"Kyoto Interlude" by Omasu Oniwaban by The Archivist

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Yahiko woke up aching. His face and jaw felt puffy and throbbed in unison. He was sitting on a rough wooden floor in what looked like a storage shed of some sort. His arms were bound tightly to his side, the ropes biting into his chest and biceps. More rope bound his feet together at the ankles, forcing his anklebones together uncomfortably. His head felt as if it were about to split open at the seams.

He could hear a burst of raucous laughter from outside the shed, and he pressed his ear against the rough wood planks of the shed’s wall in an attempt to hear more.

“So we’re set for tomorrow, then?” It was the voice of the man who’d captured him. There was a swishing sound like liquid sloshing around in a jug.

“Yeah, I can take you and your cargo to Osaka tomorrow night. I know these canals like the back of my hand.” The other voice was lower, with an Osakan accent.

“And this sea captain friend of yours at the Osaka docks, he won’t ask too many questions, right?”

The Osakan laughed and the sound and smell of a sake jug being shared between the two men came to Yahiko’s ears through the thin planking.

“Pay him what you’re paying me, and he’ll gut the kid and dump him out to sea for you too if you’d like.”

“No!” Yahiko’s captor burst out. “I’ve got other plans for him.”

“Calm down,” growled the Osakan. “Just be sure he’s gagged and rolled up in a carpet when I come for you tomorrow. It’s not far to the canal dock, but we’ll still have to carry him a ways. Once you’re both on the fishing boat in the open seas it won’t matter.”

“I’ll do my part,” promised the first man. “Just don’t you be late.”

The Osakan grunted and moved away, his heavy footsteps growing fainter.

The sound of liquid sloshing inside the sake jug came again, and Yahiko could hear swallowing sounds, then there was a ‘clunk’ that startled him as the man fell against the wall of the shed.

Swallowing, Yahiko tried to think through the haze of pain in his head. If the guy who’d kidnapped him was drunk, then maybe he had a chance of escaping. He shifted his weight, and pulled his feet closer to his bottom and pressed his back against the wall. Pushing against the planks for leverage, he tried to get up. He got his rear about two inches off the ground when a wave of dizziness and nausea came over him with such force that he dropped back down with a grunt.

Now it felt like someone was driving an iron spike through his brain. Maybe getting up wasn’t such a good idea.

Eventually the pain lessened, and Yahiko let his head fall back gently against the wood planks at his back. The man, whoever he was, was still drinking at intervals as he puttered around the outside of the shed, moving things against the walls and muttering indistinctly.

The muttering grew in volume and intensity, and at last the man opened the shed door with such force that it rattled.

The sudden rush of light filling the shed made Yahiko wince. The man, who was at first an indistinct black form, began to take shape as he marched through the dust motes which swirled in the air, illuminated by the late afternoon sun.

Yahiko had slept away the night and most of the next day. He only had a second to realize this when his head snapped to the side, as his captor’s hand came down hard against his face in a powerful slap.

“Uhn.” Yahiko couldn’t help the grunt of anguish when the already injured right side of his face hit the wall. He pulled his head weakly back to center and blinked up at the man leaning forward to stare down at him.

His captor was anything but impressive. He was a thin man, unshaven, middle-aged with grey hair at his temples, and spindly legs set widespread apart and protruding beneath a plain grey kimono. Thrust into the obi belt at his waist was a gun.

The man was of average height, maybe a head taller than Yahiko, with a gaunt face that would have been ordinary if not for the hateful expression on it. He held his jug of sake in his left hand so tightly that his knuckles were white.

Yahiko could smell the sake on the man’s breath as the drunk leaned over to speak to him. “Bet you never thought you’d see me again, did you? But I saw you first, walking down the street here in Kyoto like you owned the place.”

“Who are you?” It was unnerving, to hear his usually loud and normal sounding voice come out in a ragged whisper.

The man’s face convulsed in rage. “Don’t play stupid with me, boy.”

Yahiko’s eyes narrowed. He’d been bashed into a wall, tied up, and confronted by a guy who smelled like a sake distillery. Suddenly angry, he gritted his teeth against the pain he knew would come from the effort, and yelled, “I don’t know you! Get that through your thick head!”

He was already wincing at the redoubled pain of his headache when the man swung his hand up by his shoulder in preparation. Yahiko tensed up, waiting for the blow, but the man never completed the downward swing. Instead, he narrowed his bleary, bloodshot eyes at Yahiko.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” he asked incredulously. “You ruined my life and you don’t even remember it.”

Panting hard against the blazing pain behind his eyes, Yahiko answered. “I’ve never seen you before, mister.”

The man pulled back and snorted.

“Yes you have. Years ago, on Sanjo Bridge in Edo you picked my pocket. I lived in that city all my life, I knew what a pickpocket felt like, and when your hand slipped into my kimono sleeve I knew exactly what you were up to, but when I checked my coins they were still there so I let it go. I didn’t realize until later that you hadn’t taken something out, you’d put something in. It was a letter from a Yakuza boss named Tanishi saying that I’d taken a bribe from them. When I got to work, the cops were waiting for me because of an ‘anonymous tip’. They searched me, found the letter, and I was fired from work that same day. I was disgraced. My fiancee’s family banned me from their house. I couldn’t see Chiyo to tell her it wasn’t true. They married her off to someone else. No one would hire me because they all thought I was on the take. And it’s your fault; you did this to me. Now you’re coming back to Edo with me to confess to my old employer. At long last I can clear my name and you and Tanishi are going to jail. That bastard is going to pay at last.”

Yahiko stared, openmouthed, at the man. His eyes shone with a sort of frantic exultation that had nothing to do with the sake he’d consumed.

“You’re crazy,” he whispered. “Tanishi is dead. He was killed years ago. Yeah, I used to work for his Yakuza organization when I was a kid, but I don’t anymore. Tanishi’s dead.” Yahiko stated it again. “You can’t get revenge from a dead man.”

The man’s mouth twisted, then hardened into a straight line. He leaned over Yahiko, grabbed the collar of his yellow gi, and shouted, “I don’t care if he’s dead, you’re still going to Edo to clear my name.”

He shook Yahiko, then dropped him back against the wall and threw his sake jug to the floor where it broke into pieces, spilling the pungent liquor on the floor. The man stared down at his lost sake for a moment, then stormed out, shutting and bolting the shed door behind him.

It took all Yahiko’s concentration to avoid throwing up after his head stopped ringing from the shaking he’d got. Sighing, he let his chin drop and tried to gather his thoughts as his stomach roiled and protested.

He remembered the job now, because it was rare that Tanishi ordered a specific victim to be robbed. He just wanted Yahiko out picking as many pockets as possible, the more the better, but that day he’d called Yahiko in for special instructions.

Tanishi’s underlings showed Yahiko a drawing of a man, told him what bridge he used to get home, and handed him a piece of folded paper to put in the guy’s kimono sleeve. Yahiko thought it was weird, but did as he was told. He’d learned not to ask questions. Questions led to beatings, and he’d already been beaten enough to be wary of Tanishi’s crew. He never found out what happened to his victim until today.

Soon after that, he’d picked the pocket of a certain red headed swordsman, and his life changed forever because of it.

Kenshin.

What would Kenshin think of him now? Trussed up like a package for shipping, too weak to stand up on his own. He was a disgrace to his samurai lineage. Worst of all, was what Tsubame would think of him. How could he protect her? How could he ever look her in the face and tell her he loved her and wanted to be with her forever if he couldn’t even protect himself from a middle-aged crazy man? Did he really deserve a girl like her anyhow? He thought back to the decision he’d made. When he got home, he was going to tell Tsubame how he felt about her.

The security guard’s words came back to him, ‘Just tell her how you feel about her. Women like hearing that more than they like hearing about what you’ve done for them.’ Maybe so, but Yahiko had to do this for himself, for his self-respect. He wasn’t going back to Tokyo in ropes, he’d come to Tsubame as a free man.

“I’m getting out of here,” Yahiko whispered to himself. “I’m getting out of here and I’m going home to Tsubame, no matter what it takes.”

Ignoring his pain, he moved his rear end along the floor, until his feet made contact with one of the broken pieces of the sake jug. It was just cheap pottery, and the shards weren’t even very sharp, but it was the only cutting edge in the shed, and Yahiko wasn’t about to let it go to waste. Bringing his bound feet up then over, he set his ankles down on the chunk of pottery and began moving the ropes encompassing them back and forth along it.

“For Tsubame,” he whispered again, and scraped harder against the pottery shard.

o-o-o

It was getting dark. Kenshin and Shimada searched the whole day, tracing and retracing every possible route between the Aiyoa and Nishihonganji Temple. There was nothing. The last person to see Yahiko was a lantern vendor who said he’d seen the young man stop to look at his wares, but as he hadn’t bought anything, the vendor hadn’t paid much attention.

Tired and footsore, they stopped at a noodle vendor’s stall for dinner.

Kenshin lowered his head and reverently inhaled the steam from his bowl, then set to work with his chopsticks. It was years since he’d been a wanderer, but being on his feet all day walking brought back the memory of a time when he’d been footsore every day, and when each meal was a blessing, not something to be taken for granted.

Shimada gave a sound that was half laugh, half grunt. Kenshin looked over at him inquiringly.

“The way you sigh over your noodles reminds me of someone I knew in the Shinsengumi. Soba noodles were his favorite food.”

Kenshin slurped the trailing noodles from his last bite into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed before responding. Very few shinsengumi members had survived the revolution. “You said ‘were’. Is this person deceased?” he asked delicately, not wanting to bring sadness to the man who was giving up his free time and obviously willing to miss a night’s work as well to help find Yahiko.

Shimada gave a short bark of laughter. “Not that one. It’d take more than the combined forces of Choshu and Satsuma to bring him down. He still lives in Kyoto, in a different district. He went into the police force after the war from what I heard, but now he’s in private security like me. Or maybe it’s just a cover, you never can tell with old spies like him.”

“Oro?” Kenshin muttered around a mouthful of noodles. Old spies? Police force? Could Shimada possibly mean…?

“His name’s Saitoh. I heard you two crossed swords a couple of times, back in the Bakumatsu. The way you’re inhaling those noodles reminds me of him.”

Kenshin choked.

“Hey, you alright?” Shimada began to slap Kenshin on the back as he coughed and swallowed convulsively.

“Shimada-san!” A street urchin ran up to Shimada, distracting him from his efforts.

Kenshin managed to get himself under control and dropped his chopsticks into his bowl as he turned to look at the child.

Dirty feet, dirty yukata with a tattered edge, an untidy mop of badly trimmed hair, and hard eyes on the lookout for a weakness to exploit, this was a child of the streets. From the various bulges in the yukata folded over his chest, he’d evidently had some success already. He was obviously a pickpocket, as Yahiko had once been.

Skidding to a halt, the kid tugged on Shimada’s haori coat. “The boss man says he heard there’s a canal boat captain in a bar by the Takano-gawa Canal who’s bragging about the money he’s getting for transporting some kid to Osaka. He said to come and tell you.”

Shimada reached into his gi sleeve and flipped the kid a coin.

The urchin grabbed it out of the air, gave a mirthless grin, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Looks like Miwaki came through after all,” Shimada said ponderously, eyes tracing the urchin’s retreat between the people walking the streets returning home or on their way to spend their money on nighttime amusements.

Kenshin allowed his gaze to follow Shimada’s, and saw the boy bump ‘accidentally’ into a slightly drunk pedestrian, then disappear into an alley. The drunk tottered on.

“That boy…” Kenshin began softly.

Shimada gave a sharp sigh and shoved away from the noodle vendor’s counter. “He’s one of Miwaki’s kids. I’ve had to run him off the Temple grounds a couple of times.” He turned a tired, sad face to Kenshin. “He’s the best pickpocket Miwaki has, and he knows it.” Shimada sighed again. “You can’t save them all, you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

You couldn’t save every street kid, every lost soul, but Yahiko had been saved from the short brutish life of a Yakuza underling. Whatever it cost, Kenshin would save him again, as many times as he needed it.

“Let’s go.”

Slipping off his stool, Kenshin allowed Shimada to lead the way through the darkening streets.

o-o-o

The man came into the shed once more, a couple of hours later, bearing a bowl of miso soup. He still looked a bit worse for wear, but there was no sake smell on his breath as he knelt by Yahiko and held the bowl to his mouth to let him drink.

“Thanks, mister.” Yahiko muttered grudgingly. He kept his legs out in front of him, extended over the pottery shards, hiding them.

“Oh shut up,” growled the man. His eyes were still bloodshot, and his gaunt face was thrown into sharp relief by the light of the sunset coming in through the open door of the shed. The unforgiving sun picked out the hollows under his eyes and the wrinkles beginning to trace sharp trenches between his nose and mouth.

Curious, Yahiko glanced out the open door and saw a long yard with a vegetable garden on one side of a straight dirt path, and a graveled expanse on the other. It was all utilitarian, no decoration or beauty in it, and it was bordered on each side by a bamboo fence. At the end of the long yard was a small one-story structure, a house.

“If you’re thinking of yelling for help, forget it,” the man told Yahiko. “There’s an abandoned warehouse on one side of us, and nothing but weeds and the canal on the other. There’s no one around to hear you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of yelling!” Yahiko told him indignantly. “I was just…uh…admiring your garden.” The canal was out, unless he could figure out a way to free his arms that took a lot less time than rubbing the rope against pottery shards that kept rolling around. As it was, if he fell into the canal with his feet free but his arms still tied up, he’d drown. That left the warehouse side. Surely an abandoned warehouse would have something sharper to use to cut the ropes around his torso.

“Yeah, right.” The man gave a snort of disbelief, his sarcasm evident in his tone. He got to his feet, and as he did so, a bit of paper fell out of his kimono and onto Yahiko’s legs.

It was a photograph, creased and faded, but the picture on it was still clear to see. It was a woman in traditional kimono sitting on a bench by a pedestal with a flower arrangement on it. Yahiko only caught a quick glimpse, because the man swore and snatched it away.

Without another word, he strode over to the doorway and walked through, shutting the door behind him. The shed had a bit of a porch in front. Yahiko had a view of it through a crack where one of the door planks had splintered next to the doorjamb. Through the crack he saw the man sink down onto the porch and hold the picture up to the fading light.

“Chiyo.” The man breathed the woman’s name softly, but Yahiko heard it, and saw the expression on the man’s profile as he gazed at the picture of his ex-fiancee. The sheer misery on his face was too much to bear.

Yahiko looked away. After another minute, he heard the man get up and retreat down the garden.

So what if he felt sorry for the guy? It didn’t matter. At least that’s what Yahiko told himself. He had a job to do, and his own girl to get back to. Yahiko lifted his ankles and brought them down again on the bits of pottery on the shed floor. He’d managed to jam one of the shards in a knothole on a plank so the sharpest bit was upwards. Pinning his hopes on it, he began to move his ankles back and forth over it. After a few minutes, he gave a triumphant grin. He felt a strand on one of the ropes give.

Setting his mouth in a determined line, he got back to work.

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