Women

I rise as early as I can every day. Nocturnal though I am, I still can’t help calling it that, and the more I see the sun, the less like a creature of the night I feel. And every hour of training is precious.

But as important as training is, my Uji comes first. I am not a Disciple yet, but one day I will be, and I see no reason not to give them my best now. In a way, it is like extra training. Blood Red Thorn came to the Scouts without ever having been in an Uji, with no idea of how to act or help, with no idea how they fit together. But I know their moods and how they think, how they work together. In a way, I am already a part of the Uji.

When they call, I am given a phone at once. Seven beasts is polite enough to slow down and stop screaming while I speak with them, even. Tonight it is the Yang Prana that is interrupted. I am trying to master the Dragon Dance, but the postures and movements are more difficult by far than those used to harness the Principle of Motion, or to summon the Eightfold Yang Mantle.

I take a towel and wipe the sweat off my face and chest as I answer the phone. It is Zhizu-san, to my mild surprise. Most often it is Yuki or Flaring Grin, those with whom I have most in common, who call for me. But tonight, Zhizu has asked my help for something. I have never turned them down before, and I never will. I failed to be of help in the Scout’s hour of need, so I will make myself of use whenever I can to make up for it.

When she arrives I am surprised when she asks me if I still want to fuck her. I can hear my blood rushing in my ears and my skin warms. Zhizu-san was the first of the Thousand Ri Scouts that I met, the first to care about me. When I was still struggling to master my own Darkness, she hurt me. I will never forget that, and I will always be grateful.

In her terse, straightforward way, she explains that she has to know something. Were her feelings for Shin nothing more than the attachment one forms with any lover? I understand the production and release of Oxytocin during orgasm and the strong bonding feelings it creates, though I am unsure if gaki were subject to such hormones. I find it doubtful, save perhaps in one overbalanced towards Yang, but this is not about science for Zhizu, it’s about peace of mind. Secondly, she needs to know if she can ever enjoy sex again, or if her heartbreak has ruined it.

She stands there, beautiful and a little frightening. Her broken heart doesn’t seem to have hurt her at all, but fed her in some way that I don’t understand. I know that the Devil Tigers learn from pain, but it is something else to see someone grow from it before your eyes. It would be like shooting someone pointblank with a large gun and finding that the gaping hole somehow made them stronger. I felt a slight shiver run down my spine and I saw a hint of the Devil that Zhizu would someday be.

Zhizu would have to answer her first question herself, but the second at least, I felt confident of. I am still Hin, but I have learned much, and one thing that Seven Beasts assures me of is that I have truly learned how to make a woman, to use her words, come like a fucking freight train.

Early dusk I wake with Zhizu in my arms. I am sore from last night, but I smile knowing that she will be as well. I’m proud for having, not just held my own with a Devil Tiger, but to have shown her unsuspected pleasure. I don’t have to sleep with Sweet Swallow’s Song again to know that this time it would be me walking away smiling leaving her dazed on the bed.

I squeeze Zhizu to me, feeling my heart beat weakly against her. One day this woman will be a part of my Uji, a blood family like nothing I have ever known. I stand now in the wings, like an actor awaiting my que, impatient to take my place on stage. I place a kiss on my co-star’s temple and then slide under the covers to wake her pleasantly.

She sits up on the futon and asks me to stop. She doesn’t close her thighs against me, or push my head away from her heavenly gate, but she may as well have thrown me through the wall. It wasn’t a lover she needed, just answers to her questions.

I smile through breakfast and as we bathe and wash away the scent of our sex and the soreness in our muscles and then she leaves to study her disciplines.

I hope she got what she needed.

I didn’t, my demon tells me. It is not true, I know. I fulfilled my passion, a felt desire towards a woman and I had her. But that doesn’t matter to the voice. I know enough about myself to know that my deepest need is to have someone to care about. What I neglected to do for Taka and Miko, I burn to do for the Scouts. And I need to feel cared about as well. I tidy up my room, making sure that Zhizu left none of her clothes behind, feeling used, my own dark voice telling me that I am nothing more than a stepping stone to Zhizu and to all of my friends. How quick they are to call when they need something, and how long it has been since they have come to help me in my learning, or simply to visit.

I tell myself that the Scouts have been busy, that their duties in Anjiro claim their time, and the demon laughs with my own voice. Zhizu had enough time to come here, fuck me and discard me.

I am saved by Yuki-san. I smile at her, ignoring the dark laughter in my head. It is all hypotheses with no proof anyways.

As always, Yuki returns my smile. She is truly not meant to be a Bone Flower. Her smile is like the sun.

In her shy, sweet way, she thanks me for all the help I have been, and acknowledges that she has not been grateful. Though I tell her truthfully that it is nothing but my duty, my honor, and my pleasure to help, my inward smile cows the shadow.

Yuki invites me to enjoy some reward of my choice with her. The reward is obvious and easy to choose. Some theater, dinner, a game of go and the chance to talk to her for hours. Perhaps more, but I will leave that up to the moment. We Dragons do think of other things besides sex, but Yuki has a way of stoking my desire that the most provocative Dragon would have trouble matching.

Just a night to call her Yuki-chan again.

The temperature in the room seems to drop a few degrees and Yuki-san grows more serious. She can’t quite keep the pain from her voice as she forbids me to make advances on her again.

I cannot even summon a smile to hide my own shock and pain. Inside the dark voice is silent and knowing. It does not need to speak to show me that I was wrong. Somehow, having been lifted by Yuki’s sweet friendship before being shoved away more completely than Zhizu had this evening hurts more.

If she had left then, I might have slipped into Shadow Soul. I could not summon my will to fight it.

But Yuki doesn’t leave quite yet. I have seen her slit her belly with an expression on her face as if she were composing poetry, but I see pain so clearly on her delicate features now. I would kiss her face until the lines on her brow went away and the corners of her sweet lips turned upwards again, but of course, I cannot.

The reason she cannot abide my advances – despite having spent a week as my lover, despite having sat next to me while I pleasured myself without being so much as mildly distracted – is because she could too easily fall in love with me. And if she falls in love with me, it may distract her from her enlightenment, she might forsake her learning for me.

I feel a swift swelling in my loins and a rush of heat and pleasure, but all of that is distant. For one week I lived as a man with a woman. We played and talked and argued and studied and pillowed and pillowed and pillowed. Like an actor and actress we took the roles of a normal man and woman, and we fell in love. When it was over, we left the little stage we had made for ourselves and we put aside the roles and put aside the love. But how true that the play might become real.

The essence of the Dance. The greatest drama of all to emulate life, to play the part of a living thing still part of the Great Cycle. I had achieved a measure of reality, of being a real man, with a real beating, loving heart. And Yuki had all but fallen in love.

Yuki looks at me with concern, noting the wet stain on the front of my thin cotton bathing kimono. My hair is still wet from the bath I took with Zhizu less than an hour ago. I wonder that years have not passed. I bow to Yuki-chan, the only expression that I can give her right now.

I need time to think about this, to read the reviews of my performance if you will, to collate data, to just let it sink in.

Yuki leaves quietly and the room is silent. In the stillness the clouds rumble and let loose a brief torrent of rain. It begins quickly, then passes. A wet patter on the roof as if the sky itself climaxed.

Kamikazi

There is a feeling in the Court of the White River. A feeling of victory.

I have begun new training under Seven Cloud Temple, a Hollow Reed elder. It was under his orders that the Thousand Ri Scouts were assigned to be my sensei for learning the Fivefold Way.

Now that I understand the Great Principle and my dharmic training has begun, the Wise Centipede begins my lessons in more detail. It is time to learn about the House I serve.

Rain drums on the roof of the tea house like impatiently tapping fingers, but Seven Cloud Temple-san is serene. He listens to the rain for a long time before he begins the story. I am amazed at his storytelling skills, so much like, but so much more than the theater I love.

The Hollow Reed takes on each role like, well, like a mask. His voice is exactly that of Igurashi-sama. Even his bearing, his carriage changes and he becomes the player in the story. History comes alive.

I listen and watch as Omi-sama stands shoulder to shoulder with Yoshinaka Sohei against the Koreans. I see Sohei break ranks and flee, leaving Omi-sama to die. I watch the blood-feud unfold, the wars, the assassinations.

Seven Cloud Temple shows me the course of our House’s history as we struggled with the treacherous Sohei all the way up until the present night.

This feeling I have is about the war. You can see it in the elders, their stoic faces hiding their pride. The Thousand Ri Scouts have established a strong presence in Anjiro and they have defeated a great evil and gifted the court with tribute and the Daimyo is generous in his praise.

I am proud of the Scouts. But as a scientist, I must look at all of the facts. They are but Disciples, and only four. How can they be the key to victory? It is the voice of my Shadow, as always casting doubt over me like dark clouds obscuring the sun. But the only way to shatter the illusion of doubt is to test it and prove it false.

I test my own dark doubts in my mind. My Demon-voice is right; the Thousand Ri Scouts have accomplished much, just like the Disciple Singing Snake who shook the middle kingdom with his koa. but for hundreds of years the Yamabushi and Sohei have warred in the shadows and in the open, and more powerful gaki have done their best to anihilate our enemies.

What I see is confidence. Igurashi-sama believes that we are going to win. The only explanation that makes sense, is that there is a plan. A secret plan for victory.

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.

Study Party

In college there are always parties. I know that the western world sees the Japanese as industrious and studious to a fault. Which is true. But we have always had our ways of balancing out. The businessmen who work endless hours for the company, cut loose in wild drinking binges and terrible karaoke. And in college, there are always study parties.

I studied hard, but I never really partied, not as Agito Tsubara. Miko would sometimes drag me down into the dorm common area, but I found the music and the talking and the crush of people distracting from my books. Maybe I was letting my books distract me from the music and talking and the crush of people. Miko got good grades too, but she knew how to laugh.

Sometimes I wonder why she ever loved me.

I wouldn’t call my learning now a study party, though some of it comes close. Seven Beasts takes me to bars and clubs and teaches me how to seduce, how to lure and entice. I don’t think I’m very good at it, but I will keep trying. But much of my new training isn’t much better than the merciless, but calculated, beatings of Terrible Thunder Talons-san. In the bamboo forest carpeting the hills behind the Court there is a range for shooting. I learn how to hold and shoot a gun, though my aim is slow to improve. I am also given kendo lessons, and again and again I am disarmed, cut and stabbed by my fellow Dragons.

It’s not all torture. Seven Beasts and my fighting sensei teach me what I need to know, and seek out my strengths and weaknesses. Each night the katana feels more comfortable in my hand. When I was young I was never swept away by the romanticism of the samurai, but now I think I agree that every boy dreams of being another Musashi.

There are also the disciplines to learn, the supernatural powers of which the Iron Mountain is only the beginning. Already my demon art has been brought out, but now I am ready for the more difficult learning of the chi arts and other powers. I am the proverbial kid in the candy store. Seven Beasts reminds me that our state is a curse, and these powers are nothing more than tool left to us by the August Personage as a way to help us redeem ourselves. I am chastened, but still excited.

It is an excuse to see more of the Thousand Ri Scouts as well. Flaring Grin-san teaches me the first secrets of the Jade Shintai – the art of sensing the ambient chi of the world and letting it flow through me. A year ago I did not believe in chi save as a superstitious word for a human body’s natural electrical field. Now I can see and feel the power that can be harnessed from that energy.

I also learn the first katas of the Yin Prana from the diminutive Shard-san. She is in the middle of a transition of her own, and I must learn to think of her under her new name, Yuki, but she finds the time to share with me. Seven Beasts suggests that the Yin Prana is an excellent lesson for understanding chi. Kyo-san disagrees with her, of course, scorning the motions designed to harness Yin chi. But I have learned much from the Yang Prana, and much about chi from the Jade Shintai, it seems that I should at least expose myself to the Yin Prana. And, as Seven Beasts tells me, it is at least a way to harmlessly dissipate excess Yin Chi.

I am delighted that learning the Yin Prana (the first katas only – though I continue to look for those tantric postures) is not the only time I get to see Yuki. More than any of the Scouts she seems interested in studying with me. Of course Yuki has just begun her own studies as well, so in a way we are students together.

A couple of times a week she comes to the Court, bringing her books. There’s a sadness to her that I know comes from the recent death of her lover, the geisha Kiku-san. She has had to endure the death of her lover twice now. Once when he lover was murdered, then when she passed into the Shadowlands she was slain again by the Empire of Jade.

Sometimes she cries. I’m not sure what to do. I’ve never been good with people, never let myself get close enough to really know someone. Maybe not even Miko and Taka. But I try. I listen to her, and hold her. I don’t tell her not to cry, or not to be sad. Her love for Kiku was passionate and powerful, and that should not be denied, but experienced.

But she is gaining a new strength as well. Unveiled Mirror Shard discovered that she had reached the limits of enlightenment listening to the Song of Shadows. Not that it is a dead-end path, just that there are lessons there that she can not learn, and that another road is calling to her; the Way of the Resplendent Crane.

Selfishly, perhaps, I’m glad. She is a passionate girl and that trait would have died inside the Black Metal Egg. Now she can pursue her passions in the betterment of herself, society, and creation. Not the path that I walk, but one that seems to suit her better. Yuki, the name she chose for herself means ‘snow,’ but it also means ‘smile.’ I like it.

We each have our studies, Yuki-san with her Crane texts and me with my volumes of Dragon teachings. But often we can share our knowledge, reading and discussing passages from the ki chuan that all dharma’s study. And Yuki seems almost eager to share knowledge all her own. Information and lore about the spirits on the Yin and Yang worlds, the cosmology of the great Wheel, and all the secrets of the shen she has learned. It’s a wealth of knowledge and I benefit from the instruction she received from the Bone Flowers, who know so much about such things.

In return Yuki-san wants to know everything that I do about math, science, and more mundane knowledge. Given the knowledge she holds I am not sure why she finds such things fascinating. When I ask her a silence descends and it is clear that she still remembers enough of the Black Metal Egg to hide her feelings well. But slowly and quietly she tells me about her first breath, how her mother raised her only to pretty and a good servant to a husband, despite her obvious intelligence. She was even removed from school. Now she has a doctor to question, so I do my best to satisfy her craving.

And I find myself subject to cravings of my own. Not that my needs are not satisfied in my training, but my partners in bed are more like sparring partners, even the mortals that I am learning to clumsily seduce. My interest in Zhizu-san as drifted to the background, an acknowledgement of her beauty and my desire, but it is no longer something burning in the fore of my mind. It’s not that Yuki-san is like Miko was. They have their similarities, but no more than any two, smart, women do. But Yuki is an intelligent women, the kind I like best. When we’re studying I feel myself drawn to her, aroused. I have never shared myself this way with anyone before. It is something like the deep camaraderie and respect I have for Flaring Grin. They are my friends.

My attempts to seduce Yuki aren’t as successful as my pass at Flaring Grin-san. She certainly notices, and I make no effort to hide my arousal, but she shows interest only in her studies. I act with confidence and take the risk of seeing to my need right then and there. I’m not entirely surprised that the sight doesn’t make her jump me, but I am surprised that she neither chastises me, nor leaves my presence. Ignoring it is the one response I hadn’t anticipated. Interesting.

I’m not upset that she ignores me, I’m happy to share my schooling and to enjoy the fruits of her knowledge in return. I’m happy to leave the confines of the Court and enjoy the city with the Scouts. I’m happy to be learning, and making myself ready for the Fire and Water test.

Sex

It’s an inseparable part of the Dance of the Thrashing Dragon. With a name like Rabbit, everyone expects it to be a large part of my search for enlightenment. It is, of course, but it’s hard for anyone else to understand why.

Each of us strive for that perfection of spirit which will atone for our past mistakes or misdeeds and free us from our curse. For those who are patient and wise and who survive in the World of Darkness, we may become bodhisattvas and reach the Hundred Clouds. It’s no accident that we call the moment of orgasm the Clouds and Rain. In the east we have long known what the westerners repressed; that the moment of transcendent ecstasy is a tiny, fleeting glimpse of nirvana.

Even the Shadow Songs know this. Second only to the Dancing Dragons, the Bone Flowers are the great seducers of the gaki. You will probably doubt that right up until you become the target of their cold, mysterious, allure. Personally, I hope some Bone Flower finds a reason choose me. They say that there are even tantric postures buried in the Yin Prana katas and more of them than you might think take their tenet to kiss the ghosts in their shrouds quite seriously and literally.

So, if those who listen to Song of Shadow echo within their black metal eggs can see enlightenment in that finite moment of bliss, then how much more might those who seek to learn the ways and secrets of life learn from such an experience?

Seven Beasts takes me as her lover, as she has certainly done with all the students who came before me. I am astonished at how much there is to learn just about making love. I memorize the karma sutra, the ­­ananga ranga, and other texts, plus volumes of books and scrolls written by gaki and containing positions, postures, and techniques that mortals have never imagined and sometimes cannot even physically accomplish.

I think of all the nights that I stayed so late at the lab before my death, only to come home and find Miko having fallen asleep waiting for me. I remember finding her sleeping in lacy things or leather, candles burned down to stubs and soft music playing on repeat. Did I even notice back then? It’s practically a miracle we conceived Taka.

I feel like I need to punish myself to make it up to her or something and I’m quite tempted to substitute a night with my voluptuous sensei for the cold kisses of a blade. But Seven Beasts-san does not allow it. She reminds me that I have been to hell and that I have been punished. The only way to atone and escape my state is to move on. All I can do is to swear to myself not to make the same mistake again.

It occurs to me that I cheated myself at least as much as I did my wife. I did not even let myself feel what she did. I deprived her of the chance to make love to her husband; I deprived myself of the desire to make love at all.

Seven Beasts takes my to the mansion-haven of Jade Snake, an established jina of the dharma. I spend several days learning the arts of bondage and masochism. The pain and pleasure remind me of my night with Sweet Swallow’s Song-san, but I have already decided that was not quite my path. I don’t think I’ll return to Jade Snake-san’s hospitality for more, but I cannot say I learned nothing.

As my confidence grows I know that there is something else that I must learn and experience. It has never been uncommon for men to find pleasure with men, or women with women in Japan. In fact, it was sometimes practiced by samurai with young boys under their care, the idea being that a boy could inherit some of an older warriors virility and power by taking their seed. I’d say that I’m not gay, or even bisexual, but then again, I’ve never really thought about it before. My instinct is to shy away from it, not because of the westerners blind revulsion, but out of disinterest. It takes very little experimentation to conclude that I am not aroused by men.

But at the same time I still find myself drawn to Flaring Grin. Will I ever be as vibrant and alive as he is? Like a young samurai, perhaps I can learn at his feet.

I choose a night when the Thousand Ri Scouts have been allowed to take me out of the Court. Yedo looks so different now… There is a spa outside the small city of Anjiro, and the Uji finds it a relaxing place to think and teach. I try not to be hesitant, after all I have been to hell and back, why be afraid to ask for this favor?

Flaring Grin thinks it over carefully. I am glad he is not taking it lightly, though his smile never entirely leaves his face. He agrees to grant my request but decides that Joko-san will stay with us. I haven’t met her before now, and I’m not sure what she is to Flaring Grin-san. A lover without a doubt, an assistant of some kind possibly, but I don’t know what the relationship is. I’m glad for her presence and her beauty, it will make this easier.

I actually find myself enjoying the evening. Joko-san was obviously a product of Jade Snake-san’s teaching, and I wonder how she met Flaring Grin. She handles both of us well as we both take her. I feel a closer kinship to Flaring Grin as we share his lover, but I’m afraid I’ll loose sight of why I came as we enjoy the woman. I touch Flaring Grin, his strange, bleached hair, his shoulder, his arm. I’m not aroused by him, but I explore the feelings I do experience. When Joko and I have reached the Clouds and Rain and it is Flaring Grin’s moment I am actually excited. Joko moves aside and I swallow it all.

I am not sure if I want to repeat the night, but I am glad it happened. I allowed myself to move beyond what I thought I was capable of. Perhaps it’s small, but I feel like I have taken a step. Perhaps Flaring Grin-san and Joko-san will invite me back. I am done on my knees, but there a thousand other positions, much more to learn and Joko-san is quite pretty.