Chapter Text
Dawn in this town always begins with a scent. It is the rich smell of cooking smoke, blended with the clean, delicate aroma of broth boiling vigorously in the kitchen of Konaya Inn. Morning sunlight slips through the lingering mist and falls on the noren curtains hanging at the entrance, where the name “Konaya” flows gracefully.
In the main hall, the sound of guests fills the air like a song that never ends. Wooden geta clack along the corridors, bowls and chopsticks ring sharply against one another, and merchants chat loudly over their first cups of tea as they discuss business. The atmosphere here is always charged with energy. Polished pine pillars, worn smooth by time, and tatami mats scented with fresh straw together create a warm haven for anyone worn down by a long and exhausting journey.
Yet, if one walks down the long wooden corridor stretching toward the west wing, the resting area reserved for special guests, the mood changes at once. The noise of the inn fades away, replaced by the soft rustle of bamboo leaves in the wind and the steady drip of water from the stone tsukubai basin in the courtyard.
At the end of that corridor lies the room of Inusaka Keno. Unlike the bright, showy presence of a Dengaku dancer on stage, this room feels somber and restrained. A gentle trace of incense drifts through the air. Light entering the room is filtered through thin shoji paper, casting uncertain patches of shadow and glow, much like the unreadable thoughts of the person lying inside.
This place holds none of the bustle of the outside world. Instead, it feels like a resting point for fragments of memory. Brilliantly colored dance costumes hang on their racks, standing in stark contrast to the pallor of their owner, who is struggling against waves of pain rising from deep within his body. The stillness of the west wing brings no sense of peace, it is heavy with unease, like the surface of a lake lying calm just before an inevitable storm breaks.
Back in the space thick with the smell of grilled fish and the noisy chatter of merchants, the appearance of Inukai Genpachi is like a massive stone dropped into a rushing stream. Guests who had been noisily slurping their hot soup freeze in place, chopsticks suspended in midair. Everyone is used to the sight of the stern patrol officer, a man whose mere hand on his sword hilt is enough to send ruffians fleeing in terror. But the Genpachi standing there now is a version they would never have dared imagine, even in their dreams.
They see him standing stiffly beside a basket of vegetables and medicinal herbs, his brows drawn together as if facing the most difficult judgment of his life. One hand grips the hilt of his blade out of instinct, while the other clumsily cradles a few small white wildflowers, lifting and lowering them with care, as though afraid that his own strength might crush them.
The merchants exchanged glances, stifling a snort of laughter in their throats. A few travelers from afar, unaware of the situation, whispered among themselves, wondering whether that officer was about to perform some strange exorcism ritual. Their gazes gathered on Genpachi, examining him from his dust-stained legs to the awkward tension he could no longer hide, creeping up his reddening neck.
Genpachi could feel dozens of eyes piercing into his back like arrows. He cleared his throat loudly, the same sound he used daily to intimidate criminals, though now it rang hollow, clumsily masking his embarrassment. He tightened his grip on the basket’s handle, straightened his back as best he could, and started toward the western corridor. Yet, instead of his usual commanding stride, Genpachi found himself stepping strangely lightly across the wooden floor, as if afraid the sound of his footsteps might shatter the heavy, somber air surrounding that man’s room.
Each step echoed on the floorboards, dragging along a tangled stream of thoughts Genpachi could not begin to untangle. Reasons, excuses, half-formed words piled up in his head, a mess no different from the stack of documents he had left scattered in his office a while ago.
It was when Genpachi was still wrestling with words on a blotched page listing the crimes of a group of thieves, that a powerful hand suddenly clapped down on his shoulder, jolting his brush and sending a line of ink veering off course. He didn’t need to turn around to know that only Inuta Kobungo greeted him in such an earthshaking way.
“Genpachi, stop sitting there squeezing words out of the page. Help me with something.”
Kobungo laughed heartily, pointing toward the basket of fresh vegetables.
Genpachi snorted, his expression hardening, as if already sensing an unreasonable request coming his way.
“I’m a patrol officer, not a messenger for your inn. If you want to deliver vegetables, do it yourself. I still have—”
“Keno-san’s been looking pale lately. Keeps clutching his stomach, too. Since you’re free anyway, take this basket over to the west wing for him. Oh, and stop by the edge of the forest to pick some pain-relief herbs, those serrated-leaf ones.”
The moment the words “stomach” left Kobungo’s mouth, they struck Genpachi like a needle to a vital point. His eyes shifted at once, the stiffness drained from his face, replaced by a flicker of emotion he couldn’t hide. He shot to his feet so fast the wooden chair nearly toppled over, snatching up the basket Kobungo had pointed to.
“You talk too much! I was heading that way anyway!”
Genpachi strode briskly toward the back garden, muttering complaints under his breath to cover the unease rising in his chest. But when he reached the dense bushes at the foot of the mountain, the valiant officer suddenly stopped. The eyes that so often scrutinized criminals now stared helplessly at a patch of wild plants.
“Serrated leaves… Which ones are serrated? This one? Or that one?”
He dropped to one knee, lifting a stalk of weeds to inspect it under the sunlight, sweat beading on his brow.
“Damn it… is this nutgrass or an actual herb? If Keno drinks the wrong thing, he’ll flay me alive with that sharp tongue of his.”
In that moment, Genpachi’s mind drifted backward along the current of memory. He recalled that night, when Keno stood beneath the torchlight, his dancer’s robes flaring out like the wings of a swan, graceful, radiant. That image of a fragile yet vibrant Keno was now overwritten by the thought of someone curled up in the corner of a cold room, wasting away under relentless waves of pain.
A strange discomfort welled up in Genpachi’s chest, like the helplessness of watching a treasured blade rust beyond saving. He clenched his fist and glanced down at the clumsy bundle of herbs he had gathered.
This is not enough…
It wasn’t just medicine he needed to bring. He knew he had to bring something else as well, something that might ease the gloom pressing in on that man.
The corridor leading to the west wing stretched on endlessly, each of Genpachi’s footsteps striking the floor with increasing weight. The lively scent of kitchen smoke from Konaya faded the closer he drew to Keno’s room, replaced by the clean yet chilling smell of incense.
Standing before the thin shoji sliding door, Genpachi took a deep breath, as if preparing to storm a fortress. He cleared his throat, restrained his strength, and knocked lightly three times on the wooden frame.
“It’s me. Kobungo asked me to bring you some herbs and a bit of fruit.”
The silence stretched long enough for Genpachi to hear the bamboo leaves rustling outside the veranda. Then a voice came from behind the door, thin and weary, yet still edged with its familiar sharpness.
“I’m tired now so leave it there…”
Genpachi frowned, the stubbornness in his blood beginning to stir. He knew the pride of the man inside. Keno would rather endure pain alone than show weakness to anyone, especially to him. Under normal circumstances, Genpachi would have barked back and forced his way in. This time, however, he stopped. An old memory surged up without warning, raw and burning like an unhealed wound.
He remembered that fateful night when he had risked his life to pull Keno from Tamazusa’s cruel grasp. Balanced on the edge of death, with hot blood soaking his collar and his vision fading, Genpachi had spoken what he thought were his final words, clumsy, scattered words that Keno later mocked.
“I thought you'd suddenly started breaking into poetry!”
Back then, Keno had laughed. A laugh born between blood and tears, a laugh that loosened the tightness in his chest and allowed him to spit out the bead of Wisdom, saving not only his own life but Genpachi’s, and the lives of their comrades as well.
Genpachi tightened his grip on the basket and straightened his back, his expression solemn, as though standing at an execution ground to read out a warrant of arrest. He cleared his throat loudly, drew a deep breath into his chest, and began to recite the haiku he had wracked his brain to compose along the way.
(腹痛や 薬を飲まず 唸る声)
"Haraitami ya... Kusuri wo nomazu... Unaru koe..."
Belly ache, Not taking medicine, Only groaning sounds
His chanting voice echoed down the corridor, rough and rigid, utterly out of tune with the refined elegance of a seventeen-syllable poem.
When he finished, Genpachi held his breath and waited.
One second.
Two seconds.
Then three passed in absolute silence. Just as he was about to kick the door open, a snort of laughter broke out from inside. At first it was restrained, but soon it burst into fits of coughing laughter, sharp with mockery.
“That… that’s supposed to be poetry?”
Keno’s voice followed, sounding as though the pain had been chased away, at least in part, by sheer absurdity.
“The meaning is as crude as your face!”
There was a soft click as the latch shifted. The sliding door slowly opened, revealing Keno’s pale, sickly face. One hand clutched his stomach, the other braced against the doorframe, his eyes glinting with a look that was equal parts exhaustion and amusement.
Genpachi’s face flushed all the way to his ears, half embarrassed, half relieved to see the other man finally appear. He thrust the basket of herbs forward, his voice turning gruff.
“What are you laughing at? You just don’t have the soul to appreciate my poetry! Now move, I’m coming in, the herbs are wilting already!”
He squeezed through the narrow doorway, careful not to bump into the fragile folding screens or the racks of delicate dance costumes lining the room. When the sliding door closed behind him, the lively world of Konaya Inn vanished completely, leaving only the dense scent of herbs and the chill rising from the tatami mats.
Keno slowly lowered himself beside the low table, his breathing faintly unsteady.
“How long do you plan to stand there?”
Startled, Genpachi hurriedly set the basket down. He fumbled with the serrated leaves he had struggled to gather, deliberately spreading them out as though displaying trophies from a hard-won battle.
“Kobungo said you haven’t been eating anything, just lying around lazily in here so I brought dried persimmons and sweet pears, too.”
Keno glanced at the messy pile of herbs, the corner of his mouth lifting into a familiar, sardonic smile. He extended his pale hand, slender fingers brushing against a leaf Genpachi had crushed halfway by gripping it too tightly. Keno murmured, his voice light and distant.
“This one… you picked it near the eastern forest edge, didn’t you? It’s very bitter.”
“Bitter medicine cures bad habits!”
Genpachi snapped back softly, though his hand quietly nudged the plate of dried persimmons closer to Keno.
“Eat a little. If you leave your stomach empty like that, no medicine, no matter how miraculous, is going to help you recover.”
Keno shook his head faintly, his fingers tightening around the thin layer of silk at his waist. He whispered, his voice dissolving into the incense smoke.
“It isn’t empty… It’s just that, ever since I spit out the bead, this place has felt strangely cold.”
At the mention of the bead, the air in the room suddenly grew heavy. Keno instinctively lifted a hand to his abdomen, the place where the bead of Wisdom had once resided. He said nothing, his distant gaze fixed on the curling trails of incense smoke twisting through empty space. When Genpachi noticed the movement, his heart tightened. He knew Keno’s pain did not come solely from his stomach, but from a tangible emptiness Tamazusa had torn out and left behind.
…
The room, already small, became even more suffocating when Genpachi decided to bring in the earthenware medicine pot and prepare the decoction right there. Charcoal crackled inside the small brazier, gray smoke rising with the sharp, acrid scent of dried roots and wild cinnamon bark he had painstakingly gathered. The bitter smell quickly filled the room, driving away the clean fragrance of incense that had lingered earlier.
Keno lifted the sleeve of his silk robe to cover his nose and turned his face aside, his refined brows knitting tightly.
“Get rid of it. That stench is worse than your poem from earlier. I’d rather endure the pain than swallow that pitch-black liquid.”
Genpachi didn’t bother looking up. He worked the bamboo fan steadily, feeding air into the brazier. His face was partially hidden behind the familiar black cloth, but his eyes remained stubbornly resolute.
“Be quiet and lie still. Even if you’re one of the Eight Dog Warriors, when your stomach hurts, you’re no different from a weakling. Bitter medicine exists to cure that arrogance of yours.”
As the medicinal smoke enveloped the room, blurring everything into a hazy veil, the words Eight Dog Warriors unknowingly pulled them back into the dark days of the past. Keno stared at the dancing flames, his voice sinking low and dull, as though speaking to the void itself.
“Have you ever wondered why we carry these beads in the first place?”
Genpachi’s fanning slowed to a stop. He didn’t turn around, but his broad shoulders tensed. After a long silence, he finally spoke, his voice deep and firm.
“I don’t use my time to analyze questions like why. I don’t even know where I came from nor who my real parents were. When I was nothing more than a red-faced infant, Kobungo’s father found me and raised me under the roof of Konaya. The bead of Faith, and the mark on my right cheek, they were already there long before I even knew how to hold a sword.”
He cleared his throat, his hand tightening around the handle of the herb basket as if gripping the hilt of a blade.
“Everything Monk Chudai said about Tamazusa’s curse, about Princess Fusehime… To be honest, I still can’t fully digest it. To me, those things feel as distant as the moon reflected at the bottom of the water. But there’s one thing I know for certain: in this world, there is right, and there is wrong.”
Genpachi rose to his feet, his shadow stretching long across the shoji screen. His voice sharpened, carrying the unmistakable authority of a patrol officer.
“I loathe vermin who make their living through theft, arsonists and murderers who kill for personal gain, and traitors who trample on morality and duty. When I see evil, my first instinct is to crush it. I don’t care whether it’s called fate or a curse, if someone harms the people, harms my brothers, I’ll use this blade to send them straight to hell.”
He met Keno’s wavering gaze, his voice softening slightly, though its weight remained.
“I still don’t fully understand why I bear the bead of Faith. But if Faith means never turning my back on what’s right, protecting those weaker than myself, even a stubborn dancer who refuses to drink his medicine, then I’ll carry it until my last breath. Tamazusa retreated because we were still weak, that’s true. But what about six of us? Or eight? As long as I can still stand, I won’t let her lay a single finger on any of my brothers.”
Keno fell silent before Genpachi’s forthright words. He realized that while he himself had been searching endlessly for meaning behind the pain of the soul, Genpachi confronted it with the simplest, most unyielding resolve. He didn’t need to understand the truth, he was the truth, standing there in the flesh.
Genpachi snorted, lifting the bowl of thick, black medicine that had finally stopped boiling over and bringing it closer to Keno.
“You’ve heard enough, right? Now drink this. No so-called justice is going to come true with an empty stomach and a body on the verge of collapse.”
Keno did not reach for the bowl at once.
Slowly, he propped himself up, each movement careful, as though his body had yet to remember how to heal. The thin silk robe slipped from his narrow shoulders, revealing skin so pale it was nearly translucent, faint blue veins visible beneath the flickering oil lamp.
Keno lifted his head and met Genpachi’s gaze without wavering. His voice was even, calm to the point of coldness, as though stating a simple truth that everyone must eventually face.
“Do you plan to cut through mist with your blade?”
There was no mockery in the question, nor any hint of provocation.
“Tamazusa isn’t a thief or an arsonist you can bind, drag away, and throw into a dark cell.”
Keno drew in a quiet breath, as if suppressing the dull ache gnawing at his abdomen.
“As long as the resentment of the past remains unresolved, even if you strike her down a thousand times, this world will give birth to another calamity to balance that injustice. You cannot destroy a wrongful scream with violence alone.”
Silence settled over the room. Genpachi froze, his grip on the medicine bowl tightening unconsciously. His brows furrowed, defiance plain on a face accustomed to defining right and wrong by law and steel. To him, evil was something to be suppressed, a threat to be rooted out completely. Yet Keno’s words were like a different kind of blade, slowly carving into the beliefs Genpachi had long held as unshakable.
Keno lowered his gaze, his eyes coming to rest on the pain twisting in his abdomen. He placed a hand there, as if to confirm that the ache was still real, and then continued, his voice dropping, slower and heavier.
“The years I spent living beside her… and the prophecies spoken by Monk Chudai, showed me a harsh truth.”
Keno closed his eyes for a brief moment, his lashes trembling ever so slightly.
“Tamazusa’s wrongful death tore a hole in the moral fabric of the Satomi clan. The curse is not merely some form of dark magic. It is a karma.”
His voice was no longer sharp now, but weary.
“None of this is random. This is how the world functions once its foundation has begun to rot.”
Genpachi lowered his gaze to his calloused hands, scarred from years of gripping a sword. For the first time, he felt that the patrol blade, once his pride as a symbol of justice, was utterly useless before a system already broken at its core. The hand clenched around the hilt trembled slightly. The oil lamp flickered as night wind slipped through the cracks in the door, their shadows stretching across the wall, warped and distorted, just like the truths Keno was laying bare.
Keno gave a soft, dry cough, the sound tearing faintly from his chest. He braced one hand against the floor, slowed his breathing, and continued, his voice steady yet weighed down by deep exhaustion.
“Don’t you ever wonder why fate is so unfair? This world was never fair to begin with. It only knows balance. And that balance tipped the moment Tamazusa was condemned.”
Keno’s gaze seemed to pierce straight through the wall before him, into a past long since rotted away.
“The Eight Virtues were not born to grant blessings. They exist to restrain collapse. Each bead is a reminder that as long as people can choose compassion over hatred, this world still has a reason to continue for one more day.”
Genpachi ground his teeth, his voice dropping, dry and heavy.
“But if this goes on… how long are we supposed to bear it?”
Keno let out a quiet laugh, one devoid of any joy. Those bright eyes flickered with a sorrow bordering on despair.
“Until the resentment fades away… or until we no longer exist.”
He lifted his head to meet Genpachi’s gaze.
“As long as you can keep Faith in your heart, believe in people, believe that this world is still worth saving, Tamazusa, no matter how fiercely she screams, will never be able to swallow everything whole.”
Outside, thick fog continued to coil around the mountains like a wound that refused to close. Yet in that moment, within the dim room, the two beads resting against their chests lay still, quietly emitting a faint, fragile glow.
Genpachi remained silent for a long time. In that silence, he felt as though something inside him had just collapsed. The faith he once wore as a badge of pride now felt like an invisible chain, binding his soul to a cycle with no escape.
“So… our end is to disappear?”
Keno did not answer right away. He closed his eyes, lashes trembling as if bracing against familiar pain.
“Not to disappear, but to be returned. Returned to a world that no longer needs sacrifice…”
Genpachi looked up at him. Keno continued, slowly, each word dissolving into smoke.
“Returned to the natural flow of birth, aging, illness, and death. When that day comes, there will be no Eight Dog Warriors, no beads, no oaths. Only nameless people, living and dying like anyone else.”
A long silence followed. Outside the eaves, the wind slipping through the bamboo grove sounded like the mountain forest letting out a sigh. Genpachi suddenly let out a quiet laugh: dry, brittle, laced with bitterness.
“How ironic. We endure everything, only to exchange it for a world where our very existence becomes unnecessary.”
Keno looked at him, his gaze softening, rarely so.
“Perhaps that is the final meaning. A world that has no need of us… is a world that has been saved.”
The oil lamp flickered, its light waning as if the fuel were nearly spent. In that faint glow, Genpachi lowered his head. For the first time, he did not pray for strength, nor did he swear to protect anything. He merely accepted, in silence, that the path he walked did not lead to glory.
And somewhere deep within, between resentment and virtue, the wheel of karma continued to turn, waiting for the day when those who bore such burdens would finally be permitted to let go.
Genpachi’s gaze fell upon the bowl of medicine, now cooled somewhat. A thin wisp of steam rose and dissolved into the air, just like the ideals that had once burned fiercely in his heart. Then he looked at the person before him, a man carrying far too many truths to ever live in peace.
He lifted the bowl.
There was no force of command now. Only a slow, steady motion remained, tinged with a quiet reverence for the companion who shared this burden.
“If that is so… Then drink the medicine.”
Genpachi spoke softly, his voice dropping low, like a vow that required no witness.
“So that we may have the strength to bear the consequences of this… until the very end.”
To be continued…