Reunited – Chapter 32

The sun shines, heralding in the start of a beautiful day on Yūsei. I stare down at the knife in front of me, a gorgeous weapon with a handcrafted handle, the blade gleaming bright. The flawless surface of the blade bounces back the reflection of the sky, blue on blue.

They want me to pick this knife up and plunge it into my belly, without a second, someone to cut my head off and end my life swiftly because I deserve it. I’ll admit I’ve thought of doing it. I could end this for me right now. End the uncertainty, the traveling blindfolded, the constant humiliation at the hands of Risa and Miura’s entourage. Either this is my fate or I can hand myself over to Fujiwara. What if he tortures me? Removes my implant and tries to get me pregnant? Can I refuse to do either, killing myself or Fujiwara? Maybe I should try that tactic first.

I sit patiently for some time while everyone waits. We’re back inside the jinmaku battle curtains on the fields we camped in yesterday. Miura sits with Emiko by his side. Where is Miura’s wife? I have yet to see her. Maybe she’s not traveling with everyone else. I wonder why his daughters are here, though. They’re murmuring with Risa behind me. What about this spectacle is interesting to them? Kazuo stands at my side, not moving, not talking. He brought me out here and commanded me to sit seiza like yesterday. Sachi prowls the boundaries with her sword out, irritated and on the edge of sanity. Kohaku and Hiro sit on their knees facing me, watching Sachi warily every time she comes by.

“Pick it up, Sanaa. End your life now,” Miura encourages me.

“Why don’t you do it if you want me dead so badly?”

Miura laughs heavily, and Emiko smiles. “Despite how much I hate your bloodline, if I kill you then I’ll become the man who murdered the last empress. The deal is you either kill yourself or you bow down to Fujiwara.”

I look away from him and back at the knife. What do I do? Kentaro asked me to hang on and stay alive as long as possible.

Today, I will refuse.

“What’s it going to be, Sanaa?”

“I refuse either option. You can’t make me do anything.” My heart pounds so loud, I can’t hear the conversation around me. Perhaps I’ll die right here of a heart attack and save us all the trouble.

“You refuse? That’s your choice for today?”

I nod slowly unable to breathe. I’m sickened with nausea again and want to lean over and empty my stomach right onto the knife in front of me.

“Fine. Sachi. The mother.” He points straight to Kohaku, and I panic, my heart leaping into my throat and beating a thousand times per second.

“No!” I shout, falling forward and laying my bound hands in front of me. “Don’t do this, Miura!”

“It’s too late. You made your choice for the day.”

He looks to Sachi, she smiles and circles Kohaku. Tears fall from Kohaku’s eyes, down her cheeks, and land on her pants, but she sits up, and makes eye contact with me. “If you see Hideki, tell him I died honorably at the hands of dishonest men. Close your eyes, Hiro.”

Hiro’s eyes dart from me to his mother to Sachi and back. Unable to speak, his head swivels around looking for someone who can help, but there’s no one here who can. “No, no, no, no…” He turns to Sachi, not closing his eyes like his mother asked him to.

Sachi raises her arm, her katana ready.

“Hiro! Look at me!” I scream at him, and his eyes fly to me as Sachi stabs his mother right in the chest.

Screams erupt in the silence, birds taking furious flight, and everyone scrambles. My mind detaches from my body, my eyes holding Hiro’s until he closes his and slumps forward into a lump of sadness on the grass. I’m jostled as Miura’s daughters run at me from behind, grab my hair, and scream in my face.

Kazuo peels them off of me. “Don’t do that,” he whispers at them, trying to keep them back at their station.

Looking down at the knife in front of me, I regret my decisions, all of them, every last choice that put me in this position. Kohaku is dead, her body prone and bleeding next to her sobbing son. There was never a guarantee that if I ended my own life, Kohaku and Hiro would be spared, but I want to believe, believe that if I had been stronger and chose to end my own life, they would still be alive.

I’ll not make the same mistake tomorrow.

The meeting breaks up, but I sit motionless. Miura’s daughters cry, hysterical mutterings from wet lips, and Risa holds both their hands. Nobu and Yukio are as white as sheets, their arms crossed. They stare in my direction with hatred and defiance. This is probably not the first death they’ve witnessed on Yūsei.

Kazuo reaches down and lifts me to my feet under my arms, but I can’t tear my eyes from Kohaku. Her own eyes stare lifeless at the blue sky. My knees give way. I can’t stand. I did that. Her death is my fault!

“Come on, Sanaa. I’ll carry you.” Kazuo lifts me up again and throws me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing. I can’t close my eyes. I can’t reconnect with my own body. I am two people now: Kind and Innocent Sanaa, Sullied and Broken Sanaa. Murderous Sanaa.

Miura will pay for Kohaku’s death as will I.

It’s a while before I can find my voice. People walk past my tent outside, voices shouting or laughing, crying. Kazuo sits in the corner while I slump over my hands. I can’t even cry. All I can do is replay Kohaku’s death, her vacant eyes.

“I was just telling Jiro how I was tired of making life and death decisions. I really didn’t want this. I don’t know how to do this. I wasn’t raised into this.”

Kazuo is silent. I glance up to see if he’s even still here, but he is. He’s contemplating me, I think. I’m not what he thought I was.

“While you were growing up learning how to be the perfect assassin, I was in school, minding my own business. I had never even been to Ku 6 as an adult before I met Sakai. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

I’m lost. These people think I hold sway over their lives, that I can sit on a throne and command an army and lay waste to their families. But I can’t. I have my little family, my town on the coast where I sit silently in meetings and decide who gets the barber shop or who builds the garden center.

Had my little family. I have nothing now. Won’t things be easier for us all if I’m dead?

Risa stumbles into the tent giggling, and Kazuo looks up at her, annoyance apparent on every feature of his face. He slept with her in the beginning, and I bet they would have been a good match if I hadn’t come along. Maybe the weeks of following me around in Yamato and Izumo changed him. And he spent months watching me in Nishikyō too. “You should have seen her cling to Usagi the other night. She cried about how you leave her home alone all the time. You should be more attentive to your wife.”

What does he stand to gain from spying on me so much?

“Not feeling so high and mighty now, are you, Sanaa?” Risa laughs and throws back her hair, striding across the tent to her trunk. “You’ve always been so damned stuck up about your bloodline. How does it feel now to put people to their death because you’re selfish?”

“I’ve never been stuck up about my bloodline, and how would you know? You bolted as soon as you saw Jiro and me together.”

“I wasn’t going to sit around and watch you bewitch him. He was mine before you came along.” She slams the trunk lid closed and spins around to face me.

“He never belonged to anyone before me.” My voice is just a whisper. I can’t talk about Jiro now. Just the thought of him makes me sink into a deep sadness. My head spins, and I think I’ll really be sick this time. “I don’t feel so good.”

I crawl to the side of the tent, get past the rug, and empty out what little I had in my stomach. What comes up is mostly acid and bile mixed with the tears I can’t hold in anymore. Sobs erupt from my chest once the puking is done, and I fall back with my hands still bound and wipe my hair out of my face.

“Gods, I’m so sick.” Another wave of nausea comes, spinning the tent around me, but I breathe deep and blow it out slowly.

“Yeah, well, that’s not surprising.” Risa stands over me with her hands on her hips and shakes her head.

“I don’t see how except that seeing other people get killed should make you feel sick.” I narrow my eyes at her, and her face goes blank for a moment, before her eyes widen and she starts to laugh.

“Oh my gods. You don’t know! I thought you were just trying to fake us all out, but you don’t know!”

“Ugh, Risa. Stop being a bitch. What are you talking about?”

Kazuo jumps to his feet and shakes his head at Risa, trying to grab her arm, but she pulls it away and laughs so hard, she puts her hands on her knees to steady herself.

What the hell is she on about? She barks out a few more chuckles before she calms herself and wipes away the tears she brought out by her laughter. Risa steps in front of me, swaggering, a triumphant smirk painted over her pretty face.

“Sanaa. You. Are. Pregnant.”

What?

“Risa, you’re crazy! I have the implant, and it’s been on since I woke up. I checked the status, and it was at a hundred percent.” Well, I checked it that one time and then forgot about it.

“I have no idea how someone as dumb as you got to be an engineer. You’re definitely pregnant. Your body has changed, your face. You have breasts!” I clutch my bound hands protectively to my chest and blush because Kazuo watches dumbfounded and not saying anything. “You’re tired and hungry…” I have been, yes, for weeks now. “And now you feel ill especially when you don’t eat. You’re knocked up.”

I run through the weeks since I woke up in my head. I’ve been tired, taking naps almost everyday, having crazy dreams. Do you have crazy dreams while pregnant? I think you do. I was eating all the time, and I didn’t even notice. Oyama always gave me food when I showed up in the kitchen, and I inhaled every meal I ate. What else? My hips have been killing me, too, and yes, my body has changed. Another thing I thought was due to hibernation. Jiro and I had a lot of sex, and we stopped using the condoms as soon as I turned on the implant. I could be six weeks along. Maybe only four or five. Miko is pregnant and already feeling unwell.

Oh my gods, I think I’m pregnant. Did the implant malfunction? Shit. There was a message from the hospital about going in to run diagnostics on the damned thing. Maybe I’m not the only one this has happened to.

A slobbery laugh bursts from my mouth and I hold it back with my hands. A baby! My baby! Jiro’s baby! And oh, I’ve been mistreating my body so badly — drinking, running, fighting, getting kidnapped and being on horseback, drugged. Yet, I haven’t been bleeding. My body must be holding onto it.

“Don’t look so happy,” Risa says, huffing and folding her arms across her chest. “When you die in a few days, I’ll be sure to tell Jiro you went to your grave carrying his unborn child.”

My blood turns to ice, and my temper flares red hot as I jump to my feet and lunge at Risa. Kazuo intercepts me and holds me back before I can get to her.

“Risa! I’m going to kill you with my bare hands if you ever get close to me again!” Pushing against Kazuo as hard as I can, I kick out at her and she stumbles out of the way before I make contact.

“You’re psychotic!” she screams at me. “It’s not my fault you’re in this situation!”

“Get out!” I was just about to say the same thing, but Kazuo said it for me. Risa runs for the tent flap before I can break loose and go after her. Gods damn Risa. I want to claw her eyes out.

Kazuo squeezes me around my chest for a moment, and I try to sedate my erratic breathing and beating heart. “You need to calm down before I let you go. And you have to stay in this tent.”

“Let me go, Kazuo. I want to…” I sigh and let my head fall in defeat. “I need to pace.” He loosens his grip, and I push myself away from him. “Ugh. I wish I hadn’t puked in the tent.”

“Sorry. We should cover it with dirt. It’s not much.”

I ignore his presence, walk to one end and start pacing, across the rug to the other side and back. I have to walk with my head bowed because the tent ceiling is right over me, but between the pacing and measured breathing I begin to calm.

I need to reassess my situation. Kohaku is dead, and it’s my fault. I promised I’d get her and Hiro back for Hideki, and I’ve failed at half my mission. Now I have to concentrate on Hiro.

Only two choices remain: death at my own hands or Fujiwara. I can’t kill myself now, now that I might be pregnant.

“Oh, a baby.” I halt and my momentum causes me to stumble on my weakened legs. I place my hands on my stomach and look down at it. Is it true? Risa seems so certain, and all the signs I haven’t seen point to pregnancy. “Dear gods, why? Why now?”

I get down on my hands and knees and lie down, turning my back to Kazuo. “Jiro. Jiro, I’m so sorry.”

I close my eyes and pass out before I can start to cry.

—-

Kazuo wakes me later with food to eat, the camp breaks down, and we get on horseback and ride for two hours. Again, I’m blindfolded, and this time I’m nauseous almost the entire trip. Kazuo is eerily silent. No small talk. No questions about me, my family, or my animals.

I think this means my life is at the end. He’s distanced himself from me, what little rapport we had between us evaporated. It’s probably better this way.

We make camp again in another field that looks exactly like the last one. Maybe we’ve been traveling in circles? I wouldn’t know. Kazuo delivers a bento box to me once my tent is set up, calls a guard, and leaves. Just outside the tent, I hear him run into Sachi.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Another ride. I’ll be back after nightfall.”

“Wait. What are you doing?”

“We have people I still have to pay off from Sanaa’s abduction. Why don’t you go keep her company while I’m gone?” Kazuo chuckles.

“Ha, ha. Funny. No thanks. I’m looking forward to killing the other one tomorrow. My sword hasn’t seen much use the past few years.”

Kazuo sighs. “Sachi, this is one thing you never understood. We were in this business for the challenge of it, not to just kill people. But maybe you’ve always been in it to kill.”

“Since when have you been soft, brother?”

“I’m not soft. I’m just not a psychopath.”

Silence. They don’t speak again. He must have left, having got in the last word.

Does he think he’s not a psychopath? Don’t most psychopaths think they’re not psychopaths? I should have gone into psychology not engineering. I don’t know what to make of those two. They’re skilled assassins. They evaded the law their entire lives in Nishikyō, and here on Yūsei, they’ve fallen into the employ of Clan Taira. Before this, they were independent. Sachi doesn’t seem to mind. I think she might be sleeping with Emiko. Before I was blindfolded this morning, I saw the two of them riding ahead of me, talking and laughing with each other like they were best girl friends.

It’s late afternoon now, and I could sleep again. The guard in the tent is playing solitaire, the quiet flipping of his cards makes my eyes droop, so I lie down. Before I go to sleep, my thoughts turn to Kentaro. Did he make it back to Yamato? What did he find there? Will anyone be able to find me if I stay alive?