I retreated deep into the Honden as the sky darkened and the wind screamed past the entrance, bringing the snow in heavily. The shoji screen doors had been burnt away, leaving the entry way vast, inviting the anger of the storm inside. The snow had drifted into a wave at the door, falling into the room, and I sat with the fire burning on the stone in the separate room. The wind couldn't reach me, and the fire dampened the cold, but still I shivered. I imagined my life laid out before me in bright colours of red, gold, but here my life was black and white. In my mind's eye I could overlay the lushness of my room in Edo atop the lifeless stone of the half burnt Honden in the mountains, where I cowered away from a snow storm outside, but still I remained there, staring into the fire and wishing for the dawn to break. I was a shell of the radiance I was in Edo, but I held onto as much beauty as I could carry.
"When you came here, you tried to assert your dominance." Mori spoke to me from far away, crouched in the corner of the room. "Look at you now."
Sugai could not ever hear my thoughts, though he knew me, my body, my mind, my desires, as if he could. He knew his way around me in such a way that we barely exchanged words, felt no need to. This creature with me now knew everything that crossed my mind, yet spoke so much about nothing.
"I admit I am a shell of the Seishin you were hoping to meet." I opened myself only slightly, suggesting an invitation for her to offer solace.
"I was not hoping to meet you, Seishin, not after what I heard of you." Dismissal of my invitation. "But I think you are still important to Sugai. I hear him on your thoughts constantly, and so I know he is still important to you."
I moved with the swiftness and strength of a demon as I enclosed the front of her kimono in my fingers, pinned her against the wall, and pressed my body to hers. Our faces so close we narrowed our eyes to focus on each other. I looked down the tip of my nose at her, my anger coursing through me so quickly my body couldn't react. My face remained expressionless, but the strength I was fuelled with overpowered me. If there was ever a moment that I used my body as a man, I felt unconfused in that moment. There was fear in her, painted across her face, as she listened to the chaos of my mind she knew I was not simply putting on a show. She was not my audience. I did not aim to impress her.
"What I think about Sugai is my business. That is why it is in my head, and I haven't said it out loud." With my grip, I lifted her away from the wall only enough to make room to collide her with it again. "It would be in your best interest to stay out of my head."
Opening my hand swiftly, keeping my body in place against hers, keeping her trapped, I paused a moment before slinking away to the radius of warmth left by the fire. I heard the wind in the distance, from outside and all around us, the cry like an animal. Warmth left by her body lingered against me, permeating into my skin through the kimono, giving me life. I used my hands to try to brush it from myself, undeserving of any aid she provided. I had not decided if I would come to enjoy her company or continue to be threatened by her presence. I hadn't decided if I would live in harmony with her.
"I can't stop." I turned my gaze to her, over my shoulder, peering through the strands of my hair pretending I wasn't interested in what she had to say. "I can hear your mind as clearly as I can hear you speak. It is my curse. I can't chose what to hear and what not to."
I felt her regret seep out of her and into the atmosphere, thick and all consuming. Regret was an emotion that she wore well, and often, I realized. My heart felt a pang of ache for her, as much as my anger guided my actions, my heart had always guided my forgiveness. If her gift was to influence the way I felt as well, I was done for. I was a slave to her. But I felt her genuinely.
"Then do not speak of it. I know what my thoughts say."
I felt fingers, ghostly and gentle in my hair, running the length of a strand, and my skin shivered with excitement at the touch. She would know every way that he had touched me before, she would know everything by body would give away when he did. I felt I should have known she would use it all against me.
"That was my apology, Seishin." Her fingers ran the length of another strand of hair, and against my will my eyes fell closed to concentrate on the feeling of electricity coursing within me. "If you sleep, I will hear your dreams. But I will not speak of them."
A warning, as I laid to rest on the stone floor, close to the fire, engulfed in the scent of sulphur. My knees were close to my chest, and I smoothed the kimono over them with a flat palm to cover as much skin from the cold as I could, shrinking in my bones to accommodate. I allowed my eyes to close, feeling the presence of a body near me, enough for that night to pretend I would be safe. If I woke when the dawn broken, then I would become a stronger man.