AU Series: Equilibrium - Chapter Ten
The attack on the Imperial guard had been the first fracture in the peace of Musashi province, as Miyake had predicted. He was now certain that the raid on the provincial capital would shatter it entirely, once word spread to the borders. Okada and the soldiers had been able to secure the village-only just in time-but not without casualties. Five men had been killed, and one of their wives. Several others had been injured and beaten. One was missing. Everyone was traumatized.
The village was safer now with a troop of two dozen of Kimura’s soldiers stationed at all roads into the village. They could protect the people from another skirmish but they would fall quickly in a large-scale attack without reinforcements. There had been no correspondence from Kimura himself but there was nothing he could suggest that Miyake hadn’t already though of. And without comrades to replace those fallen, they would all die fighting. Or have no choice but to run.
For two days, the immediate countryside was searched for the remaining raiders but not one was found. There were campsites left behind but it was hard to tell who had last used them and when. There had been no sightings of travelers for weeks; people were too afraid to be on the open road with the threat of attack fresh and heavy. Aiba was merely one more figure in the tally, an unforeseeable consequence of the incident to all but four people in the castle.
Jun cried the first night Aiba was gone, locking himself in his chambers. Nino knocked and knocked but got nothing in response. He left tray of food outside Jun's door but it was untouched when he returned in the morning. When his eyes dried, Jun wore a veneer of calmness: it was his duty to appear strong in his father’s stead. He directed the wounded to the doctor and distributed the castle’s rationed medical supplies to the villagers as best he could. He spoke with confidence and surety but Nino could see the pain in his eyes that he hid so well. While Jun was angry with himself for letting Aiba go, he blamed Sho for his disappearance. Aiba was his responsibility; he would have been safe if Jun had held on, for just one more day.
Sho was restless and itched to join the search party but Ohno refused, exercising his seldom-used seniority. His wound had yet to begin to knit and tired easily still from the blood-loss. He looked weary, like a man sentenced to death. In his stead, Ohno offered to go search the surrounding forest and relayed the findings to Sho each evening.
Being confined to his room amplified Sho's guilt. He knew Jun blamed him, and was convinced that Nino must as well. It was clear in the Jun's glare, when he wasn't pretending Sho didn't exist. They were family to each other and Sho had single-handedly destroyed that. The castle was filled with whispers and pitying eyes: word spread fast that Sho had been the last to see Aiba. At each turn he hoped to see Aiba’s face; his heart thudded against his ribs at the clink of porcelain as he passed the kitchen. He felt his heart heavy in his chest, tight and leaden like the armor that belonged to his father, wrapped in the unshed tears and unsaid words.
So he escaped to the village and wandered the streets. Perhaps that’s where he hid, maybe that’s where he was captured or died. It only tormented Sho more but it was the least he thought he deserved. He visited the shrine and spent hours in prayer: if Aiba was alive, that he was well and would come home safely and soon. If he was not, that his soul would find some rest in the after life and that he would be happy to be with his family again.
Ohno watched Nino flit about the castle, managing Aiba’s chores as well as his own. “Time won’t stop because he’s away,” he had said, matter-of-factly. Doing the work of two people, additional errands between the keep and kitchens for the samurai, seeing Jun and Sho mourn, laying blame and drowning in it, trying to be silently solid and supportive was impossible for one person.
Nino slept little the first night, napping in the main entry between greeting returned soldiers and helping the doctor treat the wounded. The next night, when there was nothing left to keep him busy, Nino retired to his room but couldn’t step through the door. He stood with his hand on the frame, staring at the tatami where Aiba’s futon would have been spread out-if he were there. He couldn’t swallow the lump his throat or draw enough breath; it was suddenly so very real.
“He’s not here,” Nino whispered when Ohno opened his door that second night. “He really isn’t here anymore and I don’t know if he’s-” His words turned into sobs and got lost in Ohno’s shoulder has he pulled Nino inside and into his arms. Aiba had always been there, always slept in their room, even when Nino hadn’t.
“I can’t sleep in that room without him,” Nino murmured, once his tears had abated. “It’s lonely.” Ohno pulled him into his futon, wrapping them both in the light blankets used in summer.
“You can always stay here, you know that,” Ohno replied, rubbing Nino’s back comfortingly.
Nino curled into Ohno’s chest, letting the samurai’s soothing touch calm him. He was silent for a long time and Ohno thought he must have fallen asleep, until he shifted and reached for Ohno’s hand.
“It was bad luck,” he said, lacing his fingers through Ohno's. “Jun and Sho-san want to go on blaming each other but it was just bad luck. Masaki knows the town so well-and if Sho-san had stayed with him, then maybe he’d be gone too. I know that, in my head.”
“...but?”
“But what if I hadn't told Jun to give up and let go? What if I hadn't made that wish? Or told them to stay? Would he still be g-gone?” Nino asked, trying not to cry again.
"Kazu..." Ohno cupped Nino's cheek gently, smearing an errant tear across his skin. "You can't think like that. You can't live in the past or change what happened. It isn't your fault; you didn't do anything wrong."
“It isn’t fair,” Nino replied. Ohno could hear the pout in his voice. “It isn’t fair that Masaki was taken. He was innocent, he never hurt anyone. I wanted him to be happy."
"And he was happy; you saw it as clearly as I did, even with his face red from crying. We don't know what's happened to him. There's still hope."
"Everyday we don't find him there's a little bit less."
"But it's still there."
"It's-I don't understand. Why-" Nino grumbled into Ohno's chest, struggling to put into words what he was feeling: being the pessimist he was, he feared the worst had happened but didn't want to believe Aiba was really and truly gone. He couldn't reconcile his logic and his emotions.
“I know how close you were to him. I know it hurts; I miss him too.”
“It isn’t fair,” Nino finished, defeated.
“I know.”
Ohno returned to the castle after the third full day of searching exhausted. It had been only a small group-Nagano, Okada, Miyake, Yamaguchi and himself-and they had gone farther afield on the north side of the castle where the forest was denser. They found a path of broken branches and crushed foliage where people, maybe two or three, had slept but the trail was cold. Whoever had been there left days ago and their tracks were soon lost in the thick underbrush and fading sunlight.
Even with the discovery of something, Yamaguchi declared that it was draining their resources to continue searching for something they would never find. Ohno knew it was a smart decision to make: if rebels fell on the castle when half of its samurai were tracking someone in the brush half a day’s walk away… He shivered to think on the consequences. They couldn’t risk weakening their defences any longer. They would search for one more day, and then turn their energies elsewhere.
He understood that it was the reasonable-safe-choice but Ohno disagreed. How could they stop looking? Ohno refused to believe Aiba was dead until they found his body. And then they could bury him properly and lay his soul, and their anxieties, to rest. He had been loyal and loving and devoted his entire life. He deserved that much; he had been as much a part of the other samurai’s lives as Ohno’s, if not more so.
It was already dark when they reached the back gate. Ohno wondered how he would tell Sho what they’d found in the woods, or even if he should. It seemed so cruel: it would get his hopes up to know that there were signs of people. And it would crush him to know that the trail was cold, there were no clues as to who had been there, and that they would not continue to search. But if he did not hear it from Ohno, it would surely be in Nagase’s next briefing.
He found Sho in one of the gardens, sitting on a stone bench, watching a pair of dragonflies flit across the surface of the moat. He wore light cotton trousers and a loose tunic in the last wave of summer heat. His hand lay limp across his lap while he cradled the gash on his upper arm with his other.
“If you keep touching it, it will take longer to heal, you know,” Ohno said, partly in jest. Sho didn’t acknowledge him as he sat down on the bench.
“What is the point of this all, Satoshi-kun?” Sho asked bitterly. “What is the point of being trained to wield a sword and then having it locked in a cupboard? How am I supposed to protect anyone?”
Ohno kept silent; he didn’t know how to respond to that question.
“I know that I am in the service of Kimura-sama. It is my job to protect and serve the daimyo. It was my father’s job and now it’s mine. And I’m supposed to put him above everything else in my life. But I can’t.”
“What do you mean, Sho-kun?”
“How can you ask someone to do that? To put one shadowy figure of a man they barely know above the most important person in their life?”
Ohno hesitated and Sho turned to look at him, waiting for an answer. “You can’t,” he responded, shaking his head.
“Do you remember what you told me before? If you had a choice?”
Ohno recalls vividly the words he said to Sho, standing in the hall after Sho’s brother-in-law’s death and the first sparks of trouble. Lovers are special. Constant. Tangible.
“I know that Nino is more important to you than Kimura-sama is. And with him gone, there is no question of what you’re going to do. And there’s no reason not to. It’ll be eleven months before he comes back, if he ever does.”
Ohno took a deep breath and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I haven’t asked Kazu yet.”
“Do you really think he would say no? He must know; everyone is making plans. I’ve been hearing whispers all day, ever since the news came of another raid to the south. It was probably a different group that the one that came here; it happened before the attack on us. A town on the sea road was completely razed to the ground. There weren’t any survivors. The messenger only arrived today when you were out searching.”
“When I was away…” Ohno felt his stomach turn. Thinking of the damage and destruction that they had narrowly avoided and that which they hadn’t and it made him feel ill. He looked at his feet and brushed dirt from his trousers. He picked at the stray pine needles clinging to his sleeve. A maid ran along the covered walkway that edged the moat, her geta clacking loudly against the wood.
“You must have found something because you won’t tell me,” Sho said in a quiet voice. “It’s okay; I’ve been preparing myself for the worst, against your advice. What did you find?”
“Nothing concrete-a few broken branches and crushed grass where it looks like people slept. We don’t know how many or when but no more than that. We couldn’t tell which way they went.”
“A dead end.”
Ohno winced at Sho’s choice of words. “We don’t know that-”
“It almost hurts less if I think he is. At least then I know where he is. It’s a place better than this.”
The maid ran passed them again, back towards the castle’s main palace, with a medical box in her hands, followed closely by Nino. Sho and Ohno watched as they two hurried inside, talking in panicked tones to each other. Ohno was already walking across the grounds before Sho could stand.
They followed two other maids running down the hall to the main genkan carrying towels and a basin of hot water. The closer they got to the front entry, the more voices they heard, shouting over each other, calling for help and the doctor, which only made them and their hearts run faster.
“One of the farmers found him in his rice paddy.”
“Is he even breathing?”
“We need to get him into a bed.”
“Where is that doctor? We need him now!”
Jun was there at the front of it all, kneeling on the packed earth floor of the genkan, leaning over the crumpled form of a young man. He had no shoes and his skin was a canvas of colours from black and purple to yellow and red. The robe he was wearing used to be green, but was now ripped and torn, sliding off his shoulder to expose a birthmark.
“Masaki!”
Sho pushed through the crowd of people, not believing his ears. His hands were visibly shaking. He’d been preparing himself for the thought of finding Aiba’s body. He hadn’t thought about what he would do if they found him alive. “Is it really him?”
Jun’s eyes snapped up to Sho’s. “Get away from him.”
Ohno saw the raw fury in them too and already grabbed one of Sho’s wrists. Sho struggled against him, wanting to see, needing to believe that it was really Aiba curled up on the floor at his feet.
“This is family business.” Jun’s tone was dark, his anger barely contained. “This has nothing to do with you, Sakurai.”
“Is it-Is he-?”
“Leave! Now.”
“Sakurai-san, please go.” Nino stepped up to him, begging him to go, pushing firmly against this chest. Ohno tugged on his arms, still careful of his injury. “We can’t help him with all these people here. We’ve got him back and I won’t let him die now.”
“…Jun-tan?”
His voice was frail and thin; he was a shadow of his normal bright self, but Aiba's voice still rang clearly in the genkan. Jun held his breath as Aiba curled his fingers loosely around the hand on his cheek.
Chapter Eleven