I don’t know what to write here either.

- Kuya Tio on Questioning this top part of every chapter, Kuya Tio’s Guide to a Healthy and Happy Homestead.

As fall grew colder and every morning became frost covered, the ache from the whole thing with Kaori seemed to fade. Not entirely, but enough to make it more bearable. I spent more time with Wei Lin as she was clearly trying to make an effort to be more open. I found that she was a lot more talkative as we took trips into the town proper for foodstuffs that our farms hadn’t produced. Though on the occasions where she was far away from other people and it was just her and myself, she tended to lose some of the inflection in her voice, her tone becoming more monotone and cold. She also attempted joking, which was a very strange endeavor. Her humor was very dry, often delivered without a lot of inflection, and she always watched my face intently for my reaction.

It was on one of these trips to the town proper when we were far away from other people that I started to get an actual idea of what was up with Wei Lin. Not liking the idea of being told who to like had not been the only reason she had initially pushed me away. Another reason was that she simply did not find me attractive. She wasn't attracted to women either. It was a bit odd talking to somebody who didn't find anyone physically attractive, but as perplexing as it was for me, it must have been horribly confusing for her. As her friends entered puberty and started talking more and more about boys, she had tried to follow along, essentially learning how to fake it as best as she could. So her opinions on anything that was attractive were mostly either based on the pure symmetry of something or simply rehashing the opinions of other people. That was not to say that she couldn't become emotionally attracted to people. She had, in time, developed several crushes on different people, and much to her chagrin, not having the ability to be physically attracted to people left her with the issue that her emotional attraction did not discriminate between male and female.

While Wei Lin was afraid of people figuring out that she was, in her words, “broken”, she was absolutely terrified of being thought of as gay. I'm not exactly sure why that was a problem. Then again, I was from a city, I knew plenty of gay couples, and on an individual basis, they didn't really seem any different than anybody else. Though, I suppose the only gay person I knew in this town was Lia, and I personally thought Lia was kind of awesome. That did bring up another point. It turns out all of Lia's compliments about Wei Lin's cooking and all her other chatter hadn't exactly fallen on deaf ears. If Wei Lin herself could get over the fear of being thought of as gay, the carpenter actually had a chance.

One of the most surprising points of Wei Lin's whole issue set was that she had been working very hard so that nobody would know. While I could fully understand hiding some of your issues from dad; the fact that she hadn't told her sister, and more surprisingly, the fact that none of them seemed to have actually noticed, at least not in any serious way, baffled me. I personally believed she should tell Yoko and tried to convince her to do so. There was no way walking around pretending to be a normal person when something wasn't quite adding up could be good for your mental health.

All this wasn't to say that Wei Lin didn't have emotions. They were just more muted, which also meant that every time she had gotten angry at me, most of it happened in an act because that's how she thought she was supposed to act. It wasn't necessarily how she felt. It was just another oddity. I can't say that the coming month or two had made Wei Lin and me really any closer in any real sense of the word, but I did finally get over the idea of thinking she was fourteen. With someone to confide in, she was able to ask me massive amounts of questions on how she should act in various scenarios. Again, it was mostly her trying to put up an act to seem normal. While it was very strange to me, she certainly seemed more like a person.

It was just after breakfast, a couple of days after the first snow, when I heard the village bell ringing. We hadn't had any of the town proper Militia training days since the harvest, and I wasn't expecting any until after spring planting. The bell meant something was wrong, and I couldn't help but hope that this wasn't just some stupid Samurai hunting trip where I was gonna freeze my ass off in the cold weather for some asshead lord. I got dressed for cold weather and started jogging towards town, as was my duty. Saito came around the corner of his house very shortly after I passed, and the expected rider came galloping down the road. He flew past me instead of stopping to tell me what to do. He slowed down just long enough to have a quick word with Saito, then sped off and turned into Saito's gate. Whatever conversation they had seemed to put an extra oomph in Saito's steps as he pounded towards me. I let them catch up.

"What's going on?" I asked as I fell in line beside him.

"They are, evacuating, all non,-militia," he spat between breaths.

"Do you know why?"

"No."

When we arrived at the supply depot and were handed our shields and spears, we were told to wait in formation for a whole five minutes before doing a quick march towards Sharinzhen-5. Because Five was so close to Four, we simply had to take the path opposite to the path to my house. We would be in Sharinzhen-5 probably faster than we could be in the Sharinzhen proper. I watched all the non-combatants gather together and start heading towards town proper. There was nothing we could do until we arrived most of the way to Sharinzhen-5, where the Sharinzhen-5 Militia guided us off into some fields behind a few of the houses facing the mountains.

I stood in line, staring in stunned silence along with most of the other people in the group, as our tiny little Militia army faced a truly massive horde of people.

"Who are they?" I quietly asked Saito as we stood on one end of the field facing the horde on the other.

Saito stood scratching his beard and examining the distinct groups through narrowed eyes. Relief washed over me when he sighed and gave a slight smile. "Barbarians from over the mountains. They come around every three or four years and trade some massive oxen for rice, cast iron pans, items of steel, things like that. We've never had a fight with them, so this will probably go fine."

That certainly was a relief, knowing that this was not a unique occurrence and there had not been hostilities with these people, who at the moment outnumbered us at least fifty to one, was a bit more calming. However, that feeling of ease vanished a bit when Saito continued.

"Though, I've never seen the purple ones before."

"Purple ones?" I asked.

Saito nodded towards the group on the far left, nearly equal in numbers to the group on the right. They all did seem to be a little different. There were two distinct groups: everybody on the right seemed to be just like us, though dressed in more barbaric clothing, lots of leather and fur. Most of the people looked human beyond the distinctly Oni-Sen appearance with their long horns. On the left, however, every single one of them appeared to be Akumajin. Though they all had the same horn structure, the few faces that I could see did indeed look purple, but they were still too distant to get a real accurate idea of whether or not it was just face paint or if it was actually their skin color. While they were two distinct groups, they intermingled in the middle, clearly demonstrating that they were friendly with each other.

Not too long afterward, the Militia from Sharinzhen-6 arrived, increasing our group to be a little bit less outnumbered. Within the next hour or so, a very large group came up from Sharinzhen Proper, and our wall of men and a few women started to look like something respectable. This group also brought the two samurai that were in the town, the one guy I recognized in his red armor, though his name completely escaped me again. The one in the black armor I was not too familiar with, and they both sat on horses looking tall and calm. About an hour later came the arrival of the more distant groups from the villages on the other side of the city, and with that, things seemed to change.

I don't know if it was the way the samurai moved or maybe the people on the barbarian side moved, but very shortly, a small group on the barbarian side formed up as though it was going to split off and head towards our side. The two samurai and a few adjuncts meandered to the front of our lines, and the two lords dismounted their horses. With some unspoken signal, the two small groups approached each other in the middle. On our side, the two samurai and their fancy-ass armor, along with about four adjuncts; on the barbarian side, four others, two of these people were very small, one was fairly tall, and the other guy was somewhere in the middle. The tall guy looked like the definition of a barbarian. A tall Oni-Sen with broad shoulders and large curving horns dressed in heavy furs with a large axe in an ornate sheath. The others, by contrast, just seemed plain compared to this guy. While the shorter ones who looked Akumajin seemed to wear finer, more fancy clothing as though it had been woven from some material instead of just plastered on animal skins, they still had fur-lined mantles, which I assumed would be pretty warm. Necessary clothing if they had to come over the mountains.

When the two groups got closer together, I no longer thought that the very short Akumajin people were really all that short. No, it was that the big barbarian Oni-Sen guy was freaking huge. He easily stood a head and a half taller than the tallest man on our side and that was not including the horns, which made him look even bigger. When the two groups arrived, the Akumajin looking person pulled back their hood and cloak, revealing them to be a purple-skinned woman whose face was covered in some type of tattoo or war paint. We all just stood and watched as the two groups spoke, and though we couldn't hear what they were saying, I had a bad feeling that settled itself into the pit of my stomach. Things were not going well.

"Something's wrong," Saito said. Adding his experienced opinion to my gut feeling.

"What do you think it is?" I asked.

Saito didn't have to answer, the purple-skinned woman spat towards the red-armored Samurai's feet, turned on her heel, and started marching back to her group, only to have our wonderful lord Samurai move forward while pulling his weapon and cutting her from her shoulder to her thigh. The big guy didn't take kindly to that, and before the red-armored Samurai had even realized he had finished his cut of the purple-skinned woman, the barbarian's axe was already swinging at his head. It was a blow that knocked out the Samurai lord, if it didn't kill him. The adjuncts on our side were running back towards our lines while the horn on the barbarian side was blowing, and a whole lot of them were running forward. The black-armored Samurai was attacking the barbarian, but the huge guy wasn't going down easily, and the horde descended around them, engulfing them and cutting both Samurai off from our vision. On our side, someone was screaming to present shields, and I only understood what that meant after Saito's shield was up in front of him, and the guy behind me gave me a gentle nudge on the shield arm.

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I hefted my shield up as we formed the wall. The group across the field from us was a considerably more disorganized, chaotic sort. They screamed at us, what I could only assume was obscenities when they spoke, but most of the sounds just sounded like uncivilized roaring. After a few minutes of this, the sea of barbarians split. A single old woman practically waddled out, large staff in hand. She was one of the Akumajin looking people with purple skin, but her face was painted white, and she wore an elaborate headdress that was attached to her horns. She leaned on a large staff and just seemed to eye us for a few moments.

"What is she doing?" I asked Saito as the old woman started waving her stick around. It was a comical movement because it seemed like it was rather heavy, and she didn't look particularly steady on her feet.

Saito answered with a single gut-wrenching word. "Shit."

The woman had been making a keening sound which had been steadily growing louder as she waved her stick. The faint white mist seemed to be coming off the mountain, rushing down like some avalanche, though I was fairly certain there wasn't enough snow for that yet. Somebody off in the distance screamed "MAGE!," but we were soon given the order to brace for a charge. I had no idea why we'd be bracing for a charge. Nobody was charging. It was just an old woman whirling a stick around and squealing like an idiot.

"Get down," Saito said. And I remembered that I was supposed to get down on a knee, set my shield in front of me, brace my spear so that the back end was in the ground, and the pointy part was sticking forward. Once I did that, the guy behind me set the bottom of his shield on top of mine, and I had to lean off to the side so I could peer between mine and Saito's shields.

I could feel my heart thumping in my chest as my brain tried to comprehend the misty whiteness that was in the background and seemed to be sapping all the color from the world. Out of the periphery, I saw Saito turn his head so he wasn't looking. I wasn't so wise.

The wind hit. A cold, bitter wall filled with icy debris and snow, dust, and everything else it could pick up. I strained against my shield as a sheer force tried to push me back. The guy behind me lost his footing for a second, his shield slipping into my face, but it was only a moment before he repositioned, and I tried to comprehend the horrible roar that was coming at us. Somebody on our side screamed "BRACE!" And I had the stupid thought that I was already bracing. I heard a thud and a scream. The person on the other side of Saito grunted, and my spear jerked in my hand, falling forward like there was a great weight on it as something large and heavy pinged off my shield with a metallic sound and more screaming. They were screaming in front of me; they were screaming to the left and right, and they were screaming behind me. Someone was shouting to hold; someone else was shouting to get him, and there were a lot of other people just shouting random shit. I tried to lift my spear up, but couldn't. And then everything just kind of went silent.

It wasn't complete silence. There were still people screaming, faint whimpers and coughing and gurgling. The world around me was still white though. The wind had died down on the other side of the shield wall; the yelling had stopped, and then there was a slight breeze. This one from our side which blew back all the settling dust and snow and revealed something I honestly didn't want to see. The reason I couldn't lift my spear was that it was impaled into the rib cage of a kitsune. We just sort of stared at each other as his mouth worked open and closed, much as if he was trying to say something, but the only thing coming out was a steady stream of bubbly blood. There was another person next to him, on both sides actually, and several people in the background were backing off as the order came to stand back up.

I felt the guy behind me grab me by the back of the shirt collar. I was still trying to pick up my spear as though it weren't lodged inside a person. My arm just didn't seem to want to pull backward.

"Just drop it," Saito hissed.

"Drop what?" I heard myself say, though I sounded distant, even to myself.

"Drop the spear," Saito repeated.

I did as ordered and watched the shaft fall to the ground, the kitsune falling sideways. Then came the order to advance forward.

I didn't like this. I didn't want to be here. This was horrible. I looked to my left to see if I could go left, but there was a person there, and Saito was to the right. I had lines behind me. The guy was pushing on me until I nearly tripped over the kitsune. I caught myself and held onto the shield in front of me as tightly as I could. I was breathing rapidly, but couldn't seem to catch my breath. We made it a good dozen paces before we were told to stop, and I sure as hell wasn't going more forward than everybody else, and then came screams from behind. I looked back, wondering what could have happened behind us, only to realize that some of the people in the back were taking the time to finish off anybody who was still alive.

I wanna go home. I don't wanna be here. I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna go home.

"Breathe," Saito said. I focused on Saito as he was staring directly at me. He said, "Breathe" again and then made an exaggerated breath in and then out. Not knowing what else to do, I tried to follow along with the movement.

"That's it, boy."

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Wasn't I breathing correctly to begin with? What the hell were we doing? Why the hell are we doing this? I looked back across the field in front of me at the horde of barbarians. Like on our side, the Iteyan-looking guys consisted mostly of men. Oddly enough, though, the purple-skinned people seemed to be largely comprised of women, if not equal. They still outnumbered us, but only now did I realize that the group in the back weren't warriors. There were women and children and the old. They all seemed to stare at us in horror as their warriors backed off, staying crouched and ready to defend, and then we stood there. No one moved; seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours. The barbarians had backed off far enough, and while they were watching us warily, they didn't seem to be attacking.

We all just stood in the cold, watching them. I have no damn idea how long it took before our group was pulled back, and we were told to warm up by the fires that someone had created, and we were given a warm drink and rice. And for the next several days, that's what we did. A Militia isn't supposed to engage the enemy; it's merely a holding force, men to protect their home and families until the actual soldiers showed up. That's what we did. It took four days. The nights were long and cold. The patrols were cold and tiring. Everything was mostly just cold. We did as ordered. And when the army got here, we did more standing around as ordered.

It was the sixth day. I was sitting in the town proper with pretty much half of the rest of the Militia, though I sat with my group. We were sitting on a log looking into the fields, a tin cup of warm broth in my hands. I watched as the soldiers started moving out, heading back towards civilization. Cages full of children, on wheels pulled by horses. Those capable of walking shackled together and made to march behind the carts.

"Sounds like we're going to be sent home," Wu said, the guy who had always been in charge of our little unit.

"Hey," said Chao. "Is it true? This whole thing started because Lord Red Armor what's his face got offended because he didn't want to talk to the girl?"

Wu shrugged. "Probably, but the official story is the barbarians wanted to trade. Oxen for our women."

"Yeah? Sounds like horse shit," Chao replied.

Wu shrugged. "I'm gonna go double-check and make sure we can go home."

I watched Wu leave to go talk to somebody higher up, my gaze returning to the barbarian slaves.

"Chao," I asked.

"Yeah," Chao said.

"Are we the bad guys?"

Chao patted me on the shoulder. "Na, we’re just the peons." Chao sat up and stretched his back before returning his empty tin cup, and joining Wu.

This whole thing was fucked.

We got the order to go home very shortly afterward, and I wandered my way through Sharinzhen Proper in somewhat of a daze. My brain didn't seem to be working perfectly well. I was cold and tired, and I didn't really want to walk back home, but at the same time, I just wanted to be home. As I was approaching the bridge, I was pretty sure I wasn't even gonna stop and look over the edge like usual.

"Hey! Yuji!" I stopped and turned around, not exactly sure who had just called me. My eyes landed on a pretty kitsune, a girl whose name I couldn't remember, and I only seemed to recognize her as number three.

"Hey," I said.

"You're still single, right?"

I had to let that rattle around in my head as it didn't exactly mesh with the things that had been happening for the last few days.

"Uh, yeah, I guess."

"Good."

Did that mean she was not asking me out? Why was that good? What the hell? "Why?" I asked.

"Because Kaori has been an idiot, and you need to be open once we manage to knock some sense into her," she explained.

"Huh?"

"You heard me. You need to be available for when Kaori comes to her senses and realizes what she has."

"I can't give her kids," I stated because that was ninety percent of the reason why we were not together. The other ten percent of the reason was stubbornness because of the first ninety percent.

Number three rolled her eyes so exaggeratedly that her head moved.

"So you both find a nice brothel in the city. She gets knocked up, you have fun with some whore. Then you both have a kid. Pretty simple."

"But it wouldn't be my kid," I stated, pointing out the obvious.

"Well, if that's your problem, then you don't deserve Kaori," she retorted.

I tried to let that sink in, but my head wasn't quite on correctly, and this conversation was massively jarring considering the shit I had just gone through for the last week. "Oh, ok. I'm gonna go home now." I started turning.

Honestly, I was terribly confused. To be fair, I was confused before number three started talking. Chui, that was her name. Why do I keep thinking number three? As I left the town proper and started heading past the rice field, I kept replaying the last words in my head, "If that's your problem, then you don't deserve Kaori." I don't know if that was an accurate statement, but where the hell could I get a friend like that?

Could I do something like that though? Let Kaori be impregnated by some other guy and raise the child as my own? It kind of went back to the original mood killer question that Kaori asked me on that first date. At that moment, the answer had been probably not. But could I? There had just been a war. There were plenty of orphans, I'm sure. Did it have to be her kid? Could we adopt some poor kid that had nothing?

The only thing I could actually do would be to talk it out with Kaori. I almost turned around right then and there, but nine Hells I was tired and cold. I continued thinking about it all the way home, dropping off my shield and the new spear I had gotten. I knew my house was gonna be damn cold and everything was gonna be frozen. I’d need to borrow water from somewhere just so I could have something to drink.

It was a pleasant surprise when I found a bucket of fresh, unfrozen water, that my house wasn't completely freezing cold, and a platter of food with a note.

-"Tried to keep your house a bit warm, and we figured you wouldn't want to cook dinner.”-

Kenta and Kyoko Yin.

Damn, I had some great neighbors. I stoked the fire on my mass heater, sat down on the stone as it slowly warmed my butt, and ate a cold dinner. That was totally okay because I expected to have nothing when I woke up tomorrow, provided I did wake up tomorrow instead of sleeping for a full day or more. Then maybe I would go talk to Kaori. Maybe we could work things out. Maybe we couldn't. But I think it'll be okay. Shit, I forgot to write mom and dad.

Thank you for reading this story.

I often use Anoria as a sort of Big Bad. While the individuals tend to be normal people just trying to get by, the Civilization is, in DnD terms, Lawful Evil. So in the next story when the main characters are running from Anorian soldiers who are raping and pillaging non-Anorians, remember Yuji, or Saito, or Lia, or any of the characters. Thanks again for reading this. It blows my mind that people actually spend the time to read the stuff that falls out of my head.