The ronin chuckled and rose from the bench. “Took longer than I thought it would, though.” He swung his bow to his shoulder and raised a hand to the girl. “Sayonara, Yumeko-san. Maybe I’ll see you on the road sometime.”
“Okame-san,” Yumeko said, and held up her hand, where something glittered between her fingers. “Here.”
Puzzled, the ronin held out his hand, and she dropped a single copper kaeru into his palm. Frowning, the ronin glanced from the coin in his hand to the girl. “What’s this?” he asked.
Yumeko smiled and picked up her bowl. “A crumb.”
The ronin shook his head. “You’re a strange girl,” he muttered, though the coin vanished almost before he’d finished the sentence. “But hell, I won’t argue with free coin. Good luck on your travels, wherever you’re headed. You’re going to need it.”
With one last smirk at me, he turned and sauntered off. I watched until the solitary figure had vanished around a bend in the road before I sat down again.
“That was my money you just gave away so freely.”
She offered an apologetic grimace. “Gomen, Tatsumi. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can, I promise.”
That seemed unlikely, so I shrugged, resigned to never seeing that kaeru again. “It’s fine,” I said, retrieving my bowl. “I just hope you’re not planning free handouts to every ronin we meet from here to the Steel Feather temple.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even think about it. It just...seemed like the right thing to do.” She pushed back her hair, looking thoughtful. “Master Isao had a saying. He told me that the tiniest pebble, when dropped into a pond, will leave ripples that will grow and spread in ways we cannot comprehend.” She paused, then smiled to herself, shaking her head. “Of course, sometimes that worked against me whenever I played a very small prank on Denga or Nitoru. The consequences would get bigger and bigger, things would spiral out of control, a troop of monkeys would end up in the prayer hall, and then I’d be polishing the veranda for the next month.” Her face crinkled in a half grin, half grimace, before she sobered again. “Now that he’s gone,” she murmured, “I want to remember everything he taught me. Out here, I feel like I can easily lose sight of what’s important. I don’t want to forget the things that will keep me...grounded.”
It sounded as if she was about to say something else, but I didn’t press it. We finished our bowls in silence, then headed back to the road. As we began walking again, I noticed the crow, perched on the roof of the rest stop, watching us as we left.
* * *
“Why don’t you like ronin, Tatsumi?”
I gave Yumeko a puzzled look. Past the way station, the land had opened up into rolling hills with scattered farms and thatched houses between them. Rice terraces set into hillsides dotted the landscape, and specks of people milled between them, working the fields that were the backbone of the whole country. It was very quiet on the road Yumeko and I walked, until the unexpected question came out of nowhere.
She cocked her head at me. “The ronin. Okame-san,” she clarified. “He didn’t seem so bad, no different than anyone else, except he kept calling himself a dog. Why would he do that? Is it because he chases rabbits? Or has fleas?”
“Ronin have no masters,” I told her. “And no honor. They’re disgraced, so they wander the land doing whatever they can to survive.”
“I have no master,” Yumeko said. “Not anymore. Does that mean I’m disgraced, too?”
“No. You’re a peasant.”
“Peasants are different than ronin?”
“Peasants have no honor to begin with,” I said. “No one expects them to behave above their station. Ronin were once samurai and lost their status.”
“But, they’re still the same, aren’t they?” Yumeko’s voice was confused. “They just lost their master and their title. That shouldn’t change who they are inside.”
“Sometimes it does.”
“How?”
“The code is a samurai’s whole life,” I replied. “Honor defines them. Duty to their master, their family and their clan is everything. Once they lose that, they are nothing, worthless. And everyone sees them as such.”
“You keep saying ‘them,’” Yumeko pointed out. “But, you’re samurai, too, aren’t you, Tatsumi?”
I didn’t say anything to that, and thankfully, she didn’t press the question.
As the sun was beginning to set, we left the valley and entered another forest, which grew thicker as we continued. Bushes, logs and gnarled roots spilled onto the narrow road,