Anita: Wah – I love Rurouni Kenshin too~! Feudal Japan always makes for a great setting :) I don't usually like using first person (my plots are too annoyingly complicated to make it work...) but I'm glad this one has somehow worked out (phew!) Yeah I definitely flipped Rukawa and Sendoh in this one xD I guess I'm coming to like Sendoh's character more and more, and its fun to tag a little bit of emo onto him haha.
The dedication is very much deserved dear. I love getting your reviews! Last time you posted your email but ffnet censored it so here's mine: ice(underscore)cold(underscore)kaede(at)hotmail(dot)com. :)
Addicted to SD: "alcohol and women" - heehee yeah you're right, I might have taken that a little too far xD but he was supposed to be at the end of everything and rather depressed xD might tone it down a little... or at least make him a little bit older lol /sigh. It's been fun to flip Sendoh and Rukawa around a bit, and I'm glad it's (sort of) working out xD Please enjoying the lemony content – bwahahaha!
Once again for Anita and Addicted to SD. Two faster and more rigorous reviewers, there are none.
Warning: ~ ! Lemony ! ~ and ~ ! Long ! ~ Happy birthday Akira 2012!
In Nijo's Shadow
Part 2
I hated him.
I hated him from the very first day I heard his name. Years and years ago.
I can remember it clearly.
I sat a little way apart from my brothers, my legs going numb from my formal kneeling position, my starched hakama itchy and stiff in the hot weather. Before me, laid horizontally on the floor like an offering, was my bokken - a full length wooden sword. A pleasant breeze blew in from the open door frame of the dojo. Beyond it, the rising battlements of Nijo Castle lifted over elegantly landscaped lawns. I closed my eyes to feel the soft wind moving over my cheeks flushed from exercise. The breeze transformed this hot, sticky day into a beautiful one.
My father, however, seemed anything but comfortable. He kept wiping his neck with his hands, and a sweat brought on by the summer heat shone over his greasy face.
He was a large man. A powerful politician and fearsome warrior. We were all terrified of him. He stood before us now like a giant, hulking statue. We sat in silence and waited for his address.
"Rukawa Akihito" he informed us, "has gone and named his youngest son his heir. Crafty bastard."
We waited, quiet and still like reeds, wondering what this had to do with any of us. My father dug his way deeper into bakufu politics than any of us really understood. He was sensitive to political waves, although his chain of thought was seldom immediately obvious to us. This time he rolled the letter he held into a cylinder and pointed it angrily in our direction.
"Do you want the Sendoh house to be entirely forgotten?" he accused us.
Those sitting closest to him flinched slightly. The rest of us dutifully shook our heads. I didn't exactly know what I was concurring to. The complex manoeuvring of the bakufu houses was beyond me. Rukawa Akihito was a name that was sounded familiar, but who he was, or why his youngest son should infuriate my father so much, I didn't know.
My father crumpled up the paper violently and threw it at the floor. "A prodigy they call him. A genius!" He looked like he wanted to hurl an obscenity. "Kaede fucking Rukawa!"
The dojo master at his side gave him a critical sideways look. Perhaps he thought my father was stark raving mad. I often thought so. He glowered angrily at all of us, as if we had failed him, as if he were incensed he didn't have a prodigy of his own.
Ah ha, I thought smugly to myself, as if I had cracked a complex enigma. That explains it. Simple jealously. I did not let my moment of self-satisfaction show on my face.
"Two of you" he announced abruptly, getting down to the nit and grit of it finally, the real reason he had stormed in and interrupted our practise, "will go to Edo. I've had enough of hiding in the shadows. It is time for the Sendoh family to stand up."
Around me, my brothers exchanged puzzled glances. I didn't move. I felt my heart squeeze up against my ribs.
Go to Edo. I wondered if I had heard him right. What a thought. I had never left Kyoto before. I had never even left the walls of this castle. The possibility of a journey – of exploration – was remote yet strangely marvellous to me. I tried to imagine it - a grand escape to another place where they wouldn't know me, where they wouldn't judge me. Edo. Though I'd never even entertained the thought of the city before, suddenly I wanted to see it. It seemed to me to be a unexpected escape from my contracted world.
My father was continuing his tirade.
"The two strongest will go" he declared. "Go and match those Rukawas blow for blow-" he pumped his fist as if suddenly overwhelmed by passion, "-an exhibition for the shogun. Let Tokugawa see that the Sendoh clan is also worthy of his attention."
"But father..." the eldest and bravest among us, four years my senior, spoke out in confusion, "...you told us that the shogun already does us great honour by entrusting us with his family seat here at Nijo..."
My father glowered at him, enthusiasm evaporating, and annoyance taking its place. "He would do us greater honour" he snapped, "were he to grace us with his so honourable presence."
The dojo master looked hugely uncomfortable suddenly. I only tilted my head in curiosity. It was rare that my father – politician that he was - lost control of his tongue. Young as I was I already knew it was sacrilegious to speak of our shogun in such a way.
"The two strongest" he repeated, taking a breath and speaking more calmly, "will go." He turned to the dojo master behind him. "Which two have the greatest skill? Skill enough to beat a so-called prodigy?"
Our teacher swept his eyes over us. I knew what he would say, and couldn't help but look up in anticipation, my heart thudding.
He seemed a little nervous as he said it. I expect he already knew what my father's reaction would be. They'd had this argument before.
"The strongest?" He grimaced slightly, "The strongest is Akira. Beyond a doubt. Akira is a prodigy himself. If you would acknowledge him before the bakufu I'm sure he would win their respect. He could bring the Sendoh family great honour."
My eyes were shining hopefully as they both looked in my direction, and I'm ashamed go say I almost believed it. Right then. There was a second, a tiny fraction of time and nothing more, when I really believed it was possible for me to prove myself to all those who doubted me. That my father would support me. That it might actually happen.
My father looked highly uncertain, and I knew he was weighing up the possible consequences. I waited, my breath baited, trying to plead with my eyes. Couldn't he see my desperation? Just a chance. Just one chance was all I needed to turn everything around. I wouldn't let him down.
Slowly, he shook his head. "No" he replied, and turned his gaze away from me. "Not him. Who else?"
My face immediately flushed red with anger and humiliation. No one dared to look at me. My fists clenched on my thighs so hard my nails drew blood. My shoulders were trembling, but they all pretended not to see me. They all looked through me as if I wasn't even there.
Where was I supposed to direct my frustration? An unrecognised, unacknowledged boy like me? Should a child hate his own father? The brothers who did not accept me? Or perhaps hate the teacher who did not bother to press the case any further? People I saw, and had to live beside, every day of my life.
No. I found it was easier, and safer, to throw my anger in another direction entirely. I could turn all my injured wrath against a boy I'd never seen before. That now, thanks to my weak-willed father, I probably never would.
Yes, I found, the emotion of hate came quite readily.
But would you blame me for it? For vowing to myself there and then that one day I would strip Kaede Rukawa of all the glories he had stolen from me? For promising myself that one day I would crush him?
Yes, I hated him from the very first day I heard his name.
Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that what I really hated was myself.
Seven years later...
There were often enquiries, or so I heard. Inevitable, I suppose, in a place like this one. Still they tended to offer a lot, the kagema trade being more profitable than the female equivalent. Male submission, it seemed, was rarer and thus more valuable. And they were always the same type of men. Usually the lower class of samurai, and middle-aged. Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Losing their hair, beards turning grey. The kind of men who no longer cared for public opinion, who had realised they were getting old, and after a lifetime spent bedding loose women decided that they no longer wished to deny themselves the opportunity of bedding men instead.
Still, their offers were always refused. I hadn't sunk that low yet, after all. Though that wasn't to say they didn't occasionally take the initiative and attempt to force me into a room or corner, hoping to subdue me against the dark wooden slats, not realising that I was neither as weak nor as desperate as they liked to think I was.
They would keel over, bent double towards the tatami mats like the old men that they were, and I would leave with a quiet clack of slippers, my dignity intact but somehow feeling oddly empty. A year ago I would have put a blade in their souls. Was pride really dead? Sometimes I wondered if I wasn't doing this all wrong.
Still, I was pretty used to dealing with these types of men by the time I noticed him watching me.
He always sat upright. I think that was how I came to be so aware of him. He formed his own presence in my mind, a straight backed figure with a cup of sake in one hand, and a woman at his side who he ignored as steadfastly as if she were not there at all.
I did not know his name. I had never seen him before.
From the state of his clothes and the hopeless air of idleness that hung on him like a drape it was clear he was down on fortune. But still; that straight back. He impressed himself upon me like a brand. I, who stooped so low.
I never looked at him except from the corner of my eye, this strange customer. I carried on as always, having him only in the back of my mind, like a quiet but insistent presence, all the while assuming that he, like so many of my other admirers, was just another middle-aged pervert to be dismissed.
So I waited, expecting an enquiry, a summons, a forceful attempt upon me, but nothing happened.
Often, sometimes more than four nights in a week, he'd be there. Always, I could feel his eyes on me. But each time he would take some woman to bed and the night would end without a glance being shared between us.
I think it was his reluctance that interested me the most. That in this dirty world, fallen so far, he still had pride enough to stop him from turning to me, to stop him from admitting his desires. Pride. The thing I sat at such odds with.
I still had pride, a least some small mote of my samurai soul. But how much of it was valuable? Had I lost too much, or preserved too little? Where was the balance to be found? I tried to convince myself, night after night, but the truth was that I wasn't sure of anything.
I had grown up surrounded by the beauty and luxury of Nijo Castle, but it had never been a home to me. I had been born into a samurai family, but I had never really felt like one.
Besides, in the last few years, so much had changed. The entire world had distorted out of recognition. The life I had once taken for granted, I didn't even dare to contemplate any more. I was lost to myself. What I was. Who I was. It was all I could do to survive each day.
But then... he. To my unfocused eyes he appeared to be something steady. Something sure. I found myself irreconcilably drawn to him. I began to watch him across the smoky bar room more and more. Wondering, perhaps, if he had answers where I had none.
He bothered no one, caused no trouble, and kept very much to himself. A quiet mystery. He wore his hair long, halfway down his back, at first pulled up into a formal topknot, but later tied back loosely at his nape. His formal kamishimo hinted that he really was samurai, more high-born than most that frequented us here, but there were no swords at his waist.
A samurai without a sword! The chef and kitchen staff liked to gossip and laugh about him behind his back. The cramped and untidy kitchen with its spills and its stains and its contaminated meat would echoing with the sound of their contempt. He was obviously defeated. How shameful. He should go and commit seppuku and be done with it.
…shameful?
What did that mean to them... to me? Shame, pride, honour. Bound together. Things I tried so hard to distance myself from. I had no right to judge anyone on such basis. I knew it was dangerous – always denying, second guessing myself, drowning in my own hideous hypocrisy - but I couldn't help it. I couldn't escape myself, my lost heritage, or my slaughtered father who still loomed large and terrifying in my mind. I was caught between the two halves of myself.
Eventually my increasingly guilt-ridden conscience drove me to ask my colleagues what they knew. It was suggested that he was one of Enomoto's defeated, fled from the fighting at Edo or the north. But it was all conjecture, nobody seemed to really know, not even his name.
He wasn't from Kyoto, that was sure enough. They said he had a strong Edo accent, and tied his obi in the Eastern style. As one who had never left the city myself, just those small regional differences gave him a whole new dimension of curiosity. He'd seen things I hadn't seen, been places I hadn't been. Though I did my utmost to stifle it, just the sight of him caused my heart to move painfully for a past I had lost. Opportunities I had been denied. Things I wanted to forget.
No, I tried to block it all out. This, I tried to convince myself, was where I belonged now.
But... there was something about him. Something as small as the tilt of his head, the distance in his stare, the fact that he sat upright and proud even though they secretly mocked him. He reminded me all over again of this old blood of mine. Reminding me that pride, in certain measure, could still be beautiful.
And then, weeks later, I finally heard his name.
I was surprised, that I will admit. Initial denial preceded cool disbelief. An unpleasant relic of my past life. This was not some distant samurai, some farm-bred creature from the countryside, but that once-reputed child genius who had so clouded my childhood. The proud prodigy of the famous Rukawa clan. Someone whose existence was strung tightly to mine, although of course he didn't know me. The object of my vicious one-sided rivalry.
But the surprising fact is that my emotions didn't rise as rapidly as I thought they might. Besides my astonishment I had no urge to swing at him, to hurt him, to revenge myself upon him. This person I had dedicated years of my seething pain to destroying didn't sear me as I might have expected him too.
Perhaps it was because I saw he was broken. Perhaps it was because I was the one who was broken. Whatever the case, the emotion in my gut stirred slightly. Nothing more than that. A gentle motion, a kindling of that which I had thought destroyed – my own hard-wrought pride.
Yes, I knew it was dangerous. But I thought, I honestly thought, that I could handle it. I believed I had control over my emotions, that after so long I would be immune to him. Of course I was wrong. His appearance in my life could only mark the beginning of a painful reawakening.
And then, that same day, for better or worse, things came to a head. I watched him. I watched the way he didn't move, didn't even flinch as the unfortunate girl was dismembered right beside him. I saw his coldness. He watched her head roll without an ounce of sorrow in his features. His disinterest disgusted me. A samurai wasn't allowed to even be human in moments like these.
The patrons and staff members squealed and ran in fright, but I did not. I did not move. I watched her headless corpse leak blood over the matting with the same distant immunity he did.
I disgusted myself.
He rose silently from his seat and I watched him still.
Among these people who laughed and scorned him, spoke so casually of seppuku, judged him all the while having no concept of a samurai's burden, he alone was strong. He was strong and utterly beautiful. And I wondered - why should he exchange his life for theirs? What compelled him to do such a thing?
Why?
I hated him, and I hated myself for feeling my heart move for him, sad and pitiful and prideful creature that he was.
Mirrors that we were.
So I turned and I ran. I had vowed I would defeat Kaede Rukawa. Years ago, I had set my path against him. I told myself that I couldn't let him die before I had the chance to pay him back for all my years in blackness.
I ran. And as I ran I felt hot tears streaming down my face. And I knew I had already decided to throw it all away. That it was time for me to pick myself out of the ashes of Nijo.
Akira. That was what they called me. A common, simple name. Sometimes I wondered if my father hadn't named me that out of spite. A worthless name for a worthless son. Yet I was a Sendoh none the less. The last one. Indeed, the only one.
Just like him.
So it came about that again, I watched. The beauty of his movements, the nostalgic song of his sword through the air. He pierced me. Everything about him. Everything.
I can't really explain it. Why, in that moment, the world seemed to contract. So small, suddenly reduced, and nothing seemed important any more. Not my lofty ideals, my personal vows, the direction of my entire life. Nothing seemed as important as him.
My false world just collapsed. He left me standing there, my soul clammering for him. And then, before I knew it, before I could even grasp hold of my racing emotion, I realised that I was, so much more than ever before, myself.
And him. It was all because of him.
He defined me.
He slept beside my fire, the contours of his face deepened by the shadows cast by the flames. His was a glamorous kind of beauty. The sort of person who drew attention with no effort. Furious strength tempered with great sorrow. Magnetic. It was difficult to pull my eyes away.
Still annoyed with myself for letting myself fall into such a trap, I helped myself from the bubbling pot of stew suspended over the fire. The smell of boiling turnip carried comfortingly on the warm air. This one square room was my modest home. It wasn't much, but I held it more dearly than I'd ever cared for any of the thousands of rooms at Nijo.
My guest showed no signs of waking. He had collapsed midway through our fight and hadn't stirred since, not even as I struggled to lift and drag him home.
I folded my legs and, still watching him breathing gently, sucked greedily on my spoon. The soup tasted a little bland. Vegetables had their limits. What I wouldn't have given for a taste of my mother's cooking now.
I saw her in my mind for a moment, a classical beauty. Hair like lacquer, skin like milk. No wonder my father had wanted her. I stared into the flames for a moment before pushing the memories away. She was beyond my reach now, and just as well too. If she had known what had become of me, it probably would have stopped her heart.
I finished my soup slowly. The night was already dark around me and eventually I pulled on more clothes, laying down on the opposite side of the fire from my sleeping guest to whom I had already lent my one and only mattress. I watched him for a while longer through the flicker of the flames, surprising myself all over again that I had ever thought he could have been a middle-aged man. From this distance, seeing his thin frame, his smooth, youthful skin, the mistake was impossible to justify. He was twenty at most. Younger, maybe. Still, the eyes that had watched me across the room, I was sure, had seemed so much older.
He was sleeping peacefully, with his lips slightly parted, his hair spread out over the sheets. I wrinkled my nose a little bit. For all his dramatic elegance it was clear he hadn't had a bath in weeks. I resolved that that was the first thing I'd make him do when he woke up.
Despite my best efforts to suppress any false optimism, I remained shamefully hopeful that we would somehow… understand one another. But it was tempered by a strange fear. I was – I realised – irrationally afraid of him. Of what he would think of me after I had already invested so much of my emotion into him. Finally, amidst all my worries, I fell asleep like that, imagining our long conversations and listening to the crackle of the logs.
By morning, however, he still hadn't woken.
I got up and, dressing up warmly, let myself out into the yard at the back of the cabin. Damp and decaying leaves covered the ground. I heated up the water in the old wooden bathhouse outside the back door in preparation, shovelling coals onto the fire that burned under the copper boiler, then fanning with wide bamboo sticks strung with cloth to keep the smoke out of the house and the flames fierce. My breath rose in puffs of vapour before my eyes but the exercise kept me warm. I fetched out the wooden washtub for laundry and set it ready in the centre of the leaf-strewn yard. I swept up debris from the porch, and then, feeling hungry and impatient, made a trip to the market to buy extra vegetables and tofu. I spent more than I really should have to purchase a few pieces of brisket to add much missed meat to the evening meal. I expected my exhausted guest would need it.
The sun had risen winter-bright, but it was still cold, and I drew my clothes tighter around me as I walked, avoiding the bigger puddles on the street, sandals clacking loudly against the frosted cobbles. It was a quiet morning, the chill weather driving most people indoors, a frosty solitude settling over the town. I found my eyes drawn up to the structure of the castle that loomed high above our heads, seeing how the sloping green rooftops were glittering with the frost. Beautiful Nijo - a stunning combination of elegance and warfare – the symbol of the lives we had left behind. It set me shivering even as I hurried back towards home.
There I found him awake.
He had pulled his kamishimo back on and was kneeling before my small looking-glass, looking strangely out of place in my simple and second hand home. He was no longer sitting straight-backed as he always had, but he had slouched slightly, as if he were tired. He was staring vacantly at the reflection of himself, my knife for chopping vegetables clutched fiercely in his hand.
I had, I remembered quite suddenly, beaten him in our spar yesterday.
I froze in the door frame, convinced he was going to plunge the blade into himself – it seemed the only suitably dramatic thing to do. But he did not. Instead he raised the knife and, with a decisive slice, cut right through the gathered bunch of his hair at the base of his neck. Inky black trails more than a foot long fell to the mat by his feet like the coils of a snake.
He hadn't seen me and I stood there embarrassed. I felt as if I had stumbled into something intensely private.
He continued to hack away clumps of hair with a wildly glazed look, like a man possessed, his movements fierce but his face distant. I set down my purchases and went over to him. I couldn't resist it. It was like watching Icarus fall.
He noticed me then, and he stopped and looked at me in the glass as I knelt close behind him. His expression was impossible to read.
I held out my hand. It was trembling slightly.
"I'll help you" I offered, my mouth dry. "You can't see the back."
He stared at me suspiciously for a moment, as if expecting me to mock him for his strange actions. When I did not, he handed the knife over with some reluctance.
I shuffled closer to him, and began to thin out the irregular clumps he had left.
His hair was dirty, but thick and vibrant. I wondered briefly if he intended to sell the strands – they'd probably fetch a good price. Almost immediately I shook my head at my own thoughts. How could I even contemplate putting a price on a samurai's soul.
I worked silently for a while. He sat patiently, staring forward at himself blankly, not appearing to really see anything, probably thinking of too many things.
Finally, after a long while, it was he who finally broke our silence. There was an odd tone in his voice, a curiosity mixed with suspicion. "Are you…" he began, "...really one of Sendoh's sons?"
His eyes had flickered up to focus finally on my face in the mirror. He was staring with a deep intensity, his curiosity, like mine, finally brimming over.
I smiled, perhaps a little bitterly. "Yes" I said, then hesitated before adding, "illegitimate, though."
"Oh" he tilted his head slightly, still looking at me.
The memories came back to me then. My miserable excuse for a childhood. My exclusion from the family, the cold shoulder of my father, and the aloof indifference of my brothers. It was so deeply engrained in me that I unable to hide the sudden flare of my bitterness. He stared at me, and I'm sure he saw the twist of my ugly emotions at that moment, but he said nothing.
I tried to hate him. I tried to rekindle that old fire that had sustained me in my youth, but I could conjure nothing. We were both in exactly the same situation. The past had been wiped away. We had both lost everything that should have been ours.
So I forced my emotions back, down, down into my gut, suffocating that fire as I sliced through the last rogue scrap of hair. I moved back to survey my handiwork. He looked nice, I thought, with shorter hair. He'd lost a little of his regality, but his striking looks had not been dampened. I got up.
"The bath water is hot" I told him briskly, "you should take one."
He nodded and rose elegantly to his feet. I showed him the way to the small bathhouse outside, trying to hide my awkwardness, and stood just inside the door, waiting to take the clothes he discarded to get them washed. I had found a plain but clean, winter-thick kimono and under-robe for him to wear, which I placed to the side.
The bathhouse was just a small wooden hut. It was divided into two sections: a small entranceway in which to dress and store items, and the main bathroom which contained a large wooden tub filled with water heated by fire from the outside.
I watched him move his hands delicately to push the fabric of his clothes back from his shoulders, the way he removed his strong arms from the sleeves of his kimono, revealing his tense back to me. I was surprised by the number of fresh scars he bore until I recalled he had been involved in the war.
"Where" I asked, my mouth suddenly dry as I watched him move, "where did you fight?"
He looked back at me briefly.
"Hakodate" he replied.
The North. It seemed wild and dangerous and far away. The brief spate of fighting in Kyoto I had watched from behind walls and windows. I hadn't been permitted to fight alongside my father and brothers. I hadn't been deemed worthy of it. Perhaps one of the most skilful swords they had, and they hadn't made any use of me at all. For what? For honour? It still infuriated me, but what meaning was there in hating the dead? I tried to tell myself all over again that I had to let my long-held grudges go.
"What was it like?" I asked, a little deflated, but far too curious to pretend I wasn't impressed.
He turned away.
I saw his back again, laced with vestiges of damage; sword slices and stabs, the occasional peppering of a bullet chip. Wounds that were only a few months old, some still bearing scabs. Though he didn't say anything, I suddenly felt as if I could hear it. The sorrows of war seemed to howl in that small bathroom. Blood and noise. Not enough space to swing a sword. Cowardly fools hailing deadly bullets from distant hills. Crushed and crowded so you were forced to stand on the dying bodies of your own allies. Anger, giving way to sorrow, giving way to madness. Memories that were still fresh and raw and painful.
I looked down at my own sword-calloused hands.
Yes, I knew the foulness of war. The stench of blood. I knew it but still my fingers clutched the fabric of his kimono fiercely. Wasn't that the only thing I'd ever wanted? – the chance to fight. The chance to prove myself. I craved it, even now.
After all, war and death – wasn't that all we had lived for?
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. He just stepped silently through the door to the bath and left me there, staring after him, the bundle of his kimono in my arms, my blood slowly heating in my veins.
I could torture myself with the same questions over and over again, but nothing would change. Why, then, couldn't I let it go? Who was left for me to blame? I, whose talents they had caged for no other reason than their own conceited pride.
I vented my frustrations by washing his kimono in the yard with more roughness than was necessary, and then hung it out to dry. It was sadly worn, but made of rich fabric, worthy of one of the great houses.
I re-entered the house still in a daze, the memory of his broken skin prickling me. I could see his faults, how the past was destroying him, and I tried to re-convince myself that I had been right in deciding to leave all that behind me, but still the urge to be like him was overpowering.
I breathed deeply, and found I no longer had the motivation to chop vegetables. I simply settled myself on the floor, legs untidily crossed, staring forward and trying to see the future, trying to ignore the past, my entire body tingling.
He returned some forty minutes later. I was surprised, mostly, by how pale he was. It had been hard to tell what with the dirt that had covered him before, yet I saw him now quite changed. The bloodied and hardened warrior I had imagined had washed away, and this... this boy stood in his place. And in his young, fresher incarnation I saw even more the he was my equal, my peer, someone with whom I shared so much rather than a distant stranger. I stared.
He was tall and fine, and without a kamishimo to dramatise his frame he was a little smaller than he had seemed. The cloth on the clothes I had lent to him was plainer, poorer, but it only served to emphasise his boyish handsomeness by contrast. The slope of his shoulders was still proud, but no longer intimidating. His hair, in its new shortness, fell slightly over his eyes, and revealed the elegant line of his chin. The thin strip of his obi hugged his narrow hips, suggesting the body underneath that was lean and strong.
He looked at me with his deep eyes, and I remembered all the nights he had spent looking at me. All the nights his eyes had grazed me and I remembered that perhaps I wasn't alone in this turmoil. That even though he was someone I wanted to thrust away, a symbol of a past life I had rejected, somehow I also wanted to drag him impossibly close.
Seemingly oblivious to my discomfort he sat near me, his eyes moving over the lined up vegetables just as mine were moving over him.
He gestured with one slender hand, "these?"
"We prepare them for the soup" I replied.
He didn't exactly seem enthusiastic, and he clearly had no idea what to do, but he was responsive to instructions, and did what I asked without complaint. We worked together, side by side, chopping and peeling and washing in silence. I was painfully aware every time our shoulders or hands brushed against each other. I felt like my skin was electrified.
"How did you learn to do this kind of thing?" he asked finally, as he attempted to behead a carrot and sent the loose piece skidding across the floor.
I shrugged. "I used to see them working in the kitchens at Nijo. And then I just figured the rest out on my own."
"Nijo?" he echoed, looking up. "You grew up in the castle?"
I looked up too. "Of course," I replied.
He looked almost startled. I think that he hadn't really realised just how similar we really were. I expect he hadn't been able to shake his perception of me as anything more than a servant boy until this moment. He seemed almost embarrassed, and looked quickly away.
"How did you end up here?" he queried.
I looked sideways at him perhaps a little bothered by the question. The past was not something I wanted to discuss.
It was true that my father had been powerful man, but his fortune had never been destined for me. As the son of one of his mistresses I had had considerably less status than the sons of his wife. I was lucky enough to have been educated and trained, but no matter how I excelled at sword fighting, I was never going to be accepted by the family.
They had said I had a discommendable humility about me; an unattractive commonness that I had inherited from my mother. They didn't like the way I spoke, my manners, my blood. Of course I was taught to speak and act formally; enduring endless lessons in etiquette though I would much rather have been swinging a practise sword in the dojo or stealing fruit from the kitchens. But my efforts made no difference. Eventually, I stopped trying to please them. If the heads of the family wouldn't acknowledge me, and I wasn't in line to inherit my father's seat, what the hell did it matter? That's how it had seemed to me back then anyway. I was equal to the best of them with a sword, but they didn't like me. And so I didn't like them. My future had lapped in uncertainty right from the start.
The Meiji restoration had left me without family, money or a home. However, perhaps ironically, it was my condemned 'common touch' that allowed me to survive the war and its upheavals and leave my samurai upbringing behind.
I had been forced to take a job, or else starve on the streets, however my manners were such that I caused no one to suspect for a moment that I had been born into the prestigious Sendoh clan. I could fool people into thinking I was one of them, low-born, right here in the slums of Kyoto. It makes sense, I guess; without a sword at my side, I really am nothing more than another illegitimate child of another defeated lord.
But I know not everyone could have done what I did. Take this Kaede Rukawa for example. He could never have convinced anyone that he was anything less than heir to a noble lord. Everything about him was just far, far too glorious.
And as irritating as that was, I supposed I had things to be thankful for. At least I had come out of the war with a place to work, a saleable trade, way to survive. Kaede Rukawa stood alone on the edge of an abyss.
So I shrugged in the face of his curious stare and said nothing. It wasn't as if he would ever have been able to understand anyway.
"Your sword..." he said in the face of my silence, struggling to frame his words, "...why did I never encounter you before?"
Another question I simply couldn't answer. I pretended I didn't hear. Thankfully he seemed to accept my silence and did not press me further. For that, at least, I was grateful.
As we continued to work I caught myself staring at him far too many times. I was waiting, I expect, for more questions. For demands. For prying curiosity. But he asked nothing more of me. Occasionally he would look at me, but then look away whenever I caught his eye. I ended up gazing with almost undisguised curiosity, trying to understand him.
I felt hot and strangely irritated. I don't know what I wanted from him. I don't know what I intended to achieve. It was only an itch, something that made me feel restless, uncomfortable, needy.
Once the vegetables were prepared I placed them all into the pot, stirred it for longer than I really needed to, and felt the empty silence settle on us again like a noose.
There were, thinking about it, many things we could have discussed. The actions of the emperor, the treachery of the Satsuma house, the blackness that stretched out before the both of us, our futures in tatters. I could have told him of my childhood in Nijo, or asked about his in Edo. I could have told him about how I had first heard of him and his sword all those years ago. I might even have admitted how I had decided, after the war, to leave my samurai upbringing behind; a simple minded intention to give up the sword, a resolve that had already been shattered in its infancy by the reappearance of my childhood rival. I could have confessed how I was prepared to give all that up, to change my whole life for him.
Yes, there were many things for us to speak of.
Instead, we sat in silence.
The steam rose in vapours towards the ceiling, the tempting scents of the soup quickly curling into the air, filling the room and us with a powerful sense of a home.
Slowly, amidst the silence and the bubbling soup, he seemed to relax. I watched him close his eyes almost experimentally, as if he were testing out the concept of peace. Allowing himself to settle, to be content, for the first time in however long.
I studied him for the umpteenth time, amazed at at his youth, his willowy form - strong and slender like bamboo - and the elegant symmetry of his face. I felt that he was beautiful.
Next to him, I felt ugly.
Not in a physical sense. I knew well enough that I was considered attractive - the loose-handed men at the bar had taught me that. No, the ugliness in me was my blackened soul.
I was discontent. I was restless and miserable and fraught with deformed emotions. I had wasted years of my life hating this person who, I now saw, moved so quietly.
As a child I had pinned only the worst kinds of traits on him. Conceit. Arrogance. Laziness. Complacency. Yet all of those things had only been distortions of my own jealousy. He was a swordsman, a proud warrior who had been called a genius all his life. And yet he was not arrogant. Not really. At worst he was only aware of his skill.
As I had seen him in the bar he rarely spoke. He retreated from interaction. He left others alone - did not judge them - and only asked to be left alone in return. He had a sense of duty, but maintained a distance. He was – I thought now – quite perfect.
And as for myself, I felt as if all the interactions in my life had conspired to taint me. The sum of my existence had only made me cynical and bitter. I hid my most ugly emotions behind a façade but I could not deny their existence. I was judgemental. I was unpleasant. In my heart I was decidedly unfriendly.
In short, I was a liar.
And like any lying, dark and twisted thing I found myself drawn with hopeful desperation towards his unadulterated truth.
Yes perhaps I had come out of the war ahead of him, but what had I sacrificed for my own comfort? At least he had a soul that was still intact, without reason to feel shame, still so proud.
His eyes remained closed.
I shuffled, almost in a trance, towards him. Crawling on my hands and knees like a dog and feeling no better than one. I felt irrationally as if I had let him down. As if abandoning my sword, my family name, my samurai blood, made me somehow despicable. I almost wanted to ask him to forgive me.
He opened his eyes at the last possible moment, but he did not stop me, nor protest, nor even seem surprised. I felt myself strangely welcomed as I touched my lips uncertainly to his.
To be him. Or to have him. Perhaps the distinction was not worthwhile.
I knew I was showing my darkest parts to him, but he didn't recoil. He accepted my desire with his eyes open while I, through my fumbled, desperate kiss, attempted to pour my black soul into him.
Perhaps, I realised, he had been expecting this all along.
At first hesitantly, and then with more and more fervour, we drew ourselves together. Lips pressing, limbs entwining, the fabric of our clothes crushed between us like a last safety barrier. I felt my mind expanding. Strangely liberated after months and months of anxiety, of labour, of stooping and bowing and trying to crush myself into a shell that was much too small for my soul.
This was so different. This was another world to me.
The more I moved, struggling against him and against my fate, the more I could feel myself being dragged out of myself, inch by inch. Renewed strength filled my limbs. I felt alive. I felt like he was giving me my long-awaited freedom.
His willing acceptance of my most pressing desire was like a gift of recognition. And as I pushed him back against the floor, I felt a sincere sense of gratitude. Why, I wondered, had I ever harboured that life-long urge to destroy? I only wanted to explore every inch of him and his crystal clear soul.
But this wasn't a gentle, playful tryst, slowed by girlish tease and long-lashed seduction. Both of us had been born from fire after all. He was not weak. Not gentle. And he made it clear to me that there was no need to treat him like a glass doll when he lifted his sword-calloused hands and clenched his fists in my hair, dragging me into his kiss with a furious kind of zeal.
Two warriors. This could only be war.
All at once I felt utterly wild. Unchained. Like bottled up rage breaking all my surfaces apart as we each released all our fears and our hurt upon the other. I clawed at his neck, desperate to have him closer to me, trying almost just to sink into his body.
I wasn't thinking at all. Both of us, in those moments I'm sure, lost control of ourselves completely. I was only aware of the furious skirmish of our lips and my body's desperate undulations as I pressed and rubbed myself against him.
Eventually we broke apart. I was gasping. So was he.
By now I was kneeling over him, one knee of either side of his hips. He looked up at me from the floor, his lips shimmering, his clothes in disarray.
We seemed to pause upon the brink of madness then. Staring at one another and seeing our expressions of wild liberation mirrored in each other's eyes.
Then slowly, almost with ceremony, he lifted his shoulders up from the floor and reached out with two hands around my waist. Gently he reached for the knot of my obi. He pulled at it with a strange sense of purpose, drawing the fabric through the knot with a gentle sound of fibres rubbing against fibres. I waited, frozen in place as the thing came undone, the band of it slipping down my front, the cloth of my kimono parting and slipping from me like a second skin.
His eyes roamed over my exposed body in appreciative wonder, his lips parting to expel a long sigh of pleasure that was breathy and hot. "Tsukuyomi" he named me quietly, in a low breath. Moon god.
I was trembling when I bent to kiss him again, pushing his clothing away, baring him so we were skin against hot skin as we moved together.
Feeling the time was right I moved back, wriggling away from his hot touch and repositioning myself between his legs. He stared up at me through hooded eyes. I knew he already expected and accepted this. I forced myself to breathe slowly.
I had never done this before. Not this kind of joining. And never with a man. So my fingers went into him first as if testing the way.
Dry and hot. He winced ever so slightly, but no more than that. We had, both of us, long learnt to endure pain. We had been born to it. But to endure shame, I knew from his ragged breaths, was costing him much more. A reminder that even he had demons to fight. Still, I pushed deeper.
"Those women never satisfied you, did they?" I said aloud, more to myself than to him, and more in wonder than in question. "Was it me who you imagined?"
He made no reply but just looked at me. Those eyes. I breathed out through my mouth in a rush, lifting his legs from the knees and feeling my body grow taut. The small room became full of the sound of our breathing. I closed my eyes and felt the world expanding around me like Nijo's walls falling, giving me an entire world that was mine.
In that empty moment, he was me. I was him.
I pushed forward with a sudden, furious thrust. His hips left the floor with the violence of it, a gasp of surprise wrenched from his lips.
I didn't pause, or wait, or savour the moment. I couldn't. I couldn't stop myself. Back, and in again, and back, my body quickly covered in a slick layer of sweat. His hands came up to run over my clammy skin, holding my forearms tightly in his grip. I pushed myself against his strength and revelled in the fact that I could not force him to give way.
How ferocious. I let my eyes roll with the pleasure of having his warm, strong body gripping desperately around me, sinking me in the splendour of his heat. The sensation of knowing I held his pride in my hand. My power over him was his power over me. We were utterly caught together.
We fought with every drop of strength, rolling between victory and defeat, fighting fiercely. I could only be astonished, again and again, by how beautiful he was. I could have lost myself there, just buried in his hot, pulsing pride, feeling utterly mad with it all. Drunk on the feeling of knowing him, and through him, knowing myself.
Gradually his body turned ragged and weak under the force of my fury. His vice grip on my arms dissolved as I sapped the strength out of him, feeding myself on his surrender. With every thrust I felt myself grow stronger, and felt him grow weaker in turn. In that cold wintertime room, my body felt like it was burning up.
Eventually I was forced to stop simply to catch my breath. He lifted one trembling hand to wipe sweat out of his eyes, looking up at me dazedly, already exhausted. My lungs and muscles were burning like fire. I looked down at him, our bodied still fused together, and saw everything I felt mirrored in his eyes. Desire and pain. Perhaps too much of both.
The violence drained out of me. The need to prove myself, to overpower, to receive recognition, somehow faded with my tiredness and I was left to see the shattered field we had fought. A struggle between him and his pride. Between me and my self-hatred.
And it felt so... human. More real than either of us had a right to be.
I found myself moving into him as if he had drawn me on strings, wrapping him up in my arms, wanting to touch every inch of him. He relaxed in my embrace, resting his head against my shoulder as I hoisted him into my lap, sinking myself back into the very depths of him, knowing that he was tired of fighting and I was tired of surrendering. And yet we no longer felt the need to break those tedious casts. Now, I felt, it was enough. Just to be warm. Just to be accepted.
So I moved slowly, and he tightened pleasingly around me until I buried my face in his neck and released myself into his shuddering, welcoming body, his name hanging on my lips, the world blackening around me until there was only me and him, him and me, and this utter pleasure that ripped through my soul.
And after that, it was my turn to finally pass out.
I heard him moving, shifting around in a rustle of fabric, and felt my kimono laid gently over me where I lay. I cracked my eyes open blearily.
He was sitting next to the fire, a powerful silhouette. Straight-backed, I noticed. So strong. So independent. This samurai.
So heartbreakingly alone.
I watched him as I always had. Perhaps as I always would.
I understood his emotions. I understood that he'd spent the months following the war running away from himself. That he hadn't had the courage to think about where he could go from here. That the thought of tomorrow terrified him, just the same as it did me.
My hands twisted around my kimono fiercely.
One way or the other, I had found him. This boy who was, in so many ways, myself. And I wanted him, without a doubt, to be my companion. I had no intention of letting him walk away from me. Besides, I had been right. He had wanted me. He still did. And now, now that I'd caught a glimpse of his soul that seemed to so perfectly nurture the light of mine, I wanted him too.
Without him, perhaps, I would cease to exist all over again.
He turned his head to look at me as I sat up, shivering slightly with the chill. He stared at me for a long time. I didn't know what to say.
"Your sword..." he said, finally completing his earlier sentence, "...is phenomenal."
I stared back.
Earlier, I would have taken those words from his lips as an insult, but things seemed quite different now. I could recognise his innocent sincerity for what it was. His simple respect. My long-wounded pride no longer snarled in his presence.
"The time of the samurai is over," I replied. "Skill with a sword has no meaning any more. There is no place for us." There was never a place for me from the beginning.
He arched one elegant eyebrow as if he see right through my thin attempt at disinterest. I could only try to hold my face together. I didn't want him to pity me. I didn't need his pity. I didn't want him to know how fiercely I regretted having being born in the wrong era, to the wrong mother. I couldn't bear that he should know just how frustrated I was. How much talent I had, and how I would never get a chance to use it.
But of course he already knew. My body had already confessed it all.
He rose to his feet and took a step towards me. "We made a wager" he reminded me softly. Whoever wins the spar must do as the other says.
I lifted my eyes to him. "Stay" I said without thinking. It was the only thing I wanted now after all.
He stopped mid-stride. He looked uncertain and I immediately regretted speaking so rashly. It seemed it was not what he had expected and he looked as if he intended to refuse. Concerned, I quickly climbed to my feet, standing naked before the flickering fire, desperate to convince him.
He held up a hand to stop me before I could speak.
"Do you really hate the sword?"
I opened my mouth to concur. To remind him that I had already decided to throw all that away. That I was no samurai. That I never had been. Never wanted to be.
But it was hard, too hard, to lie to him now. I clenched my fists. The sword was my soul, just as it was his.
"You are too skilled to let your talents just fade away" he said. "So I will… practise with you. I will stay with you... only until I can beat you."
It was a sign of how much things had changed that he could even admit that I was stronger than him. I nodded, licked my lips, and knew I didn't have a choice. "Fine."
Life and death. Balanced always on a blade. The sword defined my entire life. It didn't seem strange to me that this part of my soul should be any different. I knew he was talented, but I wasn't afraid. Something about matching skills with him made my heart beat faster. My task was clear to me. No matter what, no matter what, I had to win.
After a tense moment he reminded me severely, "The day I beat you, I will leave."
It was simple. I liked it that way.
There was an eagerness in his eyes that I didn't dislike.
Besides, I would never lose to him. I would never permit myself to lose to him. And I think I might even have smiled. It was strange but, more than anything else, I wanted him close to me because… because when I was beside him I felt, more than at any other time in my life, as if I were truly myself. As if I could move faster. Strike harder. Just because it was him.
He gazed right back at me and it made me think that perhaps, just perhaps, he felt the same way when he was with me.
~the end
ARGH. I have been struggling with this chapter for more than six weeks. It has been a monumental pain in the arse. It has been through four different full-length versions already. It has taken me absolutely AGES to get it right in terms of how Sendoh would feel in this situation – it was all terribly complicated. I even had to draw a "Sendoh-emo-map" out on paper which looked something like this with little lines squiggling everywhere:
Sendoh feels...
→ hate → illusion(?) → self-hatred
→ uncertain of his own choices → no self-confidence → undermined → threatened → wants to regain control
→ jealous
→ curious/intrigued → attracted
x.x /so dead