ASP has finished.

A Strategic Plot has finished

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:28:00 -0700

I’m not sure what to say here. I usually have an essay to write (my feelings run verbose and saccharine and superfluous) but I really don’t know how to wrap this up.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has read these drabbles. I really did not intend for ASP to be a serious project (unlike Setouching, which I regarded with a degree of gravity). You have all been very kind and I am always grateful for feedback.

I had only one goal for ASP: to keep writing, writing, and writing. However, I really think I’ve bled my Sengoku Basara strategist vein dry right now. I have some story ideas lined up, but they do not involve (these) strategists, or even Setouchi. But we will see.

Right now, I’m keeping my writing alive by keeping notes of (some of) my original characters. I spent an entire night a few days ago at a 24/7 diner trying to connect the lines between my various characters to an extremely patient friend, and by 5am, even I wanted to throw something out the window. It’s gotten complicated. I guess, one day, I’d like to publish it, but I don’t know how.

I don’t even know how to end this. I should end this.

Thank you, and thank you again. My fanfiction collection is here, and my original fiction … uh, it’s really not up yet.

100. the strategist

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:07:11 -0700

In retrospect, the kohl pencil has been both the worst and best present he has fetched for Mouri Motonari. On one hand, Chousokabe Motochika wakes not only under the threat of decapitation, but now also under a blanket of crudely drawn tattoos of suns, buns, Huns, and sometimes, even tsuns. On the other hand, the warlord is massaging his back with kohl pencil. …. Sort of. Close to. Not really.

One morning, while feigning sleep, Chousokabe follows the sudden change of lines flowing along his back. Fifteen seconds later, he starts, befuddled.

Mouri scowls, and pushes the pirate back down onto the futon with the tip of the kohl pencil.

“Why are you writing Takenaka Hanbei’s name on my back?!”

“Can you believe he moisturizes with milk and lavender?” Mouri fumes.

“… sorry, what?”

“It’s really not effective,” the warlord rambles on, “I offered him my personal concoction for his dry skin, and he turned it down. That bastard. He’ll burn for that.”

Chousokabe curls up quietly and hopes for the best.

But it’s too late. Too late. The kohl digs deep into Chousokabe’s back and the pirate winces as the massage rolls rapidly downhill. The warlord slashes against the poor pirate’s spine and begins a new death threat with the sea in the sky.

“And do you know what the monk did?”

Chousokabe really does not want to know.

“He refused my personal shampoo! There was hair everywhere. His hair was everywhere. That lunatic’s going bald, I swear. So I gave him my shampoo, and he actually refused!”

Mouri stabs the pencil into Tenkai’s name, and the pirate bites down on a whimper. No. Okay. Chousokabe pushes off the futon and rolls over supine. He grabs the kohl from the stricken warlord, tosses it aside, and grabs Mouri’s hands before his lover can claw out his eyes.

“Why do you care about what they do?”

Mouri frowns. “I don’t. They’re just doing things wrong.”

Chousokabe tilts his head along the pillow. “And that’s why you want to change them?”

“Because they’re doing things wrong.”

“What about me?”

The warlord practically chokes on disbelief. “You? You? You are the filthiest, dumbest pig in the sea. You’re vulgar, you’re loud, you pick your teeth, you talk while eating, you haven’t washed that eyepatch since last year, you wear the same colors as my daughter, you smell like seaweed, you—”

“What do you want to change, then?”

The words hang. Mouri pauses and gawks, as if the sight of the pirate’s lounging over the futon with that lonely baby blue glazed over has punched the air out of his stomach. The warlord swallows. He pushes down against Chousokabe’s hold, pushes his wrists down until that stupid pirate gives way, the stupid pirate with that stupid brilliant shark-bite smile, that stupid sunkissed ripped skin of salt over sea, yesterday morning reds, and last night’s blues. That stupid pirate. Mouri rests his ear against Chousokabe’s chest and listens to that stupid heartbeat.

“Motonari,” the pirate suddenly says. “What if I bought you some porcelain tweezers? You know, the small ones.”

“You don’t buy anything.”

“What if I stole some porcelain tweezers,” the pirate corrects without pause.

“…. fine, whatever.”

Motochika smiles and hugs the warlord in closer. One more victory, one more night. That is all that matters—or so, Chousokabe thinks. Weeks later, when Mouri hovers above his sleeping body and prepares to pluck a certain idiot’s body hair clean with a certain new pair of tweezers, the pirate begins to have second thoughts.

99. full dark

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:55:00 -0700

“Shigeharu, what will you be when you grow up?”

There is no growing up,　お母さん. There is only yellow malaise.

Shigeharu dies the night after the doctor leaves. A storm brews under his thin ivory chest and batters against his cracking ribs, pounding heart, straining collar, and closing neck. A storm brews, black, yellow, gauze wrapped tighter and tighter around the throat until finally, he turns and spits out sick.

He dies, because there is nothing else under the full dark of the missing moon. He dies, because the terror of uncertain years closing in is too much for the boy. He dies so, the next morning, he can wake, cold, calm, composed, and contained.

“お母さん,” Shigeharu announces to the world of birds outside of his room, “I’m going to be great. I’m going to be glorious. I am going to be beautiful.” The dead boy then takes in a deep breath of fresh spring air, and expels the last remnants of self into the empty courtyard.

You’ve got the devil’s eyes, an airy strategist once whispers to him at Mino. What is your secret?

But Hanbei only smiles at the slender man named Akechi Mitsuhide, even if the latter does not understand how it is only the truth.

And so, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi extends that magnificent hand capable of moving mountains, Hanbei is only too eager to leap aboard. This land, this game, this earth is but a dream shifting beneath his fingers, beneath Toyotomi’s fingers for he has died so long ago and does not understand where he ends and Toyotomi begins, and so everything is under control, control everything everything everything

“Sakichi,” Hanbei whispers, stark.

The boy has disappeared again but the soldiers find the child general whimpering in a fox hole, where he has fallen prey to the pursuit of mischief.

“Sakichi?”

The boy crawls out from under a mess of roots and mud, and whimpers, “I’m sorry, Hanbei-sama.”

No more. No more full dark. The moon has been found. Hanbei closes his eyes, and the dead man’s heart begins to beat.

And so, when the yellow malaise finally returns to cut the thread, Hanbei waits for dawn to break in the east. Pink spills across the sky, and a shadow crosses the room. The strategist then asks his friend, “Did I do okay?”

The shadow does not respond.

“Did I do okay?” Hanbei weakly repeats, and pauses as his throat constricts. “Did I … I wanted to beat you. I died early. Did you see that? I controlled when I died. But then, he forced me back up. He forced me to live. Nothing was real until he came.”

The shadow still remains silent.

“I want to leave him something real,” Hanbei whispers.

Finally, the shadow stirs and looms close. The moon is setting now. The yellow shade swoops down and it is full dark.

98. the slender man

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:04:13 -0700

(Note: Hello. When I was on break, I read only Faulkner. You’ve been warned.)

Mouri Motonari notices the wounds first.

Correction: Mouri notices the wounds and is, of course, the very first person to say anything about them. It is not as if Tenkai has even bothered to keep them secret. But they’re disgusting, they’re disgusting, and the warlord practically jumps out of his skin every time the black blue blossoms and heckled scabs scramble into the forefront of his memory. It’s not as if the warlord cannot take a little blood, or a lot of blood (preferably not his own); it’s just that, back then, back at the river, Tenkai sheds layers, layers of white dimming to grey and then black, and that sinuous body twisted with bright blue veins dips into the running water. Back then, Mouri, on his way to the main part of Takamatsu, pauses along the river and catches sight of the slender statue, the slender man, standing stark against the stunning afternoon sun.

Back then, Mouri, breath catching like the frantic scratching of caged birds, notices as Tenkai’s long tipped fingers reach around and peel and pick at the eggshell enclosing his under pink skin. Bright red bursts under the afternoon sky and fades to black. Tenkai discards the remaining skin into the running river.

Mouri shivers.

Finally, after days of ruined appetites, he approaches the monk one night under the missing moon.

Tenkai tilts his head, “You want me to stop picking at my skin?”

“Do those things in private,” the warlord snarls.

“Why should I?”

“I am the lord around here.”

Tenkai glances around the room, as if seeking confirmation from the invisible. A single candle burns against the black back drop, and he blows the light out.

The faint rustle of cotton and silk follow, but, in full dark, Mouri steels his will.

Tenkai’s voice rolls in like fog. “How many souls do you think we have, Mouri Motonari?”

“I don’t care. Just stop picking your skin in public.”

“I want to know who’s inside me.”

“I don’t care. Do that in private.”

“I want to know who I am living for.”

“I don’t care.”

“Then what does the great Mouri leader care about?”

Mouri contemplates this for a split second, and steps closer. He reaches out into the full dark, and his fingers soon meet the rough edges circling skin over skin. Fingers then descend, slide slide slide, slide over patches of new pink and old blue so that pain hisses between the monk’s teeth, between the strategist’s white as sin teeth, and the warlord releases a short laugh.

“You’re pathetic,” Motonari snarls, and scratches in deep.

97. eggshell

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 22:08:59 -0700

Akechi Mitsuhide wakes stretched across the wooden floor. Cracks run along his eggshell blue skin, and the wood feels cold, so cold. He rolls up. Under a tangled mess of platinum and last night, the Oda strategist peers through sleep crusted eyes and searches for something to cover his bare legs.

Sometimes, hopeful vassals pass him notes in court. Mitsuhide leisurely reads them under the bright noon sun, and then rips them apart. But the vassals do not stop, do not stop asking for favours to be whispered into Nobunaga’s ear during the most daring of moments—

“Why don’t they just ask you instead,” Mitsuhide wonders over tea.

Nouhime stares dully from across the low table. “Because you’re his favourite.”

“I am not his favourite.”

But she just folds her arm and leaves the room.

Later, the strategist learns. Later, when his skin cracks and splinters like peeling hard boiled egg shells off the slippery center, he learns what Nobunaga has never managed to say. Those jabs, those stabs, jolts, burns, cuts, insults, those are nothing compared to the silence after over. Later, when Tenkai curls up with his beloved lord’s skull every night, he learns the loneliness of falling out of favour.

96. bathe

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:43:07 -0700

Splattering interrupts the shamisen. Irritation splashes across Mouri Motonari’s face, and he dismisses the musician with a vague flick of the wrist.

Far within the courtyard, Tenkai leans over the well and pulls his gleaming wet hair into a tight knot. He twists the long silver hair and squeezes. Water runs down a slim back knotted with protruding bones.

The warlord approaches.

“Am I not allowed to bathe here,” the monk asks as he releases his hair and another stream splatters across the well.

Mouri’s frown deepens. “We have rivers for this.”

“Rivers have fish.”

The warlord snorts. “And wells have mosquitoes.”

Tenkai shrugs. One hand wrapped in porcelain blue veins reaches back, grips the roots, and squeezes down the entire length. He holds the twisted end out to a rather affronted warlord.

“Here, pull.”

“That’s disgusting,” Mouri scowls.

“Afraid?”

“Of catching a disease? Yes.”

“Takenaka Hanbei wouldn’t be afraid.”

Mouri grabs a hold of that blasted monk’s hair.

“You know,” the warlord sneers, “if you can’t dry your own hair, you need to cut it.”

“Spoken from a man who’s never had the pleasure of long hair,” Tenkai serenely responds.

The warlord yanks that hair back tight, and a thousand needles stab into the monk’s scalp. His spine tingles. The monk sighs with delight.

“Pull harder.”

“No, I’m done.” Mouri releases and wet platinum splatters flatly against the monk’s knotted back. The warlord rolls his eyes and leaves to engage in a cleansing ritual (or at least, to wash his hands), and Mitsuhide stands in the courtyard, alone, shivering.

A breeze drifts by, and he has never missed his lord so much.

95. beast

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:26:00 -0700

Back at Mino, Akechi Mitsuhide learns of a certain boy’s savage innocence. The strategist frowns and approaches the boy with a dagger curved like the half moon of his own eyes lost in battle. Mitsuhide takes the puzzled Shigeharu aside and, after having stolen into one of the cook’s pig pens, slices a belly open. Swine intestines pour and blood splatters across Shigeharu’s white socks. The pig whimpers and collapses. Mitsuhide reverses the dagger in his palm, and holds the blood slicked handle facing out.

“Now it’s your turn,” Mitsuhide, eye whites gleaming bright, declares.

Shigeharu shakes his head.

“Are you afraid to take a life?’

No. The boy shivers as a massive stench erupts from the slaughtered pig’s body and the body deflates. Blood continues to pool under the loose intestines and somewhere among the tangle of limbs and skin, the heart still beats.

The boy grabs the dagger. His hands slip down the blood stained grip as he suddenly stabs into the beating heart.

There.

Done.

Mitsuhide licks his lips, and smiles.

But Shigeharu never tells. He never tells that he has never been afraid of taking a life, has never been afraid of death knocking on anyone or anything’s door. He has never been afraid of anything, but the man transformed into that silvery beast before him, the beast with his humanity torn.

“What do you kill for?” Shigeharu asks when they leave the pig pen.

Mitsuhide shrugs.

The boy swallows hard, and wonders where Mitsuhide keeps his heart.

And so, decades later, when it is time to grace Sakichi with his first sword, Hanbei watches the adolescent closely as those small hands trace the silver trimmings of the sheath. Sakichi grasps the hilt and slides the blade out.

It is, Hanbei debates, appropriate to say a few words here. It is appropriate. Natural. A given. Perhaps, he should say, now, you can fight for the Toyotomi cause. You will kill for the Toyotomi. You will kill for glory.

No.

Hanbei smiles softly, and pats his new general’s back. “Sakichi-kun, when you fight, remember that you fight for the ones who you love. Remember.”

94. pregnant

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:48:17 -0700

On the second day after Kingo drags a cat out of the rain, Mouri Motonari finds two long strands of silver floating in his favourite bathing pool. The warlord leans over the side and frowns severely at the intruding hair.

On the third day after Kingo drags a cat out of the rain, Mouri finds long silver weaving against shorter black among the bristles of his favourite brush. He leans so close to the bristles that his eyes practically pop with malice.

On the fourth day after Kingo drags a cat out of the rain, Mouri catches voices outside of his window. He peeks over the side, and the silhouettes of an oversized pirate chatting with a long haired monk drape across the lawn. Unfortunate laughter spirals into the air, and Mouri snaps a hair brush in half with his teeth.

On the fifth day after Kingo drags a cat out of the rain, Mouri strings the monk up by his feet and slaps that stupid face around with the top curve of his hat. Tenkai laughs and blushes pink as blood swells where the thick rope cuts into his ankles and wrists. Black and blue blossom against fair skin and blend across that sinister statement of a mask. Mouri raises his hat, but when Tenkai’s eyes slope down into half moons, his throat catches and his fingers tighten.

On the sixth day, the warlord consults the go board.

And so, on the seventh day, Tenkai wakes to something warm rolling around on his neck. Eyes flutter open and for one stark second, the monk cannot separate dreams from reality from utter nightmare as something pink and quivering looms in his vision. Tenkai scrambles up, and that thing leaps off his chest. A pregnant, terrifying pause rolls through the room but eventually, the kitten decides that she’s hungry and meows loudly.

A scream rips through Takamatsu and Mouri smiles with relief.

93. hatch

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:42:00 -0700

(In response to Sherry’s tag.)

“Hanbei-sama, where do babies come from?”

Intense deja vu flashes over the strategist. No really. Haven’t they gone over this before?

“…. didn’t Motochika-kun tell you?”

Furious nodding. Sakichi moves on over and kneels down quite closely against his puzzled mentor.

“Do you not remember?”

“He didn’t tell me how it worked, Hanbei-sama.”

Hanbei bites down on his tongue. Damn that Chousokabe Motochika. Damn.

“Okay. Sakichi. Babies come from …” He takes a deep breath, and attempts to clear his head. Air blows in, and in lieu of the best possible not-truth, warblers chatter. “…eggs.”

“What?”

“Babies come from eggs.”

Sakichi considers this for a moment and furrows his brows. “Like birds?”

“…. yes,” Hanbei whispers faintly and prays to dear Hideyoshi-sama that this will be one of those things that never makes it outside of his room.

“Did Hanbei-sama lay the egg?”

The strategist pauses, if only because his throat has frozen from an attempt at maintaining adequate oxygen uptake. When he finally finds his voice, the strategist practically croaks, “What … makes you think that I … laid an egg?”

“Hanbei-sama is Hanbei-mama.”

No. No. It is too much. Under the glowing afternoon sun and without another human in sight, the strategist cannot help it. Sakichi just looks too cute with his clenched fists and attentive face, so Hanbei resigns his brain to his racing, mischievous heart, and adds, “And then Hideyoshi-sama sat on the egg.”

Sakichi’s ears perk up. “Just like birds!”

“Yes, just like birds.”

”Until I hatched?”

“Yes, and then I gave you to the Ishida clan for a few years.”

He’s going to catch it, he’s going to catch the impossible logic, a cold voice hisses at the back of Hanbei’s skull but Sakichi, grinning ear to ear, stands up and sprints off. The Toyotomi strategist glances back down at his unfinished letter, and, in a strange daze, begins to pack for an early visit to the Mouri clan.

“I’ve done something terrible,” Hanbei whispers hoarsely over their game of go.

“And you’re smiling about it,” Mouri Motonari snorts.

So the Toyotomi strategist reveals the story, blow by blow, and the warlord falls silent.

Finally, Hanbei asks, if only out of curiosity, “Your judgement?”

Mouri ponders his next move. After capturing a fleet of white stones, he quietly responds, “Once, my mother told me that she grew me in a garden.”

92. overwhelm

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:55:00 -0700

Once, Takenaka Hanbei finds Sakichi squatting by the koi pond and poking at the affronted, gaping fish. Dark green smears across the boy’s back and dried leaves peek out of that platinum hair. The strategist kneels down by his future general, and removes the stick from those bruised hands.

“Did you and Takechiyo get into another fight?”

Sakichi’s gaze refuses to leave the gaping fish.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The boy shakes his head.

“Do you want to cry?”

A pause rolls through. The fish gape once more, but then a suddenly light shower begins to splatter across the surface. Gold and crimson scatter, and Sakichi bawls tears and snot into Hanbei’s white kimono.

The strategist pats the boy’s shaking back, and smiles wryly. “It’s okay, Sakichi. It’s okay to cry. Crying will make you feel better. It’s okay.”

It’s okay.

Kneeling by Hanbei’s sick bed, years later, Mitsunari bites his bottom lip. These days, the strategist can barely crawl off the futon. Forget greeting the soldiers first thing in the morning; forget preparing Mitsunari’s breakfast and checking over Hideyoshi-sama’s notes; forget composure forget dignity forget everything. Takenaka Hanbei, the once beautiful and glorious strategist of the Toyotomi force, spends his days gargling blood and reeking yellow. Once, Mitsunari attempts to clean up after his beloved strategist, but Hanbei slaps his hands away.

“You’ll catch it,” Hanbei gasps out, and then covers his mouth.

One day, in early July, Mitsunari finds Hanbei sitting on the balcony of his room. The general nearly runs into a wall, but before he can flip the mother hen card on his own mother hen, Hanbei interrupts.

“I can use some tea, Mitsunari.”

Later, the Toyotomi soldiers will swear that they have never seen their grouchy general move so fast.

It’s okay, Hanbei tells himself as Mitsunari’s furious snarling for the best brewed pot of tea in all of Hi-no-moto explodes through Osaka Castle. It’s okay. It’s okay to cry, sometimes. Hanbei swallows hard with eyes trained on the blue skies stretching endlessly overhead, and his hands stop shaking just before Mitsunari returns with a steaming pot of tea. The general swoops down to sit by Hanbei’s side, and dramatically pours a cup.

Hanbei glances at the steaming mug, and swipes it aside.

“But—” Mitsunari sputters.

Hanbei leans over, and rests his forehead on his beloved general’s shoulder. When has Mitsunari gotten so tall? Why is he so lanky? Is he still not eating his vegetables? Hanbei inhales, shuddering. How has time moved so fast?

“Hanbei-sama?”

It’s okay to cry, he has told a certain boy once upon a time. It’s okay to cry, even when you get better just before you die.

——
AN: I’m sorry for this string of terrible and sad shit. It’s the only way I know how to cope right now.

91. willow

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:06:00 -0700

“When is Hanbei-sama’s birthday?”

The Toyotomi strategist pauses, and glances down. His mouth opens, and hangs in the air for some time. Sakichi waits patiently with hands clutched behind his back. The strategist makes an odd noise, like a horse forgetting how to run.

“Hanbei-sama?”

“… when the plum trees begin to blossom,” Takenaka Hanbei answers quickly, as if speed can erase the rather pathetic fact that he’s forgotten his birthday.

“And what does Hanbei-sama want for his birthday?”

The strategist throws a helpless look in the poor eager boy’s face. What he wants? What can he possibly want? He’s given away everything, given way all sense of self to the Toyotomi cause—and not without glorious reasons, of course—but now this cute little boy is asking him what he wants for the most selfish day of the year? Hanbei rubs his temples.

“Umphm. Sakichi. A willow tree.”

“… the entire thing?” Sakichi whispers lest the horror seizing his heart reveals itself.

“No, just plant a willow tree for me. Down by the stream behind the castle.”

And so it goes. The years pass, and Hanbei requests for the same each year. The first seedlings sprout into yearlings, and young trunks soon flourish along the bank as Mitsunari races down the fields, day after day, chasing after the new dawn of Toyotomi.

One day, the sun sets.

Mitsunari wakes, gasping for breath. He has failed, failed once again to rip out Ieyasu’s heart. The orphaned general climbs out of the dusty room, the one Takenaka Hanbei once kept so clean, and stumbles towards the banks.

The weeping willows beckon, so lovely, dark, and deep.

There, moonlight cannot enter. Mitsunari parts the drooping branches, and walks into the black velvet embrace of the low, sweeping leaves. The wind rustles through, as if digging through the darkest earths of time. Mitsunari makes his way to the center, to the trunk, and presses his ear against the cool damp bark.

Did you know, Sakichi, that willow bark can alleviate pain? So when you get headaches, just chew on some branches.

But when Hanbei-sama is here, I don’t have headaches.

One day, Mitsunari, I will not be here.

I will not be here.

90. swan song

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:07:54 -0700

Chousokabe Motochika wakes him up. No. Wait. Correction. Chousokabe’s stupid fingers wake him up, the stupid fingers that pull on his cheeks as if stretching out the rice and flour before twirling into noodles. Morning slaps Mouri up so he prepares to spit all his fury onto that goddamn pirate’s grinning face—if only he can open his mouth.

“I bet you miss this, don’t you,” Chousokabe sneers as Mouri kicks and flails to no avail. “Don’t even think of that. You arms were always too stubby.”

In the distance, a sonic boom explodes from Takamatsu and rocks Hi-no-moto.

Although the morning hasn’t left a mark, the warlord still rubs his cheek incessantly for the rest of the day. Finally, in the foulest of moods, he knocks a writing desk over and storms off to his room. There, a lazy wolf lays sprawled out across his balcony while a heavy cloud of honeysuckle drifts by.

Mouri steps up, and raises a boot.

“I miss the summer,” Chousokabe says just before the warlord stomps against his skull. He winces, but refuses to move. Occupational hazard as an okra’s boyfriend, some have said. “What did you do with my anchor?”

“It’s my trophy,” Mouri snorts. He slams his boot down again, but the wolf rolls over too fast and grabs his ankle.

Under the cloud of honeysuckle, the pirate slowly removes the warlord’s boot as if peeling away the rough skin of a pale succulent lychee, and kisses the delicate ankle. The warlord’s breath catches.

“Come lie down with me.”

“Roll over,” Mouri commands and settles his cheek against the pirate’s back. The sun sets, and shadows crawl up the back walls of his bedroom. Then, just before the first fireflies begin blooming in the night, Chousokabe asks, “Hey, Motonari?”

“What?”

“Why am I still here?”

Mouri curls his fists against a broad back that has never been there. The wood beneath his cheek still retains the sun’s heat but only as the ghost of dimming light. The warlord closes his eyes, and clenches his teeth.

89. dissonance

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:44:58 -0700

(Ah … this may be AU for SB? It’s vaguely historically accurate, but I think SB’s Hideyoshi recruited Hanbei differently? … accuracy has never stopped me before. Also, I spent today reading HERO and wondering about all the stupid things we do for people we love.)

Back at Mino, Takenaka Shigeharu once allows a traveling fortune teller to study his palm. As the woman pries his hand open as if examining fruit at the market, a strong breeze sweeps through the courtyard and stirs the blooming honeysuckle. Shigeharu inhales deeply, and pollen tickles his throat.

When will you die, the fortune teller suddenly asks.

Too soon, Shigeharu responds without missing a beat.

Then, with a pat on the wrist, the women rolls his fingers in and places the boy’s fist over his heart. Then, you have no time to lose.

That night, Shigeharu writes a list of things that he must do before he dies. At the end, he signs with his clan’s mon, but then immediately crumples the paper and throws it violently against the wall. He drafts another list. Discards. Another. Unsatisfactory. In the distance, the horizon grows light, and Shigeharu still doesn’t understand how to tame the dissonance swelling in his chest.

Later that week, Toyotomi Hideyoshi pays a visit to the lord at Mino. Back then, still in service to the Oda clan, Hideyoshi speaks in the code of dreams lest his current master overhear. He passes by Shigeharu, and the boy remembers not how that massive shadow engulfs his own tiny frame but rather, the brilliant burst of light following Hideyoshi’s footsteps. The boy quietly trails the vassal, and listens outside the door.

And so it begins.

I am losing you to a visitor, the lord at Mino laughs when he catches Shigeharu sneaking food Toyotomi Hideyoshi yet again. It’s not that the vassal is starving—in fact, if anything, it’s the exact opposite. But it’s not enough. Nothing is enough. When Shigeharu looks upon Hideyoshi and hears those prophecies encoded in dreams, something rips across his chest, something rips and screams and asks why this man cannot have the world.

When Hideyoshi Toyotomi prepares to leave, Shigeharu prepares as well. At the gate, however, Hideyoshi glances down at the boy who has so faithfully served at his side during his stay and shakes his head.

Slowly, Shigeharu’s heart begins to shrink.

“Prove yourself, boy,” Hideyoshi declares, and leaves the boy in the dust.

Shigeharu clenches his fists and sets his jaw. One year later, rumours whisper that the Saito clan of Mino has been outmaneuvered by a mere boy. Toyotomi Hideyoshi barely glances up from a letter when a rather short man strolls into his room, but it is enough. Takenaka Hanbei takes his placed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s side, and prepares to lay the world at his lord’s feet.

88. corpse walker III/III

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 21:41:49 -0700

The glittering plain stretches across the dreamscape, and the horizon blurs. Mouri Motonari’s feet drag along the soft floor, but those uncertain footsteps fade fast. A sparrow bursts in the air, and the warlord gasps awake.

Again.

The dreams haven’t stopped.

Since then, only Takenaka Hanbei has left Aki. Those stories, the corpse walkers, still linger in the air like a rotting stench after disposing the fetid body. At first, the warlord purged such superstitions with a calm deep breath, but then the dreams began.

There, he is lost.

It is not yet summer in Aki, so his damp body shivers under the crisp morning air. The warblers have started outside. For one stark grey second, uncertainty seizes Mouri’s heart and the warlord wonders just how fast this moment will end.

Just how fast can a bird die?

That day, he prepares a lantern. He prepares a lantern so he will not lose the way when his walker leads his body back home. In addition, he writes down a phrase and seals it with the Mouri mon. He memorizes this phrase, so that his walker may recite it in case the lantern blows out. He then prepares a box, where he places the lantern and the letter, and it is only when he seals the box does he realize that he can only send his fate to one person.

And so later, when Chousokabe Motochika finally kills his rival, a box arrives on a small, empty boat. His men reel the boat in, and the pirate lord opens the box in his private chambers. The lantern has broken but the seal remains strong. Chousokabe Motochika reads the message, the simple two words with all the hope nested in a heart once so cold, and understands that he must lead Mouri Motonari back home.

——

AN: Corpse walking was a profession back in ancient China. I was first introduced to the profession when reading The Corpse Walker. Basically, the idea was to return the corpse back home lest the ghost become restless. People reported seeing two figures walking in the night. The first figure (a person) held a lantern, scattered paper money, and chanted “Yo, ho” in a way that alerted the corpse (e.g. “Yo, ho, steps ahead”). The second figure was very big, almost two people tall, and draped with a black cloth. When it walked, it moved extremely stiffly and made a heavy thudding noise. That was the corpse.

Some people claimed that the corpse walker would have a black cat crawl all over the corpse and animate the corpse with static electricity. This practice was popular enough in some areas (because transportation was so difficult in China) that there would be signs for “corpse crossing.” Of course, there is a logical explanation behind it. But my life was not improved by learning about it. So I will not write it down unless you ask.

87. corpse walker II/III

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:58:00 -0700

A sparrow bursting into tawny and red interrupts their game. Mouri Motonari dismisses Takenaka Hanbei with a wave of his hand but leaves instead. The Toyotomi strategist lingers over the half full board checkered with white and bold, black and cold, as feathers rain down soft around the fallen soldiers.

“Once,” he says while cornering Mouri’s players, “a certain man told me about corpse walkers.”

“The dead don’t walk,” the warlord scoffs, and counters swiftly.

“These had to walk,” Hanbei gently explains. Warblers loop and curl above their bowed heads, and demand answers. “They died far from where they were born. So some one decided to show them the way back. That person lit a lantern and sang, three notes, over and over, so the corpses never lost sight of the path. Once the corpses returned home, they could properly die.”

“I can arrange a proper death for you.”

Hanbei smiles wryly. He leans over against his elbow and peers over the ledge. Far ahead, the sea laps gently against the shore. The warblers subside and he hears a sparrow tweet curiously.

What will you be reborn as, Motonari-kun?

Only dead men think about those things.

A vegetable, then?

Die.

But the sparrow flies over first, and bursts into death. Later, alone, Hanbei collects each feather in his palm, but alas, they seem so small, so small—no where nearly enough for one bird. The strategist drops the feathers. He cannot help the sparrow home.

86. corpse walker I/III

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:56:00 -0700

Back at Mino, they call them キョンシー in the journals that Akechi Mitsuhide collect from the soldiers who have returned from exploring the outskirts of the Ming Dynasty. The strategist pores so ponderously over the narratives, the stories swearing truth and signed with blood, that he does not notice the short silhouette straining over his shoulder.

“Surely, you will learn subtly,” Mitsuhide wryly comments as he peers back at Takenaka Shigeharu. Well. At least the boy does not even pretend innocence. Instead, the boy just stands there, as if claiming everything yet expecting nothing.

“Everyone wants to hear about the corpse walkers,” Shigeharu asserts.

One perfectly tweezed platinum brow raises. “Who said anything about corpse walkers? These are walking corpses.”

“Some one is walking them.”

Mitsuhide’s mouth opens, but the words falls back. He glances furiously down at the journal laying flat across his table, and a sneer burns into the back of his neck. The strategist grits his teeth, and wonders how brightly that Shigeharu’s blood runs.

85. capricious

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:30:04 -0700

One week. One week out at sea, and the young Takenaka Hanbei promises to be back. Silver sides of fish ripple through the waves south of Hi-no-moto, and the glare of the sun sears so brightly that a storm takes Hanbei blind.

“You shouldn’t go out,” a pirate lord with a full set of shark teeth had warned him a day ago when he asked to purchase a boat. “These days, the seas change quickly, capriciously, you know?”

“I want to see the edge of the world before …”

Chousokabe Motochika’s ears perked at the falter. “Before what?”

Hanbei smiled thinly. “I just want to see the edge of the world.”

… of course, the strategist calmly reviews as the skies thicken with black and blue against the flashing fists of the sky dragons, he does not really care for the edge of the world lest it engulfs the land that he will one day unite under his lord. Hanbei clings tightly to the deck of the small boat as the sea swells and rocks. He does not care for anything outside of his mistress’ lines but he has heard of the certain Western forces circling Hi-no-moto’s feet. Amidst the howling wind and the sting of salt against blurry eyes, light pierces through the roaring waves.

He wakes, and cannot understand a word. Hanbei rolls over on the pillow, and smiles.

Three days, and blue eyes peer back. Four days counting, and a rough thumb coarse from sunburnt skin runs down Hanbei’s chest. He does not understand their questions, but their fingers ask about the smoothness of his legs and the silkiness of his hair. He wants to laugh, laugh that they are not all this way, but it is too entertaining. The strategist sighs with content, and counts down his hours as their odd porcelain pet.

On the sixth day, Hanbei slaughters the crew.

On the seventh day, Hideyoshi asks about the edge of the world. Hanbei, once again clothed in his soldier’s uniform, peers into a mirror and frowns at a suspicious freckle-like object that has dared to reveal itself.

“Did you find what you’re looking for?”

“The foreign demons,” Hanbei nonchalantly responds. “I ran into them, Hideyoshi-sama.”

“What were they like?”

The young strategist sighs and straightens up. “Surprisingly, similar to us.”

84. nothing lasts forever

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 22:36:17 -0700

Sakichi learns history not by date but by man, for time is nothing without the constraints of the human imagination. Takenaka Hanbei dabbles over the meager dawns breaking over births, meager in their inaccuracies of prophecy, but drills in the details dividing the narrow space between glory and loneliness at death.

“But Hideyoshi-sama must have been born on an audacious day,” Sakichi asserts.

Hanbei ruffles the boy’s hair. “Hideyoshi-sama is the exception to everything.”

One day, Sakichi points to the name Akechi Mitsuhide and asks about the blurry line between duty and lunacy. The boy does not phrase it so, of course, but when the question slips out, Hanbei pauses and wonders how to explain the yawning black hole waiting at the edge of sanity.

Perhaps, one day, Sakichi will face this terrible abyss—Sakichi, with those dead serious earnest eyes at such a young age. They are the doomed ones, they, the passionate ones.

Hanbei ruffles Sakichi’s hair some more. He begins, “The Buddhists say that nothing can be permanent.”

The boy’s eyebrows furrow at this apparent regression.

“What do you do when you’re tired, Sakichi?”

“Ummm … I sit on the ground.”

“How long do you sit?”

“… until I’m not tired.”

“Could you sit for an hour?”

“Sure.”

“Five hours?”

“… maybe.”

“The rest of your life?”

Sakichi frowns. “Why would I do that, Hanbei-sama?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Hanbei asks gently, but before the boy can offer a realistic answer, the strategist provides the more practical one, “Because you’d be in a world of pain, wouldn’t you? You’d want to stand up, right? You couldn’t stay sitting forever.”

“I don’t understand, Hanbei-sama.”

The Toyotomi strategist kneels down and ponders his next words carefully. Perhaps he should deliver his sentences straight, and reveal Akechi Mitsuhide’s downfall to be his love fallen over to the other side—a love so bright, so hot, so intense that it has collapsed against itself to leave a hungry black hole. Hanbei ponders this, ponders as those hopeful yet somber youthful eyes patiently wait, but

but for the price of innocence

Hanbei stands. He shakes his head. “Lesson’s over for today, Sakichi. Let’s go have dinner.”

83. sunday

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:30:09 -0700

There’s a fly buzzing around the room. Mouri Motonari narrows his eyes, but the insect lands just out of reach against a smooth dark red pillar. Somewhere else, in another world just beyond the thin gauze pulled down between himself and supreme annoyance, his generals drone on and on about whiny soldiers, whiny children, whiny wives, whine whine whine whine

whine

Once.

At the end of the world, a pirate takes a warlord on a fishing trip, with the verb take in full blown action. The warlord, who has been strapped to an oar hot glue gunned to the wooden seat, stares glumly over the side of the boat at the quaint lapping waves. The pirate hums.

When the burning against his scalp grows too much, Mouri scowls, “Is this your new torture method?”

“No, I thought you’d just like some fresh fish.”

“I’d rather rot in prison.”

Chousokabe glances askance with that aggravating smile. “Why are you so dramatic, Motonari?”

Dramatic? Motonari, dramatic? The warlord practically rips off the oar in disbelief. Here stands a goddamn pirate king clothed in pink and purple floral pants who swings around a goddamn anchor and runs on the power of friendship. Here stands a pirate who’s idea of a greeting involves blasting into port, through the gates, through the guards, through the wall … Mouri grits his teeth. Dramatic? Fuck, what is he possibly dramatic about?

“I mean, what’s this I hear about Sunday Mouri?” Chousokabe suddenly taunts.

”Die.”

But now.

The fly has long left the wall and flown to some place where his general’s voices cannot reach. Mouri leans cheek against knuckles and fixes those dark eyes upon the suddenly stuttering soldier.

“L-lord Mouri?”

The warlord blinks slowly. He pushes down the burning desire to leap onto his feet and chase that ghost of purple pink cloth rippling at the edge of the world, and wonders who he needs to kill next.

82. quickening

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:28:03 -0700

Akechi Mitsuhde learns, one day, to count the quickening of his heart. At the top of the staircase crawling down to the hollow bones of birds and beasts, blood pounds against his skull and breaths cut short. He wakes, anew, in a room which his lord has trashed once again.

He learns to count the quickening of his heart when the black haze of ginger and malice roll around the corner, and smoke drifting between Nobunaga’s lips pollutes the sunlight streaming through Mitsuhide’s study. The warlord sits before his strategist, his beautiful and brilliant strategist, and draws long from a hastily rolled cigarette. Something tight, something tipped with steel and talons grips around Mitsuhide’s chest and when Nobunaga leans forward, his shoulders freeze and his mind blanks.

Those are the early days, those are the early days. Mitsuhide counts the quickening of his heart, but only considers the possibility too late and blurs the line between love and hate.