Ambiguity
Chapter 9: Courtship?
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Author: Jun-I
Pairings: Kanbei x female Kyuzo
Notes:
- Kyuzo is a woman disguised as a man. At this point, all the samurai assume that Kyuzo is male, with the exception of Kanbei, who is not sure of Kyuzo's gender.
- Since Kanbei at this point isn't sure if Kyuuzou is male or female, I'm using s/he and his/her to refer to Kyuuzou when taking Kanbei's point of view. When taking Kyuuzou's point of view, I use 'she' since she knows she is female.
- Kyuemon's old granny is borrowed from Seven Samurai .
Warnings: See Chapter 1
Disclaimers: See Chapter 1
Two days passed after Kanbei had struck Kyuuzou. She acted as if nothing had happened. As before, Kyuuzou trained her archers during the day, and returned to her great tree to rest for the evening. That evening, she had drawn her knees up to her chest and was preparing to enter a state of half-sleep when Kanbei came up to her. He was carrying a blanket. Kyuuzou did not bother to greet him. The older samurai said nothing. He just placed the blanket on the ground beside her and left.
"A peace offering?" Kyuuzou wondered. "But it is not like Shimada to feel guilty about doing what a leader had to do. He never coddled any of the samurai or the villagers."
The next night, Kanbei brought a straw mat for Kyuuzou. Again, he wordlessly placed the item beside her and left. She thought of telling him not to trouble with all this. She did not want all this attention from him. But the samurai did not bother to speak her thoughts. That guy was probably not even worth the trouble to talk to anyway.
Two nights later, he returned. This time he brought her a pillow. By now, the silent samurai was beginning to question if the items were peace offerings or courtship gifts. Was Kanbei courting her? Did he even know she was a woman? Or did he think she was a man? Kyuuzou could not figure that ronin out. Maybe Kanbei thought she would be easy prey because she was not particularly good-looking and would feel flattered with attention from a strikingly handsome man. Well, Kyuuzou was not flattered. She was irritated.
The icy warrior remembered her one other suitor, Makoto. Moriyama Makoto looked like a man, but everyone knew she was really a woman. Unlike Kyuuzou, she had no need to hide her gender. No one would dare to touch Makoto. She was a general's daughter, raised as a boy. Kyuuzou met the mannish young woman when she served under General Moriyama's command during the war. Like Kanbei, Makoto was striking to look at. But unlike Kanbei, Makoto was the same age as Kyuuzou.
The handsome young samurai was a mid-level officer, a couple of ranks higher than Kyuuzou. Moriyama Makoto guessed pretty quickly that Kyuuzou was not really a man. Kyuuzou did not know how Makoto knew, but she supposed it took a woman to know another woman. But Makoto never revealed Kyuuzou's secret.
Kyuuzou was not in Makoto's direct chain of command. Thus the way was clear for the young officer to express her desire to be more than friends with the quiet, ruby-eyed woman. Kyuuzou, however, did not feel the same way about Makoto. Makoto was an honorable leader, an accomplished soldier, highly literate, and very handsome – qualities that almost never went together. Of course, the 'perfect man' could only be a woman. Kyuuzou smiled wryly at the irony. Many young women paid Kyuuzou's friend much attention, even though they knew she was not a 'real' man. Kyuuzou too found Makoto somewhat attractive, but not on the level of true passion. Then, Kyuuzou thought maybe she could never feel real lust for anyone. It was beyond her.
At first, the blonde was nervous about turning Makoto down. After all, the general's daughter knew her secret, and the disguised samurai feared retaliation from a scorned suitor. But Makoto proved more noble. She took Kyuuzou's refusal graciously, and the two became closer friends than before. Then the young Moriyama was killed on the battlefield. Makoto faced down a Red Spider to gain some time for her retreating unit. The unit escaped but Kyuuzou's friend did not. Kyuuzou was with another unit and had been too far away to come to Makoto's aid.
Kyuuzou wished her friend was here now. Makoto's down-to-earth personality had always been an anchor in times of uncertainty. Faced with the strange ronin Kanbei, nothing seemed so certain for Kyuuzou anymore. For years, nothing and nobody truly had the power to upset her. The silent samurai could detach herself from any subject and analyze it with cool dispassion. But all of that changed the day Shimada Kanbei crossed her path. Kanbei was the one subject that had the power to move her to anger. Against her own will, the cold samurai had given that dark ronin a kind of power over her. A power that no one else had.
Kyuuzou wanted to kill Kanbei, but at the same time, she found herself perversely drawn towards the commander in a way she had not found herself drawn towards the 'perfect man'.
The silent samurai did not want to feel this way. And she did not want any of Kanbei's 'gifts'.
"Can we share a blanket?" Kanbei had said to Shichiroji as they prepared to retire one night.
"Sure," the aide replied. During the war, he had gotten used to sharing the same blanket and drinking from the same bottle with other soldiers. Then he asked Kanbei "But where is your blanket?"
"Someone needed it more." Kanbei replied. He turned his back on Shichiroji and went to sleep. Shichiroji was curious as to who that someone was, but he got the hint that Shimada did not wish to entertain questions.
The next night, Kanbei's sleeping mat was gone. Shichiroji did not think much of the matter. The two men had to lie on the same mat if they were to share the same blanket anyway.
But two nights later, when Kanbei's pillow disappeared, Shichiroji could bear it no longer. "How are we going to share a pillow?" he asked. "It's too small for two!"
"Never mind, I'll do without a pillow." Kanbei replied.
"No, you take my pillow!" Shichiroji responded. The two argued back and forth for a while until Gorobei suggested a solution. They could take turns using the pillow. The two samurai still would not have agreed, but they saw the annoyed looks on Heihachi and Katsushiro's faces. The unspoken request in the eyes of the young ones was "settle your noisy disagreement quickly so that the rest of us can get to sleep."
So the aide and the commander acquiesced to Gorobei's plan.
Before long, Kanbei heard the villagers praising the kindness of Kyuuzou and himself to Kyuemon's granny. Kanbei did not even know the old lady existed until then. It went without saying that the respected leader was more than surprised when others claimed the old woman had benefited from his kindness.
Rikichi told Kanbei the bereft old woman lived by herself in a decrepit house. Her only child had gone to fight in the war so that he could support his widowed mother on a soldier's pay. But he never returned. The old woman raised her son's orphaned offspring Kyuemon alone. Then came the Nobuseri. Kyuemon did not wish to hand over their family's meager supplies, so they killed him. The villagers gave the kinless old woman whatever food they could spare, which was not much. A few days ago, Shino and Kyuuzou had gone to visit the old lady. They brought her a straw mat, a pillow and a blanket, all of which were slightly used, but still better than the old woman's vermin infested bedding, which Shino removed and burned. Kyuuzou said the replacement items were from Kanbei.
When this story came to Kanbei's ears, he could not decide if he was insulted or amused. It was clear that Kyuuzou did not want his attentions or his peace offerings. But yet s/he had turned her/his rejection of his favors into a positive public relations spin for him.
But there was no time for Kanbei to dwell much on personal matters. Soon enough, the Nobuseri attacked in full force one fine morning. The commander heard Gorobei sound the alarm. Immediately, he ordered Katsushiro to escort the children, the elderly and the women to the priestess's house for shelter. That is, except for the women in Heihachi's weapons unit and Kyuuzou's archery unit.
Heihachi's unit fired the giant log with their massive bow. The projectile pierced the eye of one of the Nobuseri's floating bases. The great ship came crashing down. The Yakans tried to cross the chasm into Kanna, but Kyuuzou's archers brought the first wave of attackers down. Kanbei and the other samurai took up their bows and came to lend their strength to Kyuuzou's team. Flaming Yakans fell into the gaping chasm one after another.
Seeing that they could not breach the defenses of Kanna, the Nobuseri retreated. The battle was won but Kanbei knew the war was not over yet. The enemy would be back. So the second part of the samurai's plan was put into action.
When the mechanized robbers returned, the villagers feigned regret at having hired the samurai. Using Kirara, Katsushiro, Gorobei and Kyuuzou as bait, Rikichi persuaded the remaining Nobuseri to accept these captives and a few bags of rice as the villagers' peace offering. What the Nobuseri did not know, of course, was that the remaining four samurai were in hidden in the rice bags. The warriors thus infiltrated the Nobuseri's floating base and proceeded to storm the place. Six samurai decimated many mecha as they could, buying time for Heihachi to enter the ship's control room and destroy it.
Kyuuzou found herself facing a Raiden. The giant mecha swung its sword right at Kyuuzou, but the silent warrior did not flinch even as the blade loomed right overhead. At the last moment, she stepped aside calmly. The sword came crashing down next to her. Then Kyuuzou jumped onto the mecha, slicing her way up its body.
"Kyuuzou! The Raiden's weak spot is its head!" Kanbei called out to her.
Of course she already knew that. Kyuuzou had been on the front lines during the last war. What did Shimada think she was trying to do? She was trying to get to the robot's head. That annoying, arrogant, condescending man! He probably thought she knew nothing. But still, work was work. She had to let this go for now. He would pay later, come time for the duel.
Shichiroji swung himself over to Kyuuzou using his mechanized arm. "Kyuuzou-dono!" he called out. The red warrior grabbed onto Shichiroji as he flew past her. He swung her up and dropped her onto the Raiden's shoulder. Then she unsheathed her twin swords.
Kanbei glanced up from below as Kyuuzou worked through the Raiden's brain with a few lightning-fast flashes of her/his twin blades. Within seconds, the giant mecha fell. Shimada smiled briefly. He could never get tired of watching Kyuuzou's clean, no-nonsense sword work. But it was time to get to work himself. There were more giant robots to slay.
Author's Comment:
The idea that the 'perfect man' can only be personified by a woman comes from Cantonese opera (the Chinese opera native to the province of Guangdong/Canton). The young male romantic lead is always played by an actress, although real men play the secondary male roles.