A/N; I wanted to clear up a couple of things, firstly that mysterious music that Jin keeps hearing is the Mirror Darkness music from Tekken 2's final boss stage. I incorporated it as as a true thematic element within this part of the story. Secondly I have updated the last two chapters with the Japanese honorifics that are used within this one as to keep continuity, it is just the honorifics and titles, nothing else. Third I have included a dictionary of all the Japanese words used at the end. I hope that helps and I hope you enjoy...
Italics - thoughts, world of the unconscious.
() - brackets used to show the change to narrator
Chapter 3: The Second Circle
"You finally have it?!"
Lei Wulong nodded from the other end of the room to Asuka's fervent question.
"Yes, it required some effort but I have the files out back."
"Well what are we waiting fo-?"
"Asuka," cut in her father in his calm voice, "let's wait for now."
"But-!"
"Asuka," he repeated, raising his left hand in an open palm.
She sighed.
"Yes, father," she replied in a resigned tone.
"We'll look after dinner," continued Mr. Kazama before turning his spectacled gaze upon the supercop, "do you wish to join us Wulong-san?"
Lei bowed a slight bow with fist to palm.
"It would be my pleasure, Mr. Kazama."
***
"Journey? What do you mean?"
"Touch one of the mirrors..."
The gentle instruction from this invisible being did not ease his need for answers.
"Which one?"
"Any one..."
Jin pulled up the spiritual training gi before taking steps across this darkness. As he approached one mirror, he could only watch as its size started to distort. With every step closer, the mirror grew horizontally like a trick of the light given true form. Jin's eyebrows narrowed as he stood in front of its monolithic form, the surface now no longer a reflection of the eternity but a smooth surface of liquid obsidian.
It was the literal manifestation of that void he had stared into for so long.
"...the void looks into you," he muttered to no one.
Yes, he could feel the mirror's empty gaze sliding into him, looking into that void of his soul and painting his life, his sins on that black canvas. All to be absorbed into nothingness.
"Jin do not be afraid."
The benign voice's chords struck the emotion that he felt in small pin pricks. Dare he look into the abyss?
"Touch the surface."
An angel's voice yet maybe a devil to a Faustian ear.
Jin closed his eyes before he took in a long breath and exhaled again. His eyes opened with that toughened auburn, the strength and texture of a firmly rooted oak. He reached a crimson gauntleted hand forward and his finger tips touched the surface.
A ripple of a liquid surface.
"What?!"
The lightless liquid started to envelope his right arm at speed. He cried as he tried to retract his arm but the liquid responded with a great tug.
"N-!"
His cry was cut off as he was swallowed whole by the void.
***
"Please sit, Wulong-san."
Lei Wulong bowed before he seated himself within the central room of the dojo, a place lit by the lantern of uncaged birds struggling to climb inside. He placed himself upon the black zabuton across this long, rectangular table of black maple from Mr. Kazama and Asuka, an invisible line drawn in engraved brush strokes between host and guest.
"Itadakimasu," intoned all three people.
Silence.
All three were in silence as they ate the meal of cold soba noodles. Looks were exchanged between hosts and guest but no forms of communication were opened.
That was until Asuka, from her position nearest to the door, broke bread with a question,
"Wulong-san..."
"Lei-san is fine," replied Lei as he pushed a piece of negi and two soba noodles between his lips.
"Lei-san..." she corrected in unfamiliar syllables, "papa told me that you knew Jun-sama once..."
"Yeah, I was her partner at one time."
His eyes saw the fervency, the need to know glisten in her eyes, the hunger not satiated for a past she never knew.
"We were entering into the King of Iron Fist Tournament Two ..."
***
(We were part of the team that had been sent into the Mishima Zaibatsu. We all had our different motives. I was looking for my other partner... and friend. He had been brainwashed by that bastard Kazuya...
You think that he's a hero, Asuka? Don't believe what the media says. Kazuya Mishima was evil. What? You still don't believe me ? I'll give you an example. Most businessmen silence their critics by producing results, he silenced them by gunshot. Japanese, Brazillian, American... all dead. Power was everything to him.
Funniest thing was though, I didn't think that Jun would actually have an affect on that monster. She was beautiful probably even stunning if she had ever pursued a career as a model but that's the sort of person she was. Jun always laughed off the flirts and teases about her looking like a geisha.
"It's just the way I look," was all she ever said. She was modest about most things, even her abilities, despite being one of the best greatest students this dojo has produced. She was always so calm as well. She even had a gun pointed to her head and she said,
"Shoot me."
One pull of that trigger and she would have been another stupid martyr but the guy didn't even ask if she believed in god, he just dropped his weapon and stared! Honestly, in that moment I really did think that some invisible, severed hand had redeemed him.
That was until I put the cuffs on him and he started swearing like a furby on steroids.
Jun was like that when I was watching from the sidelines at the Iron Fist too. She was graceful in her movements, a real martial arts master...)
This was a memory in which Jin Kazama entered into.
He emerged from that cold eternity into violent warmth, his senses unable to contain this transition from the darkness of the mirror's harmony to this world of violent intent. He blinked and asked through still shaking lips,
"Where am I?"
His tone was of instant need.
"The preliminary rounds of the King of Iron Fist Tournament Two, now go through the crowd."
He may have asked how he was in there or why but that gentle voice had been clipped in tone, asking not for questions but for him to seek the answers. Jin said nothing as sense came back to him, his feet only pushing forward, down through the steps towards that decescended in circles of violence to the ring in the centre. He reached out with two hands to push two of the spectators out of the way.
His hands phased straight through.
Panic was hitched behind those edged features, a violent emotion that was displayed with the widening of eyes and the widening of his mouth with no cry. Covert overtones for vivid undercurrents.
Within that same second, he retracted his hand.
He was a ghost. A hollow being where feeling of any kind was just on the edge of consciousness, baiting him from the other side of that void but never allowing full realisation.
Such was his life.
The hollow warmth that ran through his body.
"OOH! OOH! OOH!"
The guttural cries of the masses.
"SLAM! SLAM!"
The pulverising of feet!
All distant.
Yet as he approached the bottom... he felt as if he became a broken conductor for this anger of the bodies that he passed through.
Each step...
The stamping of feet.
"SLAM! SLAM!"
The screams of harlots and whores.
"OOH! OOH! OOH!"
That bilious heate that rushes through the body!
They became greater and greater within his self. Only a trigger was needed to make that connection.
"Kaachan,"
Jun Kazama in one fell back flip smashed her faceless opponent to the floor, their knees crumbling under them like the erosion of slate by the wind and their body falling into a graceful flop. Jin smelt summer salts, the texture of leaves, even the running of clear water, all so on the brink of the senses, yet the name for his mother was only said through the slight widening of eyes, the upward flick of raven eyebrows and the slight twitches of surprise at each end of his mouth.
"Jun Kazama Wins!!"
Bang!
A single connection is made in red lightning for the tiniest of moments, that flash of nostalgia and bitter loss that he reacts to in one of his few, accustomed ways of shaking fists.
"Kaachan!"
A single scream that is drowned in this maelstrom.
The audience screams, "MORE! MORE!"
Jin screams, "No more! No more!"
Only for Kaachan.
This wind though boils his emotions in blood as he becomes another lost conductor, another one screaming as all commingle into a circle wind that scatters this infectious current too and fro, its screeches and roars akin to a Biblical daemon slashing its rusted claws into the flesh of its androgynous lover.
"Go after her."
That voice released Jin from the shackles of saints and sinners.
All emotion became pure clarity, a liquid silver running in his bloodstream.
His feet pushed him forward as his eyes focused on her.
Kaachan...
The liquid silver combusted.
"Kaachan!"
She did not hear as she headed for the double-doored exit to the stadium.
He ran though in pursuit of her, driven by emotions that had beaten three previous generations of Mishima.
Jun's Kazama's white, cotton top disappeared through the opening.
Jin's shaking hands hit the swinging door .
Slam.
Huh?!
No Jun.
Only a void of endless white light.
He stood there, looking in with his widened eyes.
"Go through..."
The voice coaxed him again, the screams of the audience grew shrill as the next two fighters entered the square ring.
Was it his-?
"Argh!"
A sudden push from invisible hands tripped Jin through the door...
(...At least that was how I remember it.)
***
"Is that all you remember of Jun-sama?" asked Asuka with a raised eyebrow.
Lei shook his head from his cross-legged position.
"It was something that always stuck out from memory for me, that's all."
"So what happened afterwards?"
"I'll tell you after this meal," he replied, laying his chopsticks to the side of his dish.
"What? Why not now?!"
"Because it is best if Jun explains the rest."
The enigmatic reply cut Asuka's indignation in two. She leant back in her zabuton, letting out a frustrated, growling sigh. Lei and Mr. Kazama said nothing as they poured their soba-yu from the ceramic bottles into the small cups of tsuyu. They raised them up to their lips, each exchanging a silent glance.
To those we have lost and to the memories that remain.
They tipped the cups back and downed the liquid in one gulp.
***
Where am I?
That question was becoming something of a meaningless habit as his obsidian eyes surveyed the all encompassing light.
"We are in a period of transition," answered the voice to that meaningless question.
Jin tilted his head in search of that voice.
"From what to what?"
"From one memory to the next."
He raised an eyebrow.
"These aren't my memories though."
"Ever heard of collective unconsciousness?"
Jin replied with a short nod.
"The unconscious psychic bond that unites us all, I've heard of it."
"Many things are shared through the collective unconscious, one of which is memories. Memories are passed on genetic levels through this bond, from parent to child, from sibling to sibling and so on however people can also connect through emotional bonds."
Jin raised one dark eyebrow to this voice.
"Friend, lover and enemy are all connected because of that emotional bond, their interchange of experiences on a subconscious level as strong as those on a genetic level. That is how you have seen what you have seen so far and what you shall continue see."
He nodded as he started to take another step forward.
"Remember, Jin," interrupted the voice, "these memories are merely hollow illusions."
"I know."
A reply that he made as he continued walking, his feet padding on smooth nothingness while his gaze remained straight. The voice rang in his ears like the thoughts that perturbed him.
"They are not gateways to the past."
I know.
"Nothing you do within them will have any affect."
I know.
"What's done is done."
He knew.
The oppressive, once lingering thought of a snake had swallowed the egg as it continually tried to devour its own tail. The inspired hope of connecting with that time of Feeling, with Kaachan again was extinguished.
Mind you, when was that new?
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he replied, his feet pounding onwards.
***
Asuka's gaze travelled up to the shimenawa, six white paper zigzags, the shape of the shides hanging from the braid of rope overhead.
Why keep the information in the Kamidana?
"Have you both washed your hands thoroughly?" asked Mr. Kazama, his voice edged with deep demand.
"Yes," came the dual reply, each as serious as the other.
With his right hand, Mr. Kazama drew back the door as he entered into this small shrine first. The two visitors followed in step as they entered, each ones eyes straying to the shrine. It was a simple thing that, a small wooden cabinet guarded in its silent procession by two evergreen Sakaki plants in their vases and the braid of shimenawa hung over the little alcove, its three shide the simplistic banner for this wooden royalty.
The three visitors to the shrine of the one-time Kazama patriarch bowed in line, the silence their acknowledgement.
"So can I now have a look?" asked Asuka, turning her head to Lei.
"Asuka."
Her gaze flicked back to see him placing his index finger over his lips.
"Sorry."
She felt a heavy hand on her shoulder as she finished her whispered reply.
"The information is on the table," indicated Lei to her constant twisting gaze between the two men.
Her eyes settled on the large, blue folder resting on the table in the corner of this shrine.
Is that it?
Her footsteps quickened in pace as she approached the table.
Jun Kazama.
The words were written in thin, black pen on the folder's lid. She knelt down, her body shaking with long, long trepidation.
I've always wanted to know...
She lifted the lid.
Photographs, records, birth certificate.
Fuck...
Her fingers pried over the sheer wealth information within this folder, the specifics of a time that had been obscured with the sealing within a frosted bell-jar.
Kazama Jun's Journal...?
Asuka smiled as her fingers opened the book cover, relishing the feel of rough paper and thin ink before she started cycling through pages.
Where is it?
Her fingers flicked pages past, searching for thoughts.
Ah here it is....
The page that would give answers to locks of sound.
The tingle of that close warmth, that comforting cage bound her in enrapture to the words as page and skin were enveloped in orange light...
***
Ah...
I always knew this day would come...
Kazuya had called me to his office today after my first match....
A pair of auburn eyes watched her from the shadows as she walked down that vast red carpet to the double, oak doors at the end.
"This is just a memory, Jin."
He paid little credence to the words as the song of mirrors played into his ears, the slightest hint of a breeze cupping his bangs. He moved from the shadows in the wake of his mother's formal amble, keeping his gaze straight ahead.
"Jun Kazama?"
Jun nodded in response to the sultry, American voice.
"Kazuya's been waiting for you," announced another American, deep and grinding in its vocals.
Jin tilted his head around his mother's back to see.
Bruce Irvin and... Anna Williams?
One of the Williams sisters.
His gaze dropped and reasserted.
Does she know that her sister is dead?
He hoped she did, God or whatever entity presided over that Hell, he hoped that she didn't have to suffer in bliss, she must grieve.
"Miss Kazama I am going to have to give you a full body search."
Anna snorted.
"What?!"
"You'll do anything to get your hands on a pair of boobs."
A dusting of crimson tinged Jun's pale cheeks.
Jin's gloved hands creaked to his clench.
"Hmph, whatever."
The kickboxer's gloved hands continued to press and prod over Jun's black trousers. Jin's knuckles clenched with every touch.
"She's clean," confirmed Bruce as he finished.
Jun lowered her arms, letting out a great, inward sigh.
"Lee will see you in."
Jun nodded to Anna's formalised statement.
"Isn't that Mr. Chaolan?"
"I'll call him whatever the hell I want, Mr. Irvine."
Jin exhaled a growling breath.
"Those two really are quite irritating," agreed the voice.
He said nothing as the left-hand door was opened in a long creak and the form of a truly youthful Lee Chaolan stepped through.
"Mishima-sama will see you now."
Jun nodded again before walking through the open door.
In the footsteps of his mother, Jin walked into the place of silk drapes, red carpets, chandeliers of dim light and encroaching shadows. It was the heart of a man on the precipice of that chasm which haunts us all.
The man in question gazed up from his camphor desk.
"Ah, Kazama Jun, I presume?"
Jin's eyebrows sunk again.
Stating the obvious was a fool's trick but the Devil plays merry hell with the tricks of the idiot, levelling entire rooms into silent terrors.
Jun Kazama though was no fool or idiot.
She returned his marbled gaze, hands crossed on her waist.
Jin could only watch from the back of the office at this silent interrogation. He ground his top teeth over his bottom in invisible movements of his top jaw, each movement becoming more violent.
How dare that bastard treat his mother like this?!
How dare he treat anyone like this?!
If only he was solid, he would...
His right fist shook.
Then unclenched.
A half smirk formed.
He had already killed Kazuya.
A small moment of hollow satisfaction.
The moment ended as the ghost of his father spoke,
"Sit."
Jun sat.
Kazuya smirked as he leant back into his chair, his arms folded.
She blinked.
…
The slightest gust of wind played within the notes of music brushed past...
And then...
Somewhere, in mind or in matter, a volume nob was twisted within Jin's mind, tuning him into the past reflections of another.
Kaachan?
(...I remember when I was sitting in that place of darkness, Kazuya would just stare at me. I would look back and say nothing. It was a habit I'd practised over my lifetime when at the table with Ojiisan. I was never clear about how long I spent in that chair, though Chaolan-san did inform me that it was around half an hour, but it was Kazuya who finally spoke.
"You are wondering why I have invited you here?"
I nodded.
"I am aware that you are here because of a certain investigation into my 'handling' of animals."
Kazuya knew. That in of itself was no surprise. However I did not sense any implicit or explicit threat in his voice, it was filled with that laconic sarcasm that he always expressed.
He rose from that throne of his, his gaze never leaving me and walked over to the drapes. Pulling them back with a far-flung swish of his arms, revealed a midnight landscape. To my vision, the landscape was wondrous yet horrifying in its soulless symmetry. This vision of steel and glass, of modernisation spread as far as the vast windows allowed.
This was Kazuya's vision for the world.
I was just the cockroach in his path.
He was always a man of dramatic metaphors and villainous clichés. He crossed his arms in front of him before he spoke to his reflection.
"I wish for you to the leave the tournament."
Again I there was no threat just a slight edge of... fear?
"Why?"
I asked that question, hoping to push some illusory advantage but all he did was turn and stare at me. There was a hard edge to those eyes, a shade of dark royalty to his features as he spoke again.
"You should ask yourself that question, why do you stay here?"
"Because you haven't told me to leave."
Kazuya tossed his head back and bellowed his laugh. I thought that at the time it was mocking and cruel. Yes it was a cruel, hollow laugh yet now I see that it was directed at no one, just himself...)
Jin crossed his arms and closed his eyes for the briefest of moments before they opened again...
("That is the biggest amount of bull crap I've heard for a very long time. If I told you to leave you would not leave."
"Would I?"
"You are too committed, too... intrigued."
I remember feeling my insides burn because Kazuya in all his bluntness was speaking personal truths. It burnt but I did not deny. Though I did ask myself "why should I be interested in this... demon?" At the time I did not know why though I sensed that fear again in his words. It was a fear connected with a dark corona of energy. Every time I sensed it I shuddered, it was like touching the dark side of the moon. Thank the kami I did not know its name otherwise I would have run out of that room...
Jin's gaze saw his mother fidgeting with her hands as he heard the words in his mind.
I can't blame her, even she had her limits...
...I remember though that commingled within the fear was an eagerness in his words. It was a small, crystal egg, something that was yet to be born as if it had no mother, only shut out in the sleet and rain. Kazuya and eager were not two concepts I will never be able to ever connect but in that moment as he paced up and down in the dim light, there was a confidence about his stride, a crimson glint in his left eye and a twitch to that cruel smirk.
"Well, Kazama Jun, if you are intrigued enough, perhaps I can teach you the meaning of fear over dinner maybe?"
"Excuse me?"
Shock was my first reaction. How could he have asked anyone out for a date with a line like that? At first I wanted to turn down his offer as I knew Kazuya could very well "teach the meaning of fear," to me. However interest, that sense of a connection, can overcome any lingering doubt. That is what I learned that day...)
"Yes, I will accept."
Jin shook his head.
"Why are you so disappointed?"
"This is how it all started, there was no choice after this."
"Who knew that such a cheesy line could have initiated such an illicit affair?"
The brush of wind on his cheek became an instant furore, tearing every paper illusion away from him, the images of his mother and father mere shreds in eternity. His father's image clung on for the longest before it was torn into eternity.
All was black.
Jin stood there as the wind drained into a whistle of its dark harmony again.
His eyes blinked at sights that had now become commonplace...
That event was the start of an downward spiral. The end result was the death of Kazuya...
Creak.
A door with no handle opened to white light.
No voice had to utter any instruction.
He simply walked forward...
***
"Died?!"
"Asuka!"
"Sorry."
"Died?" she whispered in repeat to the detective and her rebuking father.
Lei nodded.
"Yes, he did die," replied Lei, "he was thrown into a volcano by Heihachi Mishima."
Asuka's mouth fell open.
"But how did he-?"
"I don't know. Twenty years later he just reappeared. I launched an investigation into his re-emergence and I got as far as something to do with G-Corporation but they simply stopped it dead in its tracks with their lawyers."
Asuka raised an eyebrow as Lei held up his hands.
"They threatened the entire department with legal charges that would have destroyed us."
She exhaled a sharp sigh.
"Heh, it's ironic," continued the cross-legged detective with an ironic smirk.
"What is?"
"Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima, both wanted to take over their world and both fell victim to their own unresolved sins; power, greed and Heihachi Mishima."
Asuka smirked but her gaze was wavering.
Who was Mishima Kazuya?
Was he a hero or a villain?
What the hell was that "energy?"
Her eyes turned back to the journal as in the orange candle light, she flicked through the book, ever fervent to find an ending just after the beginning.
Aha! Jun-sama's last entry...
***
Jin's footsteps padded through the door and the white light greeted him with its smells of fresh salt. He blinked once on the other side as this calm breeze cleared his vision.
I'm on a boat.
He walked forward, feeling that slight breeze continually play with his bangs, enticing him onwards.
The slight blow of the wind...
The cry of lone seagulls...
The washing of calm waves...
The only sounds on this ferry to nowhere. A scene of tranquillity captured in the colours of graphite, everything shaded and detailed, everything frozen and alone.
All except one.
Jin's gaze turned to his left to see that distant figure of his mother. He pushed himself into a jog to bridge that distance.
Tap...tap...tap...
The hitting of steps upon metal.
Tap...tap...tap...
Forever cyclical.
Tap...tap...tap...
It had ended, I knew it...
His mother's voice.
Jin's gaze fell upon her in the flows and waves of the white dress of woven silk she wore. The wind blew the tresses and bangs of her hair, her eyes closed and lips pursed, she was the rhythm of this world.
Kaachan... she looks... sad.
He stood there in silence, just watching her.
It was the way the world worked for them.
When Kaachan was sad, she sat in silence.
So would he.
They would sit and stare and smile until it was all better.
It was the way the world had worked for them.
Jin stood and listened...
(Kazuya was dead.
I felt it. There was nothing left to be said to anyone. I couldn't phone home. Ojiisan left a message on my answering machine.
"I know."
How he knew I did not know but he stated them with the intent of execution. I was guillotined from my ties to the family and all my students, even to my little brother. Ojiisan asked me to call him back that day but I never did. I'm a coward, yes, I'm a little girl who is cowering under the table from the angry tirades. I will always be that but I will never regret what I did. The times I shared Kazuya's bed, those winds will fade in dying dreams yet those winds are the reason for our connection. That is something I will never forget. It's funny how the winds blow...)
Jin's gaze descended to her hand on her own abdomen.
Is that...?
(...My child, Kazuya's child has become the bane of both families. I cannot allow it to grow up, hated and reviled. I just hope that the world is kinder to this child that it was to it's father, I wish for my child to never bear the legacy of hatred.)
***
Asuka pulled herself to her feet as the last sentence receded into memory. She let out a long breath.
Relax...
"Asuka, what's wrong?"
She whirled around to her father.
"I'll..."
Not now.
Not in this place.
Calm was the manner of the dojo. Calm and respect for the seniors both the living and the deceased.
"Asuka?"
"I'm fine!" she cried with the nails digging into her palms.
She stomped past her father.
"Asuka!"
Slam!
She needs the time alone.
He rubbed his forehead and sighed .
She still needs to improve her manners.
What she needed was to beat the shit out of something! Her feet stomped down the corridor.
Jun-sama was abandoned by her own family!
Abandoned.
Cut off.
With an unborn child.
"Ojii-teme..."
The first on a long line of insults she wanted to shout at that old bastard. Yeah, she loved tradition. She was proud of the name Kazama, she wanted to uphold it in gold light but what her grandfather did... there was a line, there was always a line. He hadn't just crossed it, he had torn it in two.
I wish could have beaten the crap out of him for what he did!
A punch bag would have to suffice.
Jun-sama.
(I will never regret...)
She's no coward.
(I wish for my child to never bear the legacy of hatred.)
Her eyebrows were pulled into a deeper furrow at the rising torrents.
Kazama Jin, you bastard...
There was a need for two punch bags tonight.
***
Jin listened to the last words fade.
"Why did you show me this?"
His question was spat, a need for an answer.
"You were born in sin, Jin but that sin as an evil is an illusory concept."
Sin's evil, an illusory concept?
Hmph, ridiculous. Sin was the fuel of the world's heart of darkness.
He was born in sin, the truth to those words of illusion.
Each word was this reality's meaning. The wind in its three note siren call begged for the water to be drunk. Bliss is in the taste of salt as the throat becomes a dessert and the tides leap up providing "more! More!" until the wind returns and tears the flesh of feeling from the body, leaving only the taste of the world on the tongue.
Bitter.
This place was a bitter illusion, a moment of peace that deludes.
(...I just hope that the world is kinder to this child that it was to it's father, I wish for my child to never bear the legacy of hatred...)
Idealisms that he once believed in, worshipped in. He wanted to be that man that his dear, sweet Kaachan so dreamed of.
Jin now knew that was a dead dream.
Bitterness.
That is reality.
Past, present and future.
"Let's go," he muttered.
I am born in sin and I will walk this damned road until the end.
A/N; Dictionary;
Itadakimasu - we humbly recieve
Ojiisan - old man/grandfather
Papa - affectionate term for father.
Kaachan - affectionate term for mother.
-sama - honorific of deep respect.
-teme - insult.
Kamidana - shrine area of the dojo.
Shimenawa - Rope braid that marks the boundary between normal and sacred places such as the Kamidana.
Shide - a zizzag shaped, paper streamer.
Soba - simple noodle dish.
Neji - Japanese leek.
Tsuyu - soya based dip.
Nori - seaweed.
Soba-yu - the water used to boil the soba noodles in.
Zabuton - type of flat chair/cushion used within a japanese household.
-One last thing before I go, heat isn't spelt wrong, I added the 'e' onto the end for pronounciation reasons, to resemble the word "hate." Hopefully this update is good enough, I'm not sure though but hey. Two thanks, one to Razer Athane for the advice on Jin's character and with previous chapters and two for SeungSeiRan for beta-reading this chapter. As for when the next chapter is out, hopefully in two weeks time. I'm trying to keep a regular update schedule so the chapters maybe a bit slow in coming out but at the end of the day I want to get this finished. I wish you, the reader, the very best.
Hplo.