Hi my lovelies! So I'll double advertise this because the funfacts for this chapter were rather extensive, so these are the ones Bosslady River and I deemed were the most necessary to understanding the chapter. The rest can be found on the Samurai and the Oni Girl tumblr, the username is onionna (which is hilarious, really, because it's supposed to be Oni Onna, but it works out that it's onion-na and I'm a nerd. Sorry). You don't have to have a tumblr account to look at the blog or ask questions, though, I won't make you do that! Oh! And I love all of your reviews dearly, dearly, dearly. Thank you so, so much!
Funfact: I've included a section on the blog on rice-harvesting! Go check it out and love on this little old lady's adorable bonnet as she explains rice harvesting!
Funfact: Iruka is living in Edo because of the practice of sankin kotai—the practice where a daimyo's wife and heirs were in essence hostages of the shogunate. The daimyo was also supposed to make a trip every other year to Edo to hang out with the Shogun, staying at bakufu-owned inns called 'ryoka,' where they were charged top-dollar. So they were broke constantly, or at least they couldn't raise armies against the Tokugawa anymore. Those guys didn't tend to fuck around. When his father retires, Iruka will live part of the time in Fujimi and part of the time in Edo—while his wife and any kids he has will live in Edo full-time. Funtiemz!
Funfact: In 1637 the Tokugawa officially banned Christianity in Japan after the rebellion in Shimabara. This wasn't a complete turn-around in attitudes toward Christianity, but it did unleash a lot of things. Many Christians in Japan continued to practice in secret, and they were called "hidden Christians," or kakure kirishitan in Japanese.
Long Funfact: Fumi-e were slates or prints of the Virgin Mary or Jesus, and after the Shimabara rebellion of 1637 they were used extensively to root out Kakure Kirishitans (Hidden Christians), and seem to have been used up until the 1800s. Basically if you showed hesitancy or refusal to stomp on the icon, there were some questions that the patrols would like to ask you in the comfort of your very own jail cell. And/or personal escort for a torture-fest in Nagasaki. The Tokugawa didn't mess around.
Funfact: THE STATUE. The statue which has been plaguing people for a while now. The Kakure Kirishitans appropriated a number of Buddhist icons and iconography into their religious material, carving crosses into the backs of Buddhas, putting Buddha in the center of crosses rather than Christ, and then making things like the statue. There is this Buddhist goddess of mercy called Kannon in Japanese, and there are several incarnations of her, and several ways of depicting her. One is a woman sitting with two children at her sides, which was super easy for the Kirishitans to appropriate into the Virgin Mary—so they did, calling her Maria Kannon. Uchiwa Fugaku had an extra one, and saw his chance to bring Kakashi into the fold following his marriage to Sakura—that was the statue he gave to Kakashi.
Funotherstuff: Don't forget, there are several more, less necessary funfacts on the tumblr (contact me if searching for 'onionna' doesn't bring anything up!) But as you can see, this was already getting too wordy!
Funotherstuff: I know that the Asuma-thing in this is coming outta left field, but you DO need to know it. So yeah.
And without further ado: Enjoy!
The rice had finally matured and dried enough on its own to be harvested. Kakashi and Tenzou went out to the field regularly each morning to inspect it after it had started to turn golden under the sun's heat, taking Sakura with them to show her the process. In the days leading up to the start of the harvest, Tenzou sharpened the sickles they would be using, and Kakashi taught Sakura how to properly cut the stalks and tie them, laying a solid handful down crosswise over another solid handful and then tying them together so that the V they formed was maintained—to make it easier to hang the rice stalks up over the scaffolds. She also found herself enlisted to help build those scaffolds where the rice would finish drying. She held up the poles they were using as beams while Kakashi and Tenzou quickly tied them into place. The scaffolds were as tall as she was, high enough to keep the rice off the ground but not so high that it would be difficult to hang the bundles.
On the day they started, the sun was blazing down on the fields in a freak heat wave. Asuma and Kurenai joined them, which made the day go faster for her. The steady shick-shick-shick of the sickles was soothing in a way as the sun's heat bore down on their backs. Everyone was faster than she was, having practiced it for years, but Kakashi patiently worked next to her for most of the morning. They periodically shooed Pakkun away from the tied bundles and Kakashi more than once set the half-grown puppy nipping at Tenzou's heels. At midday they ate a small meal to get them through the rest of the day.
Sakura wasn't quite exhausted, but she was miserably tired. Her father had never farmed in his life, having been born into a family of life-long merchants, and he had never had his family learn. Sakura had learned just fine in the last few days and this morning, it was her muscles which hadn't quite learned yet. Still, she readily stood up to head back out to the field when everyone was finished eating. Pakkun yipped and voiced his dissatisfaction with the current outside-in-the-boring-sun ideas. She clicked her tongue as Kakashi did and pointed at Tenzou in response, and the dog bounced over to the brown haired man to hassle him.
"Sakura," Kakashi surprised her by taking her elbow and bringing her to stand close to him. The others were already heading out back to work, and his low voice ensured that they wouldn't be overheard. "I want you to switch to tying bundles after me as I work, it will be faster." He was so close, his nose six inches from her own, "You are doing well, but if you exhaust yourself today, then you'll be worse off tomorrow and the next day. This is something that takes practice, and I am proud you're doing so well. But I need you more for the rest of the harvest than the rest of today—can you help me?" She nodded and leaned a little into him, resting her forehead for a moment on his collarbone before stepping away.
The rest of the day had gone by in a blur, for Sakura an endless blur of tying bundles of rice together after Kakashi cut them down and laid them out. It was creeping towards sunset when the five of them backtracked their steps across the field to stack the bundles of rice on the scaffolds. She and Kurenai put the stacks on the outstretched arms of the three men as they walked back, and once they reached the scaffolds moved the rice to those. With a weary farewell, the older woman and her husband walked back across the field to their own home while Sakura, Kakashi, and Tenzou went into the house.
Sakura had planned a cold meal for them, knowing that she would be too exhausted by the end of the day to make a hot one. Her arms ached as she swung the hot water pot over the fire for tea—she wanted it for herself, but the other two were surely to want some as well to relax a little. Kakashi and Asuma had gone to the bath house to wash away the grime, so she was alone for a few moments. Her father, who had been to a few other places in the land because of his business, said that in the far south there were two rice harvests each year. She shook her head at the thought of harvesting twice a year, planting twice a year, everything in relation to rice twice a year. It sounded grueling.
Tenzou returned from the bath, looking tired but a little refreshed, and took over for her. The water wasn't yet half hot enough, so at least he had something to take over. Sakura grabbed her things—a small towel, a comb—and walked out of the house towards the small building where they kept the ofuro. Pakkun was playing in the yard with a sandal, no doubt stolen from one of the two men, which Sakura confiscated from him. The fuzzy little brown puppy they'd been given was growing into his fur finally, looking less like a dog-shaped fuzzball and more like an actual dog, albeit a bit fluffy.
"So that's where that went," Kakashi said from the doorway of the bath house. Sakura smirked and waved his sandal a bit before tossing it to him. Pakkun whined at their feet, gazing longingly at his stolen toy as Kakashi slipped the sandal on. Sakura laughed a little at the poor thing.
"I think it's because you've trained him to go after Tenzou's feet. There must be something about them that is interesting to you, he was just finding out what was so fascinating about people-feet." Kakashi huffed a laugh before starting towards the house. Sakura turned a little to watch him go. His hair was a bit damp and it was getting very close to sunset, making his hair seem more gray than white, but it stuck up in odd places like it always did. She couldn't see his face, but she knew that his left eye was shut while his right would be relaxed—almost tired looking. Kakashi was a handsome man in his own way.
After her short bath, she returned to the house in the twilight where Tenzou was just finishing making tea and setting out their food. The idea of a cold meal was a great one—if she'd made a hot meal, they would be eating well past dark.
"Kakashi, why do Asuma and Kurenai help with our fields? Wouldn't he be more worried about his own right now?" Sakura only asked once everyone was settled into the meal comfortably—tea cups filled, food halfway eaten. She'd wanted to ask this question from the start, but there had never been time really. Or at least, a proper time. Tenzou shot a look over at her a moment too late, telling her that the question was a little too forward, but the question was already out. Kakashi cleared his throat to answer her in what turned out to be his own roundabout way.
"Asuma and Sarutobi-sama are related, you know. Sarutobi-sama is Asuma's great-uncle, so they would never have grown close in any case…but he and Asuma don't see quite eye to eye a lot of the time. Especially in the realm of responsibilities owed to the lord of the village as a family member of the lord—Sarutobi-sama expects that Asuma act as an advisor to Sarutobi Iruka when he returns from Edo to succeed his father."
"And Asuma feels otherwise?"
"Asuma feels that to be a slap in the face of Iruka's training and abilities, a dishonor to the position of daimyo which Iruka will hold." But what did that have to do with Asuma's lands?
"To enforce the message that Asuma will spend much of his time helping to run the village as well as the territory the Sarutobi control, Sarutobi-sama 'gifted' Asuma with a living which included no land."
Sakura stared at Kakashi, stunned.
"He will be much too distracted in the future to manage his own land, let alone run it, is what Sarutobi-sama is saying. Best to not get attached to things he can't have. Asuma won't disobey his uncle anymore, but they can't stand to live under the same roof. So he built that house with my father's permission, and will help us here until Iruka takes his place as daimyo." She couldn't even find words, so Kakashi continued, his voice a little softer as he comforted her as he could.
"It makes Asuma proud to be able to work any land at all, and we don't speak of what his family is making him do. Just as he doesn't speak about how we treat Tenzou far more equally than would be expected of us. Do you understand?" She nodded quietly—what else could she do? The three of them finished their dinner in relatively pleasant silence, save for the whuffles and snuffs of Pakkun who was sniffing their clothing eagerly—scenting out what rice smelled like, it seemed. Sakura fed him once she had finished her own food, absently petting him. Kakashi, now that she had balanced all of the family and estate books properly, was much freer than her father's old friend seemed to be.
But Kakashi's words had turned Sakura's thoughts towards Tenzou. She had been living here for nearly six months, but each of them still twisted carefully around the issue of whoever Tenzou really was. Mentioning that Asuma also participated in that game where Tenzou was a servant had only drawn attention to the fact that still none of them had told her why the game was really in place. They wouldn't keep it from her for very much longer, she decided. Once they had brought in the crop, she would ask Tenzou. Kakashi would never tell her, she was sure of that. He meant well by it, but she needed to know—and it was Tenzou's business too, he should be able to talk about it.
The next day was not as hot, but just as sunny. Sakura could feel her skin drying and burning under it, but she didn't mention anything. What could be done? They needed her help, it wasn't as though she had budgeted for traveling workers when she had reworked the family accounting books, and she had already prepared everything they would need later on in the day—from the unusual midday meal they would take, to the easy, almost completed supper meant to save time and energy after a day outside working, to the extra bundle of wood she had left out in the bath house to properly heat up the ofuro. There was nothing to do if she wasn't working, so why not work?
The five of them chatted lightly throughout the day. There wasn't much else they could do than that, seeing as they were all out there and weren't ever all that far apart from one another. Sakura spent the morning working nearest to Kurenai—Kakashi said he would have her follow him in the afternoon, that she should take the morning to work on her own. She learned a lot about her neighbor, who she had never met before coming to Fujimi. Asuma had always been on business alone when he had visited her father, and although Sakura had known he was married she had never heard him speak of Kurenai—Although apparently he whined to people that he missed her when he was away from home—according to Kakashi. Getting to know the older woman was a welcome distraction to the tediousness that was rice harvesting.
Their efforts, by the end of the day, had nearly cleared the fields—tomorrow they would finish harvesting and hanging the rice out to dry, and then in a few days they would burn the chaff and stubble, finishing the season by tilling scorched land over. As their neighbors got farther and farther away across the now almost empty fields, and Tenzou went into the house to start their dinner, Sakura took the chance to lean tiredly against Kakashi. Her entire body hurt, or ached, it seemed. Her legs and back were screaming at every move she made, and her arms were only marginally more impressed with the recent exercise. There were tender spots on her hands from tying the rice stalks together tightly as she'd been shown to—tomorrow those tender spots would be blisters, she was sure of it.
Kakashi put his arms around her, engulfing her in a warm solid hug. He let her slump into his hold, with what was surely one of his indulging smiles—Sakura couldn't see, her face pressed up against him as it was. He was pressing a kiss against her hair when he paused for a long moment, standing completely still, which almost had her breaking away from him to see what was the matter. Until he chuckled softly and kissed her hair again, bringing one hand from around her shoulders to lift her head up so he could look into her eyes.
"You smell like my rice—I like it," he said before he tilted his head to kiss her soundly.
It was Itachi's great-grandfather who had decided to commission the statues, a set of three at first and then a set of five—trying to appropriate the traditional numbers associated with Heaven and Earth. Apparently Madara had been advised to commission a set of four rather than five by the man who had taught him, but four was an unlucky number to be associating with—everyone knew that. The fourth and fifth of the second set were given to Itachi's uncle Fugaku many years ago, and to Itachi's knowledge had remained with him since then.
The grandest statue out of the initial three was safely hidden in the family house in Edo, in a secret room concealed in the butsudan room. It was Itachi's favorite, he had always felt that the woman depicted looked like his mother, despite the fact that there was no way she could have modeled for the artist. But, he supposed in his adulthood, the woman was supposed to look like a troubled man's mother. She was supposed to resonate with the troubles of men after all. She was also the source of Itachi's troubles, she should be the one to fix them.
Itachi's father had made him stomp on her face as a child.
He had been given a fumi-e by a family friend as a sign of sympathy and love, and he had taken it home to his two young sons, having devised a method of protecting them with it. Itachi remembered how his father had yelled at him to stamp his foot, how three year old Sasuke had started crying. They were each childishly in love with the soft, sad woman on the page, and it was so terribly cruel to do that to her. Their father had periodically forced them to stomp on the little page up until his death. The first time that Itachi understood why, however, had been when he was thirteen. The family carriage was stopped just outside of Edo, and they'd been asked to get out—all of them. With only the tiniest of apologetic glances towards them by the leader of the group—so tiny it took Itachi years to really decipher it as an apology one would give a blood-brother—a metal tile was thrown to the ground. On the face of it was the same soft, sad woman as on the paper from six years before.
He hadn't even batted an eye before putting his foot resolutely over the tile and stomping as he'd been asked. His family had followed suit after him, and soon they were on the road again with profuse apologies from the patrol who had stopped them. When he was twenty a similar scene had happened all over again as he traveled to leave Edo to give his blessings—as head of the entire family—to Obito's widow's marriage to Obito's brother. That trip was when he realized that among the men who had stopped them back then was another just like him.
Itachi bowed his head deeply in front of the statue and prayed for that man, hoping that he had come to his senses in the intervening years. He knew that a peaceful, forgiving smile looked down on him but that didn't stop the anger welling up inside of him. Sometimes he felt that if she and her Son had any mercy in them, they would have struck down his family for going into hiding as they had. His anger, though, was always directed at his family and his ancestors—for not standing up to defend their beliefs, for not standing up for a mother and child.
They had left it for him, and even now he was taking the coward's way out by reporting them to the bakufu and allowing the government to deal with his family for him. It was all so much more complicated than "they were breaking the rules," after all. The Uchiwa had been hiding their religion for nearly fifty years, having been among the first converts to renounce their faith in public but retain their practices in private. Uchiwa Madara had been more paranoid than a Tokugawa, Itachi had been told, and had decided that hiding was the best option for his family.
And it wasn't just a strange sect of Buddhism that the Uchiwa had begun to hide—they practiced the faith that had been brought to Japan by the Spanish and Portuguese sailors more than a century before. The patrols had been looking for kakure kirishitans, using the images held most dear to many kirishitans against them—Maria Kannon's face sometimes floated up in Itachi's dreams, bruised and bloodied by his foot. His only comfort was a conversation with his mother—that the actual Kannon must have been Christ's mother, and that she forgave them all for what they had done. It was a hollow comfort. Everyone that they revered in their faith had suffered publically, had spoken of it publically, and had died publically—and Itachi could only look around himself at his family, living in hiding.
What the Uchiwa were doing was far worse than plotting rebellion, it was living, existing in rebellion, and it wasn't even an honorable rebellion either. That second incident with the fumi-e patrol had rattled him, and it was then that Itachi had decided to turn his family in for their treason. There was no way he could turn only himself in, and there was no way he could turn in everyone else but himself. He was only lucky that his mother was in poor health and that he and Sasuke were unmarried and childless.
He stayed in the hidden room for several more hours, praying silently that he be forgiven in prayers memorized in rote as a child. And in the gloomy inner, hidden room, he felt a measure of forgiveness emanating from Heaven—Maria and her son had endured everything possible according to the things Itachi had been taught, and they understood his pain.
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