“Why don’t you get her inked on you, then?”
“Maybe I will.”
“And maybe I’ll find myself a boy who doesn’t paint himself for life while smoke-drunk.”
“Mmm.” Jurou smiled, heavy lids over dark, knowing eyes. “Somehow I doubt that.”
Yoshi looked him up and down, smiled in return, crooked and beautiful.
“Me too.”
“I love you, you know.”
They were crouched atop a three-story tenement, waiting for the game to begin again. The moon was entirely hidden behind a veil of exhaust, shadows tumbling thick upon the cobbles below. It was the kind of dark that left you feeling alone, even if you were skin to skin. The kind of dark that turned your eyes inward, since there was nothing to see without.
“Hmm?” Yoshi was perched upon the gutter’s edge, eyelashes fluttering, like some carrion bird awaiting supper. “D’you say?”
If it was brighter, Jurou could have seen it from up here, even all the way from Downside. The estates clustered on the hills east of the Daimyo’s palace, trying desperately to keep their nose above the stink-line, the noble-born inside averting their eyes from the squalor below, all their pretty gardens turning gray. His father’s house amongst them, high ceilings and gardens of smooth stone where he and his brother Kazuya played as children. His father watching, potbelly swelling his Kitsune-silk kimono (only the finest), bald pate gleaming with sweat as he fretted for his money and honor and name.
“Family,” he would say. “There is nothing more important in this world. Show me a man’s friends, I will show you the man. But show me a man’s sons, I will show you his future.”
They were trained, he and Kazuya, from the day they could walk. To stand amongst Kigen’s nobility, to inherit the family estates; the vast farmlands their father had bought from struggling farmers at fire-sale prices, now worked by gaijin slaves. Jurou had been betrothed when he was thirteen, a daughter of a family ally, a pact to seal friendship in blood. And to his lasting surprise, Jurou found himself utterly smitten, struck to the core by dark beautiful eyes and full lips and smooth, sweet curves. Not his betrothed, of course, poor thing.
Her brother.
It had been brief, and blinding, and beautiful. But it ended as it was always going to—with discovery. Not by a servant or his bride to be, but by his brother; little Kazuya stumbling across them in the sweat-soaked shadows of the garden pavilion. And the boy had run quick as silver, singing like a nightingale, clever enough at ten years old to know a sole heir would be wealthier than a second-born son. And his father had grown pale, rent his kimono in anguish, and cursed Jurou as a bastard, a wretch, a disgrace.
“What did I do,” he’d cried, “to deserve the shame of a son such as you?”
Jurou pictured him now; the image that superseded all others, overshadowing the smiling hugs on naming days, the pride at family dinners. Spittle on his lips, katana held high as he chased Jurou from his house, vowing to kill him if his shadow ever darkened the doorstep again.
“No blood of mine,” he’d screamed.
“No son of mine.”
And there on the rooftop, waiting for the game to begin again, Jurou brushed at his eyes, stared in the direction of the house he’d grown up in. Now so distant, so empty, a hollow ache that clung to the inside of his ribs and pulled the breath from his lungs.
Dark night. Darker thoughts.
“I said I love you,” he whispered, to no one in particular.
A strong arm around his shoulders.
Lips on his cheek.
A crooked smile, close enough for him to see every perfect detail, no matter how dark it got. Here. Now. All that mattered.
Yoshi.
“I love you too, Princess.”
There were four of them, broad as doorways, moving quick despite their bulk. Shappo pulled low over their features, creeping down alleys and dashing across streets, hearts all aflutter. Yoshi watched them through glittering black eyes, yellow teeth in his gums, hide crawling with blood-fat fleas. He ran with them down the narrow cracks between buildings, the labyrinth of Downside streets, the tangled knot of crushed brick and bloody gravel and graffiti scrawled in letters ten feet high.
ARASHI-NO-ODORIKO COMES.
“Should send that bitch flowers.” He smiled, eyelids near to closing. “These boys wouldn’t be half as rich without Little Miss Thunder Tiger.”
He watched the yakuza darting closer, shadows within shadows, fat satchels and war clubs in dirty hands. Moving across the rooftops to intercept. Rats to the cat. Flies to the spider.
“How do, gentlemen?”
The iron-thrower hissed as Yoshi engaged the pressure, finger kissing trigger, arm extended and pointing death at the lead yakuza’s head. The men skidded to a halt, fourth bumping into third, narrowed eyes and kerchiefed faces. They looked up at Yoshi, crouched on the gutter at the alley’s end, tipping his split-brimmed hat in their general direction.
“You,” the second one hissed.
“Looks like.” Yoshi smiled crooked, aimed the iron-thrower between the talkative one’s eyes. “If you’d do me the honor of tossing those satchels, my little sponge cakes, you can all be on your way back home to mother. Kiss her on the mouth for me, hear?”
Jurou stepped around the corner, same alley’s mouth the yakuza had entered by. He upended a sack with a flourish, contents ringing brightly upon broken concrete. They were “crow’s-feet”; two lengths of sharpened wire, braided together and bent so that one of the four points always faced upward. A hundred of them now covered the deck between the yakuza and retreat. Yoshi and his iron-thrower hovered above their advance.
Jurou stepped back with his roofing-nail war club, watching the gangsters close. He didn’t bother minding the street: Yoshi had other eyes in play.
What you seeing, Daken?
… no guards down. moving riverside to look up …
“Don’t be mistaking me for the type who asks twice, Scorpion Children.” Yoshi waved the iron-thrower. “The iron. Count of five.”
“You know who we are then?”
The lead yakuza pulled his kerchief down, tipped back his bowl-shaped hat. He was a wide, red-faced fellow, freshly shaved and sweaty, his ugly smile missing four front teeth.
Yoshi’s hands were stone. “Four…”
“We’re gonna get you, you know.”
“Three…”
“A little shit with big coin isn’t hard to find in streets this narrow.”
“Two…”
The yakuza relented, aimed his gap-toothed grin in Yoshi’s direction, hefted his satchel with fat, stubby fingers. And then a frown crossed his face, one eyebrow creeping skyward as he looked around in alarm.
The roof beneath Yoshi began to vibrate, a subtle tremor at first, increasing in intensity. He thought for a moment the house might be collapsing, brickwork giving way beneath his weight. But then he realized the yakuza were feeling it too; a shivering rumble reaching up through the earth, as if the whole island were moving beneath their feet.
“What the hells?” Jurou called out in alarm.
… what is that?…
Yoshi crouched low, one hand on the eave to steady himself. He watched mortar dust drifting from the walls, listened to the fragile tune of splintering glass.
Another earthquake.
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tremor subsided. Stillness fell over Kigen, angry voices and wailing babies splitting the still of the predawn dark. Yoshi collected his wits, turned back to the yakuza. Still, it happened so quickly, he almost didn’t catch it.