Blind Love

by Sedonia Guillone

  Instead of an answer, Hirata heard the rip of cloth and then felt Sho wrapping something around his shoulder, over the wound.

  “This will hurt, but I must stop the bleeding.” Sho yanked the wrap tight.

  “Ahhh!” The pain made Hirata’s body jerk from the ground.

  With swift fingers, Sho secured the cloth wrap. “Not much more, Hirata, and then we can go.”

  Hirata heard another ripping sound and then felt Sho wrapping the cloth around him to fashion a sling. Sho guided Hirata’s arm into the sling and made sure it was firmly in place. “There,” he muttered. “At least this will get you back.”

  “My… ka… kata….” But Hirata was unable even to say the word katana.

  “I don’t know where your sword is, Hirata.” Sho maneuvered Hirata into a sitting position and then looped Hirata’s free arm around his neck. “Leave it for now. When I know you’re safe, I promise I’ll come back and look for it.”

  Hirata wobbled. His head lolled. The shock and loss of blood made him feel like a sack of rice hanging on Sho. Incredible strength lifted Hirata to his feet and steadied him. The sling held his arm perfectly still. Sho had expertly wrapped him to ensure he could move without much further blood loss.

  “Come, Hirata, once I cauterize the wound, you can rest.” Sho gently but firmly half dragged, half carried Hirata’s weight in slow but urgent steps, guiding himself with his cane-sword. All Hirata could do was use his remaining strength to take one step at a time.

  “If you’d just listened to me, Hirata, this whole problem could have been avoided,” Sho said, his voice halting and breathy from the exertion of Hirata’s weight. “You foolish, stupid man! You never could listen to anyone. So selfish! At least when we were separated, I could imagine you were safe and well, at home in your father’s dojo. I should have known you’d do this. Are you going to put me through losing you again, you selfish bastard?”

  Hirata felt giddy, light-headed. He knew he’d lost a lot of blood yet the world shone like a light. If he died in this moment, he’d die knowing Sho loved him. But he didn’t want to leave the world. Not if Sho felt this way, so frightened of losing him, wanting to know they were still walking the same earth, living under the same sky and stars and sun. Determination rose in him. The light encompassing him receded. His steps grew a bit stronger.

  The late afternoon sank to twilight, then evening. Crickets chirped thunderously and the dark specter-like forms of trees loomed above them. The journey from the site of where they’d fought the ronin to wherever Sho was taking him seemed interminable.

  A little more distance passed and Hirata heard the trickle of water.

  “We’re almost there,” Sho said softly. “Please, Hirata, be strong just a little longer.”

  Their dragging steps took them to a riverbank on one side and a forest on the other. Another dark shape loomed ahead. Where darkness contrasted the rising moonlight, Hirata could just make out the angles of a small house.

  “A few more steps.” Tension pulled Sho’s voice to a hoarse whisper. Hirata wanted so badly to stand up and finish the journey himself. Nearly his entire weight had pressed against Sho the whole time, but he couldn’t do it. In fact, he felt weaker.

  Finally, they reached the front door, which Sho unlatched and slid open. He hoisted Hirata inside.

  Darkness bathed the interior of the small house. Hirata could see only blackness, but of course, Sho wouldn’t need lanterns burning in order to know where he was going.

  Up one small step to the living area and Sho lowered Hirata gently onto his back. “I just need to make a fire, Hirata. I’ll work as quickly as I can.”

  Hirata wanted to reassure him, but only a small groan escaped his throat. He stared up into the dark rafters, listening to the sounds of Sho moving around him. Sho hadn’t even taken his sandals off yet, and they thudded against the wooden floor with his movements.

  Hirata heard wood and smelled peat being dumped into the center cooking pit and the scrape of stone against stone. From the corner of his eye he saw sparks and then tiny flames. The flames grew in size, giving off the smell of the sticks and dirt they were consuming.

  In the next second, Sho knelt at his side again. “I need your wakizashi,” he said, feeling for Hirata’s weapons belt. Finding the short sword, he pulled it from its scabbard. He turned to the fire and held the blade in the flames. Hirata felt too weak to turn his head and watch, now there was light from the small fire. All he could do was wait and stare up, now able to distinguish the rafters above him and the shadows of their forms dancing on the slats of the ceiling.

  “It’s almost ready, Hirata.” In the next second, his hands gently felt for Hirata’s sling, which he unwrapped. “I’m sorry about this. I have no choice.” Carefully he untied the cloth that had held the bleeding at bay. “Life is so full of acts to which we’re forced, isn’t it?” Sho then held something to Hirata’s lips and pushed, urging him to open his mouth. A piece of thick rope. “Bite down on this.”

  Hirata obeyed and when the rope was firmly entrenched in his jaws, Sho turned toward the fire. Hirata saw a flash. The red-hot blade of his wakizashi as it swung toward him.

  Then sssssssssssss!

  Hirata’s body jerked up off the floor. The rope clenched in his jaw reduced his scream to a garbled cry. Blinding light, like the sun, crowded everything else from view, except for the smoke rising from his skin.

  And then it was over. The sting burning through his shoulder and chest began to recede and the white haze faded like a mist, revealing the shadows dancing among the rafters once again.

  Hirata panted. Sweat coated his skin. The wound, now sealed, still burned, but the pain had lessened. Slowly, his consciousness came to include a second rhythm of heavy breathing.

  Sho.

  Sho tossed aside the short sword and slumped back on his heels, panting. His face, visible in the glow from the fire, shone with sweat. Sho’s searching hand landed on Hirata’s arm and groped carefully upward, toward the wound, which he touched with only the slightest pressure. Then a sigh of relief. “The cauterization should prevent infection. All you need now is to rest.”

  “Thank… you,” he managed to grind out.

  Sho’s lips stretched a tiny bit in what could pass for a smile. “You’re welcome.”

  The next moments passed with Sho’s moving around the small house. Unable to do anything but lie there, Hirata could only listen whenever Sho passed out of his line of sight. Sho unrolled futons and helped Hirata slide over onto the one closer to the cook fire. Sho left again, and Hirata heard the sound of water being poured from one vessel into another. More sounds of water sloshing around, and then Sho was back, kneeling beside him. In the next moment, a cool cloth slid across his forehead.

  Hirata’s eyelids fluttered. The cloth felt so good on his brow. Sho dipped it again into the water, wrung it out, and wiped it over Hirata’s face, neck, then carefully over his chest and stomach and down each arm. What a gentle nurse Sho was!

  What really happened to you, Sho-chan? Hirata thought hazily. His consciousness hovered between awareness of Sho’s tending to him and the deep blackness of rest. Images passed through his mind… the Sho he had known as a child and the Sho he’d found today. Young Sho tagging at his heels, a faithful friend, climbing trees and rocks with him, but always warning him not to go too far or to behave when he was about to defy an authority figure. Then Sho, the man, cocking his head to listen to how the dice in the cup fell and then raking in money with his correct calls. Sho in the brothel, making love to the beautiful actor. Sho taking down three bloodthirsty killers in a few swings of his weapon.

  A sensible, levelheaded boy who’d always kept Hirata’s passions tempered, Sho was now a man who gambled, made love, and wielded a sword as skillfully or more as highly trained samurai.

  And Sho was a true healer. His touch alone flooded Hirata with comfort.

  The cloth splashed into the water, indicating that Sho had finished wi
th it. A moment later, Sho slipped a hand under Hirata’s head and lifted it. He placed a wooden block underneath him and lowered his head again. Then, gently, he picked up Hirata’s forearm. “I’ll feel your pulses now,” he murmured and pressed his fingertips into the soft flesh beside the tendons of Hirata’s wrist.

  The tiny house seemed to hum with the intensity of Sho’s concentration. Sho tilted his head the way he did when listening to the sounds around him, both close and distant. Even before he’d lost his sight, he’d done that. After what felt like a long time, he released a deep sigh. “Nothing vital was injured. Your life force is strong.” Softly he lowered Hirata’s hand to the bedding. “You’ll be fine.” He patted Hirata’s hand. “Rest now. I’m going to retrieve your sword. I won’t be long.”

  Panic gripped Hirata. “Don’t leave me!” he whispered.

  Sho touched his leg, resting his palm firmly over Hirata’s shin. “I promise I’ll be back very soon. I don’t want your sword sitting out there in the grass. Doubtless it has the symbol of your father’s dojo on it.”

  “I… don’t… care.”

  “I do, Hirata.” Sho’s voice was kind but firm. “I don’t want this fight traced back to you. Those ronin were wanted men, but let the one who brought them to justice remain anonymous. Life is quieter that way.”

  Hirata relented. Sho was right, of course. “Wait,” he labored to say, “before… you… go. Where… are we? How did… you learn to—”

  “I promise I’ll answer all your questions after you’ve rested. In fact, I have something that will help you sleep.” He rose and went to the wall against which a barrel stood.

  From the corner of his eye, Hirata watched Sho’s movements, listened to the sound of liquid being scooped and poured from a dipper into a cup.

  Then Sho was kneeling by him again. Gently, he lifted Hirata’s head and held the cup to his lips. He tilted it, and a strange, sweet liquid pooled in his mouth. The taste was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. Sweet as… honey. Potent as saké.

  The gentle burning flooded Hirata’s veins. His body relaxed. Hirata’s eyelids fluttered. His vision blurred. The drink was already fulfilling Sho’s promise.

  “There.” Sho set the cup aside. His face hovered over Hirata’s. “You’ll be all right, Hirata.” His hand passed once over Hirata’s brow.

  The touch was heavenly. Hirata’s eyelids fluttered again before closing. “My beautiful Sho-chan,” he whispered.

  “Shhh.” Sho’s hand receded from his brow.

  Hirata tried to open his eyes and reach out for Sho. Sho’s sandals scraped on the wooden floor again. He was leaving.

  Never leave me again! Hirata tried to cry out, but his exhaustion overcame him. The last thing he remembered was the sound of the door sliding shut.

  THE NEXT days passed in the same exhausted haze. Hirata marked the passing of time by the amount of light filtering through the slats of the windows. At all hours, Sho tended to him quietly and tenderly. At regular intervals, Sho took his pulses, laid poultices over his wound, wiped his head and neck with a cool, damp cloth, held a bowl for him to relieve himself, and fed him barley gruel and saké as well as that other potent brew.

  By the night of the third day, Hirata felt well enough to sit up, his back against the wall. Sho brought him a bowl of gruel, which he set on the floor by Hirata’s leg, then turned to head back to the fire.

  “Sho.”

  Sho halted and turned slowly around. A hesitant look tensed his delicate features. “Yes?”

  Sho’s nurturing demeanor had receded, replaced by the cool distance of their initial reunion. A distance that made Hirata’s heart physically ache.

  “You promised to answer my questions after I’d rested.” He sat up a bit, bracing himself against the jolt of pain that movement caused. “I’m rested now.”

  “All right.” Hesitance hovered around Sho like a physical force, and Hirata couldn’t help feeling that Sho just wanted to get away from him. Which only intensified his internal ache. “Ask whatever you’d like.”

  “Is this the quiet place Ichi-san intended to bring you to?”

  Sho tensed visibly. “How do you know about that?”

  “An anma named Hoshi at the Blind Men’s Guild in Kyoto told me. Ten years ago when my search for you had just begun.”

  Sho recovered himself then nodded slowly, as if about to divulge deep secrets. “Yes, this is the place. This house was given to Ichi-sensei by the lord of this domain. When the lord was still a boy, he used to run away from his tutors in order to play in the forest. Some bandits came upon him and surrounded him. Ichi-sensei happened to be passing nearby and saved the young master. They’ve been friends ever since. Lord Yorimasa gifted him this little plot and house so that he’d always have a place to rest. We spent a great deal of time here. This is where he trained me.”

  “In swordsmanship.”

  Sho nodded. “Yes. And in the skills of our trade as well.”

  “Is that why you were at the castle, tending to the lord and his family?”

  “Yes.”

  Hirata’s emotional pain intensified. Sho had been here in Kai, not so terribly far from Edo, all this time, and had never once sent a message letting his friend know anything. “Hoshi-san said that Ichi was insistent on taking you for his apprentice. Why?”

  Sho turned fully to him and knelt, his hands on his thighs. The short kimono he wore gapped open and the firelight glowed off his skin, accentuating the chiseled planes of his chest and abdomen. As well as the wrapped half stone on its cord. “It turned out that Ichi-sensei knew your grandfather. They’d been friends as boys. Even after Ichi went blind and was taken into the Todoza by his master, they remained friends and practiced swordsmanship together. Ichi has mastered many forms, and he’s the one who helped your grandfather develop the Flying Cloud technique your father teaches to this day. When the Guild received your father’s letter about me, Ichi-sensei happened to be at the Guild and requested to take me as his apprentice.”

  “Why didn’t he tell my father about their association?”

  Sho shook his head. “I really don’t know.”

  “You mean in all those years together, he didn’t tell you why?”

  “Ichi has secrets. He is my master. I don’t question him. I know that people do strange things.”

  “Strange. Yes.” Bitterness from deep inside Hirata welled up. Images of his life since Sho’s departure flashed through his mind, as if released from a cage in his soul. For years, he’d worked in his father’s dojo, training, cleaning the weapons, polishing the floors, doing whatever tasks his father and brother-in-law required, as well as bearing his shame in silence. He never complained. Just waited for his seventeenth birthday when he could depart and search for Sho. In all those hours, days and years, he’d felt Sho’s absence like a cavern of dark grief, never abating, haunting his soul. “Yes,” he said again, unable to repress the anger in his voice, “like never telling your friend where you were? Not even to let him know you were alive and well? Like not caring whether he missed you with every breath?”

  Sho’s face, which had tightened during Hirata’s speech, now showed a deep furrow in his brow. “You wouldn’t understand, Hirata.”

  Hirata shoved the uneaten bowl of gruel away from him. In this moment, he didn’t care if he ever ate again. “Try me. You owe me that, at the very least.”

  “I saved your life. Call it even.”

  Sho’s response stunned him. But only for a moment. More bitterness and anger welled up until he could not have repressed his grief if he wanted to. “Why did you bother? So you could keep me alive and torment me some more with your absence? Your cold distance?”

  “All right, Hirata.” Sho bowed his head briefly and took a deep breath. “After I left with Ichi-sensei, I… just couldn’t….”

  “Couldn’t what?”

  Sho’s face darkened. “Once he became my master, I was no longer the same person.” He paused. “The change
began the moment he led me away from your father’s house. By the time we reached Kyoto, I couldn’t even bear to hear Ichi-sensei call me by my name. So I changed it. Years later, when I heard about the fire at the Guild headquarters, I realized that my old identity had been destroyed. I never went back and updated my records.”

  Hirata stared at him. “That’s why no one knew what had happened to a child named Sho.”

  Sho nodded. “Yes. Ichi-san agreed not to tell anyone either.”

  “That’s why that actor called you Jirrroo-sannn.” Hirata couldn’t refrain from imitating the way Aoki had said the name.

  To his credit, Sho bowed his head again, not showing annoyance at Hirata’s jealousy. “Yes, Hirata. I buried Sho. He’s no longer who I am. For years now, I’ve not been the person you once knew.”

  “That can’t be,” Hirata ground out. To hear Sho speak like this was another torture. “You’re Sho. My Sho. Always.”

  The crinkle in Sho’s brow deepened further. “You are selfish! I was right. In ten years of searching for me, did you ever once consider what my life has been like?” Sho rose up on his knees, appearing ready to pounce on Hirata and throttle him. “As difficult as our separation was for you, Hirata, at least you weren’t ripped from your home. At least it wasn’t your parents pushing you off onto a stranger.” Sho pointed an index finger at him accusingly, so accurately in his direction Hirata found himself forgetting that Sho couldn’t see him. “I’m fortunate that Ichi-sensei is a kind and honorable man. But how could I have known that at first? What if he’d abused me? What if he’d starved me, beaten me? Left me to die when I became ill? Your father and my parents took such a chance with my life. Once that happened, the place that remained your home was no longer my home. And if you believe they didn’t take such a risk with me, you’re wrong. There are twisted people like that out there, you know, Hirata. There is depravity in this world beyond your wildest imaginings.” During his speech, Sho had lowered his hand. Head bowed, he sank back on his haunches.

  Hirata’s blood ran cold. “Sho, did someone visit their depravity on you?” Already Hirata had images of slicing up the madman who would dare touch his precious Sho. Not that Sho needed anyone to defend him.