He swings the blade down, the motion smooth and unruffled, the only noise the slight whick of the steel slicing through the stilled air. Up, and down, arms straight as iron rods, only bending for the strike, and up, and down. He counts, rhythmically, methodically. He likes the precision of each movement, the fact that he will *know*—innately, inherently—how each muscle of his tenses, how each joint slides back into place. There is a certainty in practicing his forms, with this sword he has not let go of since those days—those days when everything was confusing and hurried and blood was on his hands and suicide in his brain— that he still keeps with him, even though he's now earned enough to buy a fine new blade, just as the swordsmith tells him, every time he goes in to look at his newly tempered creations. He doesn't want to forget, he doesn't know if he can really forgive himself.
His eyes are closed, but he can see it now, the small temple across the way, across the river, the darkness of those clouds and the heaviness of that night. He has not seen her since then, has not heard from her, or of her in what gossip he discerns from the townsfolk (which, he muses somewhat sadly as he swings his sword in a sharp and perfect curve, he cannot discern quite so clearly now, not without Fuu to decipher it for him.) The husband—that lousy, drink-addled serpent—has died, his liver finally giving out before his befouled brain did. She has not returned to this side of the river though—to this side where civilization might receive her again. Maybe she does not want to. Maybe she fears Kohana will be all that remains, that no one will remember pleasant Shino, lovely, *respectable* Shino. He had thought her uncommonly beautiful then, watching her brush her long hair in the dim moonlight—time bought with thievery and his two only friends—and wishing for her happiness so hard he could feel the rock settle in his gut, the tension knotting up his spine, even as he lay there, quietly.
It has been two years. And he has not seen her, not even felt her, in those dreams he has sometimes, where he sees his wild friend, storm-eyed and fierce, drenched in blood, a sword clenched in his yellowed teeth, his mouth stretched out in a fearsome grin. Or her, sitting by the shore, lonely and hopeful and uncertain all at once, and the faint smell—of sunflowers, he thinks—in the breeze that lifts her hair, ever so slightly. He went back, to this no-name town with the too shallow river, so that he might move on, so that he might begin to make the life that they all dreamed of having. One that was settled, one that would not be snatched away by fire or unjust authority.
He cannot imagine leaving her, nor could he imagine her loving her any less when she finds him, when she decides her exile is not worth keeping. He has never felt such certainty before, it grounds him to this place, serving a lord who he despises. He would be moody, he would've—back in those days before he had friends to remember, friends to send well wishes through in dream and in mind—been disgusted with the cheapness of his task. Though, he counters to himself, as he shifts his stance, moving his weight to his left leg, swinging harder, though no louder, with his roughened exhalation, you are a murderer. And will always be one. There will be no peace for you yet. He almost breaks rhythm, remembering the way the moonlight spilled through the ripped paper doors—the blood, merciful one, the blood and there was so much—but he stays firm, forcing out each strike, forcing his muscles to move in perfect rhythm.
He will go to the river today, he decides, and he will wait. One of the boatmen—a friendly sort, with dark skin like Mugen's, and strange brown eyes that no person of this country would have—has kept watch for him, though he smiles every time he comes near, and Jin can feel the heat rise to his face every time he asks about her, even though the boatman never pries, and only speaks when Jin asks him the inevitable question. He asks Jin to tell him stories to while away the time they spend watching the temple across the wide slow river, but Jin has never been a skilled storyteller, and doesn't know, really, how to put into words the way he wandered with those two—how, in the end, he only ever wanted to protect them both.
The boatman shakes his head, a strange and light bob from side to side, halfway between acceptance and rejection, and then proceeds to sing, in some strange and lilting language that surely comes from lands so very far away, lands that Jin cannot envision, not in his mind's eye, not yet, when all that haunts him is a temple across the way, and a house on the lonely cliff upon a beach.
Dil e dardmand e aashiq huwa hijr maen hay khooni, kabhee baat us ki mano, karo ahd e wasl yara.
He stops his practice at long last, the sweat running down his lean face, cutting tracks through the dust that has plastered onto his skin. He could not understand what the boatman said then, only felt the keen longing in his voice, and wished he could give voice to his thoughts like that. The boatman dipped his head and smiled at him after he'd hummed that line, as if it were meant for Jin, as if it had some kernel of truth buried within for him. Jin did not feel annoyed, either by his own ignorance or the man's seeming refusal to learn proper Japanese— his dialect was worse than Mugen's, his accent south of the Dutchman's—but instead felt comforted by his presence, a stranger who had no qualms in looking after him.
Perhaps, despite himself, he was beginning to make a friend, though one, he thought smiling to himself, who had yet to give him a proper name. He hoped—quietly, the hope of one who has seen too much in the world and known very well how fragile promises are—that he would see her today, so that he could tell her these stories, of new friends and old. He wished to see her again so that he could reassure her that she was worth waiting for, that Shino was remembered, even if the townsfolk let their minds drift away.
He pulled aside the door to his tiny one-room house, and surveyed the interior. A low bed, the sheets pulled straight over the straw mattress, a burnt-black kettle that he had received from a European down at the port after he half-heartedly rescued him from some low-level yakuza shakedown artists. It did a rather good job heating water, he mused, though its whistle sometimes scared the birds in the pines outside, and they would chatter and squawk in harried indignation. The fire pit needed a good scrub—he had been traveling in his lord's retinue the last few days, and could hardly be bothered to clean when he did manage to make it back to his own lodgings— and the wooden chest of drawers in the corner, carved roughly out of bare pine, held what few things he called his own. He went inside, still breathing deeply, and slid the door shut behind him.
He ran his fingers over the rough wood of the dresser. It wasn't elegant, he fretted, it was the rough work of an even rougher itinerant carpenter. Nothing like he imagined the furniture that Shino once owned to have been like. He had probably been cheated—he'd never known how to spend his money anyways. But there was something there, in that roughly hewn wood, so bare and unforgiving he was sure his fingers would be covered in splinters if he so much as lifted them, there was something there that was oddly comforting. So rough, and yet, so true. It would never try to be an artwork, some gilded lily for a king. A plain chest of drawers, with a purpose as clear as summer rain.
He could hear Mugen's gravelly laughter now, if he stayed still, and fixed his eyes on the cracks in the wood, the unsanded edges so dangerous and sturdy. Could hear him mocking his seemingly futile wait, could hear the lazy lust that undercut every word he said to any woman he could not respect. Could hear the sharpened tone of respect cutting at his slang, each and every time he'd dodged his graceless blows. He lightly lifted his fingers—sans splinters, as always—and stared out the window at the green pines.
It was time to go to the river bank. He'd had enough, he thought, of remembering his days with them. For surely they had parted for a reason, surely they were now going to seek out the rest of their lives on their own terms. And across the river, in that temple at once so close and so very impenetrable, was a reason to carry on, to endure in this land.
But then again, he thought, as he pulled open the drawer and looked at the old hakama lying there, neatly folded, its frayed edges and faded color betraying his once-hard traveled life, could we also not find our way back to each other? He let his fingers brush against the worn cloth, once, as if for good luck from his friends so far away, and went out of the back door, down towards the riverbank, and his friendly, nonsensical companion.