Chapter Fifteen Sen #2
One moment, she was walking behind Lee. The next, her foot slipped and she was falling forward.
Lee turned, as if he’d heard the sound she hadn’t made, and gripped her forearm to steady her. She balanced precariously on the edge of the earth, looking down at the drainage ditch she’d nearly fallen into, the wet soil and muddy water and steep fall that she should have noticed.
Lee had frozen, and Sen half expected him to reproach her like her father, but he wasn’t even looking at her. Sen followed
his gaze over her shoulder.
The town behind them was gone.
Where there had once been many stores and people wandering the streets, now there was nothing but white sand whispering as
the wind stirred it into the air. The sky had darkened to an ominous gray, and Sen could taste a storm on the wind. The earth
rumbled beneath them as a dark wave crested the horizon.
It looked just like the ocean that Sen saw when she meditated. But this time, Lee could see it too.
The ocean roared in the distance, its cry echoing a thousand times across the empty world. Dark waters filled the horizon
and began rolling forward.
Sen turned to Lee, who stood frozen beside her, his gaze fixed on the approaching wave. She dropped her gaze to his hand,
which was still clenched tightly around her arm. As the roar of the sea grew louder, she tore her arm away.
Light and sound slammed down over them, and they both flinched at the sudden brightness. The smell of wet soil and summer
returned, the warmth of the sun on their faces, the softness of earth beneath them. Sen whirled to face the town that was
once again a town, the horizon quiet and white, the ground firm and unmoving beneath her. She turned back to Lee, who was
gaping at her like she was a world all by herself.
What are you? Sen thought, unable to move. What are we?
“I think we shouldn’t touch,” Sen said at last.
Lee examined the palm of the hand he’d used to touch her. When it seemed he saw nothing unusual, he sighed and dropped his hand. “I told you that you were a bridge,” he said. “I don’t know how. But I’ll find out.”
There it was again—that tone that made his words sound like a blood oath. I’ll find out. He glanced unsubtly at Sen’s arm, like he wanted to touch her again, tsunami be damned.
“Not until I get what I came here for,” Sen said, crossing her arms.
Lee looked up, brow creasing as if displeased. His gaze flickered across her, and Sen suddenly felt like she was buried in
the ground again, beetles crawling all over her bare skin. But whatever Lee was thinking, he decided not to say it out loud.
“Fine,” he said, turning around and continuing down the road. Sen hurried after him, glancing over her shoulder at the horizon,
the ocean still echoing in her ears.
They reached the town hall, which seemed like a palace compared to any government building Sen had seen in her time. The white
stone floors gleamed like a sheet of ice, and their footsteps echoed up to the tall, arched ceilings. Electric lights buzzed
overhead, the sound filling Sen’s head with bees. How could no one else hear it? How did it not drive them all mad?
Lee paused to glance at the signs on the walls, then turned to Sen, dropping his gaze as if embarrassed. “I don’t read Japanese
very well,” he said quietly.
“I would be surprised if you could,” she said. Sen’s own mother couldn’t read, and neither could many of the women she’d met
in her time, much less foreigners. She scanned the signs until she found one for the archive and led Lee to the left. They
approached a smaller wing of the building and stepped into a dimly lit office.
“How can I help you?” said a woman in Western clothes behind a counter, looking to Sen rather than Lee.
Sen brushed past Lee, pulled out her wooden passport from her obi, and held it out to the woman.
“I’m looking for my family koseki,” she said.
To her surprise, the woman frowned at her passport and made no move to accept it. Her confused gaze drifted to Lee, who looked
like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.
“Do you have any identification?” the woman said.
Sen frowned, waving the passport again. That had her family name—all the information that was needed to let her pass from
town to town.
Lee let out a stiff laugh, and Sen watched as his expression changed. He shifted so easily into someone brighter, as if emerging
from deep underwater. “She found that in her grandmother’s room,” he said, glancing at Sen’s wooden passport. “We came here
for her grandmother’s funeral, but she lost her ID on the way. We were hoping this would be enough to get a copy while we’re
here.”
“I can’t issue you a copy without an ID,” the woman behind the counter said. But her eyes caught on Sen’s passport. “May I?”
Sen passed it to her with both hands, and the woman held it up to the light. “Iwasaki Sen,” the woman read, running her fingers
across the carving in wonder.
The secret name sounded strange on her lips. It was the surname Sen was born with, but the one she was never allowed to use.
She was Sen of Shimazu, for she belonged to her lord.
Sen sensed Lee’s eyes on her. Surely he’d noticed that she’d hidden her real surname from him.
“I’ve never seen one of these in person,” the woman said at last. “It’s very well preserved.”
“She takes good care of her grandmother’s possessions,” Lee said. “They were very close.”
Sen stared at Lee, careful to keep her expression neutral. He lied like it was his first language. He could lie to her just as easily. Perhaps he already had.
Luckily, Sen was a liar too.
She hung her head and let her hair fall over her eyes, her shoulders shaking slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said tearfully, turning
away. “I’m so embarrassed. I came all the way here without my ID and wasted everyone’s time.”
“Oh, it’s not a problem!” the woman said quickly. “Please, don’t worry.”
Sen hid her grin behind her hair, feeling like the world was sliding in her favor once more. Lee Turner might have known a
lot about the future, but Sen knew how to make people do what she wanted. She was a female samurai in an era where samurai
weren’t even supposed to exist—of course her words had to be as sharp as her sword. Not every problem could be solved with
blood.
“My father will be so disappointed in me,” she sobbed. “I’m so careless.”
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. Her gaze flickered between Sen and Lee, who was standing stunned beside her. “Maybe...
well, I suppose I could let you look at a copy here in the office, as long as you don’t take it with you. The passport is
proof enough.”
“Oh, thank you so much!” Sen said, her expression brightening as she bowed deeply to the woman before she could change her
mind.
As soon as the woman left the room, Sen’s expression fell and she scrubbed tears from her face with her sleeve.
“Well played, Iwasaki Sen,” Lee said under his breath. “But please avoid taking out any more relics. You’re supposed to be
the less suspicious one of the two of us.”
Sen glared at him. “It’s not a relic,” she said, jamming her passport back into the folds of her clothes. “And how did you
expect to get the koseki without identification?”
“I didn’t know you needed any!” Lee said, crossing his arms. “Death certificates become public record in America after a few decades. You must have been dead for at least a century, so I didn’t think your papers would still be confidential.”
I’m not dead , Sen thought, then closed her mouth when she remembered that wasn’t true.
The woman returned, her gaze shifting uneasily between Sen and Lee for a moment before she set a piece of paper on the counter.
“The original is too delicate to handle, but I printed a copy of the scan.”
“Thank you!” Sen said before Lee could, all but shoving him out of the way to get a better look.
The koseki was a long page of vertical columns with handwritten text. At the top right corner, Sen read the date and location
of the office, and below it, her father’s name.
Head of household: Iwasaki Itaro
Born: Tenpoˉ Era Year Two, Second Month, Third Day
To the left was Sen’s mother, then Sen listed as the first daughter, Kura as the second daughter, and her brothers as the
first and second sons. All of their birthdates were written correctly, so this was definitely the right document. She turned
to the column for secondary information.
Iwasaki Itaro
Death: Meiji Era Year Nine, Tenth Month, Twenty-Seventh Day, First Hour, Chiran-cho
Sen’s breath caught in her throat. She read the words again and again, just to be sure, then she scanned the columns for herself,
her mother, and her siblings.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, passing the paper back to the archivist. She turned and walked out without another word, feeling as though she’d just woken up from a long dream. All the bright colors, the smell of hot paper and tea, the buzzing lights crashed into Sen at once.
She’d nearly forgotten about Lee until she emerged in the sunlight and he grabbed her sleeve.
“What happened?” Lee said.
Sen looked up at him, then realized that he probably hadn’t been able to read much of the koseki, that he didn’t know what
she’d seen. She looked to the sky, imagining that her soul was fixed on a kite floating higher and higher into the white horizon.
“Did you find what you wanted?” Lee prompted, releasing her sleeve.
Sen let out a sharp laugh. “Yes,” she said, her voice far away even to her own ears. “Though I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why?” Lee said, his frown creasing deeper into his brow.
Sen swallowed, letting out an unsteady breath as she leveled her gaze with Lee’s. “My whole family will die in three days.”
When Sen returned home, her father was sharpening his sword.
On a normal day, Sen knew this meant she shouldn’t bother him. But this was not a normal day. This was one of the last few
days Sen would be alive, and this couldn’t wait.
She’d run home from the town hall, too fast for Lee to follow. Her mind was full of storm clouds, and she could think of little
else but warning her father, of packing up their house and fleeing as soon as they could. There was still time to escape,
to live.
“Chichiue,” she said quietly, shifting from foot to foot in the doorway of her father’s room.
His blade made a clean, metallic sound as he dragged the whetstone across its length. The polished, flat side reflected the flickering candlelight, as if flames burned from within the pure iron.
“I’m going into town,” he said, as if Sen hadn’t spoken. “Guard the house while I’m gone.”
“Into town?” Sen echoed weakly. Her father had always forbidden them from going into town, for fear of being recognized. He
was the most recognizable of them all... and he planned to go out with his sword?
“I’ve found the spy,” he said, setting the sharpening stone down and sheathing his blade.
Sen went very still. Ever since Maeda had disappeared, her father had been trying to find the man responsible. Yesterday,
he’d captured a man lingering at the edges of the forest and managed to get his employer’s name out of him before killing
him. It seemed he’d now located the employer.
Her father wanted blood. It was the worst possible time to upset him, but this couldn’t wait.
“Chichiue,” she said, kneeling in front of him, “if there are spies, should we not leave Chiran and hide somewhere else?”
She held her breath as he turned, his gaze searing into her.
“We cannot run forever,” he said. “There is no other safe house.”
This was the point where Sen was supposed to drop the subject. She was lucky her father hadn’t punished her for asking in
the first place. But she could still see the date of death written beside his name. She imagined the man before her cut to
pieces, exploded with bullet holes, unable to hold a sword because there was nothing left of his arms or hands.
Her father was her whole world.
No matter how cruel he’d been, she was always destined to bend like a flower toward his light. She could not imagine a life
without him and didn’t want to try. What else could she do, when her mother had already given her away?
“Chichiue,” she said, pressing her forehead into the ground in a deep bow. “Forgive me, but I only worry for your safety. I would be lost without you, and so would my brothers. If there are spies here, then it won’t be long until the military—”
A hand closed around her hair, yanking her up. Sen let out a startled cry and gripped her father’s hand to relieve the searing
tug on her scalp. He tossed her easily into the wall, where a low shelf smacked the back of her head. When she looked up,
her father’s shadow had painted the ceiling, as if the roof had been ripped out and there was nothing but starless night overhead.
“Have you learned nothing ?” he said, his voice like thunder above her. “You fear death. I can see it in your eyes. I can smell it on you like rot.”
“I’m sorry,” Sen said, trying with all her heart not to flinch away, to prove her father right. “I just... I have a bad
feeling about this house. I think we need to leave.”
Her father’s eyes darkened. He drew his blade, holding it under her chin. She couldn’t so much as breathe or it would split
her skin.
“Samurai do not make decisions with their feelings,” her father said. “They take orders. You are not a mind. You are a weapon.
You have no soul, no heart, nothing to forfeit to death. You are already dead.”
If only he knew how true that is , Sen thought, tears stinging her eyes.
At last, he sheathed his blade. Sen let out a sharp breath, hand flying to her throat, though his blade hadn’t even scored
her skin—his control was flawless.
“Do not ask this of me again,” her father said, rising and shoving the door aside. “It will be the last question you ever
ask.”
He stepped into the hallway and slammed the door behind him, extinguishing the sole candle on the table and leaving Sen alone
in the dark.