Abstinence Education

This is a new take on the opening of Abstinence Education, which I originally dashed off more than three years ago as a thought experiment rather than the start of a serial fic. I've said before that I hadn't intended to set out on any more long fanfic projects, but obviously I was deluding myself, and I've never been very happy with that offhand beginning. Several months ago I started working on a major revision of the first two chapters, which do sit better with me now. In honor of its third anniversary (September 2005), I give you the beginning of Abstinence Education, all over again. :D

All comments and crits are welcome and encouraged! Email me (mmemanga@aol.com) or comment on the post. In a little while, I'm going to incorporate these two revised chapters into the PDF version of the story, so there will be a new edition of its first volume, which I'll announce when it's uploaded.


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. Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic, though at the immediate moment we're just going to have fun with the sex part.


Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga

Part One




"Gosh," said Rin. "I'm just so happy to be home." On a joyful impulse she laughed out loud, her braids swinging across her shoulders as she threw her arms wide. "Back home... with you!"

The man who slouched next to her scraped the last few morsels of grilled fish from the charred stick between his teeth. "How do ya figure?"

"Well, here. You know." Rin gave herself a quick squeeze around the upper arms and subsided. She delicately dabbed her lips with her fingers and then with the corner of her long sleeve to remove any trace of her supper. "I guess I actually haven't lived here very much with all the traveling that we've done. But it's your place, Manji-san, and you're my bodyguard, so that makes it..."

"It ain't actually mine, if you get down to it." Manji shied the stick towards the pond; it didn't make it all the way down the bank. With a brief survey he seemed to dismiss the whole place: pond, hill, sunset, the rough board porch where they sat, and the bare dirt patches and irregular paths their feet scuffed deeper into the ground with every passing day. "It's just a shack, anyhow." His one-eyed glance passed over all and finally came to rest on Rin as she poked apart the cooking fire with a long split of kindling.

"Oh, Manji-san, honestly..." Rin shook her head at her companion with affectionate indulgence. She dragged the unburned pieces of firewood from the hibachi to save the fuel and scraped ashes over the coals to bank them until morning. "I found you here, you stay here when you're not doing anything else. What would you call it but home?"

"Whatever, girl." Manji grunted and leaned back against the wall, hands behind his head. The breeze still blew hot, since the sun hadn't yet declined below the treetops. He turned for a moment and squinted out towards the road and rice paddies; the sunset light moved across his face. No one there: neither workers in the fields nor evening travelers taking the narrow byway between rural villages. The shogun's great castle city of Edo lay only half a morning's walk to the east, crowded with more than a million people, but Rin couldn't remember the last time she'd seen anyone on this track other than locals. Those peasants generally gave the two of them a wide berth, probably preferring not to encounter a two-sworded outlaw. Rin didn't think there could be much to worry about here, but Manji seemed more than usually watchful since they'd returned from Kaga and taken up residence again.

Back under the overhang of the porch as he settled into a comfortable slouch again. Rin couldn't decide if the warm cast of the sky softened the aspect of Manji's hard, scarred features or just made him look overheated. Right now he wore his usual lazy air of half-amusement or boredom, scratching the back of his head around the tie of his spiky topknot and resting one leg over the other.

"Aren't you glad to be here?"

Another grunt was all she received for answer. He was in after-dinner relaxation mode; with the weather this warm he might well take a nap if she left him alone. Or even if she didn't. Rin rolled her eyes with a smile, tied back her sleeves and her dangling braids and busied herself with cleaning up.

She didn't have very much to do, since this wasn't exactly a tidy kitchen or a mat-floored room for fine dining. Only a flimsy roofed porch attached to the back of a one-room hut, a little hibachi grill and a stack of firewood. When he cleaned the fish he caught from the pond Manji usually left the piles of innards for the crows, and tonight was no exception; the mess had already begun to smell. Rin wrinkled her nose, plucked a few of the turning leaves from the big maple to the north side of the hut and scraped the ground clean.

Crouching on her wooden geta, she collected gnawed fish skeletons, a few other small bits of trash and debris and heaped them on the leaves in preparation to take them behind the bushes. Over the last week they had accumulated a good pile of floor sweepings, corn cobs and the mortal remains of fish and frogs; that might start attracting more than crows. She'd have to ask Manji to dig a pit for the garbage if they meant to stay here long. Rin shuffled a little way further from the porch without standing up and leaned over to sweep up everything within reach.

Behind her, Manji let out a muffled sigh: a somewhat unaccustomed note. Tired? He hadn't given Rin much sword training today. Even under the shade of the forest, after mid-morning the air had grown too sultry for exertion. Though Manji had fished down by the pond in a half-doze for most of the afternoon and made a fair catch for dinner, they hadn't stirred to cook anything until less than an hour ago.

Rin sat back to watch the sun fade into the forest beyond the ripening rice paddies. There weren't any clouds abroad to make the sunset particularly pretty, so after a minute she returned to her work while she still had the light. When she had collected everything she could and the area looked tidy, Rin bundled her pickings, brushed her damp, trailing bangs from her face and turned around.

Manji was watching her.

Not lazily, as if she were the only moving object in sight and he might as well have let his gaze follow a random bird or squirrel that crossed his field of view. Nothing like that. He held his head on one side; he frowned slightly and his heavy brows had a speculative tilt.

"Manji-san?"

"Hnn?" He blinked and straightened up as if she had caught him by surprise.

"Um... " Rin peered at Manji; he looked flushed again, particularly across the cheekbones. "Something?"

He yawned and stretched instead of replying: a slow upward arch of his spine while he raised his arms and pulled his elbows back. Through the gaping overlap of his black and white kosode, the long scars that crossed his chest displayed their full spread from collarbone to nipples, and his ribs and lean midsection were exposed to the waist. Rin wondered why he didn't just pull down his sleeves and bare his torso to cool off. Unless he'd been wounded, she hardly ever saw him strip that far.

Still, Rin thought Manji looked much more comfortable than she felt right now. Her housekeeping tasks had provoked enough perspiration to dampen her throat and upper lip as well as her covered parts; she wished she could loosen her clothes for ventilation like a man. Not as wide open as his, of course, but would Manji remark it if she lowered her collar just a bit?

Rin put a couple of fingers in the firmly wrapped overlap of her inner robe and furisode and gently tugged them away from her body. A breath of warm air entered.

She glanced up at Manji at the same time his eye fell on her. Only a brief jolt of contact; he looked down after a moment and reached for his tobacco pouch.

Her stomach pulled in as if she hadn't eaten for days. Why did he look at her that way? He hadn't changed at all during their separation — Manji never changed — but this wasn't the first time she'd caught him with a wary, unsettled quality in his eye, almost mistrustful. As if she were no longer the same girl who had left him behind weeks before. To follow her enemy alone, to find him even if the quest killed her. It didn't matter how subtle the changes or whether she knew them herself; even after ten days' reunion, Manji didn't quite recognize her.

That could only be her fault, not his. Manji packed his pipe and lit it with a coal, ignoring her. Rin re-adjusted her collar, got up and went to dump the trash.

When she came back, Manji was lying flat on the porch with his head pillowed on his forearms, eye closed and knees bent upwards. She picked up the old bamboo-leaf fan they used for fire-starting and sat near her bodyguard's feet. No point in going indoors yet; it would be just as warm in there, if not warmer from the sun beating on the thin shingles all day. The mosquitoes would chase her under shelter soon enough, though right now the smoke from the grilling fire lingered to keep them at bay.

Rin briskly fanned herself from various angles until she felt a little cooler. A quiet life at the moment, which suited her very well. She'd walked too many ri and seen far too much in the last month... it was time to rest and recover.

Though Manji didn't let her rest much unless the weather forced him. He insisted on training with practice swords every day, pushing her as hard as he could in every element of her barely-tried fighting technique. Her uneven progress frustrated her; her sensei demanded that she run over her kata again and again under his unforgiving eye and face up to him in mock bouts that he made harsher and trickier every time, and every day he had some new criticism to throw at her along with her bruises. Too slow, too hasty, too sloppy, too formal. Just plain bad — Anotsu Kagehisa's greenest Itto-ryu recruit would take her apart without even breaking stride, he'd seen better form watching an old woman beat laundry on a board. He was never satisfied.

Manji muttered something and turned over in his sleep. He pushed his nose into his bent arm and settled down again. Rin kept slowly fanning under her chin and watched the last light of the sky shimmer across the darkening pond. The swollen moon slowly ascended in the east. Much prettier than the nondescript sunset: the full moon would shine with glittering radiance on this warm autumn night, without even a haze in the sky.

A fish jumped far out in the middle of the pond with a soft splash and plop; the bugs must be stirring from their own midday naps. At least some creatures didn't mind clouds of mosquitoes singing for dinner over their heads. She watched one insect land on her thigh and hunt for a spot to bite through her clothing. Stealthily Rin raised her hand. Tiny blood-thief... under sentence of death.

Manji murmured again and she stayed the impending execution, not wanting to disturb him with a loud smack. He stirred and shifted; Rin flicked the mosquito away and turned to look at him in case he was waking.

His stomach muscles tightened and relaxed a few times, unconcealed by his open clothing. Then Manji arched his back slightly, his hips tilting and then rising. Rin watched, oddly mesmerized. A slow, repeated wave rolled through his body: back, down and arcing up again, while he made a soft gravelly sound in the back of his throat. In time with his movements, he smiled and grimaced alternately, his face only half revealed by the crook of his arm. What could he be dreaming about? Not the sword-strokes of a duel?

Peering more closely at Manji's expression, Rin put a hand to her mouth. Not a duel, exactly...

He let out a harder pant and jolted. Rin jumped, but Manji didn't wake up. Instead he relaxed and let his hand fall to his thigh, just at its junction with his hip. For a moment his clothing pulled taut across his lower body.

Rin drew in a sharp little breath of her own when she glimpsed an outcropping at the base of Manji's belly; almost immediately she looked away. Her face felt hot.

A moment later she glanced back at him with shy hesitation. She was only checking once more to see if he were waking — it was pure chance that her gaze touched first below Manji's belt rather than on his face. He'd slightly shifted his hand and the folds of his clothing now fell loose; she couldn't detect any sign of that mysterious protrusion, though she examined him carefully in the dimming light just to make sure. Rin fanned herself again and tried to take interest in the ascending moon.

She'd noticed that part stirring before, once in a while; not that she had ever seen her yojimbo naked, nor indeed any man. Though she had a vague idea what went on under his concealing clothing, Rin didn't quite understand why that object would assert itself and then retreat, apparently at random. Didn't Manji have control over his body? She'd heard proverbs which implied that a man's desire often triumphed over his reason, but of course those didn't apply to someone like Manji... at least when he was awake.

After all, he had managed for months to live and travel with a sixteen-year-old female entirely unrelated to him, sleep side by side with her in rented rooms and this small hut and still treat her almost as chastely as a sister — almost. Though he'd provoked Rin more than once with indecent jokes, Manji avoided outright offense to her modesty. He often turned his back or left the room before she even asked for privacy, and she'd never suspected him of peeking where he shouldn't. He was just as careful with his own state of dress; Rin had caught her bodyguard stripped to his fundoshi only a couple of times, and then he'd instantly put something on and yelled at her for creeping around as quietly as a mouse. Even when he needled her about sex, he laughed uproariously if she took his sly jibes at face value, and left her feeling oddly reassured rather than threatened.

Still, she reserved the right to clout him over the head every so often when he decided to act like an insufferable jerk. Not as if she could hurt her yojimbo in the least, no matter what weapons she chose or how hard she hit — all she could inflict were minor chastisements, and his healing abilities erased even mortal wounds in minutes. By now Rin took Manji's peculiar immortality almost for granted.

Manji made a sound and rolled over again; he seemed very restless even allowing for the heat. When he let out a low, warm groan and showed his teeth, Rin slowly scooted backwards along the porch, hoping to retreat without disturbing him. She wasn't spying on his private thoughts, of course, nor trying to learn anything she didn't need to know. But maybe she ought to give him some privacy for courtesy's sake. At least before he dove all the way into another dream like the last one...

Manji's eye opened. Unguarded with dissipating sleep, his expression was easy to read in the bright moonlight and last remnants of sunset. He still had the ghost of a lascivious smile. Then his lips opened at the sight of Rin and his cheek twitched. Nearly guilty, as if she had caught him out again. If she had screeched with indignation and thrown chunks of firewood at his head, he might have accepted his punishment as deserved.

Only for a dream? Rin looked at him with wide eyes.

Manji knuckled his eye and swung his legs off the porch. Without a word he rounded the corner of the hut and headed down the hill in the general direction of the latrine. He had an air of meaning not to return for a while; more than once this week he'd taken long walks after dusk, circumnavigating the pond and the forest's fringes as if beating the boundaries for intruders. He never wanted her to come with him.

Rin sat for a few moments with her hand over her mouth. She didn't want to think any more about the changes in the atmosphere since she'd returned; it seemed dangerous to recall too many details at once. Despite the sun's departure, she felt very sweaty again...

So while Manji was gone, maybe she ought to seize the opportunity for a private wash. Rin had sponged herself down earlier after they had knocked off training for the day, but that refreshment was long forgotten. She glanced in the direction of the pond and the cool moonlight on the still surface. She'd grab a pail of water, a basin and towel and a moment to get free of her confining clothing. Rin got up and peeked down the dusky hill; her yojimbo was nowhere in sight.

She hastened to fetch the pail and the towel, lugged the water up to the hut and squatted on the ground near the hibachi's fading smoke trail. Stripping only down to her waist, of course — she wouldn't take more than a few minutes at the task, especially because of the mosquitoes.

Rin emptied the pail into the basin, worked her sleeves off her shoulders and sighed with pleasure when the cool water touched her hot skin. Sluice her itchy arms, splash her nape — she wriggled when a trickle ran down her spine and into her lowered collar — and stroke her wet hands over her chest. Her breasts weren't very large and they stood away from her ribs, but between them and in the creases underneath, her skin felt positively sticky. Rin leaned over the wide basin and scooped up water in both palms to let it flow down her front. She closed her eyes.

Manji's hands... tracing the same soft curves. Just touching her, only a cool caress, gently cupped in his calloused palms. A liquid, swirling sensation spread from the core of her belly. Like the water that circulated in the basin, stirred into motion by her own hands.

Lost in a delicate trance of imagination, Rin kept her eyes closed so the feeling wouldn't escape too soon. She sighed again and kept rinsing away the sweat. No hurry, was there? She would have liked to stay here dabbling in the water until the stars came out. Only dreaming...

Behind her Manji's slow footfalls approached around the corner of the hut, as if her wandering thoughts had lured him from cover. Rin didn't screech or grab for her towel; she only paused with one hand in the water and the other laid over her breasts. For a moment her own breathing and the random songs of insects were all she could hear. Her bodyguard stood behind her, from his utter silence perhaps not breathing at all.

Then Manji retreated, though not in great haste, as if he took backwards steps instead of turning around. She heard him brush around the corner again, slump against the hut's end wall and then ease down to sit on the ground. "Sorry."

"Uh... that's OK." All that he could have seen in the warm moonlight was the white skin of her shoulders and nape, but a ripple of goosebumps ran up Rin's back like the stroke of a cool hand.

Manji sounded as much out of wind as if he'd run all the way up the hill. "Gotta... warn me, kid."

"I'm almost finished." She splashed her breasts once more and let the water drip back into the basin while she reached for the towel. "How would I warn you, anyway? Hang out a sign? Eh heh heh..."

Manji didn't reply; he remained so still that she couldn't help but imagine that he must be listening for something.

A last droplet collected on one crinkled nipple and plinked into the basin. Manji's back shifted against the boards of the hut, like a slight tensing of his shoulder muscles. In the shimmering silence she heard him swallow hard: a tight, liquid sound as if his throat had nearly closed. Rin patted her chest with the towel and pressed it to her skin to absorb the film of water.

A sandal scuffed the ground, and then the back of Manji's skull bumped the wall hard. Twice. Perhaps his legs urged him to rise, but his head refused to let them move.

"Is there something you... what is it, Manji-san?"

"Kuso." A short, explosive obscenity through his teeth. Not really meant for her.

By now Rin was trembling, but she tried to keep her tone casual. "Um... I was wondering..."

"Ahhn?" He might have had a hand over his mouth.

"You said today that a woman... had to use some different approaches in combat, since she's got to make up for lacking a man's strength. Speed and leverage... like Makie-san."

"Yeah."

"So she would be someone for me to try to emulate?" Rin shrugged her sleeves back on. "Maybe not her technique, but more like her attitude? Or..."

Manji chuckled, his voice easing slightly. "Well... that lady's got a gift."

"That's for sure. Gosh, even Anotsu was so impressed! He told me to watch her — not that I could avoid seeing it. She was like..."

Actually, while the matchless swordswoman Otonotachibana Makie slew eight armed men in Anotsu Kagehisa's defense, Rin had mostly watched the look on Anotsu's face while he watched Makie. She fiercely longed to put that same look on his face some day... just before she struck off his head.

"I didn't hang around for the show. Guess it was just as well."

"She really did almost kill you that other time, didn't she? When she pretended to be a streetwalker to get you alone? She's so graceful, but she's deadly too. I wish I..."

"Fine, you work on that." He sounded a little too sarcastic. "Got your duds on yet?"

"Uh-huh, I'm all dressed." Rin hastily tucked together the overlaps of her clothing. "You can sit back here now... um." She swallowed hard. "Manji-san, if you felt like — if you wanted to... er, to talk to me — ?"

"I'm turnin' in." He rose and went around to the hut's door without returning to the porch. Rin sat outside until the smoke thinned to nothing and the mosquitoes began to sing in her ears. Still a faint glow in the west, and the moon drowned out the rest of the stars.

Indoors it was nearly black, the blanket that hung over the door blocking the moonlight along with the bugs and the breeze. She couldn't see at first except for vague shapes, but she knew the hut's interior well. There wasn't much furniture to trip her up in any case. Just two heaps of straw at opposite ends, a couple of old reed mats and a number of battered wooden boxes filled with assorted junk and pushed against the walls. Rin navigated around the unlit lantern, turned left and felt with her toes for her straw pile.

Manji snored on his own pile; she smelled sake. He must have kept back some of that jug he'd bought a few days ago. It seemed like he had been drinking a great deal lately, especially considering how little cash they had. She'd assumed it was because of the weather, or simply boredom.

Rin untied her obi and folded her furisode as neatly as she could in the darkness. Wearing her thin inner robe, she lay down on the straw, trying not to let her rude mattress crackle too loudly, and settled herself for sleep. Manji growled and turned over with a prolonged series of rustling noises, then kicked his legs a couple of times.

"Manji?" she whispered, not sure if he were entirely awake or not.

"Hanh?"

Rin flinched at his harsh grunt, but it shattered the quiet and emboldened her a little. "Uh... would you be angry if I asked you a question about something, sensei? I'm sorry... it's sort of, um, personal, and I don't want to sound as if I — "

"Just ask it, wouldya? It's quicker."

Rin paused and swallowed hard. "What's the last time you... well, pillowed with a woman?" The straw crackled violently. "Was it... Makie?"

"...No."

"But, then... " She blinked. "Don't you ever... think about it?"

"NO."

"But I thought...err, I heard that a man gets unhealthy if he doesn't... you know."

"I ain't dead yet." He sounded as if he were in pain. "You don't like me buying whores anyhow, so what's the goddamn point of thinking about it?"

"I said it was okay if you did. I just didn't want to know — "

"Then I won't tell you." Manji rolled over again and swept a hand beside his bed. A few scant drops rattled when he shook the sake jug; Manji tossed it against the wall. "Aw, fuck it..."

Rin sat upright and felt for her quilt. Despite the night's warmth, she pulled it over her lap. Manji heaved to his feet and took a couple of steps in her direction. Paused.

She waited, heart thumping, but he did nothing more than look at her in the darkness. A faint hint of moonlight intruded through the cracks in the walls, so that her increasing vision gradually gave his dim outline some form. Hands at his sides, curled in fists, head lowered halfway below the tight line of his shoulders. She heard his breathing, both sharp and shaky. How stupid of a tender girl to ask a grown man such a question, especially when despite her ignorance she had already learned the answer.

"M-Manji — "

"Woman — don't you ever quit asking?"

He stalked to the door, swept the blanket aside and went out. Rin huddled under the stifling quilt. Behind the hut the grill rattled; he was fanning up the coals. In a while she smelled tobacco.

Manji still hadn't come back into the hut by the time Rin finally fell asleep. She was glad of that, since she wasn't sure she would have been able to hide her sobs. All her fault, all her heedless, stupid, yearning dreams. She didn't want to cause her beloved Manji-san any more torment than she already had, especially on the last night she would ever spend in this place, or sleep by his side.

Continued...