Page 57 of Brutal Union
The minute he deems me too weak, he will kill me. He has done it before. I remember my brothers. Benjiro was an artist who had a knack for drawing women and animals. He used to tell me those were the two purest forms of humanity. Riko was more of a lover. He was tender and kind, never really understood what it was to wield a sword. Both died at the age of fourteen. I am almost fourteen, my father has no trust I will make it to maturity. He believes my mother breeds weak men. I never asked about my one sister. I haven’t seen her since the day she was born five years ago.
I don’t want to cry.
But the tears still come. Hot. Silent. Not sobs—nothing weak like that. Just my eyes leaking without permission while I grind my teeth and keep my jaw clenched. Salty streaks cut down my face, disappearing into the ocean air. My shoulders shake, but only a little. Maybe from the wind. If anyone finds me I will tell them I am cold, but I am unsure a man should even feel a chill. That may make me weak as well.
The blood gushing from my leg isn’t clotting, and my head feels too fuzzy to sense my surroundings. That is the only reason I don’t hear her approach.
I smell her first—lavender, and sea salt. She kneels beside me without a word and clicks her tongue at the sight of my leg. Her presence doesn’t feel like it pushes into mine; it’s like water—slipping around me, fitting beside me.
“Sho,” she hums, her hands moving around mine, and gently pulling them away from the wound.
I stare at her beautiful heart shaped face. She’s wearing a pale blue kimono with silver cranes dancing along the hem. Her hair’s twisted up, strands pulled loose by the breeze.
“Do shita no, amai ko?”What happened, sweet girl?She hisses, looking at the long gash, moving my pained leg from side to side. It is only then that I recognize the swelling at my ankle.
I don’t answer her, and she murmurs under her breath, looking around the beach for the eyes of my father, or his men. She reaches into her sleeve and pulls out a small cloth bundle. Of course she brought it. She always brings something. I wonder how long she’s been watching me.
She unwraps the bundle and dabs at my leg. Her hands are warm. She’s gentle, but not afraid. When I flinch, she doesn’t. But her hands grip me tighter to keep me still.
“You should have come to me,” she says.
I stare at the waves. “I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I pause, biting the inside of my cheek. The words taste like shame. “Father said I can’t be seen as weak.”
She stops cleaning for a moment. Her hand goes still. The silence stretches so long I think maybe she’s angry. But then she resumes—slow, steady. “You’re not weak, Sho. Your father is weak.”
“That’s not what he thinks.”
“No,” she sighs, moving up to the curve of my knee. “It’s not. But your father was raised to worship stone. He thinks strength is being unshakable. But stone cracks, Sho. Stone breaks.”
I should tell her that stone is still stone. That father would hit her for not understanding that a cracked stone becomes jagged and more deadly. I should say something my father would say, but instead I lie.
“I wasn’t crying.”
She doesn’t look at me. “I didn’t say you were.”
Her hands stay busy—pulling antiseptic from the cloth bundle she always seems to carry, wetting another corner of the linen, gently wiping around the gash in my leg with careful strokes. It burns with every swipe, but I swallow down the hiss, and hold in the pain like I am meant to. She moves with quiet focus, as if tending to me is something sacred. I am afraid to tell her it is not. I am afraid to tell her I am no better than Riko and Benjiro. That it is true. She creates weak sons. I am a weak son.
“Do you remember the story of Princess Kaguya?” She whispers, her gaze stuck on the line of my wound.
“The moon princess?”
She smiles, just a little. “Yes. The girl found glowing inside a stalk of bamboo.”
“She leaves Earth at the end.”
“She does,” she nods. “But not before she lives here. Not before she’s loved, and feared, and misunderstood. Do you know why I think she cried when she returned to the moon?”
I shrug. “Because she was sad to leave?”
“No,” she says. “Because she was human for a while. Because it hurt to love people who couldn’t understand her—and still choose to love them anyway.”
She finishes wrapping the linen like a bandage around my leg. Tight, but not harsh, and ties it off with a string from around her wrist.
“She cried, Sho. And those tears weren’t weakness. They were the burden of someone who felt everything and still kept going.”
