Gōketsu Yoshio, a giant of a man with arms like tree trunks and a beard that could hide a small deer, looked down at Hazō in barely-suppressed fear. His wife Shizue, a young woman withered before her time by a wasting disease, looked up at him with a poker face. Their daughter, Karen, hid behind her father's legs as if they were a palisade, peeking out warily at the deadly chakra beast prowling outside her village.
It was not the kind of welcome he'd hoped for when he visited the Sacred Ibis, an old, ramshackle tavern in the poor quarter which the owners steadfastly refused to abandon no matter how Yoshio's half-brother urged them to move to the Gōketsu estate. (Based on the sign outside, an ibis was a kind of lizard with a leathery mane.)
"W-Welcome to our humble home, Lord Gōketsu," Yoshio stuttered in a low baritone that would probably have caused a small earthquake if the man ever sang. "How m-may I serve you?"
Hazō suppressed a sigh. "There is no need for concern. I'm just here to talk to you about your daughter."
"Oh," Shizue said quietly, with effort. "This is about the…"
"It is," Hazō said eventually, when Shizue showed no sign of wanting to finish her sentence. "I apologise for allowing it to happen."
His bow was deep, deep enough that he didn't have to see their faces as the subject rose to the forefront of their minds, especially Karen's. Some part of him wished it could stay that way forever.
"Please raise your head!" Yoshio nearly screamed. "You have nothing to apologise for, my lord!"
The reaction seemed over-the-top at first, but thinking about it, Hazō strongly suspected that the traditional response to a civilian witnessing their clan head's humiliation was summary execution. Still, there was no way around it. For failing to anticipate the risks involved with an institution he'd built himself, Hazō deserved to be humiliated. If the abuse by an authority figure had a tenth of the impact on these kids that it'd had on Mari…
Hazō raised his head.
"But I do," he said heavily. "There is something I've started to understand over the past few months, clansman, and that is the reason a clan head has absolute power. It isn't a privilege that comes with the bloodline. It isn't a reward for doing the hardest job. It is the minimum requirement to make me able to carry out my duty.
"By adopting you into my clan, I've taken responsibility for you. I've promised that when you fall, it will be my hand that reaches out to help you up. When you make a mistake, I will be the one to deal with the consequences. And when you're attacked, I will be the one to defend you.
"Your daughter is as much of a Gōketsu as you or me. I have a duty to protect her with all the power of a clan head, and I have failed in that duty. It's as simple as that, and the fact that I can build walls with the wave of a hand or make laws with a few spoken words doesn't change it one bit.
"I can't undo what's been done. No ninja has the power to do that."
Ino had likened memory erasure to groping around inside the raw flesh of someone's brain with a pair of forceps. She'd refused to say, presumably in the name of clan secrets, whether that meant fulfilling his request was impossible, too dangerous, or merely too difficult.
"But I can give you the apology you deserve, and I can make amends."
As the three civilians stared at him, dumbstruck, he reached out and placed a heavy pouch of ryō on the saké-stained table in front of him. The thud seemed to jerk them back to their senses.
The two adults looked at each other and exchanged several intense seconds of couple telepathy.
"We can't possibly accept this, my lord," Yoshio finally said. Shizue nodded firmly.
"Can't you?" Hazō asked. "It's your right to refuse, but in the end, the money is an apology to Karen. She is the one I failed."
He looked down at the girl, who continued to stare at him in silence. There was less fear in it now, though, and more curiosity. While the adults were stuck on the fact that the tiniest offence here could be a death sentence for them (living in the village proper, they had yet to internalise that that simply wasn't the Way of Gōketsu), Karen seemed like she had the flexibility of mind to understand that she didn't understand—not because it was an adult matter, but because the world was different to how she'd thought it was. Hazō smiled on the inside. There
was meaning in educating civilians, no matter how the other clans sneered.
"I've done what I can about it," Hazō said, "and I've been careful about not making this a public visit, but even the Sage's power couldn't kill a rumour. If Karen becomes known as a victim of rape, there will be those who call her damaged goods, and I've had it explained to me what that can mean for a young woman's prospects. If you don't want that money for yourselves, call it her dowry for when she comes of age."
More couple telepathy.
"We would be honoured," Yoshio said, relaxing a little. "I have no words with which to repay such generosity, my lord."
"There's no need," Hazō said. His gaze shifted downwards. "Karen, I have something to say to you too."
The girl continued to watch him warily, but she straightened up a little bit. Briefly, she met his eyes, then urgently looked down again.
"There's someone at the Gōketsu estate who went through the same thing as you. She's an adult now, and very wise, and she says that if you ever need someone to talk to, her door is always open to you. As your clan head, I promise that you can trust her. Ask for Gōketsu Mari."
The gesture of vulnerability involved in that, for Mari to bare her greatest trauma to strangers on her own initiative, had staggered him. If this was the shape Mari's personality was going to take as she finally went beyond her "playful manipulator" holding pattern and began to create something new, she was going to become a new kind of power to be reckoned with. Hazō had no words either, not for how proud he was.
"My secretary has your names," Hazō said. "If you ever need help with anything, come to the main estate and you'll get it, no questions asked. I will review the procedures we have at the school, but for now, I promise you that every new teacher will be thoroughly vetted, and all complaints—even minor complaints—will be taken seriously. A Gōketsu doesn't flinch away from the truth, even if that truth is hard to say or hard to hear."
"Thank you, my lord," Yoshio said, his voice finally somewhat even.
"We've been so rude," Shizue croaked after a silence that was just a breath short of awkward. "Tea, your lordship? Something stronger?"
Hazō shook his head. For someone who'd been a teacher a bare handful of months, Ikenaga had been a busy sexual predator, and Karen's family was only the first on Hazō's list.
"Thank you for the generous offer, but I need to get going. It's going to be a very long day."
-o-
You have received 4 XP.
-o-
Your appointment with Ino, followed by the visits, took up the entire day and all of your spoons. The rest of the plan has yet to be implemented.
-o-
What do you do?
Sunday will be an interlude, so voting closes on Wednesday 29th of July, 12 p.m. London time.
