Maka resisted the urge to toy with the knot in her hair again. Mira had painstakingly shown her how to pull it up, letting a bit of hair flop towards the front. To her, it looked ridiculous, and even worse it tugged at the little hairs at the base of her neck until it ached. While Maka did wish she could return to long, flowy strands that fluttered in the breeze, it was this or giving into Black Star's asinine idea of a betrothal. The life of a man-servant would at least be better than some frail maiden waiting for her wedding night.
Or at least she hoped .
The road had started to smooth out the closer they came to the city but it didn't seem to make a difference to the rickety carriage. "Where did you say you were going again, boy?" The amiable farmer that had picked her up hours ago finally peeked over his shoulder to glance at Maka as she sat with her legs over the edge.
"Just into the city…" Vague replies were all she had tried to give, but friendliness usually meant nosieness.
"Looking for work? Not sure you'll find it there. You'd have better luck in Tomonoura– docks and boats always looking for hands."
"I have a job already." While that should have come with surety, she could still see Black Star's smug face waiting for her, making it warble with annoyance.
"Oh? Apprenticing somewhere? Sorry to say, boy, you look a little too flimsy for most trades."
Says the man who just wanted to make me a sailor. Maka barely stopped the roll of her eyes. "I'm working in the Scythe house."
In the pause, Maka felt some of the friendliness slip away. "The main house?"
"I was chosen to be the Scythe's new page." More like Star pulled strings since he hasn't been able to do this on his own. As if I'm actually surprised Star hasn't been able to get friendly with him.
"How much did your family get for you?" The chill of his voice made Maka's shoulder's set.
"I'm an orphan, sir." My first and probably only truth on this journey.
"Not a one'll benefit from your death then." The man's sigh was one of multitudes before the silence crept back between them.
But in the quiet snuck Maka's pride. Don't worry, old man, I'm not going to die. I'm here to free you all from this– I'll find the secret of that man's weapon and I'll take it from him.
A buxom blonde woman greeted her outside the gate. "Are you the new page?"
"Masao, my lady." Maka gave a curt bow that brought the woman to giggles.
"You've never worked on an estate before, have you?" She waved Maka in but instead of moving into the main house, she skirted along the edge of the fence to a tight path along the side of the building. "I'm the only one you'll be working with, so you can drop the 'my lady' and stick with Marie."
"Just you, my– Marie ?"
"If he had his way, the Scythe would have no one at all, but I insisted. He keeps one page— you —and I bring anything else to his courtyard if he asks." Tree branches started to curve over the path, leaves tickling at the top of Maka's head. Marie continued to hurry them along. "He'll tell you what he needs, if anything, but for the most part he won't speak. He stays in his room or the courtyard if the weather is good. He goes to the baths nightly. His brother visits once a week, and his father may call for him at the main house but not often. Don't talk to either of them. It's best if you–"
"Marie." Maka stopped under the overhang, her jade eyes lighting over a small side-house that sat disheveled at the corner of the compound. "What kind of man is he?"
Marie barely turned, only slowing to tilt uneasily on her heels. "Sometimes I wonder about that myself. To be honest, you're the one who'll be able to come closest to knowing." She beckoned Maka closer, and as soon as she got to her side, that hand motioned out towards a glimpse of a small yard obscured by the gentle shade of an ancient maple. "Enter through there. He'll most likely be on the engawa. Unless you speak he won't, so greet him."
"You're not coming with me?" A small wave of trepidation sprung from Maka's gut. As if it lapped at Marie's shore, she gave the page a push, sending Maka a few steps out into the sun.
"It's just you and him now." Without anything else, Marie turned and started back towards the main house.
Only us? Is that why Star hasn't had any luck? Has he even been able to see the Scythe? Her eyes floated along the fence until they reached the opening of the yard again. A thin wisp of smoke drifted across her field of vision, and as she walked towards it, the strong medicinal scent started to sting her nose. Maka held her breath as she wafted through the swirl to the back of the house. Never before had a face struck her, but Maka found her legs seizing in place just in time for another cloud of smoke to drift between them.
Staring back at her was a fox, wood painted bright white with red rims matching the red eyes that pierced through the holes. His kosode was left entirely a mess, untied so that a tan chest blared out against the white. The arm holding his pipe was bare, out of the cloth to show marred, violent zigzags of scars littering unpatterned across his sternum as it rose to pull in another drag of stringent smoke. As his lips unlatched, a crooked, toothy smirk emerged as grey slowly drifted between those predatory spikes.
He's a monster– glanced over her mind as Maka took a step back into fresher air. Stop that. He's a man. Even with the reassurance resounding in her brain, her voice quivered: "M-my lord."
"Name?" rumbled deeply from his chest with the rest of the smoke.
"Masao." She neatly trimmed the ' my lord ,' still finding the servitude of it all grating down her spine.
A grunt—neither full of displeasure nor interest—left his lips before he replaced it with the pipe again. Though he toyed with the edge, his eyes still glared with an attention that stripped her.
Annoyance started to bubble at his appraisal, no matter how much she tried to calm herself with the tight grip into the legs of her hakama. "And yours?"
The edge of his mouth twitched, momentarily bearing a sharp tooth at her again before falling. "Doesn't matter. ' My lord .' ' You there ' works just as well." He shrugged lazily as his kosode started to slip further off his other shoulder. It did nothing but bare more glaring white lines slithering up in crooked arrays.
He's covered, but he can't be any more than a year older than me. Even I don't have that many scars. "Not the Scythe ?"
The word set his shoulders straight as she heard the clench of his teeth against the metal of the kiseru. "Guess that's what they call me outside," he muttered off before pulling the pipe from his tight teeth. With a hard thwak, the bowl hit the wood of the engawa, ash and sparks falling to the dirt of the courtyard. He left the pipe there, still smoldering as he padded barefoot back inside the open screen.
Maka paused, watching the last of the sparks die.
"What are you waitin' for?" His guttural grumble raked through the half closed door.
Carefully, she toed the last of the embers until they were black before climbing up on the engawa. She slid the door open to a small room divided in two by a screen. Each side was visible from the courtyard, but one would be mostly obscured by the other if she walked into the room.
The man was seated on one side, surrounded by a mess of bedding and random novelties. She assumed one box was for his kiseru, the other for whatever concoction he was smoking—the smell had been much too herbal for tobacco—and trinkets that held no visual order. "That's your side." He tossed an absent hand towards the screen before flopping on his side.
Opposite of the screen was another set of bedding– clean simply because of disuse since the arrangement of it was entirely half-hearted. A burning terror curled up in her stomach. "W-we sleep in the same room?"
The panic in her question fell on deaf ears as his muttering continued: "You stay there unless I say." He half turned, his eyes barely visible from the holes in the mask. "I'll tell you if I need something. The rest of your time is yours."
"But I–" Maka took a step closer to the divide, eyeing the separation with growing despair. "I stay here? All the time?"
"Mostly." He rolled back towards his stomach, arm outstretched on the tatami mat. His finger was tapping at a black lacquer box adorned with pink blossoms. "Go. So I can take off my mask."
I know I heard he doesn't show his face but– even to me? The question almost leapt from her tongue but she bit it in place. Instead, she moved to her side of the room. Maka sat at the edge of the bedding, watching what little outline appeared in the partition between them. It gave her no image of him, and she could only guess at his freedom from the sound of the wood clattering to the mat along with a long sigh. All the rest was motionless.
"Masao."
Maka jumped.
"One more thing." A shadow rose on the divider, his shoulders looking absurdly large, a hulking monster lying in wait on the other side. "Don't ever touch me."
Black Star sat on the dilapidated roof, daring it to collapse. He'd left the regular bread-crumb trail for Maka, knowing it would only be a matter of time before that prim mouth would be launching an endless tirade of complaints about the state of things. Obviously, this was what he lived for.
Right on cue, as the moon hung high in the treetops, the hissing started: "What the hell have you been doing here, anyway?"
Star rolled his eyes before settling on the shadow that now became a girl. "I told you not to come."
Maka positioned herself at his feet, her hands on her hips. "I don't see what you've gotten done without me."
"Well, I've scoured the whole damn compound"—Star wiggled the least polite of fingers to start—"got myself in the door with his brother, but the Scythe's a fuckin' pain! Ask for an audience with the guy and he sits behind his screen and lets you talk without sayin' a word. No snacks or sake either."
With a groan, her eyes traveled that natural revolution of disappointment again. "You said you scoured that compound, but–"
"No buts," Star complained. "There's no hidey-holey, the dungeon's empty, and everyone is so fucking predictable here. I've tailed just about every important person—even your guy—and none of them are holdin' even a mouse captive. Your dad's not here."
"So the Scythe is just a coincidence?" Maka offered with a huff.
Star shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe the guy's good with a weapon– not that I've seen him use one. Whatever it is, it ain't Spirit, and you comin' here just complicates things. Especially as a fuckin' page !" He sent a sweeping hand down to her, displaying top to bottom. "You think you're foolin' anyone that you're a man just because you tied up your hair? I get it, you don't exactly have to bind those tiny tits all that tightly, but the rest of you–"
Maka's hands dashed up towards her chest, fixing the collar of her kosode as she blared: "Shut up! He didn't– doesn't suspect a thing. And it wasn't like I was going to come here and pretend to be some blushing courtesan."
"I admit that's even less believable than the page," he chuckled.
Maka shut her eyes and prayed for a moment of serenity before honing again on Star's face. "You have to be wrong."
"I'm not ," he griped.
" I'm going to look around. I'm going to tail a few people–"
"And you're gonna find nothing ." He finally skidded off the crumbling building, earning him a cloud of dust. "All you're gonna find is a weird guy whose entire family hates him. Everyone but that head maid and the physician are scared of him, but they both kinda strike me as having plenty of screws loose so…" Blake shrugged.
She moved toe to toe with him, knowing that he found nothing in her stance to be challenging no matter how much she felt the bucking of her own heart. "He has to be hiding something ."
"Oh, I'm sure he is"—he waved a dismissive hand at her before using it to poke her right between the eyebrows—"but that has nothin' to do with your mission, right? If your dad's not here, you should be screwin' off."
Maka rubbed the tender skin he left behind. "Then why are you staying?"
"I have a hunch." Blake's smirk broke across his face with reckless abandon as his eyes burned with wild enthusiasm. "But that has nothing to do with you and you're only gonna get in my way."
He was never happy to see her settle her hands on her hips with that know-it-all curl to her lips that always made his eyes want to roll. "Did you tell Sid about your little hunch ?"
"Eh," Star elongated the sound. "I mean, I sent a message to Kid– told him I was busy , but… Hey, they should just be happy I take some of the missions they offer. I do much better on my own."
"So when I tell him that you're here, without a reason-"
"You're such a snitch !" Star was on her, his arm tossed around her neck so he could mess up the useless top-knot she was using to bring forth some semblance of manhood. "And like I said, all of 'em are lucky I do anythin' at all. They can't say shit if I'm followin' my ' always right ' hunches."
Maka struggled in his hold but only managed to get away with her hair completely askew. "Again– what is this hunch?"
" Again – you're only gonna get in my way." He flicked a bang for good measure. "So gather your things and slip off into the night so you don't waste my time."
There it was again– that curl of her lip. "Sorry, I think I'm going to stay."
The pungent, striking smell hit her before the smoke itself. He's awake! A pattering of fear fluttered over her heart before she kicked it aside. Simple. It's not too late. I was at the baths or getting settled in my surroundings. The reply sat on her tongue but as she finally caught sight of him on the engaway, it stuttered away.
His crimson eyes glowed in the darkness, illuminated in horrifying sharpness with the next pull of his pipe. They watched her, appraising deeply for a second time.
Maka moved wordlessly past him with purpose towards her side of the screen. There should have been bark or bite, but all that came was another puff of smoke drifting in the night. She settled to the bedding, feeling the ache of her bindings around her chest as she tried to concentrate on the new ceiling. The cicadas burred somewhere in the distance, their sound rattling up Maka's spine in the absence of his reaction.
The tap of the pipe brought her glare back to the opening, seeing only a peek of a leg of his hakama as he disappeared on his side of the screen. The lamp he had brought with him etched a soft outline of his movements. She watched him put away the pipe before rubbing his hands over his face.
"It's quiet here." Maka was surprised by her own voice just as much as he was, shoulders setting stiffly.
He only grunted a reply.
Apparently, his eloquence knows no bounds. Maka rolled her eyes as she nibbled her lower lip to prevent a sigh. "Do you always stay up so late?"
Another wave of insects sang in his pause. "Couldn't sleep."
"There are different teas for that." Her fingers worked into the edge of her kosode, playing nervously with the hem. "I've heard even–"
"The smoke works."
"Oh," Maka murmured. "Well if it's–"
"You don't have to talk."
Maka bristled. "I don't have to or you don't want me to?"
"... Have to."
"Then I will talk," Maka snapped.
A dry chuckle drifted through the divide before the light suddenly disappeared, leaving no hints on him other than the sound of his voice. "I'm gonna sleep"—the laugh that followed almost disappeared in the rustle of his bedding—"so don't expect much."
As if you'd have much to say! She rolled her eyes in the darkness. "Can I at least know your name?"
"I told you–"
"Yes, I didn't forget, my lord ." Maka rolled onto her side as she focused on the separation. "But all men have names. You do too."
He muttered, "No one calls me by my name."
"Which means it no longer exists?"
The challenge weighed heavily, bolstered by the buzz of the creatures of the night outside. "Soul."
"What?"
"My name is Soul."
"Soul," Maka repeated without being able to replicate the way he seemed to be able to ladden it with so much pain.
"But I want to hear it just about as much as I want to hear the Scythe ."
Why? Why does your name—any identity for you—bring some kind of lingering pain? Maka let it crumble on her tongue.
