Part One: Chapter 8

Chapter 8



"Tomorrow I will be taking Ayame and Hana into the forest for the next week," Kaede announced at dinner one day. At that Kurenai looked up with curious eyes at her mistress, but Yoshimo, who really had no interest in what Kaede was doing, kept eating. He glanced briefly over at Hiruma to see what his reaction was, but could read nothing of interest on the man's scarred face.

"Why not me?" Kurenai asked, her voice rising into a plaintive whine. "I never get to go anywhere anymore!"

Kaede gave her apprentice an even look and said, "Because you have not progressed as far in your studies as they have," she replied. "When you develop your ability further I will take you on more training exercises."

Yoshimo thought, I wish Hiruma-san would've tried that with me instead of dragging me off and throwing me into things I might not have been able to handle.

"Aside from that," Kaede went on, smiling gently at the girl, "someone needs to make sure Hiruma-san and Yoshimo-kun eat well while we are gone. I trust you to take care of them."

Hiruma snorted at that and said, "I can take care of myself, woman, but leave the brat here if you want, I don't give a damn."

Kurenai nodded, but she still didn't seem convinced. She turned puppy-eyes on Yoshimo, as if asking him to argue her case for her, but he gave her a helpless shrug and tried to concentrate on his food. Since she had been hanging around him so much, and he been being nice to her and not shooing her away like he did the other girls, Kurenai seemed to have made a monumental leap in logic and come to think that he was her best friend. He didn't mind intervening on her behalf in little things, like when she got into teasing contests with Ayame and Hana and started to lose; she would head into it full force and confidant, but somewhere along the way she would get flustered, and since the other girls didn't play fair Yoshimo sometimes had to step in and call the whole proceeding to a halt before they started throwing spells at one another. It had happened once, and Yoshimo was the one who had to replant the rose bushes that had been destroyed in the process. Still, because he stood up for her on those occasions, even though it was for a more or less selfish reason, Kurenai thought it meant she could always rely on him to protect her or argue for her. He would have to set her straight eventually.






The next day Kaede, Ayame and Hana were gone before the rest of the household was even awake. Kurenai spent an inconsolable afternoon watching Yoshimo train, and Hiruma rambled around somewhere in the house, going about the difficult task of trying to look busy while actually doing nothing at all. The old man did stop out often enough to make it impossible for Yoshimo to slack off, but the boy guessed that was more to make him miserable than an actual interest in his attention to his training.

To say the least, things had been strained between apprentice and master lately. Hiruma was, Yoshimo knew, not the sort of man to forgive a transgression, and he figured Hiruma would always hold his insolence against him, and in the mean time work him to the bone just to make sure everyone involved knew who was in charge.

It was during that first day that Kaede was gone that Yoshimo realized that in the past month he had come to hate his new master almost as much as he had hated his father. Vengeance, he realized, was Hiruma's passion. He made money off the revenge of others, and thoroughly enjoyed getting revenge of his own, especially when he could draw it out like he had been over the incident with the merchant. There was no desire to teach in Hiruma's punishments, no learning to be had, just Hiruma's own childish need to make Yoshimo suffer for crossing him. Every single on of Hiruma's smug smirks filled Yoshimo with anger, engendering in him a deep desire to turn the tables on his master and see how Hiruma liked being on the receiving end of someone's vengeance, but he knew that the most cunning plans he could come up with would, in application, do nothing more than gain him more of Hiruma's wrath, so he did nothing.

"What're you doing that for?" Kurenai asked him. The two of them were in the garden, and she was watching from a good distance away, where he had put her to keep her out of his light, while he worked laboriously to put together a tiny, but complex mechanism that was, according to Hiruma, supposed to be set in the latch of a box, or a door so that when someone opened it they would set off the trigger and the device would inject a small dose of very potent poison or sedative into their finger or hand. It was not one of the most physically strenuous tasks, but it did tax his mind and the pieces were so small that fitting them together properly was giving him a headache.

"Because Hiruma-san told me to," he muttered grumpily.

"But what for?" the girl persisted. "I mean, what does it do?"

Yoshimo sighed and explained the purpose of the device to her. "I'm supposed to learn how to put this unholy little device together and then how to put it into every type of lock or latch I know of -and knowing Hiruma-san, probably those I don't know of too- and how to do it so that it will be undetectable to the unwary observer." He threw the thing into the box Hiruma had handed it to him in and sat back with his arms crossed defiantly over his chest. "I'd bet that he left some of the pieces somewhere else just to frustrate me," he growled. "He wants to see me fail."

Kurenai laughed. "Maybe if you worked harder you would do better."

"Maybe if you spent more time studying whatever it is that you study and less bothering me you could have gone with Kaede-san like you wanted to," Yoshimo snapped.

Kurenai just looked at him with round eyes for a moment, and then she got up and fled into the house, throwing him a hurt look as she left. Yoshimo felt guilty for a moment, but then decided that he had no reason to. If she hadn't been able to tell he was in a bad mood then snapping at her would get her to learn how to read him, and if she noticed then she damn well deserved a few hurt feelings for purposefully provoking him. Besides, it felt better to have yelled at someone, as opposed to being quietly obedient and patient.

He looked at the tiny trap in its box and frowned fiercely. Angry defiance grew within him until it burst out. He threw the box against the garden wall and the pieces of the device scattered into unknown corners under the ground cover. It was high time he had some respite from this endless stupidity, he decided.

Yoshimo left the yard by the front gate and spent the rest of his afternoon strolling through the city, Hiruma's wrath be damned.






Night had fallen by the time Yoshimo returned. He felt much better for having left the sometimes claustrophobic confines of Hiruma's house and gardens, and if Hiruma berated him for neglecting his training he could show him the coins he had filched during his outing. He had spent a little bit of course, some on a bowl of miso soup and baked fish, but Hiruma didn't have to know that. He also pocketed a tiny carved stone figurine of a cat as a gift of apology to Kurenai, half because he was starting to feel a little bad for yelling at her and half just because he could. Hiruma didn't have to know about that either.

He entered the house without announcing his return, pausing at the entrance to kick off his sandals before going into the kitchen to see if there was anything left over from dinner. The soup and fish had been hours ago, and he was hungry again. Sadly, it looked like Kurenai hadn't even made dinner, much less set aside any left-overs for him. That struck him as odd even despite their argument.

He stopped and listened, but heard nothing. That was also odd admittedly there were only the three of them in the house, but though Hiruma was as quiet as a cat, Kurenai was not, unless she and the other girls were plotting something, and even then the occasional giggle could be heard. Feeling a little ill at ease, Yoshimo left the kitchen warily and walked through the various rooms of the house. He noticed now that he was paying attention that all the paper lamps were unlit, which was another unusual thing.

Hiruma was nowhere in the house, but he did find Kurenai in the bedroom she shared with the Ayame and Hana. He heard her making soft, strange noises before he opened the door, and when he entered the room he found her curled up on her futon naked, her face pressed into her hands. She didn't turn to look at him, or make any motion to cover herself, and he realized then that she was crying.

"Eh..." he mumbled uncomfortably. He cleared his throat. "Eh... Kurenai... Kurenai-chan, are you all right?"

She didn't move, but she whimpered softly, and her crying got louder. Afraid that something had happened, that perhaps Hiruma had gone out looking for him and that in their absence someone had robbed the house and hurt Kurenai, he fetched one of the lamps and used a hot coal from the banked cook-fire to light it. He took the lamp back with him to Kurenai's room and knelt down next to her, shining the light over her to see if she was hurt and where. With the aid of the lamp he saw that she had been bleeding, there was blood on her futon, but found no obvious wounds, and he was hesitant to touch her in order to examine her more carefully, what with her being naked and all.

He set the lamp down and threw the crumpled kimono he found lying by the futon over her body. "Kurenai-chan," he said, using the diminutive suffix on her, knowing that she, in her childlike way, preferred it, "are you hurt?" He saw her nod her head ever so slightly. "I'll go get a doctor," he decided. He started to get up but Kurenai grabbed his wrist.

"No!" she said sharply.

Yoshimo was disturbed and confused. "But you're hurt..."

"No!"

"When Hiruma-san gets back he'll order me to do it anyway. Kaede-san would kill him if you died while she was gone."

"No! Don't tell Kaede-sama, don't tell anyone."

"But..."

"No!" She screamed it at him, which made him sit back on his heels. Kurenai wasn't the type to scream, especially not at him.

Something was drastically wrong here. Drastically, terribly wrong.

And suddenly he realized what it was.

He felt queasy for a moment, and angry with himself that he hadn't figured it out sooner.

Kaede had always been so careful, and Yoshimo had somehow mistaken her caution for jealousy. She always watched Hiruma like a hawk. She didn't even trust her own apprentices to be alone with him for more than a few minutes. He realized now that it wasn't to keep them away from Hiruma, but rather to keep Hiruma away from them.

He stared at Kurenai, shivering and crying and clenched his fists. Suddenly he stood up. As he left the room, he was already formulating a plan.