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“So, go over this one more time with me. Why are we looking for this place?”
Banba refuses to slow his pace, dead leaves crunching beneath his boot heels.
“We don’t have to be doing anything,” he says. He frowns at the crudely drawn map as he compares the landmark labeled ‘weird copse of trees’ to the repetitive forest scenery around him. None of these look particularly weird to him. “I’m more than capable of going alone, Master.”
“True enough, I’m sure. But what else am I supposed to do? Sit back at the inn and drink while you’re gone? That doesn’t sound all that riveting.”
“Maybe you could do with some boredom once in a while,” Banba mutters. “Keeps a man humble.”
“Hm? What was that? Are you sassing me again?”
Banba pointedly does not respond. There is an overdramatic sigh from behind him.
“You never used to be so disrespectful. Where did I go wrong?”
“Do you actually want me to answer that?”
The sound of his companion’s footsteps cease. There is a stretch of silence, then, and he finally acquiesces and turns back to find his master giving him one of those Looks – knife-sharp, appraising, head cocked to the side as he studies him.
“I assume this is about that story we heard, isn’t it?” he says. “The ‘secret technique’ sealed away in some forgotten temple around here. The real question is… what do you need it for?”
“What kind of question is that?”
He steps closer; reaches out to pluck the scrap of parchment from his hands. “I mean you already won, Banba-chan. The war’s over. What are you still trying to get stronger for?”
Banba snatches the map back from him with a glower. “Is that really something a warrior should ask?”
“Maybe not,” Osamu says, shrugging a shoulder. “But I’m just being pragmatic here.”
“No, I’m being pragmatic. Like I always am. You can never be too prepared.”
He turns sharply and sets off into the trees, and after a long moment where he can feel that exasperated stare boring into his back, those footsteps begin following after him once more.
Strange, he thinks. How it’s often the other way around nowadays.
Back then, it was always him trailing behind.
Despite the poor quality of the map, they do manage to find the temple eventually – little more than a crumbling, ivy-covered ruin, and yet there’s still a field of protective energy surrounding the place that only allows them in after he uses the Unlock Soul.
Past the rotted door hanging off its hinges, they find the grey stone interior to be spacious, echoing, and nearly empty, save for a long table and a few locked bookcases stuffed with yellowing volumes. Thin fingers of sunlight stretch down through the many cracks in the ceiling.
“Ooh, someone’s here,” a voice says, and Banba looks up to see a small creature pop into existence.
“A fairy?” Osamu says. “That’s rare.”
Rare is an understatement. Banba can only recall one other time that he’s glimpsed a fairy up close. This one’s skin is a shimmering pink colour, its face sharp and elfin with pupil-less opalescent eyes, and it flutters down to sit cross-legged on the table, looking them up and down, judging and assessing.
“It’s been ages since anyone showed up,” it says. “You’re here for the scroll, right? You look like real serious knightly types.”
“Oh, that’s him to a t,” Osamu says.
Banba ignored that quip. “What do I have to do to get it?” he asks the creature. There’s always some kind of catch, it seems, with beings like this.
The fairy ponders, tapping a tiny finger against its chin, before its face seems to brighten. “I know. How about… a test of honesty?”
“Honesty,” he echoes.
“Mmhmm. My kind don’t like liars, you know. We like humans who’re straightforward and say what they mean.”
Osamu huffs out an incredulous laugh. “Might actually be in the wrong company then,” he says, and Banba shoots him a dark look.
“Fine,” he says tersely, though he has a bad feeling about this creeping up his spine. “Whatever it is, ask me.”
“Okay, so. The way it goes is I get three questions. And I’ll know if you’re lying. So don’t even bother! We have a sense for that, y’know. First one… Um. What would you do with the technique sealed within the scroll?”
That, he supposes, is simple enough.
“I’d use it to defeat any new threat against the Earth that might emerge during the rest of my tenure as Ryusoul Black.”
The fairy nods glumly, clearly bored, but a moment later an unsettling smile is curving its mouth as an idea seems to occur to it.
“Question two! Who… was your first love?”
Banba stares back at it blankly.
“What?”
“You heard me! I said what I said!” The creature pouts. “You don’t know how boring it’s been around here lately, man. All of my friends have been having the same drama for like a century now. I wanna hear something new! Something romantic! Something juicy! Gimme some info!”
As it becomes increasingly clear that it’s not kidding, Banba winces; presses his fingertips to his temple and massages. He can feel the throb of a headache coming on.
“First love, huh,” Osamu is murmuring. His arms are folded across his chest as he leans against the wall. “That’s crazy to think about. Mine was… Rina. Pretty sure that was her name. Almost three hundred years ago? We were in training around the same time. Oh, she was so mean. Harsh to everybody.” He smiles wistfully. “I liked that about her. Been weak for that type ever since.” He gives Banba an expectant look, then. “See, I’m not even involved in this and I still managed to share with the class. Your turn, Banba-chan.”
The fairy blinks up at him as well, waiting.
Jaw clenched tight enough to hurt, Banba lifts a hand, slow and begrudging, and points to his master.
“Him,” he grits out.
From his master, there is only a slight lift of the eyebrows. The fairy, meanwhile, springs up from the table in excitement.
“No way,” it gasps, covering its face with its hands. “Could it be…? A romance right in front of me? No, no, don’t answer that, that’s not my third question. Oh wow, wow.” It paces the length of the table, glancing back and forth between them, gradually sobering a bit as it reads the mood. “It kinda… doesn’t seem like you’re a couple, though, does it. So then. Okay, um. Question three. When did it end and why? Those feelings, I mean?”
He can feel those eyes on him.
Banba lets out a weary breath.
“You know what,” he says. “I’ve decided I don’t need this technique after all.”
“Haa?” Osamu’s sharp note of disbelief echoes after him as he turns to walk away. “After we came all the way out here?”
“Noooo, come on,” the fairy calls, genuinely mournful. “I’ll – I’ll be here if you change your mind! Or tell your friends about this place if you want! As long as they have some drama in their lives!”
“I can’t believe you’d just run away,” Osamu says, after he’s caught up with him outside the sphere of the temple’s barrier. “Right when things were getting so enlightening, too.”
Banba presses his lips together in a hard line, not faltering in his brisk pace. “Don’t be coy. As if you haven’t known this entire time.”
“Sure, but it’s a little different to actually hear you admit it. And honestly, I don’t get it. Why not answer that last one, if you’ve come this far? Wouldn’t exactly be a shock to my system to hear it said out loud. When did it end? Oh, you know, the day he pointed a sword at me and pretended to betray us all. Seems easy enough to say.”
Banba’s hand curls into a fist at his side. He keeps his eyes trained on the path between the trees in front of them.
“Please be quiet, Master,” he says stiffly.
There is a distinct lack of bite to his master’s words as he hears him mutter, “Seriously. So mean.”
With Nada, it started because of him.
He remembers sitting around a dying bonfire, Nada next to him, the other knights-in-training having said their good nights and drifted away into the smudged darkness outside the fire’s glow. His gaze had been focused across the clearing, to the other fire pit around which the Masters were gathered. He’d been watching him. Not even consciously, really, but just in the way that his eyes always sought him out when he was around, as if magnetically drawn. Osamu had been laughing, easy and genuine, the kind of expression Banba liked most on him, the orange light softening his features, though when the fire flickered the shadows had laid strangely on his face.
“It ain’t worth it, yanno,” Nada had said, and he’d glanced over to find him leaning back on his hands, head tilted, giving him a knowing look. “Thinkin’ about that.”
Banba had cleared his throat; set to work feeding a few spare pieces of kindling into the low flames.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure ya do. And it’s unattainable, man. Nothin’ on you, of course. It’s him. He’s like. Like he only half belongs in this world or somethin’.” He’d shaken his head. “Dunno where the other half is s’posed to be.”
To tell the truth, he’d thought much the same over the years. That his master was, at times, like a creature from the old legends – a sphinx with its riddles. A wandering spirit who shouldn’t still be here among the living. Only for the moment to end and for him to be simply human again. Just a man with a sword. But Banba had always been left rattled by it. Those glimpses of incomprehensibility.
Rattled and something else, maybe.
“Y’know what you need?” Nada had slid closer to sling an arm around his shoulders, a playful glint in his eyes. “You need t’ spend more time with somebody normal. Somebody who’s the fun, down-to-earth, life of the party type.”
“Do I know anyone like that?” Banba had deadpanned.
Nada had laughed, close enough that it had been warm against the curve of his neck. That’s who he’d been: warm and solid. Tangible. Until the day he wasn’t, he supposes.
“Aw, c’mon,” he’d said. “It’ll be great. You ‘n me on our own for a while. Soon enough you won’t be lookin’ at anyone else. I promise.”
Years later, Banba still wonders. If he’d been able to do that – to look only at him – could he have made him stay?
On the road, they meet a middle-aged merchant woman with a bushel of yellow apples strapped to her back, who of course Osamu has to stop and buy from, tossing one to Banba without much preamble.
“Are you boys knights?” she asks. Doesn’t wait for an answer. “Good that you’re heading this way. The village I just came from has a Soul Beast that needs dealing with.”
“Have they submitted a formal inquest?” Banba asks, and Osamu snorts.
Formal inquest? he mouths.
“Can’t say,” the woman murmurs. “But you’d think they must have by now. Seems to have been troubling them a good while.”
Banba takes a bite of his apple, finding it much too sweet for his liking, and can feel his brow furrow. It’s a bit of a double edged sword. Stepping on the toes of whichever knight is soon to be sent out here is technically a glaring faux pas. Enough to get them gossiped about in the training halls – even more than they undoubtedly already are. But sitting idly by while someone could potentially be in danger is at the same time a far more unforgivable offense. Personally, the idea of doing so is almost inconceivable, the wrongness of it itching across his skin.
And though he promised Towa up and down that he’d try to get along with people while he was gone, he never did care much for knightly politics.
“We’ll look into it,” he says, and ducks his head. “Take care on the road, miss.”
Osamu takes her hand in his and looks deep into her eyes as he says, “If you come across any trouble before you reach the next village, just shout. We have sharp ears. We’ll come running.”
She stares back at him, startled, her cheeks turning faintly pink. “I – I see,” she stammers. “Thank you. Um. Would you… like another apple, by any chance? Free of charge, this time. For all your hard work.”
“How are you a knight? You’re a conman, is what you are,” Banba says, as they round the next bend in the road, his master with two more free apples now stuffed into his pack.
“I think you’re just angry she didn’t extend the same offer to you. Starting to realize that beautiful face of yours isn’t always enough, hm?”
As if I didn’t realize that a century ago, Banba thinks but does not say.
“Come on,” he sighs. “Maybe we’ll get there to find the knight they called for arriving right when we do.”
Of course, no such coincidence occurs. In fact, the residents seem to think that they are the ones assigned this particular mission, and it’s easier to simply let Osamu smile, eerily charming, and say “that’s us.”
There is no inn in such a tiny hamlet, and so they’re given the spare room in the village chief’s home – like being inside an antique wooden box, with a slanted ceiling, dried flowers with a brittle, perfumed scent to them hanging on the walls next to carved bone charms to ward off spirits. A single window provides a view of dark, dense pines, the silhouette of a mountain peak towering over their tops. He’s weary but unsurprised to find that there’s only one bed.
“Oh, just like old times,” Osamu says with a laugh. “Remember? When I’d drag you along on my missions? We ended up in rooms like this on occasion. Though you never seemed to like sharing with me.”
“I wonder why that might have been,” Banba says drily. He drops his bag into a nearby chair and moves to pry the window open – rarely used, by the resistance – leaning on the sill as he takes a steadying breath of the outside air.
Torture, is what it had felt like, being a teenager and trapped like that with the man you were horribly in love with. It’s still a vivid memory: lying awake, sleepless and exhausted, unable to stop fixating on the inches of space between them. One night he’d moved to the floor and lied about it the next morning, claiming the bed had been too soft.
“I’m sorry, Banba-chan.”
He straightens. Turns. His master’s back is to him as he sits on the edge of the bed to remove his gloves and unlace his boots.
“I was pretty cruel to you back then, wasn’t I?” he continues. “I swear I didn’t mean to be. I thought… Even if you felt that way, it would be better if I didn’t treat you any differently. From how I imagined a normal master and pupil should be. Though god knows that was probably a wasted effort to begin with. With me as your teacher, it was always going to be…” He trails off. Shakes his head. “So. I apologize for that. Only about a hundred years too late, I know.”
For a long time, Banba can only stare, rooted there in place as if paralyzed. He swallows hard.
He spent so long trying to fit every action his master took into some grand villainous plan. It was easier, in a way. Easier to imagine he’d intended every slight than to think he ever cared for him and then, one day, simply did not.
He still hasn’t quite wrapped his head around the idea that neither of those are the truth.
“You – ” he starts to say, but a voice calling up the stairs drowns him out. The wife of the village chief, by the brash loudness of it.
“Mister knights! We’re having an early supper tonight, if you’d care to join us!”
“Oh, that sounds great,” Osamu calls back. He gets to his feet and turns to give Banba a faint smile. “Our first real meal in a few days. Can’t pass that up.”
Even after he’s left the room, the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, Banba remains there for a minute more: silent, even his thoughts oddly still, the only movement the breeze from the open window at his back.
“Now, not to discredit you two,” the chief – a square-faced man with a thick mustache – says from across the table. He’s gesturing at them with his spoon. “I’m sure you’re both quite handy with a sword. But I do think it’s strange they sent only the two of you, given the circumstances.”
The two of them exchange a covert look.
“The circumstances?” Banba prompts.
“Yes. You know all about it, I’m sure. Our Soul Beast situation.”
“You know, they actually sent us out the door with barely a briefing,” Osamu says, as effortless with the lies as ever. He shakes his head with a put-upon sigh. “I swear, it’s all been a mess lately since the new head councilman took over.”
The chief and his wife both look taken aback at this. “Gracious,” she murmurs. “To think the management would be so poor… Even with a case like this… Well it’s that, you see.” She points towards the window. “Sleeping right now. But you can see it quite plainly from here.”
They both peer in the direction she’s indicating.
There is nothing to be seen but the trees and the shape of the mountain peak against the sunset sky.
“It’s oddly docile, actually,” she continues, perturbed. “We’ve been keeping it at bay for a while now, but it seems dead set on passing through here eventually, and, well. We’d be rebuilding for years if it did.”
“I… must be going blind, miss,” Osamu says, a rare confusion in his voice. “Where – ”
“The thing that looks like a mountain, obviously,” she says, impatient, clicking her teeth as if they were children who refuse to listen. Smiles, then. “You should eat your stew before it gets cold, you know.”
‘Soul Beasts,’ he’s thought as of late, must have been a term coined as a method of purposeful obfuscation.
What they actually are, at their core, are naturally occurring Minusaurs. But no one wants to think about that, do they? No one wants to consider that something so parasitic and strange and seemingly alien can simply spring up from the Earth without some wicked outside influence.
They’re created when something very old has grown very lonely or bitter. Trees, most often, if one is left standing after their forestmates succumb to rot or fire or axes. Lakes sometimes, if they become unclean and the fish leave for better waters, and the birds along with them, and soon enough the humans by the shore as well. Rivers, when their flow is diverted by dams and they begin to mourn the loss of their old, well-worn path.
But a mountain? How does a mountain become lonely? Something so gargantuan, so imposing, created to stand alone for eons and never be moved from its place.
“Have you ever seen this before?” he asks. He’s back at the window in their room, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, staring at that huge dark shape over the treetops.
“Never in my life,” Osamu replies, appearing at his side. He’s still in the midst of toweling off his hair, though a few strands are already beginning to flip up at the ends. He’s dug an ancient-looking shirt out of his pack, off-white, one elbow threadbare, the v of its collar stretched out and dipping annoyingly low. “They’ve got a great bath here, by the way. You should give it a try.”
Banba frowns. “Isn’t this concerning to you at all?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Not particularly. Something that huge will be a challenge. But if anyone can manage it, I’d like to think it’s you and me. You and your little friends struck down far worse not too long ago.”
Banba’s frown deepens. That isn’t what I meant, he almost wants to say, but what did he mean? He isn’t quite sure himself.
“Come on, Banba-chan.” Osamu smiles. “So much worrying isn’t good for you, you know. You’ll get a frown line one of these days. Get some sleep and we’ll think about it in the morning.”
In this moment, Banba is certain that he is going to kiss him good night. Not in some noteworthy way, but casually, as if it were the routine between them. The atmosphere simply feels like it – like every other quick, familiar “get some rest already, will you” kiss he’s ever had.
But it doesn’t come. His master hesitates almost imperceptibly before putting a glancing hand on his shoulder and leaving him there by the window, with the same disoriented sensation as when you confidently swing a sword at a target and strike nothing but air.
When he returns from his bath, Osamu is asleep – or pretending to be – and Banba climbs in to his own side of the bed and lays there for a long time as the lamps are extinguished outside and the room goes black save for a pool of moonlight on the floor.
It’s nothing like it used to be, being with him like this. In fact this, too, feels like it could be part of a routine. That if he reached over to close the distance between them it would be normal and expected, hardly even worthy of comment.
That line of thinking is unnerving in its own special way.
Though he informs the chief’s wife they’re most likely just going out to do reconnaissance today, she insists on packing them a bag of supplies for the trek. By the time he finally manages to escape the kitchen, the morning – clear and brisk – is well under way. He finds Osamu at the edge of the village facing down a trio of local children, who seem to have needled him into giving them a swordsmanship lesson, each of them holding a wooden blade they must have whittled themselves.
“Alright, try to hit me,” Osamu is saying. “All at once, if you like.”
The three exchange glances and then a tense nod before springing into action. It’s not a bad attempt for beginners – they have more resolve than most – but all three are blocked effortlessly regardless, their weapons knocked from their hands, one of them sent sprawling into the other two and ending up in a heap on the ground.
“Oi, what did I tell you?” Osamu crouches down next to them. “Three times now. I said not to leave your guard open, didn’t I?” He pokes one of the three in the forehead. “What’s with those wild swings? That’s a good way to get gutted in a real fight.”
The kids scramble back to their feet along with him, all of them asking in an overlapping rush for another try, please teacher, they’ll get it this time.
“Augh, enough!” He shrugs off the one tugging on his elbow with a grimace. “You brats are so annoying.”
Banba coughs into his hand to disguise a laugh.
“Oh, Banba-chan, thank god,” Osamu mutters. “Look, I have work to do,” he says to the kids. “So scram, alright? Go practice basic strikes and blocks about a thousand times. Don’t talk to me again until you do. Got it?”
The kids grumble darkly amongst themselves as they file away.
“I see your patience hasn’t improved at all,” Banba says once they’ve gone.
“I don’t know why the hell they ever let me be a teacher,” he sighs. Drags a hand through his hair tiredly. “Back then I never realized how lucky I got, with you and Towa. Students who actually listen to what you tell them. There’s a concept.”
That gives Banba pause.
“Lucky,” he echoes softly.
“Hm?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Let’s go see how big this Beast actually is.”
The answer, unsurprisingly, is very. Its head alone, when they reach it, is like staring up at a cliff face. It resembles a tortoise, of a sort, with a craggy, orange-ish head, limbs emerging from a great shell of black rock veined with glittering gem deposits and stained with lichen. The mountainous shell can be seen rising and falling very faintly as it breathes steadily in its sleep. Up close to its face as they are, the smell of that breath – like wet, moldering leaves and old sediment – is overpowering.
Osamu whistles in awe. “I guess we do have our work cut out for us, huh?”
He draws his sword.
Banba has his own blade blocking his path before he can take another step. “Master,” he says coolly. “Didn’t we agree we were just scouting today?”
He sighs. “What’s there to scout, really? You hoping to find something marked ‘weak point’?”
“You never know. We need a plan in place to protect the village at the very least. And attacking a sleeping opponent is… disreputable, wouldn’t you say?”
“A sleeping opponent?” His laugh is disbelieving. “Banba-chan, it’s a monster, not a man.” He shakes his head. “Those little friends of yours really did soften you up, didn’t they? Made you even more sentimental than you used to be.”
“…Maybe so,” Banba says, and they lock eyes with one another until Osamu finally relents and puts his sword away, Banba lowering his in turn.
There does turn out to be a chink in the so-called armor – a split-open fissure high up on the left side of the creature’s rock shell.
“That would be the place to aim a strike, I suppose,” he says. The words feel strangely reluctant on his tongue. “But not until it’s woken up. Do you understand me, Master?”
“Not really,” Osamu mutters. “But I’ll defer to your judgment, if that’s what you mean.” He gives him a long, intent look. “You’re the one calling the shots now. Whatever you say goes.”
Back in the village, they hear from the local blacksmith that the creature dozed off about three days ago. As for when it will wake up again, based on past experience he “reckons maybe a couple more days. Maybe a week or two.”
“Two weeks, huh?” Osamu says drily, which Banba refuses to dignify with a response.
He’s not sure what this is, frankly. He’s never felt hesitation or guilt over slaying a Soul Beast before. In a certain sense, they aren’t even real – just manifestations of the emotions of something that won’t be harmed by their destruction. A tree will still stand if its Soul Beast is cut down. A river will still run. A mountain will still loom there in the distance.
But he can’t shake the feeling that it would be wrong to simply dispose of this particular creature. The chief’s wife said it, didn’t she? That it was docile, completely unlike the rampaging anger of every other Beast he’s encountered. Simply trying to pass through, on its way towards… Towards what?
That night he lays out an old, dusty map of the area, borrowed from the chief, and pores over it by candlelight. On the other side of the village, a few miles away, there is a mountain. An actual one. Jouji-san, it’s labeled.
Examining every possible trajectory of the creature’s movement, he can only think that the Beast is trying to make its way there. To be with another of its kind.
They while away the next few days as best they can. He draws up a potentially fruitless plan to corral the creature away from the village once it wakes. The local kids begin following him around in place of his master, and he relents eventually and gives them a few pointers on their stances. They get invited for a drink at the communal gathering hall, much to the delight of Osamu, who has never passed up a free mug of wine in his life.
“So the – the two of you are master and disciple, then?” the man across the table asks. He had introduced himself as Goh, a fisherman by trade, and two drinks in his face is already beginning to look a bit ruddy.
“Hm. Not so much anymore. He’s surpassed me, you know.”
“That’s hardly true,” Banba mutters.
“It is, it is! Don’t be so modest, Banba-chan.”
The fisherman nods in thoughtful, tipsy understanding. “Well that’s what the goal should be, shouldn’t it? The day your student doesn’t have anything left to learn from ya. And they can go off and. And have their own life without ya.” He makes a dramatic hand gesture. “Gone from the nest.”
There is a split second, then, when Osamu’s smile seems to falter. Banba could swear he sees something go a bit distant in his expression, hollow behind the eyes, but maybe not, as it is smoothed away a moment later, back into amiable camaraderie as he lifts his mug in agreement.
“You’re a wise man, sir,” he says. “You really get it. Not everyone has that kind of sense.”
He wakes just before dawn the next morning with the sense that something is amiss. Glances over to find that his master’s side of the bed is empty.
Immediately, instinctively, he thinks that he has a good idea of where he might be. He’s out the door a mere few minutes later, having laced up his boots in a rush, grabbed nothing else but his sword and his Ryusouls.
Osamu is there, as expected: staring up at the Soul Beast with a decisive look, his sword leveled at that conspicuous crack in its shell, his other hand poised on his bracer to transform. He only barely manages to turn and parry when Banba uses the Crash Soul to send a bolt of energy slamming into him. His back hits the tree behind him forcefully, and he slides down to the ground with a quiet hiss of pain as Banba stands there breathing hard.
“What did I tell you, Master?” he says, jaw clenching. “Did I just imagine you agreeing with me?”
Osamu lets his head fall back against the tree trunk, mouth curving into a small, sardonic smile. “Oh, come on. Do you really want to spend another week or longer here? Just waiting? If you’re such a monster rights activist now, then let me kill it for you. Easy enough.”
“That’s not – ” He takes a steadying breath. His momentary anger is ebbing away, and in its place is tiredness – not anything that can be assuaged by rest, but instead the kind accumulated bit by bit over a hundred years. “That’s not even really the issue right now, is it. It’s that. Suddenly I’m realizing… I don’t know why you’re here.”
Osamu stares back at him levelly. In the thin, grey pre-sunrise light he actually looks his age for once, Banba thinks. Not anything otherworldly. Just a man with a sword after all. The lines around his eyes seem more pronounced than they were the last time he took notice of them. Is he tired, too?
“You tell me I’m calling the shots now, then turn around and ignore the shots I called. So clearly you’re not actually here to just play support. So then what?” Banba’s grip tightens around his sword hilt. “Why are you with me?”
“Hmm? Could it be you want me gone?”
“Yes,” Banba snaps. Hangs his head a moment later and drags a hand across his face. “And… no, obviously not.”
He spent so long wanting him back. How could he ever send him away?
His master’s answering laugh is wry. “Conflicted, huh? I guess that’s about the best I could hope for.”
“Are you going to answer my question or not?”
“I mean. What else am I going to do?” Shrugs a shoulder, an attempt at nonchalance. “It’s not like they’d take me back as a teacher, with my reputation. Not that I’d want to be one again anyhow. And I have no interest in living out in the regular world. It’s no place for us out there.”
“So your only other option is following me around – ”
“Yes!” There is raw anger in his voice, and Banba blinks. The shift is so abrupt it feels like whiplash: Osamu’s knuckles white as his fingers dig into his thigh, his face set in a mask of tension. “When I spent the last decade carrying out a mission that was absolutely pointless in the end! When everyone I could call a friend died while I was – was wasting my damn time! Don’t you get it, Banba?” This time when he smiles, it is joyless and bitter. Like he’s swallowing down something caustic. “I don’t have anything else left. Just you. You’re the only thing I can be proud of anymore. If I’m with you, maybe I can think… that I did something right in my life. That’s why I’m here.”
He feels, in this moment, like someone has sunk a knife in between his ribs.
“What are you saying?” he hears himself ask. “Just me? What… kind of a lie is that?”
His sword has fallen out of his hand sometime in the past minute, he realizes distantly. He’s taken a step closer without even noticing. And another, until he’s standing right there in front of him, looking down to meet his eyes. He can feel himself shaking.
“I’m not sure why you think I’d be lying to you at this point – ”
“That makes it worse! All those years you were… the most important person in the world to me. Even when I wished you weren’t. And now you just. Want me to be that for you? How? How am I supposed to do that, Master?”
His own breathing is loud in his ears as the question hangs in the air between them.
Gradually, Osamu’s expression softens. “You don’t have to do anything,” he says. “Just keep being you. With all of that secretly sentimental honor. And I’ll take care of the unpleasant parts, if you like. Killing the things you’re too kind to kill. Since I’m not good for much else these days – ”
“Stop.” He’s on his knees, then, straddling his master’s thigh, kneeling there with his hands gripping his collar. “Stop it. I don’t want to hear it. And I don’t want that from you. I just want,” here he falters before finishing, quieter, “things to be like they were before.”
Does he truly want that? He doesn’t know. But it would be simpler, wouldn’t it? A return to a relationship that can be understood.
The silence stretches on, brittle and tense, until he can feel a hand come to rest on the crown of his head, thumb stroking his hair.
“You’re so cute sometimes, Banba-chan,” Osamu says, his smile faint. “Saying something like that… I think those days are past us, though. Sorry. I can’t be that person for you anymore. That’s what time does. It changes things.”
Banba shuts his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Opens them again.
“Yeah,” he concedes. “You’re right about that, at least.”
He leans in to seal their lips together.
As expected, there is little surprise from his master, only a small intake of breath that’s more like relief, his hand moving down to curl around the nape of his neck and pull him into a better angle. It’s earnest in a way that makes his chest ache. He kisses like someone who hasn’t in a long time, which is undoubtedly the truth of it – years spent carefully undercover in the company of inhuman creatures don’t exactly allow for such things. The same as being alone, really.
(He thinks he gets it, then. Why he doesn’t want to kill the Beast that lies sleeping only a dozen yards away.)
Osamu is slightly flushed, bright-eyed and grinning as he pulls away. “Towa told me about all of your many love interests. Isn’t there some cute young person you should be doing this with instead?”
Banba glowers back at him without any real edge to it.
“As if anyone else can compare,” he says, and this time he can see his master’s eyes go wide, genuinely taken aback, in the moment before he kisses him again.
(“We’re not killing it,” he says firmly, offering him a hand and pulling him to his feet.
“Alright, alright,” Osamu sighs. “This monster welfare campaign is starting to compel me, I have to admit.” He pauses in dusting himself off to stare up at the sleeping Beast. Tilts his head to the side. “It is a bit cute, now that I really look at it. Like a big dog. Like if you showed it a bit of kindness it might start trailing along after you.”
“…Yeah,” Banba says, though his eyes are fixed somewhere other than the creature. “It does have that look to it, doesn’t it.”)
He returns from the bath that night to find that Osamu has taken up the watchman’s post by the window, frowning as he stares out at the silhouette of the Beast.
“We just had to stumble onto an odd one, didn’t we,” he mutters. “Couldn’t just be lucky enough to have normal jobs again.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Suppose I’d be a hypocrite if I said yes. After all that about ‘time changing things’ earlier. Maybe the days of sticking a sword in an enemy and being done with it are over, too. And it’ll all be different from here on out.”
“‘A knight fulfills whichever mission is in front of them, no matter what is required,’” Banba recites. “Someone told me that, once.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Someone who was just trying to sound wise in front of his student, I bet.”
“Could be. Still solid words to live by, though.” He steps up beside him; puts a hand lightly on his hip. “Why don’t you come to bed, Master?”
Osamu turns into the touch to smile at him. “Well. Maybe with some persuading.”
Banba rolls his eyes, but can’t quite keep the hint of a smile off his own lips as he tugs him in.
It’s not until he has him pressed into the bed, hand trailing beneath the hem of his shirt, that his mind finally registers the lovingly stitched patterns of the homemade bedspread, the creak of floorboards as the chief’s wife puts out the candles downstairs. He stops. Pulls back.
“This is… someone’s house,” he says slowly. “And our hosts’ room is directly below this one.”
Osamu stares up at him for a long moment before laying a hand over his eyes and sighing wearily.
“Oh, come on,” he mutters. “I don’t remember teaching you how to be a tease.”
Banba can’t help but laugh at that as he rolls over to his side of the bed; props himself up on his elbow. “You may not have meant to, Master, but you absolutely did.”
“Touché.” He goes quiet for a time, hand fallen away but face cast in shadow now, save for the sliver of his cheek, his eye, illuminated by the moonlight slanting into the room. “Shouldn’t you consider stopping with that, by the way? ‘Master’?”
“I guess so.” Hesitates for a beat. “Osamu.”
He can see something shift across his face, then, as if he’s being overwhelmed by some staggering emotion, but he turns his back to him quickly before Banba can study it too long.
“Never mind,” Osamu says airily. “I think I prefer the former, actually. Or you could at least add an honorific.”
Banba lifts his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh that comes out more affectionate than exasperated. He slides closer to put an arm around his waist, leaning in to say into his ear: “Good night, Osamu-san.”
He wonders what his expression looks like when, a minute later, he curls his fingers around Banba’s hand and squeezes tight.
“This is quite a few days you two have been here,” the woman across the table says. Alia, a weaver, with her sister Emi next to her, are the newest locals they find themselves sharing a drink with at the community meeting hall. “Don’t you have wives to be getting home to?”
“Never went in on that myself, marriage,” Osamu muses, tapping a finger against his mug. Gives Banba a thoughtful glance. “Wouldn’t be surprised to find out this one has a secret wife somewhere, though. Maybe two. Both of them just pining away for their absent husband.”
The women laugh, agreeing that he’s ‘certainly handsome enough for it’ as Banba shifts in his seat, clearing his throat.
“Osamu-san,” he says tersely. “I’d really rather you didn’t start fake rumors about me.”
“Hm. Okay, how about this, then?” He leans across the table and lowers his voice. “Actually, I’m his wife.”
“Osamu.”
The sisters clap in delight at this news as he turns back to regard him plaintively. “What? Is that not more accurate?”
It is, is the problem.
Osamu looks like he’s about to reveal some further personal information to these total strangers, when something stops him. A rumble that travels through the ground that feels nothing like an earthquake. The room around them shakes ever so slightly, mugs rattling, a picture frame on the wall tilting.
The two of them exchange a wordless glance, and are out the door a moment later with swords in hand. Over the tops of the trees they can see it: its glittering shell rising higher and higher, and then its head, pure black eyes open now and fixated on their destination on the horizon.
“So, what?” Osamu says. He’s resting the blade of his sword on his shoulder. “You’re really going to just… have a talk with it?”
“I used to talk with Mirneedle,” Banba says, instilling his voice with as much confidence as he can muster. “And I have the Listen Soul. I don’t see why it would be impossible.”
“Worth a shot, I suppose. But… just for safety’s sake, right?” He lifts his hand, flashing his bracer. “And to officially commemorate our first real mission in a long time.”
Banba can feel the corner of his mouth curve into a smile. “For commemoration, yeah,” he says, and the two of them set their Ryusouls in unison, the armor feeling lighter, more comfortable than it has in years, somehow, when he looks over to find his mirror image looking back at him.