II
I decided that, after Ohagi put me to bed, I would kill my father.
I weighed my choices. There was stabbing, but that was too much mess. There was drowning, but I would have to lead him someplace. There was poison, but that would seem too out of the ordinary.
I decided on suffocation. I had it all planned out. Nakayama-kun had tried to do this to me once. I would slip a leaf over his dribbling mouth, and then hit a pressure point in his back to make him suck the leaf into his throat. Then, he would choke and die...all on his own. Although, I didn't know where the pressure point was. I figured that I would find it eventually.
I grabbed a leaf from the maple tree outside- not a dead one, but loaded with water, so that it wouldn't decompose in his saliva. Like an assassin, I crept down the hallways and through the corridors. Finally, I reached his room. He, however, wasn't sleeping.
To my horror, my father was sitting at his desk, and painting calligraphy on a scroll.
“What do you want, Jin?” my father asked as I was speechless. “Well?”
Realizing that I could not kill him by surprise, I would have to do it by a knife to the throat. I dashed for the dagger under his futon, but before it was in my hand, I felt a smack to the back of my head.
“What do you think you're doing?” he demanded.
The tears welled up in my eyes when he slammed me against the wall, and unsheathed his katana. It was a beautiful sword, with a glimmering metal and sharp edge. It was better than my bamboo sword, but I figured I could beat him with technique alone. What a fool I was.
My father let out an icy laugh as I snatched my bamboo sword in the corner and readied my stance. He failed to acknowledge that in a lot of ways, I was like him. I'd die before I would admit it, but he had a lot of pride. You could tell just from the way I held the shinai that I was the son of a samurai. I would die before I admitted defeat.
“Did you really think that you would beat a katana with a shinai?”
My father walked me back to my room. He then put the sword by my doorway, as if he were baiting me.
*
In the middle of the night, I heard a terrifying call of surprise- it was my father's voice.
“Father?” I jolted upward from my bed.
At first, I thought that he had it coming, but then my chest felt like it was touching the floor. I'd realized later that the emotion was guilt. I noticed that my father had left his sword there, at the corner of the door. As a reflex, I grabbed it and started to run where the shriek had came from. When I was at the doorway, however, I stopped in my tracks.
An assassin was trying to kill my father.
As I stood in the doorway, it was difficult to tell who was going to survive. All I had as indicators were the candlelight and the sounds of their kiai- battle cries. However, my heart was pounding faster than either of their's- they couldn't possibly know what it meant to sit by and watch a battle of life and death. My father once told me that I should never help fight his battles- it was dishonorable, disrespectful and slowed him down.
I wasn't the only one who was feeling completely useless- my father was struggling to dodge the sword cuts. My father was without a sword, but I needed to get his sword in my hands to him, somehow, without him noticing me. Then, my father knocked the sword out of the shinobi's hands, and they were both wrestling for it.
I don't know what compelled me to do so, but I started to scream.
“Father!” I hollered.
My father and the shinobi were both staring at me, or perhaps the sword- the only thing of value.
“Give me the sword, Jin!” my father yelled.
When the shinobi took off his mask, that changed my entire perception of the battle. He did that to change my thoughts, and my actions. He took off his mask to make the whole scene not black and white, but grey. When he peeled off that black piece of cloth, my eyes widened in shock, and hurt.
The shinobi was Ohagi.
“Little One!”
His usually calm and gentle voice was now frantic and rigid. There was a sense of urgency- he needed the sword too. For a short while, I was trapped between where my loyalties lay. If I chose my father, I would never see Ohagi again. If I chose Ohagi, my father would die. But there wasn't any time to hesitate.
“Jin!” My father cried out in desperation.
It made my stomach flip over to see my father in such agony, but I'd already made my decision. I'd thrown the sword before he'd said my name hopelessly, and I couldn't change my mind now. Ohagi had caught the sword and unsheathed it. I looked away.
Immediately after, Ohagi grabbed my wrist and tugged me into the hallway.
“We have to leave!” Ohagi said urgently. “Now!”
There was a hint of sternness in his voice, an element that I'd never heard in him before. As I walked out of the doorway, I didn't dare look back at the corpse. I pushed away all of the ideas that I might have regretted my decision. I'd stuffed them into the closet of my mind.
“Where are we going?”
Ohagi didn't answer me. He shoved a pack in my hands, almost nastily, and made me carry it. He kept a tight grip on my wrist as he dragged me along. It hurt, but I didn't try to resist him. It almost seemed as though, from his grip, he changed overnight. He always used to hold my hand, not my wrist, and his grip was always as gentle as his voice. Now, things were different. Perhaps it was because of his agitation for getting caught, but I didn't think that was the case.
There were two horses outside of the house, and they both had packs of supplies on their saddles. One of the horses, as though it were blind, was tied to the healthier-looking one. The leader horse was a full-grown horse, while the other was a pony. Ohagi mounted the leader horse, and I finally understood why the foul was tied up. It was so that I couldn't run away. In all honesty, if I had known where we were going, I wouldn't have considered it. Ohagi had been my caretaker since I was a toddler, and I trusted him.
“Well?”
Ohagi had said that almost coldly, but not as coldly as my father would have said it. When the memory of my father streaked across the sky of my thoughts, I pushed it away and mounted the pony as Ohagi had instructed.
And we were gone.
*
I never realized how experienced Ohagi really was. My ignorance had once made me think that I was less innocent than my former servant, but once I took the time to think, I saw how scarred he was. Ohagi's burn mark was still making his way up his arm, and it seemed to worsen. The mark seemed to be personified like a flame- I could have sworn that it wasn't that big before. Fire, as long as it has something to burn, snakes its way up the wood, leaving lasting impressions.
Ohagi had long, black hair that was tied back, but not in a samurai top-knot. As the wind blew the snow into our direction, it made his image blurred, but I could still see his heartache as if it were a mirage. The way his hair swayed back and forth seemed almost like a pendulum- the wind had a specific rhythm.
I could hear his iron hum, so dense and low, singing a song. It was to the tune of a song that I heard fishermen sing. That gave me a clue as to who Ohagi was, where he came from. He probably came from a small fishing village, though I wasn't completely sure, and I would never know. His voice sang me into a daze, as he used to do when I was a restless, young child. My head was bobbing up and down as I tried to stay awake. Ohagi was still humming the tune, painting an illusion in my mind. It was as if the snowy wonderland were a desert, and I, desperate for replenishment, saw an oasis. Ohagi was so close, but yet so far away at the same time. Water was not what I'd been deprived of for so long, but affection.
“Say, Ohagi,” I began foolishly. “Does this mean that you're my father now?”
Ohagi was silent for a moment, but then he looked back with an angry eye. “Don't be stupid.”
For a moment, I could see that the fire in Ohagi's spirit was flaring, though perhaps from agitation. I opened my mouth to apologize, but Ohagi's new voice beat me into silence.
“And another thing- stop calling me 'Ohagi'. I am no longer your servant, and you will not treat me as such.”
From there, I was shaking. I didn't dare let Ohagi see that I was afraid, though, because I had too much pride. I could let him think that it was the cold of winter that made me tremble.
“I'm sorry Oh-” I stopped myself. “If I can't call you 'Ohagi', then what is your real name?”
“Takamura Ryuichi. But you will refer to me as 'shishou'- master.”
I knew what that word meant. 'Shishou' did not infer that I was his servant, but his student. Ohagi was going to teach me martial arts. At first I couldn't believe it- it was my dream to be as strong as my late father, or even Nakayama-kun. I was wondering when I was going to start training, and I was very eager at the time. However, when I actually did start to train with Ohagi, it was expected that I would crumble under the pressure. I would always think of this 'Shishou', even in the future, as 'Ohagi'. I liked to think of him as, not my servant, but my friend.
Suddenly, Ohagi dismounted the horse, and instructed me to do the same. He was taking off of the things on the saddle, and putting them in his pack. Almost afraid of asking Ohagi another question, I dared to. He took the bits out of the horses' mouths, and set them free.
“Shishou,” I began. “Why are we leaving the horses?”
Ohagi looked back at me apologetically, as if he were sorry for the new tension between us. He was aware of the rift, as I was, but he knew that it was necessary to break the ties with me as a father. He knew that while having the fatherly component in our relations, he could never truly teach me swordsmanship.
“We're letting them loose to cover our trail. The samurai clan will most likely be onto us soon.”
I thought that Ohagi would reach over and hold my wrist, but he didn't. Instead, he kept his hands at his sides, and started to hum again. The song was one that I'd recognized- I might have heard Ohagi sing it before. I didn't want to make him stop singing, but, like any other child, I wanted my questions answered.
“Shishou, where are you from?”
Ohagi turned to me, and with sad eyes, said, “I come from the Kii Province in Nankaido. We're heading there now.”
I wanted to know why he was in such agony. Perhaps because he could feel my supposed pain about him killing my father. Surprisingly enough, I didn't feel anything now.
Suddenly, my head felt light, and I was on the ground. The snow was in my mouth, and I was panting so that I could get the oxygen running through my body. The warmth in my body was leaving me, and I could feel two strong arms reach around me. I squirmed around in Ohagi's arms, protesting his help.
“Little One,” Ohagi's voice sounded like his old self again. “Forget your ego for now. I'll protect you.”
And he promised. I never forgot that day, and the affection that he showed me. I carried that memory all throughout my life, even after Ohagi died.
More emotion.
