It had been raining for three days straight. The ancient guttering was gushing with water and the rock of the bamboo pipe in the garden was thud-thudding in a constant heartbeat as it filled and poured, filled and poured.
Heihachi looked out on the grey sheets of rain streaked across the estate. Dim veils fell as curtains, concealing the distance from him. On days like these, he grew contemplative, thinking of the past, of how things might have gone, had things been different. In the greyish green light, he could almost see apparitions out there. A stately woman in a kimono, moving about the gardens, her hair sodden in the rain. She'd turn to look at him, and Heihachi could never make out her face.
Heihachi-san, Heihachi-san, she seemed to say, come outside. It is soaking wet, and there is no one to see. Let us stand in the rain, you and I. Come outside, come and feel the weather.
Heihachi remained seated on the veranda, still and unmoving, watching those ghosts.
Suddenly the veils of rain were parting, and out of them came a slight figure. Jin drove his hand back through a sopping fringe, sweeping it all the way back. His hair stuck there, and for a moment, Heihachi saw Kazuya in the garden. Jin laughed in the rain, and it seemed to Heihachi that his son was reunited with his beloved mother – those two haunting apparitions who dogged his thoughts. Then Jin turned towards the house and saw him. He froze for a moment, then looked down at himself. He had a light yukata on, tucked into hakama, and those were folded back and tucked into his belt, leaving Jin's forearms and knees free. He approached Heihachi cautiously, like a dog who is unsure if it will be fed or scolded. He stopped just under the roof gable and looked up at Heihachi.
"You're soaked," Heihachi said flatly.
Jin looked down at himself, as if to check. He looked back at Heihachi.
"Mmhm."
"You don't mind the rain?"
Jin toed a puddle shyly and shook his head. Heihachi shrugged and interlocked his hands loosely in his lap. In times gone by, he might have shouted at his sons for ruining their clothes, but he was more tired these days, and always slower to anger around Jin.
"Ojiisama, is there a temple on the estate?"
"Hm?"
"I saw a pagoda near the cliffs, so I wondered if there is a temple."
"Mm. Hon-Maru. The family temple."
Jin nodded. "Shall we go there?"
Heihachi blinked and looked at the boy. The temple had always been off limits to his sons, but there was no need for such restrictions now. He was caught off guard by the question, and by the idea that Jin would want to go with him.
"It's pouring with rain," Heihachi said dully, "and the temple can only be accessed by foot."
Jin nodded. "Yes, I know."
Heihachi didn't have anything to say to that. He looked at the boy, and for once saw not Kazuya there, but someone else.
Heihachi-san, Heihachi-san, come outside, come and feel the weather.
Heihachi put up a large umbrella and he and Jin struck out together into the grey gardens. The footpaths were awash with mud, and only Heihachi's high-soled geta saved his feet from spattering with dirt. Jin led the way, so at ease in the gardens that Heihachi wondered if he knew them better than he did yet. They paused to look at the pond, high with rainwater, and their tenants, brilliant koi, unaware that their roof was thundering with a thousand raindrops. They walked silently through the orchards, and Jin picked them both a plum each. As Heihachi bit into its rain-washed flesh, he wondered when the last time he'd eaten from his own gardens had been.
"I saw the bear here one time," Jin said.
"Hm, Kuma likes to help himself to the fruit, greedy rascal."
"I haven't seen him much since."
Heihachi laughed. "Perhaps he doesn't like you."
Jin didn't share his laughter.
They walked on, and passed the austere dojo, with its magnificent doorway, and handsome ribbed roofing. Heihachi paused to look at it. A myriad of things had happened in that place. He'd raised his sons in those walls. If you knew where to look, you could see their history written into the scars in the woodwork: places they'd bled, places they lashed out at one another, places they'd fallen as they tried to defy him. He'd done the unthinkable in there – held a broken body, lifeless, and sagging, like a doll, or a sack of vegetables. He'd held her until the warmth of life turned forever cold. He'd met her here, trained with her. He'd grown himself into a man under the severe hand of a father and teacher. He'd grown shrewd and cunning, bitter and ambitious. He'd honed himself into a weapon, sharper than any competitor could hope to rival. Save perhaps one. But even Kazuya had fallen to him in the end.
He glanced down at Kazuya's son. He was standing patiently next to him. Looking up at the dojo with a dark, impenetrable gaze, intent and fierce. Heihachi wondered if he dreamed of usurping him.
"What are you thinking of, Kazama Jin?"
Jin's attention drew to him slowly, until Heihachi was held in a maelstrom of unbridled emotion, contained in that small person.
"I am thinking of the ogre that I must destroy. I was wondering if its death will set me out of balance or if banishing it will bring more harmony to the world."
Heihachi's eyebrows raised. "And? What is your conclusion?"
Jin was silent, and, for a moment, Heihachi thought the rain might have swallowed up any answer he'd given.
"I don't know yet," Jin said. "I hope I know before I have to kill it."
A hundred sardonic answers to correct the boy and put him in his place crossed Heihachi's thoughts. None of them got to his lips today. He wasn't sure why. Maybe that rain. It always got to his mood. And anyway, Jin was walking on, with his borrowed geta making high bridges over the puddles. He'd have to fit him for some shoes as well.
As they struck out over the meadows, there was a total absence of all sound but the rain falling heavy on the umbrella and the earth, and the snatch of warm breezes, rippling through the wild grass. Planes of water fell as a circle about Heihachi as his umbrella carved out a cylinder of safety. Jin had his face tilted up to the sky, letting the water run down his face.
A blink of light awoke the heavens and a crackle and growl of thunder rolled above. Jin jumped and hastily stepped under the umbrella.
"Don't tell me you're afraid of a little thunder?" Heihachi laughed over the storm.
"No…" Jin said defensively. He didn't look too sure though.
Hon-Maru was a two-tier pagoda build onto the edge of a precipice. A plunging waterfall fell off to its right and dark mountains loomed over to its left. A dense coniferous forest brokered its borders and swayed now in the dark of the storm.
It had been close to here that Kazuya had challenged him for the first time, with an unbridled fury and hatred that his body couldn't yet keep up with. Still now, a strange feeling of disbelief and pride filled Heihachi at the thought of Kazuya surviving that fall and climbing inch by inch back to the clifftop. It was here his father had challenged him too, unable to accept the coup Heihachi had launched against him, and had rallied what few employees he thought remained loyal to him. Heihachi had bought them all long ago by charm, guile, or intimidation – tools his father never learned to wield effectively. It was for reasons like this that Heihachi had had to take over for him. It had been a mercy almost, and pitifully easy. His father had believed in tradition, patience, inheritance, honour, single combat, and other such fanciful notions. The Zaibatsu had stagnated under him. It had been agony to watch how mediocre his father had been, and the thrill it gave Heihachi when, one-by-one, his father's top advisors fell under his sway was still as sweet as it had been forty odd years ago. He'd offered Jinpachi retirement and a way to step down with pride intact, and, at first, it had seemed like the old man wouldn't contest his rule. But of course, such is never the way with the Mishima…
"Ojiisama? May we go in?"
Jin was shivering next to him, and jumping with each flash of lightning.
They passed under the temple's stone lintel and stopped in its flagstone entryway. Heihachi shook out his umbrella and closed it. He leaned it against the wall, and a puddle started to form on the stonework. Another grumble of thunder murmured above. Jin was looking about him, reverent and curious. There was little to see here, save two guardian lion statues either side of the entrance, looking out onto the rain, a shut wooden door onto the ground floor of the temple, and a wooden staircase to the floor above. Jin was hovering about the door. His fingers traced a heavy, black iron lock, slung with a chain through the doorhandle and a wall bracket. The iron was discoloured with age. Jin withdrew his hand sharply.
"It keeps something in," he said, quietly.
Heihachi thought at first he'd imagined Jin speaking. His head whipped to Jin though, eyes sharp.
"What did you say?"
Jin ran a finger down the wood grain of the door. There was something unnerving about the act, uncanny. Heihachi realised he could hear his own breathing. The rain was subsiding a little, coming more intermittent now. He could hear the creak of old wood, breathing with the humidity, like the temple was alive.
"I said, what did you say, boy?!" Heihachi snapped.
Jin turned to him, surprised, and with a slightly absent look on his face.
"Huh… I don't know. Just felt something a little strange. May we go upstairs?"
Heihachi continued glaring at the boy, irate and disturbed. Could Jin somehow know? Is that why he'd asked to come here? He was reminded startlingly of a time he'd found Kazuya playing near a stream, murmuring that cursed song Kazumi used to sing. He remembered his gaze: demonic, calculating. Heihachi looked at Jin. He hunted in his eyes for that same curse. He only saw Jin there. Gentle, unassuming Jin, haunted with grief and sorrow, and urgent for something to fill that void.
Heihachi nodded. His temper had eased some. He stepped out of his geta and onto the wooden staircase. Jin followed. As they mounted the stairs, the sound of rain died away and only the wind leaning into the old wood could be heard, along with their solitary footsteps. Heihachi heaved open a stout oak door and stepped within. The rain was all but stopped, and dripped now off the pine branches beyond the open windows. Light suffused the room, breaking through brooding storm clouds with soft, ethereal rays. The bronze Buddha statue in the shrine gleamed gold and winked light back into all corners of the room, like the inverted patterns cast by sunlight on a pool.
Heihachi heard Jin gasp behind him and stop dead in his tracks. Heihachi turned and watched him. For a moment, he wished with all earnestness that he could see the world as Jin could. He wished he saw whatever he did now, felt whatever he did now – had the capability to possess unadulterated joy at simple beauty. Jin looked around him with open awe in his gaze and such unassuming innocence. Heihachi turned away and let his eyes rest in a dark corner that had alone eluded the touch of the sun. He had a vision, then, of how things could be. Of the new leaf that was Kazama Jin. Of all the things he'd done that he could do differently this time. Of something untouched, as yet unmarred by his shadow.
Then he remembered where that locked door went. He remembered a room, sunken with shadows and cobwebs and shuttered in darkness. He remembered a trapdoor that opened onto pitch black, and a ladder that would now be rotted away. There in the bowls of the temple, deep under the stone foundations, imprisoned until driven to hunger, and then driven further, beyond the realm of the living…
Everywhere on this estate there was blood and death. Bones piled high that Heihachi had had to forge into steps and upon which he'd trodden to reach greatness. The world Jin thought he knew was a lie. These brief moments where Heihachi thought he saw things as his grandson did – they would pass. They were fanciful. What was real, what brought about tangible results, was the path that had given him the Zaibatsu and the world. An empire of wealth, power, influence, and magnificence that his father could never have dreamed of. Everyone who'd fallen at his hand had been a traitor to that. A traitor who'd tried to hold him back from achieving greatness. In the years to come, some names would be footnotes: Jinpachi, Kazumi, Kazuya. The volumes would be about Heihachi – illustrious and magnanimous, a personality who stretched to all corners of the globe.
Jin was kneeling before the shrine, the way Heihachi had showed him at the dojo. Heihachi did not join him. He spoke and his voice filled the room.
"To amount to anything, you must break your enemy. You must smite the ogre down, and if you second guess that, you will be ruined. I knew someone who was in two minds when he should have been focused. He thought as you did – warring within himself. He is dead now. You cannot fight without whilst you fight the enemy within. Remember that, Jin."
Jin said nothing. Heihachi left him before the shrine, and walked back out of the temple, picking up his umbrella as he went. He didn't much feel like praying today after all.
