Search Results
ID: rF9pUySb/qst/6263076#6265229
6/26/2025, 12:05:13 AM
>>6264014
The hemp robes scratch against your shoulders when you walk. Coarse fabric, deliberately patched, the color of old tea stains--every thread calculated to suggest poverty without squalor. The wooden begging bowl knocks against your hip with each step, its hollow sound echoing off the narrow walls of the merchant quarter.
You have become Brother Myōan, a name pulled from the register of a burned temple three provinces away. Your head is shaved clean, the stubble pricking in the cool air. Soot darkens the crescents beneath your fingernails--the residue of countless incense sticks you burned last night to embed the scent into your skin. Every detail must be perfect. The mask must become as flesh.
The Benten shrine's red torii has faded to rust-brown. Morning mist rises from the water, carrying the stench of night soil and rotting fish. You settle yourself on the shrine steps just as the temple bells announce the Hour of the Snake, arranging your robes with practiced humility.
Lady Akane appears just as the sun begins to banish the haze, exactly as you knew she would. She moves with the careful gait of someone who has learned to make threadbare sandals last. Her kimono was once fine--you can see it in the silk's weave--but now it bears the telltale signs of repeated darning. She carries herself like nobility playing at poverty, like one of the onnagata that have grown so popular in these times. No theater for her performance, of course.
You close your eyes and begin the Lotus Sutra in a low murmur, loud enough to be heard but soft enough to seem private. The words flow from muscle memory, learned in childhood before you understood their meaning. Before you understood that even prayer could be a weapon.
"Namu myōhō renge kyō..."
Her footsteps slow. Through slitted eyes, you watch her bow before the shrine, her movements precise despite the trembling of her hands. She lights a single stick of incense—-the cheap kind that burns fast and smells of sawdust. When she kneels, her spine stays straight, but you catch the way her fingers press white against her prayer beads.
You let the chant fade into silence.
"Forgive me," she says without turning. Her voice carries the formal cadences of the merchant class imitating samurai speech. "I did not mean to disturb your prayers."
"All prayers join the same stream, honored lady." You rise slowly, bones creaking with feigned age. "The Buddha hears them together or not at all."
She turns then, and you see that hunger has sharpened her cheekbones, and something else has hollowed her eyes--a exhaustion beyond the reach of sleep. This close, you can smell the rice paste she uses to powder over the bruises on her wrists.
"You are not from Edo," she observes.
"The road is my temple now." You gesture toward the river with your begging bowl. "Though I confess, your dedication shames me. Every day I see you here, faithful as the tide."
[Continued]
The hemp robes scratch against your shoulders when you walk. Coarse fabric, deliberately patched, the color of old tea stains--every thread calculated to suggest poverty without squalor. The wooden begging bowl knocks against your hip with each step, its hollow sound echoing off the narrow walls of the merchant quarter.
You have become Brother Myōan, a name pulled from the register of a burned temple three provinces away. Your head is shaved clean, the stubble pricking in the cool air. Soot darkens the crescents beneath your fingernails--the residue of countless incense sticks you burned last night to embed the scent into your skin. Every detail must be perfect. The mask must become as flesh.
The Benten shrine's red torii has faded to rust-brown. Morning mist rises from the water, carrying the stench of night soil and rotting fish. You settle yourself on the shrine steps just as the temple bells announce the Hour of the Snake, arranging your robes with practiced humility.
Lady Akane appears just as the sun begins to banish the haze, exactly as you knew she would. She moves with the careful gait of someone who has learned to make threadbare sandals last. Her kimono was once fine--you can see it in the silk's weave--but now it bears the telltale signs of repeated darning. She carries herself like nobility playing at poverty, like one of the onnagata that have grown so popular in these times. No theater for her performance, of course.
You close your eyes and begin the Lotus Sutra in a low murmur, loud enough to be heard but soft enough to seem private. The words flow from muscle memory, learned in childhood before you understood their meaning. Before you understood that even prayer could be a weapon.
"Namu myōhō renge kyō..."
Her footsteps slow. Through slitted eyes, you watch her bow before the shrine, her movements precise despite the trembling of her hands. She lights a single stick of incense—-the cheap kind that burns fast and smells of sawdust. When she kneels, her spine stays straight, but you catch the way her fingers press white against her prayer beads.
You let the chant fade into silence.
"Forgive me," she says without turning. Her voice carries the formal cadences of the merchant class imitating samurai speech. "I did not mean to disturb your prayers."
"All prayers join the same stream, honored lady." You rise slowly, bones creaking with feigned age. "The Buddha hears them together or not at all."
She turns then, and you see that hunger has sharpened her cheekbones, and something else has hollowed her eyes--a exhaustion beyond the reach of sleep. This close, you can smell the rice paste she uses to powder over the bruises on her wrists.
"You are not from Edo," she observes.
"The road is my temple now." You gesture toward the river with your begging bowl. "Though I confess, your dedication shames me. Every day I see you here, faithful as the tide."
[Continued]
Page 1