Bit-by-bit, my stamina returned, while we made our way out of the city, across the landscape of red fields and through a multi-coloured forest just like the one I’d encountered immediately after arriving in this World. We didn’t take a single break on the way to our destination, as though Death itself was on our trail.
As we made our way through the forest, I could’ve sworn the colours were shifting and melting before my eyes, though it might’ve been a side-effect of the exhaustion. Regardless, I quickly became extremely dizzy and nauseous.
Maybe two-or-three hours later, when the sun was lost from the sky and reddish-orange light painted the clouds, we reached the edge of the forest and the beginning of crimson rice fields. The fields were submerged in blood-red water and tended to by farmers wearing conical rice-straw hats, and all had the same dark spots around their eyes. Past the red fields were the outskirts of a small town or village, but clearly not inhabited by just farmers, as I could spot, even from this distance, several houses of decadent design and elaborate build, not too dissimilar from those of the Noble District in the city.
“Is this the place?”
“Yes,” Hanada replied. His voice sounded worried. “I do not know how they will react when we return without Mori-sama by our side.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be fine!” I lied.
“I hope you are right. Besides, a warrior of your mettle would surely be a boon to our clan. I hope they will acknowledge this truth like I have.”
We followed a raised dirt path between two red fields and continued towards the settlement. As soon as we came ten metres within the nearest house, five men sprang out from the fields on either side of us, clad in camouflaged suits built from crimson reeds and straws, which allowed them to completely blend into the rice stalks. Each of them wielded the same straight shortswords I’d seen in the hands of the suspicious ‘civilians’ earlier, once more confirming my theory that they were Shinobi[1].
“Halt!” ordered an archer, who suddenly emerged onto a nearby rooftop.[2]
“It’s me, Hanada!” I noticed Hanada’s speech changing from the humble expressions and words he used when speaking to me or his late leader into a more casual tone. No doubt he was the superior between the two of them.
“Hanada-san?” the other archer half-yelled, surprised. “We had heard everyone in the city died. How did you manage to escape the Wolves?”
“With her help,” he said, gesturing towards me.
The man on the rooftop looked at me for a moment, sizing me up, then continued with the interrogation of my guide, “And Mori-sama?”
“The Reds got to him.”
A brief expression of grief flashed across the archer’s face, but he quickly composed himself and said, “You should go see our Lady, she will want to hear your report.”
“On our way,” Hanada replied. The five Shinobi surrounding us backed down and away into the rice fields again, and, even though I kept my eyes fixed on one of them, he soon vanished among reeds.
“Follow me,” Hanada said. Clearly, I’d been staring a bit too long at the stalks waving back and forth, and he was losing his patience.
“Lead the way.”
We proceeded past the nearby house, from which the archer still watched us, and came out onto a wide dirt road that spanned across the village, passing the many different houses and shops. Everyone we passed stared at us[3] as we walked towards the big mansion at the end of the road.
The houses here were extremely varied in size and make, with the more elaborate and expensive ones closer to the large mansion. It seemed that this village housed everyone in the service to the Azure Dragon’s leader, all the way from the lowly merchants and up to the proud Samurai.
When we reached the end of the road, two imposing Samurai in attire similar to what Mori had worn, though with the addition of frowning full-face masks and throat guards, stood before the large wooden gate to the expansive mansion behind them.
“Halt,” one of them demanded.
“I would like to be granted an audience with the Lady.” Hanada’s tone and words changed again and though it should be normal to me, I couldn’t help but pick up on it for some reason.
“She is with her council at the moment, you’ll have to wait,” the other Samurai replied in a monotone voice.
“It is urgent, I have just returned from Kakon-shi.”
The two guards looked at each other. “Very well,” the first one said, “but don’t interrupt Her meeting unless She addresses you.”
“Understood,” Hanada replied.
We made to enter through the gate, but one of the Samurai put his hand on my chest, stopping me. “Not you,” he stated.
“Get your filthy hand off me,” I replied and slapped his hand away.[4]
Instantly, the two Samurai had pulled their blades, a Tachi and an Uchigatana,[5] but Hanada quickly got between us. “Stop!” he urged. “It is important that she sees the Lady too, after all, she is the reason I am even standing here now!”
The guards didn’t budge.
“Listen!” Hanada said, his conciliatory tone gone. “If you want to fight it out with her you can do so afterwards, but right now we need to speak to the Lady. For all I know, the Wolves might be here at any moment!”
The mention of the White Tiger clan’s kill squad caught their attention and suddenly they didn’t seem too sure about what to do.
A small door set into the frame of the large gate suddenly opened, and an old, wrinkled, congenial face with ruffled hair poked out.
“What’s the ruckus for?”
“Mitsui-sama!” one of the guards observed, bowing his head deeply in respect, although I suspected it was also to hide the embarrassment on his face.
“Hanada is trying to—” the other guard started.
“Oh, Hanada, you’re back. Come on, get in here.”
Hanada didn’t waste a moment and slipped past the guards and through the tiny door. When I didn’t immediately follow, Mitsui poked his head back into view and gestured at me with a hand.
“Come on, you too.”
I walked past the two guards as nonchalantly as I could, and as I ducked down and went through the tiny doorway, I turned around and pointed my tongue at the guy who’d lain his hand on me. I couldn’t tell what he whispered under his mask, but I was sure it was something like, “Just you wait…” followed by an obscene amount of degrading insults. After I killed the Azure leader, he would be first.
The old man wore a modest yukata and wooden clogs that produced clack after clack as he walked up the stone path leading to the front of the mansion, from inside which a heated discussion could be heard, though the words were muffled through the paper-and-wood walls.
The mansion compound itself was comprised of a large main building, surrounded by roofed wooden walkways that led to various other smaller buildings. The stone path we were following split into three, with the paths going left and right leading around the building and under the raised walkways. Shoulder-height-tall stone lanterns were planted along the paths, and light from the candles within cast soft shadows around the compound. Surrounding the stone path and spread out across the unused open space was white gravel, which had been skilfully raked to resemble waves. A few decently-sized rocks were placed at random intervals throughout the pebble waves, and though I was sure that they had some higher significance to a trained eye, their meaning was lost on me, but the whole of the stone garden did look nice, which I guessed was the main reason behind it.
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“Our Lady is in session with her retainers. As you can tell, things aren’t exactly amiable. Do hurry and present yourselves before her, she could use the distraction right now I believe.”
We walked up the wooden steps to the main building and Mitsui slid open the door for us. Upon entering the mansion, he closed the sliding door behind us, seemingly content with staying outside.
Standing there in the entrance, I had a sudden, unexplainable urge to take off my boots. So, I did. As I walked barefoot across the wooden floor, clutching my blood-and-mud-stained boots tightly in an attempt to make as little noise as possible, Hanada looked at me with extreme confusion marked on his face. He’d kept his shoes on…
We walked towards the sound of the discussion coming from a room at the end of a long hall with closed-off rooms on either side. As we approached, I silently pulled up my inventory screen and stashed my boots, the objects vanishing from my grip without so much as a pop.
“They have dismissed all the servants. This must be serious,” Hanada whispered.
Suddenly a female voice cut through the air, “… it is our duty to the people!”
“There are far more urgent matters than some ‘cursed’ sword,” one man retorted condescendingly.
“If it falls into the hands of Suzaku[6], you cannot even fathom the consequences!” the woman urged. Her voice was serene to listen to, like that of a singer who never sung one note off-tune.
“Even if it that is true, we cannot simply pull our fighters away for this errand. We would be defenceless!” another man counselled wisely.
“And what about these rumours of betrayal?” a third interjected, trying to change the subject.
“I do not believe that our people would betray us.”
“How else would you explain today’s events!? Every last one of our hideouts have been burnt to the ground and not a single one of our spies escaped alive!”
“This is our cue, I believe,” I told Hanada. It took him a moment to react, likely dreading what would happen if he interrupted his superiors. Then he carefully slid open the door, revealing a large tatami-floored room with elaborate ink paintings on the walls and the scent of flowers, which wafted out the room through the newfound opening. An assembly of nine men wearing modest yukatas were seated on pillows in uncomfortable-looking Seiza[7], before a woman clad in an azure kimono decorated with patterns of flowers, who sat on a slightly raised podium, also in the seiza pose. The men all had similar hairstyles of comical-looking topknots folded flat along the length of the scalp, which no doubt was all the rage amongst the Aristocracy, though Mitsui didn’t wear his hair that way, which immediately made him ten times more likeable. The woman had a white-powdered face, lips painted to appear smaller than they were, and long free-flowing midnight hair. Her beauty was serene, but also dominating and demanding of attention. I also shouldn’t neglect to mention the long spear-like Naginata[8] that lay before her. I didn’t doubt for a second that she probably knew how to handle it well.
“Why jump to the immediate conclusion of—”
Suddenly all eyes were on us. Scowls occupied most of the faces, although the Lady seemed almost happy for the interruption.
“Hanada, you have returned alive. I am pleased.”
Hanada got on both his knees, averting his gaze to the floor. “Sincere apologies for the rude interruption, my Lady, but we come bearing grave news.”
“Are you the only survivor?” As she asked the question, I noticed that her teeth were painted black, but somehow the stark contrast with her white face only emphasised her beauty.
“I am. I would not have made it here alive, if this kind Rōnin had not come to my aid.”
I smirked at the Lady. I hadn’t followed the example of Hanada by getting on my knees, and currently I was trying to decide whether or not to carry through with my original plan.
“Tell me, what is your name,” the Lady asked.
“Aiko… Aomori Aiko,” I replied. For some reason I’d gone with my full name, and as the words left my lips, they sounded foreign and yet familiar.
“I may have use for someone like you.”
I was about to reply when a tremor came over my body and I had to grab my head and brace against the wall to keep myself from falling. Memories flushed through my mind, like a merciless river beating down on me.
A soft, familial voice called my name in the distance. “Aiko… Aiko…” I saw my mother running after me like in a game of tag and heard my own laughter in my ears. “I’m gonna get you…” the voice called, which only made me laugh more. Such a wonderful childish laughter, the kind that comes straight from the root of the belly.
I snapped back to the room and the people staring at me. Cold sweat ran down my neck and back, my hands were shaking, and I felt a tear tickle my skin as it rolled down my chin. Somehow I’d triggered the return of a memory without the Watcher ‘rewarding’ it to me.
“I may have use for someone like you,” the Lady said again. I wondered how many times she would repeat herself until I replied.
I wiped the tears from my face and sniffled pathetically. Then I cleared my throat and said, as confidently as I could manage, “What sort of use?”
“My advisors here tell me it is unwise to pull away what little troops we have available to deal with a growing threat to the east, but one such as you might enjoy the opportunity to exalt yourself to the world. After all, this is a time when warriors flourish at the expense of all others.” She didn’t sound pleased at all, which I thought was strange, considering that her clan was half the reason why the civil war had begun, at least according to Jirō and Genzō.
“What sort of threat are we talking about? I don’t have time for pointless missions.”
She laughed at my response. It wasn’t a laughter fit for a Lady of her stature, no, it had a kind of cruel tone to it, and, when I looked closer, I was sure that, despite the white powder, I could see a bit of darkness around her eyes, not to mention around the eyes of all who occupied the room.
“Such insolence, and yet, so endearing. The mission is one which might kill you, but if you accomplish it, I will reward you well enough that my dear vassals here will regret their own inaction. To the east lies a temple known as Namida-jinja[9], thusly named for the cursed sword it houses. A blade said to weep and curse all who touch it. The Vermilion Bird seeks this blade and its twisted power, but they cannot have it. Such power belongs to no one. You must travel to the temple and cleanse this cursed sword, and then bring me the inert remains as proof.”
“How will I cleanse it? I’m not an exorcist.”
“Worry not, I have hired a man who is confident he can accomplish this task, but he will need a guard to defend him against the White Tiger’s monks who guard the temple.”
“Monks? Really?”
“You may joke all you like, but these warrior monks are fierce. In the forty years since the temple was built to guard the sword, they have successfully repelled all who sought its twisted power, but the Vermilion Bird has grown strong enough to finally breach their walls. Thus, the time for action is now.”
“Alright, I’ll do it.” How I’d get inside the temple was something I apparently had figure out when I got there. I was still considering whether or not I should kill her, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get paid first, although, to be honest, I was kind of starting to like her, even though she also scared the shit out of me. Besides, how much did I truly owe Jirō, Genzō, and the White Tiger clan? They had abandoned me after all.
In response, the Lady smiled an unladylike smile, black teeth on full display. It was honestly quite terrifying to behold.
“You should leave at your earliest convenience tomorrow. You may reside in our spare chambers for the night.”
I nodded in response.
“Hanada,” she said, and the Archer arose, “show her to the guest chambers. Afterwards return to me and report.”
“As you wish,” Hanada obliged and escorted me out the room.
We crossed the main building and left through a door opposite the entrance, then walked along the raised wooden path outside, passing above a garden with many vibrant plants and trees, as well as a pond with Koi fish aggressively slamming into each other as though they’d gone mad.
As we neared my temporary lodgings, a banner appeared, stating, “Now entering Safe Zone ‘The Hidden Azure Village’.” I thought that calling the village ‘hidden’ was a bit of a misnomer, considering how the White Tiger already knew about it, but I supposed it was similar to the Forgotten Village, which was in fact not forgotten at all.
My room turned out to be a small, tatami-floored wooden building overlooking the garden, which, through a door in the backwall, had access to a hot spring exposed to the open air. It was sparsely furnished, and, aside from a low cupboard with a few cups and a vessel for tea, only had a pillow and blanket for sleeping.
Without a word the entire walk from the main building to the guestroom, Hanada simply left. I was honestly surprised that he hadn’t admonished my behaviour towards his Lady, but perhaps the fact that she had acknowledged me meant that he couldn’t speak out against me. I pushed the issue from my mind and decided to take a bath to clean my body. It was somewhat amusing that we’d been allowed to trudge through this fancy villa with our bodies covered in several layers of mud and blood, but I supposed that was a concession necessary for this fabricated World to avoid being overly tedious by requiring you to wash yourself after every battle, before being allowed to go anywhere.
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[1] 忍び in Japanese, owing to the verb “shinobu” meaning “to conceal/hide oneself”. A loose translation of the word would thus be: “someone who conceals themselves”.
[2] His command was a bit pointless to be honest, ‘cause we weren’t moving anywhere with five blades pointed at us.
[3] Correction: “… stared at me...”
[4] I consider this a fairly tempered response to someone groping me like that.
[5] Descendant of the Tachi sword and predecessor of the Katana. The Samurai wielding this particular sword also had a shorter version, forming a pair known as Daishō, “Big and Small”, comprised of a Daitō “Big sword” and a Shōtō “Small sword”.
[6] The Japanese word for the “Vermilion Bird”, though used here as if the name was attributed to a person.
[7] A formal way of sitting with your legs folded under you and your butt touching the heels or soles of your feet.
[8] A pole weapon with a long, wide blade at the end. Warrior women of Nobility, called “Onna Bugeisha”, were known for favouring this weapon.
[9] Literally, “Shrine of Tears.”