Failure

The voice of my demon is loud and it only gets worse. My failure burns and there is no excuse. Flaring Grin, Yuki, and Zhizu needed me and I could not help them. My shadow laughs because he knows this already. He has been telling me for a long time.

The stranger, Blood Red Thorn, steps in to save the Uji, keeping the Thousand Ri Scouts legitimate. I’m still a spare. The dark voice rasps in my head that perhaps the Scouts do not need five. Four has been enough, four have accomplished much. What need to they have for five?

Plugging my ears does not mute my own hateful voice. I devote myself utterly to my training, forcing myself to stay awake with the sun so that I can read just one more line from the Ki Chaun. A minute at a time I fight the irresistible lure of sleep. One more passage, one more kata.

I go to the dojo every day and train. I have been introduced to iaido, and the sudden movement appeals to me. It is like the pounce of a cat, of the sudden dive of a bird, the crack of lightning that is gone before you hear it. I push myself, attempting katas harder than I have tried before, trying to make myself worthy.

I drown myself in flesh. Seven Beasts-san holds me to her sweaty breast afterwards, stroking my hair. She purrs, deeply satisfied, but she knows that I am not. She tells me that not every hunt is successful and sometimes the tiger starves.

I don’t want to understand her, but I do. Failure is inevitable. But the tiger is the most dangerous when hungry.

My shame is deep. I know that the Thousand Ri Scouts will be hunting the kumo Spins the Night. I know they will succeed.

Blood Red Thorn can do what I can not have. Doubtless it is his fighting skills that will make victory possible. Fighting skills that I do not have. He is a Devil Tiger, and even now I can still hear the echo of the Howl. Is the Dance of the Thrashing Dragon a mistake? Would I have been able to help, had I plunged myself into a hell of my own making and thus become a self-made Lord of Yomi? With that power, the Fire and Water test would be easy, a kumo hardly an obstacle.

My inner darkness leaves no wound to heal, tearing open every shame and pouring in poison.

My rage is much like Yuki’s, swift and unexpected. I surprise myself. When the futon is torn apart, the shoji ripped, the screens shattered, the flower arrangement hatefully scattered the only sound is the laughter within. How proud Flaring Grin would be of me!

I need peace, I need to analyze this. There are facts that I cannot deny, that my demon-self cannot deny, if only I can find them.

But what good will a scientist do? Yuki is all they need. Dazzlingly intelligent and far more enlightened. The voice leaves me no wall to put my back to, no rock to cling to.

I doubt. And that is all the Shadow needs.

Duet

Sometimes it’s easier for me to look at my own existence as a playgoer would a performance.

I love the theater because I see mortals doing as I must. For my karmic crimes I am separate from the wheel of creation, denied the interchange of chi and barred from the give and take of life.

Gaki must take to survive, but to give, I must imitate life. My sensei once likened our dharma to an unruly schoolboy who was expelled from the classroom and now can only learn by peeking through a crack in the wall.

So the Dance of the Thrashing Dragon is like a play, and I must put on a role, some performances as a predator, some as a victim, some as a beast, sometimes as a force of nature itself. I love to watch the humans do the same.

Usagi, the young lead, is still very much the quiet man he was when we saw him die and return. He is respectful and thoughtful, but we can see now how hard he tries. He has learned some things and we can feel a little hope for what he might become.

He is bolder, and more willing to take chances reaching out to people, though he is still awkward. He speaks to the Uji that he is training to join, and tries to do what he never did with anyone in his mortal life: to get to know them.

He fights Keeper of Forgotten Temples and the older gaki shows him tricks of the blade. It would have been the first of many such hours, save for the death that will soon claim Keeper.

He speak to Zhizu, and here we can be pleasantly surprised! A success! He speaks with the Devil Tiger about the lover he heard the gossip of and he asks about her first breath. Here we are shocked, for Zhizu has been such a quiet and severely controlled character in this drama that to hear her give consent and to explain her life and death leaves us stunned! We can almost see the new understanding in Usagi’s eyes. He asks her to pillow, and he hold our breath. We’ve seen his attraction to the dangerous beauty since he first met her, and we know the respect he has for her. We know also how fierce she is and we sit on the edge of our seats to see if she will tear him limb from limb.

We laugh out loud in relief as she declines him politely. She seems to have respect for the Rabbit as well, and after all, her new lover is every inch as dangerous as she.

The next scene shows us in a large and perfectly ordered garden. Stones and weeds grow in careful disarray, perfectly hiding and highlighting the careful design. The Resplendent Cranes meditate and train here, but tonight, Yuki is here to commit seppuku.

Honor compelled her to make a deal with a vile goblin spider, but honor also demands that she cleanse herself of that shame. The drawn wakazashi flashes light out over the audience and on Yuki’s perfectly composed face.

We see the Frostwings Uji in attendance, stirring the plot, and we see the Daimyo of the House, overseeing her act. There in the back is Usagi, bravely watching. We can see that he would like to look away, that he cares for his friend and does not like to see this. And it is the first ritual suicide he has seen and he does not want to dishonor his friend by looking away, or by reacting.

Yuki dies well, her death poem received with thoughtfully closed eyes and her graceful cuts with an approving nod from the Daimyo. There is a sense of renewal. Honor has been satisfied, the shame has been wiped away and new challenges await the eager young gaki. There is no foreshadowing of the tragedy that will remove one player from the stage.

It is during the celebration afterwards that Yuki asks Usagi a favor: Will he consent to live with her for one week, to help her to accept men, and to conquer her fear? We can see doubt, or is that the whispering of the Demon in his ear? And he requests time to think about it.

In the next scene we see Flaring Grin and Usagi together drinking sake. We can see the calming effect the older Dragon has on the young hin. They speak about Yuki and about enlightenment and together they analyze the doubt.

When the men part, Usagi confidently gives Yuki his answer. Yes, he will live with her.

What a week it is! We see here what could have been with Miko, a relationship of shared joys and interests. They study together, sharing the katas of the Yin and Yang Pranas, they read books and see plays, and of course, they pillow. It is also a healing time after the death of Keeper of Forgotten Temples.

We can see how hard it is for Usagi to remember that this is for Yuki’s fear. His demon pours its poison in his ear. The voice from backstage whispers that she is using him, that he is nothing to her. The voice tells him that what Yuki really wants has more to do with domination and control.

At the end of seven days, Usagi is left alone on the stage.

…I watch the door for a few moments after Yuki leaves. The one thing that no sensei seems to be able to teach me is how to feel. I was never good at feeling before, thinking, yes, but not feeling.

When next I see Yuki, things will be different. I just hope this had made us closer, and I hope it has given her what she needs. Will she less fearful of myself and Flaring Grin? She revealed a passion that I respect as a Dancing Dragon. She has always turned it towards scholarship, and that is why she was instructed by the Shadow Songs. But people seem to think that the Bone Flowers are the only ones allowed to be intelligent. Yuki has a passion that was out of place in the Yin dharma. Now she can turn both her keen mind, and her strong passion towards the Way of the Resplendent Crane.

I hope I have helped her do that.

Broken Masks

I am sobered by the death of Keeper of Forgotten Temples. A terrible mistake in judgment and enlightenment becomes blindness. He slits his belly and dies, but I can tell that something is wrong, an expression of terrible loss briefly flashes across his face before he tumbles.

Yuki rages, her grief spilling out of her in hot tears and whip crack accusations. Everyone else is silent. I hold my tongue, it’s not my place to speak.

The aftershocks are more than emotional. Even as Yuki masters herself, the Uji itself comes under fire, principally from the Frostwings Uji, which has made itself a rival of the Thousand Ri Scouts.

I want so badly to help them. I have been promised this Uji, this family and now it will be taken away before I have even had a chance. I resent my new belief in karma. How can it be that I am dealt the same lonely hand in the second breath that karma dealt me in life?

I throw myself at my training, it’s the Scout’s only chance. The Court of the White River is debating disbanding the Uji entirely. Four was weak enough; three is no Uji. But I can make them four again. Four is enough.

The hard training and studying helps me forget my fear. Yes, I’m more afraid than I have been since I woke up in hell. I am only hin, not yet ready for the Fire and Water test, yet I hurl myself toward that trial in hopes of saving the Scouts. But Keeper’s death never leaves my thoughts. How much more did he know than me? How many more years of training in his dharma?

How can I survive with so little when he failed after so much?

I am spared the matter by a Devil Tiger name Blood Red Thorn. A Disciple from the Court of Five Bridges, willing to join the Thousand Ri Scouts. I’m relived that the Uji will live, but I’m…what? Angry? Ashamed? Probably both that this stranger steps in to do what I could not.

My Shadow wastes no time whispering to me that I am not needed. The shortest Re training period that House Yamabushi allows is one year and I am just nearing half that time. Blood Red Thorn has taken my place, and the Scouts – always successful even with only four members – has no need of a fumbling rabbit.

But then Yuki asked a favor of me.