Dororo: Part One - Chapter 12

Dororo: Part One

Nakamura Masaru

Part 2: Dororo

Chapter 12

    After traveling for some days, Dororo and Hyakkimaru crested a hill rising from a windswept plain. Something about the wind made them cautious. The hill had an eerie atomosphere. It marked the old border of the Kaneyama Clan's lands, before the Daigo Clan had swept over them like a tidal wave.

    Rumor had it that the hill was the site of an extremely bloody battle. Some signs of that battle still remained—flags and bones—but the most significant feature of the landscape was a high wooden fence. It had once stretched the length of the entire border, but now, only a few dozen yards of the fence remained.

    The decisive battle that had destroyed the fence took place more than a decade before. The littered bones and high fence protruding like a fist toward the sky were the only grave markers for the countless, nameless dead.

    This place doesn't belong to the human world, Hyakkimaru thought. He didn't know anyone who'd died here—of course not—but he understood at a glance that great and terrible evil had occured in this place. It was in the air as well as the earth: the lingering heartlessness and cruelty of men cutting down other men without a care. The wind whistled through the gaps in the fence—many of them made by arrows. It was a lonely sound.

    The people who lived close to the fence gave it a new name after the border battle was lost. That name was Banmon, because so many had met their final end here.

    Hyakkimaru reached out to Banmon with his newly restored right hand, then recoiled as if he'd been struck. The sensations he received from touching the wall were overwhelmingly painful. His fingertips felt like they were on fire.

    "Ow!"

    Hyakkimaru looked closer at the fence and discovered that there were hundreds of tiny spikes that were almost invisible if he stepped away from it. They looked a little like bee stingers. He wanted to reach out and touch Banmon again to verify the sensation, but he didn't. The pain had surprised him too much.

    Dororo stood next to Banmon, then walked over to a gap, placing one of his feet to one side of the wall and the other foot to the opposite side, straddling the old border of the Kaneyama Clan's lands.

    "This side belonged to Muroto, and this side belonged to Kaneyama," Dororo said. "It's all Daigo's now."

    The mountain where Hyakkimaru grew up was close to Banmon, though he'd never been to Banmon before today. He knew from Jukai that they'd lived on a mountain that was right on the edge of Kaneyama Clan territory. Hyakkimaru had traveled all over Kaneyama Clan lands fighting demons. Muroto Clan territory was still new and unexplored.

    Dororo knew that Hyakkimaru had grown up near here. At first he'd expected Hyakkimaru to visit his old home. He was disappointed when Hyakkimaru made no move to do so. He didn't understand Hyakkimaru's reluctance to go home. If Dororo remembered where his home village was, he'd return there in a heartbeat. It was an old ache, that homesickness, and Dororo carried it with him wherever he went. Even if there was nothing left to see, Dororo still wanted to place his feet on the ground of the place where he'd been born and raised.

    "Kaneyama and Daigo, huh?" Hyakkimaru asked.

    He frowned at Banmon, then passed it by, entering Muroto Clan territory. He put his back to the fence, then sat down.

    "You know anything about Daigo, aniki?"

    "No," Hyakkimaru said. "And I'm not partial to them or Muroto. In my experience, the most bloodthirsty of the lot seems to be Kaneyama."

    "Do you hate them? The Kaneyama Clan?" Dororo asked.

    Hyakkimaru blinked. In his mind's eye, he saw Mio smiling down at the spirits of the village's children. He plucked a small thorn out of his index finger, then said, "When I came down from the mountain, I didn't know anything. I had no idea what was safe to eat, and collapsed from hunger and exhaustion."

    By bad luck, there was a terrible drought that year. Most of the people in the village of Fumoto were starving. All of the nearby harvests were poor, and the wild plants that they could have relied on to increase their stores were also affected by the drought. People shared what little they had and hunted game in the mountains.

    Fumoto was the first village Hyakkimaru ever passed through. On the path from the mountain to there, he encountered nothing but people who had starved to death or soon would. Much like Lord Sabame's village, people abandoned their own children in temples, or even along the roadside, simply because they couldn't feed them.

    Hyakkimaru walked into Fumoto, hungry himself and lost in more ways than one. He was a complete stranger and the villagers were all suffering from desperate poverty, so they weren't predisposed to help him from the start. To make matters worse, his body wasn't normal, and the villagers figured that out fairly quickly.

    He wore the clothes that his father had told him to wear—the ones made of silk. He stuck out like a sore thumb, though he didn't know it. He knew nothing about living in the world at all. Before he encountered war and violence, he saw the shapes of other people. Each of them were different; each was new and strange. He was overwhelmed by them and his unfamiliar environment.

    The people he met were also afraid. There was peace in the village today, but that might not be true tomorrow. While their fear was plain, Hyakkimaru couldn't parse out many more of their thoughts and emotions. He knew that Jukai had often closed his heart and concealed what he was feeling, but all of these people felt different from Jukai. It was like their hearts were closed, not just to him, but to everyone.

    In those early days of him being on his own, the fact that Hyakkimaru looked human saved him a lot of trouble. While people weren't sure what to make of him because of his fine clothes and strange manner and way of speech, they didn't view him as a threat. Some considered him a target and attacked him, so he showed them plainly that he was more than able to defend himself. He was not what he appeared, and the people who chose to target him learned that before anyone else. His revealed sword arms gleamed to either side of him like the fangs of some supernatural horror. It wasn't long before people started calling him a monster.

    But the people of Fumoto saw Hyakkimaru as human. They'd never seen his sword arms, and didn't treat him with any special hostility or fear. Hyakkimaru had no idea how to treat them in kind. He knew nothing of people aside from Jukai, and watching the villagers go about their daily lives was a bewildering experience, to say the least. He was unaccustomed to putting his thoughts into words, and most of the time he couldn't make himself understood.

    Hyakkimaru knew a lot about surviving on his own thanks to what Jukai had taught him, but he knew nothing about how other people lived. He also didn't know how cunning and crafty people could be, since Jukai had been a forthright and honest person. He learned of the war and its circumstances from observation, and left the village when it became clear to him that there was no help to be found there. He was in desperate need of food, so he went into the mountains to search for it. He collapsed before he could find any and didn't move. Was he waiting to die? He didn't know.

    I'm sorry. Hyakkimaru apologized to Jukai internally. He couldn't do this. He couldn't even live among humans, much less hunt down demons. Why had his body been stolen by demons in the first place? He remembered Jukai's last words, and was disturbed by them. He feared that he might never get answers to his questions. His father had taught him so many things, and yet, here he was on the ground, absolutely useless to everyone, including himself. There were forty-eight demons, and he hadn't managed to defeat a single one.

    I'm sorry.

    That was the last thing Hyakkimaru thought before he lost consciousness.

 

    When Hyakkimaru came to, his body, inexplicably, felt a whole lot stronger.

    "Dad?" Hyakkimaru asked. He used his hands to feel around, trying to get a sense of his environment. It was dark and quiet. Had someone carried him here? He heard a fire crackling and guessed that there was one nearby. Was he back at the house? Had Jukai brought him back there?

    No, impossible. The house was gone.

    There was light coming from an opening, and he heard sounds of people moving about. Many people, not just Jukai. Hyakkimaru was still among strangers. There was so much light; he wasn't used to it. He got to his feet. He remembered almost dying, but he felt hale and well now. It was difficult to believe that he'd given himself up for dead.

    How much time had passed? And where was he?

    Hyakkimaru stood in the doorway and looked outside. The light was coming from there, and he felt wrapped in warmth as he faced it. There were eyes on him; he tensed.

    Someone's watching me. Hyakkimaru turned, searching the area, and discovered a child staring up at him. The child was standing very still and was quite small; Hyakkimaru guessed that they were still a toddler, perhaps three or four years old. The child stood in the shadow of the eaves, peeking out at him from behind a corner.

    "Can I…" Hyakkimaru faltered. "Can you look around for me? Where are we?"

    The child nodded solemnly and dashed off. Hyakkimaru was starting to remember how he'd gotten here, though his memory was still hazy. It was sunset, and a grassy plain spread out all around the small hut that he was standing in. There were ten or so children playing nearby, running through the tall grass. The wind blew strongly, causing prayer bells strung around the hut to ring out in a cheerful rhythm. It was peaceful here. Hyakkimaru felt like he could rest.

    The children continued playing. Their innocent laughter reached him where he stood in the doorway. He didn't join them.

    Is this another world? Am I dead? Hyakkimaru thought. He'd never been to such a place before. He was used to the grim realities of life at home and the terror of war that gripped the people in the village of Fumoto. This was the first time he'd visited a place of peace and joy. The children's laughter echoed all around him, like music, or a balm to the soul.

    Then Hyakkimaru noticed that all of the children were missing at least one limb or appendage. He frowned. Some were missing arms, or legs, or eyes and ears. Others had suffered terrible burns. There wasn't a single child that was completely whole and sound of body. He couldn't tell how they'd been hurt, but he guessed that they all had different stories for why they were missing pieces.

    Maybe this was some kind of shelter for war orphans—a place for children who had nowhere else to go. That seemed likely, but who had the time and resources to take in children with such injuries and deformities? Their parents were probably dead, or they'd abandoned their children because they couldn't care for them. Was this some kind of afterlife where children who had suffered could find peace? That was what it felt like to Hyakkimaru.

    But he wasn't a child, so he didn't fully understand why he was here.

    The child he'd asked to scout the area for him returned, and behind them, there was a woman of about Hyakkimaru's same age, or perhaps a little older. The toddler pointed to him, said something, and laughed. The woman smiled.

    "Say," the woman said in a voice pitched to carry, "shouldn't we all introduce ourselves to this new person?"

    Hyakkimaru froze. He didn't even think he was breathing. Was this woman...a person? Could people be beautiful like this? She appeared pure to his eyes. He was familiar with the concept of gods and briefly wondered if she could be something like that.

    "What about you, Mio? Come say hi!" one of the children said.

    Mio? Was that her name? Hyakkimaru thought that she must be part of this afterlife, somehow. The brightness and intensity of the light he saw everywhere didn't come from the fire, but from her. He grasped immediately that she was the source of the children's happiness.

    This is heaven, and she's a goddess. That's why she's so beautiful.

    Hyakkimaru shook all over. The idea that he had been saved or spared by some merciful goddess was too attractive for him to ignore, and he fell instantly in love with Mio. If his eyes were flesh and blood, he might have noticed Mio's eyes following him curiously as he walked across the plain. When he approached her, he could never look directly at her: she was too bright, like the sun. He got the feeling that if she spoke to him, he might not understand her language. If she touched him, his artificial heart might split in two. Was it possible for him to die again?

    What's wrong with me? Am I sick? Or just scared? Yes, I'm scared of her. Is it because she seems so human? She breathes; she touches the children; she seems so much like us, and yet not. Why is she here?

    No matter how he looked at her, Mio wasn't terrifying. Her smiles and touches were soft and caring. She never harmed or threatened him or the children, but he was still scared of her. His heartbeat quickened around her, and he didn't know what could cause that aside from fear.

    Jukai hadn't taught Hyakkimaru anything about romantic love. Jukai considered Hyakkimaru's life and circumstances to be too harsh for it. Even if Hyakkimaru could fall in love, and be loved in turn, Jukai viewed love as potential source of pain and complications. He'd never mentioned it.

    Hyakkimaru didn't understand what was happening to him. He was shaken to his very foundations. He passed the day among Mio and the children and slept surrounded by the children at night in the hut he'd awakened in.

    It took Hyakkimaru a long time to fall asleep, that first night. He sat in a corner with the children around him, looking at Mio in mute incomprehension.

    I'm scared of her. Why? Why am I scared of a woman? She and the kids haven't hurt me. They don't treat me strangely like the other people did. I don't understand it. I don't…understand myself.

    Mio wasn't a Buddhist nun like Jishōni. She lived and worked in the world as it was, and the world was a horrifying place. Although Mio wasn't superficially like Jishōni, they both protected children, and there was a shared sense of otherworldliness, like they belonged to a different place and time—or like they were blessed or divine. If Jishōni had rescued him, she would have taken him to a temple and appealed for help to the local lord or government, but Mio didn't have such resources at her disposal.

    Mio wasn't a stupid woman, but there were times when she seemed simple. She'd never had any formal education, since she was a war orphan herself. She rarely spoke, and when she did, she kept her sentences brief. Her laughter had a rough edge to it that sounded wild. She was beautiful, inside and out. If Jishōni was like a cleansing, merciful rain from heaven, then Mio was like that rain gathering in the cracks of the earth, bubbling up from hot springs and flowing through rivers. Jishōni's compassion was all-encompassing and ideologically based. Mio's own sense of compassion was more active, and much more down-to-earth. She did good because it was the right thing to do, and because she was there to do it, not because any god or doctrine told her so.

    Mio had discovered Hyakkimaru collapsed near the road. She'd carried him here, made him rice gruel and nursed him back to health with the children's help. She'd done much the same thing for all the children who lived in a cluster of abandoned huts surrounded by fields of grain. During the night, she left, and was usually back by morning.

    "Where does Mio go at night?" Hyakkimaru asked the children.

    "Mom goes to work," one child said. "She brings back food for us."

    "She's not your mom, is she?"

    "Of course she is! She goes out every night, but she always comes back in the morning. Don't worry."

    "You're the oldest, so you can watch us," another child said to Hyakkimaru.

    Hyakkimaru didn't know what it meant for Mio to go to work, and of course he didn't know what she was actually doing. He'd probably have to ask Mio herself. He stayed up all night, refusing to sleep until Mio came back.

    Mio returned a little before dawn. She appeared sick—or injured?—and collapsed next to the youngest child, asleep in seconds. Her arms wrapped around the child in a protective pose.

    Hyakkimaru didn't wake her. He stood over her and the other children, feeling that there was danger here, even if it was danger that he couldn't see. He tried to sense Mio's thoughts and memories in the same way that he'd done with Jukai. She wasn't closed to him, but all he could see within her was a dull sense of numbing cold. He knew that Mio wasn't trying to hide anything from him, or from the children; she didn't think about what happened to her at night because she was trying to protect herself.

    Because she wasn't trying to hide anything, a few images surfaced in Hyakkimaru's mind. They were like holes in a wall that the wind could blow through, or like brief flashes of pain in Mio's all-over numbness.

    He saw…men. A lot of them. They were violent and wild, like beasts. He heard their harsh breathing. He felt Mio in pain. She was nauseous and wanted to throw up. She wanted to scream, but she didn't. The men laughed at her, gloating and mocking her, though he didn't understand why.

    Is this…work?

    He could sense nothing else from Mio, but he knew that she was suffering. The part of himself that feared his reaction to her made him feel a little crazy, like there was something inside him that was trying to claw its way out of his chest. He felt what Mio felt about this concept called "work," and he hated it because Mio hated it. She didn't want to do it, but she felt like she had to. She forced herself. If she didn't, she and the children would die.

    Hyakkimaru sat with Mio's memories swirling in his mind. There were many things that he didn't know or understand about Mio, but he felt that he understood well enough. He was angry on Mio's behalf. He wanted to end her suffering. He felt warm all over, his anger and dissatisfaction boiling up inside him. What should he do? How could he help her?

    Mio went to work the next night, and the night after that. She returned exhausted and sick, and she fell asleep immediately before Hyakkimaru could ask her anything.

    You don't have to do it if you hate it that much, Hyakkimaru thought, though he lacked the courage to say such a thing aloud. He felt like if he said that, even once, he would shatter the illusion of the beautiful, peaceful life that Mio had created for the children.

    He wondered if any of the children knew what Mio did at night for work. Had any of them followed her? He asked them all, but none of them knew a thing. Hyakkimaru was like the children Mio had rescued: she'd saved him the same way that she'd saved them. He shouldn't know anything, either.

    Mio... Who is Mio, to me?

    On a night of drizzling rain, Hyakkimaru couldn't stand to sit still. His thoughts made him restless, so he went outside and waited near the road for Mio to return. The rain slowly drenched his hair and clothes, but he barely noticed.

    It was a long night. Right around sunrise, Mio came limping up the road, looking exhausted. She noticed Hyakkimaru and straightened up, offering him a smile as bright as a lantern light.

    But Hyakkimaru didn't want Mio to pretend that she was all right. He knew better. He stood in front of her, expressionless and thinking hard, until she asked, "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

    "Your 'work' seems...very difficult."

    Mio seemed surprised. Hyakkimaru couldn't tell if she was faking that reaction or not. She looked at him with gravely serious eyes, like she was trying to guess how much he knew.

    Hyakkimaru could perceive a great deal, but he felt like he didn't understand very much about what he saw. She was a poor girl who'd never had a family, an education, or people to look out for her. Her advantages were a kind heart and a strong will. She was determined to give the children at least some small part of everything she lacked in life.

    Mio looked away from Hyakkimaru. Her mouth opened and closed. She looked like she wanted to apologize for something terrible that she'd done, but she didn't know how to put her apology in words. "I've...never been pure," she said. "Since I'm not, it's not a problem for them to keep defiling me. I'm used to it."

    At that moment, the lid lifted from Mio's mind. Hyakkimaru suddenly saw everything that Mio did for work, down to the smallest detail. 

    Mio?!

    It resembled what animals did to procreate. Hyakkimaru knew about that: he'd seen deer, squirrels and other animals chasing one another down in the woods as a child, and he'd asked Jukai questions about what they were doing. The animals' bodies always came very close together. Sometimes—often—it looked like a fight, but Jukai explained that it was something different, and natural, and would result in them having offspring.

    Was Mio working so that she could get more children? That didn't make any sense. Besides, Mio's situation wasn't like what Hyakkimaru had seen in nature. Males competed with one another in fierce, and sometimes humiliating, battles before mating with a female. There didn't seem to be any kind of competition going on for Mio. And the men didn't fight with Mio or chase her down, either. Some laughed at her, but none of them seemed hostile. But the men gave Hyakkimaru a bad feeling, all the same. There was something wrong about them.

    He'd seen everything that Mio was doing at night, but seeing it didn't clear up any of his confusion.

    Why would Mio want to have more children with these men? Is she looking for a good father, one that will be there to help her? She really hates doing this 'work', but she doesn't stop. She keeps pushing herself to do it...

    He knew that he was wrong. It wasn't Mio's intent to have more children. There was nothing in her mind that pointed in that direction. To him, it felt like Mio was being devoured—slowly, a little at a time. Each man she worked for took a little piece away from her, and eventually, she'd have nothing left. It hurt. He felt her pain. It hurt horrendously, but she endured it.

    Hyakkimaru still didn't understand why she would do it. The children wouldn't die instantly if she stopped. There had to be something else that she could do that harmed her less. He didn't know how to communicate what he was feeling to her, so he stood in front of her, not speaking. She smiled a little, then said, "Don't worry about me. Really." There were tears at the corners of her eyes.

    Mio had said that she'd been defiled, and that she wasn't pure. That she'd never been. That didn't make sense to Hyakkimaru, either. Defilement was…well, didn't that mean she was dirty in some way, in body or in soul? He'd seen inside her mind and spent several days with her, and he knew there was nothing dirty about her. She called herself defiled, but she didn't seem that way to him. He looked at her, and knew that he wasn't mistaken. She was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen.

    The next morning, Hyakkimaru went down to the cold stream near the hut where he lived with Mio and the children and dunked his head in. He was trying to get his jumbled thoughts in order.

    Mio…Mio is beautiful. He still believed that she was something otherworldly, like a goddess: she was too perfect to belong in the ordinary world. He was terrified to touch her. He thought that if he tried, he might go insane. He imagined her smile and felt something in his chest constrict painfully. He remembered all the men who were hurting her, devouring her, and wanted to vomit.

    Mio, you're perfect. You're not defiled, and you're not dirty. Don't say such terrible things about yourself. They're not true. If you hate going to work, you don't have to do it ever again.

    That was what he wanted to say. But before he could leave the river and find Mio, he heard Jukai's voice inside his head. "That's all very well and good, but you know that won't save her. What she's facing is savagery and barbarism. Barbarism always destroys culture and civilization. It destroys beauty, and eventually, it will destroy her, too."

    Barbarism: that was the concept Hyakkimaru had been missing when Mio had first revealed her memories to him. Mio wasn't trying to have more children. She was being brutalized by savage men. Hyakkimaru grasped the distinction between barbarism and civilization. He also knew that the world had been made savage by warfare. For some people, becoming wild and feral and living like a cornered beast was the only way to survive. Jukai had told him that many civilizations had risen and fallen throughout the course of history, and that what was broken could always be rebuilt. He found that idea hopeful.

    But right now, Mio was in the process of being broken. He had to save her if she was ever going to recover. It was astonishing that she'd held out against the horde of brutal men trying to hurt her for so long. Her strength of will and desire to survive had nothing at all to do with barbarism or savagery. Up until this point, she'd been forced to do "work" so that she and the children would survive, but Hyakkimaru was here now. He knew what plants were edible in what season, and he could hunt.

    I'll do anything for you. Please, stop working. Don't call yourself defiled anymore. I'll get you and the children everything you need. Find something else to do for money if you want, something you don't hate—but don't hurt yourself anymore. I can't stand it. I can't stand the idea that you think less of yourself as a person because of what you've been forced to do. I… I don't want anyone to say anything bad about you, including yourself.

     It was the beginning of spring. New life burst forth all around him. Clear, clean water flowed in the river near where he and the children lived. The soft green grass felt good on his feet. Insects swarmed around water sources and crawled up tree trunks seeking food. Hyakkimaru took it all in as if he'd never seen it before. Spring was a time of renewal and new life. He felt the season's essential goodness as a balm to all of his stunted senses.

    The life he had now with Mio and the children was a good one. He should be content here, and he would be if he didn't know about Mio's suffering. She hadn't asked him for help, and when he offered to help her, she just pretended that everything was fine.

    Mio…tell me what to do. I'll do anything you ask. What should I do? If you don't know, think about it for a while, and then tell me. But stop working right now, before you kill yourself.

    He thought that, but he didn't say it. There were so many things he should have said, while he had the chance. He decided to go hunting for rabbits, hoping that this activity would put his unquiet thoughts to rest.

    "I'm sorry," Hyakkimaru said to the rabbits as he killed them. "Really, I am. But without you, Mio and the children will starve. I'm sorry."

    He returned to the children with the bloody rabbits in his arms, thinking, Mio is more important than me. Of course she is.

    But when he came back to the hut where he and the children lived with Mio, Hyakkimaru sensed no sign of anyone. Everything was quiet and still. Where had the children gone? He ran across the wide-open field to the edge of a forest and felt something sinister in the air. Mio and the children weren't nearby, but Hyakkimaru knew that someone else was there—or something.

    Hyakkimaru took a few hesitant steps into the forest. There were definitely people here, about as many as the children—ten or so—but he could tell that the people he was sensing weren't children. There was something violent and frightening about them, like they were killers. Were they hunters? Maybe.

    Had the children turned into hunters? That didn't seem right. They were probably the men who were hurting Mio…but no, that wasn't right, either. Hyakkimaru sensed women mixed in among the men.

    Why are there here? Who are they? Where did the children go? And Mio?

    Mio—Mio—Mio—

    Hyakkimaru had no idea what had happened, but he wasn't going to find out if he stayed still. He kept walking, searching for the people he could sense. Suddenly, he felt like the people he was approaching wished him harm.

    They want to kill me. Why?

    The men nearby started moving around him in a circle. Then they started closing in.

    They're hunting me.

    Hyakkimaru sensed four men encircling him. No, wait—there were five. One man hung back a little from the others, but he was definitely getting closer.

    Why are they hunting me? Where's Mio?

    The four men closest to Hyakkimaru drew their weapons. Sunlight glinted on metal. Hyakkimaru tossed aside the rabbits he'd killed and pulled off his left arm. He cast the arm away as well, leaving it to twitch and writhe on the ground.

    The men threatening Hyakkimaru exchanged surprised glances. "What are you? Some kinda monster?"

    Hyakkimaru felt their hostility toward him increasing. He was surrounded on every side. There was no way past them except to jump over them or cut his way through. And then there would be the fifth man to contend with…

    "Maybe that woman and those children were monsters, too."

    The men's voices were quiet, but Hyakkimaru could hear them. He could hear their thoughts.

    Who are they? Bandits? Thieves?

    Hyakkimaru thought they were hunting him when he'd first sensed them, but it was possible that they would go after anyone in their path. All of their weapons were red with newly shed blood.

    "Where is Mio?" Hyakkimaru asked. "And the children?" He was terrified to even ask, but he had to know.

    The fifth man stepped forward. "It's a kid. Well, kid, I don't know if you're human or a monster, but..."

    Hyakkimaru saw what these men had done. He knew why there was blood on their swords and knives. He saw some of the children running, and Mio behind them encouraging them to flee. But they were all cut down, in the end.

    "You...killed them?" Hyakkimaru asked. "They're all...dead?"

    "We didn't want to," the man said. "But they saw us. We couldn't let them live. If they told the Daigo Clan that we were living here, in the mountains, they would wipe us out. We have no other place to run."

    Hyakkimaru had to find out who these men were. There was no reason for them to indiscriminately murder women and children. Why did it matter so much if they were seen? He took a closer look at the man who'd spoken to him and noticed the pattern of a crawling centipede on his bloody blade. The man was young, not much older than Hyakkimaru himself.

    The other men also bore weapons and armor with centipede designs. Some had a pattern of seven stars carved or painted on their gear.

    A centipede and seven stars...

    The star pattern looked like the one that clustered around the north star, Polaris. Hyakkimaru recognized these patterns and symbols as the signifiers of a clan. The Muroto Clan's symbol was a winding snake, which meant that these men were...

    "Kaneyama?!" Hyakkimaru had heard about the terrible war between the Kaneyama Clan and the Muroto Clan from Jukai. These must be the survivors from that terrible battle long ago. Jukai had heard rumors of survivors, and he'd passed those rumors on to Hyakkimaru as well.

    "We don't hate you, kid," the man said. "We don't hate anyone except for Daigo Kagemitsu."

    These men weren't old enough to have fought in the battle Hyakkimaru knew about. They were the descendants of the warriors and soldiers who had died that day. The man speaking to Hyakkimaru was Kaneyama Takeshige, the last surviving heir of the Kaneyama Clan.

    "I'm sorry, kid." Takeshige came at Hyakkimaru with his sword raised high. His strike cut through Hyakkimaru from his right shoulder to his hip.

    Hyakkimaru didn't fall. He didn’t bleed.

    The men around him thought that Hyakkimaru was dead. No ordinary person could survive a wound like that. But Hyakkimaru had never been an ordinary peron. White bubbles frothed around the edges of the cut, knitting Hyakkimaru's skin and organs back together.

    Kaneyama Takeshige appeared shocked. One of his men called out, "Retreat! This one's the leader. We need backup from Akane!"

    The men around Hyakkimaru scattered like leaves in the wind. He felt the women who were with them moving farther away, too—back toward the buildings where Mio and the children had lived.

    There were more men around those buildings now. The men surrounded a group of women as if they were keeping them under guard—or maybe the women were prisoners. Five little girls were mixed among them, but none of them were familiar.

    Mio and the children were dead. Hyakkimaru knew that, but that fact didn't really hit him until he saw these other people in their place. He touched his newly healed skin through the huge rent in his clothes and gaped at the people in astonishment.

    "Who are you?" Hyakkimaru asked them. His voice shook. Being cut open didn't hurt, but the idea that everyone was dead and that he hadn't been here to save them did.

    Mio Mio Mio Mio Mio Mio Mio....

    The men who'd attacked Hyakkimaru kept calling out to retreat. Kaneyama Takeshige ordered the men to guard the women, then dashed away from Hyakkimaru. Everyone followed him across the windswept plain.

    "Wait!" Hyakkimaru called out. "At least tell me what you did with the bodies!"

    The men glared at him.

    "If one cut won't kill him, we'll just cut him more! Cut off his head! He can't tell anyone anything without a head!" one man called out.

    Hyakkimaru was surrounded again. He pulled off his right arm with his teeth, so that both sword arms were bare. He frightened them—he could tell that much—but all of these men had more experience at combat than him, and he was greatly outnumbered. None of them managed to successfully attack his neck or head, but he received several defensive wounds to other parts of his body. None of the wounds hurt. The bubbles that healed him felt like nothing. He was cold and numb all over, but there was no pain.

    "It's a monster! Or a demon! Kill it!"

    Hyakkimaru fought like a madman, but he wasn’t trying to kill them, only to defend himself. "Where is Mio?" he cried out. "Why did you kill her? Where are the children? Why did you do this?!"

    Kaneyama Takeshige’s men gradually wore Hyakkimaru down, slicing at him and kicking him until he lost his footing. They aimed for his neck, but just when the blade was about to land on him, Hyakkimaru rolled away, out of reach. He stood up with tears in his eyes and an expression of raw hatred on his face.

    "Mio! Mio! Mio!"

    The men attacking him took a huge step back. Several of the men were shaking from fear. "We can't kill him," one man shouted. "Retreat!" He ran after the other men and the women they were guarding. The men accompanying him followed, moving fast until they left the plain and vanished into the trees.

    Hyakkimaru was left alone. His injuries were still healing, so he couldn't run yet. He crawled along the ground, yelling, "Stop!"

    By the time he recovered, Kaneyama Takeshige and his men were out of range of his senses. He left his arms twitching on the ground and chased after them. He hadn't gone far when he tripped over something solid.

    It was a woman's body, face-down. He flipped her over  carefully, using his feet. He took one look at her face and collapsed to his knees.

    "Mio?"

    She didn't answer. Her body was still warm.

    "Mio..." He passed out next to her. His first love was dead.

 

    Hyakkimaru's cold numbness lingered even after he regained consciousness. It was his fault, Mio and the children being dead. He should have been with them. He should have been stronger for them. He resolved to practice more with his swords. He remembered every lesson Jukai had taught him and did them over again, only this time, he understood the meaning behind his strikes.

    Swords were used to kill people. Hyakkimaru would have to kill, now. As a child he'd hated the idea of killing so much that he'd never thought he'd be able to do it without Jukai there. Killing the rabbits for food had been terrible: he could feel their pain as if it were his own. But there were some people who deserved to be killed, before they could kill him or others. He had to be able to kill them. He needed to change himself to become that kind of person.

    Rage was the only force motivating him for the next few days. He had no time to mourn his terrible losses. He felt like if he broke down and truly felt the enormity of this tragedy, he would never recover.

    Don't grieve. Move. Fight. Yes, that's it. Faster. I have to get stronger. I don't care what I have to do. All I want is to be strong.

    His hatred for the evil men who had killed Mio and the children was like a fire within himself, always burning. It was the only warmth he felt, and that warmth was pain. Eventually, he climbed down the mountain again to resume his quest to find demons, but he never felt anything at all apart from hate.

    Hyakkimaru fought monsters and demons, so he developed something of a reputation. People called him by all kinds of names: Dororo, Segare, Little Monster. Hyakkimaru didn't mind those names. People feared and avoided him. That was what he wanted.

    Strangely, Hyakkimaru wasn't afraid of demons anymore. He wasn't afraid of anything. He'd fought his first demon in a brusque and efficient way, and when it was dead, he didn't regret killing it at all. It was the first time he'd killed anything with that mindset. He didn't feel like he should kill the demon, necessarily. Killing it didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Him dying didn't really matter, either. The agonizing pain of his body part returning to him seemed right and just.

    Despite the pain, Hyakkimaru wanted his body back. He hated the look in people's eyes when a new part came back to him, miraculous. His ability to heal and recover frightened others even more than his fighting abilities. He wanted to be normal so that people wouldn't stare at him with those hostile, terrified eyes.

    Hyakkimaru didn't usually kill people. He had cause to hate the demons, and they usually attacked him before he attacked them. Most people were weak compared to him, and he didn't kill them because it would be unfair. The war would probably kill the people who hated and feared him soon enough.

    Killing demons made Hyakkimaru feel better about himself. He was strong enough to fight them. Maybe that meant he was getting stronger at last. His hatred continued to motivate him: hatred of war, the hatred of villagers, and hatred for the demons. He hated them because they hated him.

    Why does everyone look at me like that? Why do they hate me so much?

    Hyakkimaru wasn't predisposed to hate, but he knew of no other appropriate reaction to others' treatment of him.  He kept traveling and fighting until he encountered Biwabōshi, who told him where to find the Hall of Hell.

    "What is your intent, young man?" Biwabōshi asked. "Do you want to get your body back, or kill all the demons? If you could only choose one, which would you pick?"

    "Why does that matter? I can do both at once. Besides, it's none of your business."

    Hyakkimaru continued his journey from there, still alone. He traveled through villages on his search for demons, but he never stayed anywhere long. His hatred still gripped him, and no other emotion affected him at all. Hyakkimaru credited his hatred with keeping him alive. Without it, he wasn't sure how long he would be able to keep going.

    One night, there was a terrible blizzard, and he looked for a place to stay in a small town so that he could weather the storm. That town was where he'd killed the giant crab demon, and where he'd met Dororo.

 

    Dororo listened to Hyakkimaru's long tale, mouth twisting in disgust. "Why did you tell me all that garbage?" He didn't look at Hyakkimaru.

    Hyakkimaru felt an odd emotion coming off of Dororo: jealousy. Why was Dororo jealous? There was nothing in his story to be jealous about.

    But Dororo considered himself to be male. As a man, he had his own reasons to be jealous of Hyakkimaru's obvious strength. He put his back to Hyakkimaru and said, "We should get going soon. We've rested long enough."

    Banmon was still visible in the half-dark. They'd moved away from it during the day, but it loomed across the horizon, looking like a fist raised to the sky.

    Hyakkimaru received another flash of emotion from Dororo: hatred.

    "Do you...hate Daigo Kagemitsu?" Hyakkimaru asked.

    "Shut up!"

    Dororo pulled Claw, his knife, from its carved wooden scabbard. He faced Banmon with Claw clutched firmly in his fist.

    Dororo had memories of Daigo Kagemitsu. Those memories overwhelmed him as he glared at Banmon. Hyakkimaru saw Dororo's memories in his mind's eye.