ARG. I’m the bookish one. I should love this, but I like learning, not researching. I also somewhat like teaching, even to the unruly monkeys in my class…
“You know, I could help you.” I look up to see my brother leaning against the opening of the door into the “archives”. His voice casual, cool, almost. “If you need help. But since you handle your own business now, dashing off to Tokyo, mysteriously, for over a week…”
I look back down at my paper, “no, I’m fine.” I pretend to look absorbed in my work.
“You’re a messy scholar and also messy with your possessions. I found your letter, on your desk in your room, when you left. Right there laying out,” he says, shaking his head. I feel uneasy, but I remain my expression. “So you went off to, what, spare me the trouble?” He sits down in the chair on the other side of the table. “I -am- the head of this family, Yuunosuke.” His voice has taken on a tone that reminds me of the -worst- conversations I had with my father, where he all -but- called me a coward and a failure for not wanting to learn swords and to die for -his- causes, and I suppress a shiver.
“Hanako-san wasn’t doing well – would it help anyone if you left her? And what would the ‘head of the family’ do? Take her and the girls and imprison her in this house?” I shoot back, refusing to bow under his best Yagi Gennojou impersonation. “Hide-neesan needed support, and I could bring Asuka-san as well.” Not that they’re close, but she is, or -was-, close to Saitou-san.
“Hanako is better now, thanks to you reaching out to Makimachi-san, so thank you for that.” He leans back in his chair, tenting his fingers. Oh, now he’s the lawyer, which is better than our father, at least. “So is that what you think? That I’m the stern old man, wanting to remove our sister from her happy dream life?” I don’t answer. I heard his talk after that fool Abe Juro was by, and the jibes from a village heavy who has his eye on taking over as head – He can’t control and protect his sister, what will he let happen to Mibu?. He -wanted- to do just that.
“I have struggled…” he drops his hands, and his posturing, as he sits forward, now. “I have struggled to let her do what she wants. I was aware of the life she lead after the war, losing Okita-san, and then Otou-san and Okaa-san… letting her go off -alone-, unescorted. What would Otou-san have done? What would Okaa-san gently encourage? She’d not let me take care of her in a normal way – finding her an appropriate marriage, or settling her somewhere close, or…” he grins, sadly, “but shamefully, I just wanted peace, and my beloved to take over the role she needed, to feel less like a bought woman, by running the Yagi home.”
We’re both quiet. “What would you have done?” I ask. “Had you gone?”
Another long sigh. “I have the power, as her… guardian, to make her come home. My authority over the girls is tenuous, as she’s never registered their births. But it’s not as if they’d leave them, and Saitou-san doesn’t…?” He looks to me, with an unspoken question.
I shake my head. “What he wants… I don’t think even he knows. He’s not the same. Whatever happened… it was -bad-.” Sympathy for the devil, goes the expression for this man who broke her heart… but I admitted as such that my sister can be a lot, and Saya-san more or less confirmed that it was her actions that lead to their downfall. “But I don’t think he plans on claiming the girls and taking them from Hideneesan.”
“If I were a monster, as you and her think,” he smirks slightly, with a bit of a grimace, “yes, I could. Claim the newest baby as mine and Hanako’s, send Makoto-chan to board somewhere or foster her out, and Hideneesan off to a contemplative life. That would be following a certain path, to bring at least one of her children to respectability and to show my force as the head of this family.” His grin softens, “but then again, I’m the son of a man who dressed his only daughter as a boy when rough samurai were billeted at his house, rather than finding a good marriage. Affection overcomes the rules of propriety and reason, I suppose, for a Yagi.” He looks up at me through his bangs. “How could I give them an ultimatum? She seemed so happy, at last. And I -know- how complicated divorces can be, why it was taking time to detangle himself…” Tamebo looks away. “I don’t know what I would have done. Probably I would have made it -worse- for her.”
We’re both quiet, for a long time. “So… what -will- you do?” I finally ask, in the silence of this room, surrounded by the detritus of the long-dead men who still shape the lives of the children of Yagi Gennojou.
He shrugs, slightly. “How does she fare? Will she have to leave that house in Tokyo? And to keep Makoto-chan, and then Ai-chan in school, being unregistered?”
“I don’t know about school, but if she can afford where they are now, it doesn’t seem to matter their status. It’s a school I approve of, it that holds any weight with you.” I’d teach at Futuba in a second, but I heard that the internal politics are -toxic-, and I have one -very- good reason to be happy in Kyoto, after all. “As for the house… I think somehow Saitou-san arranged that it be handed over to her. I don’t know what he -did-, as it was held by the government… they don’t give houses over to ex-mistresses of cops, no matter how good they are.”
He nods. “She has a home, and what about Saitou-san’s kin?”
“Still there…” which confuses me, but perhaps his new woman doesn’t want that grumpy boy. Well, when he lets it show, Fujita Tsutomu is -smart- in a way I rarely see. And I saw, when he didn’t have his guard up, how -kind- he was to Makoto-chan, and protective of that baby – as if a teenage boy was the only person qualified to take care of her! “As is Saitou-san’s niece, and oneesan’s taken on a boarder, a schoolmate of Tsutomu-kun’s, apparently, but she pays her way. So she still has a houseful.” Holding up her last letter, “she tried to get a job, translating English, but she already told me that the life of a mother who works away from home isn’t suitable, so she quit already.”
He sits back, muttering something about needing a smoke. “You can let her know… we’ll talk as the school year comes to a close in the spring. Unless things get worse…” his face darkens, suddenly, before moving on, “I will allow her to continue as she is in Tokyo.”
“Thanks,” I say, quietly. “I’ll let her know. She’s been worried about Hanako-san. She’ll be glad that Makimachi-san was able to help.”
He nods. “Now… will you tell me why you’re messing with my archives?” I raise an eyebrow at his possessiveness, but I see the joke he’s trying to make, to both lighten the mood and to offer me an apology. We’re not soppy, after all, like oneesan…
“She sent me something in English – a magazine about technological advances – with something secured inside – a newspaper article.” I hand it over, about some blowhard Interior Ministry guy making a speech. She had circled the face of the statue, and had written, in English -script-, “Peaches??” “And in her letter, along with her news about her job, she asked me to carefully look after her old writings.”
He looks over the newspaper article, and the puzzlement shows on this face. “What about this guy? Some Choshuu fellow, we might have something, but what is that word about?” I translate it for him, and he’s even more confused. “But what does she mean about ‘her old writings’? And when did she learn English?” He asks.
I hand over the notebooks that I’ve been puzzling over. “Okita-san’s old journals, for something he was doing. They’re all in her writing.” There’s two styles. A heavier hand that seems to vary in quality but has a fluency that only someone who was well-trained would use. And the other, unmistakably my sister’s, light and hesitant, with pauses where it’s clear that she had to re-dip her brush. Was she going slow or transcribing?
“These are in code,” Tamebo shakes his head, flipping through them. “She couldn’t have done this, written this, known the old code. I’ve not figured it out myself.”
“She’s -not- stupid,” I snap at him. “Just because her formal education ended at eight doesn’t mean that she’s not -capable-.”
He grins at me. “Yes, the old story… sacrifice… her education, her childhood, her dowry… and we ended up alright, didn’t we? Saint Hide…” He looks grim again. “She never told me, she knew this. And when did she? And what’s this Peaches reference?”
I point at a character in the notebook. “In looking over Okita-san’s books, it’s all in code -except- certain words. I wonder if they’re codenames? All of the words are… food.” Now I smile a bit, remembering how he shared sweets with us children. “So perhaps someone scanning through could find a reference quickly?” It’s the only guess.
“So have you found ‘Peaches’ then?” He looks at the books curiously.
I hold up one. “Yes. Now just to read them…”
“Next door, then,” he tells me. He glances at the letter on the desk, and notices that the envelope was marked ‘Express’. “This may something that can’t wait.”
(Later)
“Well now that they’re all dead… I suppose you may know. Hijikata-san sent Souji-kun for treatments at a doctor’s, and Yagi-san went with him. Like they were courting, you know? So I guess he taught her then so she could help, Hijikata-san said that the treatments stole time even as it gave him more, that they’d have to stay and rest at the doctor’s. As for the reports? This was Souji-kun’s self-appointed project. To follow around Sakamoto Ryoma, as he was convinced that he was plotting to kill Kondou-san.” The mountain of a man felt a million miles away, as he continued, “so we had a good idea of who was in his circle, his friends, what he was doing. But it turns out, of course… that Sakamoto didn’t kill Kondou-san. But his death condemned him all the same.”
I look at the notes I took from Shimada-sama. “Now, how to get these to Hide-neesan? Letter may be too slow, and this information…. telegram’s even worse, and I don’t know how we could code it to make it work where she’d know what we meant…” I’m almost about to make the -mad- suggestion that we send the original notebook to Tokyo, but my brother is possessive about his treasures…
Then there’s a knock at the door, and a young woman enters. “Hanako-san is much improved! Omasu thinks she’ll be out of bed in a few days.” She frowns at me. “Why are you two looking at me like that?”
“Ummm…. Makimachi-san, could you do us a favor?” I ask.
(End)