What I need to do, is move on.
"The next time we meet," I say, "I'll play." And until then, I'll have thought of an adequate means of revenge.
...
If my bending doesn't return… I will. I won't become a monster of rage. Even this man must have innocents in his circle of acquaintance and I won't chance widening the range of targets. No, it is him who deserves my retaliation, if I decide to carry it out. This doesn't have to turn into a mockery of a Vendetta. I'm not a gangster. Not yet, anyway.
Mai and Gorou have gotten up. They haven't said a word. I suppose they're angry with me. We leave the place behind, sun creeping steadily up the horizon.
"They took your bending," Mai states quietly, back on the ship.
I nod. Thanks for reminding me. Like I don't feel the lack acutely. She doesn't deserve biting comments, either. It was good of her to come looking, whatever her reasons. I might have needed rescuing.
"Apologies for delaying our schedule," is what I settle on, watching her face for any hints as to her thoughts. Surprise, displeasure. Not the apology she wanted.
"Did you know this could happen?" her tone is slightly accusatory. Is she calling me reckless?
I look away from her, to the railing. It's a bit too slack. I'll have to tighten it. Like my reign over my anger. She does not deserve the snapped answer whetting my tongue. "I… should have," I manage to admit.
She narrows her eyes. "Why go to them when you already secured the yakuza?"
Mai knows that both of my actions were risky. And she's right that I should have been as cautious with the Order as with the yakuza. I will take this as the lesson that it is. That doesn't mean lessons aren't painful, as all growth is. "It's always best to have more than one source of information."
"Do you trust them after this?"
"Of course not. Always verify," next time, beforehand. As much as possible. It was naïve of me to think I could rely so much on Pakku's tile and teachings. I might have forgotten some important things. The order might have changed since his time spent with them. So many possibilities, and as always, I know nothing.
"Then…" her head is cocked to the side, mouth a thin line.
She didn't just go. She came to look for me. I will trust. But verify. "I can't afford to spurn opportunities when they present themselves to me. But yes, I was reckless and too trusting."
Let's see where this concession takes us.
She makes for Circus Girl and her brother by the bow. And I tighten the railing.
...
People aren't usually very fun to be around. That is, they tend not to be, when they've seen and done too much shit to think of things with the distance required for humour. And if they are fun to be around, they have to put a lot of effort into it. Or you yourself have developed a darker sense of humour that relies on there being misery in this world. It's a very realistic approach.
As it is, I've managed to acquire a rather dour entourage of people who would, for the most part, rather not. Do a funny, that is.
Except for Eyebrows. It's a rare thing, to find someone so entrenched into the yakuza system who has genuinely put in the effort to be humorous. To be just a bit more approachable. It could be a strategy to present a front of leadership within the organisation that allows for all sorts of people to feel marginally represented. Sort of like a representational democracy. With less representation and more violence. Ah, even that depends on where you live.
But somehow, I doubt it. Dionu seems, for the most part, genuine. That he's found a way to be humorous in his profession at the same time as he's got the piercings shows just how normalised some things are for Dionu, while others seem too strange not to incorporate them as they are seen. It's all about what values you grow up with. What you do with them later in life when you're confronted with differing views. How well you cope.
Humour is often a strategy to guide the eye. It's not necessarily deliberate. Sometimes humour is a front to hide insecurity. I wonder what it is in Dionu's case. I'll find out, over the next few months. We'll be in close proximity, after all. The yakuza will provide us with housing in the city. Lower ring, but large enough for all of us. Every few weeks, myself and Dionu will leave the city on the boat, to keep up the front of traders. And we'll be trading. Largely in information. Or informants.
As you do.
It's not true slavery. But there's a fine line between acting to ensure your survival, where the circumstances of your station in society are being made use of, and slavery. The chicken might be considered a person's property, but not the human. But if the human does things in order to survive, doesn't have many other choices or hasn't been made aware of them…
It's a cruel world.
Not that different to where I come from, just less sanitary and a bit more magical.
I blink myself back to the present. Spacing out like that can't be good. I should meditate later.
"When you made that deal with Aunt, I hadn't expected you to make things difficult for us so soon," Dionu says in a light tone, "I mean, I thought she put the fear of her consequences in people pretty thoroughly. You're just… really odd."
It's not the words. They're not funny. It's the way he says it. Childish incomprehension coupled with haughty metal eyebrows threatening the territory of forehead just a bit too much, digging trenches. It would make me smile, if I hadn't been thinking about what constitutes as slavery seconds ago.
I give him a shrug. "Sometimes life happens to you when you're in the middle of something."
"Life happens, sure," he crosses his arms, "But it tends to happen differently to other people."
Right. I am lucky to be free enough to make my own decisions. To live by them. To see that it is possible. Because it is. There's just fewer comforts. Less baggage. Or, in my case, too much, so that lugging anything else around seems like overkill weight-training.
"It's always fun to mix things up a little. Bring excitement into the mundane routines of life and so on," I say this in a tone that makes obvious just how much bullshit I think I've just put into the air. It should be especially strange to him, since his routines probably consist of beating up the local upstarts who think it's funny to encroach upon someone else's territory. I suppose that's the problem when institutions have been there for so long that changing the status-quo seems impossible. That was called moderation once, wasn't it?
Not, that I think much of keeping territories and all that, but some things happen to be reality. That is, enough people believe it, so it must be true. It works a bit like values do.
"Mundane routines," he mutters, before raising his voice, even though it was clear that I'd be able to hear the mockery, "Anyway. Let's move out, before we get to wait for our next slot, which is next week. I'm not sure I want to be stuck on a ship with your mundane routines for that long."
"Of course," I nod and smile and give the command.
It's midday, a gentle wind that carries us with enough speed that we might even be capable of arriving on time after all. If I help us along a bit, by making the waves less choppy so they don't reduce our speed so much, no one says anything.
So ungrateful.
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