Imamimi Notanobu - XVI

“Do you love your country, Nobu-san?” asks Yanghua, as we walk through the forest.

Love is a strong word. One I'm not sure I'd even use for my parents. I look at him for a moment, debating how much to say.

“I like living here. But I wouldn’t call myself a patriot.”

“I understand,” he says, giving a small nod. “You would, however, want the best for your country, right? And you would, if nothing else, feel a bit of pride when you see your country win the World Cup, for example.”

“To a certain extent. It wouldn’t be me that did it, but it’d feel a little good.”

The walk through the forest is covered with snow and stable-footing. After leaving Iolanda alive, and the sniper to do their own thing, he decided to take me on a nice evening walk.

Strange as it might be to say, that gives me the impression he's not a wholesale murderer. Just a half or quarter.

“In that case, wouldn’t you say that the development of your country’s virtues is a good thing? That their improvement would thereby result in a net benefit for both themselves and you?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I mean, my country’s government isn’t perfect or anything. But it’s nice that they didn’t decide to bomb themselves, or legalise slavery.”

I think for a while about all this. I’m not sure what he’s getting at. I want to know, though. Not only because Yanghua is interesting, but because I can imagine that it’d offer more context to the audience I explain all this to.

“Did you kill these people because you wanted to improve your country?”

“Yes, Nobu-san.” He looks satisfied with my answer. “I don’t expect you to know the full scope of my country’s problems, but I imagine you can understand that it’s far from perfect. Day by day, warlords fight and wage wars against imaginary borders. Day by day, people sink lower and lower into depravity, and rob themselves of worldly merit for temporary satisfaction.”

I remember the last murder. Li Zezhang. And his relation to the virtue of ‘filial piety’. How he abandoned his family to chase foreign splendour.

“By killing in accordance with the inversion of the Eight-Virtues, those you deem as failing, you’re hoping to highlight… the shortcomings of your countrymen?”

With hands behind his back, Yanghua smiles. “That’s correct. The people no longer have anything to aspire to. They’ve been led astray by promises of riches and low-temptation. Do you know how many lives were lost just this last year alone, Nobu-san?”

“Thirty-thousand?”

“Sixty,” he corrects. “From starvation. From bombs. From man-made floods and man-made terrors. Even Sects such as mine, once sworn off conflict, inevitably found themselves pulled by the tide of warfare.”

I knew his country was going through a lot, but having that number does contextualise it. It'd explain why there's so many people escaping too.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” is all I manage, while listening intently. “But, this Sect, is it the one you currently lead?”

“An old iteration. Not quite the same, but not quite different. Lead by a Grandmaster different than I.” He takes a deep breath and sighs.

I can hear the pain it it. The resignation to something I don’t understand but want to. I take a second to build up the courage to ask. Watching his breath form clouds in the winter air.

“What happened to him?”

“He died. In exchange for our Sect’s secrets, a Japanese conglomerate agreed to sponsor his subsequent stay in their country.”

It sounds a bit shady, but it’s not too unexpected. Even with governmental regulations on magic and its corresponding elements, there are still plenty of families, companies, and the like who are willing to sneak around them for more power. There was a incident a few months back about a famous family who allegedly imported the body of a dead phoenix even, for some esoteric ritual.

Yanghua looks at me. “However, a warlord by the name of Wong Yuguang found out his plan to escape. And for my Grandmaster’s insubordination and so-called desertion, he had him flayed alive, and as punishment, sealed his disciples beneath a tomb to die of starvation. I was in there too. Deep in that wet, crowded darkness. You could say I came to realise a lot about human nature.”

He doesn’t explain further. I take it these aren’t fond memories, but at the same time something doesn’t make sense.

“Do you hate your Grandmaster?”

“No. I could never hate the man who raised, taught, and nurtured me at such a tender age. But I cannot forgive him either.”

“For trying to escape?”

“For leaving his country to die, and for letting inaction take the better of him,” he corrects. “I am an unsophisticated person, Nobu-san, I do not consider myself in possession of great wisdom or truth, and my speech is flat and artless. Even so, I know that a seed cannot be nurtured if left to fend for itself. If every man, woman, or child leaves their country to for refuge elsewhere, then their country will simply cease to be. That is all.”

He’s not wrong. But knowing what I know, gives me the feeling that his words are undercut with a certain extreme malice. Wanting your country to be better? Sure. Doing so by killing people, and then decorating the crime scene with various trinkets to signify some sort of agenda?

“I do not fault you for holding me in contempt, Nobu-san,” he says. Like he’s seen through me.

“I don’t. I frankly think it’s a bit insane to do what you do, but I don’t hold you in contempt. But, I’m not all right in the head either, so don’t take that as great consolation.”

Any normal person would hate a serial killer. Any normal person would probably be repulsed, as they would by an insect or stain. Maybe I would be one of them.

But knowing Yanghua. Having spoken to him. I realise ‘hate’, or ‘contempt’, isn't a feeling I have. Maybe pity, if nothing else.

I take stock of his expression. He takes stock of mine.

His tail starts to wag. His fluffy brown ears, relax, and fall to the side. “I see.” He smiles again. “I was correct in choosing you to represent my being. You understand the scope of my words, while not falling prey to idolatry, or utter loathing.”

Our walk continues. We end up in on a stony path. Close to the forest, but not quite in it. Yanghua ends up looking at his phone, matching the given address to where we are.

“We’re not far,” he opens, breaking the short-lived silence. “We’re not far.”

The walk continues for a few minutes longer. We end up on the outskirts of the city. He stops, raises his head to the house before us, then back down at his phone. As a result of a incident some time back, a lot of the buildings here have been abandoned and left dilapidated.

The building we’re at is a tall, concrete block. A fancy office square, given its sleek look, and glass windows. What must’ve been a courtyard once is now a overgrown jungle of tall grass, and flowers.

Yanghua looks around. “Do you see anyone, Nobu-san?”

I do too. “I can’t say I do.”

“That’s weird.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Probably not. But it certainly feels like it could be the case, which is never a grand feeling to entertain.”

We walk to the front entrance. The double-glass door opens easily to the sight of tall, looming darkness. As I look around, I get the sense that people left here in a hurry. Seeing as there’s still desks, papers, and whatnot still left scattered and about.

I have no clue why we’re here. It’s a very good place to kill someone, I think, given that there’s no one who’d check up on this place all that often. Except given Yanghua’s whole spiel about representing him, I thought I’d be sat in front of a camera while I recorded him going on about his life work.

“My dear brother was supposed to be here,” he says, with a genuine tenderness to ‘brother’.

“You have a sibling?”

“Not one by blood. A brother by familiarity, if you will. I don't believe you've met him. He's called Stillwater.”

I ransack my head. “I can't say I have. Did you meet him under your previous Grandmaster?”

“Not at all. We met far after that in Beijing. He saw me reading a particularly esoteric book on Taoism in a library, and came to question me about it.”

“He sounds like a good friend.”

“Quite so.”

“Do you have any others?”

He shakes his head. “The others were hired from the other branches of the Ejīngbāng. Largely novices untrained in magic, and seeking new avenues of power. Knowing only the application of the magic, but not what it entailed.”

His excited, out-there demeanour seems to have been infected with a certain melancholy. Maybe a sign of reflection or nostalgia for a better time.

“Do you want to elaborate on it?” I ask.

“I would not be opposed. Though I fear I will simply retread old paths. One can only find so many ways to complain about the youth before sounding like an old geezer,” he continues. “For what it’s worth, I simply appreciate when individuals are able to form genuine connections and fight for them.”

He looks at me and smiles. I do too. We let the time pass for a bit, waiting and looking around.

“Well.” Yanghua sounds a bit confused. “Shall we get a headstart?”

“A headstart?”

He reaches into his pocket and hands me my smartphone. “How about you record me, and we can practice my interview?”

“Oh, sure.”

I take the smartphone and train it on him. The screen adjusts to the surrounding darkness and offers a grey hue. I make a mental note that there’s internet here, despite not knowing what I’d do with it.

“Hello. My name is.” He cuts himself off. “Hello. My name is Hong Yanghua, and I’m the Grandmaster of the Eight-Virtue Sect.”

The boy starts going about his life. Recollecting information he’d said to me earlier with a certain enthusiasm. This continues for a good while, as he explains all about the reasons why he did it. His unbound anger towards the state of his country. His sympathy for those affected by it. Everything. He then does it in his home-language, then English, then another tongue, which I assume to be Cantonese.

Sensing that he wants a break, I make a nod. He nods back and I stop filming.

“How was it?” he asks.

“Good.” I’m nothing if not honest. “You were plenty confident, and you spoke your words very clearly.”

He speaks with obvious satisfaction. “That’s great, hehe. I learned from the best, after all.”

“By the best, you’d mean me, right?” I joke.

“Of course, Nobu-san. While I’ve had many teachers over the years, you are by far supreme in the abilities of public speaking.”

I’d said it as a half-joke, but I imagine my inner consciousness was using real information as a base. “You know, if you were watching my streams for that long, you should’ve dropped by to say hello. I would’ve been glad to have the opportunity to consult you.”

Yanghua keeps quiet. His expression, best summarised as a somewhat despondent realisation, is clear to see. Suddenly, his gaze flicks to me, and a sign of thought moves his fluffy ears. Like he'd just remembered something important. Yanghua reaches inside his robe and hands me my trinkets. The ones I'd used for summoning.

A small relief takes my body. “Thanks,” I say. Having those around makes me a little less helpless.

Say, he or one of the Ejingbang decided to come after me. Say, he or one of the Ejingbang came after me…

I feel a weight in my head. A sudden realisation about the circumstances of what’s here, and what’s next.

“Hey, Yanghua-san?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not against doing this for you or anything, but what’s stopping your--uh, gang from killing me when I’m done?”

“Between my Sect’s loyalty, and a favour owed to me by the Ejingbang’s Leader, rest assured that you’ll be taken care of.”

“But Iolanda… She did try to kill you, and she was a part of the Ejingbang, wasn’t she?”

“True.” He takes some time to consider the situation, or at least how to explain it. “Every organisation, no matter how united, will have opinions in divergence. Let alone one of the Ejingbang’s size.

Yanghua takes out his flip-phone and begins to type away. There’s a sound of little plastic keys being pressed in.

“Well,” he says, and smiles. “I just contacted the big boss, so it should be fine.”

“You have the big boss of the Ejingbang on speed dial?”

“I had to get started in the business somehow, didn’t I? We met at a tea shop in Shanghai, a very homely place. Their white tea is rather spectacular. If you want, I can write you the addre—”

Yanghua looks right. I do too. A blurring mass of black approaches, and before he can do anything, it leaps into the air with two feet forward. By a quarter-second, the figure’s slow’s just enough so that I can see what it is.

Zhang in the act of drop-kicking.

The hit sends Yanghua flying. His body slams into a nearby pillar, and cracks spread on impact with a quick, grinding noise. He rubs the back of his head, but makes no sign he’s been hurt.

Zhang and Mad Dog are inside the office building. Bodies caked in a moon-light glow, creating soft, thin shadows.