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He used to drink to make it easier.
It never actually got easier, but at the time it always felt like medicine of a sort, as if the next sip might be the one to wipe everything away, and he’d wake up in the morning a different person in a different, better life.
Nowadays, he doesn’t want it to be easier. He wants to remember every detail, because that is the right and honorable thing to do, and he may not have any honor left but Masa seems to think he does, seems to hold him to the same standards of goodness and respectability as everyone else.
Yaichi is so tired of disappointing him.
And yet despite it all, he still drinks. Old habits, maybe. It doesn’t help that every tavern he visits feels wrong, too cramped or too bright, and so he finds himself wandering the back streets of each town they pass through, searching for a place better than the last.
This one is not better than the last. The sake tastes off, its flavor heavy on his tongue, and the warmth that he was hoping for is absent altogether. There’s a woman drinking alone at the table in the corner, but her eyes are too wide and her lips are too thin, with colour in her cheeks from the drink. And the men a few tables down are aggravatingly loud, their voices and laughter carrying all the way across the room.
“You seen that fellow who’s staying at the inn?” one of them is saying. “Looks like a samurai, doesn’t he? Certainly walks like one, all high and mighty.”
“Doesn’t have any swords, though,” the other says. “Y’think he’s just a rich boy trying to act tough?”
“Hah. If he’s a rich boy he’s come to the wrong place, I’ll tell you that.” Yaichi can hear the smirk in the man’s voice. “He might carry himself all proud, but that’s a soft face he’s got. Probably drop everything and run away scared with the right encouragement, if you catch my meaning.”
The other man laughs cruelly. “Might not even have so much as a knife on him. Easy pickings is what I – ”
In one swift movement, Yaichi pulls his own knife from his sleeve and brings it down on their table with a quiet ‘thunk,’ the blade sinking deep into the soft old wood. The two men peer up at him in astonishment, and Yaichi blinks. He doesn’t remember crossing the room, or even getting up from his seat. As if he’d been in some sort of daze.
“He might not,” Yaichi says, with an unfeeling smile. “But as you can see, I do. And I would be more than happy to fight both of you in his place, if you’re so inclined.”
“Haa?” The burlier of the two men scowls at him, initial surprise fading quickly into irritation. “The hell are you?”
“No one important,” Yaichi says with a shrug. He removes his knife from the table and holds it lazily between his fingers, trailing a thumb along the hilt. “I just have a… vested interest in that man’s wellbeing, so to speak. So how about it? Would you care to go through me first?”
Yaichi knows he doesn’t strike a terribly imposing figure. His time spent in prison still weighs on him, even after two months of freedom, his face gaunt and his wrists as thin as twigs. There’s a sunken hollowness to his eyes that he can’t quite seem to shake. But he’ll fight with everything left of him, if it comes to that. Even being beaten within an inch of his life sounds appealing, if it means keeping them away from Masa. (Masa can take care of himself, of course. But all Yaichi wants, in this moment, is to be the one who protects. The one who carries that burden. Just this once and he’ll be satisfied.)
The two men rise from their seats, exchanging a glance as they both reach inside their yukata, hands closing around concealed weapons.
“Yaichi,” a familiar voice says, and the tension vanishes in an instant as all three of them turn to look. Masa is standing in the doorway, a faint frown curving his lips. (Oh, Yaichi thinks. There it is again. That awful sense of having let him down.)
Masa approaches them and instantly drops into a deep bow. “I am very sorry, sirs,” he says. He reaches up to put a hand on the nape of Yaichi’s neck, forcing him to bow his head as well, and Yaichi allows it with minimal resistance. Masa’s palm is warm and calloused, a reminder of how many times that hand has gripped a sword. “He’s had too much to drink tonight. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Please excuse his rudeness, and allow me to pay your tab as an apology.”
For a moment they stand there in silence, until one of the men clears his throat awkwardly. “Well, that’s… I s’pose I could let it slide. We’ve all made mistakes after a few cups of sake. Haven’t we?” He looks over at his friend, who hesitates before nodding in agreement. The opportunistic scheming of earlier is gone as quick as it came. Even the lowest of people, it seems, are not immune to Masa’s calming effect.
On the walk back to the inn, Yaichi trails a few steps behind Masa, studying the gentle slope of his shoulders. Those men were right about one thing. He does hold himself with a certain, samurai-like dignity – so different from when Yaichi first met him. Funny, Yaichi thinks, that only now, with his swords gone and his title stripped away, would Masa start to look the part.
It’s eerily quiet in this little village. Quiet and dark. The stars seem so much brighter than they were in Edo.
“Why did you pick a fight with those men?” Masa asks.
Yaichi finds himself smiling. “Who knows?” he says.
Masa sighs softly. He stops and turns back to look at him, face cast half in shadow. “What would you have done, Yaichi? Fought them then and there, two against one? Whatever they said to provoke you… Was it really worth being reckless?”
Yaichi raises an eyebrow. “A lecture about recklessness from you? Isn’t that a tad hypocritical?” If Masa had even a shred of common sense he would still be in Edo, and Yaichi would still be rotting away in that dank prison cell.
To Masa’s credit, he laughs – a sound Yaichi is still unused to hearing, and so tries his best to memorize, on the off chance he never hears it again. “Perhaps,” he says. “But is it really recklessness if you don’t regret it later?”
.
.
Masa is writing a letter to his brother.
“Who knows if it will reach him, things being how they are,” he says. “And it’s not as if he can reply. But…”
But a part of him still feels responsible, no matter how many miles they put between themselves and Masa’s home.
Yaichi wants to scoff. They’ve given you up, he wants to say. Why can’t you do the same? But he supposes it would be laughable, for him to say such a thing. Him, who still answers to the name of a dead man. A name he doesn’t deserve. How could he, in all good conscience, advise someone else to cut ties with the past? And so he says nothing, and instead leans his weight against Masa’s back, resting his chin on his shoulder. Masa’s writing is neat, as expected, each brushstroke precise, and in the candlelight there’s something lovely about the sheen of the still-wet ink.
“It’s difficult to write with you like this, you know,” Masa says, smiling faintly.
“Good,” Yaichi murmurs. He turns to press his face against the crook of Masa’s neck, breathing in the smell of sweat and dust and summer. His lips brush against Masa’s skin, and Masa promptly leans away.
“Yaichi,” he says warningly. He takes him by the shoulders and pushes him back, firm yet gentle.
(“It’s not proper,” he said not two weeks ago. “To do those things outside of marriage.”
“That’s your objection?” Yaichi had said with a disbelieving laugh, all the while wondering: What do you think this is?)
“Ah, you’re no fun,” Yaichi sighs, settling for sitting back to back, the warmth of Masa’s skin tangible even through their clothing. It feels nice. The scars on Yaichi’s back still ache from time to time. Sometimes he hears the crack of the switch in his dreams, and wakes up in a cold sweat, thinking that he is still there. He’s not entirely sure he’s not. Maybe this – this journey, this moment, Masa’s weight solid and comforting against his own – is all a hallucination of his deprived, exhausted mind.
But no, he thinks, remembering back to the bridge, to Masa waiting for him with a smile. No. He’s not nearly sentimental enough to come up with this.
“You should get some rest,” Masa is saying. “We should leave by sunrise tomorrow if we want to make it to Azuchi by evening.”
Azuchi. Yaichi conjures up a map of sorts in his mind, tracing the path from here to there, and feels the corner of his mouth twitch. Masa certainly shows no sign of wavering from the plan.
“How far do you plan to go, exactly? Until we reach the sea? Or farther than that? To China? To all those,” he makes a nebulous gesture with his hand, “places beyond?”
He can feel Masa shift as he ‘hmm’s thoughtfully.
“I think,” he says, “wherever the Five Leaves happen to meet again. That is where we’ll stay.”
.
.
Yaichi wakes in the middle of the night to find Masa’s arm slung around his waist, breath hot against his neck. This happens often enough that it could be called a habit, though he seems to do it unintentionally, reaching out in his sleep for something or someone to cling on to. Yaichi isn’t the only one who lost things in Edo. Masa is simply less obvious about it.
Yaichi shakes his head, then, as if clear away the remnants of whatever nightmare woke him, and closes his eyes once more.
It will help to be well-rested, he thinks.
Tomorrow they go west.