Chapter 17 Haru
Haru
The moment the weight of the heavy ceremonial outer robe left my shoulders, I groaned in relief.
How had Father worn these layers every single day without complaint?
The kimono alone weighed more than chain mail, and that was before adding the stiff shoulder boards, the embroidered belt that felt like armor around my waist, and the ceremonial sword that served no purpose except to make sitting down an exercise in graceless geometry.
“Almost finished, Heika,” my chamber servant murmured, her ancient hands deftly untying the complex knots of the inner sash.
She had been doing this since I was a child—helping me dress, undress, making sure I looked every inch the Imperial Prince, now the Imperial Emperor.
Her constant presence was a piece of solid earth amid the shifting plates of our world. “Just the under-robe and—”
My mind barely registered her words.
It was still spinning.
It had been spinning since I left the council chamber hours ago.
The orders I had given—were they right? Paying mountain villagers instead of securing them by force seemed logical in the moment, but what if Yamada was right? What if they took the rice and betrayed us anyway? What if my first major decision as Emperor led to—
Stop.
I had made my decision. Second-guessing now would accomplish nothing.
But what about Takayama? Should I have sent more explicit orders? Should I have—
“There we are, Heika.” The maid folded the last layer of under-robe with practiced efficiency, placing it on the shelf with the others. “Will you be needing anything else before—”
The door slid open.
I looked up, expecting the Dai Shogun or Grand Minister with more terrible news.
To my relief, it was Esumi who slipped through the gap, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
The maid’s eyes widened, but to her credit, she did not falter, dropping into an immediate bow before me.
“Thank you, Moko,” I said, trying to inject some authority into my voice despite being caught in nothing but my sleeping robe. “Please leave us now.”
“Of course. Pleasant dreams, Heika.” She scurried toward the door, not quite running but close, shooting one last side-eyed glance at Esumi before disappearing into the corridor.
The moment the door closed, I collapsed onto the bed face-first, letting out a moan that would have horrified every protocol instructor I had ever had.
“That good of a day?” Esumi’s voice held a hint of amusement.
“You have no idea,” I said into the bedding. “I think I made good decisions. Or maybe all the wrong ones. Possibly both simultaneously. Is that possible? Can you be right and wrong at the same time?”
“In my experience? Almost always.”
I rolled onto my back to glare at him, but he had already started undressing, his back to me as he removed his outer robe. There was something methodical about the way he moved, so different from Moko’s graceful efficiency. Esumi made every motion deliberate, unhurried.
“You know what the worst part is?” I asked the ceiling. “Everyone keeps looking at me like I have answers, like I know what I am doing. A month ago, I was a stupid, drunk prince they couldn’t wait to send far from the capital, and now they think I have some sort of divine wisdom.”
“You are the Divine—”
“Ryujin’s hairy balls, stop that.” I huffed a humorless laugh. “Do you know how many war councils Father let me attend? Dozens. Maybe a hundred. And you know what I learned from them?”
“How to look wise while having no idea what anyone is talking about?”
“Actually, yes!” I let out another surprised laugh.
“That is exactly what I learned. Father would sit there like a mountain, all silent and thoughtful, and I thought—I thought he was such a great man weighing every word, considering every angle, twelve moves ahead of everyone else. But what if he was just . . . sitting there? What if he had no idea either and was just really good at looking like he did?”
“Your father,” Esumi said, draping his robe over a stand, “was many things, but he always knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Great. So I am even worse at this than I thought.”
The bed dipped as Esumi sank onto the edge to remove his sandals. “You made decisions today. Good and honorable ones, from what I heard.”
“Or catastrophically bad ones that will lead to the fall of the Empire and historians writing about Emperor Haru the Incompetent Who Reigned For Three Weeks Before Everything Collapsed.” I threw an arm over my eyes. “That will be a very long entry in the Imperial records.”
“I think they would shorten it to ‘Haru the Brief.’”
“You aren’t helping.”
“I wasn’t trying to help. I was trying to make you laugh.” The mattress shifted as Esumi stood again. “Did it work?”
“No.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
And I was.
I had let out something between a snort and a laugh despite myself, but the brief moment of levity had faded quickly, crushed beneath the weight of everything that had happened that day, everything that was still happening.
Despite winter’s approach, Eiko’s forces were still advancing toward our northern garrisons, who were isolated and running low on supplies, tens of thousands of refugees were fleeing Yubi, and Daiki’s salty head was on its way to taunt me.
I could practically hear Eiko laughing her fat ass off somewhere in the east.
“I keep seeing Daiki’s face,” I said quietly.
“He used to bring me candied ginger when he visited court. He said it was good for digestion, but I think he just knew I liked sweets and Mother would never let me have them during state functions.” I swallowed hard.
“Eiko murdered him. She executed him for trying to do an honorable thing.”
I gulped back bile that threatened to surface. “And I sat there on Father’s throne today and gave orders like I knew what I was doing, like I had any idea how to fight someone like that.”
The room was quiet except for the soft rustle of fabric.
I lowered my arm to find Esumi now completely bare, folding his final garment and setting it aside.
The sight of his taut, muscular body usually soothed whatever might ail me, but in that moment, even the beauty of his bare buttocks failed to easy my heart’s aches.
“You are going to give poor Moko a heart condition,” I muttered. “Slipping in here like this. What if someone sees you leaving in the morning?”
“Then they will see me leaving in the morning.” Esumi padded across the room toward the bed. “You are the Emperor now, Haru. You can have whoever you want in your chambers.”
“That isn’t how it works. There are protocols, expectations, political considerations—”
“All of which can be changed—or at least wait until tomorrow.” The bed dipped as he climbed in behind me. “Right now, you need to stop being Emperor for a few hours.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I admitted. The words came out smaller than I intended. “I mean, I don’t know how to be Emperor either. It’s just . . . I can’t stop thinking about all of it: the decisions, the consequences, the thousands and thousands of things that could go wrong. What if—”
“Haru.” Esumi’s body pressed against my back, warm and solid, his arm draping over my waist and pulling me into him. “Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“No, you’re spiraling.” His lips brushed against the back of my neck, soft and gentle. “There is a difference.”
I tried to relax into his touch, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing.
“Gods, the funeral. I gave my uncle two days to plan and execute the burial of not one but two emperors, two days to prepare an Imperial funeral that should take thirty. And only one more day to prepare a coronation. Am I disrespecting Father’s memory?
Will the people see it as me trying to rush past his death? What if—”
“What if the people see this as a young emperor putting the Empire’s needs above his own grief?
Above his own very personal loss? Above his pride as he ascends the throne with more humility than any emperor before?
” Esumi’s voice was low, murmuring against my ear.
“What if they see this as a display of great strength instead of weakness?”
“What if they’re wrong?”
“What if you are?”
I wanted to argue, to list all the ways I was clearly, obviously, catastrophically unprepared for this, but Esumi’s hand was stroking slow patterns on my arm, his breath warm against my neck, and some of the frantic energy coiling in my chest had started to loosen.
“Es, I’m terrified,” I whispered. “Every moment of every day. I am so afraid I am going to make the wrong choice, that people are going to die because I didn’t know better, because I didn’t choose better, because I am too young or too inexperienced or too—”
“Human?” Esumi pressed another kiss to my neck. “You’re allowed to be afraid, Haru. You would be a fool if you were not.”
“That is not very reassuring.”
“I’m not trying to reassure you. I’m trying to remind you that you are not alone in this.” Another kiss, this one lingering at the base of my skull. “You have generals who know how to fight, advisors who know how to govern, and you have—”
“You?”
“I was going to say a really excellent Grand Minister, but yes. You also have me.” His hand stilled on my arm. “For what that is worth.”
“It is worth everything. Gods, Es, you’re everything to me,” I said quietly. “You know that, don’t you? Please say you know that.”
“I do, but . . . you need to stop trying to carry all of this by yourself.” His hand started moving again, drifting lower, and I felt some of the tension bleed out of my shoulders. “Let someone else take some of the weight, even if just for tonight.”
“I don’t know how to do that either,” I admitted. “How to just let go, to stop thinking and planning, to stop worrying about every possible disaster that could happen tomorrow or the next day or—”
“Then let me help you.”
Teeth sank into my earlobe as his hand slid across my stomach, fingers splaying against the fabric of my sleeping robe. Not suggestive, just present and grounding, reminding me that I was here, now, in this moment, not drowning in a sea of possible futures.
“I can’t stop thinking,” I said, almost desperately. “My mind won’t stop. It just keeps spinning and spinning and—”
“I know.” Esumi’s voice was impossibly gentle. “So stop trying to stop it. Just let it spin. Let the thoughts come and go. You don’t have to solve anything right now.”
“But—”
“Haru.” His hand pressed more firmly against my stomach, and I felt the warmth of it through the thin fabric. “You are not in the council chamber anymore. You are not on the throne. You aren’t the Emperor in this moment.”
“I’m always the Emperor,” I said, but there was less conviction in it than before. “That does not just stop.”
“No,” he agreed. “But you can set your katana down for a few hours. Let me carry it for you.”
“That is not how it works—”
“Then we will make it how it works.” His lips found that spot just below my ear that always made me shiver. “If only for tonight, for right now.”
I wanted to argue more, to insist that I couldn’t afford to let my guard down, that there were too many things that needed my attention, but Esumi’s presence at my back was so solid, so real, cutting through all the spiraling thoughts about tomorrow’s disasters and yesterday’s choices.
“Those soldiers, those cities, those people—they will still be there in the morning. And you will serve them better if you are not exhausted and drowning in doubt.” His hand shifted lower, fingers tracing idle patterns. “Let me take care of you. Just for tonight.”
My breath hitched. “Esumi—”
“Trust me,” he whispered against my ear. “Let me help you forget. It will help you remember who you truly are, too.”
His hand moved lower still, and despite everything—the fear, the doubt, the weight of an empire pressing down on my shoulders—I felt myself let go.