Abstinence Education

Shorter installments? *facepalm* Another double chapter, that's what you get! No more promises -- I only prove myself wrong. Why is it taking such a while to get these out, aside from the obvious factor of length? Short version: I've got more responsibilities at home, which is actually a good thing. :)

Okay, speak to me! Tell me what you think, since that may make ME think more about writing, rather than clearance white sales and scrubbing bathrooms efficiently with braces Velcroed to both wrists. :P I'd be grateful!

Through a glass, darkly, in the light of the sun...

The characters and universe of Blade of the Immortal/Mugen no Junin are copyright by Hiroaki Samura and do not belong to me. Not one sen will come into my hands in consequence of this story.

Warnings for sex in various forms, including quasi-incestuous themes and a sixteen-year-old female paired with an adult male. (Yeah, this also applies to future chapters!) Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic.

netsuke: Small carved toggle used to secure hanging items from the obi belt.
bu: Unit of currency; one-fourth of a ryo, or approximately $250 USD.
shinpan: Judge; the referee or official presiding over a match.
buke: Warrior households; the samurai class.
bushi: Warrior; samurai.
kata: Prescribed sequence of weapon moves used for instruction and working out.


Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga

Part 41

“Broads are crazy, that’s all there is to it.” Manji frowned at his empty pipe and chewed on the mouthpiece. “I sure could use a puff about now... hey! You listening to me?”

Nearby, Tsukue Ryonosuke lay on the bare river-rippled ground, resting on his side with his knees drawn up. He looked pale; the bandage on his severed leg had soaked through with dark blood, but he dutifully nodded.

“Good. Now, see, where you went wrong...” Manji pointed with the bladed bowl of his pipe. About ten paces away behind a clump of rushes, O-Hama held one end of a cloth belt in her teeth and expertly whipped back the flaps of her sleeves, preparing for the duel with Rin. “You couldn’t have picked a girl who didn’t have a blood vendetta against somebody like me, could you? Naw, it had to be one who’d seriously consider removing a guy’s parts in mixed company. With his own knife.”

“My... my lady is the loveliest — she — ”

“Yer beautiful darlin’; fly-attracting sugar-lump — whatever!” Manji broke from a sarcastic sing-song to a low-pitched growl. “Quit dribblin’ from the mouth before I puke on my sandals. Nobody ought to get that batshit over a broad, no matter what her face looks like.” He wrinkled his nose. “You realize, even if I hadn’t been the one to catch up with you two, her revenge ends up forfeiting your life while she gets off with a beating, if that? She’s made some good use of you.”

Ryonosuke flushed but didn’t answer.

“Ahh, it’s all a freakin’ drama. You like playing the part, so you say the lines, but you don’t know crap about dealing with the female sex. See, the face ain’t the genuine point of interest...”

Rin gave Manji a sidewise glance from behind another waist-high clump of rushes. She crossed a cord over her back to tie her own long sleeves out of the way, then bent over to hike the skirts of her furisode higher.

“Hey, Rin! Where the hell did my tobacco pouch get to, anyhow?” She looked up; Manji slapped the front of his clothing where he usually stored his smoking materials and aimed a peremptory jerk of the chin. “You claimed you fetched all my stuff along, woman.”

“Uh... that bullet kind of blew your pouch apart. Along with your ribcage? I didn’t think you’d want the tobacco that was left, considering.” Rin adjusted her under-belt and discovered a few dryish splinters of Manji’s flesh and bone that still clung in the bloodstained folds of her clothes. She scraped them off with the tips of her fingernails and hastily wiped her hands. “Yuck!”

“Oh? Right.” Manji directed a glare at Ryonosuke, but his eye then shifted to the young man’s detached foot. He shrugged his shoulders. “Ahh, I’ll have to say he’s paid in full. Even if the little bastard did make a hell of a mess, I still got my blades!”

Ryonosuke struggled up on one elbow and pulled a netsuke toggle through the obi that adorned his soggy, soiled armor. After placing a gilt lacquer tobacco pouch and pipe holder on the wide flap of lacing that formed his lap, from the folds of the obi he also produced a small knife in a wooden sheath, much plainer than the pouch and pipe. “Th-this is yours... I beg your pardon. I don’t remember how I happened to...”

“Yeah, that IS mine! Give it over, ya little thief.” Manji plucked the knife from the trembling, upstretched hand and dropped it into his sleeve. He started to turn away, but Ryonosuke held up the pouch as well.

“P-please accept an unworthy offering. I’m afraid the tobacco’s not very fresh...”

Manji lifted a brow at him. “You fell in the water, pal. It’s probably stale and soaked in river-bottom muck. I’d sooner smoke it with the bone marrow flavoring.”

“No, no... this flap inside keeps out the damp! See, the artisan was very ingenious... the set cost me three bu.”

“You sure do toss your cash around, rich boy.” Manji shook his head and accepted the pouch. “Hah — you’re right, it’s dry. You store a waterproof light somewhere in those overpriced duds?” Ryonosuke looked discomfited, and Manji laughed. “Flint and steel, if you know how. Here, watch real close.”

He tamped and expertly lit his pipe, then tossed the pouch and his fire-knappers back to Ryonosuke. “Fill yours up and let’s see if rich boy can figure it out.” Several clumsy attempts sent white sparks sizzling everywhere, making Ryonosuke flinch and blink. “Strike and draw at the same time, idiot. Sheesh, how long you been smoking, anyway? You look like you’re still begging puffs from your old wet-nurse.”

Eventually the young man successfully caught a spark in the hair-fine shreds of tobacco and nursed it to a smolder. He pulled a shaky breath through his slim ivory pipe and sent up a bluish cloud around his own head. Manji reclaimed his fire-knappers with a patronizing smile and gestured at Rin, who had watched this colloquy in some confusion. He seemed about to ask her a question, but his eye fell on O-Hama.

She had finished tying a band around her head to keep her thigh-length hair out of her way. One by one, she pulled up the trailing legs of her hakama and secured them with the waist ties, exposing her shapely calves to the knee. Manji stared for a moment, let out a long whoosh of suspended breath, cleared his throat and spoke to Ryonosuke again.

“Yeah, okay... I’ll grant you, that’s the most expensive lay I’ve had, anyhow.” Rin put a hand to her mouth and turned away. “Which only goes to demonstrate that looks ain’t the whole story. Rich boy like you, you’ve probably poked at least half a dozen just as pretty, and with pleasanter dispositions. So given that — ”

“My lady’s is the only pillow I’ve shared.”

“Haah?”

“She is my one love — my eternal match in heaven.” Ryonosuke raised his face, a glow in his expression as he looked at O-Hama. “We were destined for each other from a previous life, and I rejoice that I found her so quickly! I have never allowed any other woman’s hands to touch me.”

Despite herself, Rin felt a pang. She’d imagined once that the fugitive lovers were hero and heroine of a romantic adventure; what cruel nonsense that seemed now. But Ryonosuke’s earnest fervency touched her; he still had a dream of fairytale love? Of course, he might just be too stupid to face reality...

“Only one? Fuck me, in your entire life?” Manji seemed torn between pitiless laughter and honest horror. “Now THAT’S a fate worse than death!”

“For this one peerless woman, I will be proud to die faithful to the last!” Manji took his pipe from his mouth and howled with mirth. Ryonosuke compressed his tender jaw. “We meant to escape Edo. Assume new identities... and live out our lives in peace.”

Manji kept chuckling. “Live your life in peace — with a female? You got a lot to learn, little boy.”

“I am a man, and no man can live as he should without his true love! Even someone like — ” He took a look at Manji’s expression and closed his lips like a case snapping shut.

“No, go on. You were sayin’?” Manji gave him a vicious grin from one side of his mouth and discarded the ashes from his pipe. “Gimme some advice, expert.” Ryonosuke trembled and let his head droop. “Like I was saying, you don’t even know what eternal means — now, speaking of me...” He took Ryonosuke’s pouch and tamped his pipe again.

“Then instruct me, immortal.” Ryonosuke kept his gaze on the ground, his voice low. Rin came out from behind the rushes and approached a little closer to hear better, carrying her sheathed sword. “If your gift gives you power to see into the ends of time, then you know the true nature of love.”

“True love, my right eye!” Manji aimed a thumb at his scarred face. “The buzz lasts a week, tops. Like cherry blossom season, what all the poets dribble about, and amounts to as much in the end. Dead flowers in a mud puddle!”

“But...” Ryonosuke heaved in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment as if to give himself courage. “Even in their ruins, those few moments of perfect joining are the glory of life. Love is all that defends us against death...”

“Your death? You ain’t got much sand left in that hourglass.”

“When I cross the river... I will carry nothing but the memory of my love.” Rin shivered a little at Ryonosuke’s yearning tone. “I have gained a vision of paradise to sustain me through the darkest sights ahead. Perhaps those of hell itself...” Manji’s good eye twitched. “Would you refuse even that gift, inhabitant of infinity?”

Manji bit down on his pipe and lit it; he made no reply. After a few moments he glanced at Rin’s feet, then flicked his gaze away. He cleared his throat again and drew so hard on the mouthpiece that she saw the burning tobacco flare bright even in the sunlight. “You ladies all set to go? Guess I’m the qualified shinpan.” He blew a smoke ring with brisk authority; it spiraled, spread and disintegrated on the warming breeze. “But I don’t call halts on technical fouls, so keep that in mind.”

O-Hama didn’t protest. Slowly she moved a little closer and took her stance opposite Rin. They bowed stiffly to each other and drew their weapons, discarding the scabbards. O-Hama sank to a deep knee bend, Manji’s loaned short sword held out before her in a formal starting position. Rin did the same, and their eyes met.

She had to make an effort to keep her composure. O-Hama’s porcelain face looked as hard as when she had prepared to cut out Manji’s tongue; she had an inexorable set to her brows. Yet a note of high-strung tension echoed behind that silent façade, as if she meant to triumph no matter what she had to inflict on anyone, including herself. Her gaze stayed as steady as a painted mask.

Rin took a deep breath and held her pose. Should she make the first move to rise, or wait out her opponent? Her thighs began to tremble with the effort of keeping her balance. What had her father and his students taught her in the dojo about formal duels?

A few kata; the etiquette of competition with wooden bokuto: all the while smiling at an earnest pigtailed girl swinging a practice sword about as long as she was tall. An imitation of combat, no more resembling a duel of honor between naked blades than a pup taught to walk on its hind legs resembled a human being.

O-Hama’s lips curved in a faint smile as she watched Rin, who clenched her jaw. Did that woman have to gloat over her smallest triumph? At last she gave a slight bow and slowly rose from her crouch as if to demonstrate her control. Rin followed suit with a concealed sigh of relief.

The two young women circled to the right, sliding their feet in deliberate moves on the damp ground. Rin had to detour once or twice around puddles and knots of rushes, but the ripple marks in the clay and sand were slight and no tripping hazard. The combatants could make good use of a wide space of flat flood-swept bank between the low bluff and the swift-running river itself. The sun stood high enough not to throw glare in the eyes, so neither the eastern nor the western direction had an advantage. This wouldn’t be a quick fight, Rin sensed. Unless she let O-Hama’s steady gaze unnerve her any more than it already did...

O-Hama’s weapon snapped from a shoulder-high guard position to point directly at her. Rin recoiled, her temples thrumming almost painfully, but O-Hama didn’t stir a step to attack. She only smiled again and kept circling. Rin’s cheeks burned; her grip tautened on the hilt of her grandfather’s sword.

Manji stood with his weight on one leg and his arms folded over his chest, one hand on his refilled pipe. Smoking calmed the nerves, she had heard; his neutral expression didn’t betray either tension or relaxation.

She had to do something. So far her opponent had scored every point although they hadn’t even touched blades. Rin blinked at the spots of sunlight striking off O-Hama’s sword. She wasn’t afraid of that unsheathed edge, was she? Of course she was — but she’d told Manji that the significance lay in the risk. No imitation of combat any longer; only the real thing. Relax that grip, she told herself, as if her sensei issued reminders — she’d sprain fingers if the blade took a hard blow with her hands so tightly locked on the ungiving hilt. Rin clenched down and released a couple of times, took a calculated breath in preparation, swallowed hard and charged.

O-Hama met her strike at torso level and countered with a forward thrust. Rin turned it aside and skipped backwards again. She’d signaled that move about as clearly as possible; Manji should have yelled at her for that. Rin glanced at him, still calmly smoking. Apparently he’d decided he would act only as judge and not coach, which almost seemed like an endorsement — he’d really let her handle this on her own?

O-Hama tossed her head; she looked keen for the next exchange. Her opponent’s moves were smooth and fast, as Rin had already seen, but perhaps delivered with more elegance than force. Rin’s confidence lifted a little more.

Then O-Hama darted at her without a hint of warning. Rin’s instincts responded just in time; she whipped up her blade and with a loud clash they locked weapons. O-Hama twirled her sword, engaging Rin’s more firmly, and pulled upwards. The hilt rocked in Rin’s hands as it started to slip; the end jammed painfully into her left palm. A faint, faded scent of gardenia tinged the air as O-Hama’s hair lashed forward and back. Rin’s nostrils flared.

Let THIS girl casually disarm her in front of Manji? No way! Determination lent her strength, but Rin barely regained control before the hilt escaped her; she grabbed down hard and yanked her sword away. She freed it from the lock but over-extended in her vehemence, swinging her arms far to the side. Just as she realized her vulnerability, O-Hama deftly reversed her grip and executed a downward sweep.

A fiery thread stitched itself across Rin’s breast just below the collarbone. She scrambled away, hand to her throat. Stupid —

Her palm came away spotted red. First blood!

Manji made an abrupt, muffled sound. She hadn’t taken much of a wound, little more than a scratch and a rip in her collar, but Rin’s heart beat so fast she vibrated. That hit could have been a lot worse if delivered just a little closer. Had O-Hama deliberately pulled back when she might have decided the duel on the spot? If her control was that fine, maybe she’d intended a taunt. Some of Rin’s fright melted into anger.

O-Hama backed up at Manji’s peculiar grunt and shot a testing look sideways; perhaps she thought she’d proved something, but also believed it unwise to tempt his restraint too far. Rin tried to meet Manji’s eye, both for her own reassurance and to show him she was all right. She shouldn’t lose the whole battle for one stupid scratch!

Manji directed his gaze only at her throat. She realized that until this moment he’d probably never seen her blood shed. Bruises, lumps, jammed fingers — those were all the wounds she’d suffered in training, not even a split lip. Was that a glint of sweat on his forehead?

Both combatants kept their positions on guard, waiting for a judgment. Rin had no desire to stop the bout; they had barely begun to warm up. She wished she had been more specific about the terms of the duel before it began, but it might be a little late now to define victory or how honor would be satisfied. Assuming, of course, that she’d really be able to enforce any part of her will in this. As long as Manji remained whole and armed, bushido and his implied obligations aside, his was the ultimate authority here. And if her yojimbo wouldn’t allow any greater risk to his charge —

He took his pipe from his mouth and made an impatient jab with the stem. Keep going!

Still they confined themselves to brief passes and thrusts, no longer circling but mostly keeping their distance. O-Hama made an ever-more-obvious show of her superior form; although Rin blocked her attacks and got in some of her own to be blocked in turn, she felt clumsy and impulsive by contrast with the other woman’s calculated poise. That sharp point’s glitter kept tracking her gaze and the scratch on her chest stung — she hadn’t needed such direct proof that Manji kept a good polish on his blades. The long pauses between clashes didn’t allow her to find a rhythm.

This wasn’t going very well.

In her glimpses of the two men watching the duel, Rin noted that Ryonosuke’s pipe had gone out but that Manji still smoked his tobacco in steady pipefuls. O-Hama’s lover lay prone and propped up on his elbows, his mouth open and his expression distressed. His lady paid him almost no attention at all.

But although Manji’s face remained mostly stoic, his stance began to change. Occasionally he pushed the heel of one hand to his right hip, and he leaned slightly to that side as if feeling an ache there. When Rin caught his glance, Manji grinned and gave her a small nod. He might approve of her performance, or just want to encourage her... but he shifted his weight again and the grin turned to a grimace.

What was wrong with him? Manji wouldn’t usually allow himself to betray a weakness under circumstances like these. No way to find out the cause right now, since she was more than a little busy. However, Manji seemed to recover after a few moments; the color came back to his face and he stood straighter. Rin’s concern eased somewhat— his strange look had rattled her. O-Hama obviously missed nothing; her eyes held an almost feverish brightness as she glanced from one of them to the other. An inner fire under this hot sun...

Then Manji’s eye widened to glassiness and his throat jumped in a hard swallow. He held his abdomen again and rocked slightly as he tried in vain to keep his countenance. Though his spasm seemed to fade almost as quickly as it struck, Rin hissed in helpless sympathy; Manji looked up and gave her an irritated shake of the head just as O-Hama tried another pass. Rin had to yank her divided attention back to the duel.

Her yojimbo’s twitching face called back dreadful moments, memories Rin couldn’t suppress and didn’t care to. Yes, she meant to avenge her own insults, restore this intangible shield called honor... but he had lost far more than she had.

Wasn’t that her dearest goal? To punish Manji’s tormentors — he claimed he deserved what he got, but she’d had to watch him suffer those agonies. Rin’s pulse thumped in her ears, her throat felt so thick and tight that it closed in on itself, and her freshening sense of pure motive drew energy as if from a mounting fire. She’d show that haughty, self-centered — O-Hama’s grievances weren’t better than everyone else’s, no matter how much poetic, rainy anguish she and her lover might have suffered, or how unspeakable was the curse of a beautiful face!

Though Rin didn’t envy a courtesan’s allure, if she thought about it. One man’s desire could cause enough turmoil without unwanted lust from every quarter. A shiver prickled the back of her mind. Why exactly had O-Hama wanted to witness a virgin’s honor torn apart by those callous men? Ryonosuke might not have been able to stomach the sight, but Rin felt sure that O-Hama had meant to watch, and perhaps not only to gloat over Manji’s anguish. What could another girl’s ruination possibly expiate?

She didn’t give a damn. Nothing was bad enough to justify such a vicious, untrammeled vengeance, and Rin meant to prove it. If how she handled a sword could ever prove anything, she’d do it on this field of battle!

In a deepening state of concentration, Rin soon read a distinct pattern to O-Hama’s attacks, as if her opponent had drilled with a few combinations over and over. Although she executed them faultlessly, she varied them very little. Now Rin found herself also attacking and responding as if by book, holding her own with less effort than at first but not pressing hard. Her mind felt light, like clouds in a strong wind, and her thoughts seemed to skim high above the earth, carrying her body along in flowing, instinctive motion. It was like a perilous dance of blades and footwork, the skirts of their robes whirling around their thighs, their sandals planting and turning, their breathing falling and rising almost in unison.

Both of them were tiring — they couldn’t keep this up forever, but it seemed impossible to break the flow yet. The combat sped up, fiercer and sweatier, the pauses shorter, like a river tumbling down ever-steeper slopes. O-Hama’s face flushed pink and moist with effort; Rin thought she must look much the same herself. O-Hama’s collar soaked dark in perspiration, and Rin’s clothes clung to her skin under the arms and along the spine. The sun brought waves of muggy moisture up from the ground and the river, and heated Rin’s scalp through her hair until she had to blink away running streams of sweat. She risked a quick swipe of her bound sleeve across her forehead.

Manji bent almost double, dropped his pipe and jerked up again with a strangled moan. Ryonosuke looked at him in surprise, halfway to concern, and seemed about to say something. Manji silenced him with a snarl. Rin spun towards her yojimbo, mouth open. O-Hama also yielded to the distraction and paused, though concern might not have motivated her interest.

Manji growled again and made a disgusted gesture at both women, slashing the air with the edge of his hand. Then his lips parted and he hissed through his teeth, eye drawing shut. He grabbed his side and his right knee bent as if the leg had gone weak.

Her concentration dissolving, Rin felt a surge of panic. Go to him? Beg O-Hama for a halt? Forfeit the duel altogether? Her spinning brains wouldn’t let her think. O-Hama made the decision for her with a sudden side-step and jab. Rin blocked her, automatically ducked the head shot that O-Hama always used to follow up that attack, and yelled as she lunged.

O-Hama’s eyes opened wide, but she had a defense ready, another well-practiced combination. Rin worked hard to avoid another wound; her focus was gone and her movements began to flail. Only by luck did she deflect a thrust that would have struck her in the middle of the chest.

Manji glanced up at the sound of the rattling blades; immediately his left hand made an involuntary move towards the overlap of his kosode. He paused the gesture in mid-air, then rested the hand on his chest in a tense curve. Rin looked back at him with an unmeaning edge of fear as her blade awkwardly batted O-Hama’s away. Manji’s expression hardened. He hesitated an instant longer, visibly bracing against his pain, then pushed his hand under his clothing and exposed the hilt of a shido.

He meant to interfere.

No breath left to spare. Rin wanted to shout at him, insist that he allow her to finish this by herself. She knew that fixed glitter in Manji’s eye. In another moment he’d strike down their weapons, or simply end the whole matter while he still could. Unthinking protective instinct, or the fog of his mysterious pain — might his scruples blur away into the execution he’d told her to carry out herself?

Or would he rue yet another murder?

Rin croaked a cry from her dry throat and flapped a frantic kick at O-Hama’s legs. It missed by a long way, but had an effect — her opponent disengaged and backed away. “Kicking isn’t legal!” O-Hama sounded mortally offended. “Shinpan!”

Manji sneered. “The hell it’s not — you got fair warning.”

“That’s street brawling, not kenjutsu! My father would never have allowed — ”

“Oh, is that so? Sounds like he was awful sure there was a right way and a wrong way — especially for a guy who ended up with my blade in his guts.”

O-Hama went scarlet, then white. “Insolent... demon...”

“I’m a better trainer than he was, too.” Manji turned and pointed with his shido. “Goddammit, Rin, get your thumb out of your mouth and fight!”

Why hadn’t she? Her opponent had silently dictated her own terms, and Rin had let her do it. Proud, formal and constrained, like the Mutenichi-ryu’s strict traditions of allowable weapons. Her own father’s limitations? Nothing like the steely power that Manji demonstrated in every fight. The lethal pike of Otonotachibana Makie, the whirling, shifting force of Anotsu Kagehisa’s battle-axe...

Hadn’t she learned a single lesson yet?

Rin launched herself forward; she swept a shin into O-Hama’s knees. O-Hama stumbled and flung out her arms, her mouth forming a shocked circle.

Rin’s point caught the tied-back folds of O-Hama’s right sleeve and met flesh. Silk and skin gave way. For an instant Rin seemed to feel the penetration herself, sharply aware of the muscles and veins and nerves that split and cried out in pain, to live in her opponent’s body.

Snapped back to herself: the impression vanished. O-Hama spun around, following the blade’s thrust. She didn’t cry out, but seized her upper arm in her left hand and staggered away, her sword dragging a line in the ground. Blood rapidly soaked her sleeve.

Ryonosuke screamed. “My lady! My lady!” He tried to leap to his feet and fell prone in a puddle. Shaken at her own success, Rin didn’t follow up. Almost glad for a little respite, she put a hand to her mouth and started to draw a deep breath through her fingers.

Ryonosuke struggled to his knees and clasped his hands. Manji laughed and nodded, though his face looked pale and he had to use his shido as a prop. “Stop the duel, for the love of heaven! I’ll atone for her — punish me instead! Please don’t let my beautiful darling suffer any more pain!”

“Shuddup, ya little prick! You’ve had your medicine — she can damn well take hers!” Manji shoved him flat with one foot. He nodded at Rin, sweat coursing down his forehead. “Go for it, kid. You’ve got her over a barrel.”

O-Hama regained a little poise; she let go of her wound and took her sword in both hands. “Demon! One cut won’t defeat me!” Her point trembled in the air; her porcelain hardness looked brittle now.

“Big talk, frail.” Manji straightened, leaned back and spun his shido on a forefinger. “Now a guy like me — I can back that up a hundred times over and come out without a mark.”

“Yes, with the aid of your black arts! Restoring your flesh to the horror of all who witness it!” Manji snorted, and O-Hama raised her voice. “Tracking us to this place — you used those same arts, didn’t you? No one could have divined our route otherwise, or intercepted — ”

“A lot YOU know!” shouted Rin. “He figured that out just from what you said!”

O-Hama whirled. “Simpleton! You believe everything this murderer tells you? What about escaping his bonds in the forest? Has he admitted how he did THAT?”

“Eh? Uh — ” No, he hadn’t. But what on earth could O-Hama accuse him of there?

“His inhuman powers — he’s a sorcerer — ”

“Oh, come ON!” Rin rolled her eyes. “That’s totally dumb, even for — ”

O-Hama turned on Manji. “Tell her yourself, demon, or I will.”

To Rin’s surprise, Manji grimaced when she looked at him with expectation. “The hell that has to do with anything? Get on with it!”

“You’d rather your innocent dupe didn’t hear that tale, eh?”

“I’m not a dupe, you... you crazy girl!” Though it wasn’t so crazy to try distraction when you’d lost an advantage. Ridiculous to talk of sorcery, but she’d piqued Rin’s curiosity. Manji’s escape had puzzled her ever since he had appeared so unexpectedly in the middle of the fight on the forest path. Like a walking corpse, stalking and slaying her captors without mercy. “How dare you call him that? There’s nothing you could tell me that would ever make me think Manji-san was a demon!” She quivered involuntarily. Poor Hebi, suffering his undeserved death...

“But you are a captive, aren’t you? Even though you don’t realize it yet.”

“Haah? Captive? He’s my paid bodyguard! I could leave him any time I — er...”

“You think so?” O-Hama fixed her with an oddly intense glance. “His shadow increases every day he holds you in thrall. Your youth and your passion sustain him — he depends on them so greatly that he will take any step to keep you for his own.”

She gestured with her sword; Rin’s eyes automatically followed. Although he didn’t seem to be in pain now, Manji’s expression looked dark, even tense. He seemed to debate with himself whether to give O-Hama the compliment of a denial, or let her talk herself dizzy. Something about his manner reminded her of the moment she had told him Anotsu Kagehisa might ask for her hand. “He’ll unmask his true intentions in good time... when you have yielded all your will to him and can no longer resist.”

The keen edge of conviction in O-Hama’s words took a twist in Rin’s vitals and nearly found a target, like a suddenly reversed weapon-stroke. For an instant an obscure and tarnished mirror materialized before her. Not just crazy imaginings, somehow, nor a courtesan’s artifice — O-Hama called up a lurking menace she seemed to recognize even under cover of darkness.

Could someone determined to see only the worst in Manji actually believe her own slanders? She must be talking about something else entirely... maybe her master’s jealousy? Rin huffed; there wasn’t any comparison! “Oh, be quiet! How would you know a single thing about — ”

“How? Remember, girl — I’ve shared a pillow with your esteemed guardian!” Pain jabbed the middle of Rin’s breast; she put her hand to it just as she had to her real wound. “In the heat of lust, a man enters another’s body only to lay himself open at his core. Have you seen that, who claim to know his motives so perfectly?”

She might have seen more than O-Hama realized, but she couldn’t answer that. Rin’s gaze shuttled from O-Hama to Manji. He might not even have heard; his eye had closed again and he held his hand cupped over his lower belly.

“Little virgin! Though he took me with such vehemence, you realize I was only your proxy. If he had not chosen to turn his desires on another — if he had ravished your innocence as he burned to do, you would have broken under his force like a sapling.” O-Hama narrowed her eyes at Rin as if gauging her snapping point. “To unleash himself too soon would have lost him all... but he’s never intended to let you escape.”

Rin wanted to protest, to say that Manji had always been as gentle as he could manage, never urged her too far nor frightened her, but that was a lie. He’d given her fair warning...

“Man, she sure... took that crack about her daddy... bad.” Manji sounded hoarse and weak. “Guess I oughta start raggin’ on her big brother... just to hear how loud she screeches...”

“Insolence! You never could have defeated my father and brother together without the help of your evil arts. Deny it if you can, killer of a hundred. What human warrior could have slain so many alone?”

“Y’know, I could take that as a compliment.” Manji pointed at his ruined right eye. “No help, bitch. Does that look like it healed up any?”

“Then you’ve paid your familiars in your own flesh and blood. They must have swarmed in hordes to aid your escape... and to feed on the gory scraps!”

Rin clapped a hand to her mouth. Foxes sniffing the remains under that tree, inhuman eyes casting back the lantern’s light. Only superstition, she chided herself — nothing but a lucky guess...

“You dropped the goddamn knife right in front of me! If anybody helped me get out of those ropes, bitch, it was you.” Manji grunted and bent double again. “Now shut up the shit and fight...” He took an abrupt step backwards; his right leg buckled and then gave way. He slumped down on one knee, holding his side.

“Manji-san! What’s wrong?”

He jerked his chin at her without straightening his neck. “The hell with me — pay attention!” Rin turned to spy O-Hama approaching, sword ready. She had caught her breath and looked fresher now; still, she halted and stood off when Rin raised her own blade.

“Stop it! Stop trying to... whatever it is you think you’re doing!”

“Wouldn’t you like to know the answer, girl? How this man broke such well-tied knots?”

“He did it in some perfectly normal way and you’re going to try to make it sound like witchcraft! That’s totally pathetic!”

O-Hama threw back her head and laughed. “Then why has he still not told you?”

“Fine, YOU tell me! Just start with how you cut out his tongue... you bitch!”

“Rin — don’t let her — ”

“Yes! I cut out his tongue and covered myself with his filth! I wept for my own defilement, as I wept for taking his disgusting member into my body. He wasn’t the first to stain me with foul seed...” Her lips curled back as she looked at Manji.

“Is... that why you were crying?” Rin made a skeptical face, and O-Hama gave her a glare. Couldn’t she admit that she’d ever had the smallest doubt in her own righteousness? Rin wondered if this was what Manji had meant when he said the duel wouldn’t end well. “I don’t believe that. You knew you shouldn’t have done that to a samurai, or anybody, and you were just plain horrified. I saw you!”

“No!” O-Hama put up a hand to shield herself, as if she felt again the spray of Manji’s blood in her face. “I’d never shrink from my justified revenge — ”‘

Rin took a deep breath. “Wouldn’t it be better... just to admit you were wrong?” O-Hama stared at her, and Rin gestured at O-Hama’s bloody sleeve. “I — look, I’d accept an apology to end this!”

Manji raised his head; she couldn’t quite make out his reaction through his mask of pain. O-Hama looked flabbergasted. “An... apology? Why do you imagine...?”

“You wouldn’t accept Manji’s apology for killing your father — I remember that. But then you said you could have forgiven him... when you thought he had died to save a w-woman.” O-Hama lowered her brows. Rin gulped and flushed; O-Hama had also backhandedly praised Manji’s suicidal solution for his hopeless love, as she construed it. Judging by his contorted crouch, her bodyguard might be only half listening, but after the barbs he kept aiming at his own emotions, Rin didn’t dare bring out that particular target in front of him. How could she put this?

“Hama-san, when you said that, you seemed to me like... like you might be a reasonable person. You’d gone through some of the same awful things that I did, worse in some ways, and you could still credit your enemy’s humanity and show him some mercy. I... I almost admired you right then.” Perhaps it was O-Hama’s turn to feel a twist in her vitals; she flinched and her features worked. “I don’t know what happened to that girl I thought I saw. Once you proved Manji couldn’t die, it was like something else took you over...”

Ryonosuke sat up. “My sweet lady — accept her offer, please. I’ll add my apologies to yours... I’ll knock my forehead!” O-Hama was silent.

“Listen to him, huh?” Rin held out a hand. “Look, I know how that might happen — finally confront the person you blame for everything and then find out that he’s not at all what you believed? You must have felt so — ”

“You?” O-Hama let go her brittle courtesan’s titter. “You know how I felt, to address my household’s destroyer?”

“Okay. Maybe not exactly.” Rin briefly squeezed her eyes shut. “But when I met the man who ordered my parents destroyed, and I had to talk to him instead of kill him, I realized it couldn’t be that simple. I couldn’t pretend that I’d never learned anything and then still try to go ahead with my revenge exactly the way I’d dreamed it for years. I’m not going to claim that I know just what I should do now, but I do know that I can’t throw away a human life only so I can keep lying to myself. Including MY life!”

Manji’s expression sharpened; his pain seemed to be fading again.

“He... he would never allow it.” O-Hama’s eyes darted from side to side. “No matter the obstacles, he would insist that the quest continue to the death...”

“He? You mean your father?” O-Hama made no answer. “But, see — if you’re dead, there’s nothing more you can do for your family. Choosing death means you can never find another way to repair your honor...”

“Death is honor’s bedfellow.” O-Hama’s jaw set. She raised her eyes to meet Rin’s. “I will never forget that, girl, though you obviously have.”

Continued in next post...