Chapter 6: Everyone Has A Different Idea Of What's Right And Wrong
It was not even two weeks later that he reappeared. Ikumatsu turned away immediately upon recognizing him, fixing her gaze on the dishes she forced herself to continue washing. What did it take to make him stay away?!
An icy breeze blew in during the brief moment the door was open, seeming to linger in the shop long after it had dissipated. Though it didn't smell anything but fresh, to her it carried the stench of blood she'd only just managed to rid her thoughts of.
For several long seconds the only sounds were the splashing of water in the sink and the low hum of the electric lights. Then came footsteps so soft she had to strain to hear them – she stopped listening the instant she caught herself doing so – and a quiet creak as the man took a seat.
Her shoulders stiffened; her grip tightened on the knife she was trying to wipe clean.
He seemed to take this as an invitation. "Lovely weather we're having, is it not, Ikumatsu-dono?" His voice was calm, lighthearted – playing at sincerity but not fully achieving it. "If I didn't know any better, I would assume it was the reason you have not been getting many customers."
She set the knife down and turned to face him, scowling; though a sick feeling was beginning to bubble up in her stomach, she addressed him with only a vague dissatisfaction, "You have the nerve to show your face around here again?"
"Oh, I've the nerve to do much more than that." He paused, brushing half-melted snow from his hair with the utmost care, then brought his hands together to rub some warmth back into them. "Does it truly come as such a surprise? Surely you should be expecting this, by now."
Ikumatsu sighed. "Please. If I expected such suspicious men to frequent my shop, I would have sold it long ago."
"Ah, would you have? How unfortunate that would have been." Now he took off his sunglasses to clean them – his eyes flitting up to meet hers once, twice during the process, alight with something unrecognizable but not possibly good news – before replacing them, pushing them higher up on his nose. "Is... there something wrong, Ikumatsu-dono? I have done nothing yet, and you already sound terribly upset."
He sure had a strange idea of what nothing meant. "Is that so? I'll be waiting for you to make your move, then – in the meantime, is there anything I could interest you in?"
"Rather a vague question," he said with a hint of a smile, but noticing her lack of amusement he continued simply, "I'll have the special."
"I should have guessed," Ikumatsu said, forcing herself to laugh. "One miso ramen coming up. Geez, can't you ever order something more imaginative?"
"Such a small menu is hardly an invitation to creativity. And is not the special what you would recommend your customers order?"
"You've ordered it enough times to have tried everything, surely you have a favourite by now? Sunglasses Samurai-san." She added the last part hesitantly, as a reminder to herself that she called him that – that name hadn't even entered her mind since the last time they had met.
Just as it had when she had first used it, the nickname gave the man pause. "Perhaps. But I much prefer allowing you to choose. It may be a foolish notion, but I have always felt anything referred to as a 'special' must truly be set apart from everything else."
"It wouldn't be the first foolish notion you've had."
"No, and I doubt it shall be the last." This was hardly a deep conversation, but he took on a solemn, thoughtful tone somehow. If he was considering everything he'd ever thought that could be considered foolish... well, that would keep him occupied for a while. This was a ramen shop, not a therapist's office.
And with that in mind, Ikumatsu turned away to prepare a bowl of ramen in silence.
A lot had happened since she saw him last. Since they'd nearly killed each other, her mind wanted to argue, but she preferred to keep a more pleasant description of the incident in mind. While he was here, at the least. Winter had settled in, and the neighbourhood was under closer watch by the authorities than ever. Her shop was seeing less visits than ever before, but as the man had pointed out already the hostile weather was not the problem.
That might have been more significant in the long run, but it was not what her brain repeated to her.
She had awoken (properly – she had hazy recollections of being awake a few times before that) in the middle of the night after that incident in a panic about getting rid of the evidence, to find herself still lying on the kitchen floor, with her wounds tended to and her shop already under investigation by the Shinsengumi.
Her outrage at this had nearly outweighed the hatred toward the man that had caused them to be there, and the young, plain-looking officer who'd woken her up had taken far too much convincing to give her any clear answers to her questions. No, they hadn't caught the culprit yet. No, she wasn't being arrested unless there was any evidence against her. No, she should really sit down and let them handle this. Yes, this would end up in the news.
Don't you know how bad that will be for business, she'd huffed, and apparently it had been the right thing to say, as it had welcomed some sort of sympathy she didn't particularly want.
As much as she'd resented that officer, the one who'd approached next was infinitely worse. She could recognize him anywhere, not by name but simply as the teenaged captain who was always chasing Katsura around and making a mess of things in the process. An incompetent of course, but a dangerous one. And unlike the plain guy, he couldn't be pressured into holding a more convenient conversation. He'd had questions for her.
Ikumatsu had claimed to have memory damage due to hitting her head – which was only half a lie, as the vivid memories were only beginning to flood back at the time. She'd given only what answers she'd found strategically suitable: her returning to the shop to find a terrorist she had never seen before killing someone, fighting him strictly out of self-defense and being mysteriously spared, not remembering much of the scene in between as she'd been so terribly overcome by fear and emotion. Taking a page out of both those terrorists' books, it seemed. Soon she'd find herself wandering around on rooftops.
In return, she'd received some more substantial information as well, as though in hopes of refreshing her memory somewhat. The victim had been a rich Amanto businessman and veteran, and it was his companions' searching for him that had led to the police being alerted. This hadn't been the first death to happen like this in recent times; some of the extreme Joui factions were hunting down a lot of Amanto all over town, going so far as to corner them in businesses. Ikumatsu, being a clearly victimized shop owner, was not a suspect in the murder itself but they'd found her suspicious in the past – they would take her in for further questioning if they needed to, they'd said. They'd said that before, in regards to the actions of her brother-in-law on a few occasions and the time Katsura chose her shop as the venue for a TV interview, and still had yet to do so.
As a subtle way of pointing out that Katsura hadn't been involved in this incident, she'd given – not without some feeling of spite toward all involved – a description of the man. The plain-looking officer had reacted to this first, but said nothing at the time. Why she remembered that detail she wasn't sure, but it had been the first outside indication she'd seen that that man really was a terrorist the authorities had dealt with before.
She couldn't help but get the impression they'd treated her as the victim more because she was a woman than for the other obvious reasons. But if she could benefit from that, there was really no use in questioning it.
The Shinsengumi had left when their part of the job was finished; only after the body had been taken away had she been allowed to clean anything up. Something about leaving crime scenes as they were. It had been a few days before she'd been able to re-open the shop, and she still hadn't replaced the dishes that had been broken.
The shop had been a dreadful mess, which had prompted far too much questioning, but she could hardly admit she'd been the one to throw everything – it would raise more questions, and earn her a violent reputation. She didn't know, she didn't remember. She really didn't remember throwing most of it, but that hadn't stopped the lies from burning as she spoke them. That man had failed to make a murderer of her, but he'd turned her into a liar already.
Lying is already an inherent part of running any sort of business, she could almost hear him saying as she recalled that realization. You've nothing to gain from deluding yourself.
Truly, "Sunglasses Samurai-san" made frequent appearances in her thoughts, taking the place of her mind's usual voice of self-criticism. She had every reason to pin any problem she saw on him, wasn't that what he'd told her not too long ago?
If only it were that simple. If only she could just hate him and call that the end. What was stopping her from calling the police now? It wouldn't only be getting rid of him, it could also improve the authorities' trust in her... yet she methodically prepared this man's dinner and resumed washing the dishes as he ate.
He must have heard the news – her lies, made public. There had been a report on the TV which she hadn't been interviewed for, and several newspaper articles which grew smaller each time as new cases and celebrity gossip filled the front page. The media showed a consistent trend of making her seem just as much a victim as the man who'd been killed, and of stating that the Shinsengumi had an idea of who the culprit was but wouldn't disclose any details lest they end up attracting his allies' attention. Ikumatsu did not often feel a need to pick up newspapers, but she'd had to read all of those stories to ensure her answers matched up with what the news said in case anyone asked her.
No one had asked, however, with the exception of Katsura, who had briefly dropped by twice since then. At first he'd seemed concerned by terrorist activity in the shop, but then he'd shifted into asking Ikumatsu various repeated questions – ranging from who he was (to which any answer but simply "Katsura" resulted in denial) and how they'd met (which he also claimed she was wrong about many details of) to useless trivia about Jackie Chan (which she assured him she never knew to begin with) – to ensure her memory damage was nothing too severe. She'd almost given in and told him she wasn't suffering amnesia, both to stop him worrying and shut him up, but in the end settled for a comment about how she'd try harder to forget about him next time.
She hadn't heard anything more about the Amanto who'd been murdered. So far as the police, the media, and even the terrorists were all concerned, it didn't matter – the Joui movement as a vague and frightening concept had committed yet another heinous act.
For all the conversations they'd had, the man had hardly grown to be any less of a vague and frightening concept himself; truly, he was a standard to which all the other extremists could compare themselves. Ikumatsu wondered what they thought of him. Did he have friends he spent time with when he wasn't busy destroying people's lives – terrorist friends, or even people outside who accepted him? Was he a leader somewhere, or did he get bossed around every day by someone even worse?
This wasn't what she wanted to know. He could keep anything that might have made him feel more human to himself; she didn't want to hear it.
Her single-minded disgust with him wasn't enough to keep her from glancing at him from time to time, wondering when he would say something. Since the first time they'd met he had made no comment either way about her cooking, rarely even going so far as to thank her. She wondered if this was because of how hard she'd shown it to be for her to take compliments, but no, he made enough of those anyhow. Though much of the time it was hard to know for sure what he was really getting at.
The general rule she'd set for herself was that if it was music-related, she wouldn't question it.
Whether he detected her impatience or simply decided it was too quiet in there (though the odds of him noticing the latter were somehow less likely), he soon looked up from his meal and asked, almost tentatively: "Ikumatsu-dono, might I ask you a question?"
This was a first – any other time, he'd have thrown a half-formed assumption at her. She frowned at him for a moment before laughing nervously. "Really, you can just ask. You don't need my permission."
"Then, if it's as much trouble as you say, why is it that you do continue to run this shop?"
"Geez... asking things that aren't any of your business," Ikumatsu shook her head, turning away. "You really are a pain."
The man didn't pause a moment. "I am flattered, Ikumatsu-dono, but that is far from an answer. You must understand, I am quite curious."
"I almost thought you'd actually have accepted that. I really am a fool." She laughed, not quite bitter but not quite amused either.
"I wouldn't say that... quite the contrary, in fact. Which is why I'd like to know. You understand there are other, one might say better, options you could pursue, and yet you do not appear to have once considered them. What is it that keeps you here?"
She hesitated to think of this man as earnest, let alone honest, at any time, but he certainly gave that impression now. It almost would have been better if he was openly mocking her. At least she'd know how to respond to that.
A few quick answers popped into her head – it was what she knew how to do, it was what she loved, it was better than doing nothing at all... she sighed deeply. None of those were really it, and they would hardly suffice for someone like this. "Pardon my breach of manners here," the first part of the sentence was ironic, but her voice slowly became more sincere and she glanced back at him despite herself, "but is there something in this world that you care about?"
It was hard to tell with the sunglasses, but he appeared to look down, contemplating for a moment. "I suppose so."
"Then I don't think it would be beyond you to understand how I feel about running this shop."
"Huh. I believe I see. There is no logical reason for it at all?"
"Nonsense." This reminded her vaguely of something he had said before – or rather, how she'd felt about most of what he'd said. He would never take her seriously whether she told him what she thought or not; there was no way to get through to him. "Of course there's a reason. Maybe if you took those headphones off and listened for once, you would have heard it."
"Ah, but I am listening." There was enough humour in the way he said this to suggest he meant he was listening to something else entirely, but something else seemed to tell her, 'go on.'
This would be the last time she tried to tell him anything. She took several slow, deep breaths. "Someone... someone important left this place behind for me, so now I must keep it. I don't care about the country – hell, I'd topple it myself if I thought that would get rid of idiots like you – but I'll protect this shop until the end."
As he so often did before saying something he shouldn't, he gave her a look that could almost be mistaken for sympathetic. "That was what your husband would have wanted, was it?"
She scoffed. "As if I'd know. This was my own choice. We both loved this shop."
"Rather a serious reason to do something so simple... yet it is not so simple, is it?" The ramen was entirely forgotten; he watched her with a strange intensity, seeming almost at the edge of his seat despite his calm words. Not too unlike how he'd been when she'd tried to kill him, as though the only real feeling he knew how to express was interest.
He could have left it there and called that the end of his prying, but naturally he had more to say. "I suppose you have not abandoned what it was you wanted back then, either."
Whether he'd done some serious research into her personal life or only made a vague guess based on what he knew of other people who'd had the misfortune of speaking to him, he was right. She could barely restrain herself from snapping at him as she asked, "Honestly, Sunglasses Samurai-san, why do you bother with these questions if you already know this much?"
"I am only trying to better understand. To see the world through your eyes, if you will." He smirked as he echoed something she'd nearly forgotten saying to him once. "Would it be asking too much?"
"It would be!" Though she was fully aware it was the reaction he wanted, her voice rose. The emotion she'd suppressed since the man walked in the door was finally slipping out, and realizing that this was encouraging him only made her angrier. "You really are here just to cause trouble! It doesn't matter what I say, so long as it amuses you, isn't that right?"
He opened his mouth to respond, calm as ever, but she cut him off. "Here I was trying to get you to understand, but you're a lost cause, aren't you? It's not like you ever would understand any of this, you've never loved anything in your life!"
"That is not–"
"I don't want to hear it!" With that, she lashed out – not at him directly, as he leaned back out of reach, but at the not-yet-empty bowl in front of him, knocking it off the counter. He caught it without so much as flinching, though most of its contents spilled on him. Of course, the broth would only have been lukewarm at most by this point.
But she couldn't let the embarrassed flush already colouring her face at this foolishness stop her. "You're the last person I wanted to talk to about this – I never wanted to talk to you at all! What does it take to get rid of you? Just get out of here!"
Her thoughts flashed to the knife she had only just washed and put away. Maybe this time, if she didn't give him a fair warning or time to prepare... not to kill, she knew that wouldn't work, but if she could just cause an injury he couldn't ignore...
His unwavering voice broke through this impossible train of thought. "Is that... what you'd like?"
No. No, it wasn't. And that was exactly the problem. The rage drained from her and she had to lean against the counter, willing the tears not to come. "It's... I don't know what I want anymore."
He set the bowl back on the counter delicately and stood, brushing off his coat the best he could. "I could leave now, if you would prefer it."
"You don't have to – not just because I said... I'm sorry, I can help you clean that up, make another..."
"There is no need for that." He picked up his shamisen – it was hard to think of that as an instrument and not a weapon now – and slung it over his shoulder. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a large sum of money, tossing it in her direction like it was nothing. "I'd meant to leave earlier than usual tonight, anyhow."
"This is too much," she said before even counting it. And it was; he had a tendency to go a little over the price and blame it on not having any smaller bills on him, but this was easily twice as much as the meal should have cost.
"On a planet I visited recently, it was customary to pay extra at restaurants; they called it a 'tip', a compliment for excellent services. I found the concept quite charming."
How irritating. "I know what a tip is, and I can't possibly keep it." Not only because it was clearly a joke, but because her service was bad enough she'd rather lower the price.
"Oh?" He tilted his head again – at the least, he was back to being ordinarily irritating and she was no longer in danger of crying – and frowned, but made no move to take his money back, instead offering: "Well, then, consider it a donation."
"Please. As if I'd accept charity from the likes of you."
He waved a hand dismissively as he moved toward the door. "I would suggest you take whatever you can get, Ikumatsu-dono."
"What do you take me for? I don't need it." This was ridiculous, on both their parts. But the man had already won, though she couldn't fathom what he was possibly trying to achieve with this.
"That does not mean you cannot use it." He opened the door now, letting the cold air and snow swirl in again. "After all, you still have something to live for."
Before she could put together a coherent response, he gave a slight nod in place of a bow and then stepped out into the night, closing the door behind him.
Not for the first time, she was left silently wondering what he could possibly have meant.
Author's Notes: Half of this was derived from a piece I wrote last year for writing class and kept planning to share but never did, and our true final interaction on twitter a few months ago which oddly touched on similar themes. The rest was an attempt to make everything that went wrong in chapter 5 stay there. That is, ease about halfway out of murder attempts, keep only the unresolved emotional (and sexual, we will not deny) tension that needs to be here, and most importantly get the police and news reports (and concerned Katsura) out of the way with justified reasons. In the RPs the lasting drama (trauma?) from there didn't manifest as much more than perpetual wariness, the actual plot aspect of this ship never advanced past there.
The next chapter will be tomorrow already. This one was planned for last week sometime but I had to find the motivation. This was one of my favourites to think about but the most painstaking to write. The best part to me is Ikumatsu immediately turning around and apologizing. And when I say the best part I mean it hurt me but I also laughed writing it. I hope you're all enjoying this fic. I bet you all expected a crack ship.