Plan A… Be casual. He doesn't know for a fact that you-
Mitsuhide was at my side so fast I hadn't even seen him walk. Perhaps he teleported. He tipped my face up to meet that implacable gaze. As he stared down into my eyes, apparently preferring to interrogate me at uber-close range, he asked, "Find anything worth stealing, Brat?"
Plan B… The best defense is a good offense, even if the opposition is a kitsune with a habit of teasing.
"You took my letter. I want it back." Better to admit what I had been looking for, rather than let on that I had found it.
It seemed my half-truth was admission enough. "I consider that document a form of insurance for… good behavior. Unless… you have an interest in earning the letter back another way?" Mitsuhide didn't alter the way he was touching me or make any move to suggest that he was insinuating horizontal currency. And yet I knew exactly what he meant. And that he was just teasing. Probably.
Plan C … Exit as gracefully as possible.
Doing my best to ignore the way my breathing had sped up, I backed away from his touch and strolled back to my room – slowly, so that he wouldn't think I was intimidated by him. Casually, so that he wouldn't think he could get away with trying to scare me.
I did not look back.
No, I wasn't scared. I didn't have an identification yet for whatever this uncomfortable feeling was, but it was not fear.
It was only after I had crawled under the warm blanket on my futon that I put a name to my feelings.
Intrigue.
There was a part of me that was curious…? No, that couldn't possibly be true. He was using some kind of Jedi mind trick on me. Or weird psychology… or not even that. So much had happened over the past few days that my brain was just latching onto the thing in front of me – Mitsuhide – as a way to not think about anything else. Anything other than the fact that -
Aki is my father.
The man who had left my mother while she was pregnant… the man who had left his future child – children – in the care of an emotionally unstable woman… it had been Aki. How could I reconcile the man I had always resented, with Aki, the man who had saved me and had given me a purpose?
As a child, when I was feeling charitable, I would rationalize that my father hadn't known my mother was pregnant when he left her. That if he had been aware that he'd left two children behind, he would have come back. He would have become part of our lives, even if he could not, or would not, be a part of my mother's. I even used to fantasize that he had been taken prisoner by a Yokai and that when I was old enough, I would find him and save him. It had been my favorite daydream.
But now that I knew he had been here all along…
True, 'flung back in time' was a good excuse for 'disappearing.' Except, his letter had suggested that there was a way to return to the future, that there had always been a way to do so. And therefore, Aki had no excuse for abandoning us.
Had he brought Toshiie and I back in time on purpose?
Our time travel could not have been random, nor could his rescue of me. He must have known from the beginning I was his daughter. Unless it had truly been a coincidence… maybe he only figured it out after I had been here a while?
Why didn't he tell me? I… might have been thrilled at the time.
Ugh! So many questions!
Would the answers make me never want to see him again?
Were the answers in the other half of the letter? I rolled myself into a tight, contained ball, feeling like any moment everything would snap and I would fly into a thousand pieces – damn Mitsuhide for taking the letter, leaving me only to speculate on the rest of its contents. Leaving me to wonder if there was an apology in it. If there was love. Or if there was only more mystery.
"Come on child." My rescuer hurried to my side and wrapped me up in a warm cloak. "You'll catch your death of cold."
Aki saved my life – but not my brother's. If he had brought me here on purpose, then why not be waiting at the spot where the wormhole opened up, and greet both Toshiie and I?
"What is it that you do?"
"I'm an information broker." He moved the target about a meter further back.
"A spy." That made sense of the vast amount of correspondence and the sheer number of messengers who came in and out of the manor. Although it didn't explain why he hadn't managed yet to find my brother. You'd think a spy would be better at finding lost people.
"Spies collect information. I know what to do with it. Then, I fix things."
I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. It brought to mind the idea of mafia and assassins. "What do you mean?"
He picked up two stones from the ground and handed one to me. "You see that pear hanging off the tree? Try to knock it down."
I flung the stone with all my strength to the pear – but it looked like I was a little off course.
CLINK!
Aki had thrown the other stone right after, hit mine, and diverted it back to the pear. The pear shuddered, and fell to the ground. Ok, that took mad skills, and I definitely wanted to learn how to do that.
"Impressive!" I retrieved the pear and offered it to him. He gestured for me to keep it. "I don't understand though." I took a bite of the pear, then wiped my chin on my sleeve when the juice attacked me.
"The rock you threw was on the wrong path. I fixed it," Aki said. "In the same way, sometimes things need a little nudge to get on the correct path."
Was I the second rock? Did Aki want me to fulfill some mysterious mission? Everything I had learned about Aki over the past seven years suggested as much. He could turn anything into a lesson, a learning experience, a puzzle. He'd treated me with gruff affection, but had he ever been fatherly? Had he ever acted like I mattered to him? Personally?
Muttering an oath under his breath, the monk picked me up in his arms – I was a sweaty smelly mess, with my hair matted around my face and tearstains on my cheeks. My breath was still coming out in panicked gasps. "Outside. Please, I need air."
He carried me out into the street. It was all I could do to breathe, as he held my hair out of my face. I hadn't realized it, but I was crying.
There was a shout from down the street, and I looked up to see Aki running toward us, looking more unsettled than I had ever seen him before.
"Katsuko." His voice cracked when he saw me. "Thank the Gods."
He cared… I had to hang onto that. For whatever reason he'd never been able to verbalize it… but Aki cared. Though he had missed the first nineteen years of my life – he had been everything to me for the past seven. I had to see this out. I would find him because of the past seven years… and then punch him in the face because of the first nineteen.
Temporarily giving up on sleep (granted, hadn't been trying … but that was a nonstarter anyway) I started a mental 'to do' list. Read the rest of my letter, talk to Francisco… find Sasuke 'Mikumo'. The letter was temporarily beyond my reach. No way in hell would I walk into Mitsuhide's room while he was in there. Francisco, on the other hand – wasn't going anywhere and could be found at any time. But… Sasuke was probably on the other side of the country. Contacting him would take time. It wasn't like I could slide into his DMs. (Although knowing Sasuke, he probably had figured out how to keep a cell phone working by building a battery out of a potato).
Yoshimoto could get a message to Sasuke.
Eventually.
Yoshimoto just leaped to the top of my to do list. With a bullet. Er, figuratively, that was. I didn't actually want to "do" Yoshimoto, even if he had offered to wrap me in jewel toned fabrics.
That decided, there was no time like the present. With my luck, Mitsuhide would demand all of 'Kaya's' free time after sunrise again – not to mention that during the day, I also had the new maid to contend with. And technically, I had only promised Mitsuhide that I wouldn't leave while he was gone. He was back now… and I had made that promise before reading Aki's letter anyway, before realizing I needed to talk to Sasuke.
Therefore… I was going out the window again.
In less than twenty minutes after I made my decision, I was running across rooftops illuminated only by the light of the full moon. Sakai at night was a different creature. Below me, groups of sailors swaggered through the streets, laughing, yelling, even menacing the merchants and servants unlucky enough to be in their way. Somehow the air from the harbor seemed fresher, sharper. Without the sunlight, the Autumn air felt bracing. As always when freerunning, I was more alive, as if I were the wind itself.
It was the one part of me that had not changed from the girl I had been in modern Japan to whatever it was that I had become over the past seven years.
Even if Yoshimoto had not told me that was where he was staying, the honjin would have been the first place I looked. Every town had one chief Inn – the honjin, where high ranking travelers stayed. As the leader of the Imagawa, Yoshimoto, unless he was trying to be inconspicuous (and he clearly was not), would of course choose the honjin over the many other lesser inns scattered across town.
Given this status, the honjin would be likely to be housing any number of high-ranking samurai, so finding Yoshimoto's room might involve a bit of trial and error… and a bit of logic. Even though the Imagawa clan had fallen on hard times (if an ignominious defeat and loss of territory to Nobunaga and his allies counted as "hard times"), they still had money and status. The name Imagawa carried prestige – I suppose that technically, Yoshimoto was a prince, and thus would have been assigned one of the nicest rooms – likely one on the top floor.
I carefully climbed into the window of a room facing the courtyard – Yoshimoto was likely to have asked for one overlooking the zen garden as opposed to one that faced the street. My logic proved correct; I found his room on the first try, for I recognized the kimono displayed on a rack near the wall as the one Yoshimoto had been wearing earlier that day.
A Yoshimoto shaped lump on the futon appeared to be asleep.
"Yoshimoto." I stayed just at the window as I called his name. One of the major rules of Sengoku: never awaken a sleeping warlord. They startle easily and it tends to be the fastest way to become a human pincushion.
As the lump hadn't moved, I raised my voice. "Psst! Yoshimoto!"
The second call was the charm and Yoshimoto, stirred, sat up, and grabbed a dagger from where it had been resting on the floor next to the mattress. He looked around and squinted through the darkness toward me. "What? Who are you?"
"Katsu – Sasuke's friend." I held still while I waited for him to wake up completely and access the memory of meeting me a few weeks ago. Or meeting me today, if he had actually recognized me at the warehouse.
He groped around until he found a lantern and lit it. Once the amber glow filled the room he lifted his arms, stretched and –
Ooops!
Yoshimoto sleeps in the nude.
Pretending a nonchalance that I didn't feel, I grabbed a yukata that had been carefully draped over a screen and tossed it at him. "My deepest apologies for awakening you, Lord Yoshimoto"
"'Lord' Yoshimoto? You were less formal a few moments ago when you woke me up." He pulled the garment over his shoulders – which… didn't cover the area in question.
Well, I possibly was trying to balance the informality of the naked with the formality of the title… but, details. I shrugged and made sure to keep my eyes on my feet when he secured the garment with a sash.
"I take it there's a matter of some urgency for you to have climbed into my window. How were you even aware that I was in Sak-" he broke off, tilted his head, and looked at me for a long moment. Then, he gave me a dangerous come-hither smile. "You wouldn't, by any chance, have been disguised as a woman earlier today?"
Ok, I guess he hadn't recognized me earlier, and the offer he made to 'Kaya' had been in earnest. As if he could read my thoughts, Yoshimoto beckoned for me nearer, patting the spot on the futon next to him. "Dare I hope that you've come to me to discuss a matter of jewel toned kimonos, and other… arrangements?"
"Er, I was in disguise, yes, that was me. Is me. But, no, I'm actually, looking at… FOR… I'm looking for… " ARGH. I took a deep breath and started over. "Please could you, um." My embarrassment would probably fill in the rest of the blank for him, but I wasn't in the mood to get into the specifics of Katsu/Katsuko. I gestured to his naked area. As he fully donned the yukata, I hurried on. "I need to get an urgent message to Sasuke. Are you returning to Kasugayama soon?"
To his credit, Yoshimoto only looked slightly disappointed, and in response to the question, he nodded, held up one finger and exited the room.
I buried my face in my hands. Really, he was too attractive for his own good, and even though I hadn't been tempted (much) … a naked Yoshimoto was very distracting.
Just as I had gotten my scattered thoughts corraled, Yoshimoto returned, leading a half-awake Sasuke. My ninja pal was not wearing his glasses and he bowed to the kimono on the rack. "Katsu?"
"Over here." I waited for Sasuke to reorient himself. "What happened to your glasses?"
"They met their demise under Yoshimoto's foot." He flapped his hand in the general direction (very general) of Yoshimoto. "I have another pair in my pack, but it sounded urgent. I can listen without seeing you."
"In my defense, if you had put your glasses on a shelf, they would not have ended up between my foot and the floor." Yoshimoto added another kimono layer. "I'm off to see if any of the tea maids are awake, as I presume you wish to speak to Sasuke alone." Once again, he glided out of the room.
"How does he do that?" Yoshimoto made me feel clumsy, and I am not a clumsy person.
"Er, Katsu, I am not able to see what he did." Sasuke was still standing in the center of the room, arms outstretched like a zombie.
I walked him to a cushion and helped him sit. "Oh… it's the way he moves, like he's always wearing…" I automatically paused to censor myself, then realized that I no longer needed to do so with Sasuke. "Ice skates.
He went very still, no doubt trying to recall if ice skates had been invented yet (they haven't, as far as I know). "Ice skates?"
"So that kind of leads me to what I needed to talk to you about. Not ice skating, of course, but… ok, wait, don't say anything yet." I rushed on because he clearly had questions (so did I, if it came to that). "I'm trying to figure out where to start, but it's a long story and Yoshimoto will be back before I finish, if I don't-"
"No, he won't." Sasuke flexed his fingers… as if he was making invisible calculations.
"He just said he was going to find tea." I had clearly heard that. Maybe the loss of his glasses was affecting his ears.
"To be one hundred percent accurate, he expressed the intention to find a tea maid. He won't return until after sunrise." Sasuke sighed. "I wish I had my glasses. I would prefer to take notes as I suspect several ideas will present themselves while you talk."
"My mentor – the man I've worked for these past seven years has disappeared. That's why I'm here in Sakai. And his friend had one of those 'in case of emergency break glass' letters for me, in which, among other things, mentioned he knew you… that is, if your name is actually Mikumo?" I cleared my throat, wishing that Yoshimoto would be bringing tea after all. I was already getting thirsty and my story was not a short one.
"Yes… that's my name in modern Japan. I took Sarutobi when I came here because he was allegedly fictional." Sasuke pressed his finger to the bridge of his nose – it looked weird, even as I realized that was a habit from when he wore his glasses. "However, I have no knowledge of any other time travelers aside from myself – well, and Mai of course – but I know she could not be your mentor."
The missing Mai was also a time traveler? Finally, a connection (of sorts) to Aki. "His name is Yamakoa Akihira-"
"Professor Yamakoa?" His face stayed neutral, but his voice went up an octave.
"Um, I don't actually know what he does, or did, in modern Japan. Until I read his letter, I didn't even know he was a time traveler." We were getting off track, but since Sasuke likely wouldn't be content unless he heard my origin story, I gave him a quick summary of how Toshiie and I had ended up here.
"There's another wormhole? Holy crap on a cracker!" Sasuke muttered to himself for a bit, throwing out scientific theories that were far above my pay grade. I waited impatiently for him to find his way back to our present. "Hm, I suppose it could be the same wormhole… this is indeed fascinating."
"Minutes after we landed?" Manifested? What exactly was the best term for wormhole travel disembarkation? "We were attacked by bandits –"
"The wormholes don't seem to care what sort of chaos they anchor to. Mai ended up in Honno-ji during the fire. I arrived right in the middle of a battle in 1578." He coughed. "In the middle of a battlefield. And, er, immediately created a temporal paradox by giving CPR to Kenshin."
Ah, that explained why Kenshin had unexpectedly been running around on a battlefield a couple years ago. "Could be worse. Could have been dinosaurs." I shrugged. Had there been dinosaurs in Japan?
I didn't realize I had spoken out loud until Sasuke nodded. "Didn't you ever go to the National Science Museum in Toyko? They have quite a nice Futabasaurus fossil."
"Never been. Only went to Toyko once on a school trip and we focused on the art museums – well, that doesn't matter." Somehow, I imagined that Sasuke could speak as enthusiastically about dinosaurs as he could about everything else, and there wasn't time for that. If I didn't get back to Mitsuhide's townhouse before he realized I was missing, the result wouldn't be pleasant. Or maybe he'd employ his pleasure torture, whatever that was, and I wasn't terribly interested in learning the details of that either. Not firsthand. "Anyway. Aki – your Professor Yamaoka – rescued me, trained me, and give me a job, and well, you more or less already knew the rest."
"He was a friend of my parents, er, Professor Yamaoka, that is. I've never studied with him, though. I'm a grad student in theoretical physics at Kyoto University and he's based at another Uni. Even so, he is the one who hinted me toward wormhole theory. It sounds like maybe he's been keeping an eye on that, um, node at Togakushi to look out for accidental time travelers, like Mai."
"That would be the simple explanation, if he had ever bothered to mention to me that he was also a time traveler." The thought was making me angry all over again. "No, he writes it all down in that letter. That and an 'oh by the way, you're my biological daughter,' which might have been the bigger shock to me."
Sasuke's face, which I've often mentally called "resting Spock face" finally showed a surprised expression. He massaged his cheekbones. "Fascinating. Apparently, what I need to overcome my weak facial muscles is shock. Ahem. Er, I take it your parentage was the surprise, rather than your gender identity."
Oh. Right. I had neglected to mention that when I was telling him the how-I-got-isakei'd-into-this-time-period story. I'd gotten too used to being around Mitsuhide. "Yes. That. Can we slide past the yes, I'm really a girl, for a moment because Aki is missing."
"Hm, you did mention that at the outset. My apologies – it is rather a big chunk of data to input." He closed his eyes for a moment (not that that was necessary since he clearly couldn't see anything anyway), took a deep cleansing breath. And then another. "As you undoubtedly have already concluded, I do not know where Professor Yamaoka is."
"Well, it was kind of a longshot anyway." Basically, this was a wasted trip, although sneaking out of Mitsuhide's at night was an illicit thrill. The only new information I'd uncovered was the news that Mai was also a time traveler. Although… that meant that two of our three missing persons were time travelers. Was there a connection? Or was the connection the fact that all three had been in Sakai investigating imports?
"Katsu, you are being very quiet and as I cannot see your face, I am left to conclude that you are disappointed. Or… have you thought of something?" Sasuke again pushed the vestigial memory of his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.
"I did. Sort of. It could be a coincidence." Was Sasuke even aware that Mai had disappeared? "Um, I didn't even ask… what are you doing in Sakai?"
"I suspect that you already know that Mai and Hideyoshi have disappeared." He frowned – his facial muscles really were working overtime for him tonight. "Although, if you didn't know that, don't tell any-"
"I know. I'm working with Mitsuhide to find them." With, not for, though I'm sure Mitsuhide would have objections to my choice of preposition.
"And the shocks keep coming." He reached for the bridge of his nose, then stopped himself at the last possible moment. "I wouldn't have thought you two would work well together."
Preaching to the choir, pal.
"We don't… but that's an even longer story." I put the whole slavery thing into a 'he doesn't need to know that' bucket. "Our separate investigations somewhat collided."
"And I presume the 'might be a coincidence' that you referred to a few moments ago, is that Aki and Mai are both time travelers?" Sasuke once again twitched his fingers, and I was about ready to offer to hunt for his spare glasses, because I was starting to feel anxious for him.
I nodded, realized he wouldn't have seen me nod, and said, "yeah."
"It's possible. But there's been no wormhole activity since prior to their disappearance." He rubbed his eyes. "However, I was not aware of the wormhole node at Togakushi. I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility that there's another node here in Sakai." His tone of voice, though, suggested he thought that unlikely.
"I was hoping that what you could tell me about time travel would help me figure out where to find him." I fought the urge to throw myself on Yoshimoto's bed and stare up at the ceiling, but figured Yoshimoto wouldn't appreciate that (unless I stayed there until he returned). "All I can hope is that if you're here to look for Mai, that if you also happen to run across Aki, you can tell him where I am."
"The thing is." Sasuke sighed. He sounded as conflicted as I had ever seen him (I've never seen him conflicted). "I planned to return to modern Japan when the Honno-ji wormhole opens in a couple weeks – I have a friend in desperate need of medical treatment. It was when I went to Azuchi to say goodbye to Mai, I discovered she was missing. I dislike the idea of leaving if she's in danger, but…" He did that finger tapping thing again. "Now that you've opened the possibility of more wormholes, then theoretically, Mai, Hideyoshi, and Aki could be in the future. In modern Japan, I could use my resources in Kyoto to continue the search in case they are indeed in the future."
Oh. Well. That was good, wasn't it? Of course, there had been a part of me that had hoped that when I found Sasuke here in Sakai, everything would become clear, and would be neatly tied up in a bow, presented to me as mystery solved, and I could return to a non-Mitsuhide-infested life. Instead, I couldn't help feeling that I had made matters worse for everyone.
Having learned my lesson yesterday, the sun had not yet risen when I climbed back into my room.
Not that it mattered.
"I believe I recall you saying you were going to stay put." Once again, Mitsuhide's voice came from the direction of my futon, where he again lay in that vampiric pose. "I would prefer not to have to lock you up to keep you from running off in the night."
"What I said was that I had no plans to leave while you were gone." And those plans had changed thanks to Aki's letter.
"A rather dubious distinction." Mitsuhide – well, if it were anyone else, I would say that he sighed – let out a huff of breath. "Apparently we are going to need to be far more precise when it comes to language."
"We" need to stop referring to ourselves in the plural.
"I came back, didn't I?" A decision I was already regretting. I detoured around the futon and stepped behind the screen. "Don't you ever sleep?"
"I appear to sleep more than you do, unless-" I heard a rustling that indicated he had gotten up, "you were sleeping in someone else's bed. Yoshimoto's perhaps?"
So, he had already known Yoshimoto's identity when he asked earlier – and he'd known that my answer to his question had been a lie. Well. Lie adjacent. Had he followed me tonight? "Yoshimoto thinks I'm a young man." Probably. Maybe. I hadn't been, to use Mitsuhide's words, exactly precise in my language when I told Yoshimoto that I had been in disguise.
Dammit, I'd left my night kimono in the main part of the – another rustle and it dangled over the top of the screen, falling on top of my head with Mitsuhide's sarcasm. "I doubt that would make a difference to him."
He was probably correct in that, but… "If he still believes I'm male, then it should be obvious that I wasn't in his bed, giving him the opportunity to learn otherwise."
When I emerged from the screen, I saw that Mitsuhide had turned down the blankets for me. "Mm. Perhaps. Perhaps not." He patted the futon mattress. "Get some sleep, Brat. Sho will be here mid-morning to help you figure out what to do with your hair."
Won't that be fun.
I crawled under the blanket, then Mitsuhide tucked me in as if I were a child. However, once I was securely burrito'd in there, he leaned over me and fixed that intense amber glare upon me. "If you weren't warming Yoshimoto's bed, what were you doing?" He punctuated the question with a tap on my nose – almost a boop – sinister in its pseudo playfulness.
"I had something I wanted to look into, but it turned out to go nowhere." I didn't know if Mitsuhide was aware of Sasuke and Mai's friendship, but it was not my secret to reveal.
"Care to elaborate?" The question was emphasized this time by a tap on my forehead.
Yeesh, what else is he going to tap on for future questions?
"I don't really." It really had been nothing and if I let him get the better of me now, then I was sure he'd continue to try and intimidate me this way again. Rolling onto my side, I turned my back on him. The blasé gesture was ruined by the fact that I had to tug the blanket free to do so.
"It pains me to have to repeat this, but if you determine you indeed have something to tell me, then you know where I'll be." He brushed his hand along the back of my neck, then finally left me alone.
If I thought that would be the end of the matter… it wasn't.
