Chapter 16: The Samurai in the Bookstore

By the time they got back to the Mercedes, Masaaki was looking somewhat nervous. “I shamed you again.”

“Yep.” Unlocking the car, she yanked open the door, tossed the bags into the back, then slid into the driver’s seat and jerked the car door shut behind her. She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and stared out at the parking lot beyond, so furious she was unable to speak.

Very carefully, Masaaki put his bags into the back, then slid into the passenger seat beside her and pulled the door shut with a soft thump. She heard the click as he buckled himself in.

Several minutes passed before he said, “I’m sorry, daimyō.”

Shannon just shook her head. After several more minutes of silence, she put the key into the ignition and started the engine. Then she backed the car out of the lot and got it headed back towards Eagle River. Beside her, thankfully, Masaaki said nothing.

He actually stayed in the car at the library when she told him to—which was good, because Shannon was pretty sure that they wouldn’t have allowed swords inside a government building—but, once he saw the dictionaries she brought back from inside the library and dropped into his lap, insisted on accompanying her on their next stop at the used book store.

“You say an entire room filled with these?” Masaaki cried, holding up a dictionary. “I will see it.” There was no, ‘Please let me come with you, daimyō,’ or ‘I’ll be good, daimyō,’ just, ‘I will do what I want.’

Shannon, who wanted to tell him to stay in the car, but who, while she was pretty sure she could lock him inside, remembered his fist going through the window of her Dodge Dart, reluctantly gave in to his sudden vehemence.

Shannon justified giving in by deciding to make this a dual-stop, since she knew the little used book store had a small bathroom in the back, and the next time Masaaki had an outburst, she didn’t want him dressed like a homeless bum. She was pretty sure that store managers would be less likely to toss them out on their ear if he was wearing something respectable, instead of a folded-over blanket and braided nylon rope.

Grabbing the kendogi and hakama from the backseat—because she really didn’t think she could put up with an argument about ‘restrictive, immodest clothing’ right then—she got out of the Mercedes and waited for Masaaki to follow her to the door of the bookstore before putting a hand to his chest and stopping him. “They’ve got a place for you to change into these in the back,” she said, holding up the garments. “Once you’re done, you are going to be utterly respectful and quiet in this place, do you understand? I am friends with the owner. Do not make an ass out of yourself. I’ll fucking lose it. You do not want to see me when I fucking lose it.”

Masaaki lowered his head in a respectful nod. “As you say, daimyō.”

She slapped the kendogi and hakama to Masaaki’s chest. “Okay. Let’s go.” She turned and wrenched the door open and led him inside.

Shannon headed toward the bathroom in the back, but as soon as Masaaki stepped through the door, he stumbled to a halt just inside the threshold. “Spirits of the ancestors,” Masaaki whispered, stopping inside the room to stare. Not willing to leave him alone at the entrance, Shannon gave him an irritated tug on his arm. “This way.” To the bookstore owner, a perpetually-happy blonde named Cindy, she said, “He’s gotta use your bathroom. He’s got a tournament coming up and we finally found him a gi.”

“Wow, Shannon?” Cindy asked, stepping from behind the counter. Her entire body glowed a soft green, with slightly darker green spiderwebs laced throughout, though extremely muted in comparison to Masaaki’s. Almost the difference between Easter-egg pastel and eye-searing neon. “You’re in a freakin’ T-shirt!”

“Started a new therapy that they put together out of Japan,” Shannon said. “In return, I’ve gotta show Masaaki, here, how to fit in over here in the States. Kind of a cultural exchange thing.”

“Oh wow,” Cindy said, “that’s really cool. By all means, bathroom’s in the back.”

“This way, Masaaki.” She tugged him again.

Masaaki stumbled after her, looking to be in some sort of shock. He kept staring up at the shelves, mouth agape, not even looking where she was leading him.

Shannon led him through the maze of bookshelves to the back of the building, where there was a small bathroom set into the far wall. “Okay,” she said, stopping. “You do know how to use a bathroom, right?”

Masaaki tore his eyes from the books and stared at her. “There’s hundreds of them.”

“Bathroom,” Shannon said. “Can you use it?”

Blinking at her, he said, “Your parents were not fond of cleaning up excrement.” Like he had absolutely no idea why she was asking him about bathrooms.

“Okay,” Shannon said, pushing the door wide for him. “Go in there, change—” she tore open the packaging on the two uniform pieces, then handed them back to him, “—and come out when you are decent.”

Still staring at the books, Masaaki numbly took the uniform and stepped inside. And, because he made no move to shut the door before he started untying his belt, Shannon flipped on the light and pulled the bathroom door shut for him.

Shannon heard the packaging rustle on the other side, followed by thumping and bumping against wall, toilet, and linoleum that began to make her anxious. She swallowed, hard, and tried to distract herself with a romance book off the shelf right beside the door, but all she could hear, see, or think about was the sound of fabric moving behind the door, and the appealing gold glow of the yatagarasu’s body as he made his contortions inside the room.

Stop spying on him, Shannon reminded herself, realizing that this must be what having X-Ray vision was like. She quickly went back to reading and re-reading the back cover of the romance novel.

Then Masaaki stepped from the room dressed all in pleated and folded blue and black cotton, swords tucked against his side, looking every inch the samurai, and Shannon’s mouth fell open. Her heart gave a few startled thumps as she watched him smooth down the gi along his front, snapping it tight under his sash.

“Oh.” She said, swallowing hard.

Masaaki didn’t seem to notice the way her heart was suddenly pounding through her ribcage. Instead, he was frowning down at the uniform he wore. “It is much different than what I wore before. Plainer. Perhaps someday, daimyō, we can afford to buy me some embroidered silk?” he asked, only then lifting his silver-brown eyes to look at her hopefully.

Oh yes. She could afford that.

Mouth open, Shannon just nodded.

Masaaki frowned at her. “Are you feeling all right? You look pale.”

“Fine,” she managed.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re feeling the need to feed again, aren’t you?”

“No,” Shannon blurted. “No, not at all.”

“Don’t lie to me, daimyō,” he growled. “It’s dangerous if you walk around hungry.”

“Not lying,” she squeaked, feeling herself flush. “Not hungry.”

He peered at her suspiciously a long moment, then grunted and returned his attention to his kendogi. “I do like it. Very easy to move in.” Without warning, he snapped out a kick over the nearby bookcase, then brought his leg down again with a satisfied nod. He shoved the wad of blanket, rope, and tennis shoes at her. “It will do.”

“You look…” Shannon swallowed, trying to find the words. “Better.”

“Thanks.” He walked up to her and examined the section of romance novels where Shannon was standing. Randomly pulling one from the shelf, he saw the partially-clad, pale-skinned woman draped over the hunky Native American on the front cover, then made a startled sound and stared down at it, putting distance between it and his face in much the same manner one would avoid a snake. Then, very slowly, he put it back on the shelf.

Clearing his throat, his eyes continuing to scan the entwined lovers emblazoned on the spines of the shelf, he said, “Somehow, I don’t think this is the history section, daimyō.”

Shannon, who was still staring at the elegant movement of his body when he wasn’t naked or dressed in a cut-up blanket, felt herself flush. She hurriedly put the romance novel back on the shelf, coughing embarrassedly. “No. Uh. History is this way.” She quickly turned and led him to the history section.

Immediately, she was rewarded with Masaaki’s gasp of appreciation. He fell into a squat in front of the shelf and pulled a large illustrated history of the world book from the top. She watched him as his eyes began to scan the pictures of war—lots of war, she realized—agriculture, technology, culture, and architecture. His fingers moved across the pages, flipping through much too fast to be actually reading, soaking in the pictures. After a few minutes, he paused, hunching forward, no longer flipping randomly through the book. It was a picture of a cherry tree, in full blossom, over a little covered bridge with a pond. Right beside it was the heading, JAPAN. He wasn’t reading the title, however, he was looking at the tree. She saw something fall onto the page, and it took Shannon a startled moment to realize his breathing was irregular.

Gingerly, Shannon squatted beside him. “You want that one?”

He nodded.

Shannon glanced at the shelves, then pulled out a few more that weren’t heavy reading and added them to a pile beside his leg. “Anything else you’re interested in? History and…?”

Masaaki seemed to steady himself, then slowly closed the book and put it atop the pile. “Japan,” he said softly. He wiped his eyes before he looked at her. “The shogun. Weaponry advances. Kendo.”

“Okay, let’s look.” She wandered the shelves for several minutes, Masaaki close at her side, before she found a couple mostly-picture books on Japan, and one on Japanese history. She added those to the collection they were forming, then went looking for martial arts instruction. She grimaced when, upon seeing the three dozen books on karate, jujitsu, kendo, judo, kenjutsu, Tai Chi, yoga, Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu, kickboxing, sumo, and a bunch of other martial arts instruction manuals, Masaaki wrapped his arms around the entire shelf and took them all.

“We have enough,” he said, after that.

“Indeed,” she said, trying not to contemplate just how much of her parents’ money she was about to spend. It actually took three trips to get all the books to the front counter.

“Wow,” Cindy said, looking Masaaki up and down. “A martial artist, eh?”

“Samurai,” Masaaki replied.

“Oh, of course.” Cindy winked at Shannon, then started ringing up the books. Three hundred and forty dollars later, they were all loaded in the back of the Mercedes and Masaaki was flipping through a manual on karate as Shannon drove them to the grocery store.

“We need to get back home soon,” she said, as they pulled into the parking-lot. The sun was already starting to set on the horizon, and she was getting dizzy with the need for sleep. “I’m so tired I feel like puking. What about you?”

“I don’t need to sleep,” Masaaki said distractedly. He was angling the karate manual up so that he could still read it in the dying sunlight.

She sighed. “Well, that’s nice. Don’t need to sleep, don’t need to eat. Whatever do you do with your time?”

“Study,” Masaaki said, turning a page, looking utterly absorbed.

Watching him for a long moment, Shannon realized he was serious. Finally, she said, “If I enroll you in a few of those classes, will you promise not to stab anyone?”

He made a grunt.

“What does a grunt mean, Masaaki?”

“I said yes!” he muttered, looking up at her for the first time.

Shannon considered. “Fine. I will enroll you. It’ll give you something to do while I’m in my other classes.”

“You will take them with me,” Masaaki said, returning his attention to the book. “It is unseemly for a warlord to be untrained in the arts of war.”

Shannon’s mouth fell open. “I’m going to college. I don’t have time to take martial arts lessons.”

“College?”

“University,” Shannon said. “They’re teaching me to be a nurse.”

Immediately, Masaaki stiffened. “You will not be a nurse.”

Shannon’s eyes narrowed and she was about to tell him how far he could take that male chauvinistic bullshit and shove it up his ass when he followed that with, “The scent of blood will often trigger a newly-awakened vampire to strike, in the early years.”