Dororo - Part Two - Chapter 19

Dororo: Part Two

Nakamura Masaru

Part 3: Kagemitsu

Chapter 19

    Hyakkimaru wandered through a throng of people, lost. He could feel the heat from the people pressing in all around him, but it didn’t touch him. He was cold through, lost in the memory of what he’d just seen. He was in hostile territory; all of these people were his potential enemies. They were talking, shouting, laughing, sighing--but Hyakkimaru couldn’t hear them. In this moment, the loudest voice reached his ears as soft as the sussuration of an insect’s wings.

    My mother...

    Hyakkimaru fell.

    Of course I have a mother. And a father. Hyakkimaru gathered himself. He got up and kept walking.

    My father is not my father. My only father is Jukai. I don’t need another. I don’t want another.

    His thoughts helped calm him down. He’d escaped from the Daigo Clan’s fortress, though his calming panic blurred that memory. He had worn the clothes that his father had told him to wear, and his birth family had recognized him because of them. He couldn’t hate Jukai or himself for obeying his father’s final command, but...

    ...but now, his life was in jagged pieces, too sharp to touch. Too painful to put back together.

    Dad...

    Hyakkimaru felt out of place in his own life, like a useless weed in a garden full of medicinal plants. He was uprooted now: the hand of his past had returned to yank him out by the root, and now all he could do was wait for the root and stem to wither and die.

    But no: that wasn’t right. He might not have a place to belong, but his father wouldn’t want him to give up.

    "It's not us you should hate. Your father did this to you."

    The demon Shugarasu’s words came back to Hyakkimaru now. He hadn’t understood the demon’s words at the time, but now...

    His birth father was responsible for his body being broken into pieces and stolen from him. Hyakkimaru could hate him without reserve, and he did, thinking over and over again: I hate my father. I hate him. I hate him!

    Kagemitsu Daigo was Dororo’s enemy.

    Hyakkimaru wove his way through the crowded streets until he came to a public square. In the center, the heads of Kaneyama Clan supporters were uplifted on a platform for a grisly display. There were two heads there. One was a man’s, and one was a woman’s.

    Sights like this were common enough that Hyakkimaru didn’t stop to look. He pretended like the heads didn’t bother him, but seeing a woman dead like that made him think of Dororo.

***

 

    Dororo was in the same city as Hyakkimaru, ducking into blind alleys and wandering up heavily trafficked thoroughfares in search of easy prey. The city was still new and under construction, so there were opportunities everywhere. Men and women rushed between jobs, not paying attention to anyone else. Stores and food stands lined every street, and most were unprotected by guards. The main streets were also wide and there were tons of people, so it would be easy to get away, too. The city was a pickpocket's paradise.

    Walking casually up a street, Dororo mapped out the immediate area, observing likely hidey-holes and committing them to memory. He never worked a job without having an exit strategy. This place looked perfect for getting some work done, but he’d never been here before and he wasn’t so confident in his skills that he’d forego precautions.

    Hidey-holes weren’t really holes--at least, not usually. They were shadows in the eaves of roofs and the profiles of large crates and barrels that could be hidden behind. Hidey-holes were places where Dororo could disappear, even if an ordinary person couldn’t manage it. Hidey-holes also served as landmarks. In an unfamiliar place like this, they served as a kind of map that Dororo could use in case he needed to retreat quickly without being noticed.

    Dororo had no desire to be caught here. He didn’t know where he’d be taken. With that in mind, he targeted unguarded food stores and shops and pilfered little items here and there, checking to be sure he wasn’t being observed before moving on.

    Dororo was coming out of the third store he’d robbed when he noticed a new hidey-hole that he could use across the street. He walked toward a vendor selling meat-and-vegetable skewers. He claimed they were made from sparrow meat. Dororo didn’t take a skewer. The idea of those fast, free birds being captured for meat saddened him.

    Sparrows weren’t fast like falcons and hawks, but he felt a slight kinship with them as a creature of stealth and speed. I guess your flying days are over now, Dororo thought, looking at the meat smoking on the vendor’s skewers. He imagined them coming to life and flying away again.

    Suddenly, a high-pitched note played on a biwa cut through the surrounding noise. Dororo turned in the direction of the sound and saw Biwabōshi standing there.

    “Huh? What are you doing here?” Dororo asked.

“I came to the market for a bamboo-wrapped cake,” Biwabōshi said. He approached Dororo, coming closer to the vendor selling the skewers. “Is that sparrow meat that I smell?”

    “Why? Do you wanna steal it?” Dororo looked at Biwabōshi with an expression of disgust.

    “Looking and smelling are not stealing,” Biwabōshi said. “Hm? What’s this?”

    “What’s what?” the food vendor asked.

    “You smell unusually clean. Are you the one who makes the skewers, sir?”’

    “What are you talking about? Of course I am.”

    “I didn’t think there was much clean water to bathe in for outsiders to the town...”

    “You idiot; don’t you see that well over there? It’s a merchant’s prerogative to be clean!”

    Dororo’s gaze flicked to the stone well that the vendor had indicated. Biwabōshi smiled kindly and paid for a skewer.

    While the vendor was distracted by Biwabōshi, Dororo made off with his ill-gotten gains and sat down with the well at his back. “I don’t s’pose you’ve got any liquor, old man, do ya?” he asked. He was smiling at Biwabōshi.

    Biwabōshi did not smile. His expression was difficult to read.

“Something wrong?” Dororo asked.

    Biwabōshi said nothing. He stared into space straight ahead. Dororo knew better to try to see what a blind man was seeing, but he felt himself tracking what Biwabōshi was looking at.

    Hyakkimaru staggered down the street, practically tripping over his feet.

    “Oi!” Dororo waved. “Took you long enough!”

    Hyakkimaru didn’t react to Dororo’s voice. He stumbled again, pale and shaking, and this time he actually fell.

    “Aniki? Hey!” Dororo got up and moved away from the well toward the fallen Hyakkimaru. “Aniki!”

    Hyakkimaru finally heard Dororo. His shoulders twitched and he turned around. Slowly, he got to his feet again and dusted himself off.

    “What’s wrong with you?” Dororo asked. “You sick or somethin’?”

    “No.” Hyakkimaru didn’t say anything else. He was like he’d been when Dororo had first met him: mostly unresponsive, lost in his own little world that didn’t include other people.

    Biwabōshi approached them slowly. The expression on his face was drawn and pinched. “I see. The time has finally come, then?” he asked.

    “The time for what?” Dororo looked back and forth between the pale-faced Hyakkimaru and the nervous Biwabōshi.

    Hyakkimaru grimaced.

    “You’re still hiding something, old man,” Dororo said. “Aren’t you?"

    “No.” Hyakkimaru shook his head. “Anything that he’s kept hidden has been for my sake. There are some secrets that he doesn’t have the right to reveal."

    “Huh?”

    “We can’t talk here,” Hyakkimaru said. "See that bridge? We’ll go under it. Then we can talk about it."

    Hyakkimaru walked ahead of Dororo and Biwabōshi on his way to the bridge leading out of the city. The others followed fast at his heels.