I call it "Tales of the Koinon"
To deconstruct the cliche of introductionary author's note, I'd say this is not my first work. More like dozenth - I've written quite a lot and stashed them in my home forum, a place obscure and inactive enough to effectively hide them from the public eyes.
It's incomplete, and honestly I am not sure if I'd have the patience to finish it.
The setting? Let's just leave it at "a holy union between anime and history, both of which then proceeding to have their own love affair with vampires and werewolves, respectively." There'd be plenty of deconstruction of both anime and historical fiction tropes, as well as the occasional jab at the Twilightsagaatrocity.
Here goes nothing:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Prologue
Faith
Pella, 272 BC.
The city lay in ruins as an obvious consequence of recent occupation by foreign forces. The streets were filled with refuse, trash and the occasional dead bodies strewn along the sewers. Here and there tuffs of black smoke were billowing from the direction of the governor house, the barracks and the ramparts. In the distance faint wails and wallows could be heard – no doubt the aftermath of the unprecedented horror had befallen the inhabitants of the city had yet to fade.
There were nobody outside, apart for the infrequent military patrols. Like all other Greek warrior those men were armed with long spears, linen armor and large round shield, albeit caked in layers of dirt, blood and mud they had yet to clean up. Unlike the Makedon soldiers the city was acquainted with, they flew a banner emblazoned with the silhouette of a dog-like being. It was the Hound of Moloss – the national symbol of the kingdom of Epeiros.
It was only two days ago that the city of Pella, capital of the kingdom of Makedon fell to the army of King Pyrrhos Aiakides of Epeiros. Pyrrhos Aiakides, the distant cousin of the greatest conqueror to have ever existed. Pyrrhos Aiakides, the general who had led his armies against the mighty Roman barbaroi and won, albeit at great costs. Pyrrhos Aiakides, an ambitious man as just and noble as he was mighty nevertheless.
The garrison fought bravely, from the general right down to the lowly helot levy akin to the mythical heroes of the ages past. But when the Epeirote elephants joined the battle, their bravery made little difference. The renowned Indian elephants rammed through the gates, crushing arms and men and horses alike, smashing whatever in their path. The brave Makedon general was gored by one such beast and then trampled underfoot, such that his remain was juiced like an overly ripe orange.
There was virtually no survivor. The only thing they gained in that hopeless endeavor was their enemies’ compassion and respect. Now the brave sons of the city lay around their homeland, well-buried in graves dug by the very hands that took their lives.
Pyrrhos wanted the city intact. For one, it was once the capital of his distant cousin Megas Alexandros. Alexandros’ footprint were still there in and around the city as were the tales of his conquest, neither of which Pyrrhos wanted to defile. And for other, it was against his principles to kill needlessly. Both because of his firm personal morality and a strategical mindset. It was no time for the Hellenas to be killing one another despite their long history of doing exactly that, he thought.
They had many other enemies to deal with. The other Diadochi who sought Alexandros’ empire for themselves. The Thracians and Dacians from up north, mighty warriors hailing from a lesser civilization more eager to make war than discuss philosophy. And finally, the Romans, arrogant upstarts having accumulated too much power for their own good and coveting the lands of Greece to add to their empire.
Not once since the Achaemenid wars did the Hellenas as a whole stood at such a crossroad in history. United they would stand to the test of time. Divided and they would crumble into the sands of time like many others before them. Pyrrhos would see to the reunion of the Greek homeland, by force if need be. Pella was but the beginning for Greece to be great again under the rule of the Epirote.
His plans with Pella, however, did not work out quite as well as he had wished. Quite frankly, he had so far failed to control the situation in town after occupation.
While decades of warfare, emigration and depopulation had devastated what used to be the finest city in the whole of Northern Greece, Pella still retained much of its wealth from the past. Wealth that his hired mercenaries could not help but give a shot at claiming some for themselves.
And so a good deal of homes were robbed, their owners thrown out and valuables seized. The temple and agora were similarly looted, stripped of much of their precious decorations and wares. Even the administrative center of the city was victimized. There was barely anything valuable left in the manor house after the looting ended. And that was after martial law was declared and several of the worst looters publicly flogged for this lack of discipline. It took an extraordinary effort from Pyrrhos himself to save the royal tombs of the late Makedon kings – his own ancestors broadly speaking – from a similar fate.
Pyrrhos could only blame himself for this turn of event. After all his was virtually a mercenary army, with only a core of Epirote elites and many thousands of Galatian sell-swords and Ptolemaic lent troops. Obviously those were not quite as noble or loyal as his core troops, much less disciplined and infinitely more prone to looting the populace for profit. Had it not been for his disastrous campaigns against Rome he wouldn’t have had to rely so much on those.
Only now did the situation calmed down somewhat. However, Pyrrhos had lost much of the popular support he thought he could win over at first. Sitting alone in the now stripped governor’s court chamber, the king of Epeiros clutched his forehead, contemplating a better solution to the situation at hand.
Pyrrhos sat there, in full combat regalia. His was a fine bronze muscled cuirass gifted to him by the ruler of Sparta, Pergamonios Lakedaimonios, upon his conquest of Taranto. On his table was an open helmet with Corinthian horse-hair decoration, one that had followed him for many years now. Both had been duly scratched in the last battle, but the king had no time to send them fir repairs just yet. Alongside with his helm, a few scrolls of status reports from different parts of the city were strewn on the table
The king’s eyes were darkened with sleeplessness. In the past two days he had hardly found time to take off his armor, let alone rest, knowing full well that such diligence wouldn’t be enough if he was to secure the town and its people’s obedience. Even his kopis had not yet been removed, still hanging by his side and weighting his belt down. The wrinkles on his forehead appeared to be etched even deeper, while his hair and thin beard looked greyer than before.
With due frustration, he picked up a random scroll, one he had read over and over and over for the past hour and reran the routine again. It said that minor skirmishes had broken out in the southern quarters between citizens and patrol groups. The situation was rapidly degrading to the point there would be no need for foreign spies. This growing dissent alone would destroy the peace he was trying – and failing – to rebuild.
“Basileus, Demetrias Thermopylaios has regained consciousness.”
The voice that broke the stressful silence came from one of Pyrrhos’ loyal Agema on guard duty at the gateway. He was a member of the royal guard, a close circle of the King’s most elite soldiers, and his equipment showed. The silver-gilded thorax, the sharp kopis in a highly decorative sheath, the fine open helm with dyed horse hair decoration and the similarly dyed cloak over his shoulder were the dream of every male Epirote. They were all there to show that this man, his son, his son’s son and his son’s son’s son would be well compensated for his work many years after that day.
In return for such honor this man had well paid with his blood. His face was lined up with scars of all shapes and sizes like a checkerboard, and that was not accounting for the barely healed slash on the side of his head hastily bandaged up after the last battle. He was still limping, an arrow wound in his calf preventing him from moving as agilely as he would like.
Much as Pyrrhos usually prided in knowing all his royal guards by name, this soldier’s had eluded the Basileus’ mind for the moment being, an unfortunate consequence of his occupied mind. But the name he mentioned Pyrrhos could never forget. A flare sparked in the king’s eyes as soon as he processed it.
“Demetrias?” he said, not at all hiding his relief. “Take this man to me at once!”
“He has already asked to be brought to you, your highness,” replied the soldier as he leaned against his dory, trying to stand up straight. “He is waiting for you outside the courthouse.”
“Then bring him in!” hastily said the king.
The soldier turned to the gateway and nodded to his compatriots outside. Two other Agema were quick to enter the room, hauling another figure with them as they entered. Once standing before the king, they released their load to bow to the king, leaving the figure to slump down upon the floor with a minor thud.
Indeed the figure they brought with him looked no more alive than a crippled man on his deathbed, literally. The bloody, dirty short tunic he wore did little to hide his physical sufferings. His legs had both been violently squashed into two blood-caked messes, and the quick first-aid didn’t help much. His left arm, while not nearly as mangled, could not move at all. The only thing keeping his face from the ground was his still somewhat functional arms. As he showed his face, there were perhaps even more fresh wounds than the proud Agema gatekeeper just now had scars. The amount of pain he had survived thus far was more than enough to fall several.
He was neither a young man nor a free man – not any longer. His grey hair was in dishevel, grimed with mud and dust, wrinkles forming deep ravines on his forehead. His bony visage had especially dark texture, a direct consequence of prolonged starvation, anxiety, illness and what have you. His wrists were shackled despite his terrible injuries and one broken arm. Perhaps the only half-decent treatment he got from the Epirotes was not having been beaten up more than he had already been.
It was doubtful whether he would survive for much longer, and yet in his eyes one could still see strong conviction, that of a man who never lost, or at least believed he never would. Those haughty, prideful eyes now stared at the king of Epeiros, stalwartly and without any semblance of fear whatsoever. Indeed having lost nearly everything, now this man’s all was reserved to holding to the last scrap of his possessions – dignity.
“Unhand him,” ordered Pyrrhos as he looked at his Agema. “A Spartan is nobody’s prisoner.”
The Epirote royal guards did as they were told. Soon metal clattered loudly on the marble ground as the large chains and cuffs were lifted from the prisoner’s arms and discarded.
“Diomenes, bring a chair,” the king then addressed the first Agema, having now remembered his name. “Help my old friend the noble Demetrias Thermopylaios on it.”
His order was duly carried out, and barely a minute had passed when the wounded prisoner was seated directly in front of the king, raised there by the other two royal guards. As he now sat atop the chair, his derelict legs and arm hung down helplessly, in direct contrast to the way he eyed the king, with all the defiance and arrogance his kind should have.
“Now leave,” the king then ordered all his men. “I want to have a private conversation with this man.”
After the last of his men had left the room, Pyrrhos opened his mouth to begin speaking, but the prisoner was faster with his lips.
“Basileus ton Epeiron, it’s been a long time.” he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion – no anger, no hatred, no agony, not even sarcasm could be heard or perceived from the way he addressed, “I fancy you are still in good health.”
“Indeed I am,” Pyrrhos replied, pausing a little to weight his words, and then returned the comment in kind. “On the other hand, you aren’t quite as fortunate, I suppose.”
The tone of the latter half of his answer was noticeably more arrogant than the first, much against his way. But he could have as well had no other choice. One could not be too arrogant before a mainland Greek, including a Spartan. Especially a Spartan.
“That much would be true if I were an ordinary man like any other,” sharply answered the prisoner. “I am proud to say I am above that.”
The king lifted his lips.
“I hope you realize I never wish to confront you again in this situation,” said Pyrrhos. “Not after all you have done for me in the past, no.”
Pyrrhos Aiakides was only beholden to few throughout his forty-odd years of life, and Demetrias Thermopylaios certainly ranked first among those few.
Things hadn’t always been rough between Epeiros and Makedonia. Many years ago, when Alexandros’ empire was still there, when the Hellenoi were united as one, when Babylon was Greek, the Antigonos and the Aiakides were allies. That was when they met, befriended and when Demetrias saved Pyrrhos’ life in a skirmish against the Thracians shortly later.
“It was a long time ago, so long that it no longer mattered,” Demetrias shook his head, cutting off eye contact for a moment. “Right now, you are the mortal enemy of all Makedonia as well as mine.”
“You weren’t a Makedon to begin with, my friend,” said the king, shaking his head in tandem. “And if my memory hasn’t failed me, deep below never once you accepted yourself as one. You always see yourself as a Spartan – a son of Lakedaimon who just happened to be serving another master.”
Demetrias bent his head at the mere mention of the word Sparta.
“And for what can I be so proud?” he finally asked back. “I am but an exile, son of a family whose existence is no longer recognized by my compatriots.”
“But you have no tie with the Makedon,” remarked the king. “You are not a Makedon, by blood or otherwise.”
“No ties? I think otherwise,” Demetrias protested. “Megas Alexandros had offered my grandfather and my father shelter, so did the Antigonos after him. They have treated us well, granting us wealth, glory and much honor. Fighting to the death for them is the least I can do to repay this kindness.”
The king stood up and glanced at his acquaintance from top to toes as he heard those words. The more he looked, the more appalled his expression became. If he himself were to bear half of the prisoner’s wounds and ailment, he would have either died or been reduced to an ignoble wretch of a person, not sitting firm and speaking like a man as Demetrias had been.
“You have already did all what you could, Demetrias,” the king said, full of compassion as he faced his old friend. “Fighting half to death to save the life of a foolish Antigonos who should know better than charging elephants head-on is all what they can expect from a soldier. All what you have done throughout your life in the name of loyalty to friends and masters alike deserve appreciation. Appreciation and honor, not oblivion!”
Seeing Demetrias remaining silent after he had made his statement, the king went on.
“You should know better than anyone else who I am, my friend,” he said. “All my life I have been struggling for the day when all Hellenoi can stand at the top of the world again, so that the heritage of Alexandros would be more than just merely a passing legend.”
Taking another emphatic pause, Pyrrhos stared at his acquaintance and continued.
“It’s going to be a long journey, Demetrias. Longer than the path to Tartarus, more perilous than crossing the deserts, and more exerting than Herakles’ twelve legendary deeds. And so I go to war, knowing that this is not a war for my own sake, it is for the glory of Greece and all of the children of Zeus!” at this point he fixed his gaze at the prisoner without blinking. “For such an endeavor I have need for such heroes as you.”
Then he left his table, walking down in front of the prisoner, and stretched his open palm out at him.
“Join me, Demetrias. Join me and my glorious army. Together we will achieve great things, remaking the world of men for the better!”
“I think not, Basileus,” Demetrias answered dryly.
“I have said this, and I will repeat it until you understand,” said the king, undaunted. “You have done many times more than your share of duty to Makedonia and the Antigonos. It’s time you do something for yourself. Build up the heroic name you deserve, for one. I just happen to have the means to that goal that I wish to share with you.”
“You still remember that I am a Spartan by blood and at heart,” answered Demetrias. “You should know a Spartan never surrenders. He either crushes the enemy and return with his shield, or valiantly dies in battle and return on it. I see no reason to disgrace my Lakedaimonian blood further than our family already had.”
Pyrrhos tried to say more, but the assertive look on Demetrias’ face stunted his will to keep arguing with him.
“Alright then” Pyrrhos changed the topic. “If you wished not to join me, why did you ask to speak to me in the first place?”
“For a favor,” answered Demetrias.
“Favor?” Pyrrhos lifted his eyebrows.
“Do you remember what I told you at that battle thirty years ago?”
Demetrias’ sudden question threw Pyrrhos off focus for a moment. What he had just mentioned was perhaps the most important battle in his life to date, the humble first step of his journey of a thousand miles. And the battle that sealed the friendship between the two men. Even today the memories of that first battle still firmly etched on Pyrrhos’ mind. Indeed never since then had the king snatched a victory from the jaws of such apparent defeat.
His army was a patrolling party with merely a detachment of light cavalry and a taxeis of newly levied infantry with no phalanges – the staple of Hellenic warfare of the day and age – whatsoever. Theirs was a rather well-prepared Thracian professional army with two light phalanges to support their bread-and-butter falx infantry and with far more adequate cavalry support. That was the time when open hostility between Greeks and Thracians was quite commonplace, but the young Pyrrhos could never have seen that dramatic turn of event come in. He was close to despair…
“Diadohos, take heart. I believe in you, and so does your kingdom, no, Greater Greece as a whole. The man whose shoulder Greece’s destiny rests on cannot lose, must not lose!”
Thirty years after that day Pyrrhos was still wondering why he had won, whether owing to his own ingenuity or that heartfelt encouragement from Demetrias’ lips. He knew he carried out his cousin Alexandros’ favorite maneuver of a direct shock cavalry charge at the enemy’s weakest link. The timely charge could be said to have won the battle itself, routing the enemy’s center and breaking the rest of the army. In return, less than a third of his cavalry wing survived. It was there that Pyrrhos himself received his first three battle scars and was quite close to losing his arm to a vicious falx.
The reminiscence of that battle was quite vivid. Pyrrhos could almost taste the blood on his lips, the battle cries from both sides of the battle, the painful shrieks of soldiers cut down and the panicked screams of those having lost the stomach to fight. Such memory drowned out his ability to speak for some time, before the sight of today’s crippled Demetrias returned him to reality.
“I haven’t forgotten, my friend, and never will I,” solemnly answered the king. “Always I will treasure my memory of that battle, as well as that of the man who had helped me carry the day.”
“I have said that day that I believed in you,” Demetrias continued. “I still do.”
“… What?”
Pyrrhos uttered, apparently astonished.
“Pyrrhos Aiakides, cousin of the magnificent Megas Alexandros, ruler of the kingdom of Epeiros,” declared Demetrias in response. “I have always believed in what I said then. I believe Greece’s future is in your hand. That our glory of the ages past will once again revive in your reign. That you will one day build for yourself and all Hellenoi an empire rivaling Alexandros himself. That you will remake this world to a new order for the sake of us all. Not the Antigonos, not the Spartans, not the Athenians or Cretans or Rhodians. You.”
Pyrrhos stood there stunned for a good while, his eyes wide open as he stared at his old friend.
“Why do you still serve the Antigonos if it is me who you believe in?” he finally questioned.
“Because believing in you is the most the honor of a Spartan would allow me to do for you,” answered Demetrias. “And this leads to the favor I ask of you.”
“Which is?” asked Pyrrhos eagerly. “I would not hesitate anything I can do for you, my friend.”
“There are two, in fact,” replied Demetrias. “First, fate had not been so kind as to grant this Spartan death by the sword in battle. If you can give me that which fate has refused me, I would be forever grateful.”
The calmness reigning over Demetrias’ visage as he uttered his morbid request was so out-of-this world that Pyrrhos was rightfully frightened. The king’s voice was reduced to a stutter for the next words he uttered.
“You… you wish for me… to kill you?” Pyrrhos stammered, but quickly regaining his composure. “I’m afraid I cannot…”
“I haven’t yet finished, Basileus,” Demetrias interrupted. “I have always wanted to follow you in battle, to observe your exploit and see the new Greece unveiling in your hand with my own eyes, but honor would disallow that. Fortunately, Spartan honor does not extend beyond death.”
Taking a dramatic pause, Demetrias looked at the king with an unshakable drive in his eyes.
“I would request that my ashes be mixed with metal and forged into one of your weapons which you bring into battle. This way I can always see how your glorious quests unfold even in death.”
Once more Pyrrhos was stunned. Demetrias had well requested him something he could technically do, but didn’t have the heart for. And yet something in Demetrias’ eyes told him there was no refusing.
“Basileus, I have never asked for any favor from you or anyone else,” Demetrias pleaded. “But this is my final wish. With these wounds I would not expect to survive for much longer in any case. If my wish could be granted, death is but a small and inevitable price.”
Pyrrhos felt his head wet as his sweat drops rolled down his forehead, down his cheek and into his mouth, leaving a salty and bitter aftertaste. Perhaps in the past few minutes he had sweat enough for a week. All this while Demetrias’ piercing gazes was still upon him, driving him mad. There was no avoiding it, as if all of his remaining energy was devoted to not let Pyrrhos’ eyes escape his sight.
Finally the king gave in.
“Very well then, brave son of Sparta,” Pyrrhos said, exasperated. “I’ll grant your last wish, but on one condition.”
“Whatever you say, Basileus,” replied Demetrias with due eagerness.
“It was my mistake conquering Pella with a mercenary army,” admitted Pyrrhos, “and now they are driving the city crazy with their lack of discipline and endless greed. As far as I know you’ve been the one genuinely in charge of Pella since that… moron Artemios Antigonos took over as governor. You might as well lend this old friend your wisdom for this last time…”
“I have only one word, Basileus,” Demetrias replied on the spot. “Faith. Please, make good use of it.”
******
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Chapter 1
A Rusty Blade… Or Not?
Rie Ichimonji was not happy.
Granted, recently she had been constantly unhappy, more so than justifiable.
Other students of Class 2-3 saw her as a classical example of a spoiled brat who refused to see further than her childish self-interests. She had little to defend herself, however, not when she threw a fit over such things as the cancellation of her idol singer’s live concert. Or whining about having to clean up the mess she caused herself. Ad nauseum.
Perhaps that was why she was quite unsuccessful in finding a date even though she had little wanting in looks.
Rie was quite pretty and she knew it. Her long, back-length hair dyed radiant red to imitate her idol was as silky-smooth as her natural hair. Her eyes, already large by normal standard, looked even larger with the pair of thick glasses she donned. Her face was just slightly thinner than optimal, revealing her high and rather sharp cheekbones. Or at least that was what she got after a prolonged diet to cut down on weight which she barely had any surplus at all. Her lips were a little thin to European eyes but perfect for the boys around town.
Her awareness of her own beauty was duly invested in fashion. Her wardrobes in their entirety could well fund a small business’ operating expenses for a year. Even her school uniform was fully customized so as to best fit her form. Not that it was a huge investment, since Rie was more or less the same size as her classmates, if only slightly thinner thanks to said dieting campaign. Nobody beat her when it boiled down to accessories – the girl literally had a room full of those little trinkets every girl would love.
For all her worth in look and material Rie lacked charm to the point of hideousness. Maybe it was her tendency to laugh at the wrong person at the wrong place. Maybe it was the way she looked at everyone with half an eye, not excepting her own parents. Maybe it was just how she kept going on and on and on about her own little drama with life that wasn’t even that big a deal to begin with. She was just that infamous among boys of the neighborhood.
People would reckon her reason was similarly petty when she stormed out of the classroom after the bell rang that day without even looking back once. No one could blame them, though.
And so Rie was traveling along the street of that outskirt suburb of Tokyo leading back home alone, her school bag in one hand and her umbrella in the other, her eyes fixed on the asphalt. She would have gone straight home without delay had it not been for a gentle but sudden pat on her backside.
“Ow!” she exclaimed as if in pain, swinging her entire body back in high alert.
She was greeted by a naïve and innocent smile flashed at her at close quarter. Its owner was a plainer and far more traditional schoolgirl, with a similarly uninteresting uniform and schoolbag she held in both hands. No make-up masked her face. No fancy accessory adorned her bag. No fancy footwear apart from a pair of shoes half as old as herself covered her feet. Rie did not have to look twice to recognize her.
“You startled me, Aya-chan,” she snorted, feigning displeasure.
The name was Aya Hanamichi. If there was one thing that made her stand out from the crowd, it would be her especially tiny size. She stood two inches shorter than Rie and weighted less than her even when her dieting regime was at its peak. Her traditional mass of jet black hair flowed to her waist, without any semblance of hairbands or ribbons for decoration, dwarfing her even more than she already was. All in all she resembled a middle-schooler more than a second year high school student.
For all the work she was supposed to do to ace her studies as such, her spectacles were quite lacking. She only discovered her near-sightedness a year ago, and it wasn’t all that bad. She wouldn’t have looked any better in a huge pair anyway, since her face was proportionately small and her forehead was dominated with her thick, black hair. Her nose was long and thin, her lips insignificant, her jawline blurry and unpronounced, giving out a childlike vibe, both cute and endearing in equal measures.
To Rie, she was three things. The poorest student in the class with the least desirable family ever, the class representative who doubles as the ace in every subject she laid her hands on, and the only person Rie could call a friend with any degree of trustworthiness. How the last dot point came to be she had no idea whatsoever, seeing how opposite their personalities and backgrounds were.
“Well, if I just called you, would you have heard?”
Aya said, her voice chiming like a clear bell, further cementing the image of an underage girl stuffed in high school uniform and demeanor. That, plus her impeccable ability to crack some very good jokes once every so often meant that Rie never could get mad when she was along.
“I am sure I would have,” Rie answered, shrugging and smiling in tandem. “After all I wasn’t all that mad, you know? If not for…”
“Shh, lemme guess,” Aya quickly placed a finger over Rie’s lips, winking. “Is it that British gentleman we are talking about here?”
Rie nodded, looking pissed.
“What. An. Idiotic. Foreigner,” Rie stressed each and ever word as soon as Aya’s finger left her mouth.
“Oh? I thought William Fastolf is quite the prince,” Aya smiled, her loosely clenched right hand propping her chin. “He did half the clean-up after class by his lonesome all in all, and that’s his first day.”
“He’s still an idiot,” Rie repeated, crossing her arms and turning her face away with closed eyes in an I-don’t-care charade. “Honestly, he came from that Corn-whatsoever province that doesn’t even appear on the world map to Tokyo, and he has the audacity to look down on Japanese women like that?”
“Eh, that was stretching it,” Aya shook her head. “He just said he was in love with and engaged to history and advised you quite politely to give it a try. No offense meant.”
“Yeah, he totally meant no offense at all when he said that in the class with the highest female-to-male ratio at school,” scoffed Rie, her pitch raised into the sarcastic territory. “and the class that has me. Totally not mean anything.”
Rie let her agitation spew out with every of her frothing words. Aya responded with naught but a smile. Her comment reeked of arrogance to the normal ear, but Aya knew better that anyone else the root of the problem.
“Come on now, it couldn’t be that serious, could it?” she said, her voice lowered to an understanding tone. “Don’t stress yourself, Rie-chan.”
Rie inhaled deeply, and then breathed out aloud. It was her standard procedure for lifting her anxiety off her chest. This time it did the exact opposite. There was clearly something tugging at her heartstring, weighing it down hard. Her lips shivered, unable to exhaust any word. Lost in her own train of thought she stood frozen on the spot, seemingly unaware of the passing traffic for a moment.
“I… I see,” she finally said with another sigh. “Well, perhaps I’m going to die a hopeless spinster then. Best start to get use to it from now.”
Anxiety sparked in Aya’s eyes as she took a thorough look at her friend. Rie wasn’t the most mentally stable person out there, but such overreaction was not healthy in any sense. She stopped right in front of Rie, locked her eyes at the depressed girl’s, and said in her most sympathetic voice.
“Rie-chan, you’ve got to look at the bright side of things,” she spoke with a mixture of dead-on seriousness and lighthearted commentary. “Why care about what a newcomer said on impulse when you have been yourself and happy for all those while?”
“But… I am still single,” Rie uttered weakly. “That doesn’t seem right at all!”
“You aren’t the only single girl in the school,” Aya said, pointing at herself. “If bad comes to worse we’d still have each other. There’s no need to get all worked up, see?”
Aya patted at her friend’s back, feeling the soft layer of thin velvet sewn into Rie’s uniform within her palm. Her move was strangely effective - Rie’s expression calmed down on the spot, her mouth curving in a return smile.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said.
Rie would never smile to anyone the way she would to Aya. The smirk on her face in public places would commonly be formed by lifting the right side of her lips to form a convex half-curve. In that form she looked downright nasty, in the traditional classic meaning of an evil hag out for trouble. Any attempt to not take offense at that gesture would be doused upon hearing the defining sniffing noise she would make in the process. It was said she alienated half her class by that gesture alone.
But to her best friend she would flash that one huggably cute smile. Her eyes closed, her face relaxed, her lips forming a perfect curve, and any trace of animosity on her feature would fade as if it had never existed. Then she looked like the pink-haired angelic idol singer she yearned for. Unfortunately, Aya was the only one to know that side of her, or else the limited reserve of boys in school would have flocked to her side despite her nasty streaks.
“Sorry, A-chan,” Rie said, bowing exceedingly politely. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I am just…”
“I know,” interrupted Aya, beaming as she suggested. “How about we go somewhere to have some fun to get your mind off thing?”
“Somewhere?” Rie’s vice briefly returned to its usual sarcastic tone, albeit for a thoroughly friendly purpose. “Doesn’t Dekisugi-sama have to study for the upcoming exam?”
“It’s Friday,” Aya replied with no less mischievousness. “And with boring lessons. Had it not been for my being the class rep I’d have skipped class today and grab a few volumes at Akihabara.”
The exchange was followed by a string of giggles from both sides. It was like a secret agreement, some sort of secret pact between the two girls. For when the word ‘fun’ escaped Aya’s lips in such context, there was a mutual understanding and agreement as to where they would spend their time for the next few hours.
******
At first sight Rie’s home was nothing to be scoffed at, even to the wealthiest of her countrymen. To be able to afford a Western-style mansion on the outskirt of the city with the most outlandish real estate prices in the world was no mean feat, especially when that mansion occupied a space as large as a medium-large urban office block. On that massive plot of land stood a huge structure, four stories at its highest, with large gardens on all four sides and at the center.
As one approached the building, it seemed as delicate and ornate as it was majestic. Gilded patterns lined up the fences. The gardens were decorated with either intricate hedge mazes or pool and grill. There were more windows facing the front than there were students in Rie’s grade. To complete its analogy to a European castle, there were a clock tower of remarkable height and a mini-chapel in the courtyard, even though none of Rie’s family members were Christians.
It was quite the palace fit for a king, which seemed fit, since Rie’s father was a king in a particular sense of the word. Kanno Ichimonji’s life story was a long one, worthy of the one man who controlled most of the paper industry in Northern Japan. Suffice to say it took a man great ability, guts and perseverance to found a trade empire, yet even greater firmness of personality to keep that had been left to him and made it prosper.
Rie could care less about it all, naturally. As long as her father kept supplying her with cash for her shopping needs, where it came from wouldn’t make a difference.
Rie and Aya had walked over the main walkway into the central foyer together many times, hand in hand, led there by the old faithful gardener and their stuffs carried by obedient servants. Which was useful, for Rie had a habit of hauling home everything she saw at the mall that either had lovely design, or could move, or glittered. In other words, ninety percent of the stuffs at the merchandise stores.
Today, however, no such escort came for them, and the two girls had to carry the stuffs by themselves. It wasn’t exactly the lightest of loads, however.
“That was a hundred grands in total,” Aya said after a closer look at Rie’s receipts and then her inflated shopping bags. Her voice could not conceal its obvious anxiety however she tried. “Don’t you think it’s a little…”
“You know me,” Rie replied nonchalantly. “When I’m not happy I’d have to spend an equivalent sum to feel better.”
“Normally you never spend even half as much as this in one go,” Aya shook her head.
“I don’t?” Rie asked back as if entranced.
“You don’t,” Aya stressed each word emphatically. “Rie-chan, sorry for asking, but…”
“I look like a depressed lovesick little girl who should have known better, right?”
For a second it seemed that Aya’s efforts at cheering up her friend had been well reversed by her own tactless attitude. Rie’s face tensed as she spoke, especially her jaws and forehead, if not by annotance then by some sort of newfound anxiety.
And then she stopped dead in her track, pulling her attendance team to a halt in response. Her neck bent, fixed on the paved pathway, her mouth zipped, as if shutting herself in for a rare moment of self reflection.
“Rie-chan?” Aya uttered, her eyes fixed at Rie with increasing worry. “Are you sure you are alright?”
More silence. If Rie was mulling over her response, she was certainly taking her time.
“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “I just feel kind of… odd.”
“Ah, I’m very sorry!” Aya said frantically. “I... shouldn’t have said that.”
Aya’s apologetic expression when she realized her wrongs was a novelty Rie could never get enough of. Whether it was her fault or not didn’t seem to matter when her look at that time was made of moe. That panicked look, that muffled gesture, that sincere yet overly cute voice… it was actually hard to understand just why she hadn’t found a date yet with all those.
For some reason Rie took Aya’s misfortune in her love life as her own fortune. For all she cared, she’d do anything to keep that rare cuteness for herself. Just thinking along that line was enough to whip her mood back to hyperactivity.
“That’s alright,” smiled Rie,
She sealed her newfound positive attitude with a mighty whack on her friend’s shoulder, causing Aya to wince.
“Ow!” uttered the smaller girl.
“You said we’d better spend some time to have fun right?” Rie spoke quickly and enthusiastically. “Let’s get in! I’d certainly want to try on my new stuffs!”
******
Perhaps Rie’s compulsive shopping behavior wasn’t entirely her fault. Shop-aholism seemed to run rampant in the family, or so any visitor to the Ichimonji mansion’s front foyer would be led to believe.
Kanno Ichimonji was both an entrepreneur and a connoisseur, a lover of beauty whose many purchases cost him much wealth. The entire foyer and the galleries leading to the left and right wings were filled to the brim with artworks, rare antiques and other collectors’ goods one could not possibly possess without forking out a fortune for. If Rie was to believe her father, there were at least half a dozen objects that were worth several tens of million yens.
But what neither she nor anyone else could understand was why alongside with those treasures there were an equivalent number of junks. Mass-produced low quality replicas of famous paintings. Obscene sculptures by nameless artists. Drawings that made no sense whatsoever even to art majors. The worst of them all was probably a broken, rotting urn displayed at the very front, one that he claimed to have been a Cretan amphora dug up in Knossos and sold for a bargain.
As Rie and Aya walked in that day, it seemed that her father had just made quite a few of those exotic purchases again. Roughly half of the household’s servants filled the foyer, busily scurrying articles to whatever place in the gallery that hadn’t yet been occupied. Of course, knowing just how much the master had stacked his galleries with, such unoccupied spaces were few and far between.
Wherever Rie’s father had been to recently, he was literally harvesting souvenirs. The result was a large pile of unsorted and unarranged goods strewn on the floor in the very middle of the chamber. There were probably upwards of a hundred individual items, of all shapes, sorts and sizes. As they toiled away among the pile, most were profusely sweating, anxiety spewing out with their every breath.
Everyone were being guided by one elderly gentleman in black uniform in the middle of it all. Grizzle-haired, thick-bearded and with a slightly crooked back, the man was obviously fighting a losing war of attrition against his old age. Still, he was by no means beaten, and as the one who knew the mansion even more than its own master, he was proving his worth with his orders to the lesser servants, loud, clear and powerful in equal measures.
“Hurry up! This one to the left corner! That goes to the far side over there! We must get this sorted out before… Ojou-sama!”
His orders were interrupted when he caught view of Rie and Aya, at which point he hurriedly left his post and bow politely to the two young mistresses. A mild horror laced his face for a moment when he realized the two girls were sweating profusely while panting under the weight of their shopping bags.
“Ojou-sama, Hanamichi-sama, I beg your pardon for not being able to do any more for you as of yet,” the old butler apologized. “As you see, we’re a little caught up here, but I’ll have Jun carry your things to your room once we are done with this.”
“That’s alright, Takeyama-san,” Rie answered in an exceedingly polite voice, before her eyes caught view of the pile. “That’s an awful lot of stuffs isn’t it?”
“As you can see, Ojou-sama, the master happened to have purchased an entire antique shop in Greece,” he said. “There are roughly a hundred and sixty-three items of particular note altogether, out of which I believe we’ll have display space for about twenty. The rest has to go to the storeroom, as per normal.”
Then he pointed to the left side of the pile, where items of lesser quality was piled up, waiting to be tossed into the storeroom with a myriad of toys the master had gotten bored of. Among which there was a broken vase, a rusty full helmet, a termite-eaten javelin, and other junks.
“I see,” Rie replied.
And then her eyes caught view of something that clearly stood out from its decaying, rundown peers.
At the first sight she did not know what it was. It was clearly a weapon, but its design was too exotic for her understanding. It had a far smaller crosspiece compared to the other swords she had known. It was too short to be a sword and too long to be a knife or dagger. Its blade was curved outward like a kukri she learnt of in a roleplaying game, but was much less so than the weapon she knew.
Whatever it was, it sure was shiny. Too shiny, actually. Under the lamplight it glittered like a bar of precious metal, so well that Rie almost had to shy her eyes in its presence. It stood out so much from the other artifacts there that Rie felt like questioning the loyal butler’s sanity for setting aside such an item.
“What about this blade, Takeyama-san?” she said, picking up the weapon.
To her astonishment, her seemingly immaterial move was responded with utter horror on the butler’s half. For a second it looked as if all his hair and beard were standing on ends as he promptly proceeded to rip the weapon from her hand with due haste.
“Ojou-sama, it’s dangerous!” he exclaimed, pointing to the edge of the weapon. “This one is rusty! One cut from it and you could get some serious infection!”
As far as Rie could remember the entire team of Ichimonji household servants, represented by the butler, Mr. Gosho Takeyama, were extremely protective of her, what with her being the master’s only daughter and all. But this time, the butler’s reaction was ridiculous on so many levels.
“Cut myself? Rusty weapon?” grimaced Rie at a complete loss for understanding. “Takeyama-san, did you happen to have a drink too many during lunch?”
“What do you mean, Ojou-sama?” the butler asked back, suitably astonished.
“Look, I know that Dad likes to buy lots of junks and you’ve always helped him sort out the garbage. But can’t you see this blade isn’t junk at all?” Rie said, pointing at the weapon. “Can’t you see how it shines and glitters? There isn’t even a spot of rust, mind you! Is something wrong with your eyes, or with what you drank?”
And then Rie’s voice took a turn for the shrewd.
“Or are you trying to tug this treasure away so you can pawn it somewhere else for some quick cash?” she said vindictively with that condemning, acerbic tone of hers. “Do you think because my father trusts you all that much you can get away with everything?”
Her expression at that point was frighteningly severe. Rolled eyes, knitted eyebrows and widely opened mouth as she sounded her accusation, there was no hiding Rie was angry. Whether or not this anger was righteous, however, was a completely different story.
What was clear was that the butler did not take such insults lightly. His face was red with anger as his hairs stood on end again. His voice was quivering from fury and the attempt to try to control it.
“I swear to God that I have never stolen anything from the Ichimonji household for the past thirty years, and for as long as I draw breath I never will,” he shouted. “As my eyes are open, I see this blade a rusty one and should be disposed of accordingly. Say whatever you will, Ojou-sama, but my eyes have never failed me before and I doubt it has.”
“Oh really?” Rie’s sour voice turned to sarcasm. “You know, you could have always asked Dad for an eye check.”
By then the other servants had gathered around the commotion in a circle, muttering and whispering to one another as they looked on. It was not a situation Aya would like to see.
“Alright, can it, Rie-chan,” she jumped into the argument. “That’s enough for now. Why don’t you…”
“But this is a fine item of antique!” blurted Rie, interrupting Aya’s words. “My father just have to have it, and here the butler is trying to pass it off as junk and stow it away? Not going to happen under my watch!”
She said, pointing at the offending item, awaiting a sympathetic word or two from her best friend. What she got was a very confused Aya looking at her worriedly.
“Umm… Rie-chan, it is a rusty weapon the way I see it. It doesn’t even look clean enough to hold properly,” she said, looking at the weapon and then back at her friend. “I can’t see the shining and glittery part at all.”
By now Rie was the one confused.
“Umm…what?” she said, for want of a better sentence.
“Please pardon me, Rie-chan, but…” Aya delved into Rie’s eyes without blinking. “You are probably just hallucinating after a hard day. You should take a rest and calm down, see?”
******
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