This strip is from my story "Fall" (which I had pulled out of ffnet). I've only written 10 chapters of it and couldn't make it as far as when this scene happened. Fall started at the onset of the Meiji Era. Sasuke is a vagrant rounin with only revenge as his raison d' etre. Hinata is... you know what, I'm lazy summarizing stuff. I'll just post what I have on my Tumblr.
Hinata and Sasuke's outfits are inspired from the classic Japanese film "Ame Agaru". Quiet, poignant, profound.
Those who once served with their souls in hand had ceased doing so; if not as scholars to become bureaucrats, then back to the countryside where their mothers and wives await. Or as robbers, turning away from the code to escape the fate of those who died in bed, skin and bones, wan of once aggrandize strength, as their guts scraped its walls clean in hunger.
Those who hold onto the sword can never belong in the modern world.
Yet even as he eats an omusubi with dried fish wrapped in smoked leaves, the man holds his loaded scabbard with the other - some days a cane uphill; most nights all the comfort he needed even without a roof above his head. He had held the sword before he learned to hold a brush and write with ink. When his mother died, and then his father to consuming and coughing up blood, and lastly his brother, over a drunken stab wound, he always had the rough leather bound around the hilt felt by his fingers. The sword has always been the only path he has ever known. Apart from the blade, there is no real worth.
Seagulls harp below by the stony shore and the sun drowns deeper. The man sits on a boulder eyeing the liquid gold expanse turning richer, as ferry boats return from the neighboring island, wondering if that is where he’s headed next.
He saves his last omusubi for the morrow, underway walking some undiscovered mountain trail in the next island, and puts it back in his bamboo tube together with the dried fish. He seals it tight and binds it with straw and then puts on his cloak and his straw hat, tying it securely below his chin. He limps as he jumps off the boulder. The other day, though it's uncertain how many days have passed since then, he narrowly missed falling head first, flirting danger with an eagle’s nest up a fir tree.
He gathers his makeshift bag and sets an easier course for his leg going further down the mountain. Casting one last look behind him, he etches to memory where he had been, the form and colors of the foliage and rock formations.
Incoming ruckus announces from the bend overhead: frantic gallops of a horse and the rattling of something in tow. A woman screams. The aimless horse without a driver appears and snaps his attention to the carriage lugging behind. The straps that bound the horse tore, drawing the carriage off the cliff road. The carriage hangs by the edge and the horse breaks free, leaving its owner behind falling out, briefly seeming like a scarlet bird, spreading its wings in flight, then rolling below the rocks around the steep edge.
He goes to the site and finds a heap of expensive layers of silken fabrics: crimson, gold, purples, and jade green. Long black hair was everywhere until he identifies what comprises the head. Slowly, he holds the bloodied head up, brushing away the stray strands, the skin with incomparable smoothness contrasting his thick, callous fingertips. He stares at the woman’s face for a long while, entranced by the brightness of blood upon her pale color. Her nose had a narrow, pointed shape, and her lips, though slightly cracked from lack of drink, was plump under his thumb.
The warmth of her blood spreading on his hand brings him back to good sense.
By the main road, they won't be lost. But in favor of better judgement, as his previous travels had been, Sasuke took to instinctively discovering paths of his own.
If the police were in search of a swordsman for assassinating an Edo official, they must be searching for him. Sasuke had briefly forgotten, the vision of the fact lost to the peaceful sounds of the forests: Danzo's horror-stricken eyes, neck cut in half by his sword.
In an era where sword-bearing was more of an art form than a weapon in battle as his predecessors' experiences were, Sasuke had killed a man.
"S-Sasuke San, are you sure t-this is the right way?"
The woman's voice cuts gently through his morbid frame of mind, her grip tight around his elbow. He likes her voice, how she says words. Demands impose but she says hers in a strange, non-intrusive way and in effect he doesn't mind.
She trips on the protruding pine root, yelps, and Sasuke catches her by the shoulders.
"Tired?"
"I-I bumped my toe…"
Her foot had moss and dirt stuck to the nail and Sasuke crouches to brush it away. The small toes wiggle slightly, as though coming alive at his touch. Her pale foot, the size of his palm, reminds him of a child's. Minute insect bites and itchiness from dry pine needles on the forest floor and spindly weeds on her skin chagrins him, because he doesn't know what to do with them.
As he lingers on the red spots, his mind segues to his mother's balms: the scents, her rolled sleeves as she poured them in jars, all distant items of the past which once seemed real. Perhaps, he had only dreamt they were real. The more he presses on with the present, he finds himself remembering details in the people who were there once.
"Does it hurt still?" he asks.
She flushes. And it becomes apparent to Sasuke that the woman was younger than he initially thought. This he might remember about fallen woman more than the fact of her beauty as they part and he continues northward with nothing in mind.
"I-It's fine… N-Not anymore… T-Thank you."
Her bashfulness impresses a stark lack of her previous conviction, dictating him what she needed. To Sasuke, apart from the insecurity of blindness, this was due to his unnerving company.
Beads of sweat bedeck the sides of her face, her lips chapped. Sasuke decides they take a rest as he sees a shaded river bank.
"Y-you don't talk much, do you?" she says, sitting on a rock and rubbing her pinkish feet together.
Sasuke drinks from the river. Schools of grey fishes and their young skitter aimlessly about, magnified by the sheer clarity of water.
Judging it was alright to the taste, Sasuke refills his container and takes the woman's wrist to feel up the container in her hand.
"Water."
Touching her made things easier. She hasn't disapproved of him doing so since she does the same. A tit for tat, and the secret thrill that lingers.
As she lifts the bamboo tube to drink, Sasuke guides the opening to press her lips. And this, too, held a strange thrill. Because only he sees, and observes to satisfy his curiosity how a young woman drinks, as the water travels down her white, contracting neck. Taken long, it is the ultimate voyeuristic act.
"You need a walking stick," he says out of nowhere. The woman takes two more gulps and holds out the container to his direction. Her head cranes down.
"A walking stick… That's right. I'm someone who needs a walking stick now."
She sighs in a wistful manner, sorrowful, and Sasuke almost asks who she is, where she came from that she raced down the cliff, and what her dealings were with the West. But Sasuke was beyond answering questions himself and drops the idea the instant it reaches out to him.
The man had brought the woman to a village healer who lives with a pre-pubescent daughter. With a too cheery spike in her voice, she asks a lot of questions, her single-lidded eyes curious and brazen. On the other hand, she’s quite generous, making sure the man had morning tea or even just hot water to drink and some sweet potatoes even if that was all they had.
“She must be a princess! Look at her skin!”
The young girl continues her guesses as she wipes the woman’s bruised legs, along pads of her feet, and meticulously with each toe. With her thin arms, she dunks the scrub into the basin of water, squeezes it hard and lets it hang on the edge of the basin.
“I’ve never seen anyone as pretty as her…” says the young girl, shifting her knees, her back stooped as she admires the face and the scattered scratches with care.
There isn’t anything that makes the fallen woman’s face stand out. It was small, slightly on the circular side with a sharp chin. Her cheeks swell with a thin layer of fat from girlhood. But the man had seen better features in Yoshiwara and the girls who threw themselves at his brother’s feet.
The more the man travels his gaze on the whole of her face, he realizes it is not in the small, individual features that makes her beauty, but how each balance a perfect whole to portray this cold peace, untouched even of respiration. A placid death served with a dark immaculate fringe of hair, the veil of which frames her the sides of her face down to the waist.
Through her darkening lips, the mystery of breath whispers to silence, and this must be the reason why he could be so taken by her countenance. He thinks back to his mother wrapped in a blanket, his father with his eyes frozen open at the last moment, and his brother brought out of the morgue and transferred into the cart he pulled. He remembers the icy permanence in his brother’s fingers as he lay each on top the other to fit his elbows in a box, and as they pulled back the lid, he glimpsed at the image of everlasting peace.
Growing up, he wasn’t fascinated of death. But recently, in the emptiness of his steps where he doesn’t follow his brother’s heels, his thoughts wander to making such peace his own. He pictures this: him standing at the northernmost part of the archipelago, the entire nation thrown off into the chaos of transformation behind him as he faces the roaring tides clash against the rocky edge of the peninsula, salty showers upon his face, and just then, taking out his blade, just then—
“There, she looks more beautiful now!”
The young girl pulls away from the woman after putting something on her face. Red tint on her lips. The morning light from out the window casts brightness on her pallid face. Now, the man sees a faint flush on her cheeks and the bobbing pulse above her collar bone.
Just then, he sees a different scene. He pictures how the red mouth might smile, and when her lashes flutter open. Might she laugh and act coy like a Yoshiwara girl? Or perhaps hide her bright lips with her sleeves? Does she sing or dance or gaze at a distance, sighing at a lost lover?
At once she’s alive and his fascination recedes. The man turns back to cleaning his blade.
As the young girl hauls the pail out to change the dirty water, he watches evenly until she disappears from view by the door frames. Taking the wet cloth soaked in basin used to wipe the woman’s body, the man wipes away the tint from her lips. He retreats, satisfied of the cleanness of her bare face, but finds none of his previous fascination. Light breath touches his fingers, and he sees she is very much alive.
Sasuke hadn’t agreed to take her anywhere, but she pays him for his services at the moment.
He tugs at her sleeve to guide her chopsticks to the bowl. Her other hand wanders in the front on the table, searching for the bowl and inadvertently knocks it over to the side. Sasuke catches the bowl and guides her hand by the sleeve to the porridge. Her chopsticks pinch at the empty air and he reigns in her hand again, seeming they could go on forever in this monotony.
“Open your mouth,” he says. Her brows subtly rise—perhaps he was too direct, he thinks, but she does as told and he directs her hand to feed herself.
“I-It’s a bit hard, isn’t it?” she says. Even with her eyes closed, for the morning light makes her head hurt, the miniscule shift of tension in her cheeks and lips express her disappointment. “I apologize for being bothersome, Sasuke San.”
She spoke the truth, and it's not in him to mollify her self-pity. He had pictured himself adrift unknown paths on the next island instead of helping a blind girl eat and drink and get out of bed. The healer's daughter helps the fallen woman to bath but has chores for the bigger part of the day, and Sasuke is left to attend to the fallen woman. This had fettered him to boredom. But part of him didn't care. Perhaps, for years and years now without certain relativity.
“The bowl, please…” she says as she opens her palm, and Sasuke gives it to her. She brings the bowl below her chin and skims the porridge clumsily to her mouth.
For someone who walks with a learned gait and grace as she lifts a cup to drink, she’s uncomfortable eating this way. But she tries to look after herself. Sasuke mulls over her manner and concludes she must be some lord’s daughter. If so, the least he can do is take her home.
Finished with her meal, she licks her lips and brings her hands together, like a roof pressed in, to wipe her mouth.
“Sasuke San, may I employ you for another service?” she says. He hasn’t given response when she adds, “Please sell my belongings so I can have what they’re worth.”
Sasuke lays them out on the floor: novels and poetry books, embellished robes and silk fabrics, a box of silver, gold, and pearl ornaments, and unique implements from the West. The ticking, circular device was what westerners put in their bellies connected with a small chain to tell time.
“I’m afraid in this simple fishing village, no one would be able to buy those,” says the healer as he surveys the woman’s things. “But there is a much larger port in Sendai. You can also head to Edo from there.”
The next morning, Sasuke sets to depart with the woman. He binds secure his and her belongings on the frames to mount on his back. The healer strikes a conversation with a buyer of laxatives by the splintery fence.
“Those government rascals are asking for more now. Oi, oi, do they think we don’t have bellies and other mouths to feed? They say work at it as if our own lands, but are they really serious?” crabs the buyer and the healer continually nods his head in absent agreement.
The woman comes out of the house guided by the healer’s daughter and Sasuke steadies the load on his back.
“Why’s a samurai in here?” asks the buyer, intentionally loud so Sasuke hears. The healer clarifies they were patients. “Oi, oi, you’re better not having to do with any of them. In my village, the police are seeking out some rascal who slashed an Edo official’s throat. Then a rowdy bunch caused trouble. Got bloody… Seems they’re confiscating weapons now. No one’s allowed to have swords now, you hear? We can have our hoes, but you damned samurai can’t have swords, you hear?”
Sasuke pulls down the front of his hat and side-glances at the short, sun-burnt man flailing bound packets of laxatives.
“What you glaring at?” says the man, and the healer tries to appease him. “Are you gonna strike me dead? Yes, go ahead!”
“Sasuke San…” The woman reaches out and finds his shoulder, slithers a touch down his arm, and settles her hand at the crook of his elbow. “S-shall we go?”
The man snaps a long branch and sets off to find lion’s mane, a potent ingredient for healing concussions accordingly, in the woods for the third time since he brought the fallen woman to the local healer.
She still hasn’t woke. Though, the healer said to wait at least two weeks. Only then can they say she might not wake at all.
While the man had no previous involvement with the woman, he chose to defer his departure until then. Rather than out of concern, he justifies this behaviour as an attribute of his dead brother who nursed injured animals until they were strong enough to fend their own. It was the natural thing to do if one is able, his brother had said.
He looks further into the dark, shadier part of the forest and ponders how to proceed forward when he doesn’t know the specifics where to find the mushrooms exactly, hoping he’d stumble upon a handful just as the healer had described—white and drooping hair-like at the base of trees. A cool gust of air blows and the canopies creak. Sweeping with his branch rod the carpet of dead leaves hiding thick, black curving roots, he finds none. The man traces back his initial trail and heads back to town.
He passes by a sake house and a man—a samurai, judging from the top-knot and the two swords strapped around his waist—steps under the fading light of a lantern, his features fogged by the shadows. The samurai man takes a short out his blade and flashes at him the flicker reflected from the shiny surface, then running back, too certain he’d follow, behind the wall.
Led into a small hut, the soft glow of candlelight weakly hints by the window to make its brightness a secret known only to a few. The man had been to a gatherings like this one. A way to gather news. And each time, the way people cleave together, not in their forms but inward, like the spirit or the heart or mind, was a thing of wonder apart from him, though, involving him.
As always, he sits near the entryway, one foot stepped outside the threshold. About fifty men huddled inside turn their heads at him, their steadfast eyes briefly making a perplexed squinting, perhaps even apologetic taking in the form of his head, the only one without a top knot, before turning back to the speaker in front. He touches the jagged tips of his hair as the men ramble on about a lord in the next town needing more warriors for a planned uprising against the new government—the rest of its length, he had left in his brother’s grave.
The men’s shadows grow fainter as more wax pools at the candle’s base laid in front. They agreed to write their names on a scroll—except one.
The man by the door swiftly leaves, his footfalls silent, both ankles now nimble since the local healer had offered using on him the herbs he used on the fallen woman.
On the way, he bumps into a merchant coming down from the mountain—the smell of soil and moss permeates from the huge basket strapped to his back. The man asks the merchant if he gathered mushroom. The merchant affirms the fact and mentions lion’s mane among his picks that day. The man takes out the fallen woman’s pouch which he had taken initiative safeguarding over and asks the merchant his price.
Reaching the local healer’s house at last, his stomach slowly grumbles as the cold air bites his skin. Smoke rises from the dirty kitchen and he proceeds there. The healer has been stirring a pot of soup, and as the man hands the mushrooms, the eggs mixed inside reaches his nose, making his guts run amok. He asks for a bowl and the healer hands him a generous serving.
“The lady woke,” says the healer, and the man shortly stopped midway swallowing. “She was asking for you.”
With his throat and stomach now warmed, he steps inside the room.
The woman jerks at the sound of his footsteps. Her head turns to his direction.
She squints as though trying to make out his form. His eyes stray to her belongings which he had scoured at the bottom of the cliff. So far, nothing had been moved, though one can’t be too sure unless checked inside.
“W-Who are you?” she asks. Her voice sounds frail and strained. He understands she’s terrified of a stranger entering her dwelling so he hands out her pouch and bucks the coins.
“I’ve taken nothing,” he says. “Only what’s needed by the healer.”
Her pearlescent eyes are wide and unmoving, and she brings her hands together. He let the pouch drop and turns away.
“Are you the one who saved me?”
He stops.
“May I know your name?” Her brows knit, still trying to make something out of him.
“You have no need of a name.” He takes a step closer to exit.
“Please. If not your name, then let me pay you… Also, m-may I have a request?”
Deciding he can’t let the talk drag any longer, he mutters, “Sasuke…”
“Sasuke…” she asks for a continuation—a family he didn’t have.
“Farewell.”
“Wait!”
Maybe it was the rustling of the sheets or the agonized creaking of the bamboo floors, but Sasuke’s legs takes him back and his arms lays out in front of him, catching the woman who slipped getting out her bed. She gasps and stares at him… somewhere around his face but not into his eyes. In common kimono, she almost fits right into his arms.
Her fingers finds his sleeves and she clutches tight. “I’ll p-pay you handsomely so… I’ll pay you so, please… help me,” she says.
Her eyes narrows, dewy, but they can’t find to stare right at him.
