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Shouyou knows the minute Shinsuke comes to him about “some dumb bird crashing into the classroom” that it is the beginning of the end.
“Show me,” he commands.
The rain muffles the sound of his footsteps as he follows Shinsuke to the room in question, the dark grey sky glowering through the translucent paper of the windows. The smell of damp earth permeates the air, churning Shouyou’s already uneasy stomach.
The foreboding feeling grows the closer they get, Shinsuke’s haste and jumpiness contagious. The boy thinks himself adept at projecting a prickly shell, but his concern shines through the spines. “Shinsuke,” he says, not unkindly. “I’m sure the bird will be fine.”
He gets an aggrieved and mortified look in reply, prompting Shouyou to lay a comforting hand on his head before they enter the classroom.
As only Kotaro and Gintoki could do, they’ve transformed the site into something resembling a crime scene. Rain flecks through a circular tear in the window; beside it, ink drips like blood from Kotaro’s desk, the victim a black bird struggling on the tatami. Gintoki, nonchalant as ever, stands over it, while Kotaro flits about looking guilty; probably, Shouyou surmises, for not being able to do more.
“Sensei!” Kotaro exclaims, panicked. “I don’t know what happened! One minute I was doing my work and the next this – this bird just landed in front of me!”
The bird, as Shouyou dreaded, is a crow. Its feeble struggles send ink sliding off its body, revealing feathers black as a dead star. Kotaro’s nervous rambling fades into static as Shouyou studies every line, every feather, already knowing where it is from. The bird’s eye tracks his movement with an almost human intelligence.
“Allow me,” he murmurs, to the crow as much as his students. They step aside, and the crow quiets. It does not protest as his hands encircle its small, trembling body, pressing and prodding its hollow bones. Utsuro had touched his crows with a cruelty Shouyou has disowned, and something like confusion lights the crow’s black eyes.
Shouyou holds its gaze reassuringly. I would not have you put down.
“Well,” he eventually says, “it seems our crow here had a run in with one of the local cats. The injuries aren’t too deep, and we can treat them easily.”
“Thank goodness,” Kotaro blurts out.
“We?” Shinsuke echoes, scowling.
Shouyou will not be with them much longer, and he intends to impart as much as he can before he goes. “Yes,” he smiles. “It’s quite the task to nurse a living creature back to full health. Wouldn’t you agree it’s a burden better shared?”
Shinsuke grumbles and Gintoki snickers; Kotaro resolutely nods, and Shouyou knows they will do him proud.
***
The setting sun throws shadows across the courtyard as Sensei shows them how to bathe and dress the bird’s wounds. Kotaro watches his careful, deliberate movements, and wonders aloud if there is anything their teacher doesn’t know how to do.
“It’s very similar to caring for errant children like you,” Shouyou says. “Always getting into accidents and scrapes. I once had a child who ran straight into danger against his better judgement.” His smile is soft.
Darkness falls and Shouyou hands the crow to Katsura, who as the first disciple trusted with such a monumental task, cradles it close to his body heat. If Sensei treats the bird like one of his own children, then he will too. He has a capital-R responsibility to this crow that crashed into his desk, now squirming against him and cawing weakly.
“You’re gonna squeeze it to death, Zura,” says Gintoki.
“How many times do I have to tell you, it’s --”
As if sensing his mounting irritation, the crow caws louder, its movements becoming wilder. Hurriedly, Katsura shushes it as best he can, but not before shooting his friend a dirty look. “It’s probably just as upset as me that you never call me by my actual name.”
Takasugi interjects with an eye-roll. “It’s a wild animal, idiot. Why would it care what you think?”
“Maybe we should name it, then. Wouldn’t you like that?” The question Katsura directs at the now-calm crow in his arms, its eye fixed, almost sceptically, on him.
“What’s the point?” Takasugi snorts. “We’re never going to see it again after its wing heals.”
“I like Birdbrain,” suggests Gintoki.
“That’s stupid.”
“Don’t be so rude!” Katsura hisses, covering where he thinks the crow’s ears would be. What was the name of the child Shouyou had mentioned? It would be a fitting tribute. Sensei rarely brings up his past so candidly.
Inside, Katsura sets up a makeshift nest of towels for their unnamed crow while his fellow disciples continue bickering over the wisdom of bestowing a name on it.
“You don’t want Birdbrain, do you?” The crow makes a sound like a disapproving croak. “Yeah, thought not.” He tries a series of other names that get the same reaction. Disheartened, he resolves to ask Sensei tomorrow when a name crystallises in his head, bright as day.
“Obo-chan,” Katsura says, looking to the crow for approval. The others are staring at him, finally silent. He repeats it, name loud and clear. “Obo-chan.”
The crow ruffles its feathers and settles into the nest without a sound.
***
Takasugi would never admit to having wanted the crow to live, and he isn’t about to start pretending he likes looking after it. He only does it because of Shouyou, and because the quicker it heals, the quicker it will leave their lives. No need to become dangerously attached.
The name, much to his chagrin, sticks.
Shouyou had seemed to hesitate when they told him, and Takasugi almost thought he would reprimand them their foolishness (as he would expect!), but he only said, “A good name. Just remember we will part ways with Obo-chan eventually, and we don’t want him to feel the loss any more than we do.”
Obviously, the others hadn’t heard the warning. Can you change Obo-chan’s bandages? Katsura will ask; it’s your turn to feed Obo-chan, Gintoki says.
They’ve taken to giving “Obo-chan” baths, and as the crow regains its strength it makes bath time playtime instead. “Stop that!” Takasugi growls, making a half-hearted grab for the crow that drenches his already sopping kimono in a wave of water. Thank the heavens the sun is out, hot and dry.
“I see you’re taking good care of Obo-chan,” Sensei says as he passes by.
Even their teacher tosses the name about. Ridiculous. Pointless. Obo-chan--the crow--has nothing to do with becoming stronger. Unless it can teach him how to do his katas, it’s useless. Shouyou might think their taking care of it will cultivate their respect for life or some such nonsense, but it’s just damn distracting.
A playful caw is all the warning he gets before he’s doused in the last of the water, soaking his kimono through. Dumbfounded and dripping wet, Takasugi stares at the bird. It ruffles its sleek black feathers, cocks its head at him. His skin feels cool and his cheeks warm. “Obo-chan!” he yells, too furious to say anything else.
“Oi, what’s the fuss?” comes a smug silver voice, absolutely the last thing Takasugi needs. “Pff,” Gintoki snickers as he appears around the corner, “has someone had a little accident?”
“Don’t be so tasteless.” Takasugi’s fists curl, blood rising, but before he can move, Obo-chan has already made straight for Gintoki’s hair, cawing madly. Gintoki falls back, yelling and cursing loud enough to wake the dead.
It’s the most absurd thing Takasugi has ever seen: a boy wrestling a crow less than half his size and losing. Obo-chan tugs at the silver threads, squawking in -- maybe excitement? Does he think he can start making a nest from that unruly mess? A bubble of terrible, guilty fondness bursts in his chest. Birdbrains, the both of them.
“Aren’t you gonna help?!”
“Nope.” Only a few damp patches remain on his kimono, the sun tickling his skin; he feels almost buoyant enough to laugh. Obo-chan can stay a little longer if he keeps this up.
***
Gintoki comes face-to-beak with Obo-chan in the kitchens on a balmy afternoon when most normal birds would be out digging for worms. His first instinct is to grab and skewer it. Crows are wily birds and he’d been worse off in many a tug of war over food scraps when he’d still roamed corpse-strewn battlefields. They always carried with them that stench of death, that insufferable beady-eyed knowingness.
Obo-chan looks no different to them, doesn’t act any different. The claw he has on the box of donuts speaks volumes. It’s so daring Gintoki has to give him grudging credit, right before he waggles his eyebrows. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want your thieving to get out.”
Obo-chan gives a low caw that Gintoki takes to mean, same to you.
Well, he does have a point. “Let’s make a deal,” he says, and remembers in time that Obo-chan is a crow before he can stick out his hand.
They escape to the tallest tree in the courtyard, its branches raking across the clear blue cathedral of the heavens. Obo-chan disappears into the leaves with a few quick wingbeats, a sign that his date of his departure is drawing nearer. It won’t be long before Gintoki can go back to stealing donuts without competition, but it’s not an entirely welcome thought.
They split the six between them agreeably, and in a flash of generosity, Gintoki even breaks Obo-chan’s donuts up into smaller pieces. “You better enjoy this,” he mutters around a mouthful. “Can’t expect this hospitality in the wild.”
Shouyou finds them in the evening, sky flushing orange and pink and bird calls echoing. His voice carries clearly through the foliage. “Gintoki, perhaps you’d like to explain yourself.”
Obo-chan immediately falls silent, and Gintoki rolls his eyes. “It’s not my fault if Obo-chan was hungry,” he calls. “A crow’s gotta eat, you know.”
“A crow does not eat donuts.”
“This one does. Rare breed of donut-eating crow.”
“Obo-chan is not our pet,” Shouyou admonishes.
“Caw,” Obo-chan adds, hopping atop Gintoki’s head. This time, he sees less inclined to make a nest of his hair and might, if Gintoki is reading him correctly, even be refuting Shouyou to some extent. Maybe he’s claiming the humans as his pets.
Shouyou’s eyes are strangely guarded. “You two,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
He shakes his head, and in the half-light Gintoki could swear his smile looks pained. Sensei isn’t that mad about the donuts, is he? It’s just the way the light falls, the deepening shadows. Things at this time of day are never quite as they seem.
“Don’t be late in for dinner, Gintoki.”
***
Shouyou knows it is Obo-chan’s last day when he sees the crow sunbathing in the courtyard as the students go through their katas, head cocked to one side and wings spread open on a patch of grass, so black they seem to swallow the sunlight.
The moon that night nears perfect roundness, a cycle about to come full circle.
The courtyard is washed in silver; trees, stones and the walls faded versions of their day-time colour. Crickets sing from hidden places. Shouyou admires the moon awhile, its bright halo pushing back the dark. Shadows grow only with the play of light; they are not meant to have lives of their own, and he knows the next sun he sees will likely be his last. The void that is Utsuro has waited long enough for a chance to escape.
Obo-chan doesn’t stir when Shouyou sits beside his nest, moved outside to help ease his transition back to the wild. “You’re going to tell them I’m here, aren’t you?” he asks, without accusation or bitterness. Moonlight spills across his lap and the trees exhale in a passing breeze.
“I must admit I will miss these quiet moments before dawn.” When even he, a shadow of a monster, could be alive and wild. Obo-chan sleeps on.
“Of all the names they could have chosen,” he murmurs, and shakes his head. “Will they never cease to amaze me?”
He suspects they have yet more ways of surprising him that he won’t live to see, and it pulls at his heart like a tide. “If you fly all the way to the heavens, could you tell him I’m sorry? I’ll be joining him soon.”
Come morning, Shouyou watches Obo-chan disappear, the Naraku spy bearing half the name of a dead child he failed, and hopes he’ll find his way back home.