the streets. Here a middle-aged man swept the dirt from the street in front of his shop, and there two young women were carrying baskets laden with dirt-covered vegetables. There was a fish vendor with a head like an ax who was selling fried eel on sticks to a group of children, all of whom clamored and pushed at one another to be the first-served. In the alleyway next to his stood a woman with a parasol. Her robes were a pale mauve.
Kouje stopped our horse in front of what I judged to be a noodle house. The smells emanating from it were enough to make my knees weak, even though I’d eaten my fill of rabbit earlier that morning. I felt my stomach give a traitorous growl. Behind me, Kouje dismounted, and I found myself hoping he hadn’t heard, that he wouldn’t think me ungrateful for his efforts.
“Perhaps I might try to strike a better bargain for my formal clothing,” he said, “if you are ever again to eat something besides rabbit meat.”
“Oh, no,” I protested. “I couldn’t. Really. It’s best just to have shoes, as you said, and not to waste money on such things.” I didn’t know how long a man could go on eating rabbit once a day, but I vowed that I would do it until our situation improved, or at least until I learned to catch my own fish.
Kouje was wise, but he was also tenderhearted when he did not have to be, and at these times it was up to me to preach sense. We would need sturdy shoes to travel as far as we were going. It was hardly so urgent that I be spoiled with hot noodles.
“I did not mean to suggest we waste money, Mamoru,” Kouje said, and I was pleased that he’d remembered to use my given name. It was still a surprise to hear it sound in his voice, but one that I would overcome soon enough. He held out his hands, and I took them, getting down off the horse.
It was rather a relief to be on my own two feet once more. I resisted the urge to rub my backside, endeavoring instead not to stand up too straight, as Kouje cautioned me earlier. Those who worked all day long for their living tended to stoop, as though a great yet invisible weight bore down upon them, the memory of their physical duties. I could manage stooping well enough, but I noticed that none of the women in this village wore their hair in one long braid, but rather kept it pinned up underneath a wrap of cloth, or looped back under as a bun. I touched my own braid with a sudden self-consciousness. Perhaps I would be better served to imitate the women, that I might blend in with our surroundings all the more.
Kouje had tied his own hair back in the simple style I’d seen worn by the tradesmen who visited the palace on occasion. He’d got his hair to behave for the most part, no longer kinked from years’ worth of wearing war braids, and I wondered whether he’d doused it with river water that morning, before I’d woken up.
“Come,” Kouje said, offering me a smile I did not recognize, until I realized that it was a companionable smile, the smile of equals. Without any warning, Kouje was playing a role, and I was expected to play along.
On sudden inspiration, I took his arm.
“One can learn everything there is to know in a noodle house at noon,” I said, “because at that hour, it is only all the people too important to work that frequent the place.”
“That is from the story of Aoi the Underhanded,” Kouje said, naming one of the legends of a slippery trickster who amassed his wealth from the misfortunes of others. He was more of a highwayman than a man to be respected or immortalized in tale or song, but as children my friends and I had enjoyed his stories best of all. If Kouje knew them better than I did, it was only because he was the one who’d told them to us, so many times over that we’d grown sick of them.
I didn’t know what had made me think of it, since they were stories for children, and I was no longer a child. But as we entered the shop, it was immediately clear that Aoi the Underhanded’s sage advice was as timeless as that of any mountain