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Chapter 18: Kyubei

Summary:

“While a shadow cannot exist without its light they are not from the same realm.

Where life and death meet each other on the battlefield, they are separated by the Sanzu river.

But I hereby promise to hold your hand and vow to walk your path bathed by the sun even when our hair turns white.“

Chapter Text

There is a song the men in camp sing to keep morale. A song of hope. A wishful song. A song of longing and songs of missing. Mostly, they were songs of promises, vows they made back home. To spend their life with their loved ones. To marry the lover they left. To watch their children grow. To not have to send their own sons out. Songs that reminded them of the pleasures of life, and songs that reminded them of those left behind, their purpose and their vows.

He had heard them all. In variations of, on the march of their pass, in beat with their hearts. He had heard them sung in a whisper, to give courage, and he had heard them loudly, while intoxicated. He even heard them dying out, as life fled and the promise died, along with any wish and hope.

This was Kyubei’s reality. An uncertainty on his own life in this war crazed world where the lords decided if today they marched and who they fought. He imagined every river to be the mythical Sanzu, prepared every day like his last march was to come, and believed his flower to be the spiderlily. A crown without meeting its leaves, leaves without ever seeing the crown.

He wasn’t meant to be, he believed. A shadow of time that just drifted and lived, but wouldn’t be remembered. There was no promise, vow, or wish that Kyubei hadn’t heard and took as his own. Songs weren’t meant for him, who seemed to walk out of beat and didn’t understand the rhythm of life.

But if there is a song in his life, then Kyubei would name your heartbeat. For it was you that lit up his path, allowing him to find himself when the nights went on too long and he couldn’t find himself. You, who he thought of as his sun.

In a way, Kyubei could conclude that perhaps his march wasn’t a song, but a poem. Poetry of a vow, a poem of promise, and hope.

Kyubei wasn’t much of a singer. Neither was he a poet. He wasn’t much of a musician, nor a great literate master. He was just a shadow that happened to have fallen in love with the sun.

“Every word can be sung. If you find the beat,” you had told him when he shared this. And ever since Kyubei tried to find melody in every word you wrote to him. A rhythm, even if it didn’t rhyme. A melody, even if it didn’t fit the march. But always a loving tune, for Kyubei couldn’t imagine singing your words as anything else. He had his march to find what suited as your letters kept you close to him, despite the miles between in reality.

“To hold your hand and walk your path until our hair grows white and children old.”

The men in the army teased him for such a loving line, but it took off, the promise between him and you. It wasn’t a secret. Nor did he feel like he had exclusive rights to the words. It resonated with the crowd, but in different ways than it had between you and him. To the you from whom it came and to the him who kept it as a prayer, an encouragement of his own for the days when even the shadow might lose its colour.

“Before the Sanzu river I promise you.”

Even these words travelled, marching its ways to your ears and reaching your eyes as you read them in a letter. The people did the rest, singing words of which they didn’t know the origin of, other than knowing that it resonated with them. With their heart, their hopes, and their wishes.

Life and death might be a blade of a sword apart. The camp between home and battle miles. But with your words in his heart, and his promise in yours, there was no distance too great to let each other be heard.