Free Thousand Shrine Warrior by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

real as their own, that I might share their sorrow, or comfort them, given half a chance. Samurai are good at not noticing peasants, don’t you think? Just like crickets on a path. Who sees if one is underfoot?”
    Otane moved about the kitchen in speechless trepidation. Was Shinji so blind? Didn’t he see that she was affected by his tongue? Such a good-looking fellow should learn to notice the feelings of others, or his beauty didn’t mean a thing. That’s what the nun was thinking. But she didn’t say a thing.
    â€œEven if you keep a cricket in a little cage,” he said, “and feed it and write a poem about how nice the cricket is … if it gets loose, or if it dies, pretty easy to replace it with another one. Hard to tell the difference.”
    Otane dropped the rice spatula. Surely Shinji noticed, but hardly skipped a beat in the rhythm of his lecture.
    â€œDespite this, Otane and I have decided we will live together someplace. Isn’t it funny? A samurai and a cricket. Maybe just a worm! Feel free to laugh at us.” Shinji’s eyes glinted as though to convey the jesting nature of his words, yet the words were far too harsh to be accepted as humor. Otane was visibly shaken, but had no doubt heard it all before, and offered no criticism of anything her illicit lover said.
    The bikuni turned her face from Iyo’s to the farmboy’s and looked at him without the least emotion. Her thoughts were many, but she would not let him know her feelings about his callousness and insecurity. He’d been respectfully silent at the deathbed of the patriarch, and was doubtless grateful that they had not shut him out altogether. Yet he was simultaneously bitter about many things. He had not been raised like a samurai and could not hold back his feelings for long periods of time. As he was more comfortable in the kitchen, as opposed to the private rooms of samurai, Shinji felt at ease to speak his mind, especially as he was only talking to a mendicant.
    He matched the nun’s gaze, but as she did not reply to his frank speech, the humor in his eyes began to fade. He looked away from her, uncomfortable or ashamed. As he wished her opinion, the bikuni searched for some honest response, and said,
    â€œSurely Lord Sato’s daughter has noticed that Otane did not return to her duties as lady-in-waiting. Someone will come to this house looking for her. A lot of trouble if it seems a peasant is living with a samurai family as though he were a son-in-law. Her family risks a lot in your favor.”
    The farmboy was unmoved by this. He met her gaze again, then leaned her direction to share a secret. “If Otane’s grandfather had not gotten so ill unexpectedly, we would already have run away together! When Otane told her father about your helping her, we all agreed you must have been a famous samurai before you were a nun. We thought you’d be brave enough to give a dying fellow a nice service despite Lord Sato’s decree favoring Priest Kuro exclusively. So Otane and I delayed our plans a while. Well, how could we know you lacked knowledge of the sutras? If you hadn’t left the room so fast, I’m sure Mr. Todawa would have apologized for bothering you. I know Otane is embarrassed to have put you in such a spot. But there is another matter Otane and I talked about privately, another reason for hoping to talk to you.”
    Otane brought a tray of fresh rice balls and some hot tea to the bikuni and placed these at her side. She slapped Iyo’s greedy hand, then produced some walnuts from her sleeve for him. These kept him busy, albeit noisily, cracking and eating the nuts. Otane was tense, but let her beloved farmboy handle the matter he had brought up.
    â€œIt’s like this,” said Shinji. “When Lord Sato finds out you killed three of his retainers, he’ll send more than three to punish you. The corpses may already have been found. It’s