Back again! We're just about caught up with ITJOTW now, so I'll be posting over there next.
Boy am I excited for how this story is going. I've also been reading a beautiful Kagewaki and Naraku fic called Beneath the Weeping Wisteria and it has lit a fire under my ass with this story. I am so beyond excited to make this story progress. You have no idea. I'm just brimming with ideas and dramas.
So I need to stop talking about it and start writing about it!
Miasma
Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin
-Jean Racine
"Miss Masanori."
The call from the servant at my door roused me, and as I sat, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and peered out into the gardens beyond my window. It was a very similar sight to the view outside Kagewaki's window. My room wasn't far off his in case he should need direct attention quickly.
By the time I reached the doorway, the servant that woke me was gone, and in her place laid a tray of breakfast foods far too much for one person to eat. It had become my morning ritual in the week since I had come to the castle in hopes of some payoff to my medical knowledge.
Not quite according to plan, the payoff had been my life, on the condition that it was now devoted to the Hitomi men and improving their ailment.
"What a mess," I said down to the seaweed omelettes as I divided them between two portions.
Since the confrontation in Kagewaki's room, each morning I was to carefully curate the young Lord's breakfast, the only meal he was always well enough to eat, so that he could start to get better.
"It will be a slow process," I had warned both father and son as I went about explaining what the disease was in as simple terms as I could, and how it could be treated. Usually I'd prescribe hormone replacement therapy and in a few weeks, the patient would be improving.
Without the graces of modern medicine, I had to get creative.
So a heavily curated diet was in order for Kagewaki. Hitomi the elder was lucky enough that his condition was still in its infancy. With just a little more beef and seaweed in his system, which he'd agreed to readily, he would likely be fine. Kagewaki would need a lot more than that. Since I was the one with knowledge of the disease, I would be the one to curate his meals.
I guessed I was lucky we were in Japan, where a lot of foods that could help hypothyroidism were in easy supply to a warlord in the Warring States.
Which had led to a morning routine alone the lines of being woken by a servant toting an array of foods, deciding what the young Lord could eat to improve, readying myself for the morning in a simple cotton kimono gifted to me, quite generously I was told, by the Lord, and running the curated breakfast to Kagewaki.
That's what led me, this morning, to be seated opposite Kagewaki on the veranda outside his chambers as a servant brushed out his long hair with a decorative comb. In the first few days, I had left him to his meals alone. On the fourth, he had invited me to join him. Since then we had eaten breakfast together.
We ate in relative silence, both looking out on the beautiful gardens.
"My father had these gardens built for me," Kagewaki offered, poking at a sliver of tuna sashimi with his chopsticks.
"They are beautiful." And they were. There were many beautiful sights in the world, and to me, this one ranked among the most beautiful. The garden was so immaculately cared for, the trees and flowers chosen and pruned to an unimaginable standard of beauty.
"His hopes were that they would entice me outside when I stopped playing with the samurai children." He paused to chew and swallow the piece of fish he had been toying with. "I fear he has failed."
"You don't want to be out there?" I had to fight to try and keep judgement out of my tone. the hypothyroidism had caused the depression he'd exhibited in droves already. He couldn't help not wanting to do basic things. He could be talked into doing them, but I shouldn't judge him for not wanting to.
His bowl touched the veranda with a click, and he laid his chopsticks atop it. "Would you? I feel to be among the flowers and blooms, I am to be reminded that I am as delicate and fragile as they. Yet, in winter, when there is no flower to remind me of my frailty, it is somehow worse. The delicate flower dies, and so fragile as it, I will soon, also."
I stared at him for a long moment, mouth hung open. "That's depressing as shit."
"What?" The comment had shocked and confused him, and his attention turned to me in its entirety. I'd noticed in the time I'd spent around the young Lord that he didn't have too many people skills. His attention drifted, and it was rare he would look a person in the eye as he talked to them. I'd attributed that to a lifetime of being frail and kept away from others. Now, though, those dark brown eyes were piercing my own grey ones.
"We all die, and we all have issues. Letting them get the best of you is only going to fuck you over. You need to get over yourself and just enjoy the damn flowers while they're still around." Maybe the gentle approach wasn't my strong suit. There was a reason I was a surgeon, rather than a regularly patient-facing doctor.
The servant was staring at me, her mouth agape, half hidden by Kagewaki's wild locks.
Kagewaki, too, was staring at me, lips parted just slightly, an incredibly toned-down version of his servant's intense shock.
Yeah, definitely not the gentle approach, then.
Then he laughed. It was a quiet sound, barely above a chuckle, but it was there and it lit up his face.
"You look better when you smile." He looked less frail, more alive. He needed to smile more, doctor's orders.
Especially now, I decided, when his eyes, dancing with mirth, found mine again.
"I thought I'd long since forgotten how. Will you allow me to escort you on a walk through the gardens? I think I'd like to admire the flowers, while they're still here to enjoy."
Well, that was a quick change of pace. Maybe making the young Lord better would be easier than I thought. "Make you a deal. If you can finish the entire bowl, I'll go for a walk with you, my Lord."
Every morning he ate what I offered to him, but would never finish the bowl. There would always be some rice, or some omelette left. His appetite was still unchanged.
With a rueful smile, he cupped the bowl between his hands again. "I shall hold you to your word, Miss Nori. I may keep you for the rest of the day on this walk."
"You're talking pretty big game for someone with a full bowl there."
His pride won out. I bowed to his terms, and the two of us walked through the gardens together, enjoying the spring sun and sweet blooms perfuming the air. Every now and again he would stop and reach out to a flower. Something cold would enter his eyes as he touched the petals, but soon he would lead us off again, deeper into the gardens.
He only lasted twenty minutes or so before the aches overcame him, and it was me that escorted him through the gardens, back to his chambers to rest.
When I wasn't at Kagewaki's side, and the elder Hitomi had no need of me, I was left to explore the castle. I started close to home, to my own rooms, and explored the rooms between my own and the now-familiar path towards Kagewaki's chambers.
Many of the rooms were empty. It was such a large castle, yet so many of the rooms were empty, unused. It was such a waste.
One room I found took my interest more than a thousand empty rooms could.
Instruments laid throughout the room, many different types and sizes. I admired them all for a time as I swept through the room, but soon settled on what had to be the most beautiful instrument I had laid eyes on. A koto, lacquered to a beautiful shine and gilded with decorative golden flowers.
My own koto, propped up against the wall of my tiny apartment in Shinjuku was put to shame by this beauty.
I ran my fingers over the wood. Cool, smooth, no dents or dings. The sound that rang through the air when I plucked a string drew a smile to my lips. It was nice to see something familiar, something I knew in this strange place.
Kneeling before the instrument, I took another long moment to admire it before finding the fingerpicks and donning them.
The simple tune I'd first learned as a teen rang out in the air with a familiarity that set me at ease.
Kenjutsu was my passion, but playing the koto bought with it a sense of serenity that I couldn't find in the sport. I was never so calm as when I knelt before a koto. It was my stress relief. I had plenty of stress right now, and I could feel it melt away as the strings vibrated under my fingers.
Once I'd begun playing, more tunes came, as naturally as breathing air.
This room soon became my favourite. Whenever I had a free moment I didn't know what to do with or found myself stressing out over something, I'd find myself in the music room, kneeling before the koto, and playing away my frustrations.
"He's barely improved, girl."
I'd been summoned before the Lord Hitomi bright and early this morning. Barely coherent, I wasn't in the best of moods in general. Being rushed along through a process that would happen when it happened, was not improving my mood. "With all due respect, my Lord, it's only been twelve days. Recovery from this sort of illness takes time. Months. It may even take a year."
"A year? You think a year is acceptable?"
Yes, I damn well thought a year was acceptable. I was smart enough to hold my tongue. Sort of. "He has been ill for over twenty years, my Lord. Recovery from an illness of that duration will take time." Far more time than two damned weeks. It took longer than that to see an improvement in people that were actually being treated with the right medication. This was the crudest form of treatment I'd had to give to someone with an autoimmune disease. It would take time, if it even worked well enough to make any significant improvements.
I wasn't a doctor of homeopathic medicine. This was a very high stakes gamble for me. I was hoping I could manage a somewhat viable treatment without the hormone treatments Kagewaki actually needed.
I'd count it as a minor miracle if it did work.
Lord Hitomi dismissed me with a grumble and a threat that if there wasn't some improvement in his son soon, then would be trouble coming my way.
Shaken, I retreated to the music room.
Some days I was filled with energy I didn't know what to do with.
At home, I usually spent those days in the dojo, working off my energy with a sword in hand, sparring with others, practising katas and exhausting myself. Here, I didn't have that luxury.
I knew that somewhere in the castle, samurai trained. Men had their weapons, their katana and bokken and shinai. I longed for that. To be able to feel a sword in my hands again. It had been just shy of three weeks, and yet it felt like an age.
With no chance ahead of me, I trade my longing for a thin veil of contentment as Kagewaki and I walked the gardens again.
This time the two of us walked towards the ponds. They were gorgeous structures, each filled with koi carp that easily caught my attention. "I used to long for a pond like this as a child," I gave to the young Lord as we stood at the bank, gazing onto the water. "I'd ask my parents so often. Please, mama, please papa. It's all I want in the world."
"And did you receive one?"
Laughter bubbled up. "Not in the way I wanted." I never had a pond like this. My koi were skin deep. Just wishes for the real thing.
I crouched beside the water, reaching out to dip the tips into it. That sent ripples over the surface, breaking the serenity of the pool. It's funny how such a simple action can change so much. Something so small.
Kagewaki stood above me. I could feel his warm eyes on my back. "You have one now, to enjoy when you so choose."
"So I do." With no way of leaving the castle now without death or going on the run, I was here for the foreseeable future.
Energy still not quelled, it bubbled up again with mischievous spirit as my fingers glided through the pond water. I flicked my wrist, sending a small stream of water up to the young Lord, then bounced backwards, giggling as I did so.
His stoic expression pulsed with surprise that just had me giggling harder.
"You find that funny, Miss Nori?" he asked, wringing water from the lock of hair that always sat over one shoulder.
The words alone would have probably given me pause, but the light brewing in his eyes and the way he crouched himself and smirked as he sent his own stream of water in my direction, spoke to me very differently.
I danced out of the way of the water. "You'll have to do better than that, my Lord, if you want to best me."
That started a war.
We edged around the ponds, sending little sprays of water in each others directions, some hitting, but most missing.
Both of us were giggling when Kagewaki conceded, flushed and panting. "I fear if I am at this much longer, I shall spend the next week in bed recovering. I concede to you, Lady Warrior. Truly you are the better fighter among us."
I bowed theatrically before him.
In a flash, his hand grabbed at the front of my robe and yanked me off balance. I ended up sitting in the pond, looking very much like a drowned rat, with my mouth agape. "Why you-"
"It is my fate to one day be a Warlord as my father is," he told me, chin lifted in a mockery of haughtiness. "I must know when to strike to win my battles."
Well, that jammy bastard- I splashed him with a generous streak of water this time. "You're lucky I'm not a sore loser, Kagewaki." That was a dirty trick, and I was impressed. I hadn't thought Kagewaki had that in him.
Smiling, he held his hand out towards me.
I contemplated pulling him in with me.
I'd probably be murdered for the cold he was bound to get from that.
After being helped up, I wrung my hair out. "I'm soaked to the bone!"
"Perhaps we did stray a bit too far in our feud. Come, let's get you inside and dried off."
"Not a bad idea. But I only have the one kimono." I'd taken to washing it in the baths during the evenings when I needed to, and leaving it to dry overnight. My own clothes had disappeared from my room the day after I had been gifted the kimono. I doubted I'd ever see them again.
"Just the one?" Kagewaki's thin brows knit together in a frown. "That won't do."
I was sent away from his chambers twenty minutes later, dry and wearing one of his highly decorative silk yukata.
Information corner:
Koto - a koto is a traditional and very beautiful harp-like instrument. I love koto, and if I could afford one and the time to learn, I'd absolutely get one.
Review Corner:
justoutherebored - Thank you so much for my first review. I always appreciate hearing from readers. I'm having a lot of fun writing it, so there'll be plenty for you to read. I've just started writing chapter six, so we even have a bit of backlog now. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, too
I had so much fun writing this chapter, but now I'm finally caught up with ITJOTW, so it's time I go back to writing that. so I can keep posting even, as promised. It'll be difficult to leave behind this story, even for a couple hours while I write ITJOTW, but I can promise that in the next chapter, we'll meet Naraku, so there's that to look forward to!
See you next time!