night pleasures

by eitan sengupta

Hayakawa Makoto was laughing at some long forgotten joke as he stumbled—or, more accurately, was pushed out of the bar's door by its two burly bouncers. Eyes squeezed shut, his body was wracked with unceasing waves of good humor, his arms clutched tightly around his stomach. The bouncers exchanged a look. This was nothing they hadn’t seen before. Some traveling merchant, new in town, heads out at night to see what the streets have to offer. He hits up a bar or two, and the next thing you know he’s incapable of seeing straight. They had a solution for people like this. It wasn’t very ceremonious, or, really, even kind, but it got the lush out of their hair and that was all they really cared about. Nobody paid them enough to care more. “Go home, old man,” one of them called as he planted a hand on Hayakawa’s shoulder, knocking him to the cobblestones, “You’re drunk.” With that, they slammed the door, leaving the merchant rolling around in front of it as he continued to laugh.

Passersby only cast token glances at him, as his situation wasn’t an uncommon one around here. Nobody bothered to help him up or make sure he was all right. He wasn’t their problem. As he lay there, the only contact anybody made with him was when a farmhand looking for a drink after a long day of work roughly kicked him out of the way of the door in order to get past. Hayakawa’s hysterics continued through it all.

Eventually, as all things do, his fit came to an end and he was simply lying face-up on the stones, staring at the night sky. The sounds of camaraderie, though muffled, still came through the walls of the bar, and he could also hear the footsteps of people passing by him on the road. After lying there for a few minutes he decided that the bouncers had been right and that it was time for him to go home. He’d enjoyed his night out, but he still had a day full of work tomorrow. It wouldn’t do to get back to the inn at a time that wouldn’t allow him a healthy sleep. With some effort, he grunted and pushed himself to his feet, then immediately sat down again as he was overcome with a spell of dizziness and nausea. The street whirled around him as though he were caught in a tornado, and he blinked a few times to clear his head. Then, more slowly and carefully this time, he stood up, using the wall of the bar as a crutch. He still felt somewhat queasy, and his head felt like it was under a blacksmith’s hammer, but he could probably make it back all right. With a deep breath to steady himself, he pushed off of the wall and started down the street.

It didn’t take him very long to realize that he was going in the wrong direction, but by then he was completely lost. The buildings had shifted from sensible, unobtrusive constructions of smooth wood to ramshackle huts thrown together from whatever their builders could get their hands on. The street below his sandals, which had been a well-kept cobblestone, was now soft, moist dirt. And, it was not simply the city that had changed—the people were different as well. Where common travelers or simply-dressed residents had once walked alongside him, allowing his ornately-patterned kimono to not stand out so much, now skulked shady characters who eyed him with far too much curiosity, taking special note of the way he stumbled, clearly still inebriated.

He had evidently wandered into a sector of town that he should not have been in, but, his head still being clouded with liquor, he continued to walk haltingly forward, convinced that somehow he would still wind up, one way or another, back at the inn. Hayakawa barely gave the thugs surrounding him a second glance, even as a gang of them swapped looks with each other and fell into step a few meters behind. Their hands slipped nonchalantly into their pockets, fingering whatever instruments of criminality lay within, as the disoriented merchant puttered along obliviously before them. They knew this part of town like the backs of their hands, and so narrow smirks spread across their faces as Hayakawa took a turn into a district they knew contained numerous twisting alleyways, easy for a newcomer to become lost in. Their opportunity would come soon. They needed only to wait.

Without warning, Hayakawa clamped a hand to his mouth and lurched into a nearby alley. The thugs’ leader held up a hand and they all stopped short, and the sound of the merchant emptying his stomach onto the ground drifted over to them. The lead thug waited another moment in silence, then indicated for them to move in. Hands were drawn from pockets, revealing wickedly sharp steel knives that gleamed in the white moonlight.

Hayakawa was on his knees, head bent over a puddle of what had just been inside of him. He panted and coughed, wiping his mouth. The vomiting had served to sober him up a little, but the buildings still spun, and he still had no idea where he was. He was about to stand up and continue on his way when he heard footsteps coming into the alley behind him. His eyes widened and he froze, suddenly unable to move. He heard the scrape of metal on wood as one of the thugs dragged his knife along the wall of a neighboring building, and heard the low chuckles of the predators sizing up their prey. They formed a half-circle behind him, leveling their knives at him. It was silent for a moment, then their leader, a tall, thin young man, spoke.

“Where you from, eh? Don’t get a lot of folks dressed like that around here. Bet you got a lotta money in that kimono...” The man’s cronies laughed, a dull, ominous sound. Hayakawa didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. He just stayed there, shivering in the night air.

The thugs’ leader didn’t like his silence. “Huh? Answer me, you idiot.” He gave the merchant a light kick, resulting in a doglike yelp. “So you can talk. You gonna answer my questions, then? Hm?” Hayakawa remained silent, his mouth frozen open in a shivering rictus of fear. This did not please the thug. He bent down in front of the shaking merchant and brandished his knife. “You see this? This can cut through your flabby flesh like it’s nothing. And it’s gonna be doing just that if you don’t pipe up.” Slowly, Hayakawa’s eyes met the thug’s, who smiled. “Actually, it’s gonna be doing that no matter what. You'll just delay it a little if you talk. But I can tell you don’t care about that.” The thug straightened up and tossed his knife in the air. It rotated once before dropping back into his outstretched palm. “So in that case…” The other thugs grinned and started moving forward.

Hayakawa did care. In fact, he cared quite a bit. But his fear had completely paralyzed him, and he was unable to move a muscle. All he could do was wait, open-eyed, as the knives would descend on his body and he would die, die on top of his own vomit. How disgusting.

His breathing quickened, and he managed to squeeze his eyes shut. It was over. He shouldn’t have drunk so much, he shouldn’t have gone out so late, there were so many things he shouldn't have done, but he had done them, and now here he was at the end of his life. It was his own fault. He braced himself, as best as he could.

Suddenly, there came a shout, and the thugs all seemed to move away from him in a flurry of footsteps. He heard some quick, muttered speech, and then a loud shout from one of the thugs. “Hey! Who the hell are—”

There was the scream of a sword being drawn, then the scream of someone being cut with it. Even before Hayakawa heard the body crumple to the ground, there came another scream, then another, and another, and soon all he could hear was a cacophony of screams, fleeing footsteps quickly interrupted, and bodies hitting the earth. Then, just as abruptly as the noise had begun, there was silence.

Hayakawa didn’t dare breathe, didn’t dare open his eyes as he heard footsteps come out in front of him and then stop. There was more silence, a longer silence that seemed to stretch to eternity. And finally, when Hayakawa thought that perhaps he had died, a voice came to his ears. A woman’s voice, speaking with a high-class yet unmistakably rural accent.

“You can look up now, if you want.”

Perhaps against his better judgement, Hayakawa slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head up to look at the speaker. She was difficult to see in the darkness, especially because she was dressed in all black, but he could make out a pale face with two bright blue eyes that seemed to glow, illuminating the night. Her hair, a pale grey-streaked black, tied back in a long tail behind her, swayed in the wind. In her right hand she held a blood-streaked katana. As Hayakawa watched, she flicked it to her side, shaking off the blood in a clearly practiced motion, then returned the sword to a nondescript sheath at her side.

“New in the city?” she asked, with a completely conversational tone. Hayakawa almost couldn’t believe it. The shock seemed to have shaken off his fear, so he was able to respond.

“Who… who are you?” He coughed as he said it. The woman didn’t show much of a reaction. A ronin? She was certainly dressed like one. Hayakawa had heard tales of ronin enacting vigilante justice in seedy areas. Perhaps she was one of them.

“You didn’t answer my question. Anyway, I’m not really anybody, not nowadays. I just get around, you know?” Hayakawa didn’t know. “Hm, well you clearly don’t belong here. Got drunk, ended up somewhere you shouldn't have ended up, and ran into the wrong types of people. Not good.” She tsked a little, shaking her head. “That’s a lesson for you, be careful where you get drunk.”

“I… uh…” The merchant had very little clue of how to make sense of this situation. All he understood was the overwhelming sense of relief filling his body. He’d survived, thanks to this strange vigilante woman. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m very lucky you were here to deal with those ruffians. Thank you.” The woman cocked her head. Hayakawa kept speaking. “I can reward you, give you anything your heart desires. I’m very rich. I can offer you money, power, men,” she gave a short chuckle at that, “land, alcohol, whatever you would like! You cannot comprehend how thankful I am.”

The woman looked up, tapping her chin pensively. “Anything I want, hm?” Hayakawa nodded, vigorously. “Well, here’s what I want.” She knelt down in front of him. His eyes followed her hand as it picked up a knife that had been lying on the ground, in a pool of its former owner's blood. He watched as she gripped it, testing its weight in her hand. Hayakawa began to feel uneasy. “I want to see your eyes bulge as you realize that you won’t be able to escape. I want to hear your screams as I stab you. I want to feel your panicked breath as you hyperventilate. I want to smell the blood that leaks from your wounds, and taste its metallic tang.” She leaned in until her face was centimeters from his. Certainly she was joking. Ronin were odd folk, were they not? This was simply an elaborate joke. His breath began to quicken, and a grin spread across the woman’s face. She traced the point of the knife along his neck, and a brief cry left his throat.

“Those men, they were fools. Clowns, imbeciles, uncultured swine. I,” she indicated herself with the knife, “am an artist. A connoisseur. A master. And you, my friend, are my canvas.”

He couldn’t help it. He screamed, shrieked, loud and piercing, as the blades crept in.

The next day, the body of the traveling merchant known as Hayakawa Makoto was found, mutilated almost beyond recognition, in an alleyway located in a district known for its high crime rate. It was clear that he had been disgustingly drunk, and that he had taken an unfortunate wrong turn on his way back from the bar, subsequently becoming a victim of something that far too many people nowadays seemed to be encountering. But oddly, he was found surrounded by the corpses of numerous members of a well-known street gang, who each had been felled by a single slash of a katana. It was clear to see that he had not done that. No, it was the work of someone who had trained in the blade for decades. The most likely reasoning anyone could come up with was that Hayakawa had been killed by the gang, who had then encountered a samurai passing through the area. This samurai had dealt out justice, then headed out on his way. It was not an unreasonable prospect.

Within a few days, people had mostly forgotten the murder. It was nothing to be preoccupied about, and the only moral that could be drawn from it was simple, and already a well-known bit of common sense—don’t get drunk in the wrong place. The law enforcement shook their heads, but there was nothing they could do. In fact, they figured they should be happy a samurai was meting out justice against evildoers in the city. It certainly made their jobs easier. So they forgot about it, too. In time, nobody really remembered it, besides one or two paranoid individuals with far too much time on their hands.

Well, them and one other. But she was long gone by now.