Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“May I serve you?” 

Akemi gently slides open the shoji door after announcing her presence, though the man doesn’t bother to face her. 

“I said I don’t want any company,” he dismisses. 

“Please,” Akemi says, undeterred. “If you don’t let me in, Madame will beat me.”

When there’s no direct answer telling her otherwise, she takes it as permission to enter the room. Setting down the tray, she pours a cup of the drugged sake as planned. So far so good. She’s a garden-variety whore sent by her abusive bawd to provide a service for a client, and soon he’ll fall for her wiles like all the men here do. Then she can enact phase two, whatever that is. She’ll figure that out when she gets there.

It’s when she proffers the drink to him that he is no longer about-faced; he turns around fully, and her stomach squeezes. 

Those tall and angular features are so recognizable, especially when bracketed by circular rims fitted with orange glass. Only his ajirogasa from when she first laid eyes on him is missing. 

Yes, it’s him no doubt. 

The demon. The problem she can fix. 

Silence yawns in the space between them. Looking up at him after a moment, she fails to stifle a gasp.  

“Your eyes!” she exclaims, honestly a bit taken aback seeing such a preternatural color up close. Suddenly the weird spectacles make more sense—his eyes are like deep midnight moons. 

They’re not off-putting, unlike how Madame Kaji's girls made them out to be. In truth, there is something about the abnormality of them that makes them strangely captivating. 

The man shrinks back into his aloof shell. “Whatever clever insult comes next is not as clever as you think.”

Ah. So he thinks she’s making fun. 

“They’re beautiful,” she says, not wanting to give the wrong impression at the expense of her plan. 

His guarded expression flickers like he didn’t quite expect her to say that, or perhaps it’s a trick of the wan lighting and he remains unfazed. Either way, he finally accepts the cup into his hands. 

They’re rough, his fingers. Strong and callused and unusually slender. Familiar with the anatomy of a sword, like Taigen’s. 

“A color I’ve never seen outside the sea and sky,” Akemi resumes, hoping to cajole him into drinking the sake. This kind of ingratiating behavior is beneath her, but if there is anything she knows how to do best it’s to play the part to perfection. Her mission hinges on it. One attracts more flies with honey than vinegar.  Down to the dregs he’ll drink, or even just one simple sip of indulgence is all she needs before he’s putty in her hands. Before she’s one step closer to Taigen and can finally put these horrible past few days far behind her. 

“Huh. I see,” he says, and Akemi blinks. “Your Madame explained how it’s some essential part of the soul that draws men to brothels when it’s only naked flattery.” Shit. “Do men usually fall for this?”

“The ones I’ve known, yes,” Akemi answers. 

Again, his expression stirs. Again, the emotion is hard to identify. 

Nonetheless he brings the cup to his lips, and something inside Akemi tightens in wicked anticipation. But he takes a small pause, and a pinch of frustration almost betrays her covert act. 

“I thought it was tea,” he says. “I don’t drink.”

A teetotal man; the mysteries just keep unraveling. Akemi bows her head elegantly. “Madame thought you might prefer sake to help you relax,” she says. Her hooded eyes rise to meet his. “Maybe just a sip.”

“If you’ll join me. I have ugly business coming.”

She watches the man pour a steady stream of sake into another cup. Her cup. Her cup, now filled to the brim with drugged alcohol. 

“Suddenly, I’m glad for company,” he continues. Akemi’s manufactured smile strains, but there’s not much else she can do than take the drink or risk arousing suspicion should she decline, so she takes it. 

“To flattery.” He raises his cup in a lazy toast, then brings it to his lips. By now, Akemi’s nerves are running amok in her gut. She just has to let him take the first sip. “Hot,” he says, testing her patience.

“Where I’m from, that’s how the men prefer it,” says Akemi. “Kyoto.”

He lowers his cup for conversation. Fuck. “I’ve only been there once, recently.”

Just drink the damn sake and let this be over with. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Dirty,” he says blandly, “and crowded. Full of puffed-up crows posing as swordsmen.” There’s a minor shift in his demeanor, then. “I beat the most ridiculous samurai there, if you can call him that. I cut off his chignon. Then he came chasing after me demanding a rematch, saying I ruined his engagement.” It’s getting harder and harder for Akemi to keep her cool as he goes on; this sounds too much like Taigen for it to be a coincidence—his words all but confirm it. “I think he was angrier about his hair than his marriage. What was his name? I can’t remember. Anyway, he’s dead now.”

Akemi breaks character to openly gawp at him, the drugged sake long forgotten. “W-what?”

His next words are as casual as they are inflammatory. “Oh yeah, I killed him.”

Blinded by a hot surge of anger, Akemi grabs the knife from her kimono and lunges straight at him without thinking. Despite her impulsiveness the samurai outmatches her with ease, moving nimbly to disarm her before snatching both her arms. The very next moment finds Akemi pinned to the floor, her back throbbing from the solid impact; she struggles against his grip, sorely wishing she’d been allowed to take at least one self-defense lesson during her childhood. 

“Get down,” he growls. 

“Let me go!” Akemi shouts back, still trying to wriggle free. To her immense chagrin, he doesn’t budge from his position on top. “Get off me!”

“You think I don’t remember you? Princess Akemi of the Tokunobu clan,” he hisses, blue eyes narrowed. “You drugged my cup.”

She glares up at him. “I wish it was poison!” Her sizzling glare retreats when she bursts into sobs. “Oh, Taigen,” she laments. 

“Ugh, shut up,” the samurai groans, rolling off her. “I didn’t kill him. I left him with his life and a contract to fight.”

“He’s alive?” Akemi says in surprise, any welling tears now gone because Taigen’s alive. Taigen’s alive, thank the magnanimous gods. “Where is he?”

“You came all this way to save a doomed engagement?” He sighs before a wry look overtakes him. “Your father probably lined up a nice young replacement lord to marry.”

Akemi’s face crumples. “The shogun’s son.”

He frowns, and she swears she can see an actual uncensored emotion in his face that isn’t apathy or annoyance, for once. 

“Women in our world don’t have a single good option—except you,” he says unsympathetically, and Akemi’s blood begins to boil. “Like some magical forest creature, you could have anything you want, and then you beg to eat trash.”

With a shriek, she yanks the knife out of the wall it was flung into and charges at him again. It takes under a second for her weapon to be confiscated, and it’s back to square one of being pinned down. Heart racing, she tries to kick, scratch, squirm, bite, but his hold is tenacious, just like before, and he’s got the advantage in height, just like before, allowing him to manhandle her into submission. She was stupid to think she ever stood a chance, and it’s enough to feed the angry fire crackling in her chest. 

“You don’t know anything about me,” she snaps, teeth bared. 

“I don’t,” he agrees. “Let’s keep it that way.”

A muscle flexes in her jaw. She should have known that he knew who she was from the very beginning—his body language from earlier kithed as much, she’d just been too careless to notice the vagaries. But there’s no point eating crow. All she needs to do now is focus on escaping with her life unharmed, but as it stands the odds don’t seem stacked in her favor. 

“Stay put,” he orders gruffly, as if ordering a dog to heel. Akemi really does regret not using poison instead. 

He leaves the room. For half a second Akemi incautiously considers running, grabbing the kettle and bashing him over the head with it, but he’s already back before she can gather the courage to do any of that. Her eyes automatically drop to the bundle of rope in his hands. 

“So that you don’t get any more bright ideas,” he says, unfastening the ropes and— are those for shibari?   “Keep still, or this will hurt more than it has to.”

Akemi has no other choice but to stubbornly comply, lest he draw his sword. Wordlessly he starts with tying her hands first, followed by her feet, and then, assuming for good measure, secures her arms flat against her sides to restrict any mobility she had left. She can smell the stench of semen and sweat on the ropes, basically cinching her suspicion. Shibari indeed. Uncomfortable and humiliating is putting this lightly; it will take more than a paring knife to his carotid to appease her now. 

When she’s trussed up to his liking, the jerk, he heads for the door. 

“Hey!” Akemi says. “Where are you going? Come back here! You can’t just leave me like this!”

Her demands fall on deaf ears; he disappears out of the room a second time, and she’s alone. Though she doesn’t have to wait long, because the samurai soon comes back with someone new in tow. Great, just her luck. It’s another man, a sumo wrestler in size compared to the more slim samurai, with a round, bald head and—no hands. Interesting. He carries himself in a more animated manner than his stolid associate, or whatever their relationship is. Akemi can’t bring herself to care. 

“You got a girl,” says the man in an unexpectedly reedy voice. “A pretty girl! Wait. How does that work?”

“She’s not a girl. She’s a princess. She’s Taigen’s princess, and she tried to kill me.” The samurai eyes her for a brief moment before stuffing a knife into the band of fabric around the other man’s arm. “She screams, kill her. She moves, kill her.” 

“What?” the man sputters. “I can’t kill her!”

“What do you think an apprentice does?” 

Apprentice. She wasn’t too far off the mark. Well, for being the apprentice to a cutthroat samurai, he seems entirely too faint-hearted at the prospect of spilling blood. Still, he attempts to make himself big and intimidating, but Akemi feels more annoyed than intimidated, if anything. 

The samurai leaves, and it’s just them two. He ditches the intimidation tactic altogether, his face softening. 

Akemi scowls. “Do you have to stare?” 

He quickly looks off to the side. “Sorry!”

And then he steals a glance right back at her anyway. 

She exhales. 

Clearly the samurai hasn’t bailed on her once and for all, otherwise his apprentice wouldn’t be instructed to supervise her. Unless, somehow, the samurai played him for a fool as well, and now they’re both stuck in this stuffy room waiting for a person who could be halfway across town for all she knows. If that were the case, Akemi doesn’t know whether she’d laugh or scream. 

Nothing else to do except wait, she regards the apprentice, who is busy fiddling with his headband. Eventually her eyes dip to his arms that end in short stubs. No gnarled scar tissue that shows the history of an accident or attack—therefore the limbs weren’t truncated. Birth defect, if she had to guess. Her eyes go lower, to his feet, where she spots a tiny bell attached to his ankle. 

“Your master makes you wear that?”

Confusion furrows his brow. Akemi gestures with a nod to the bell, and he looks down at it. 

“Oh, that!” he says. “Master said that I am never to take it off, or else I will be discharged from my duties. Something about me being too stealthy for his liking.” He laughs sheepishly. “Light on my feet, I guess.”

Akemi stares. “Is it not dehumanizing?” 

He cocks his head a little. “Dehumanizing?”

“Yes, dehumanizing,” she repeats. “Forced to wear an accessory like how a domesticated dog wears a collar.”

“Master doesn’t view me as a domesticated dog,” says the apprentice frankly. “He may not be the friendliest samurai there is, but he inspired me to find my own strength. That’s why I decided to run away and join him on his quest.”

“You voluntarily joined him?” she blurts, not quite wrapping her head around how any sane person can tolerate someone too wintery for warmth. He’s an outcast, and a bellicose one, at that. There’s little admirable about him. “Why?” she adds.

“My life before meeting him was not without hardship,” he confesses in a quieter, heavier voice. “But when I saw the way Master confronted the flesh trader that pulled a gun on me, something inside me clicked into place and I knew I had to follow his path. I want to become a great samurai one day, just like him.”

There’s a million things Akemi can say, but she chooses to say none of them. 

“I still don’t know your names,” she says alternatively. She’ll ferret out at least that much.

“My name is Ringo,” he tells her kindly. Akemi is pretty sure you’re not supposed to smile when you’ve been tasked with holding a person at knifepoint, but he does. It’s…reassuring, somewhat. Knowing the knife he inexpertly wields won’t kiss her skin anytime soon. 

“And your master’s name?”

“Mizu.”

“Mizu,” Akemi echoes, testing out the taste of it, the easy way it flows and takes new shape. Like water. 

*

She’s tired, thirsty, and needs to pee by the time Mizu returns. 

He’s quieter than normal, dampened. Whatever he did while he was out still clings to his conscience like lichen to a rock, but he tries to appear unbothered by it. However Akemi’s eyes are as sharp as her tongue, and she sees through him. He’s since swapped the kettle with the drugged sake for one with tea, which he takes intermittent sips of, simultaneously taunting her parched mouth and full bladder. His silence, though, is what chafes her frustration the most. 

“I should have just killed you,” Akemi says squirrelly, doing away with the silence. “That was my mistake. I wanted to meet you first, to see what power you have over Taigen to send him running from me.” Emboldened, she straightens herself taller. “Under your mask, you’re not the killer you pretend to be.”

Mizu reaches for his scabbard and Akemi flinches, bracing for the inevitable slash—except no slash greets her skin, and her hands are suddenly free. 

“Just go,” he says, like she’s some sort of chore he’s pushing aside for later.

“I thought you had to be something special,” Akemi says to him, her glare recontextualizing. “Your face isn’t even so scary. You’re just…angry.”

A parody of a smirk twists Mizu’s lips. “I see why he likes you; you’re just like Taigen when we were children,” he remarks. “A fucking brat.”

Ignoring the irrelevant insult, Akemi zeroes in on this piece of information with heightened interest. “You knew him?”

Outside screams tear through the tense air, and Akemi forgets she even asked. 

*

Moments ago, the place was teeming with an army of Boss Hamata’s men. Now that same army has been ruthlessly slain. Cut down by Mizu’s blade. 

In the aftermath of the Thousand Claw army’s defeat, Akemi tries not to think about the warm blood still on her face, on her kimono. She just tries to focus on getting ahold of her breathing. She tries to stop shaking. She succeeds in doing neither.

Akemi hears them before she sees them—the distant clopping of hooves against snow-slushed dirt—and she snaps around. Galloping horses arrive on the scene, more than likely summoned by the commotion from earlier, their riders plated in a menacing layer of armor and authority. Guards. Her father’s. 

“That’s her,” one of the guards says, jerking his horse into an abrupt halt. He unrolls a wanted poster with her image on it. “Princess Akemi. We found her.”

Just when she thought she already had her work cut out for her. 

“By order of Lord Daichi Tokunobu, his daughter must return with us,” says another guard. 

One by one they dismount their horses, and Akemi jumps back. The first guard that mistakenly approaches her gets a warning slice on his hand. She stays on edge, brandishing the paring knife broadly in their direction when they come too close. She’s killed two men with this thing—she’ll kill three more if she has to. As the betrothed of an honorable samurai, she has no qualms taking a life that threatens her own. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she hisses. “Right, Mizu?”

Two of the guards exchange a questioning look while the third narrows his eyes at her. “Do we have a problem here?” 

Akemi lunges at him on pure impulse, but he sidesteps her knife’s swipe before it can get a lick on him and grabs her by the scruff of her kimono. She shrieks, twisting and turning in his grip. 

“Quit squirming!” he barks, using his other hand to more effectively restrain her. 

She bites down the hand, hard. 

The force with which he wrenches his hand away nearly rips her teeth out of her gums. 

“You bitch,” he snarls, cradling his bleeding hand while Akemi spits out a hunk of skin. Enraged, he raises his hand to slap her and Akemi screws her eyes shut—

The slap never strikes her cheek. Instead there’s a sickening squelch, followed by a hot spray of something on her face, and then gurgling. She slowly opens her eyes to find the guard’s gorge impaled straight through by a blue blade. Her eyes go saucer-wide and she stumbles away, but her back bumps into someone standing behind her. 

Mizu.

The blade dislodges from the guard’s throat in one fluid motion, and his lifeless body thuds ignominiously to the ground. 

The two remaining guards draw their weapons with ferocious roars, but Mizu is calm and collected. He moves with the formidable grace of a maelstrom and strokes his naginata like an artist strokes his paintbrush as he makes light work of them. There is an art to this, Taigen had explained to her once. For samurai, battles are all about honor, ceremony, technique. Just like a blacksmith with his tools or a fisherman with his rod, the sword is an extension of a samurai’s being; an extra limb he is in complete and total control of. In action, the samurai is a master of his craft. An artist. 

Watching Mizu move, Akemi realizes that he is the art itself. 

When the final guard is felled, Mizu rests against his naginata, spent. His ragged breaths curl in the frosty air. Large red dots dapple the snow below him. It takes a moment for Akemi to regain her bearings. 

“Mizu,” she starts. 

“The path I travel requires no more outside influence,” Mizu interjects, and he grimaces when he speaks. His injuries are taking a toll on him, not that he cares. “Go while you still have your freedom, or I will make sure you won’t interfere.”

She levels her gaze at him. “I saved your life back there.”

“And I’m giving you a second chance at yours,” he replies. “Quid pro quo.”

When he starts to walk away, something cold and desperate grips Akemi in a vice. 

“A bad storm is brewing,” she shouts after him. He stops in his tracks, and she culls her desperation into aplomb. “Look at the bloated clouds. You won’t be able to complete your precious quest if you’re buried in a cold grave of snow. Especially given the state you’re in.”

“She’s right,” Ringo chimes in from the sidelines. Akemi’s head swings toward him, surprised. The nod he gives her steels her resolve. 

“I have money,” she continues. “Enough for an inn, and decent food. I wager it will take three days for the storm to subside, possibly longer for your wounds to—”

“I’m a sitting duck the longer I stay here,” says Mizu. Akemi chews her inner cheek. This is her only recourse now. It’s either this or earn her keep as a whore under Madame Kaji, and she’s already made up her mind about whose service she’ll fare better with.

“You expect me to believe that you’re going to walk this off?” she says. “Every step you take, you limp. Your body will give out any moment. With weather this intense, sickness will ravage you.” 

Mizu is silent. Thinking. 

Akemi waits. 

“One day,” he finally says. 

“Two,” Akemi amends, pushing her luck. There’s a long stretch of nothingness, Ringo’s uncertain eyes bouncing between them. 

“And then we go our separate ways,” Mizu decides. He resumes walking. 

Akemi falters for a moment. Then her footsteps are crunching as she jogs to catch up with him, but he doesn’t look back. 

Chapter Text

Dusk descends by the time Akemi is able to hunt down a lesser status inn that matches her price range. 

“We’ll sojourn here for both nights,” she declares. Beside her, Ringo shivers against the nippy wind but nods in spite of it. 

As for Mizu, well. He has no input or reaction other than walking straight past her and into the inn. Akemi lingers in the street, feeling somewhat slighted, before brushing it off. Boorish men will be boorish men. 

Scrubbing her face to remove any residual blood and grime from the brothel, she smooths out her weatherbeaten kimono to appear presentable and follows Ringo inside. The stale warm air that hits her skin is a welcome respite from the brutal chilliness they’ve been walking in just seconds ago. She inhales a lungful, savoring it. 

A strong gust of wind snaps the door shut behind them, startling the innkeeper at his reception desk into waking up. Grumbling, he peels himself up off the desk to squint at the new arrivals in his lobby. 

“We’re looking for two nights,” Akemi says, forgoing the customary platitudes to cut right to the chase. She’s freezing, gross, and wants to sleep. Naturally she’s a little miffed as a result, not that she tries to be. It’s been a long day. 

“Sorry,” says the innkeeper unrepentantly, laying his head back down, “but we’re closed for tonight. You can always stop by tomorrow for any openings.”

“I can pay you handsomely,” she insists, not one to be fobbed off. Not when a snowstorm is nigh and this is the only affordable inn they could find nearby. 

“I just told you we’re closed,” he says, agitation creeping into his nasally voice. He looks up at her again. “I’m sorry, but my hands really are tied here.”

Akemi doesn’t back down; she retrieves from her kimono more koban than this place deserves and offers it to him. She bows her head as a sop. “Please.”

The innkeeper smacks her hand away, and the coins go flying. “Are you deaf? We’re closed. Take your patronage somewhere else, before I—”

The floorboards creak and Mizu is in front of her, one hand on the scabbard dangling at his hip. The innkeeper clamps his mouth shut, his eyes flickering down to the sword that has yet to be unsheathed, then back up to Mizu’s face, to those intense blue eyes. Eyes of an onryō. He gulps. 

It’s one thing to deny a lowly woman, but no one dares deny a samurai under any circumstance. But to deny a lawless samurai lodging when he’s not in the mood? That’s one way to gamble your life.  

“One night,” Mizu says. He doesn’t break eye contact with the innkeeper as he bends down to pick up the fallen koban before placing them onto the desk. “Then we will make ourselves scarce.”

Chastened into compliance, the innkeeper scoops up the koban and brusquely waves them down the hall. “All the way down on the right.”

Mizu bows. “Your hospitality is appreciated,” he says. 

Akemi thinks she hears “demon-eyed freak” muttered beneath the innkeeper’s breath when she passes by, but she doesn’t think twice about the epithet and continues onward down the hall. 

The room itself is decent. Not too cramped, sparsely decorated, with lofty ceilings and ample lighting provided by a source of oil lamps scattered about. Even the characteristic tatami matting is in mint condition. 

They take off their shoes and enter. Ringo immediately makes a beeline for one of two futons he thereupon claims as his, collapsing onto it with a sigh that soon turns into a series of light snores. Mizu limps his way to the chabudai in the middle of the room while Akemi pauses over the threshold. 

Truth be told, Akemi’s never stayed at an inn before. All her life she’s been confined to castles, whether in Kyoto or Edo when her father spent a year in his province, as per sankin-kōtai law. Such is the life of a princess… was the life. She knows the basics of an inn from her studies: a maid comes in to serve meals, provides fresh laundry, and regularly checks to make sure guests are satisfied with the experience. Given that the night is no longer young and there’s already folded laundry set out on the futons, an impromptu visit from the maid seems unlikely. 

If someone told Akemi two days ago that she’d be bunking at an inn with the same samurai that ruined her engagement and his zealous apprentice, she would have laughed in their face and called them crazy. 

She’s not laughing now. 

Akemi closes the shoji door. Across the room she notices Mizu struggling to walk the remainder of the way to the chabudai, and for a moment she’s torn between helping him or letting him be. Stupidly, she listens to her gut and chooses the former. 

She rushes to Mizu’s side, slipping a hand under his arm to buttress his weight. She half-expects to be protested against or shoved away, but none of that happens. No, his injuries coupled with the inclement weather and overexertion have weakened him considerably, mind and body. He wobbles with each step. 

“Easy,” she says. “You’ve taken a lot of lumps to still be walking. It’s a wonder you can even stand.”

As if on cue, Mizu drops with the heaviness of a sack of rice onto the floor, hissing as he clutches his left side. Akemi crouches down, eyebrows creased. She’s not quite sure where to put her hands, if she should put them anywhere at all. The raw pain in his face is clear as day. Just how long has he been hiding it?  

Boorish and stubborn.  

Manually hauling him into a sitting position, Akemi gropes with her free hand for a random cup of water on the chabudai before nudging it to his chapped lips. She fights back a flinch when he snatches the cup from her hand and greedily belts down every drop. He tosses the cup once he’s finished, wiping his mouth. 

Akemi bites her lip. Now that she’s paying closer attention, she can see the blood soaking through his haori in certain areas around his torso. Neglected wounds such as those readily invite infection, and the last thing she needs is for him to become sick and be out of commission for a few days, or worse: die.

(Who is she kidding? Death can’t claim this man if it tried.)

“I can run to the marketplace,” she says. “Fetch some bandages and salve before the weather worsens.”

Mizu doesn’t respond, just props himself against the chabudai and shutters his eyes closed. Sweat trickles down the slope of his temples, and, come to think of it, his face looks a shade too pale, that strand of hair sticking to his clammy skin. Testing a theory, Akemi presses the back of her hand to his forehead. Not burning up, but his temperature’s warm. Plenty of time to prevent a fever. The marketplace is right up the road from here, though she’ll have to make haste. 

She goes to stand, and something papery crinkles beneath her footstep—a folded piece of parchment. She picks it up, inspecting its contents with mild curiosity. 

It’s a map. 

“Why?”

Akemi reflexively stashes the map inside her kimono. She spins back around to face Mizu, who’s looking at her with one eye cracked open. Her heartbeat quickens without rhyme or reason. Odd.

“Why are you helping me?” he asks, a rasp in his voice that wasn’t there before. Akemi frowns at him. 

It’s an honest and logical question, one that forces her to actually consider an honest and logical answer. After what he did to Taigen (and to her), he should be her enemy—technically he still is— but they’ve brokered an unspoken truce, a temporary alliance of convenience. Except truce doesn’t mean trust, and alliances can split as easily as they’re forged. 

And then we go our separate ways.

She’s helping him because he’s her best shot at reuniting with Taigen. Because…

That’s her only main reason. Except that reason seems flimsy, in retrospect. Penny-ante. 

“You ought to get some rest,” Akemi deflects, making for the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

Sleep will just have to wait a little longer. 

*

When Akemi returns, the roles have flipped and Ringo is awake while Mizu sleeps. Ringo smiles at her, which she awkwardly mirrors back before depositing the items she got from the marketplace onto the chabudai. 

“I got bandages,” she says, joining him on the floor where he’s sitting steadfastly at Mizu’s side. “Although I couldn’t find any salve for his wounds.”

“You’re a very sweet princess,” he tells her, and Akemi huffs. 

“I’m just trying to make sure he’ll live to see tomorrow break over the horizon.”

“He will live. Master is strong.”

“Headstrong, more like,” she unthinkingly mutters out loud. 

Ringo makes an amused noise. “That too.” He marinates his headband in a basin of snowmelt that was collected from outside, likely while she was away, before placing it gently on Mizu’s forehead. “He’s strong, so he has to recover,” he says. “He has to.”

“I refuse to believe that he won’t, stubborn as his spirit is,” she says. “I never got around to asking, but how long have you known him for?”

“A few days.”

“A few days?” she echoes incredulously. “And you trust him after only knowing him for a few days?”

“You trust him.” He states it like it’s an obviously objective and objectively obvious fact. 

“I,” Akemi says, ready to retort, but stops short because he’s not completely wrong. Akemi doesn’t trust Mizu like she trusts Taigen, but she does trust Mizu in that she knows he’ll protect her from harm’s way, as he demonstrated back at the brothel. Not to mention she’s not even sure Mizu trusts her. Knowing him, he probably doesn’t. 

Whether she has his trust or not doesn’t matter, because Akemi is using Mizu as a magnet to pull Taigen in. There is no doubt in her mind that he’s tracking down Mizu at this exact moment, and it could very well be tomorrow when he finds them. From there, Taigen will win his duel, restore his honor, and marry Akemi, in that order. So what if she has to fudge the truth to get there? The end justifies the means.  

Trust can be fabricated. Trust can be manipulated. And if Akemi has learned anything from the past couple days, it’s that men are gullible creatures. 

Mizu has proved himself an exception to that rule, but he’s still a man at the end of the day, able to bend to a woman’s will. Akemi just needs to make the right plays on the board to seal her victory. Strategy is the game, and she has never once lost a game that mattered. 

“He has earned my trust,” she says to Ringo, selling him the perfectly packaged lie. “Mizu saved my life. Of course I trust him…just like I trust you. We’re allies, not foes. Not anymore. Forgive and forget.”

And Ringo buys it hook, line, and sinker. His naive smile brightens with such sincerity that it’s like a sincere slap across the face, forcing her to turn away— toward Mizu, ironically. 

Akemi replaces the headband with her hand to feel his temperature again. It hasn’t ratcheted up to a fever. That’s good. Though maybe that’s mostly because of the damp headband being used as a makeshift cloth to cool him down. Whatever the case may be, he’s not getting worse. 

For a moment, Akemi watches him. He actually looks somewhat peaceful when he sleeps, and it’s a picture so incongruous with the man who had mowed down an entire army in an orgy of gore only recently. Even his features are softer, gentler, that masculine quality about him smothered by slumber. It gives her a chance to notice the little things she’d overlooked at first: the indelible scar above his left eye, the faint freckles peppering a nose of foreign origin. He sleeps with his mouth barely parted, revealing a chipped front tooth that seldom sees the light of day from behind a stern mask. 

Here he is, an open book on display right in front of her, and yet she still can’t read all his pages. 

When Mizu mumbles something unintelligible and leans into her hand, Akemi swiftly retracts it as though burned. 

“Why did you decide to run away?” 

She blinks, reversing her gaze back to Ringo. Then she clears her throat and schools herself neutral. 

“No matter how rich the soil is or how pretty the pot may be, plant a seed in a small enough pot and it will grow to be a weed,” she says, placing the headband back onto Mizu’s forehead. “But transfer that same seed to a garden, and it will bloom into a magnificent tree.” 

Ringo hums. “I didn’t know being a princess was so difficult. It sounds like you were trapped.”

“I was,” she confirms. “But I’m in control now.”

No more contrived displays of filial piety to her father; no more being treated like merchandise for sale; no more looking at the outside world through the slats of a palanquin. No more dreading blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows for the shogun’s cad of a son. 

She is in control of her life now. 

And she partly owes it to Mizu. 

If not for him…she doesn’t want to entertain what could have been, had he stood by and let her father’s guards whisk her away. 

“Well, I’m glad to have you on board,” says Ringo. 

Akemi lets herself smile a little. “I know I made the right choice.” She glances at Mizu. “Only I’m not so sure he thinks he made the right one.”

“He won’t admit it, but Master is lonely,” Ringo says. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s an awesome samurai, a legendary one, and I intend to follow in his footsteps, but he pushes people away. He’s deformed, like me, so people are scared of him. People don’t take kindly to those of us who are different.” He looks back at Mizu with empathetic eyes. “I think he just needs a friend who isn’t scared of him for being different.” 

Akemi is speechless. Because how does she respond to that? 

Mizu suddenly stirs below, redirecting their attention to him and thankfully shelving that conversation. But he doesn’t open his eyes, just moans weakly, his face contorting in pain before he stills again. It’s then that Akemi is reminded of his wounds.  

She reaches for the bandages she previously placed on the chabudai, then for his torso, where the majority of the bleeding is concentrated. 

“His bandages need to be changed—” she starts.

“No!” Ringo exclaims frantically, inserting himself between her outstretched hand and Mizu. “I can do it,” he says more calmly. “I, a man, can change his bandages. As a man. To another man. Master is a man of utmost privacy.” He gives a nervous little laugh. “You understand.”

She doesn’t understand, but she won’t make a fuss and drops it anyway. 

“Okay,” she just says slowly, looking very much bemused. “Well. I suppose I’ll retire for the night, then.”

That response is apparently satisfactory. “Feel free to take my futon. Just don’t peek!”

“I’m not a pervert,” she shoots back on her way over to the futon. Undoing her hair until it spills refreshingly down the length of her back, she sets aside the pins and ribbons before laying down and making sure her back is facing them, out of deference to their “privacy”.  

Despite her exhaustion, the sleep she has been chasing after all day is impossible to catch. 

*

Akemi ducks behind a bush when Seki enters the garden, hoping he didn’t see her. 

He did, of course.  

“Not so fast, young lady,” he says in that admonishing tone Akemi hates, and she sulkily moves away from the bush. “If I am not mistaken, you’re supposed to be practicing your calligraphy sets right now. Instructor Wataru is worried sick.”

She pouts. “But Seki!” 

He raises a hand to hush her, crossing the distance between them until he’s in front of her. “No ‘buts’. You’re not authorized to be anywhere but your lesson. If your father catches wind of this—”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Akemi says innocently. 

Seki sighs. His wizened eyes land on the book she hugs to her chest. 

“And what were you getting up to out here? Horticulture?”

“Reading. Is that a crime now?”

Seki gives her one of those looks she can never discern. Then he gestures for the book, and at his mute behest Akemi begrudgingly gives it to him. He flips through it. 

“This is one of your father’s books,” he says, sounding somewhat surprised. “This text is too advanced for a girl your age.” 

“Not advanced enough,” Akemi mumbles. She’d read the entire book in less time than it took for her to run away from that calligraphy lesson. It’s not her fault Instructor Wataru called a recess for tea, leaving Akemi to her own devices. 

Seki tucks the book under his arm, then reaches for Akemi’s hand. “Come. Instructor Wataru awaits.” 

Akemi tugs her hand away. “I don’t want to practice kana!” she says. “My hand hurts, and he strikes it every time I make a mistake. It’s not fair.”

“Akemi-sama,” he says to her softly, lowering himself to her height, “life is a trial by fire. Sometimes you are going to get burned.”

She looks away petulantly, but his fingers are a gentle spring river on her chin, guiding her face back toward him. 

“But you are the quickest of learners,” he resumes. “You adapt to your environment, and you are resilient. But above all else, you are fearless.” 

Seki releases her chin and stands tall. 

“Don’t fear the fire,” he says. “Be the fire.”

*

Someone is tapping her shoulder repeatedly. 

Through the retreating fog of sleep, Akemi paws the hand away and rolls over with an exaggerated groan. Her eyelids are much too heavy to lift. 

Until that someone is fully jostling her shoulder, and she peels her eyes open in annoyance, about to tell Seki to go away. 

It’s Mizu.

Right. It was only a dream of a memory. 

“Get up,” he says, standing from where he was crouched next to her, and Akemi resists an eyeroll at the command. Though she’s powerless to resist a yawn. She sits up with a small yawn, swiping a stray strand of hair out of her face. 

“Where’s Ringo?” she asks.

“He needed to use the restroom,” says Mizu. Akemi makes an “ah”. 

“You look better.”

“I’ve suffered worse.” He walks to the chabudai to retrieve his sword. “Your dangerous snowstorm abated this morning and shows no sign of building back up. It’s safe to travel, as long as you’re appropriately dressed. Every bit of warmth is precious, so you’ll need this.”

He tosses something back at her, and she barely catches it in time. 

Taigen’s scarf. 

Akemi looks up at him with knitted brows. Only now does she realize that Mizu’s neck is wrapped with clean bandages. “Why?” she asks.

His sword winks in the dim morning light before it snaps into the sleeve of his scabbard. “We’re parting ways,” he says insouciantly.

“What?”  

“I know, tragic.”

Something hot and agitated simmers in the furnace of her belly. “That is not what we agreed on. We said two days.”

Mizu is quick to correct her. “You said two days.”

“I didn’t hear a rebuff at the time!”

At that, he sighs. Asshole. “For someone who is so assertive, you are awfully adamant about cleaving to people,” he says, and Akemi’s nose wrinkles. What’s that supposed to mean? “Or perhaps the princess has taken a fancy to me?”

Akemi bristles but says nothing. She won’t dignify that idiotic assumption with a single word out of her mouth. She’s doing this for Taigen, not him. 

Another sigh from Mizu. He sighs a lot. 

“I can’t find the map Madame Kaji gave me,” he tells her, and Akemi thinks she detects a hint of frustration in his voice. “I must have lost it on the way to the inn. Without it, I can’t complete my mission. That’s why I’m going back to the brothel.”

It dawns on her, then. The map. She can still feel it in her kimono. It was his map. 

And he doesn’t know she has it. 

“I can go with you,” she offers after a beat. 

He turns her down without hesitation. “No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can. Your sickness—”

“Was never a sickness to begin with. Goodbye, Akemi.”

“I need you to find Taigen!” 

Akemi’s nails are biting into the flesh of her palms as she waits with bated breath for how he will react to her outburst, to this information she wanted to keep secret. 

“I don’t know where he is, nor do I care,” he says in defiance to her expectations. “He is a distraction, and so are you. I can’t afford distractions. Weakness dulls the blade.”

“Then teach me how to use a sword,” Akemi blurts, and it’s Mizu’s turn to look taken aback. “The world is a dangerous, uncaring place, and I’ve only just glimpsed it. You know I killed two men. You know I’m capable of learning how to fight.” Her nails bite harder into her palms. “So teach me how to fight. Please.”

Mizu is staring down at her, his eyes speaking a language she cannot translate. So she improvises. 

“I know it is frowned upon for women to practice the sword,” she says. “But you told me that women don’t have a single good option in this world—and you’re right, we don’t. My ability to choose for myself was wrested from me in the womb. But now I can choose. And I’m choosing to defend myself, to become strong. I want to become strong.” Supplication bows her entire body to the floor in front of him. “Two days, that’s all I ask. Nothing more. Please.”

Mizu’s silence is agonizing. Not being able to see his expression is even more agonizing. Then he says, “Two days isn’t long enough to become competent with the body of a sword.”

Panic seizes her. “Please—”

“A week,” he says, cutting off her desperate plea. Her breath hitches in her throat. “Then we are to never cross paths again.”

Relief floods Akemi. She nods belatedly, appreciatively. “A week.”

Enough time for Taigen to catch up. Enough time to make sure she gets what she wants. 

“We’ll have to circle back to Madame Kaji’s,” Mizu says over his shoulder, “so pretty yourself up again.”

The door opens and closes, and Akemi is alone.

Chapter Text

“You said you’ve known Taigen since childhood?” 

They’re walking along the edge of the forest, Ringo humming a carefree tune up ahead while Akemi hangs back with Mizu to ask him questions. 

All morning they have been trudging this route (a shortcut to the brothel that avoids attracting attention, Mizu told them), and all morning Mizu has been obnoxiously taciturn, not sparing Akemi any answers that are more than a sentence long, maybe a noncommittal grunt if he’s feeling particularly inclined. Although she did manage to wrangle two sentences out of him about Kohama, so she’s broken the ice to a degree. Still.

She’s pushing multiple boundaries by asking these personal questions, but Akemi can’t help her itching curiosity. Small talk won’t kill the man so much as it will kill the tension between them. Besides, she farms for information when and where she can. It’s not being nosy, it’s being thorough, and Akemi likes to have all her bases covered insofar as she can. 

Mizu is a man of many masks, and she can’t deny that a part of her wants to unmask him and reveal what mysteries fester beneath. He is hiding something, that much is certain, and she will get to the bottom of it one way or another before their time together runs out.

“I know Taigen,” Mizu says, confirming what Akemi already knows to be fact. “He tried to chase me off a cliff when we were children.”

Okay, Akemi didn’t know that, and frankly she’s baffled. “He tried to kill you?” 

“You say that as if he’s given up on trying to kill me,” he deadpans, and she presses her lips into a thin line. “People are creatures of habit.”

“I didn’t know,” she says quietly. 

His silence is loud. “I was an outcast in my village,” he says. “Nobody spared me a second thought unless it was to add to my misery.” His face hardens to stone. “In their eyes, I was a demon through and through. Nothing more, nothing less.”

People don’t take kindly to those of us who are different.

Ever since last night’s discussion, Ringo’s words have persistently stalked Akemi’s conscience. She shouldn’t feel bad for the person who pushed her so far to the brink of desperation that she now has to bide her time by consorting with him, but she does. She feels bad, and she doesn’t know how to make the feeling go away before it complicates things. 

“Let me ask you something,” Mizu says, yanking Akemi back to reality’s hatefully cold touch. “Why are you marrying Taigen?”

Her response is as easy as it is automatic: “Because I love him.”

“And he loves you?”

“He does. Why?”

“From what I’ve gathered, he jilted you to chase after me,” he says plainly. “Seems marriage is low on his list of priorities.”

“As if you know anything about marriage or love,” Akemi shoots back, feathers ruffled. 

“Because I’m a heartless demon incapable of feeling love?”

“You’re not a demon,” she says, and the way his eyes widen slightly isn’t lost on her, like she’s made him falter. Good. “I was wrong to assume that. You’re just a man. A man who lets anger contaminate his heart and hold his humanity hostage. You have no room in yourself for love or friendship or anything else—only anger.”

Mizu falls silent, and for an asphyxiating moment Akemi is anxious he’s going to resile from their deal because she can’t keep her opinions to herself. 

He doesn’t. 

The wind howls a sad song around them. 

“I don’t have room for love or friendship,” Mizu says, and his voice is lower, more remote. “Not when I have a score to settle.”

Revenge. That’s all that occupies his mind, isn’t it? 

How isolating that must be. Though it doesn’t seem to affect him much.

(…Does it?)

When Mizu makes an abrupt stop, Akemi gives him a questioning look but shuffles to a stop as well. She watches him fish something from his haori before holding it out.

“Recognize this knife?” he asks her, and she nods. Of course she recognizes it: it’s the same paring knife she’d tried and failed to kill Mizu with. The same paring knife Mizu now proceeds to hurl in an impressive arc into the forest’s mouth for the tall trees to swallow. “Now retrieve it.”

Akemi says with dumb disbelief, “I beg your pardon?” 

“Wielding a sword requires you to hone your eyes for combat,” he says. “You anticipate your opponent’s moves by intuiting his body language. A right foot in front opens his left flank for attack; a bent right elbow predicts the oncoming slash to your left arm. You visualize every possibility before it happens, and then you strike. Body language never lies.” He looks at her with those blue, blue eyes. “In order to read body language, your eyes have to be perceptive enough to see the imperceptible. Like finding a needle in a haystack…or a kitchen knife in the snow.”

“This method of learning seems rather unorthodox,” Akemi says.  

“Since you’re already familiar with the knowledge of swordsmanship, you should have no trouble teaching yourself,” he drawls, and Akemi’s jaw sets. Damn it.

“Apologies, my foot was in my mouth,” she says. Biting her lip, she looks sidelong at the wall of trees that stretches on for a good few miles. “But how do I know you will wait for me and not bolt in the opposite direction as soon as I’m out of sight?”

Mizu is not a man allergic to candor. “I won’t be waiting for you,” he says. “You will have to learn your own way back. Ringo was able to find me in no time at all when I tied him to a tree.”

Tied him to a… Akemi holds back a sigh. Mizu must have some kind of obsession with wanting to make her life unnecessarily difficult, she’s convinced of it. 

You chose this, her mind whispers unhelpfully, and she grits her teeth. Yes, she did choose this. For Taigen. This is all for Taigen. How else is she supposed to reunite with her betrothed? By going back to the life she fled? Fat chance.

She looks back at Mizu. He stands there, an island of blue amidst a grand white sea that shines in the midday sunlight. He is considering her just as she is considering him, seeing what move she will make. Intuiting, predicting. Thinking she can’t do this. Thinking she is weak. 

Very well. Challenge accepted.

Determined to prove him wrong, Akemi marches into the forest. 

*

The challenge is more of a challenge than she initially thought. 

Akemi isn’t too deep in the bowels of the forest—she can still see Mihonoseki from inside—but the knife is, predictably, nowhere to be found. All around her is snow, camouflaging the flora and fauna in a pretty coat of white and making this arboreal scavenger hunt much harder than she’d like. There’s an ice-packed lake to her left, and a foul stench souring the air, like spoiled hen eggs, though she’s sure the culprit is far from poultry-related. 

A faint rustle shakes the bushes behind her and she whips around, spooked. 

It’s only a rabbit. 

“Hello there,” she says to the critter, voice soft so as to not scare it off. The rabbit’s floppy ears do a cute little twitch. “Aren’t you adorable?”

The rabbit hops in the opposite direction, and Akemi’s eyes follow its path—

She gasps, clapping a hand over her mouth. 

About fifty footsteps ahead of her where the rabbit hopped to is the lifeless body of a man. Death has evidently touched him for some time: his skin is waxen and gray and being eaten by maggots that feast on fetid flesh. His clothes are shredded, allowing access for his entrails to slip out his gaping abdomen. If winter was spring, she is positive his body would be far more decayed and have a dense cloud of flies buzzing around it like carrion in the road, graphic as that is to conceptualize. 

She briefly wonders how he went out. Judging by the fright forever frozen in his face, he was screaming. Ambushed by brigands, or an encounter with a wild beast. Was he traveling alone, or with company? Did they all flee at the first sign of trouble, leaving him to fend for himself? Whatever the story might have been, death was his dole the moment he set foot in here. He’s clutching something to his chest that glints in the shafts of pale sunlight spilling through the trees. Akemi squints to make out what it is, braving some steps forward. 

From this distance, it looks almost like a knife. 

“Huh,” she says to herself, contemplating.

Perhaps she needs to see the forest for the trees. Seki always did praise her for being an exceptional out-of-the-box thinker, after all.

*

The sun is a yellow dot at its apex when she delivers the knife at Mizu’s feet.

She smirks jauntily through her panting breaths after having run to them all this way, hunched over with her hands on her knees, not paying any mind to the stitch attacking her side. She’s suddenly very thankful for Ringo’s bell. 

“Done,” she says, a little breathlessly.

Ringo is staring at her in what can only be placed as abject astonishment. “Nice throw!” he says, and a flowery feeling of pride buds in her heaving chest at the compliment. 

Meanwhile, Mizu offers no such compliment. Not even a comment. He just stoops down and plucks the knife out of the snowy sludge in which it landed, right between the valley of his feet. He assesses it for a scant moment.  

“This isn’t the right knife,” he says, letting it fall unceremoniously back into the snow. 

“You told me to retrieve it,” Akemi says. “There was never a specification for which knife I had to retrieve.” 

She holds Mizu’s gaze, searching those depthless blue eyes for an ounce of respect, or something similar. 

He turns away before she can get a proper read on him. 

“If you can’t follow basic instructions,” he says, “then I can’t expect you to learn the basics of a sword.”

He continues walking. Off to the side Ringo gives her a deflated look, hesitating for a split second, as if he wants to console her, before trotting to catch up with Mizu.

Akemi ignores the burn in her chest and goes forward. 

*

The burn, she later realizes, is humiliation.

*

The prostitute that greets them at the entrance to Madame Kaji’s isn’t anyone Akemi recognizes from working here. Recently hired, probably, like how Akemi was. She’s beautiful, with a petite frame and glossy black hair pinned up in an accessorized style; the round apples of her cheeks are soft, her almond eyes expressive. She’s young, still so full of life. If she wasn’t in the sex industry, Akemi would peg her for an actress. 

“I’m sorry, but Madame Kaji is currently unavailable,” the prostitute says. “However, you’re more than welcome to stay for the evening and decompress.”

Akemi hears something like glass shatter inside the brothel, followed by a roar of amused male laughter and applause. She’s surprised that this place is up and running so soon after everything that happened here just yesterday, but the show must go on, she supposes. 

Mizu presses on. “It’s urgent.”

“And it’s freezing out here,” the prostitute insists, her voice sweet and coquettish by rote as she drapes a hand over Mizu’s shoulder to lure him inside. “We can warm you up.”

“How long will your Madame be unavailable?” Mizu asks dispassionately, him and his one-track mind.

The prostitute takes offense to his lack of interest, and her hand slides off. “She is out of town, but I can relay the message once she returns from her business,” she says. 

“What business is that?”

Her almond eyes narrow. “None that concerns those who aren’t special clientele.”

“Ikuyo!” says a girl tartly from inside, rounding the corner and casting a mean glare at Ikuyo and—oh, delightful. Akemi remembers this girl and her antagonistic eyebrows: Ise. “Show him respect. Do you not realize who you’re speaking to?” 

Ikuyo goes bug-eyed the moment it clicks, and she drops her head in a rushed and sloppy bow. “Forgive me. I was not aware that I am in the presence of the blue-eyed samurai.” She lifts her head. “It is an honor and a privilege, sir.”

Akemi frowns at the girl's oiliness. The blue-eyed samurai? She glances at Mizu, who seems somewhat flustered by the title bestowed on him. That’s a new one: his discomfiture. 

“I…did not know I’d made such an impression,” he says, a slow edge to his voice. 

“Are you kidding?” says Ise. “The whole town won’t stop raving about the blue-eyed samurai that sliced through Hamata’s entire army. Word travels fast here—you’ve become a celebrity, and some of the girls are all agog to meet you.”

The same girls that made fun of him? Akemi fails to suppress a scoff, and they all look at her before she covers it up with a hasty cough into her hand. 

Ise’s eyes are pointedly on her now, and Akemi tries not to squirm under her scrutiny. She’s not slathered in makeup today, but she knows Ise can see who she is: her face gives it away. 

Whatever smug thing Ise has up her sleeve, she keeps it to herself in favor of talking to Mizu again. 

“You’ve prised Hamata’s grip away from this town, but his death has left a power vacuum,” she says. “Others are vying for the position he held for so long. Bad men, most of whom have worked under him and want their pound of flesh.”

The front door slides open with a screech, collectively turning their heads to the giant pillar of a man now engulfing the doorway. He has a bulky build, trimmed hair, and his dark clothes are clean, not a single crease or stain visible. Perfectionist. His left eye sports an unconventional eyepatch, something Akemi has never seen anyone wear before. His exposed eye lands on Ringo first, then down the line to Mizu, Ise, and Ikuyo. Then lastly on Akemi, and for whatever unknown reason he stares at her the longest. It’s as if the air they breathe has been sucked up by the sponge of his presence. 

Chilling. His presence is chilling. 

He strides into the brothel like he’s the proprietor, oozing haughtiness, and Akemi whiffs the scent of sweat and crud and wood on his way past them. Ikuyo bows meekly to the man before escorting him to wherever destination he intends to go. 

“Who is that?” Akemi whispers to Ise once he’s out of earshot.  

Ise whispers back in confidence, “Trouble.”

Akemi couldn’t resist the shiver that scurries down her spine if she tried. 

“Perhaps we can continue this discussion in a different setting?” Ise suggests. She turns to Mizu again. “You must be hungry. We have food, and tea.”

Mizu takes stock of her offer for a moment. “I would prefer to keep a low-profile after yesterday.”

“Naturally,” Ise agrees. “You each can stay in our private rooms for the time being.”

*

Ise pours them all tea.

The tea leaves didn’t roast for long enough and the water in the kettle is too tepid, making Akemi’s first sip taste bad. The second sip tastes just as bad. The third is shockingly no different. 

Beggars can’t be choosers, but Akemi really can’t bring herself to stomach any more of this tea despite how thirsty she is. Ringo is sitting criss-crossed on her left,  so she scoots closer to him and subtly nudges his leg with hers, making him cock his head at her like an unknowing rooster. He seems to get the memo when she discreetly motions with her eyes to the cup in her hands, and he takes it. She smiles a silent thank you at him, and he smiles back sunnily. You’re welcome. 

“Why do you need to speak with Madame Kaji?” Ise asks Mizu when they’re all situated in their spots on the floor. 

“Let’s just say her business and mine overlap in a certain area,” Mizu says vaguely. “When will she be back?”

“Tomorrow.”

He hums to that. “Who’s the eyepatch?” 

Something shadowy darkens Ise’s face, like rain-loaded clouds blocking the sun. “Tomo Hagiwara,” she says, voice grim. “More notoriously known as Tomo the Butcher because of his collection of dead animals he kills for sport. He was one of Hamata’s closest associates, and one of the men now fighting for his empty throne. Shady, repulsive, has a ridiculous sexual appetite. Made his fortune by smuggling illegal goods into Japan from overseas and selling them on the black market.” 

“Illegal goods from overseas,” says Mizu, knuckles grazing under his chin pensively. “What kind of illegal goods?”

“No idea. But if I had to guess…Chinese opium and European guns. Standard stuff that will see your head rolling off your shoulders if you get caught.” 

“Hn. He comes here often?”

“He’s one of our most frequent clients. Thinks himself big and clever when he is puny and dull. But what do you expect from a self-aggrandizing man who has no respect for anyone but himself?” Ise hikes a brow at him. “Why do you ask?”

Mizu slurps the rest of his tea in one go. Then he says, “I can cut him out of the picture—permanently.”

The room swims in a steady ocean of silence. 

Ise blinks at him. “You’re serious? I didn’t take you for a sellsword.”

“I’m not asking for remuneration,” Mizu clarifies. “Just to eliminate the threat he poses to your enterprise.” He sets his finished cup down in front of him. “Give me a time and location, and I’ll make it quick.” 

“Despite the bravado, he’s a very paranoid man,” Ise says. “The only places you’ll see him are here and his estate, and I’d hate for the brothel to be at the center of another public bloodbath.”

“I can help,” Akemi butts in from the sidelines, and all heads turn to her. Their gazes are heavy, but she doesn’t buckle under the weight. Instead, she straightens her posture. 

Ise huffs, almost a scoff. “You?” 

“Yes, me,” Akemi says, frowning. She looks over at Mizu, and his expression is as hard to gauge as ever. “You agreed that you would teach me how to defend myself. I think this is the perfect opportunity to show me the ropes.”

Ise bursts into a fit of laughter, and Akemi’s frown deepens at the corners. 

“So you’ll kill him? With your dainty hands?” Ise shakes her head with wry amusement, her laughter petering out. “Hate to break it to you, princess, but you’ll be the one getting killed.”

“These dainty hands are stained with men’s blood,” Akemi says through gritted teeth, irritated that she isn’t being taken seriously, being treated like a child. “That alone should qualify me for the job. Right, Mizu?”

Mizu doesn’t come to her defense, not that she was really expecting him to. In fact, he doesn’t back her up at all. No, he just sits there and thinks in that thick, impenetrable head of his. 

Fuck, does Akemi want to tear that placid mask off his face and just see something, anything stirring beneath. 

“Tonight,” Ise says to Mizu solemnly. “Tomo dies tonight.”

*

Akemi is undressing when someone knocks on the door to her room. 

“I need a moment!” she calls back to them, shimmying out of her dirty kimono faster. Two things slip out when she goes to set it aside: the map and Taigen’s scarf. Cramming the map into her old half-folded kimono with haphazard care, she hurriedly changes into the new, silkier garments loaned to her by one of the girls. She’s a little more reluctant to cram the scarf inside the kimono, so she keeps it bunched up in her palm. It’s a link between her and Taigen; a tangible reminder that he is still out there, searching for the duel cheated from him. Searching for Akemi. 

Good thing she’s a quick changer, because Ise invites herself in anyway. Privacy has apparently lost all its meaning. 

“Never thought I’d see you back here,” Ise says without preamble. 

“Never thought I’d be back,” says Akemi, back still facing Ise, and she has to chew down her testiness. Ise just goes “uh-huh”, obviously deeply engrossed in the conversation she started. Seriously, why is she even here in the first place? To taunt and tease?

“So you’re his traveling concubine now?” 

Akemi wheels around. “What?” 

Ise crosses her arms, all snobbish and full of herself. “Come on. As if it isn’t obvious.”

“It’s not obvious, because there is nothing between us,” Akemi rejects, recomposing her addled-self. “Whatever it is you’re implying couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“You’re meaning to tell me there is nothing happening?” Ise tuts. “Huh. Maybe he is a eunuch, after all. Or he’s just not into women. And here we were, awed that you could thaw the frozen heart of the blue-eyed warrior for even a moment.” Her lips flick into a goading slant. “Seems we overestimated your abilities.”

Akemi doesn’t want to waste energy by arguing with Ise, especially when she’s being accused of something so inane and indecent. She doesn’t take the bait, like Ise plans. She refuses to give her the satisfaction. 

“Mizu’s thirst is for bloodshed,” Akemi says, “not…” She can’t bring herself to say the stupid word, stupidly enough. She finds the rest of the sentence anyway. “Only revenge can slake him.”

“Then why are you tagging along with him?” 

Why should I tell you? comes close to tumbling out of Akemi’s mouth, but she professionally holds her tongue. “Why does anyone ever do anything?” she mutters instead. 

Ise makes an openly confused face. “What?”

“I see this as my best course of action.” Akemi shrugs. “I made a choice yesterday, and I’m sticking with it.”

Unpredictably, that seems to knock Ise off course. “He’s a samurai,” she says. “You’re just—”

“A woman?” Akemi cuts in. She actually laughs, and it’s false, bitter. That’s probably not what Ise was going to say, but she was thinking it. They all think it. “Yeah, I am just a woman. A woman way in over her head, probably. A woman with no sense, a woman who’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, a woman who is sick and tired of being belittled and kicked around by everyone in her life.”

That shuts Ise up. Akemi feels a hot stream of vindication pour into her veins. It emboldens her. Makes her invulnerable, even for just a moment. 

“For the first time in my life, I have a choice,” she says. “And I chose this. So yes, I’m tagging along with the samurai because I choose to. It’s my decision. Mine. And nobody can take that away from me— nobody.”

Ise’s smirk from before has capsized into a lesser version of itself. Something small, and shriveled. There’s a pouch above where her eyebrows are scrunched together. Dare Akemi says she looks borderline regretful for everything she’s said and done to Akemi leading up to this moment. 

All at once, the vindication Akemi was feeling a moment ago snuffs out like a weak flame pinched between two fingers. Her mouth parts—

“You don’t have to do this,” Ise says, and then elaborates, “Tomo.”

Akemi’s mouth closes shut. She takes a shallow breath. “I want to do this.”

“I’ve offered services to that depraved bag of skin and bones before,” Ise says, and there’s disgust dripping from her words. “He’s more animal than man and has zero regard for women. We’re all but fuckable property to him that he gets to own for one night.”

Akemi purses her lips in a frown. She doesn’t understand. One minute Ise is talking down to her because she thinks Akemi is trying to get into Mizu’s pants as a lark, then the next she is trying to discourage her from killing Tomo because she’s, what—worried about Akemi’s safety? 

What game is she playing?

Is there a game, at all?

“If you had a chance to prove yourself, even if that chance might be dangerous,” Akemi says, “would you take it?”

Ise is staring at her. “Not if it meant putting my life on the line,” she says. 

“What about revenge?” Akemi says, to counter. “You speak of Tomo like you’re familiar with his behavior. Do you not want to wring his throat for how he’s treated you—for how he has treated anyone?”

After a long, long stretch of moments, Ise confesses to it, quietly. “I do.”

“Revenge, power, honor. Everyone has something that they want. Something that they’re willing to go to even dangerous lengths to attain.” Akemi looks down at Taigen’s scarf, tightening her grip on it. “I won’t let anyone stand in the way of what I want.” 

“Then you’ve signed your own death warrant,” Ise says. 

“Then I’ve signed my own death warrant,” Akemi accepts, looking back at Ise. 

It doesn’t matter what Ise says or how she dolls it up: with sympathy, concern, fear—she won’t disabuse Akemi of this path she’s on. And besides, Mizu will be there to step in if things take a bad turn. He’s all the insurance Akemi needs. 

The silence festers in its stasis. And then Ise is leaving without another word, granting Akemi a moment’s reprieve from the stress she’s felt all day. She turns back to her discarded kimono, and then looks down at the scarf in her palm. 

She shoves it inside the bundled up clothing before her mind can object.

There’s a swift knock, immediately after, and the door slides open faster than she can register it. 

“Ise—?” Akemi starts, turning, and pauses. The person at the door isn’t Ise. The word escapes her a second later: “Oh.”

“I don’t mean to intrude,” Mizu says, inviting himself in as casually as Ise did and closing the door behind him. I don’t mean to intrude, he says, while in the process of intruding. Sure. 

The first thing she notices is that he’s wearing the same clothes—only the bloodstains have since been removed, and the ripped fabric is sewn inexpertly back together. Obviously Ringo’s handiwork. His face has also been washed, scrubbed free of the grime and dirt collected from the past few days of harsh weather and bloodbaths. It gives his skin a sort of soft glow, in this low lighting. 

“Have you come to tell me I can’t go?” Akemi says, a bit waspish. 

“No,” says Mizu, to her slight surprise. “You’re stubborn. If I told you to stay, you would go anyway.”

Akemi doesn’t know if that’s a compliment or criticism, but she scowls all the same. Stubborn —he’s one to talk. 

Wordlessly—always a man of such maddeningly few words—he crosses the room, scabbard swaying lazily at his hip, closing the berth between them. Akemi resists the uncomfortable urge to back up. He stops only a couple feet in front of her. 

All she gives him is a twisted look. “What are you doing?” 

He says, completely unprompted, “Hit me.” And she balks. 

“Hit you?”

“Hit me.”

“Um,” Akemi says, eloquently, “well. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeats, because she’s not quite sure what else to say and because Mizu is dead serious. 

Odd. But, well, if he’s asking. There’s a few things she needs out of her system, and when the opportunity presents itself—who is she to deny it? The opportunity to hit him is actually rather attractive, come to think of it. 

Akemi shifts on her feet, side to side. “Can I ask why?” 

“If the worst comes to worst, then you need to be able to defend yourself.”

He’s not wrong. In fact, it would be best if she did get some fighting practice: that’s the reason why she placed herself under his tutelage in the first place—at least, to Mizu’s knowledge. It will be frustrating, but it will be worth it. She can only hope.  

She hears Mizu smack his lips together, impatient. “Dragging your feet won’t help.”

Face warm, Akemi sends him a baleful glare. “What? Too shy to draw your sword?”

Mizu’s mouth works around a barely-there smirk as he says, “You’ll have to earn my sword.”

Akemi juts her jaw. Cocky asshole. 

Nevertheless, she assumes an offensive stance. It’s an awkward stance, confidently inexperienced; she isn’t a warrior that was molded by the clay of combat in childhood, but she has seen Taigen practice his katas over and over again, so she brings forth what she remembers and braces herself. She’ll show Mizu that her resolve is more a utility than physical strength. 

Mizu’s smirk spreads.

He is fast. 

Extremely fast. 

Akemi is given no time to react, or to move out of the way. He comes in sharp as the sheathed blade at his side, a rapid blur of motion, tapping with his fingers the middle of her sternum in what she assumes is a simulated-hit. Her shock lags behind, and she looks down at his flexed fingers, then back up at him. 

“Too slow,” he says. 

Too slow. 

Akemi’s nostrils flare. “Again,” she demands, and that faint smirk is revived, a rictus of smugness. She wants nothing more than to wipe it off his face. She will.

He goes again, generating near inhuman speed just like before. This time she actually manages to dodge the first “hit”, his fingers only ghosting her arm, before he snaps around her like a whip and grabs both her wrists, locking her in an immovable hold. Akemi attempts to jerk herself free, but to no avail—until he suddenly lets go on purpose, and she stumbles forward. 

She clenches her fists, unclenches them, then breathes in deeply. She brings herself to her full height. 

“Again,” she says.  

They go again. Akemi fails to land even a single hit.

Then again.

Akemi fails.

Again.

Fail.

And again. 

Again and again and again. Rinse and repeat. 

Mizu is impressive. He is all fancy footwork and towering power, but Akemi knows the difference between this exercise and his fight against Hamata’s men: he is holding back. 

It makes perfect sense. Akemi is an amateur, and he doesn’t want to hurt her by giving his all. This is not life or death. 

Except Akemi does not want him to hold back. Not when Tomo and other enemies won’t. Not when society won’t pull its punches. 

She wants him to try. She wants him to break a sweat. She wants him to see her as a real threat capable of ruining him. 

She is a threat. 

So the next time she’s trapped in his grip, she swipes her legs behind to buck at his like a recalcitrant donkey, and—it works.  

Mizu’s left leg bends and his grip slips, as does his smirk from earlier. The smallest window of opportunity cracks open, and Akemi immediately pushes away from him, spinning around. She swoops in to deliver a chop while he’s momentarily off-kilter, aiming for his arm—

She doesn’t realize her feet have been swept out from under her until she loses balance, back smacking against the floor and punching the air out of her lungs. She winces. That’s bound to be nasty and purplish by tomorrow. 

Supine on the floor with now throbbing back muscles, Mizu descends upon her. Finally he is taking this more seriously, finally seeing her as an opponent, and it’s enough motivation for Akemi to gather all the strength and adrenaline she has to roll them both over.

But just as she rolls on top, much-taller-and-twice-as-strong-as-her Mizu rolls them over again. Akemi grunts in uncontained frustration, and it comes out pained and childish. She thinks she tastes the salty, flat flavor of blood—she bit her tongue. She bites it harder when her vision is no longer doubled from all the movement and sees that Mizu’s smirk has returned. 

That loose strand of hair tumbles over his forehead, half-obscuring one blue eye. A bead of sweat trickles just above his brow. 

He’s sweating. She didn’t land a blow, but she made him sweat. 

Mizu leans down, then, his hair brushing the side of her neck, and Akemi has stopped moving, stopped thinking. He is close, so close that she can feel his breaths hot as steam from a sauna on her skin, can feel the smirk on his lips she cannot see. She forgets to breathe altogether because something wild in her brain is scrambling her senses, screaming at her to beware beware beware— 

“Yield,” he says against the shell of her ear, breathes it, and—

And—her heart is now hammering hard against her ribcage, and she is running hot, feverishly hot, and it’s confusing, and it’s exhilarating, and it’s unbearable, and she does not know why her body is reacting this way. 

Exertion. She’s over-exerted herself, that’s why. It’s the only rational explanation, and it’s the one Akemi subscribes to without hesitation.  

Mizu lifts himself off her and stands up the following moment. He angles his chin high, haughty. Boastful. But there is also respect in the way he does it. Acknowledgment. 

Akemi’s heart has not begun to slow down to a normal pace. 

He extends his hand to her in good sportsmanship, open, offering. 

Reluctantly, Akemi takes it.