The plaintive notes of the shamisen float through the smoky air, and Fuu looks up from her seat in the back, behind the narrow bar separating the kitchen from the benches where a few men are wrestling over some fried chicken, spilled bottles of sake testimony to the importance of the contest. She smiles at them, but they're intent on their battle, and soon she looks away.
It's a quieter night today, and there are only a few customers here to listen to the old man plucking away at his instrument. She turns back to her sewing, trying to see what she can make of the patches on this kimono. It's one of those nights, she thinks, fumbling as she tries to thread her needle. One of those nights where memories skip beneath her thoughts, coming up to surface at the slightest chance. The shamisen player, though nowhere near as skilled as ones she has heard in an earlier life, eases her pensive mood: she leans back and takes in the deepening shadows of the teahouse. She'll have to rise soon, to light the lamps, but for now she sits back, her fingers playing with the cloth on her lap.
Her reverie is soon broken: some new customers—three men, two dressed in dashing silk kimonos, one in a plainer cotton—have arrived, and she puts away her patchwork. Before she can pick up the serving tray and head over, she hears—that oddly familiar sound—the snick of a blade being drawn. She freezes, but steels her nerve. Her fingers clench the heavy tray, a dependable instrument. It has served her well before.
The silk-kimono men were holding out some kind of seal, she realized, getting closer, and looking displeasedly at a harried customer in the corner. She counted the bottles lying around him: six. She sighed, theatrically putting a hand to her forehead. The bartender really ought to take better care of these men. Maybe she could get the old cook to overthrow him. She'd be a good bartender…
She shook her head once—here were men drawing swords not three feet from her, and she was daydreaming about the vagaries of kitchen politics as if there was absolutely nothing to run away from. Maybe wandering with those two had changed her. It had certainly given her a foolish bravery.
The customer shouted in a voice that was thick with alcohol and a slow-burnt anger, "I'm not answering that, good sir. Police, dogs, you all might as well be the same, yeah-hey."
The silk-kimono men, one with drawn sword, the other with hand on sword hilt, said, in inflexibly clipped tones, "I regret to inform you that we are neither dogs, nor are we the police. We are special agents, from the High Minister of Enlightenment himself. We have come to detain you for idolatry and subversion."
"High priest, huuunh, say a prayer for this head of mine, would ya? It does ache ever so badly."
"Have you been sheltering Christian remnants?"
Fuu's blood stills, her heart slows, and before she can drop the serving tray she carefully lowers her hands, her left holding the tray, her right one clasped tightly into a fist, nails digging sharp into her palm. Don't blink, don't move, don't breathe.
There has only ever been one time, one time when she was this afraid. She was not afraid to die, she remembers. But there was a time, when the sunflowers were so high, and she was so alone, with nothing but her fear, and the demon who'd taken shape from it.
"The hell are they?"
The cotton-kimono man says, "I saw him leading three people to our cellar, and telling them that they would be safe there, and not to come out until dusk."
The second silk-kimono man, hand still on hilt: "Are we sure they were Christians?"
The customer says, "Dunno if they were Christians, they didn't have any pictures of that nailed-up injured man, but," and at this he stares right at the silk-kimono men, and Fuu can see the sparks of defiance in his eyes, and she knows with a horrible certainty that he has made some kind of decision, "they said they needed my help. And I had a cellar."
"Subversion, then." He nods towards the cotton-kimono man. "Go back and retrieve them. We will have to question them." The cotton-kimono man—and only now does Fuu note the patches in his kimono, and the relative cleanliness of her customer's own well-washed garb—nods, smiling as a sycophant should, and hurries out the door.
"Are you a devotee of Guanyin?" The way he pronounces it is strange, and it sounds like a foreign name. She racks her brain—the sailor folk who pass through here sometimes shout that name before tossing back one and many drinks. Fuu carefully backs away. She cannot get into this. She should not fight this battle.
The music, she realizes, has stopped long ago.
And the only things she remembers are the blood on his face, and the angry, pure rebellion in his eyes, that time, so long ago, the smell of salt and sand still thick in the air. She closes her own eyes, wonders if they would forgive her for her foolishness.
She already knows the answer to that. And she knows she cannot let a good man die, not when she's tried so hard to live the life they wanted for her.
This has nothing to do with you, she thinks. Hide.
But she does nothing of the sort. She already knows what those two have taught her, and what has kept her alive and well so far.
She knows what she wants to do, though she will never know if it's the right thing, or the best thing. But that is all that has ever guided her, in these uncertain days.
She unclenches her hand, looks at the tiny red marks scored into her palm, rubs the tips of her fingers against them. Her face breaks into a plastered grin, and she lightly walks over to her customer, the serving tray at her side.
"Sirs," she says, her milky-white teeth shining in the reddened light of the early evening, "how may I help you tonight?" She moves around, and among them—her body now blocks their line of attack, as she leans over the table, gathering the bottles and scattered plates together. She knows this is only a distraction, but she hopes—beyond belief—that they will not want to spill blood they are not prepared to account for.
They pause, and glance at each other, and look at the customer, who is staring at the ceiling now, seemingly unconcerned. Fuu notes the stiffness in his neck, the straightness of his legs, despite his splayed arms. He too, is afraid. And he has hidden it before.
The silk-kimono men, so focused on their task, failed to account for the seeming publicness of this location. One of them shrugs, and the other says, examining his drawn blade, "Let's see what our new prisoners have to say, shall we?" Fuu is deliberately slow in her movements, as she balances the loaded tray and looks directly at them. Their eyes seem sunken, their mouths pursed.
"You, woman," the drawn-sword man says, and Fuu turns to him, still smiling, the heavy tray balanced jauntily on her hip. He looks closely at her, and she wills herself to keep breathing evenly, to keep her smile, her steady hand. Surely…
The man frowns, about to ask a question, when the other says, "The boss won't be happy if we don't bring him back."
"The boss isn't running this damn show yet. If he wants heads, we'll have those three fresh-cut and waiting at the dock." He grins, as if he knows the exact game all of them are playing here, and Fuu wonders if he can hear her heart breaking its way out of her ribs.
"You, woman," he says again, sheathing his sword, "how long have you been working here?" Fuu is about to let fly some implausible number: 10 years! 17! All my life, of course. But the other man seems to be in a hurry: "I don't trust that damned snake who led us here. Better make sure he actually earned his ryo, this time."
The man looks at her again, then bows. "Toda," he offers as a name, with no indication of surnames, first names, or familiarity. "I would very much like to meet you again."
Fuu makes no show of her anxiety, her even smile hardly breaking. "You know where to find me, then."
"I suppose I do," he drawls, and then turns heel, walking away. His companion bobs his head at her, slightly confused, and walks away with his partner, the noise of their clacking sandals soon fading away.
Fuu looks at her customer. His posture's loosened, but there's an air of defeat about him now, the shadows of a deepening sadness. She sets the tray down, breathes once, twice, and looks him over.
"Sake, sir? Or perhaps some food?"
He looks gratefully at her, and then pulls a pouch from his sleeve, lays some large coins out on the table. "For the two of us." Fuu smiles—an easier smile now, one less painful to conjure, and says, "Of course."