Chapter 2, Part 3 / Taking Things, One Step at a Time
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Dinner was served as a filet mignon with a side of rice and stir-fried vegetables that had a tang of sweetness and spice mixed into it. For Ikaruga and Murasame, this looked like a regular dinner service for them, and this hadn't involved what desserts the chefs had prepared for once they were finished. Isayuki, on the other hand, had his eyes sparkling at his plate the entire time, as if he had never seen such delicacy before. He was practically drooling until Murasame reminded him to correct his posture.
Ikaruga and Murasame clapped their hands together, prompting Isayuki to clumsily follow.
"Thanks for the food."
Isayuki immediately ignored the spoon, the knife and the chopsticks. He lunged forwards and reached for the food with his hands.
It was lucky that Murasame noticed his odd movements beforehand and caught his arm before Isayuki could get his hands dirty. All he could muster was to slap Isayuki's hand away from his lack of coordination, but it got the message across. At least, after the third time Isayuki tried to touch the food with his bare hands.
While Murasame kept a face of scrutiny over Isayuki's lack of table manners, all the boy did was innocently look back at his teacher as if he wasn't sure why he was stopped.
"Uhm, Master Murasame? Is there a problem?"
"Yeah. What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm… trying to eat? It's a bit difficult for me to do that if you keep slapping my hand away from the food. It looks too delicious to pass up, but…" Isayuki straightened up with a gasp. "Wait, is this part of my training? To resist the temptation?"
"What!? No! What type of stupid training exercise is that!?" Murasame slammed the table before pointing his finger at Isayuki. "I'm asking you why you're not using the utensils to pick up the food! You're eating like you're some sort of street orphan, digging through the garbage!"
"Huh? These things?"
Isayuki picked up the silverware and inspected them.
"The spoon is for soup, no? And I don't see any soup at the table. And why do we even need a knife at the table? Are we fighting someone? And what are these two sticks for?"
There was a lot to unravel there.
Murasame bit his lips to calm himself for a minute, realizing this was the price to pay in order to keep someone who earnestly believed in his strengths around. If this was the price for people looking up to him in the world, maybe it would have been nicer to keep the status quo as it currently was.
"First of all, spoons are not only for soup. It's for anything you can scoop up with that spoon, like rice or a small piece of meat. Second, the knife is to cut the meat apart for said smaller pieces. We're not fighting anyone here. And third—"
"The food doesn't come cut for us? I thought you said that the food was to be prepared already."
"It is prepared. You cut it yourself, so that the meat juices stay inside for longer. If the chefs did it in the kitchen, the juices would run dry quicker and it wouldn't taste as good."
Murasame narrowed his eyes.
"Also, do not cut me off again."
Isayuki stiffened. "O-Of course, Master Murasame! I'm sorry!"
"Where was I? Oh, right. The two sticks over there are called chopsticks. You hold them like this." Murasame grabbed his chopsticks and held them in front of Isayuki. "You leverage the two sticks on a finger in order to pick whatever you want to pick up."
Luckily for Murasame, Isayuki was quick to learn how to use chopsticks. It was still a little surprising though. Even if Isayuki's memories had vanished, those types of motor skills should still be retained in his subconsciousness. That is, unless he genuinely never learned how to use chopsticks before he lost his memories, but that was a weird thing to think about.
Murasame brushed it off once Isayuki was starting to eat his food like a normal person. There was still the conversation with his sister that he needed to deal with, so as Isayuki was distracted by the food, Murasame turned to speak with Ikaruga. He was worried that Isayuki was painting a bad image for himself already, but it seemed like Ikaruga was somewhat amused.
"You sure have your work cut out for you."
"It's whatever."
Ikaruga glanced over to Isayuki who felt the gaze. It seemed like he took it as ominously, freezing up as if he was caught doing something wrong. He then immediately broke eye contact, doing his best to ignore her, but the sweat on his forehead told a different story. Even with the quick explanation, it would appear that Isayuki was somewhat scared by Ikaruga's presence.
"You should probably start with what happened that night, Murasame. I don't think it's a coincidence that the person you deemed as your assistant and your student suddenly showed up in our manor, unannounced like that."
"Sure, but I'll have to back the time frame up by a few hours." Murasame briefly sliced a piece of his filet mignon and tossed it into his mouth. "I met him while I was training earlier that day, but he wasn't someone I could call my student yet."
Murasame explained the entire story as to how they both met, leaving very little out of it. There was how he found Isayuki drowning in the river, followed by bringing him to the hospital, and then how Isayuki apparently snuck into the manor, simply trying to follow him around to see if he could help out in his missing memories. Once there, Motoyasu fast-forwarded to his meeting with the Tengu Foundation and Isayuki's involvement with it, leading up to when they were able to meet back up with Ikaruga.
However, Murasame left out the chains, the scythe and the unnatural regeneration ability. Even the last one hadn't been recorded by the doctors because he healed up before he could even be tended to by the hospital. He was trying to hide it, but it seemed so absurd that it might have been better to leave it out for now, such that Ikaruga can understand what happened a little better.
Murasame glanced over to Isayuki out of the corner of his eye. The brief topic made him wonder where the chains and the scythe went. In fact, where did those chains even come from to begin with?
"Looking at Isayuki, he doesn't look like someone who lost his memories. In fact, he looks rather happy-go-lucky about it."
"Yeah, that's the type of person the kid is. Anyways, I'm going to be keeping him here until further notice. With someone like that, I think it's better to put him close by, just in case anything happens to him. I'm not so certain he can take care of himself, but he will make for a worthy investment. Hopefully, that's fine with you."
"Probably not the whole investment deal, but I am fine with letting him stay here. He doesn't have any family members that he can remember about and the hospital doesn't have any records of him. Have you considering searching the—"
"—missing people list?" Murasame nodded. "What do you think I was doing during my hospital stay? If I have the internet and I have a laptop I can use, work is going to be done. Who the hell do you think I am? Murasame Houou does not slack off whenever he needs to work."
It would be bad manners to pull out his phone, but there wasn't any other way to get the answer across as to how much searching he did without showing like he was gloating.
"Barely anyone matched the kid's description. Even less for people in Japan."
"Hold on." Ikaruga widened her eyes. "Did you check worldwide?"
"Only the nearby countries. Even something like that would be difficult for me in a short amount of time. I did make some calls from the hospital to see if I can expand the search, but I haven't heard anything noteworthy back yet."
"And yet, you still haven't come to a match that was close enough?"
Murasame grunted. "I asked the nurses to grab samples of the kid for me, just to see if I can narrow down the list, but I came up with nothing. It's like he suddenly showed up one day out of thin air. That would explain why he wouldn't have his memories, if he didn't have any to begin with, but that's just some crazy theory that cooked up in my frustrations."
While Ikaruga knew her brother was a hard worker at heart despite what his outward attitude might suggest, she didn't think he would have gone this far for someone that was practically a stranger. The two of them must have been able to hit it off perfectly for Murasame to be invested in Isayuki's situation already, but she realized that even if she brought it up, he might simply dismiss those ideas.
"Well, it's not like it matters," Murasame shrugged, then bit down on a clump of rice. "The kid is my student and my assistant right now. Might even be upgraded to a bodyguard if he learns enough. Doing more than what I've already done might make it a disadvantage for me. Especially because I've got a student of my own before you did, my dear sister."
Ikaruga giggled. "I suppose you have the upper hand this time around, brother."
She sliced a piece of the filet off carefully and neatly, but Ikaruga held herself for a brief moment, looking back up to her brother.
"Murasame? I've been wondering what you meant by Isayuki being a student. If it was simply being an assistant at the company, I would understand that better, but being a student would imply that he's learning something from you? What, perchance, would he be learning?"
"Are you saying that he's got nothing to learn from me?"
"Of course not, but does he know about the underside of our family connections? Or at least, something regarding those lines?"
Although Ikaruga was vague about it, just in case, her worries were met with her brother's nonchalant attitude. "The kid doesn't even know what a shinobi is, but he does look up to me as someone that is powerful and strong! After all, I was the one that saved him from the Tengu Foundation! That's what he wants to learn about! You don't need to be a shinobi to learn about strength! We even got finished with a training session before crossing with you and I'd say it went pretty well!"
Suddenly, Ikaruga was rather concerned, but her poker face didn't show it. That sort of expression apparently runs in the family, but for Murasame, it emerged in its own special way as shown now.
"That is to say," Ikaruga continued, "he isn't one?"
Murasame's tone slowed down a bit, getting off his high horse.
"Nah. Even if he's got some fancy, if not straight-forward, moves, I don't even think he had anything to do with the shinobi world before he lost his memories. He even said himself that fighting doesn't come naturally to him, but my brilliant commands helped him ease into it quickly."
"Have you talked to Father about it?" Ikaruga asked, ignoring that last part.
"I'll mention it if I feel like it. We have to talk about the Tengu Foundation and the shenanigans they pulled on me." Murasame leaned in to grab another bite. "By the way, thanks for updating him when I was stuck in the hospital."
"It was my pleasure. It was quite the change of pace."
"Hmm? What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Ah, don't mind me, brother. I was merely speaking aloud to myself."
"Well, don't make it a habit," Murasame grumbled.
Dinner continued for a bit, having Ikaruga and Murasame make small talk as Isayuki devoured his meal in silence. Ikaruga did try to communicate with Isayuki, but simple and short answers were all that she received from him. Even when trying to reach out with her pleasantness, Isayuki refused to accept Ikaruga as anything other than the demon that tried to kill him.
Even if Isayuki was practically immortal.
Murasame wondered if he could shake that unwarranted cowardness out of him. Back when they were fighting Haruto, Isayuki looked as if he could take down anything in his path, but it felt like he could still get spooked by almost anything that would represent a danger to any other normal person.
"How strong is Isayuki, by the way?"
"What do you mean?"
"I can't simply ignore the fact that he made it through our security system, after all."
Murasame wasn't sure how to explain the idea that Isayuki did not, in fact, dodge them, but actually tanked through whatever threats were launched his way. The cameras must have been able to catch the video of Isayuki being attacked, but Ikaruga wasn't comprehending how he could have survived through all of it without having himself hindered.
"I don't know. He said it was easy enough, but he's a pretty tough cookie. He took an attack from you at the Tengu Foundation, right?"
"Was it really that easy?"
"Don't ask me. I told you that I don't know. Go talk to him about it."
"That's a bit of an unfair request, considering the bad first impression I've made on him."
"Not my problem. I don't feel like asking either, since I'm not that invested in the security issue, but if the kid was able to get through it, we should definitely consider some updates. Nothing can go wrong with a stronger system and it's not like we can't afford it."
"I suppose you're right…"
If something like that could be easily swept underneath a rug, that would be Murasame's ideal situation. He really didn't want that entire night to be brought up ever again, purely out of embarrassment.
"I think the security system is still good for what it's worth though. The kid was probably lucky in how he tackled it that night, but that's just my opinion."
"I'll take that into account when I'm consulting about it with the security team."
Once dinner was finished, the plates were collected by the chefs and shortly after, desserts were brought out. It was a crumble, baked with an assortment of fruit that all blended together in a pleasant aroma. Like the filet mignon, Isayuki's eyes sparkled as he was drooling over the food once again.
"Master Murasame! Is there some sort of special occasion today!? Why are we having such amazing food for dinner!?"
"Amazing food? What are you talking about? I think this is pretty normal."
"Normal for our standards, I suppose," Ikaruga added. "Many people aren't fortunate to have meals like this everyday, but in our case, we have the opportunity to do so, thanks to our kitchen staff. Even if we take this for granted, we have to know where to give thanks and never forget the effort people use to get food in front of us."
Isayuki gulped, trying not to pay attention to Ikaruga's dialogue. He wasn't even trying to listen to what she was saying and at this point, Murasame felt like Isayuki needed to learn how to let by-gones be by-gones, even if she tried to kill him once. For the hell of it, Murasame was relatively certain that one of Ikaruga's friends was in a position to try and kill her before when they hadn't known each other.
"Hey, kid. Learn to play nice with my sister. Now that she knows that you're not an enemy, she won't bite you. She's not some sort of dog, infested with rabies and disease."
"Why do I have mixed feelings about that sentence?"
"In any case, you'll obviously be living here with me for the time being, meaning that you'll also be living with Ikaruga. I don't want you to constantly freeze up every time you two cross paths in the hallway or anything. I'm sure that would stir up problems before long."
"... Can I eat dessert now?"
Murasame dropped his forehead into his palms. From any angle Murasame looked at it, there wasn't any reason to be scared of her. She even apologized already for drawing her sword, something that she didn't have to do since she was in the right of protecting her home.
"It's fine, Murasame. It doesn't bother me in the slightest."
"Are you sure about that? This kid is my assistant, so if I demand it, he'll have to put in some amount of effort to heed my request."
"I don't think that's what an assistant is entirely for…"
"Whatever, you wouldn't understand. You don't have an assistant of your own."
Isayuki went on to finish his dessert, salivating at every bite, while Murasame and Ikaruga finished their fruit crumble at an average pace. By the time they had eaten a quarter, Isayuki was already done with it. The chefs took their plates and Ikaruga went her separate way with Murasame and Isayuki. She had some studying to do, so it was best to leave her alone for the rest of the night.
It was optimal for Murasame as well, considering the call he had to make.
First, Murasame went ahead and showed Isayuki his new room. It was merely a guest room to be repurpose as a personal room, but even as it lacked some of those details, Isayuki was happy to see a place where he could rest. He walked up to the fancy bed, pressing his hands against it like a kneading cat. Even his hair antenna had been wagging like a dog, amazed by the softness.
"And this room is for me?"
"Yeah? Why? Is it not good enough?"
"It's more than good enough! It's so big, I don't even know what to do in this space!"
"Big?" Murasame glanced around. He didn't think of it as big. There was only a bed, a few tables by its side, cabinets, a seating table with couches, a flat-screen television, a walk-in closet, some shelves preemptively filled with books, a desk for any needed work, and a couple of other things serving as decoration. Yeah, for Murasame, it was nothing too fancy. "I wouldn't call this big. Medium at best."
"If there were a hundred of me, there would probably still be room!"
"I would not like to deal with that, but the average square foot of a guest room is around six hundred square foot. You can do the math on the room occupancy limit for that."
"... Uhm, okay, so you carry over the one—?"
"I was being sarcastic. Don't actually try doing math that you clearly don't know," Murasame sighed. "It does come down to a bit under one hundred people though."
Murasame showed Isayuki around the room, letting the ecstatic boy be flustered about almost everything else around him. Even if this was a simple room, Isayuki was extremely happy about it, but he might have been the most happy about the bed. It was a bit strange for Isayuki to be this content with something like that. Murasame guessed that if he simply gave Isayuki a futon, the reaction would be relatively similar. It was as if he never actually had a bed before.
"I'm heading back to my room. I need to make a call."
"Oh, I'll come with you! Should I do something while you're making the call?"
"I don't want you to be distracting me, so why don't you stand on guard outside of my room? Don't let anyone inside until I come out to get you."
Of course, the idea that he would be randomly interrupted by a house staff had been negligible. All he had to do was put up a sign that warned them to not disturb him and they would respect it, but it wasn't as if Isayuki needed to know that. He looked happy to be of use, at least in his head, so they went over to Murasame's room on the next floor. Isayuki stopped himself outside of the door, letting Murasame set himself up at his computer desk.
With the webcam all cleared up and the notes he compiled off to the side in a document manager, he opened up his video-telephony software and waited until his father sent a call. He was very digilent when it came to keeping a schedule, so Murasame knew he wouldn't have to wait long. Even so, his eyes wandered a bit off to a side table, but even that distraction held relevance to the upcoming matter.
The SD card had been smashed to pieces, but it held important information regarding whatever the Tengu Foundation had been planning. If the data could be recovered, things would certainly be easier, but no matter what business connections he pulled, nobody could rebuild it back to its former state. In other words, the information he stole was as good as nothing.
"So close…" Murasame groaned, leaning back in his chair. "I was so close to greatness…"
The call prompt rang on his computer, causing him to flinch in surprise. He stumbled over his seat, getting himself look presentable, and accepted the call. Murasame was soon greeted by his father's image on the monitor. A quick exchange of bows was all that was needed for pleasantries.
"I'm hoping that you're feeling better, Murasame. I was surprised to hear that you were sent to the hospital after you visited the Tengu Foundation."
"There's no need to be scared or anything. I showed those thugs who had been the stronger one!"
"If you say so, I'll take your word for it. If you have the energy to be talking like that, then there was nothing to be worried about. Your mother wanted to go back to Tokyo, just to make sure that you were okay, but I trusted that even if you were roughed up, you would be in good hands with the doctors."
"Oh, please. I'm an adult already. I don't need Mother to constantly look after me."
"She does have to make up for the lost time in your adolescence and early university life in some way," his father chuckled. "In a way, she feels guilty about the entire turmoil between you and your sister, despite it being my call to bring Ikaruga into the main family."
"What was done is done," Murasame scoffed. "We're not here to discuss the past either way. Were you able to find time to read the report I sent to you this morning?"
It was a rhetorical question to get themselves off the topic. Murasame already knew that his father's priority shifted around the minute he received the email with his attached report. There was only so much Ikaruga can provide details upon as a bystander to the situation.
"I did read it, but…"
His father pressed the back of his hand against his mouth.
"The Yoma Weaponization Project, you say? Is that truly what you remember from reading through their files?"
"I wouldn't forget something like that, but the details surrounding it…" Murasame shook his head. "I wasn't able to read through all of it before I was interrupted. If only the SD card hadn't been busted, we would have a better grasp on it, but something like that was out of my control."
"From the name alone, it certainly provides an ominous atmosphere to it." His father scrolled through the report on his side of the screen. "If it does have direct connections to Dōgen and the Kyoto incident involving Ikaruga, we cannot allow this project to succeed, whatever it is."
"What did this Dōgen guy want to do again? Monetize yoma in order to get richer or something?"
"From what the informants were able to collect, that was the original idea, but he sought power for himself after seeing what a resurrected yoma could truly do. I'm sure that you're unaware of this, but there was an incident in Hebijo more than a year ago where he brought back Orochi using sacrifices of evil shinobi. Later on in the Kyoto incident, Dōgen went on to attempt to awaken it fully, even coming to fuse with it, but was ultimately killed alongside the yoma."
"For some reason, it sounds familiar. I might have scanned through it in a report."
"In any case, this does not mean well for shinobis. Despite not being a fully-fledged shinobi yourself—"
"—Hey, I'm just as good as one—"
"—I understand that you know what the highest rank of shinobi is for, that being Kagura. Whether you're a good shinobi, an evil shinobi, or even a renegade, the role of a Kagura is to extinguish the yoma that crawls into our world. And if there is an organization out there attempting to do something similar to what Dōgen had wanted to do, or perhaps an organization that Dōgen was once a part of, then we cannot overlook their actions."
Murasame sighed, leaned casually on his propped-up hand.
"Okay, but I think that's easier said than done. We've got no information to work with, not to mention that we're dealing with an organization that can wipe the existence of a shoddy business off the internet in the matter of a day. No matter what I do, I can't rediscover any traces of the Tengu Foundation again. We could try to question whoever had been arrested from that raid—"
"Ikaruga reported that they've been killed."
Murasame felt a shiver down his spine.
"Wh-What…?"
"More than half of the people found within the building had already been killed. I assume you had nothing to do with it?"
"I don't like you're insulinating," Murasame groaned, crossing his arms, "but it isn't my style to kill people in the first place. I'd rather them get arrested and locked up, so they can repent on crossing paths with me."
"The remaining few people had been murdered within police custody itself. It took no time for them to be dealt with," his father continued. "Ikaruga informed me of this yesterday. They have no idea who could have done it, since the security was compromised during the time of their deaths. No surveillance footage, no eye witnesses, and the scheduling between the police force had even been messed up to create an opening."
"Not only are we dealing with folks that can wipe themselves off the internet, but they've got a solid grasp on how to tie up loose ends. That… might be problematic."
"Exactly. If you still had the SD card, I could try to deliver something to the clans and see if we can execute a high-level search in order to break down this operation, but even that wouldn't be a guarantee. With something so extreme like that, it wouldn't be easy to remove their skepticism."
His father's eyes quickly glanced to the side to read more of the report.
"If I forwarded the report by itself, they would easily dismiss it. You even claim there to be a relic in the form of a scythe that they were using as a medium, prompting a child from the slums as a sacrifice, but you had also written that the scythe ended up disappearing by the end of the skirmish. That's not something that could be grasped by the other shinobi heads."
Despite all the details he included in the report, Murasame consciously left out most of Isayuki's efforts. He didn't write about how Isayuki broke the glass holding the scythe back and he didn't write how Isayuki temporarily wielded the scythe before it ended up disappearing. All he mentioned was that he met a kid in the facility that helped him out in his escape and as thanks, Murasame allowed him to become his assistant. Although it sounded a bit pretentious, Murasame always kept his phrasing in his reports as concise and formal as possible, a total opposite to how he would talk about it face-to-face.
"You don't even know what it was all for."
"How can you blame me? I was more worried about getting myself out of the situation."
"And I'm glad for that. Information gathering means nothing if you can't get yourself out to pass it along. It goes a bit against some of the traditional beliefs of the older generation of shinobi heads, but their time has clearly passed. Failure can be accepted on occasions."
His father wryly laughed.
"Apologies for that slight tangent, but I'm sure you've already understood my point."
Murasame nodded.
The report had been as good as telling his father that there was an evil corporation running amok in the shadows, but without any details to back themselves up on that, there was nothing they could extend further than that hearsay. Murasame knew that his word alone wasn't going to be changing anything, so it wasn't a surprise when he clicked his tongue, sounding defeated.
"I'll figure something out by myself."
"I'm sorry, Murasame."
"It's fine. Nothing to be sorry about, Father. If anything, you and I have less paperwork to go through, so maybe that's a bit of a silver lining."
His father chuckled. "Indeed, a lighter workload, if even a little, is still a weight off one's back."
"I'll see you when you get back, Father."
"Indeed. Take care of yourself and Ikaruga."
The video call disconnected, leaving Murasame leaned back in his chair.
"I'll figure something out by myself, huh…?"
Obviously, that sounded like more work than what needed to be done.
Even if he sat there for a week, thinking about it for all those consecutive hours, he didn't think he could come up with anything that could come close to a plan. However, it wasn't as if he was terribly invested in the problem. All he wanted was the recognition for leading the shinobis over to take down that operation, or maybe even be recognized as someone that took them down, but if the clans weren't going to take it seriously, there might not be any point for him to pursue that empty victory.
He only wanted to defeat the Tengu Foundation out of his spite in the heat of the moment, but now that he was back in the safety of his own home, actively searching for a fight with them, or whoever the Tengu Foundation really was, had been something ridiculous. Whether he wanted to bluff about it or not, it didn't change the fact that he was not an actual shinobi, like his father said. There was a limit to what he could do for himself, perhaps even a lower one that he refused to accept.
"I'm sure it's not even worth the effort."
With a sigh, he turned off his computer and closed the lights. Thoughts like that were better left for arising opportunities, rather than actively wasting his energy. Besides, it was starting to get dark out and while he liked using this time to enjoy himself in some video games, reading, and mindless media browsing, all he wanted after a meeting like that was some sleep.
He slumped into the bed, drifting off to the land of dreams.
"... Man, this meeting is taking a long time for Master Murasame to finish up."
Meanwhile, Isayuki stayed at the door the entire time, being forgotten by Murasame.
Needless to say, he didn't get to enjoy his new bed that night.
