[D7 LE] Hunting in the Dark

[Shiba Jiro]

He nods. "Okay. No, I was a bit concerned about the gesture because it was not dissimilar from bowing to one of much higher status. But, yes..."

He moves to place her hand on his forehead.

"... that is a good sentiment. I like it."

He smiles gently before lowering their hands. And then it snaps.

"I am glad that you are not unhappy with the match. Though... I definitely have flaws as we all do. Failures and issues..."

He breaths in to steady himself.

"I am sorry, I am about to monologue, which is not good for communication, but i think if I don't get this all out in one idea it will be both worse and harder."

"Feelings are a difficult thing. They push us around, we struggle back, sometimes they win. I have felt strongly towards someone here. And I suspect I'll feel that way for some time. And I think it's only fair to you to know that I am struggling with that."

"I want to be an honest husband even if I don't know if I can be a good one. I will care, and I will work, and I will try each day. You will be the one person that I dedicate my life to, and I truly, deeply hope that it becomes love one day. Right now I like you, appreciate you, and want to support you however you need. But emotions, being unruly things, need to be worked through."

"I really don't want to hurt you. But I feel like lying about it will only be worse. This is a failure on me, and I hope that you know that. But I can say with certainty that I don't love anyone romantically, but I want to find that with you. This is an obstacle I need to conquer towards that end."

He lowers himself to bow in apology.

"And so I offer my deepest apologies for my failures thus far even though you likely were unaware of them. I really hope that I have not broken anything between us."

[Isawa Natsuko]

Well, she'd been warned a monologue was coming, so it was easier than usual to simply listen. Sometimes there were expectations that you'd jump into the conversation at some point, and then it got awkward as one person kept talking, waiting for someone else to add in.

This was a whole different sort of awkward.

Natsuko remains still as Jiro's words pause, letting the silence grow until the soft drip-drip of condensed fog be heard.

"I have no family to make things difficult if you shame me, Shiba-san, though those who arranged this match might. I do not know." Her hands clasp before her, sleeves draping to hide them. "I knew it was possible this match would be unwelcome because you had hopes for another. I did not think that would begin here though...I..." Her voice remains the quiet, barely inflected alto it has always been, but somehow sounds as if it's receding, even as she stands entirely still.

She takes a step back, turning to watch the fog eddying softly around them. "I suppose that fundamentally changes nothing. Duty is as it has always been, and I want to meet my daughter."

"I think...I have found all I need tonight. We should begin the walk back."

[Shiba Jiro]

"Please wait. I..." he says, the hurt really hitting home. "Please."

[Isawa Natsuko]

Her head tilts slightly. "You have the lantern, I don't plan to outpace you."

[Shiba Jiro]

That felt like he was holding her hostage. He moves along with her.

"I don't want what I feel towards someone else to exist. I want you to be the center of my world. Feelings change. People evolve. I... the paintings of our daughter changed things for me. It led to me thinking of you as the mother of our children."

He breaths in heavily.

"I want to grow to love you, nobody else has ever been that to me. I have not loved someone else, I have not wanted to love someone else. Maybe I should not have said anything. But you deserve honesty and effort. I don't know if you can ever feel that way towards me after my admission, but it will not stop me from trying."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"I do not know if I am capable of love." She walks carefully, socks green with vegetation stains, hands remaining in her sleeves. "I would like to think so, but I do not have enough practice at it to say if I will love you in any future whether or not you spoke of this." Her words are quiet, pausing as she stops to orient on the path from time to time. "I think I love my...our...daughter. Or at least the idea of her. So maybe I am capable"

"But what we feel never mattered so long as our actions were dutiful. I...thought I could offer in gratitude what I might not reach for in desire, but..." Another pause, her eyes flicking up to the glow of the moon on fog through a break in the trees. "It is harder to feel grateful now, though that is as much as I can say for certain of my feelings."

Pausing, she turns to look at him, "does it matter so much that I retreat again to duty? That is where we began, and it was not so hard to contemplate."

[Shiba Jiro]

"I have taken you for granted and hurt our connection, our relationship. But it is so strong, whatever that connection is, that we both believe that our daughter will be. We have felt and sensed it together. That is not nothing. That is something that other people simply do not get. We have that."

He stares at the ground while walking.

"I want to meet our daughter too. Right now she is a possibility, and I imagine a very strong one for us to be touched together like we were. I feel like she wants to be born. I want her to grow up in a home filled with love. I want her to have siblings in that home."

He takes a deep breath and looks at her.

"I failed to control my emotions towards another, even while we were betrothed. I refused to see the harm I was potentially doing, willfully and ignorantly. And I am so very sorry for breaking your trust. You deserve better, I will be better. I will struggle the rest of my life to be worthy of you and would still consider it a life worth living if I died trying, but never regaining that trust."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"She exists because children are a part of the duties of marriage. I do not not think our feelings about it matter unless they include defying that duty." Reaching up, she shifts the satchel threatening to slip from her shoulder. "I have never intended to defy it, despite your offer to support such a thing."

"She was revealed in a devotion to Kisshoten--a boon of the fortune and the void that I treasure."

"All the rest?" There is a pause of several breaths. "I do not know that emotions can be called up or banished at will, or there would be far less fuss about love within a match. We control our actions. My emotions are unsettled and confusing. My actions? I will need to meditate on this. My...impression... of how things are is shaken, but I do not know entirely what that means." Apologies are neither accepted nor refused as Natsuko continues on their path in the muffling fog.

[Shiba Jiro]

"I don't know what it means for you. I know what it means for me. You are right, our actions are our own. I acted callously, and dishonorably. Whatever conclusion you come to... I will submit to your judgement of me. There will be no arguments, secrets, or avoiding facing responsibility."

He follows, close behind, feeling like he had defeated himself. And he wondered how sharp a wakizashi was, how much that might hurt. It felt like that would be excessive, but rejoining the wheel would probably hurt less than what he felt now for what he finally realized he had done to her.

[Isawa Natsuko]

"I do not sit in judgement, Shiba-san. Our slate is no longer clean, but neither are we allowed to stop writing." She stops and turns to look at him, unfastening the little yin netsuke from her satchel.

"I still ask only for patience. But...I think you need that as much as I do." Holding out the darker, yin carving, she continues, "I think we should trade. And I think...I should ask what it means to have feelings for someone that...that interfere, but are not love."

[Shiba Jiro]

His chest tightens a bit when she unhooks uin, bet when she asks to trade, it is relieved a bit. Unfastening yang from his own obi, he exchanges with her and replaces.

She... doesn't really understand it. But knows something is wrong instinctively.

"You are right. I do need patience. But it is difficult. I don't know if you feel it as strongly as I do or maybe you feel it differently? But I am reacting physically. Feeling muscles tighten in anger, breath becoming more difficult, heart pounding in anxiety. And so I am driven towards resolution when I should be patient to allow you to process, so I will."

He can't meet her eyes without his own revealing sadness and shame. He doesn't know if she'll read that, but he doesn't avoid it.

"Infatuation. It is not love. It is attraction, romantic in nature, but not the same as love. As you said, you can't always control emotions, but you can control your actions. I might be drawn aesthetically or intellectually to someone else, but acting on it is the true issue. I pursued my infatuation, because I was not considering what it would do to you, not really. The feeling does not interfere, but poor decisions based on that feeling do."

"I made poor decisions. If all I had done was feel a different way, I would not have shared that because feelings are not bad, they are just natural. But I pursued and that causes interference, something I refused to recognize before. It hadn't stopped me from spending time with you and getting to know you. But I think it stopped me from allowing more to grow between us. Until yesterday, I believed it would be a pleasant and positive experience to spend my life with you. But, during our painting experience, I found something that I wanted with you. I always wanted to be attentive and pleasant and supportive, but I suddenly understood that I wanted more than that. But I had been pursuing my infatuation already and the issue became so much more confusing to me."

"And so I admitted my actions to you, and with your reaction came actual understanding of consequences I had been ignoring and repressing. Now I feel ashamed and recognize my previous ignorance and cannot undo what I have done. I can only move forward and carry my failure. And hope that I have not done irreparable damage to our connection with my actions. That is what having interfering feelings means to me."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"All emotion is grounded in physical reaction. I am told that deep breaths are useful," she offers, taking time to attach the carving to her satchel as a fastener, he own breaths coming slow and long. "Why are you angry?"

"You wanted more...after yesterday, but you said you hoped for more previously. Was that simply...polite? And pursued a romantic connection at the same time..." It's a lot of pieces to hold onto and put together, but that is more or less what the ishiken is trained to do. There are parts of the picture that are certainly distressing.

But her demeanor shows little of any such distress, her blue gaze open and direct, her tone steady, though her fingers bear the imprint of the netsuke's carvings from holding it so tightly. "Did you...hope the romantic connection would also be, more? Does infatuation become love, or something else when pursued? It sounds like a pillow book, though they always sigh of love, asking Benten to bless such pursuit."

[Shiba Jiro]

"I am angry at myself, for being foolish, for hurting you and us," he says. But takes longer, slower breaths as she said.

"I was not just being polite. I always wanted to have a more from our marriage. But the paintings, the images of a future daughter, that strengthened the hope I had. I was not dishonest about that. All that I said to you I truly meant and felt. But I was being selfish, naïve and cruel to you by also seeking another romantic relationship, with someone that I couldn't really have a long term relationship with in the first place." Honesty... that was the only path forward. It would hurt, both of them, but he had to do it to be able to recover any sort of trust, and he didn't even know if he could.

A few slow breaths.

"The other connection... I did not expect it to be anything more than what it was, infatuation. And that was all it was. Two people that enjoyed each others company with no expectations of commitment or devotion. I did not look for Benten to favor that relationship."

The breaths were helping, so he took a few more.

[Isawa Natsuko]

"Cruel. Hmm." After a moment she nods, turning to continue off a bit to the side of their path. "I know I am not an easy match. The Crane train their children from birth to be lovely and harmonious spouses. Easy to trade on."

"I did not lie, I expected a guardian. More, I expected one who would seek elsewhere for that caring connection they could hardly find if dutifully guarding their ward. Maybe with someone they had already found love with. And that is just how it works. I could accept that." she leads to a clearing with a jumble of stones as if knowing where it would be. Everything is damp with the fog, which doesn't seem to phase her at all as she hops up to sit on one, kicking sandals to the soft loam and pulling her knees up beneath her chin.

"The first was wrong. It sounded like the second was wrong too, and I find..found myself trying to figure out how to adjust, but I hoped I could learn." Her voice never wavers from that calm matter-of-fact tone, but she wraps her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees, an orange stone atop the grey-green one. "I feel as heavy as these stones. I could settle into the earth and blink up at the passing sun for days. I don't know why it should feel so heavy to simply find that I could be wrong about being right in the first place."

"We have a lifetime to continue adjusting, but I could accept being a stone, knowing you wanted..." she pauses, "something else. It's just hard to hear...maybe think I heard...that you might find a way to treasure stone, when you meant that you still planned to seek out the wind and waves of the shore." He had never mentioned a name. Natsuko plucked words from the local topography that might be entirely too apt, even so.

[Shiba Jiro]

He nods at the analogies and tries to keep them straight among the storm of feelings and thoughts. He breathes slowly and deliberately. And then feels worse because he had done this without realizing what he had done. He could not read her very well.

He moves and picks up her sandals, holding them until she wishes to come back down from her perch. Standing and looking at her from arms reach.

"You... the stone... You are correct, I did and I still very much do wish to treasure the stone. But I still sought to enjoy the shore regardless. Because I wanted everything I could have. But I kept returning to the stone, and enjoying its presence, but not committing to remaining with it because I didn't understand how it confused the stone and I wanted something I should not have. It was selfish and lazy. I will not visit the shore anymore."

He kneels down before her, not quite as tall on his knee as she was, compacted as she was atop the stone. He rested his hand on it.

"You likely don't have much trust in my words anymore. I wouldn't blame you for that. But, I am going to be by the stone from now on. I am going to treasure it. If it is only ever a stone, I will be happy, because it will be the stone I have chosen. But if the stone ever wants to transform, ever wants to be a different shape, it can tell me and I will help it. I will sweat, cry and break myself to carry that stone if it wants to be somewhere else. And I hope that in time I will be strong enough to carry the stone easier, and perhaps it will be lighter itself, hopefully both. It is the stone I was given, but I am not just accepting it anymore... I am choosing it, and claiming it as my stone. It is not a burden, it is a gift and opportunity that I failed to see the full value of."

He tried to smile, but he was not happy enough with himself to actually feel it.

[Isawa Natsuko]

"It is so much. ...I hope we can try to...treasure one another in time. Even if that may not end up looking like the stories. Perhaps more like a tree growing around a stone than...than all of that." She glances down to where he kneels. "Your knees will soak through. And...there is room on the stones to sit."

She looks up through the swirling fog, wondering if this is anything at all like what a ningyo might see as the water swirls above them. "It sounds strange to say, forsake the beach. The example is clumsy, I suppose. But trust...yes. it might be harder than it was before I knew."

"Is not the beach enticing? Warm in ways a stone is not? Why would you chose to set it aside, when...honestly...there are always those whose matches are a duty to perform while they find their joys elsewhere. Without open scandal, much is accepted." She pauses, turning her gaze back to him. "I will remain grateful that you are not a guardian, regardless. I will reach for the children who might teach me what family means, regardless. Without any guarantee of more...will you be miserable?"

[Shiba Jiro]

"I don't care about my knee. I prefer to face and be near you. It's more important than my comfort."

He shakes his head, denying the idea that he might be miserable. He thinks for a moment, considering how he thinks he may feel in the future, moving to pinch the bridge of his nose. After a few moments he looks to her once more.

"I won't be miserable. Certainly, I am going to hate myself for making the decisions I have made. But nothing about you will make me unhappy. The fact that you will enable me to meet my daughter... that makes me happy."

He looks down to the stone she is on top of. His hand moving to rest there again, feeling the moisture collected on the surface.

"The beach is nice but I will be fine without it, and the fact that I visited will always haunt me anyway, hurting me for knowing what I should not. I made the poor decision to go when I had just found the perfect stone, even if I didn't realize it yet. I should have been tending to my stone instead."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"Hating yourself sounds a bit miserable." She says quietly, reaching to rest cold fingertips on his hand on the stone. "Perhaps it is easier, having had no expectation of Benten's attention to...just...wait."

"You have known for however long, that the fortune touched your line. Such expectations." Her hand returns to fidget with the little yang carving. What did it meant to bring more of that to her life, self, actions? Looking up she says, "We should return though. Tell me of the things that move you as we walk? What are you passionate about?"

[Shiba Jiro]

"It will probably fade with time. A person can't hate themselves forever, I hope," he says, smiling at the light touch.

"Of course. Let's head back," he agrees. Setting the lantern on the ground, he moves to offer the sandals he had picked up from the ground and tucked under his arm. He holds them out individual, proffering each for a foot so she need not walk barefoot.

"Things that move me? I think that the strongest is creating. Making things, whether something small or something complex. The entire process calls to me."

[Isawa Natsuko]

She slips into the sandals, thumping lightly to the ground. "That does make sense for an artist. We have something a lot less tangible to work on making, I suppose."

"For that, I need to learn. Tell me about your childhood as we walk?" She asks. Something small, and mundane, and full of information to try and connect to, or imagine for those future children. "I want to be able to...offer more of what you had, growing up, than what I did."

The walk back is less quiet than the walk out, if more careful, like carrying cracked bowls and trying not to spill.

/fade to recollections?