Chương 21: Book 1: Chapter 8 - Foundations [Part 1]

"The Way is in training." - Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, Shimon Ayanokouji woke beneath his own roof. The thought came to him before his eyes opened, warm and comforting for perhaps half a second. Then he remembered that the roof had belonged to a dead man. The realization, however, did not stop the young man from opening his eyes. Reality, however, could only be delayed and resisted temporarily.

Morning light seeped through the paper screens, and the room smelled of tatami, old timber, and cold wooden ashes. The house was quiet. Not silent, for houses were never silent once one listened carefully enough. Timber settled, a bird scratched somewhere beneath the eaves, and from the courtyard came the soft scrape of a broom. Beyond that, muted by walls and distance, the castle town had begun to wake. Still, the room felt empty in a way his apartment never had. There was no refrigerator humming.

There was no router or a myriad of other devices blinking in the dark, no distant elevator shuddering inside the building. And, no Mochi pushing open the door to his bedroom with an insistent determination. There were only the swords beside his futon and the dark upper corner of the room. Shimon stared at it, drinking in his current state and reality. He had slept badly again.

Worse than at the inn, perhaps, because this time there had been no Tarō on the opposite side of the room and no public corridor beyond the door. The house had offered privacy, and that quiet privacy had simply given his fear greater space to roam in the halls of his mind. At some point in the middle of the night, he had awakened with the absolute certainty that something was watching him from the corner above the storage alcove. Thankfully, he had not seen a face, nor had he seen some great eye.

There had only been a deeper patch of darkness where the ceiling beams met, darker than the room should have allowed. When Shimon looked directly at it, it became wood and shadow. When he looked away, he felt attention settle over him like dust. The chip, his erstwhile companion, had scanned his sensory data and found nothing. Of course, it had found nothing. Shimon sat up, rubbed his face, and allowed himself a long yawn.

He owned a house now, though instead of taking the usual route of applying to a bank for a loan, he had apparently chosen the more difficult path of killing demons. There was probably a metaphor buried somewhere in that, but this early in the morning, he could not quite get hold of it. It was his house, according to Lord Satomi's men, or at least his for as long as his usefulness and obedience continued to exceed the cost of maintaining him.

There had been no deed, no mortgage, no keys handed over by a smiling agent. A clerk had read out an assignment, two servants had bowed, and the dead owner's remaining possessions had been removed from the storeroom. The place was larger than his rented Tokyo apartment. That felt unfair. It had three principal rooms, a narrow kitchen building joined by a covered passage, a small courtyard, a shed, and a rear garden. There was also a privy.

Several minutes later, the former ronin rediscovered the privy and regarded its wooden opening with profound personal resentment. It consisted of a raised platform, a rectangular hole, a bucket of ash, and a rather offensive odor. There was—of course— no heated seat, no bidet, and certainly no automatic deodorizer. It was a toilet stripped of every comfort modern civilization had devised.

"This is barbarism," Shimon whispered to himself, but the privy being a privy did not care. He completed the necessary process with as much dignity as could be preserved. Afterward, he washed at a basin in the rear passage, using water left in a covered jar. He scrubbed his hands, splashed his face, and cleaned his teeth with some sort of salt and the end of a small, softened twig the servants had left for him. It sufficed, but that did not make him like the entire process.

His reflection waited in the polished bronze mirror beside the basin. The surface distorted him slightly, softening one side of his face and stretching the other. His hair had grown untidy. His eyes looked bruised from lack of sleep. He wore a plain underrobe belonging to a different time and had a paper charm tied within it to discourage monsters from noticing him. I am a samurai, Shimon thought. He still found it ridiculous. In his mind, a samurai should have looked severe, disciplined, and certain.

Shimon looked like a student who had spent three nights preparing for the wrong examination. The newly minted samurai touched the edge of the mirror and found that he very much wanted to go home. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. The thought was not a new one. But here, in a house supposedly given to him, homesickness arrived with a different cruelty. It had rooms waiting for habits he did not possess. A place for armor. A place for swords and weaponry.

A kitchen. A sleeping room. A shelf where someone had once kept household records. An empty hook near the entrance where the former owner's rain cloak might have hung. This place, this house, expected a life to be built inside and around it. Shimon thought of his trusty spear and where it rested, then cast that sword aside. He very much wanted his old life back. He begged and pleaded for the System, or whatever it was, to give him a quest to find a way home.

To give him a clue to let him walk that path, but fate and this world were not so forthcoming and generous. No quest appeared. The System remained blank.

"Of course," he hissed.

"Life could never be that easy." His stomach growled. Homesickness, terror, and acid resentment all lost some of their dignity when placed beside hunger. Shimon dressed more properly, tying the unfamiliar layers with the help of borrowed memories. He looked at his swords, and he hesitated before putting them through his belt. Inside his own house? He scanned through his memories. Tarō had worn his, and Nagai had worn his indoors, too.

Letting the chip sift through the data, he could only conclude that everyone wore swords everywhere until specifically ordered not to, because this was a society that revolved around violence, or the threat of violence, wrapped up around the guise of honor. So, Shimon put them on. The kitchen lay beyond the narrow covered passage. He found Tarō there, already eating. The older Kume brother sat before a low table with a bowl in one hand and chopsticks in the other.

He had recovered enough from his injuries that the bruising on his face had faded from purple to yellow, though one side remained swollen. His hair was tied back badly. His robe hung half-open at the chest. He looked up when Shimon entered, then gestured with his chopsticks toward the empty place opposite.

"Sit," he offered. Shimon sat and shrugged.

"Welcome to my house," he sighed. Tarō grunted and returned immediately to eating, and the sound was quite impressive. Rice vanished, and soup was drawn into his mouth with long, audible breaths. Pickled radish cracked between his teeth. Shimon had heard quieter industrial machinery. A woman entered from the kitchen yard carrying a tray.

She was perhaps thirty, with a pleasant oval face, dark hair tied beneath a cloth, and the healthy strength of someone who spent much of her life carrying water, wood, food, and the burdens of men. Her robe was clean but plainly patched at one elbow. She had bright eyes and a mouth that looked used to smiling. The woman knelt and placed breakfast before him.

"Good morning, Ayanokouji-sama." Shimon had not yet adjusted to being addressed with honor in his own kitchen.

"Good morning," he replied curtly. The woman looked pleased that he had answered correctly.

"I am Kiyo. My husband and I kept the house for Yamashita-sama before he went to battle. Nagai-sama ordered that we remain and serve the new master." Shimon looked past her through the open rear doors. A grizzled man in a faded robe was sweeping the courtyard with the stooped aggression of someone personally offended by leaves. He had a broad, badly healed nose and a grey-streaked beard. A stack of cut firewood waited near him. Kiyo followed Shimon's gaze.

"That is Genbei." The man looked up as if he had heard his name despite the distance. He gave Shimon a brief bow, then returned to his work.

"He does not speak much," Kiyo commented.

"Wise man," Tarō said around a mouthful of rice. Kiyo smiled without looking at him.

"He used to speak more before marriage." Tarō made a choking sound that might have been laughter. Shimon picked up the lacquer bowl. The breakfast was similar to the inn's meal: rice, miso soup, pickles, greens, and a small piece of dried fish. The bowls were less elegant than those at the ryokan but still beautifully made. Kiyo remained nearby, preparing tea and watching them with the frank curiosity of a servant who had already heard every rumor in town.

"Is the house suitable?" she asked.

"It has walls," the young man replied dismissively, a little sharper than he had intended. She blinked, so Shimon tried again.

"It is more than suitable." Kiyo seemed to decide that the first answer had been humor.

"The rear wall needs plaster before the rains. Genbei says the shed roof will last another year if the gods are kind and three months if they are not."

"Three months, then," Tarō said. Genbei shouted something indistinct from the yard. Kiyo raised her voice.

"I told them the roof leaks!" Another indistinct reply.

"He says it only leaks when it rains," Kiyo translated as she poured tea.

"You are both unfamiliar with this part of town?"

"Very," Shimon said. Tarō shrugged.

"I passed through once. Years ago."

"If Ayanokouji-sama wishes to see the town, the market lies west. The bathhouses are near the lower bridge. There is a good seller of sandals near the shrine, but do not let him tell you the blue cord costs more. It fades."

"Useful," Shimon said sincerely. Kiyo nodded, warming to the subject.

"And the women's houses are below the eastern embankment." Shimon paused with the soup bowl halfway to his mouth.

"The what?"

"The pleasure houses," she clarified.

"For your needs."

"I do not have any of those needs," he coughed. Kiyo's eyebrows rose.

"That sounded wrong," Shimon admitted.

"It sounded unhealthy," Tarō added. Kiyo laughed.

"There is no shame. Men are men. The houses nearest the gate are expensive. Farther down, near the dyers, they are cheaper, though some of those women are less than honest." The young man looked as troubled as he was puzzled.

"That is very specific advice."

"My husband used to go there whenever he had money." She pointed through the open doors. Genbei was now splitting firewood. At the exact moment Kiyo pointed, the grizzled man struck the block hard enough to bury the axe head. Kiyo smiled sweetly.

"He does not go now." Tarō laughed into his soup.