll go for supper with you when you're done. Bye. Enjoy." And she was gone.
"Follow me!" Shinobu said, and her presence was so that it was as if she was tugging my hand, and I could not refuse.
The second floor.
The third.
A door.
"Here it is," said Shinobu.
And she opened it.
First I noticed the emptiness. Loud, and full. Then the lights went on and at once the solitude disappeared. I was called to the middle of the bare room of earthen mats and wooden walls and looking around, it inexplicably brought to mind the image of Miyamoto's office. But this was different.
"That's your bed," Shinobu said, and she pointed to the corner of the room, where it lay. "If you prefer a futon, just say."
"A bed's fine."
"And there's your bathroom," she continued. Bathroom? She opened a shutter parallel the bed and a glowing porcelain interior came spilling out. Amenities I could not name stacked the marble shelves, and there was a washbasin, a bath, a mirror, a fancy razor, a vase of plastic flowers that had water in it, among other things. It was all so excessively modern. Had it been prepared for me?
"Speaking of that… what products do you use?" Shinobu asked, eyeing me up. "Your skin's so…" she didn't finish, but I knew what she meant.
"…Soap," I replied.
"What kinda soap?"
"The green one."
"But that's laundry soap."
"It is?"
"And for your hair?"
"Also soap."
Shinobu left it there, with this mildly bewildered expression. We went back to the section of wall opposite the door and she placed her hand on it. Then she gripped it and pulled it open and I saw it was a shutter. Outside, a balcony.
"Haven't you noticed, yet?" she said. "This is where we talked a few days ago."
"With the tea and stuff," I added. "I remember now."
Now that we were in the coolness of the outside, only then did I realised the stagnant air of the inside. I took some long breaths and paced around the porch a few, before I stopped when I observed that Shinobu did not do the same. Instead, she was looking at me.
"You like it?" she asked then.
"Yeah."
"But it's so empty."
"Still like it."
"If you say so…" Shinobu replied. "But we'll go furniture shopping soon, anyway."
"'We'll'…" I murmured. "We'll? Us and Tsubone? By the way, where's Tsubone?"
"Out working late. Like Kanae. But Kanae can do it at home. Tsubone has to be out there. 'Cause, ya know, a boss can't be keeping on their high horse, away from all the real work…"
A noble philosophy. Where'd she learn that?
"…according to her."
I see.
"Then when she gets back I ought to thank her," I said. But Shinobu didn't reply, only continued to stare.
"Giyuu, you're…"
And only when I realised why did she speak again:
"You're smiling, Giyuu," she said. "I think that's the first time I've ever seen you really smile."
8 o'clock.
Supper.
A packed restaurant, at the ends of town.
A 'family restaurant', so to speak.
"This is where we normally have supper…" Kanae said. "When Tsubone's not around."
"Since, who wants to cook?" Shinobu added.
The inside's dizzying, crammed, hazy, bustling, and we sidestepped our way through crowds to a narrow, empty table for three, and took our seats.
"Strange, isn't it?" Shinobu said. "This table's our usual. It's always empty. No matter how busy it is. Like… God or whoever above tells people not to sit here."
We placed our orders and sat with shifting hands a while, not knowing what quite to say. I pretended to be interested in the goings of the horde around us, excited but unsure on how to approach Shinobu, but most of all Kanae. No matter where I looked my eyes kept falling back to her, and I wondered, only dared to wonder, just what kind of look it was. There was a moment she caught me – which later, in bed, I'd replay many times over before my eyes – and I thought again, if the smile I saw brush over her face was real, a figment, a bit of both, or neither. Then she suddenly got up, the tension fell, and Kanae disappeared into the crowd for parts unknown.
"How was Miyamoto?" Shinobu took the chance to ask.
"Decent," I replied, still looking the other way.
"Not so good?" Shinobu reiterated.
"Not so good," I confirmed. I turned to her. "Kanae… your sister… said a lot of nice things about her."
"And she is nice, right?"
"She…" – why did I hesitate to say it? – "She's nice, yeah. But I don't think she's happy with me."
Shinobu frowned. "Impossible."
"She isn't happy 'cause I can't do TCL constant."
"Neither can I," Shinobu replied. "But she likes me." And it shocked me such that I would not – could not – reply it, and she went on.
"Well, it's not really like that... I actually can do it 24/7 – am doing it right now – but the way I got here… was almost like cheating."
Her hands go up to her mouth for a moment, like to catch back what she said.
"No. You didn't hear."
"I did," I replied. "I… won't tell anyone." But if I was honest I wanted to know for my
own motives, not to relieve the weight on her. Her tightened expression went slack again and she began to talk.
"It's this thing called 'artificial alveoli expansion'. The alveoli are the sacks in your lungs where the air blows up into when you breathe in. A.K.A., where they're temporarily stored between the cycle of inspiration and expiration. The max size to which they can expand, or potential volume, and the number of them determine your lung capacity. You can't increase the number, but you can increase the max volume. The way you do that… is to pump air into your lungs. To the furthest extent you can. Until you can't hold it no more. With a funnel that reaches down your throat. I did that.
Since the alveoli walls are kind of stretchy… a bit like skin… after repeated expansion they'll eventually 'remember' their shape, and so gain a greater potential volume, thus being able to hold more air with each breath. That is the concept of AAE. And I know it works because I have gone through it."
Trivia: limitations in attaining Total Concentration Breathing: Constant
The singular main obstacle for people trying to master TCB: Constant is not having a large enough lung capacity, and thus running out of air to sustain their elevated state before their next scheduled breath. Therefore, to rectify this means to enable constant. Lung capacity can be increased through natural measures, and generally this is the only way, but there are other less-documented methods that have remained in obscurity because of the stigma they carry.
"By the way, who stabbed me?"
Kanae came back to the table with drinks and my and Shinobu's conversation had to be put off. Though to meet her with nothing but sustained silence would be suspicious, I thought, since she most likely saw us talking, so I cleverly came up with that question to distract the quiet, and it wasn't as if I didn't want to know, either.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, but the killer's still out there," Kanae said. "But don't say anything." And she hushed me.
"Nishimon…" Shinobu picked up. For one reason or another, there was guilt when she spoke. "Nishimon wasn't it. The day after he died, another body was found. Disemboweled in that same Asclepius pattern. A snake hammered to a post nearby. Tengenmon… Tengen was right."
"And it was most likely the real convict who tried to kill you," Kanae finished. "Maybe as revenge for taking down the man who was posing as him, and inadvertently protecting his identity. In any case, the Demon Slayers are still after him, but the investigation's losing steam. The higher-ups still want to go through with it, though. That's what Tsubone says."
"But why–" I stammered, but Kanae wouldn't have it. She said there were some things I didn't have to know and that was one of them. And we left it there. The food came and we had our meals and when we were done I set my hands on the table, for no reason, and Shinobu pointed to it and asked this:
"Why – is your right hand so much bigger than your left?"
Tomorrow came.
Here I am, lying on the ground again.
Sweet earth below me, wide sky before me.
Yet all that could be felt was a disappointment.
"It's called the Breath of the Cloud," Miyamoto said, and I knew at once what she was referring to. "The breath style I use. It's really Mist Breathing, 'cause my Hashira's the Mist Hashira, but mist is such a depressing thing. So rather cloud."
She's standing over me, too looking up.
"It's derived from Water Breathing. Some people like to say Wind Breathing, but that ain't true. So our styles are pretty similar. And what's why I'm in a position to criticise you, Giyuu. You're too stagnant. You don't move. You aren't water, but ice. And even though ice is hard, it's brittle. You're brittle. And that's why you fall so easily."
"I do move…"
"Yes, but only backwards. You'll never win like that. And if you think you can only move backwards then you're wrong. Go home, and think about it."
I did not go home, but instead made leeway to the medical faculty. I had been accustomed to this place long enough that I was beginning to remember the layout of it, and I got there easily, in good time. Alone I ambled through the corridors and often I would stop and ask myself what I was looking for, only that I couldn't and would never have an answer because I was not looking for anything and was only here for the sake of being here.
A familiar hallway came; the one with Kanae's office. But I swung inside and saw Shinobu sitting there, in that creaking metal chair. She noticed me instantly and greeted me, and the chance to leave was gone with that. Still I felt guilt for wanting to desert my end of the promise I made to her, two days ago. But still I sat down, still I put my hands on my lap, still was the one to incite the conversation.
"What am I doing?" she repeated, and she glossed over a book she was holding in her hands. "Studying. Studying the anatomy of the lung, specifically."
She pointed to two posters on the wall. One was an illustration of the lung; the other, a close-up of a section of it. The latter had conglomerations of rice-like bulbs shaped into stems all around, and it felt freaky to imagine that inside of me.
"You see those little sack things?" Shinobu said. "They're…"
"The alveoli," I answered. "You told me yesterday."
"I did…" she murmured. "Yes, I did. But you haven't said that I've done it to anyone, have you?!"
No, no, Shinobu. I waved her off and she calmed down.
"By the way, how's your sparring going?" she asked.
"Same old…" I replied.
"It's only been two days."
"But two days were enough. Nothing'll change at this rate."
Indeed, because it only took such a time for me to come up with an ultimatum: that even if I were to one day beat Miyamoto, it would be out of adaptation, not out of the gaining of power. I would adapt to the way she moved and by stroke of luck and muscle memory, I would topple her. But come any other opponent, and I'd go fresh into the fight just like I'd done the first time with Miyamoto. That was the unavoidable reality.
"Pessimist," Shinobu spat. "Take me, for example, I've never been able to cut off…"
"Cut off what?" I asked, but she refused to finish.
"No, that isn't a good example. But you're strong, Giyuu. What's stopping you?"
"I ain't strong."
"You're a boy. You're tall and still growing. You killed Nishimon. You're strong," she reiterated. There was equal parts emphasis and equal parts bitterness in her tone.
"You're still growing, too." I tried to be diplomatic. "You're twelve. You're… still young. Your puberty's still coming, I think?" But more and more I was feeding a dead, irritable fire. She slammed her fancy fountain pen down and stormed out, though I followed her. Immature as ever, yes, but I felt bad for being the one to instigate it. Down some hallway, I called out to her again.
"I don't have any memory of the fight, you know," I said. "With Nishimon."
She didn't reply, and starts walking faster. I continued.
"But I had this dream where I thought I saw myself battling him. And it was really real-feeling… ya dig?"
"…No."
"I don't either. Because… 'cause… I wasn't the one to kill him."
Her reply was instant:
"Don't lie. That's not what your crow said."
It hit me then that I had a talking bird who followed me everywhere, at all times.
"Oh…" – it came as a realisation to me, and my own doubts over the fight were busted, but not gone – "…yeah, he was there. And what else did he say?"
"Nothing."
"Come on," I pleaded.
"Nothing important."
"But there was something."
"I'm not telling."
"Why?"
"Just not telling!" Her head was already far in the clouds, way above the land of reason. I decided then that it was no use to pursue her any longer, and I stopped silently in the hall and watched as the distance between us grew, until she turned round the corner and she could not be seen anymore and with it, the spirit of gross childishness that could not be explained.
That night at a supper unattended by Shinobu, Nisegami Youma appeared before me at the table for the first time in two days. Kanae had momentarily fluttered off of for drinks, unaware of her sister's midday moodiness, and in her stead he sat. His arms were folded over each other. He was reclined into the chair. He was not smiling.
"Congrats on becoming a Tsuguko," he said, though he did not sound convinced. "Sorry I wasn't here to see it. I was busy."
Busy with what, I asked, but I would not remember his answer.
"The girl's mad at you. Shinobu. That much I know, from your thoughts. But why exactly?" he asked.
"She said I was strong. I said I wasn't. This offended her," I droned. My hands press my temple. "It makes no sense. She's crazy."
"Don't go calling people out. You were the same way when you were twelve," Youma said. "But why reject a compliment in the first place? Even if it isn't true. You weren't doing it for humility, I'm sure."
"'Cause I'm not strong."
"Okay. But decree now that whether you're strong or not is beside the point. Rather, why does affirming your 'weakness' matter to you?"
I eyed him with teenage bitterness. "That's a stupid question."
"If it's stupid, then it's simple. A simple answer. So answer."
Relenting, like him I leaned into my chair to think about it for a moment. After an awkward quiet interrupted by nothing but the repeated, halting utterances of the first words of my answer, my reply came simply:
"I guess I don't wanna delude her."
"That's it," Youma said, and for the first time he smiled. "You're sweet on her."
Perhaps because I liked that word, sweet, I felt no hostility towards it. I recognised the truth of it, the magnitude of it; that inadvertently I had softened up to her, that rejecting her dream was no longer an option. I had been ensnared in a pleasant trap I did not necessarily wish to escape; my body would not go, because my heart refused to command it so and because my mind was someplace else. That is why I feared the word 'strong'.
I remembered her words then. She told me that because I was strong, I ought to join her on her quest to see the world. She forced the term on me, and I was too weak to refuse. Or maybe just too empathetic. Or perhaps, perhaps –
I saw something –
I could attach myself to.
But if only someone during the next seven years of that life would have dared to tell me just what kind of attachment it was.
Though take that however you will. Subjectively, or objectively.
Cue Kanae again.
Our meal done and dusted.
Leaving the restaurant.
In the alleyway that I vaguely remember as the one in which I was conked, Youma appeared from a shadow I passed, and his presence shocked me because anything did there, and he followed me and began talking again.
"Rather don't ask Shinobu anymore for what the crow said." And he came forward and put on his hand on my shoulder and shook me wildly. "But if you want my opinion, I think you're strong."
How so, I thought, and there was a silence, though I knew what he would say next.
"Because," Youma replied. "You were the one who killed Nishimon, after all."
Because I was the one who killed Nishimon Uzui.
Because I was the one to kill them all.
For God's in his drawing room, and all's set with the world.
And even God has to play by his own rules.
Because to receive something that you think is of value you must give something that the world deems as equal in value.
And when the day came I would try to preserve something that was of indispensable magnitude to me; that which I thought God saw as equally important –
But that which the world deemed of relative unimportance –
Was the day the gears of the finale began to turn.
Shinobu was there the next morning, in the hallway, apologetic pride strewn over her face. She looked torn, but came forward with a hung down head and muttered something along the lines of 'sorry for yesterday', and though I truly felt there was no need for apologising, I accepted for the sake of her conscience and all was well again.
That day she accompanied me to Miyamoto. On the outskirts of the laundry-grounds, where we would not be spotted yet, I watched with resolve the lady lingering between the sheets. There was an instant I thought she saw me, and I forced myself forward. But Shinobu grabbed me backwards and told me this:
"There was something the crow said," she said. "Something weird."
"What?" I replied.
"You wanted to know, right? Yesterday. I'm telling you now."
"Later, Shinobu."
"Not later, now!"
Because by then Youma's words still hung in me. Don't ask Shinobu anymore for what the crow said. And by his mandate, passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive, I wasn't going to refuse. But there was no space in time for me to say no. I had already been pulled down; Shinobu was already on her toes. And in my ear, she imparted to me her first revelation among many others to come:
"He said that during the fight, Nishimon called you Nisegami Youma."
