Chapter Text
“Thanks to you, Mori-dono,” comes a low, gravelly voice, “we can dedicate more resources to food production.”
A flash of teeth, and a silken voice responds with, “It’s the least we can do for you, Fukuzawa-dono.”
After a brief exchange of strained, though polite farewell greetings, the man in an earthy green rises to leave, gesturing silently at his stony-faced second whose features had a flavor of foreign blood. Most people had never seen hair so fair. Fukuzawa pauses only a moment in the doorway, before leaving without a word.
Still, this amuses Mori deeply.
Fukuzawa, despite his unfriendly exterior complete with a mask of stone, was truly a sentimental man. “Chuuya-kun, I know you’re there,” the lord says.
From a shadow behind the screen steps forth another foreign-looking man, with hair as red as the vivid Island sunsets. “I don’t recall when he stopped looking back,” Chuuya says.
A faint, coy smile plays across Mori’s face, touched with something like nostalgia. “Fukuzawa-dono and I have long since accepted that we’ve parted ways,” he jabs in return, looking upon his general with an odd mixture of admiration and scrutiny. “Something you could stand to learn.”
At the latter clause, Chuuya struggles to keep his displeasure off his face.
“However, we were older than you are now when we finally did so,” Mori assures him, as if to appease his hotheaded general. “What have you to report?”
“It appears the rabid dog has made a reappearance,” Chuuya replies with an air of irritated resignation. “I lost half a platoon.”
“And Hirotsu?”
“Two. Maybe more.”
With a put-upon sigh, Mori gestures for Chuuya to sit in a grand flourishing of a rich blue sleeve patterned with an unsettling maroon, too dark to be blood, but unsettling nonetheless. “Have a cup of tea.”
Obediently, Chuuya sits and a faceless, nameless maid scampers in with a pot of tea. His blue eyes never leave his lord as he lifts his cup.
Mori is often called a snake, but Chuuya finds a spider to suit him better. The lord doesn’t lift a finger until his plans demand it. And Chuuya, his obedient dog, ensures that he won’t need to.
Mori doesn’t touch his tea, nor does he continue the half-written sentence from his notes with Fukuzawa, which Chuuya half-reads upside down. A considerable feat, considering Mori’s handwriting was illegible to most when right side up.
Despite being able to read the notes, Chuuya is unable to glean any meaning from them. For the most part, they are columns of numbers and figures, occasionally labelled with imitation characters written in Mori’s doctor scrawl.
It was Mori that had taught him to read, many years ago, but Chuuya is fairly certain his notes were not in words.
Frankly, Chuuya thinks to himself, it wouldn’t be surprising. Such cunning suits the Lord. At once unscrupulous and diligent.
Mori laughs softly, snapping Chuuya back to his tea. “Don’t think too much, Chuuya-kun, it’s unseemly on you,” he says, “The girls won’t like the way you scrunch your face up like that.”
“Says the one who is in his forties and yet unmarried,” Chuuya hears himself snap back. “Didn’t your fiancée run away?”
Instead of getting upset like Chuuya would, and perhaps how Chuuya expects his lord would, Mori laughs. “Well, first she threatened me with a sword, until I recommended her to the medical school and allowed her to run to Fukuzawa-dono when she finished with that.”
Chuuya is, as he often finds himself, struck with how much of a buffoon his lord acts. Spider indeed. If he hadn’t been raised by the man laughing across the table, he might actually believe the act. He remembers vaguely the girl, around his age, who somehow managed to learn the sword well enough that Chuuya had become worried she might assassinate Mori.
“-Randou nearly beheaded her when she barged in, if memory serves.”
This too Chuuya recalls, with even less clarity than the girl herself. The mention of his other mentor, however, twists Chuuya’s heart in a way he hadn’t anticipated. “Must you?” he blurts, knowing full well that the Lord does as the Lord wishes, only deriving amusement from the suffering of others.
“Ah, did I strike a nerve, Chuuya-kun?” Mori asks with a wicked smile, “My apologies.”
Chuuya has to finish his tea to avoid throwing it in his lord’s smug face.
He narrows his eyes as his lord pours the next round of tea himself. “You want me to go to the temple this time, don’t you?”
Mori is all innocence as he takes a delicate sip from his cup, but Chuuya knows better. It’s impossible to miss the affectionate mockery in his lord’s eyes.
Chuuya scowls as he takes up his fresh tea. “Are you afraid that the naga has left you another child and you don’t want Hirotsu traumatizing it?”
Mori chokes slightly, as if not expecting the comment.
“Truly Chuuya,” he scolds, “Who taught you such attitude?”
Chuuya scoffs into his drink. “Who indeed, my lord.”
However, the deal is sealed. The Lord does as the Lord wishes, and as his faithful general, Chuuya must allow him to chase whatever fancy strikes him.
~
Kunikida watches in reverent silence as his lord rides only a stride or two ahead of him, consumed in an old, familiar contemplation.
He is always like this after visiting with Mori, stony faced as ever, yet troubled. Kunikida himself trusts Mori-dono even less than his lord does, but his advice only ever goes so far. Ranpo for one seems unconcerned about their continued association with him, so Kunikida’s protests only go a short way.
Still, the lord is contemplative in such a way that Kunikida only ever sees after meetings such as these. He often finds himself wondering about what occupies his lord’s mind when he’s like this. Still, if Fukuzawa doesn’t wish to share, he won’t. Kunikida is usually appreciative of his master’s demeanor, but still finds himself occasionally irritated at the lord’s habit of saying exactly as much as needs to be said. Which often turns out to be nothing at all.
Ranpo, however, has not inherited this trait from their mentor.
He, flanked by Atsushi and a maid- Hinami, if Kunikida isn’t mistaken- rushes down to greet them as they near the front gates of Fukuzawa’s impressive estate. As Fukuzawa dismounts, Ranpo bounces up to him with a broad grin, like a small child, so close that he’s nearly pressed into the front of Fukuzawa’s clothes. Fukuzawa, expression neutral with perhaps some softening around the eyes, places a hand on his shoulder. “Ranpo.”
“Did you bring me something? Not to say I think Mori-dono’s sweets are terribly good, compared to ours, but he’s got a nice pastry shop there somewhere?”
Without another word, Fukuzawa draws a small bag from a sleeve and offers it to his protégé. With the scrap of ceremony reserved only for his adoptive father, Ranpo nearly tears the fine silk in his enthusiasm. “These look like those candies that the Triad imports!”
Kunikida sees the ghost of smile that flickers across his lord’s face, and from Atsushi’s expression a polite distance away, the latter has caught it too. Kunikida steps away from the lord and Ranpo, addressing Atsushi. “Where is that miserable Dazai? I need his report.”
The poor boy seems to shrink a little at the very mention of paperwork, and Kunikida is well aware that Dazai and Ranpo both treat him as a secretary when Kunikida isn’t there to ensure that they do their work themselves. With a sigh, he shakes his head. “I’ll deal with Dazai. Anything I must know now?” Perhaps a secretary for each of them would be a worthwhile investment.
Atsushi tips his head a little, as if thinking. “Kenji-kun, that is, Miyazawa-san asked to meet with you to deliver his own reports, but nothing else.”
“I’ll schedule that myself. Hinami, come.”
Kunikida silently thanks the gods that it is, in fact Hinami that accompanied Ranpo and Atsushi to greet them. That would have been embarrassing. He prided himself in knowing his entire staff personally, after all. They deserved the dignity of being called by name, just as anyone else did.
Kunikida sighs, laying Fukuzawa’s notes across his desk. Sparse, as they always are, and Mori-dono’s handwriting must have rubbed off a bit on Fukuzawa at some point before Kunikida came into his employ, because deciphering what little was written might take hours. More often than not, Fukuzawa would only write impressions and ideas, anyway, and not what had actually taken place, leaving that particular job to Kunikida instead.
On an impulse, he sweeps them aside and smooths “Dazai’s” reports flat, already feeling a headache setting in. At least Atsushi’s handwriting is neat.
Dazai perks up as a soft tap sounds at his door. That must be sake. “Come in.” He runs a bandaged hand through his hair, as if to mess it up further.
He finds himself disappointed to see his personal maid holding the tray with a steaming bottle of sake and one of the hand painted cups. Her flat, expressionless eyes seem to ask if he’s disappointed to see her.
“Don’t look at me like that, Saya. You and I both dislike your position equally,” Dazai assures her.
“Thank goodness,” she replies, sounding almost sarcastic in her monotone deadpan. “What would I ever do if you were to get attached to me?”
“Ne, Saya.” Dazai watches the steam curl as she pours him a cup. “Do you ever speak like a normal human being?”
Her carefully constructed mask cracks a little, as a look of offense appears and vanishes fast enough that any less watchful man would miss it.
“This is my normal voice,” she replies. Is Dazai imagining things, or does the retort come back two notes higher? “Oh, and Kunikida-sama asked me to inform you that he will admonish you first thing tomorrow morning over forcing Nakajima-sama to write your reports.” She sets the bottle down and exits with a bow.
Still, the dread of an angry Kunikida breaking down his door at the crack of dawn does not dampen the experience of a good bottle of sake, Dazai thinks, draining his cup, before choking.
Ever-spiteful, it seems, Saya managed to find the very edge of Dazai’s heat tolerance with this bottle. The prickling burning in his mouth mocks him silently as she prefers to.
Still, he endures because a maid isn’t going to stop him from drinking good sake.
Ranpo is sitting to Fukuzawa’s right with a candy in his mouth when Kunikida is admitted to the lord’s study. Kunikida greets them politely and delivers his notes as he always does. “I believe,” he tells Fukuzawa, “that it would be a reasonable investment to hire a secretary for Ranpo-san and Dazai.”
Ranpo tilts his head at Kunikida, sucking on his candy thoughtfully. “No,” he decides, “You’ve forgotten to account for the time needed to train a secretary. Atsushi-kun is already familiar with the way we would prefer our notes to be presented.”
Kunikida silently curses Ranpo for being right, as he always is.
“And you do like how neat Atsushi-kun’s handwriting is, do you not?”
Kunikida can’t keep the scowl off his face. “At least I do my work,” he grumbles. “I often feel I don’t receive anything in return for all the slack I pick up.”
Something in the air shifts, and Kunikida realizes he’s pinned under the full force of Ranpo’s brilliant green eyes. Fukuzawa too, inspects him, seemingly tired after explaining this so often.
“Is your life payment enough?” Ranpo asks. Fukuzawa, Kunikida notices, doesn’t admonish him for his indelicacy. Despite having had this conversation at least once a moon, Kunikida never finds himself satisfied with their reasoning.
“Perhaps you’d like to hear what it’s like to be me for a change,” Ranpo says, and Kunikida’s attention is dragged back to Ranpo’s striking eyes. “I, the talentless son of the Silver Wolf, am a safeguard for his subordinates. My life is the way it is to protect you and Dazai. I will bear an empty title, an empty inheritance. My father’s servants are more skilled in almost every area than I am. They, younger than me, are famous for things that are expected of the son of a lord like ours.” Ranpo’s voice is unexpectedly steady, as if he’s already come to terms with his position. “To pick on Atsushi-kun once more, he is the only one in living memory that has been able to hold a candle to my father in the art of the sword. I know what they say about me,” he continues, “I don’t even need to hear it. They say of me what I say of myself. I will never be able to uphold my father’s reputation when I finally inherit the title and the lands. That falls to you and to Dazai, and to Junichirou-san and Kenji-kun.”
Some small part of Kunikida already knows this from all the times Ranpo and Fukuzawa have justified naming Ranpo to him for his own protection, but somehow he never managed to acknowledge it to himself. Guilt feels like the weight of the sky on his chest. He read somewhere that in the West, the lords and the Church enjoyed slowly crushing people to death in a pit under a set of doors by stacking boulders on top of the one marked for death.
Ranpo’s jewel-toned gaze is steady, unwavering, unyielding as he watches Kunikida’s reaction. “You understand, then? I may wear the crown, but I do not rule the lands.”
“Dismissed. Rest tomorrow.” Fukuzawa’s voice, as it always does, carries a note of finality that suits his imposing silence.
Kunikida’s body feels too heavy as he bows and exits.
Hurried footsteps beside him are the only thing that alerts him to Kirako’s presence. “Does Kunikida-sama require anything this evening?”
“No, thank you, Kirako. Take this evening off.”
Ranpo watches Kunikida leave, rolling the round candy around in his mouth. “Atsushi-kun and I are going tomorrow,” he says as his father accepts tea from a nervous-looking maid.
“Take Saya with you.”
“Of course. Poor girl deserves a day off sometimes, doesn’t she?”
“It was your idea,” Fukuzawa replies with perhaps a hint of an accusation.
Ranpo shrugs, but doesn’t deny it. “I’d rather those two put their energies into bothering each other than anyone else. It seems they’re the only two that can handle one another.” The temple is a bit of a trek, but he supposes favorable relations with the Triad are worth the exercise.
Fukuzawa doesn’t reply.
Ranpo rolls the candy around his mouth again, before biting into it. While he was wary of the Triad, the candies they imported had a special place in his heart. He allows himself to enjoy the tart cherry-flavored syrup that floods his mouth from the sweet shell. He looks down at the two completed lists in front of him.
“Well, I’m off to bed, then. Don’t stay up too late,” he says once his candy is gone.