by Nikita Thorn
“Home at last,” said Mairin, as the group of Shinshioka patrols guarding the East Gate came into view. “No Rogami in sight,” she reported happily, scanning the surroundings.
Seiki had almost forgotten the encounter out the East Gate three or four levels ago. “I suppose they would really come after us now, wouldn’t they?” All he had tried to do was to get the rare to destroy the siege machine, not take out half the Rogami army.
Thinking back to the beginning, perhaps it had all started simply because he kept surviving their early attempts to kill him, but the degree of offense he had caused them seemed to have greatly escalated since then.
Still, all that was not bad.
“Well.” Ippei smiled. “You did a pretty good job of getting their attention.”
“Good thing we started a clan war between the Rogami and the Honor Warriors, then,” said Mairin. “I mean, the Warriors own Shinshioka. So at least, the Rogami people won’t be able to do much in the City.”
“It’s unlikely Warriors are even aware they’re at war,” said Ippei in amusement.
Seiki laughed with him. “I guess I can forget about coming out into the Wilderness for a while.” He wondered if there were decent trees to cut out the West Gate.
“Alone,” added Mairin. “Or next time, you can just take the Ranger carriage straight to Mannaka like we did and cut trees where there are Rangers around. Better rack up some Favors for that, though. Your samurai friend here spent all his to get us that ride.”
Seiki turned to look at his friend questioningly, not sure what he was hearing, and wondering if there were more things his friends had done for him that he had no knowledge of.
The kitsune explained, “The Rangers maintain a carriage route between Shinshioka and Mannaka, but they want to be paid in Favors. So what you do is go buy Favor tokens from the Palace and give it to them, and they will temporarily put you on their clan guest list and you can ride their clan carriage all the way to Mannaka.”
“Oh,” said Seiki. So that is how his friends had managed to get to Mannaka so quickly. “And, uh, how much did that cost you?”
“Thirty.” Mairin giggled. “Ippei spent all his Favors, plus some more he borrowed from this weird friend of his... Kasa-something. That guy is kinda… intense.”
“Katsumasa,” said Ippei.
“Yeah, and now you’re going to have to pay him back,” said Mairin. “What did he want again?”
“Let’s not talk about it,” muttered Ippei. “We’ve still got that stupid rat dungeon we have to run twenty times.”
Seiki bit the inside of his cheeks as he looked at both his friends. “Thank you,” he said.
“Hey, better make it worth my investment then,” Ippei said.
“Tuesdays, Thursdays and every third weekend of the month?”
“I think you forget the ‘for the rest of my life’ bit,” said Ippei, matter-of-factly.
“Oh, come on,” said Seiki. “The rest of my life isn’t worth just 30 Favors.”
Mairin winked at him. “What? More like 35?”
“Fifty,” said Seiki with a straight face. “At least—” A thought suddenly tripped over itself in his head and froze the words in his throat. “Wait,” he said. “You mean the Rangers offer their clan carriage to anyone who can pay 30 Favors?”
“Yes,” said Ippei. “You can just go talk to them at their City territory near the Palace. They usually have one every couple of hours.”
Seiki cursed as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in his brain. It all made sense now, and this changed everything. He suddenly understood why Fuyu had never bothered to explain anything about the Wilderness to him before sending him out on his merry way, and he also knew why the journey had been made so difficult. “I need to go talk to someone,” he said to his friends.
Without any further discussion, they galloped all the way down Trade Street, and after asking his friends to wait outside, Seiki burst into the West Gate inn.
The ground floor of Ichikeya greeted him with its usual bustle and enticing smell of food, as well as the enthusiastic crowds who were waiting to group up for events out the West Gate. Fuyu was sitting on a table, conversing with a Juro of the Midnight Troops [Level 20] and a few of his clan mates.
“Ah, Seiki-san,” said Fuyu, happily, when she saw him. “What can we do for you today? Help yourself to a table.”
“A word?” said Seiki. “Preferably in private.”
Fuyu let out an innocent laugh. “Nothing you can’t say here, Seiki-san.”
“You owe me three answers.”
Fuyu showed no sign of comprehension as she tilted her head to one side. “What are you talking about, Seiki-san?” She then turned to her tableful of customers. “I think Seiki-san is just trying to get me upstairs.” She whispered, loud enough for him to hear, before giggling.
“You promised,” Seiki said. “I kept my end of the bargain. It’s your turn to keep yours.”
“Now, Fuyu-chan has no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, and she lightly slid off the table. Without warning, she raced toward the back of the inn and casually made her way up the stairs. “Excuse me for a second, gentlemen.”
“Wait!” said Seiki, as he rushed after her.
She was already up on the landing by the time he reached the stairs. Being uninvited, Seiki could not will himself to take a step.
“Wait!”
She turned to smile. “Sorry, Seiki-san. I can’t talk to you.” Her smile then vanished, and she said very seriously, “It’s best that you don’t come here anymore.”
With that, she continued up the stairs, and Seiki had a feeling this was the last time she was ever going to talk to him. She had used him and was done with him, and he was never going to learn what he had gotten himself and everyone else into.
“I challenge the Ichikeya!” Seiki said.
Behind him, gasps went up and the whole inn fell into a kind of shocked silence.
Fuyu had stopped short and slowly turned toward him, and a small but rather chilly smile crept onto her lips. “You sure about this, Seiki-san?”
You have challenged the Ichikeya territory. Fuyu has nominated Fuyu [Level 15] to accept the challenge on behalf of the territory. If victorious, you claim the right to enter the territory for the next 15 minutes.
Seiki stared at her. “Yes.”
Fuyu scoffed in a way that still managed to sound pleasant. “You think you can win this?”
“No,” said Seiki. Mimura was Level 21, and that ninja was at least Level 20, if he remembered correctly. And there was no way he could actually force Fuyu to tell him the truth. “But I will try, and I will keep trying.”
Fuyu studied him for a long time, and Seiki unwaveringly met her gaze. After what seemed like forever, she dropped her eyes.
Fuyu has yielded. You may freely enter the Ichikeya territory for the next 15 minutes.
“Come up, then, Seiki-san,” she said.
Seiki did not need a proper discussion session, and he did not have time for any more of her games. As soon as he turned right around the landing, he said, “You were the one who tipped Renshiro off about the delivery.”
Thinking back, the timestamp on Renshiro’s message suggested she had sent Renshiro that note as soon as he had left the Ichikeya, and before he had reached the White Crane Hall.
“Is that your first question?” Fuyu asked.
“No. It’s a statement. You were also the one who tipped Rogami off about the Sheathed Blade.” Not many people knew about the Sheathed Blade, and Fuyu had learned about it after Renshiro had mentioned it in his post.
Fuyu let out a laugh. “Why would I do that, Seiki-san?”
It was becoming clearer and clearer to Seiki now what had happened. “Because you never intended that piece of paper to reach Kano Castle.”
If she had, the smartest and safest way would have been to shoot it off in a carriage straight to
the destination, and not leave it in the hands of an inexperienced Level 10 ronin, who knew nothing about the Wilderness.
“And you even misled Renshiro into thinking that it was the key in that box,” said Seiki. “By using the same blood-locked box, and by using me, who was mixed up in it in the first place.”
Seiki took a deep breath before continuing, “Then, when that didn’t work, you tipped off the Rogami Clan, lured them with the Sheathed Blade, knowing that they would also find the box, just to stop it going to the Kano Castle.”
“No, Seiki-san,” said Fuyu. “You got that part wrong. I know you have a history with Rieko and her crew. And since you were getting along quite nicely with the outlaws, I was hoping that you would choose the lesser of two evils and let them have it instead of the Rogami Clan.”
Seiki stared at her. “The real recipient for that delivery was Renshiro,” he said.
“Yes,” said Fuyu with a smile. “I never thought the ex-Captain of Jigokuryu would develop a soft spot for you, and I never thought you’d still refuse after I told you directly to give the paper to him.”
“Why?” Seiki asked.
“Because Ichikeya was paid to get that piece of paper to Renshiro while having him think that he had gotten it out of his own volition,” replied Fuyu.
Before Seiki could wrap his mind around this, Fuyu continued, “And let me give you the other two answers, Seiki-san, since you may not come up with the right questions, but I can give you the right answers.”
She paused for an instant.
“Your second answer is: it was the Kano Castle who gave us that piece of paper and hired us to do this.” She paused again, for the information to sink in. “And your third answer is: it was the Kano Castle who had been buying a tremendous amount of clay in the past month or so.”
Seiki stared at her. “Teruo,” he whispered.
The reaction of the people at Kano Castle also made sense now, including the cold treatment they had given him.
Fuyu was smiling. “So, I’ve got an extra answer for you, Seiki-san, to the question of what you have actually done.” She let out an amused giggle at this. “Whether intentionally or not, you have ruined the Kano Castle’s plan, not once but twice in a row.” She held up two slim fingers as if posing for a photograph. “When I told you it was best you didn’t come here anymore, it was for your own good.”
Seiki thought he should be horrified. After all, he had just inadvertently gone up against the holder of the alleged best sword in the game, the Ire of Izanagi, and the retainer of two of the eight daimyo territories with probably half the rice villages under their command. But at that moment, he found it so amusing that he could only laugh. Finally, he understood why Ippei had always found it funny that he seemed to get tangled in the most ridiculous situations. There was no set way to play this game, and everyone had their own agenda, maybe even including the NPCs. And he was just a little cogwheel in the middle of the whole thing, whose big picture was still much too big for him to see. Somehow, that was a pleasant thought and, whatever this meant for the consequences, Seiki decided to worry another day.
Fuyu seemed to have read his mind as she looked at him with a kind of smile that belonged to the real Fuyu. “Seiki-san,” she said. “You haven’t scratched the surface.”
The sun was high up in the sky when Seiki left Ichikeya. It never ceased to amaze him how he had managed to stumble into this place knowing absolutely nothing on his first day in Shinshioka. Thinking back, that day seemed like a lifetime ago.
Seiki found his friends waiting in front of the inn on their horses, and he took a moment to draw a deep breath and glance toward the busy West Gate. Somewhere in the distance, a faint bell sounded, and in a side alley nearby someone was shouting out “Brawl!” quickly followed by “Patrols!”
Ippei was yawning. “Let’s go,” said the samurai. “After all that, I need my sugar fix.” Again, Seiki greatly appreciated that his friends never really asked questions but waited for him to offer explanations on his own time.
Seiki hopped on his Fubuki, and they slowly made their way back down the street. He was not sure why but the city seemed different now, and he smiled as he peered toward Mani Shrine and made a note to himself to go and light an incense and tell Master Tsujihara that 1% health was not bad. He had been away only less than a week, but the city looked brighter, livelier, and he felt like he had now glimpsed the inner workings of how things ran—even when he did not know exactly what it all meant.
He soon found himself turning right down the street toward the pawn shop, on their way to their usual kakigouri haunt. This was the street he had tried to take a week ago, to get to his box, when he got sidetracked into all kinds of unexpected events. And Seiki now marveled at how normal everything looked. The pawn shop ahead was crowded as usual, with people hanging out trying to sell ingredients that had dropped off a kill that they could not find a use for.
He gazed at his two friends on their horses, and suddenly he was rather glad that Yamura had locked them all into running his cursed dungeon over and over. He also realized there was something else he needed to do.
“Hey,” he said, pulling Fubuki to a stop next to the Central Crossing territory building.
His friends turned to look at him.
“Come up for a sec?” he said. “I need to tell you something.”
“About what new kind of trouble you just learned you had gotten all of us into?” said Mairin with a smile.
“That, too,” said Seiki. “But I’ll start from the top. And I’ll try to be coherent this time.” Then he added, “Kakigouri’s on me later.”
No one could say no to a free bowl of kakigouri, and his friends laughed and leapt off their mounts. The crowd on the street could still be heard chattering enthusiastically when the ascended the wooden steps toward the Central Crossing territory that everybody owned.
You have invited Ippei [Level 12] and Mairin [Level 11] into your private territory.
As Seiki slid the door of his tiny room open, with his two friends behind him, he really felt like he was coming home.