AU Series: Equilibrium - Chapter Two
Aiba Masaki did not have a childhood. Ever since he could remember, he had worked. He had never thought of himself as more than a commodity.
The year his mother fell pregnant, there was a drought and crops failed to seed. What should have been a happy occasion was met with anxiety and despair. His father was a low-entry government official in Kazusa Province and loved his wife; he sacrificed promotion and stability for the love of his wife and unborn child, damning his family to poverty, by refusing to move to the capital.
He was a faceless figure in Masaki’s memory, working constantly for the needed money to support his family but his transgression against the state made it impossible to achieve. His mother tended a small vegetable garden that produced very little and produced even less worth selling. As soon as he was old enough to be of use, his mother had him helping in the garden and running errands for a few coins. To say they had a miserable existence was generous.
It was a time when mortality and fatality were often one and the same: most babies died before their milk teeth came in. The gift that women prayed for was his mother’s curse: she fell pregnant a second time and delivered another healthy boy that lived. Masaki wanted to work hard so that his brother would never have to.
It was customary to celebrate a son’s seventh birthday because if a boy lived to the age of seven, it was likely he would reach adulthood. Masaki’s seventh birthday came and went like any other day. That was the day his mother started to look at him with those eyes, but it took him years before he would be able to find a name for it: contempt. That was also the day his parents started speaking in hushed whispers, heads close together, plotting the future of their children.
A few weeks after his seventh birthday had passed, a man dressed in clothes finer than anything in the Aiba household came to their home. Their house had only one room so Masaki sat in the corner, witness to the sale of him and his brother. Perhaps he should have acted differently; he sat in the corner, hugging his knees in silence. Maybe he should have screamed; maybe he should have thrown a tantrum; maybe he should have shed a tear. But how could he feel loss for this kind of life? He didn’t know where he was going or who he was going to, but he knew that it had to be better than this. The only thing concerning Masaki’s heart was who would look after his little brother when he left.
Masaki left that home with the man in fine clothes in a horse-drawn cart. He went without complaint, doing the most for his family the only way he could. He turned and looked at his parents, the people who he had worked for with all this little boy heart because he knew that it was supposed to be the right thing to do. He felt a tightness in his chest and finally, overdue tears slid down his dirty face, as he watched his house disappear under the horizon.
The journey took six days. The man tried to make small talk but Masaki’s attention was mostly occupied by the passing countryside. Masaki gazed in awe as they passed the bay; the child had never seen the ocean before. The wonderment on his face was enough to make the man stop and take Masaki by the hand to the shore. Going from one form of servitude to another, it was the least he could do for the boy.
Green-tiled roofs and white-washed stone walls rose above the budding hamlet as they descended into the valley below Iwatsuki Castle on the morning of the sixth day. Golden statues on top of the keep glinted in the sunlight. They passed through the Black Gate with no inquiry. Standing in front of large, simple wooden house - Masaki would soon learn this was the staff residence and to call it home - was a refined man dressed in a black robe bearing a pine wreath crest.
“Kitagawa-san, we’ve been expecting you. Was the trip pleasant?”
“Ah, Matsumoto-san. Yes, it was and thankfully uneventful.”
“Thank you for going all they way to Kazusa on such short notice.”
“Ah, think nothing of it. It’s the closest province to the south and I have always enjoyed travelling through its countryside.” Masaki alighted and bowed an awkward, sincere bow to his traveling companion. “Take care of yourself, boy.” Grabbing his bundle of meagre belongings, Masaki turned and faced his new life.
He had joined the Matsumoto household and the service of the daimyo. Matsumoto-san was to be addressed as nothing but “Sir” and rattled off a thousand thou shalt not’s in an accent that Masaki found hard to follow. He was to be seen, not heard; he was to do as he was told, before he was told to do it. He was to be the first to rise and chores were to be completed before the midday meal. The afternoon would be filled with lessons in letters, arithmetic and history.
That first day was spent adding the boy to the household registry and organizing and creating records. There was so much to absorb. And he wanted to absorb it all. His unnourished mind and spirit blossomed. Masaki was eager to meet the expectations set before him and equally determined to exceed them. That first week was a blur in his memory of strain, soreness, ridicule and exhaustion. His seven year old body was not accustomed to such physical exertion, nor had he been reprimanded and punished so much before. Matsumoto-san demanded nothing short of perfection from all of his staff, even the young ones. It was not long before he began to forget life before the castle.
Masaki was not the only child in the Matsumoto household and that made things bearable. He shared a room with a boy named Ninomiya Kazunari who was younger than him in years but treated Masaki with the kindness of an older brother. Kazunari had been brought to Iwatsuki Castle after his fifth summer. His parents maintained a pair of shrines in the southwest, near the provincial capital, but wanted more for their son than asceticism could provide. Unlike Masaki, who left home with a sense of duty, Kazunari fought. He swore, thrashed and lashed out with all the power a five year old possessed. He spent his first week screaming through bitter tears until he collapsed from the stress of maintaining such anger.
He soon made a name for himself among the staff and retainers as a mischief maker. When lessons ended, they were allowed to play until the evening meal and Kazunari often used his free time to set traps for his teachers and play tricks on his seniors. When Masaki arrived, he was excited to have someone who he could play pranks with. Quite often, the target of their tricks was Matsumoto-san’s son.
The third child in the household was Matsumoto-san’s son Jun. Masaki and Kazunari were in the care of the Matsumoto house: they were not formally adopted and did not carry the Matsumoto name nor bear its crest. Jun was Matsomoto-san’s pride, his only son and second child. The year Jun took his first step, the province had been struck by a plague that took his mother and older sister. From his son, Matsumoto-san required more than perfection. Jun was to be groomed and moulded to continue the family’s service to the daimyo when the time came for his father to retire.
The boys were instructed, according to the samurai moral code: in frugality, loyalty, honour, and the Confucian classics. But only Jun devoted himself entirely to his studies. The desire to please his father spurred him into poring over the tenets of bushido, the way of the warrior, while Masaki and Kazunari spent their afternoons hiding spiders in the maids’ futons. He came to understand that his father wanted to be rewarded for providing perfect service to the daimyo and elevate the family’s status above that of mere servants. Jun would eventually resolve to achieve his father’s dream; he had not yet thought of one of his own.
While little Kazunari helped Masaki adjust to the physicality of castle life, Jun aided him with his academics. Never had Masaki held a brush or a book; he could neither write nor read. When he held both objects in his hands gingerly for the first time, a look of shocked awe crossed his face to think that he could be given such a gift. Jun could not help but watch tenderly as Masaki ground ink for the first time, smudging black marks on this nose and chin, copying out row upon row of wobbly kana. Starting two years later than the other two, Jun coached Masaki’s writing and reading in the evenings when the elder boy wasn’t chasing fireflies in the gardens.
In addition to training the mind, Matsumoto-san had the boys trained in the art of jujutsu. The three sparred in the daimyo’s dojo, personally trained by Kimura’s senior samurai; their instructors changed constantly to prevent them from becoming lazy and docile. Initially, Masaki spent more time lying on the mats than standing on them, being thrown to the ground often by Kazunari and Jun. But as they grew older, his eventual height worked to his advantage.
Working together, studying together, training together, playing together: it wasn't long until the boys became as close as brothers.
A decade passed. Ten years of training and refinement were ingrained in Masaki’s every movement, every breath, but could not rid him of his occasional clumsiness. He had grown to be the tallest of the trio, elegant and lithe. He’d always been skinny; the years spend in this natal home underfed had left his cheeks hallow but he never seemed to be able to gain weight, no matter how large his appetite.
Kazunari hit his growth spur first, but also reached his full height shortly thereafter. Although he towered over Jun in adolescence, the tables were quickly turned, Jun winning several prized centimetres in adulthood. True to his nature, Kazunari had learned to work with quick efficiency, wanting to complete the task at hand in as little time as possible. When he was sixteen, Nagase gave him a shamisen that a visitor had left behind. Kazunari devoted endless hours to plucking the strings, pulling out notes until they sounded right and later, when he found confidence with the instrument, composing.
Jun, awkward and chubby, became regal and refined. He was talented, tasteful and had cultivated an appreciation for calligraphy. He was gradually given more responsibilities, outfitting him with the skills to take over as the head of the household when the time came. He thrived in his position of leadership, glowing with pride and self-assurance. He was fair and honest, exerting his authority over his friends rarely, if ever.
They became seniors in their own right, as Matsumoto-san hired younger members into the household while their elders retired from service. Every couple of years, Kitagawa-san would return with another young boy rescued from a life of tragedy that would be trained and guided to serve the daimyo.
The year Masaki turned twenty-four, Kitagawa-san arrived with a letter. The letter was addressed to him, only by first name. The letter was from his parents.
Masaki clutched the thin envelope in his hands, staring at the two characters of his name. He sat on the veranda that stretched around the staff residence, long legs folded underneath him, staring at the scratchy brushstrokes. Kazunari came to sit beside him, legs dangling off the wooden terrace. They sat in comfortable silence until he noticed Masaki’s hands shaking slightly.
“Do you hate them?” Masaki’s voice wavered.
“I did. I did for a long time.”
“When did you stop?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe when I realized that they did what they had to for me. They made a choice. Maybe it was their only one, but they made it. Life is about choices.”
“Do you remember them?”
Kazunari was silent for a moment before shaking his head. “No.”
“I do, sometimes,” Masaki whispered.
“Do you ever miss them?”
Masaki’s hands gripped the letter tighter, tension apparent in the folds of the paper. “I… I do. When I don’t want to, I do. I want to be angry at them. I want to hate them for not loving me. They’ve never tried to reach me before. Why now?” Angry spots of colour bloomed on his cheeks.
“They did love you. You know they did. But if they showed it, it would have been that much harder to leave. They might not have been able to let you go.”
Masaki took a deep breath and carefully broke the wax seal and pulled out the single sheet of rice paper. He unfolded it carefully and read.
Masaki,
If you are reading this, I’m sorry. This is my final penance; I’m making my peace before I die. But I doubt I will make it to Paradise after what your mother and I did.
Your brother… he was supposed to follow you. We knew you could take care of him but after you left, he fell ill with fever. He died before Kitagawa-san could come back for him. Your mother died last winter. It’s my fault; she miscarried. You should have had a sister.
I didn’t have the heart to tell you.
I’m sorry for everything.
Father
Masaki bowed his head; his long fringe hid his face. Tears dripped onto the page, causing the ink to bleed. He sat hunched over the crumpled letter crying partly out of obligation, but mostly out of pain. Something inside, long buried and forgotten, was broken.
That night Jun crawled into Masaki’s futon, offering warmth and support. Jun knew he wouldn’t - couldn’t - be able to fully understand; Iwatsuki Castle had always been his home. He could only be within reach when his friend needed him most.
With Jun at his back, hand splayed between his shoulder blades, heavy and there, Masaki fell into a restless sleep. Kazunari laid his futon beside Masaki's, reaching out to lace their fingers together, anchoring the older man to something real and warm. Masaki had always had nightmares, especially when he was upset.
When Masaki awoke, they were still there. He felt tired and his eyes were dry and sore from crying but he felt happy. He squeezed Kazunari’s hand, causing the younger man to move closer, touching his cold nose to their entwined fingers. He took a deep breath and relaxed into his pillow. Jun was still beside him, behind him, around him; his hand had moved from Masaki’s shoulder to his waist during the night. He felt peaceful: he had mourned the loss of something he never really had in the first place and awoke to the realization that this was his family.
Chapter Three