Daimyo

Guilt is a hex. It binds the human race thoughtlessly to the ground as it watches them bow on hot coals.

Look away, you try; but you cannot pull yourself away. It calls for your audience.

A warning.

The elements rage, compounding nature's odorless breath. It is the third of January, 1998; the Shiretoko Peninsula.

No man should be alone with his thoughts in this wood. Not any righteous man.

Ancient towers that plant their feet deep and prosper, now bare in their communion.

They watch on as a single solitary fool trudges through their halls.

In the cracks of the bark walls are the painted saints. Edgard Varèse himself, composing the apathetic creatures to deliver his one thought and play on his every waking fear, hides in the shadow of the watercolor sky.

*Chug-chug-chug*. The choo-ing of an evening train; a distant reminder of civilization left behind.

The solitary fool stutters. Stops in place.

Every drawn breath is another pang of mourning and disbelief in the mind. Steps are retraced and laced by the venom of hindsight.

The path to a sort of peace, perhaps-

"I'm not far enough out," He thinks.

To know warmth, to have it in your possession, only to reject its embrace for a nebulous path.

If there is a word worse than evil, it would be youth.

8:45 pm. The sky was falling on ‘the end of the world’, and out came the kin of the shadow.

The world became silent, and the air crisper.

Out of breath, Shigeo Noguchi slumped down under a large tree.

Tense, constricted, angry, and yet…

*Titter-tatter*

Rustles of branches and the weight of the ground rocked beneath his feet.

That muted heavy thumping vibrated through his heart, dictating its swing.

It got faster.

Stopped.

An audible breath, not of humankind. The smell of bathed-in salt water among other indiscernible strands of stench. 

Something doesn’t belong here.

In the feudal era, territory was allotted to magistrates with great power. Handed down through blood, they ruled over their land and army.

Something greater had found the young man in its marked territory- a force more regal than savage samurai.

 And they had found blood.

-DAIMYO-

Shaking. Shaking. Shaking. From the shoulder blade up to the follicles of his head, Shigeo was shocked cold. But he dared not turn around. 

Trying to keep in place only made the sensation stronger.

A sensation of being trapped. Of wanting a way out of insurmountable circumstances. Primal urge versus primal prowess? The answer to that battle is instinctively known.

As he inches to rise up, his mouth begins to quiver.

He prepares himself to slowly evade the large Bear looming behind him.

*Gristle* His teeth feel in sync with the gnashing of the beast. 

The first incitement is heard. 

Loud and clear.

Look away, he tries; but Shigeo cannot force his neck forward. The Bear calls at him. It commands acknowledgment

It speaks of judgement.

Still, Shigeo goes on, reverse step after step. His teeth begin to chatter.

*Growl*

No longer interrogating Shigeo's movements, the bear leapt forward with its sharp claws sizing up the lanky man.

Shigeo, unable to see behind himself, stumbles on the path below him.

He's been cornered.

As the bear closed in to him, he lost all control of his thoughts. Image after image ran through his head. Some he had long forgotten.

Almost as if they were chosen for his funeral booklet antemortem. 

Like he’d be remembered for anything decent.

Birds flutter in the night sky at the command of the bears' primal scream. The young man's voice curdled closely after. There would be no one there to hear it. No mortal man.

Or so he thought.

*CRACK*

“Smile child, it's yer lucky day…” a voice whispered beyond the young man's conscious awareness.

Pitch black was all he could see; if there was anything. The scene had ended. But he wasn't dead.

As he came to, the *crack* sound ran through his head again. It sounded like thunder.

Laughter and the smile are like thunder and lightning. You have heard the adage that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile, right? It's true.

If you are an intelligent woman, you have likely been told to smile. If you are an intelligent woman who likes to smile, call me.

Before you stop reading, these words are not of my origin.

They were the unsolicited thoughts that began to percolate through Shigeo’s head, as if they were planted there.

And then he woke up. Slowly first, his eyes adjusted to overhead light. 

Now he could clearly tell that the voices were of conversation in the room he had been placed in. He tried to raise his arm only to see it had been set for him.

“Uta, that's just sexist, I can’t believe you!” A woman sitting at a table across the room exclaimed half laughing.

She had red hair, and a nose uncustomary of this part of the world..suffice to say she was foreign.

But she spoke the language gracefully, while the man was more flaccid.

All that work to be forced to laugh at a tepid joke.yet they continued to talk and exchange pleasantries.

Two warm weights at an instant fell over Shigeo’s shoulders.

“So you’re awake. Good, good.” Faintly, the source of those hands spoke. His accent sounded Russian.

He naturally lowered his head to the side of Shigeo’s face. They touched, skin to skin.

“Don't be scared, okay?” He said even quieter before unsinking his fingers from around Shigeo’s shoulders and patting the young man on the back.

The man walked up towards the other side of what Shigeo could now see was a cabin of some kind. 

“Ah, Hirowitz, so the boy you saved is alive? Kudos to you.” Uta said 

He finally got a good look at the man's face; The man named Hirowitz.

He too looked foreign. Though something about him; it was almost like he could pass for the singer Kiyohiko Ozaki. He looked like a Daimyo

There were three people dining at the table. One was named Uta, another was a woman with impeccable Japanese. And another sat detached from the conversation altogether.

She sat silently and looked down. She had no food to eat.

With her hands folded above her face, she slowly raised her head up. 

Her face may have been obscured, but I was sure.

She smiled at me.