Departing the fog-shrouded area behind, they reached the Daigo estate.
"Father, are you truly entrusting me to take charge of Banmon?" Tahomaru resumed their horseback conversation.
Daigo Kagemitsu's bushy eyebrows arched slightly. "Are you scared, my son?"
"I don't mean it that way," said Tahomaru, "Banmon is a strategic stronghold on the Asakura frontier. I would never shrink from such duty."
"Go then, Tahomaru. Consider this your trial as the heir of Daigo. Let no one—be they peasant or child—cross Banmon alive." He clapped Tahomaru on his right shoulder.
"Yes… Father." Tahomaru replied, bowing his head.
He remained motionless long after his father departed, staring at the spot where Kagemitsu's hand had rested. The shoulder beneath his ornate kimono felt nothing. He slowly touched it with left hand to feel the remaining warmth, and his eyelids growing heavy. "This is the right path." Tahomaru murmured to the empty space, his voice barely audible.
In order to catch father's sight, it's must right.
Although Tahomaru had heard from his father before, it was still surprising to have actually seen Banmon once. What had once been a towering wooden palisade now lay in ruins.
"Tahomaru-sama." The deputy commander, Makuwa, approached with a bow respectfully. His bushy whiskers and swollen nose were twitching when he spoke. "The barrier stands secure. My men guard every day. Not even the cunningest rat slipped through unnoticed."
Tahomaru's gaze swept over the defenses. "Is that so?" He looked down with expressionless face.
A pampered lordling, Makuwa thought with scorn. "Shall I show you to your quarters, -sama? The trip must have wearied you."
Tahomaru mounted his horse and intend to depart, then paused. "You were the one previously in charge of this place. You are …"
"I'm Makuwa, Tahomaru-sama."
Tahomaru gave a curt nod and rode off without another word.
The moment Tahomaru's back was turned, Makuwa's obsequious smile vanished while his face contorted into bestial malice.
Arrogant brat, he seethed like his father. How that young man swanned in to steal my post without lifting a finger. How arrogant.
At estate, subordinates bowed as Tahomaru passed. After he was beyond earshot, they edged closer to Makuwa. "Makuwa-sama," one man murmured, "those children..."
Tahomaru slowed down and wanted to listen more carefully, while Makuwa looked delighted and strode back to his room with his whiskers twitching. The subordinates had also disappeared. Tahomaru held his arms and turned to look in the direction those people were leaving, his face darkening.
The next morning, Tahomaru was massaging his throbbing temples against the sleepless night. As sunlight blazed through the window, he clicked his tongue in irritation. Did those subordinates neglect to wake me? Damn this cursed habit of being particular about beds. With a sharp exhale, he shoved the door open to look for his deputy.
Reaching Makuwa's chamber door, Tahomaru found two guards stood watch at the entrance. As Tahomaru approached, they exchanged uneasy glances.
"Tahomaru-sama," one stammered, "Makuwa-sama..."
"Stand aside!"
Ignoring the guards' attempts to stop him, Tahomaru pushed the door open.
The stench of iron flooded his senses. His brow furrowed instinctively and took two paces forward. Beneath his boots spread a viscous crimson pool of blood. A few paces away, Makuwa sprawled across the tatami mats in deep slumber. In the corner, a child huddled trembling, his torn robes stained with blood.
"Makuwa."
"Mmmh..." The deputy stirred, forcing his eyes open only to snap to full alertness at the glowering figure looming above him.
"Tahomaru-sama!" Though his voice carried a tremor, he maintained his posture without getting up as if he was still mastering Banmon.
"You eat them…"
"They are merely trespassers. Their deaths mean nothing."
"So you choose to eat?" Tahomaru advanced, each step amplifying the suffocating weight between them.
Makuwa scrambled backward across the bloodied tatami until his back struck the wall. Tahomaru's right side now rippled with fox-like distortion. He closing around Makuwa's throat.
"You disgrace... to bushido... to the Daigo…How dare you?!"
Makuwa laughed weakly. "We're the same."
As Tahomaru's grip loosened in confusion, he grinned. "Both of us… sell ourselves to devils. Tahomaru-sama, you'll get this 'sickness' too. Look at your face—it's an omen."
The door slammed open. Guards rushed in. "Tahomaru-sama, please! Makuwa-sama… it's not his fault! Just because of sickness—"
Tahomaru released his hand. Even as the Daigo heir, I can't command true loyalty here yet. Makuwa must not die—not yet.
"Take the child to Banmon for execution." he ordered. Hearing that, guards dragged away the wailing child.
"As for you." Tahomaru leaned down and grabbed Makuwa's throat, staring at his struggling face. "Don't let me see you doing this again."
He released his grip only when Makuwa nodded. Tahomaru said coldly, "We're nothing alike. Don't compare yourself to me." He stepped around the blood and left.
Makuwa smirked, savoring the young master's denial. All the same. I can't wait to see you become like me.
Tahomaru rode to Banmon. The unnatural quiet felt ominous, like the calm before a storm. Since their last confrontation, Makuwa had stayed obediently behind him without complaint. After receiving reports from his subordinates, Tahomaru removed his outer kataginu and began archery practice. Sweat drenched his skin under the blazing sun. Annoyed by the sticky feeling, he peeled off his left clothing.
"Tahomaru-sama!"
"What's wrong? Why the panic?"
"People—they're trying to cross Banmon!"
"No one," he stated, "crosses Banmon alive."
...
After eliminating every fugitive, the phantom vibrations of Asakura arrows still pulsed through his mechanical body. His numb right side felt pathetic—needing such sensations to justify his sacrifices. Ridiculous. Yet he felt no regret, even if this body was now more machine than man.
A burning gaze prickled his neck. He turned sharply, but the watcher vanished like a startled rat. Tahomaru chuckled darkly.
"Does something wrong, Tahomaru-sama?" a subordinate asked.
"Just spotted a rat."
"A rat?"
"Keep guarding. I'm gona visit the doctor."
"Yes, sir!"
Doctor Jukai, who has been by Tahomaru's side selflessly since rebuilding his maimed body after the ritual two years ago when he sacrificed half of himself, is the one stood second only to his mother as the sole person who remained at his side without expectation of reward.
"Tahomaru-sama, you push yourself too far."
"You'll stay by my side, won't you, Doctor?" Tahomaru flexed the mechanical hand with smiling.
"This old body might not last long enough." Jukai chuckled weakly, a dry cough rattling his chest.
"Doctor!" Tahomaru reached to steady him, but Jukai waved him off. "No need for concern."
Every gesture between them carried the weight of careful formality—a barrier Tahomaru couldn't breach.
Does it matter? He told himself. His presence alone suffices. Even if it because he was the Daigo's son. Even if his care was slight.
"You should tend to your own health," Tahomaru urged, clasping the doctor's weathered hands.
Jukai smiled faintly. "I pray to live long enough… to see my Hyakkimaru again..."
Hyakkimaru—a son bearing Jukai-crafted mechanical limbs like Tahomaru's own—appeared frequently in their discussions.
"If fate allows… you might yet meet as brothers."
"I look forward to it." What he could do was merely keeping smile.
He knew, no one's first place belonged to him. Not since his mother's death. Not through all his desperate striving for his father's approval. He was just a child, a poor fellow, for seeking his father's approval.
Alone. Always alone.
Half my body sacrificed, yet still inadequate? Must I offer all?
As he left Jukai's quarters, his smile hardened. Hyakkimaru, this stranger he had never met, began to fill him with unexplained hatred.
Return to the estate echoing with the shrill cries of a young girl, each scream clawed at Tahomaru's frayed nerves. His expression darkened as he turned to a subordinate. "What is this noise?"
"It's…Makuwa-sama, his sickness…"
"Again?" Tahomaru's voice was full of suppressed anger, and strode toward Makuwa's my warnings, he dares repeat such atrocities? Why must I always be surrounded by such wretched, lowly scum?
Alone. Always alone.
…
The pleas for mercy faded to whimpers, then silence.
Tahomaru exhaled slowly, his mechanical hand uncurling from Makuwa's collar. The deputy's body lay motionless. Fatigue weighed on Tahomaru's bones—how many times had he smashed that head against the floor? he had forgotten.
When he finally straightened, the right side of his face had fully transformed: a vulpine, bestial half of his face. Unbidden tears traced his human left cheek, dripping onto blood-slicked tatami.
He tossed Makuwa's corpse aside like refuse, then froze.
In the corner sat a familiar child—a girl in a cherry-blossom kimono, its hem torn and mud-stained. Her pale legs were drawn up defensively.
"You…"
"You're… Tahomaru?" The girl—Dororo—clutched a pair of mechanical arms to her chest, sweat glistening on her brow. "The samurai from the fog?"
Their eyes met again in mutual surprise.
She comes. She comes unexpectedly. She's here, in this place… beside me.
Somehow, the hollowness in his chest eased.
The tears continued their silent descent. He didn't notice.
"Why are you…" Dororo stood on tiptoe, scrubbing his face with her oversized sleeve. "Are you alright?"
Her small hand brushed his cheek. Like a figment from some half-remembered dream, a figure approached him unbidden.
Tahomaru laughed from the heart. "Just dust in my eyes. Must you be so rough? You'll blind me at this rate."
She retaliated by grinding the sleeve harder across his face. "Ungrateful jerk," she huffed.
Without lashing out at him like last time, her usual temper was dampened—whether by his help or the strangeness of his tears, she couldn't tell.
Guards burst in, their horrified gazes darting between Makuwa's corpse.
"Dispose of this." he ordered.
When they'd dragged the body away, Dororo wriggled free from Tahomaru's embrace, then asked, "They go?"
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Of course I'm afraid! That jerk totally had me pinned against the wall. I will get eaten alive if you don't come."
"No, I mean of me." His shadow engulfed her. "You watch me kill a man. Aren't you afraid of me?"
"Aren't you here to save people?" she asked, blinking quickly.
"What a weirdo," he smiled, eyes closed as he shook his head.
"Come on, you're the weird one here—crying one minute and grinning the next."
She darted toward the door and planned to flee. He blocked her path, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Let me repay you with a meal. What do you wanna eat?"
Shouldn't she be repaying his life-saving debt? Why's he talking about repaying her—even offering meals? She was confused, then thought for a moment. "Rice balls, dango…"
He nodded with smile, committing each demand to memory.
She came…came unexpectedly. I don't even know her name. She is closer to me than anyone else, even Dr. Jukai or my father.
The table soon overflowed with dishes.
"Whoa, you're truly a young master!" Dororo blurted and ate a rice ball with hand.
Tahomaru's gaze lingered on the mechanical arms beside her. Disquiet coiled in his gut. He hoped the mechanical arms didn't belong to that guy.
"Those arms…they're not yours?"
"Nope! They're my aniki's."
"Aniki?"
"The one I told you about in the fog! His name's—"
Hyakkimaru.
—He hated hearing that name, especially from her. A name was enough to shatter him.
Tahomaru turned away, his smile hardening into a mask.
So it's true. The man who haunted Jukai's stories—the son who commanded the doctor's longing—now stole even this moment. How effortlessly he takes what's mine.
"Can I take these for him?" Dororo reached for the remaining rice balls.
Suddenly, before she could touch the arms, guards materialized, binding her in a straw mat.
"Hey! What the hell?!" She writhed, couldn't move at all.
"Enjoyed the meal?" Tahomaru rested his chin on one hand, keeping smile.
"Bastard! Let me go! You two-faced samurai! Aniki will slice you to ribbons!" She writhed in the bindings, confused by this sudden shift from a good person who had saved her and given her a meal to a snake in the grass.
Tahomaru leaned forward, his smile never wavering. "You've eaten well, I see. Such vigor. I'll return this arm to the man called Hyakkimaru."
He nodded to the guards. "Take her to Jukai. Keep her unharmed."
Her shouts faded into the distance. Tahomaru crossed his arms, staring at the empty path where she'd vanished. The wind clawed at his hair, sending it tumbling backward like waves.
Forgot to ask her name. Not that it mattered—we'd meet again soon enough.
Yes, soon.