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“Hurry up, slowpoke, or it’ll be dark before we get there! All those sweets are really starting to slow you down, huh?”
Asugi might have been able to argue with that if he hadn’t been shoving another sweet bun in his mouth at that very moment—ah Hell, he was gonna do it anyway.
“Says the guy who just polished off an entire roast chicken.”
“Meat is energy, Asugi! Energy for training. And for walking. So, let’s get a move on!”
Asugi stuck his tongue out at Shiro’s back.
“I saw that!”
“Wasn’t trying to hide it!”
Boy, would his father tan his hide if he heard him talking to his precious Lord Ryoma’s son like that! Then again, Saizo had hardly spent any time around Shiro, definitely not enough to get a good taste of how obnoxious he could be. Maybe even a stick in the mud like him would understand after some extended exposure.
Asugi took another bite of his bun and turned his gaze upwards to the sky. He was walking at a meandering pace not only because he knew it would annoy Shiro, but also because he wasn’t in any particular hurry to get anywhere. When he wasn’t working, he liked to take things slow, enjoy the scenery…
Then again, running around across the countryside with Shiro would probably be considered ‘work’. He was a ‘Saizo’, technically, and he was ‘escorting’ the prince of Hoshido. That was how his father would see it. Shiro didn’t, praise the Gods. He just didn’t want to wander around on his own.
They walked on through meandering fields and gently rolling hills. Some of the farmers gave them odd looks—a sloppy-dressed spearman in noble’s armor taking a casual hike with a ninja, which was obvious enough even if he wasn’t wearing his wrist blades or other full trappings. Most of them just kept their heads down and ignored them.
Eventually, Shiro stopped. He pulled a map out of his chest plate and unfolded it, staring at it like it was written in a foreign language. He turned it sideways, then upside down, all with a comically puzzled look on his face.
“Don’t tell me: we’re lost.”
“Can you really be lost if you don’t really have a destination?” Shiro gave him a bright smile, like he was being so smart and philosophical by saying something like that. Asugi pinched and stretched his cheek as a response. “H-hey! Leggo!”
“Are. We. Lost?”
“Y-yes!” He let go of Shiro’s cheek, and the prince started massaging the area he’d pinched. “But we can’t be that far off course. We were definitely heading in the right direction from the last village. We’ll just ask someone for directions and be back on track in no time flat.”
“If you say so.” Asugi had his doubts. But it didn’t bother him that much, really. He was just along for the ride. It did floor him that the prince of Hoshido could be such an airhead sometimes, though…
The rice paddies and fields led them to a village, where a small market was going on in the town square; beggars lined up along the edges to ask for coin or food from the more generous of their neighbors, children ran around between the legs of adults, and local merchants bartered with out-of-town traders to swap produce and fish for less easily accessible goods.
“See? Betcha someone here knows exactly how to get where we’re going,” Shiro said. “No problem at all.”
“Look, I’m gonna take a look around. Just go ask for directions, and let me know when you’ve gotten us out of the hole you dug us into.” Asugi folded his arms behind his head and walked off, leaving Shiro to wander the market alone—another thing his dad would probably kill him for. But his dad wasn’t there.
He looked through the various stands, with nothing catching his eye. He wasn’t browsing to actually browse—just to kill time while letting Shiro flounder. He was looking over a selection of salted fish when Shiro came jogging up to him.
“Haha… so, Asugi, it’s a funny story…” He was rubbing the back of his neck, which was never a good sign. “Turns out we might have gotten a liiiiittle turned around when we stopped for lunch.”
He offered him a sweet bun, like the ones he’d been munching on since they’d made that lunch stop—obviously a peace offering, so Asugi knew it was gonna be bad.
“How turned around?” he asked as he took a big bite.
“Weeeeell… according to that guy selling ceramics, we’re about a day and a half’s march from the harbour.”
Asugi immediately choked on his sweet bun.
“A day and a half?!” He scowled at Shiro once he’d cleared his airways and wiped crumbs from his face. “We were supposed to be there before nightfall! How’d we manage to get so lost?!”
“H-hey—it ain’t my fault! Not entirely…” He looked embarrassed, but Asugi wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “The map’s outdated. Guess it’s from before the war, and there’s a bunch of landmarks that don’t exist, not to mention the towns and places themselves have had to be rebuilt. And we would be able to get there in time… if there was still a bridge where the map said there was one.”
“Hmph. So, you didn’t get us lost by not following the map—you just brought a crappy map with us.”
“C’mon, Asugi. It’s not that big a deal.” Shiro laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not like we’ve got a deadline. Think of it like an adventure! And the salesman sold me a better map, so we’ll for sure be headed the right way this time.”
“…let’s head out, then.” Ah Hell. He was the one who’d agreed to follow Shiro on this Gods forsaken trek across Hoshido; he’d made his bed, and now he had to lie in it, as his mother would say.
“That’s the spirit!” Shiro clapped him on the back instead of the shoulder. (Asugi was just glad he didn’t knock the wind out of him this time. It was embarrassing for a ninja to get the breath knocked out of him by his liege, even if Shiro was built like a bull.) “C’mon, let’s grab some provisions and head out. No telling if we’re gonna be anywhere near a place to get something to eat.”
“And with you… we’d be in real trouble if that happened.” Asugi pulled a sucker out of his pocket, removed the wax paper wrapped around it to keep it clean, and popped it in his mouth.
It was going to be a long, long day.
They were lucky that night. Or luckier than they had been so far, at least. Just as it was getting too dark to continue travelling, and the two of them were starting to get tired, they came across a village. It was no more than a handful of families, but there was a house on the edge of the village that didn’t have anyone living in it, and they were happy to let them spend the night in exchange for some of the ceramics Shiro had bought off the merchant who had given them the map.
Shiro made some obnoxious stretching noises before flopping down on the floor. They were left to sleep on the wooden floor with nothing more than a couple of threadbare blankets, but it was still better than sleeping under a tree. Asugi threw his blanket onto the floor next to him.
“Hey, Asugi—got any of those sweet buns left?”
“Yeah, plenty—and after you’ve been teasing me non-stop about eating too many sweets, you’re not getting a single one.” Asugi stuck his tongue out at Shiro. “Besides, you just ate enough salt fish to feed a small army.”
“We’ve been walking all day, bud! Need to refuel. No idea how you run off nothing but sugar.” Shiro propped himself up sideways on his elbow, resting his head in his hand. Asugi remained on the floor, his hands folded behind his head.
“Hey, I eat plenty of meat and veggies. Just not by the trough full, like you do.” Asugi reached out to give Shiro a punch in the arm. Shiro just laughed.
“So—how’re you feeling about this whole adventure thing?”
Asugi shrugged as he let his eyes slide shut. “Eh, it’s not so bad. Can think of a few other people I’d rather travel across the country with, but…” He gave Shiro a small grin so the prince would know he was joking.
“Still mad at me for getting us lost?”
“Like I care,” Asugi scoffed. “I’ve got nowhere else to be. But you’re still an idiot.”
“And yet you still follow me around.”
“Like I’ve got a choice!”
Asugi rolled over onto his side, mimicking Shiro’s pose so the two were looking each other in the eye. Shiro reached out to grab his scarf and yanked him forward by it, pulling him into a kiss.
“You know, when we get to the harbor, I bet we can find a ship heading somewhere new and exciting. We don’t have to head back home quite yet.”
Asugi snorted, then reached up to pinch Shiro’s cheek again.
“Your dad would kill you,” he said. “And mine would kill me, then bring me back just so he can kill me again.”
“Even if it’s a ‘diplomatic’ mission?” Shiro wrapped his arm around Asugi’s waist and tugged him close; Asugi pulled his blanket with him, since neither of them was large enough to cover both of them, if Shiro felt like being clingy.
“Yeah, they’ll buy that for about fives minutes. They might be blind sometimes, but they’re not dumb.” His life would have been so much easier that way. “But hey… maybe if we told ‘em we wanted to help fix up everything that got busted during the war, they might let us out of their sight for a little while longer.”
“You know… that’s not a half bad idea.”
Neither of them wanted to go back home—not yet, at least. Asugi knew he didn’t want to deal with all his dad’s talk of legacies and he was sure Shiro was the same way. Out here, the only thing either of them had to worry about was finding a dry place to sleep, finding something to eat, and not getting lost—and they didn’t really worry about the last one too much.
“Besides,” Shiro continued, tilting his head so their foreheads were rested against each other. “Seems like they could really use the help.”
“You know,” Asugi said, his voice a tired sigh as he let his eyes slide shut (ignoring the annoying way Shiro was breathing warmly against him—just this once). “You might make a half-decent King yet.”
“Not for a long time, I hope. We’ve still got plenty of adventures ahead of us.”