36 Views of Mt. Fuji: Winter (3/9)
Title: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji: Winter (3/9)
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji is a series set early in Batman and Superman's careers, shortly after the S/B annual #1. The full series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: Clark and Bruce go to a temple for New Year's and attend a tea ceremony in an attempt to gather information about whether Kyodai Ken is alive and behind the mystery they're investigating.
Word Count: 3200
Bruce and Clark in formal kimono is an image taken from
rai_daydreamer's lovely art on the topic!
The troubled waters
Are frozen fast.
Under clear heaven
Moonlight and shadow
Ebb and flow.
--Murasaki Shikibu
"Go 'way," Clark Kent muttered and pulled the blankets over his head. Bruce Wayne glared down at his cocooned form on the tatami floor, then launched a buckwheat-filled pillow at his head. It connected with a satisfying thump, and Clark grunted irritably.
"I thought farm boys rose with the sun," Bruce observed as Clark emerged from under the blankets, blinking.
"Sure, when there's sun to rise with. What time is it, anyway?"
"Five o'clock. We're heading to the local temple soon for hatsumode, the first visit of the new year." Bruce dropped a pile of gray and black material on Clark's lap.
"What's this?" Clark stared down at the heap of glossy, elegant raw silk, then up at Bruce with an oddly dismayed expression.
Bruce grinned. "Formal kimono. Yoru-sensei strongly suggests we wear them to go with his family. Which means it's required." He turned his back on Kent to give him a modicum of privacy, slipping into the white under-robes, pulling on the white split-toed socks, and donning the wide, pleated gray silk hakama and black jacket. Then he heard a thumping noise and a muffled curse behind him. He turned around to see Clark struggling to put on one of the socks. The robes were on all wrong, rumpled and in disarray, the hakama hiked up until the hems were at Clark's calves. He looked totally ridiculous, and at the sight of Superman playing the idiot, yet again, Bruce felt irritation boil over in him.
Kent stopped hopping and stood there, one sock still only half-on, staring at Bruce's outraged expression. "What?" he asked blankly.
Bruce stalked across the straw matting right up to Clark. Clark fell back before him until his back came up against the sliding walls. "Stop it," Bruce hissed, getting in Clark's face, almost relieved to be saying it at last. "Just...cut it out with the moron act when we're in private, all right? It's insulting that you're pretending you can't figure out how to wear clothes." Clark's jaw was slack in shock; there was a touch of hurt in his eyes that somehow just made Bruce angrier. "And you can drop the whole 'cutely flustered' routine around people here too. No one is that socially inept, all right? It's completely unrealistic."
Somehow he had expected either disingenuousness or laughter, but not anger; Clark reached out and pushed Bruce away just hard enough to send him staggering a couple of reluctant steps backward. The calculating part of Bruce's mind was impressed at the fine control, but most of him continued to be mystified by the expression on Clark's face, half fury and half...something else.
Clark bunched his hands in the black silk of his kimono and shook it as if he was brandishing himself at Bruce. "You think this is all an act?" he said disbelievingly. He held out his fists. Bruce tried not to notice they were shaking slightly. "What the hell does being able to punch things really hard have to do with knowing how to wear a kimono? What exactly is the connection between invulnerability and knowing Japanese bath etiquette?" The fists dropped to his sides. "And what precisely does being able to learn a language quickly have to do with being comfortable with talking to people and being able to connect with them? Tell me that, Bruce!" Clark shook his head. "Just because I'm not as--as--" he groped for words, growing visibly more irritated with his inability to express it, "--as good around people as you, as charming as you, that doesn't make it an act. I'm just not very...likable," he finished, somewhat lamely.
Bruce struggled to keep from breaking into outright laughter. Charming? "You've got to be kidding me," he snarled back, the suppressed laughter adding an odd edge to his voice, "I've seen Superman in action, I've seen how people look up at you in the sky, the looks on their faces, and you say you're not likable? Everybody loves Superman."
Clark was staring down at the foot with the sock half-on and half-off. He ran a toe along the edge of the tatami mat and spoke without looking up. "That's worship. That's not liking." He reached down and tugged the sock on more firmly, crumpling his clothes up more in the process. "And it's sure as hell not love," he added very softly.
For a long moment, Bruce couldn't seem to think of anything to say, which was very unusual. Clark cleared his throat, then looked up with the air of a man trying to lighten the mood, deflect attention away from himself. "I mean, I saw the way you had that stewardess on the flight wrapped around your little finger. She was half-hoping you'd invite her to induct you into the Mile-High Club in the lavatory."
This time Bruce looked away. "That's not love either," he muttered.
Thankfully, at that moment a gentle knock on the door interrupted the increasingly uncomfortable conversation. The door slid open and Tokiko came in, dressed in a pastel kimono, looking like an entirely different girl than the jeans-wearing teenager of yesterday. At the sight of Clark, her hand flew to her mouth to stifle laughter, but her giggles eventually won out over her decorum. Clark turned bright red and she hurried forward and started adjusting his kimono for him. "Don't mind, Mister Kent, I'll help you," she said, still giggling slightly.
"Thank you," Clark mumbled indistinctly, staring down at the straw matting like it was extremely interesting. Bruce watched the man blush as the attractive Japanese girl fussed over him, straightening his clothing deftly.
Not very likable.
Right.
: : :
"So when do we get to talk about this business with Yoru-sensei? Will he be able to tell us if Kyodai Ken survived your last encounter with him, if he's seen any sign of the ninja?" Clark whispered as he and Bruce trailed after the teacher and his flock of students and friends.
"You need to give it time, Kent," Bruce whispered back. "You can't rush these things."
Clark sighed as Bruce tucked his hands into his sleeves and looked inscrutable. Just how did the man manage to walk so gracefully in these sandal-things? Clark clomped sullenly along beside him.
The temple courtyard was crowded, although not oppressively so. In the center of the courtyard a huge incense-burner, chest-high, emitted wisps of sweetly scented smoke. Children in kimono and Western clothes chased cooing pigeons around while their parents took videos with their cell phones.
Tokiko handed Kaori her cell phone and darted over to squeeze in between Clark and Bruce. < Take a picture of us, sister! > Kaori smiled and held up the phone. Tokiko looked over and grabbed Clark's hand, frowning. "Peace!" she exclaimed, holding up his hand and showing him her hand, two fingers extended in a "V."
"Um...peace?"
"It's practically required when having your photo taken here, Clark," Bruce said dryly.
"Even when wearing formal kimono?"
"Even more so." Bruce made the peace sign and flashed him an utterly insincere smile. Clark gamely held up his hand as well.
The cell phone clicked. "Thank you!" exclaimed Tokiko, then darted off again.
Clark looked around and felt panic grip him. He was going to do something incredibly stupid and rude and foreign, he just knew it. He grabbed Bruce's sleeve. "What do I do?" he hissed.
Bruce pulled his sleeve away. "Just do exactly what I do."
Well, at least this way Bruce couldn't make him look like an idiot without being one himself. Clark trailed along behind Bruce as he followed Yoru up the stairs to the temple interior and watched carefully as Bruce, his teacher, and the girls all tossed a coin into a box, pulled a rope to clang some kind of bell, clapped their hands twice and bowed their heads a moment. Clark followed and tried to imitate their movements as best he could. At the end he was sweating more than when he had fought Ultraman, but Kaori gave him a slight smile and a nod and he relaxed a little.
Tokiko grabbed their two sleeves and dragged them to a stall where various charms were being sold. "Omikuji," she explained. She handed the vendor some money, grabbed a black lacquered box with a tiny hole in the top, and shook it at Clark with a rattling noise. Clark stared at her blankly. One of the readings he had memorized for the characters of "omikuji" was "honorable god lottery," but what the heck...
"It's your New Year's fortune, Clark, " Bruce explained, nudging his hand. "Pick a stick at random and they'll give you a fortune."
"Oh." Clark reached out and grabbed the thin wooden dowel protruding from the box; Tokiko shook the box imperiously at Bruce and he took one as well. The vendor handed them each a slip of paper. It was divided up into categories with predictions on how the next year would go. Clark's was quite good--his love life specifically was foretold to be excellent, albeit after a slow start. He glanced over at Bruce's and saw his was also very good.
Tokiko, on the other hand, read hers with a downcast face. "No good, no good," she sighed. Then she flashed a grin at Clark, folded her fortune into a thin strip and went over to a pine tree growing near the temple. It was bent under the weight of slips of paper tied around its branches. "Bad thing tie here," she explained, before fumbling for words and then slipping into Japanese with an annoyed grimace. < If your fortune is bad, you can tie it here to ward off bad luck. If it's good, we usually take it home. >
To Clark's surprise, Bruce stepped forward and tied his slip of paper to it. Tokiko shot him an ironic glance, but said nothing, slipping off to rejoin the sensei.
"Why'd you do that, Bruce? I saw your fortune, it was a really good one."
"I don't believe in superstitions, Clark. I always make a point of tying good fortunes up as well. I don't need a god looking out for me."
Clark snorted. "That sounds just as superstitious to me." Bruce gifted him with a black look and stalked off. Clark followed after a moment, falling in behind Bruce and the Yoru household as they made their way through the courtyard. The incense wafted around them and pigeons scattered as they passed by. Clark looked at Bruce, walking between Tokiko and another young student and talking easily with them, the silk shifting gracefully with his body's movements.
Clark slipped his hand into the pocket of his black jacket and felt the two slips of paper hidden there, twining around his fingers and each other. He wasn't superstitious either, but why take chances? Someone like Bruce was going to need all the good fortune he could get, after all.
: : :
Clark and Bruce made their way across a path of smooth, round stepping stones toward a little house built off in the garden. The garden was apparently dead for the winter, but bushes of red berries and evergreens kept it from looking lifeless. As he walked, Clark went over Bruce's instructions in his head on how to get through a Japanese tea ceremony. The instructions were fairly complicated, but in the end boiled down basically to "Do what I do and keep your mouth shut as much as possible."
The door to the interior of the teahouse was only half the height of a man, which gave Clark pause. As he hesitated, Bruce's dark head poked back out. "It's to force all people to bow and humble themselves as they enter, Clark, I would think you could appreciate that. Now get in here."
It wasn't the humbling himself so much as the worry that he wouldn't fit through the damn door at all, but Clark decided not to mention that to Bruce and scrambled through.
The inside was austerely simple: tatami mats, a low table, no other decoration besides a scroll hanging in a niche above a bowl of flowers. Yoru-sensei took a variety of utensils from a lacquered box and arranged them on the table as Clark and Bruce sat down on the mat on the other side. Clark tucked his legs under him, sitting on the heels in the correct formal posture, and waited. Without speaking, Bruce's teacher went through the graceful process of the ceremony, whisking enamel-bright green tea into a black ceramic bowl. The bowl was surprisingly unattractive, awkwardly shaped and asymmetrical, the dull matte glaze uneven. Bruce lifted it as if he were handling something priceless, however, drank, then passed the bowl to Clark. Clark tried to replicate his actions as closely as possible, drinking the thick, bitter tea and eating the small sweet Yoru had placed next to it. The teacher gestured to Bruce and Bruce gently lifted and examined the utensils, setting them back down with infinite care on the cloth-covered table.
The trio sat in silence for some time, far past when Clark felt comfortable. He followed Bruce's gaze to the niche with its scroll and flowers. The scroll was of a cicada, clinging to a branch under the moon. The black bowl under it was filled with waxy magnolia-like flowers. The other two men seemed to be contemplating something very deeply, but Clark mostly felt uncomfortable and a little bored.
After a time, however, Yoru stirred and sighed, and Bruce apparently took this as a sign he could speak. "I was deeply grieved to hear of Matsunaga-san's death," he said softly.
The teacher's face stayed almost expressionless, yet the lines of his visage somehow seemed sorrowful. "You were very close to him during your time here."
Bruce drew in a careful breath. "Yes."
Clark remembered Batman's steady hands collecting evidence around the garroted body, the glazed eyes gazing at the vigilante's expressionless face. In the silence of the tea room, he heard Bruce swallow, once, and he didn't know what to think.
Yoru-sensei sighed again. "I wish I could be of more help to you, Wayne-san."
"I understand, sensei."
The silence stretched out again for some time, and then Yoru started to put away the utensils. Apparently the interview was over.
As Clark and Bruce walked back through the garden toward their room, Clark hissed, "Is that all we--"
Bruce raised a hand to forestall his protest. "Wait," he said softly. They didn't speak again as the two quickly changed and packed, beyond small and pragmatic exchanges.
Soon, backpacks slung over shoulders, they were bidding goodbye to Yoru-sensei and his household. Tokiko and Kaori bowed politely: hugs seemed incongruous with the girls in their formal kimono. < Come back sooner next time, > Tokiko said softly, sadly, as Bruce said goodbye.
< I'll try, Tocchan, > said Bruce, and the girl's eyes lit up at the sound of the childish nickname. Bruce and Clark bowed and turned to head back down the mountain path. Bruce ambled along at a relaxed pace until the compound disappeared around a corner, at which point his pace picked up both haste and urgency until the two of them were going down the trail at some speed.
"That was a waste of our time, Bruce!" Clark said in frustration. "He didn't tell us anything at all."
Bruce's face was grim. "On the contrary, Yoru-sensei told me everything I needed to know."
"Would you stop being obscure and explain how you learned anything?"
Bruce stopped to turn to Clark under the arch of one of the weathered torii. "You saw the scroll and the flowers Yoru put out for the ceremony?"
Clark shrugged. "Notice them? I had nothing else to look at for twenty minutes."
"The flowers were star magnolias, a spring flower. The scroll had a cicada on it. Cicadas are fall insects. Both are glaringly inappropriate for a tea ceremony on New Year's Day."
Clark snorted. "Maybe Yoru-sensei made a mistake."
A look of pure disgust. "Clark, if you went into a cathedral and saw the communion wafers had been replaced with Oreos and the crown of thorns on the crucifix switched for a baseball cap, would you say the priest had 'made a mistake'? That's about as likely as a high master of the tea ceremony choosing those flowers and that scroll."
"All right then, detective, what was the message?"
"The star magnolia's name in Japanese is kobushi. Written with different characters, kobushi can mean 'fist.' And Kyodai Ken's name means 'Great Fist.'"
"And the cicada?"
"A traditional symbol for rebirth." Bruce gritted his teeth, but didn't seem to be angry at Clark. "Yoru was telling me that he has reason to believe Kyodai Ken didn't die as he appeared to in our last meeting, and that he suspects he's behind Seio's--behind Matsunaga's murder. I think we'd better assume Matsunaga was on to something, something that has to do with Hakone. We'll be heading there today."
"Well, why didn't Yoru just say something to us? Did he have to be so darn elliptical?" Clark knew he sounded frustrated, but he felt like so much was happening that he was missing, unable to pick up on even with inhuman senses.
Bruce looked almost angry for a moment. "You look at Kaori and Tokiko, at all of his students there, and tell me what he has to lose by speaking openly."
Clark felt abashed. "All right, I can understand that." Then he made a leap of intuition and grinned a touch smugly at Bruce. "The tea bowl--it must have been a clue too, right? He deliberately gave us those ugly bowls to represent...Kyodai Ken's soul, or something."
Bruce shook his head, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. There was an odd expression on his face. If it weren't so totally uncharacteristic, Clark might almost have called it reverence. "Clark, in all my time at the dojo, I never once saw Yoru-sensei use that bowl. Not for his most illustrious guests. He kept it under lock and key as some of the most priceless items of the household."
He clapped a hand to Clark's shoulder. "Today, we were accorded one of the highest honors we will ever be given in our lives." Then he started back down the path again, leaving Clark to trail slightly behind, as bewildered by the awe in Bruce's voice as by the events of the day.
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji is a series set early in Batman and Superman's careers, shortly after the S/B annual #1. The full series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: Clark and Bruce go to a temple for New Year's and attend a tea ceremony in an attempt to gather information about whether Kyodai Ken is alive and behind the mystery they're investigating.
Word Count: 3200
Bruce and Clark in formal kimono is an image taken from
rai_daydreamer's lovely art on the topic!
The troubled waters
Are frozen fast.
Under clear heaven
Moonlight and shadow
Ebb and flow.
--Murasaki Shikibu
"Go 'way," Clark Kent muttered and pulled the blankets over his head. Bruce Wayne glared down at his cocooned form on the tatami floor, then launched a buckwheat-filled pillow at his head. It connected with a satisfying thump, and Clark grunted irritably.
"I thought farm boys rose with the sun," Bruce observed as Clark emerged from under the blankets, blinking.
"Sure, when there's sun to rise with. What time is it, anyway?"
"Five o'clock. We're heading to the local temple soon for hatsumode, the first visit of the new year." Bruce dropped a pile of gray and black material on Clark's lap.
"What's this?" Clark stared down at the heap of glossy, elegant raw silk, then up at Bruce with an oddly dismayed expression.
Bruce grinned. "Formal kimono. Yoru-sensei strongly suggests we wear them to go with his family. Which means it's required." He turned his back on Kent to give him a modicum of privacy, slipping into the white under-robes, pulling on the white split-toed socks, and donning the wide, pleated gray silk hakama and black jacket. Then he heard a thumping noise and a muffled curse behind him. He turned around to see Clark struggling to put on one of the socks. The robes were on all wrong, rumpled and in disarray, the hakama hiked up until the hems were at Clark's calves. He looked totally ridiculous, and at the sight of Superman playing the idiot, yet again, Bruce felt irritation boil over in him.
Kent stopped hopping and stood there, one sock still only half-on, staring at Bruce's outraged expression. "What?" he asked blankly.
Bruce stalked across the straw matting right up to Clark. Clark fell back before him until his back came up against the sliding walls. "Stop it," Bruce hissed, getting in Clark's face, almost relieved to be saying it at last. "Just...cut it out with the moron act when we're in private, all right? It's insulting that you're pretending you can't figure out how to wear clothes." Clark's jaw was slack in shock; there was a touch of hurt in his eyes that somehow just made Bruce angrier. "And you can drop the whole 'cutely flustered' routine around people here too. No one is that socially inept, all right? It's completely unrealistic."
Somehow he had expected either disingenuousness or laughter, but not anger; Clark reached out and pushed Bruce away just hard enough to send him staggering a couple of reluctant steps backward. The calculating part of Bruce's mind was impressed at the fine control, but most of him continued to be mystified by the expression on Clark's face, half fury and half...something else.
Clark bunched his hands in the black silk of his kimono and shook it as if he was brandishing himself at Bruce. "You think this is all an act?" he said disbelievingly. He held out his fists. Bruce tried not to notice they were shaking slightly. "What the hell does being able to punch things really hard have to do with knowing how to wear a kimono? What exactly is the connection between invulnerability and knowing Japanese bath etiquette?" The fists dropped to his sides. "And what precisely does being able to learn a language quickly have to do with being comfortable with talking to people and being able to connect with them? Tell me that, Bruce!" Clark shook his head. "Just because I'm not as--as--" he groped for words, growing visibly more irritated with his inability to express it, "--as good around people as you, as charming as you, that doesn't make it an act. I'm just not very...likable," he finished, somewhat lamely.
Bruce struggled to keep from breaking into outright laughter. Charming? "You've got to be kidding me," he snarled back, the suppressed laughter adding an odd edge to his voice, "I've seen Superman in action, I've seen how people look up at you in the sky, the looks on their faces, and you say you're not likable? Everybody loves Superman."
Clark was staring down at the foot with the sock half-on and half-off. He ran a toe along the edge of the tatami mat and spoke without looking up. "That's worship. That's not liking." He reached down and tugged the sock on more firmly, crumpling his clothes up more in the process. "And it's sure as hell not love," he added very softly.
For a long moment, Bruce couldn't seem to think of anything to say, which was very unusual. Clark cleared his throat, then looked up with the air of a man trying to lighten the mood, deflect attention away from himself. "I mean, I saw the way you had that stewardess on the flight wrapped around your little finger. She was half-hoping you'd invite her to induct you into the Mile-High Club in the lavatory."
This time Bruce looked away. "That's not love either," he muttered.
Thankfully, at that moment a gentle knock on the door interrupted the increasingly uncomfortable conversation. The door slid open and Tokiko came in, dressed in a pastel kimono, looking like an entirely different girl than the jeans-wearing teenager of yesterday. At the sight of Clark, her hand flew to her mouth to stifle laughter, but her giggles eventually won out over her decorum. Clark turned bright red and she hurried forward and started adjusting his kimono for him. "Don't mind, Mister Kent, I'll help you," she said, still giggling slightly.
"Thank you," Clark mumbled indistinctly, staring down at the straw matting like it was extremely interesting. Bruce watched the man blush as the attractive Japanese girl fussed over him, straightening his clothing deftly.
Not very likable.
Right.
: : :
"So when do we get to talk about this business with Yoru-sensei? Will he be able to tell us if Kyodai Ken survived your last encounter with him, if he's seen any sign of the ninja?" Clark whispered as he and Bruce trailed after the teacher and his flock of students and friends.
"You need to give it time, Kent," Bruce whispered back. "You can't rush these things."
Clark sighed as Bruce tucked his hands into his sleeves and looked inscrutable. Just how did the man manage to walk so gracefully in these sandal-things? Clark clomped sullenly along beside him.
The temple courtyard was crowded, although not oppressively so. In the center of the courtyard a huge incense-burner, chest-high, emitted wisps of sweetly scented smoke. Children in kimono and Western clothes chased cooing pigeons around while their parents took videos with their cell phones.
Tokiko handed Kaori her cell phone and darted over to squeeze in between Clark and Bruce. < Take a picture of us, sister! > Kaori smiled and held up the phone. Tokiko looked over and grabbed Clark's hand, frowning. "Peace!" she exclaimed, holding up his hand and showing him her hand, two fingers extended in a "V."
"Um...peace?"
"It's practically required when having your photo taken here, Clark," Bruce said dryly.
"Even when wearing formal kimono?"
"Even more so." Bruce made the peace sign and flashed him an utterly insincere smile. Clark gamely held up his hand as well.
The cell phone clicked. "Thank you!" exclaimed Tokiko, then darted off again.
Clark looked around and felt panic grip him. He was going to do something incredibly stupid and rude and foreign, he just knew it. He grabbed Bruce's sleeve. "What do I do?" he hissed.
Bruce pulled his sleeve away. "Just do exactly what I do."
Well, at least this way Bruce couldn't make him look like an idiot without being one himself. Clark trailed along behind Bruce as he followed Yoru up the stairs to the temple interior and watched carefully as Bruce, his teacher, and the girls all tossed a coin into a box, pulled a rope to clang some kind of bell, clapped their hands twice and bowed their heads a moment. Clark followed and tried to imitate their movements as best he could. At the end he was sweating more than when he had fought Ultraman, but Kaori gave him a slight smile and a nod and he relaxed a little.
Tokiko grabbed their two sleeves and dragged them to a stall where various charms were being sold. "Omikuji," she explained. She handed the vendor some money, grabbed a black lacquered box with a tiny hole in the top, and shook it at Clark with a rattling noise. Clark stared at her blankly. One of the readings he had memorized for the characters of "omikuji" was "honorable god lottery," but what the heck...
"It's your New Year's fortune, Clark, " Bruce explained, nudging his hand. "Pick a stick at random and they'll give you a fortune."
"Oh." Clark reached out and grabbed the thin wooden dowel protruding from the box; Tokiko shook the box imperiously at Bruce and he took one as well. The vendor handed them each a slip of paper. It was divided up into categories with predictions on how the next year would go. Clark's was quite good--his love life specifically was foretold to be excellent, albeit after a slow start. He glanced over at Bruce's and saw his was also very good.
Tokiko, on the other hand, read hers with a downcast face. "No good, no good," she sighed. Then she flashed a grin at Clark, folded her fortune into a thin strip and went over to a pine tree growing near the temple. It was bent under the weight of slips of paper tied around its branches. "Bad thing tie here," she explained, before fumbling for words and then slipping into Japanese with an annoyed grimace. < If your fortune is bad, you can tie it here to ward off bad luck. If it's good, we usually take it home. >
To Clark's surprise, Bruce stepped forward and tied his slip of paper to it. Tokiko shot him an ironic glance, but said nothing, slipping off to rejoin the sensei.
"Why'd you do that, Bruce? I saw your fortune, it was a really good one."
"I don't believe in superstitions, Clark. I always make a point of tying good fortunes up as well. I don't need a god looking out for me."
Clark snorted. "That sounds just as superstitious to me." Bruce gifted him with a black look and stalked off. Clark followed after a moment, falling in behind Bruce and the Yoru household as they made their way through the courtyard. The incense wafted around them and pigeons scattered as they passed by. Clark looked at Bruce, walking between Tokiko and another young student and talking easily with them, the silk shifting gracefully with his body's movements.
Clark slipped his hand into the pocket of his black jacket and felt the two slips of paper hidden there, twining around his fingers and each other. He wasn't superstitious either, but why take chances? Someone like Bruce was going to need all the good fortune he could get, after all.
: : :
Clark and Bruce made their way across a path of smooth, round stepping stones toward a little house built off in the garden. The garden was apparently dead for the winter, but bushes of red berries and evergreens kept it from looking lifeless. As he walked, Clark went over Bruce's instructions in his head on how to get through a Japanese tea ceremony. The instructions were fairly complicated, but in the end boiled down basically to "Do what I do and keep your mouth shut as much as possible."
The door to the interior of the teahouse was only half the height of a man, which gave Clark pause. As he hesitated, Bruce's dark head poked back out. "It's to force all people to bow and humble themselves as they enter, Clark, I would think you could appreciate that. Now get in here."
It wasn't the humbling himself so much as the worry that he wouldn't fit through the damn door at all, but Clark decided not to mention that to Bruce and scrambled through.
The inside was austerely simple: tatami mats, a low table, no other decoration besides a scroll hanging in a niche above a bowl of flowers. Yoru-sensei took a variety of utensils from a lacquered box and arranged them on the table as Clark and Bruce sat down on the mat on the other side. Clark tucked his legs under him, sitting on the heels in the correct formal posture, and waited. Without speaking, Bruce's teacher went through the graceful process of the ceremony, whisking enamel-bright green tea into a black ceramic bowl. The bowl was surprisingly unattractive, awkwardly shaped and asymmetrical, the dull matte glaze uneven. Bruce lifted it as if he were handling something priceless, however, drank, then passed the bowl to Clark. Clark tried to replicate his actions as closely as possible, drinking the thick, bitter tea and eating the small sweet Yoru had placed next to it. The teacher gestured to Bruce and Bruce gently lifted and examined the utensils, setting them back down with infinite care on the cloth-covered table.
The trio sat in silence for some time, far past when Clark felt comfortable. He followed Bruce's gaze to the niche with its scroll and flowers. The scroll was of a cicada, clinging to a branch under the moon. The black bowl under it was filled with waxy magnolia-like flowers. The other two men seemed to be contemplating something very deeply, but Clark mostly felt uncomfortable and a little bored.
After a time, however, Yoru stirred and sighed, and Bruce apparently took this as a sign he could speak. "I was deeply grieved to hear of Matsunaga-san's death," he said softly.
The teacher's face stayed almost expressionless, yet the lines of his visage somehow seemed sorrowful. "You were very close to him during your time here."
Bruce drew in a careful breath. "Yes."
Clark remembered Batman's steady hands collecting evidence around the garroted body, the glazed eyes gazing at the vigilante's expressionless face. In the silence of the tea room, he heard Bruce swallow, once, and he didn't know what to think.
Yoru-sensei sighed again. "I wish I could be of more help to you, Wayne-san."
"I understand, sensei."
The silence stretched out again for some time, and then Yoru started to put away the utensils. Apparently the interview was over.
As Clark and Bruce walked back through the garden toward their room, Clark hissed, "Is that all we--"
Bruce raised a hand to forestall his protest. "Wait," he said softly. They didn't speak again as the two quickly changed and packed, beyond small and pragmatic exchanges.
Soon, backpacks slung over shoulders, they were bidding goodbye to Yoru-sensei and his household. Tokiko and Kaori bowed politely: hugs seemed incongruous with the girls in their formal kimono. < Come back sooner next time, > Tokiko said softly, sadly, as Bruce said goodbye.
< I'll try, Tocchan, > said Bruce, and the girl's eyes lit up at the sound of the childish nickname. Bruce and Clark bowed and turned to head back down the mountain path. Bruce ambled along at a relaxed pace until the compound disappeared around a corner, at which point his pace picked up both haste and urgency until the two of them were going down the trail at some speed.
"That was a waste of our time, Bruce!" Clark said in frustration. "He didn't tell us anything at all."
Bruce's face was grim. "On the contrary, Yoru-sensei told me everything I needed to know."
"Would you stop being obscure and explain how you learned anything?"
Bruce stopped to turn to Clark under the arch of one of the weathered torii. "You saw the scroll and the flowers Yoru put out for the ceremony?"
Clark shrugged. "Notice them? I had nothing else to look at for twenty minutes."
"The flowers were star magnolias, a spring flower. The scroll had a cicada on it. Cicadas are fall insects. Both are glaringly inappropriate for a tea ceremony on New Year's Day."
Clark snorted. "Maybe Yoru-sensei made a mistake."
A look of pure disgust. "Clark, if you went into a cathedral and saw the communion wafers had been replaced with Oreos and the crown of thorns on the crucifix switched for a baseball cap, would you say the priest had 'made a mistake'? That's about as likely as a high master of the tea ceremony choosing those flowers and that scroll."
"All right then, detective, what was the message?"
"The star magnolia's name in Japanese is kobushi. Written with different characters, kobushi can mean 'fist.' And Kyodai Ken's name means 'Great Fist.'"
"And the cicada?"
"A traditional symbol for rebirth." Bruce gritted his teeth, but didn't seem to be angry at Clark. "Yoru was telling me that he has reason to believe Kyodai Ken didn't die as he appeared to in our last meeting, and that he suspects he's behind Seio's--behind Matsunaga's murder. I think we'd better assume Matsunaga was on to something, something that has to do with Hakone. We'll be heading there today."
"Well, why didn't Yoru just say something to us? Did he have to be so darn elliptical?" Clark knew he sounded frustrated, but he felt like so much was happening that he was missing, unable to pick up on even with inhuman senses.
Bruce looked almost angry for a moment. "You look at Kaori and Tokiko, at all of his students there, and tell me what he has to lose by speaking openly."
Clark felt abashed. "All right, I can understand that." Then he made a leap of intuition and grinned a touch smugly at Bruce. "The tea bowl--it must have been a clue too, right? He deliberately gave us those ugly bowls to represent...Kyodai Ken's soul, or something."
Bruce shook his head, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. There was an odd expression on his face. If it weren't so totally uncharacteristic, Clark might almost have called it reverence. "Clark, in all my time at the dojo, I never once saw Yoru-sensei use that bowl. Not for his most illustrious guests. He kept it under lock and key as some of the most priceless items of the household."
He clapped a hand to Clark's shoulder. "Today, we were accorded one of the highest honors we will ever be given in our lives." Then he started back down the path again, leaving Clark to trail slightly behind, as bewildered by the awe in Bruce's voice as by the events of the day.