#Hodogaya-juku

[bearbench-img]

ホドガヤジュク

保土ヶ谷宿（ほどがやじゅく）は、東海道五十三次の4番目の宿場町で、現在の神奈川県横浜市保土ケ谷区に位置しています。江戸から数えて最初の坂越えである「箱根越え」の前に位置し、旅人たちが一息つく宿場町として栄えました。また、保土ヶ谷宿は東海道と鎌倉街道が交差する交通の要衝でもあり、多くの旅人や物資が行き交いました。宿場町には本陣や脇本陣、旅籠などが立ち並び、門前町としてもにぎわいました。近くには有名な景勝地である程ヶ谷の富士見坂（現在の横浜新道）があり、多くの旅人が富士山を眺めながら旅の安全を祈ったと言われています。

手抜きイラスト集

[sabraeal]

Get Up Eight, Chapter 4

River of Silk | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Obiyuki Week, Day 1 Envy | Kindness

The sun hangs low in the morning sky, but still Hodogaya-juku is choked with travelers, each of them waiting for the soldiers to check their travel permits. Obi leans, squinting into the glare, but all he gets out of it is the bridge’s rail digging hard into his hip. He’d seen a print of this place once, a ukiyo-e done by one of the masters, but somehow it had failed to captured this, the endless non-movement of waiting as the day’s heat builds at his back.

There’s no soba shop either. At least not one open this early in the morning. Which means there’s no pretty serving girls either, no fans fluttering alluringly in the air as they call out to men passing by.

Okyakusama, come inside. They are not yujo, so there would be no promises to follow, but their demure gazes are meant to be as exciting as a taste of skin. You’ve never tasted such pleasures as we have for you.

A laugh huffs out of him. Not likely, in a place like this. The soba might be filling, might scratch hunger’s itch on a long day, but even with hardly more than a few mon in his pocket, Obi’s had better. And with ojou-san’s ryo...

Well, the best was yet to come. Last night had taught him that well enough. All he needs to do it let himself enjoy it.

Easier said than done, when all that’s behind his eyes is that pale expanse of skin, a round bead of water making it’s agonizing journey over it’s curves--

You look very much like a samurai in those clothes... 

His lips thin. He’s not being paid to have such thoughts, and all they’ve done so far is make him all-too aware of her body next to him, to the exact temperature of the air between them.

He doesn’t see so much as feel ojou-san squirm at his side. With each shuffling step they take toward the checkpoint, she curls even more tightly into herself, as if by making herself a snail, she might somehow be overlooked by the shogun’s men.

She is not alone. There is tension in every traveler these days, the world more uncertain than it’s ever been. From here he cannot see the mon on the soldier’s haori, but this is not Kyoto, not a hotbed of conflicting loyalties free to run rampant outside of the shogun’s indifferent gaze. No, this is well within Edo’s shadow, and if the men did not wear the triple hollyhock --

Well, things would be a lot worse than he remembered.

For the fifth time in as many minutes, a slender hand rises, fidgeting with the edge of her covering. He can’t cage his sigh this time.

“You’re only drawing attention to it, ojou-san,” he tells her, careful to keep his gaze ahead, to keep himself from chasing that glimpse of crimson he knows lies underneath.

Her hand snaps back down, as if he’d slapped it. Ojou-san is so careful to keep her gaze lowered, to keep her posture suitably deferential, but he can see the displeased bow of her mouth. A good scolding is building behind those thinned lips.

He shouldn’t find that so enticing, but well, here he is.

“What is our plan?” she asks instead, voice soft yet steely. He likes that about her; ojou-san may seem quiet, may play a little mouse, but beneath that mask is a vixen. Her scarf may cover her markings, but she is a kitsune through and through, meant to enthrall wayward ronin to her side.

“Plan?” Maybe he should offer to count her tails.

He bites back a smile. That would be a quick way to feel the kiss of her palm.

“What are we going to tell the dōshin?” Her gaze lifts, soft and bright as jade, and his heart gives a traitorous pound. There’s no need for this; rare does not mean special, not for the likes of him

“The dōshin?” His laugh is far too raw; she flinches, sending that soft green scuttling away. “We’ll be lucky if we see one outside of a tea house. No samurai worth his sword would be seen on gate duty.”

With a stubborn jut of her chin, she insists, “You have something to tell them, don’t you? That we are -- are siblings--”

His brows lift, giving an exaggerated sweep between them. “Siblings?”

“Cousins,” she corrects, firm. “Or maybe -- husband and wife?”

He blinks, only a blank buzzing between his ears as he watches the blush blossom on her cheeks, as the palest pink tints the tantalizing skin at her throat.

“Wife?” he laughs. Oh, ojou-san had been sheltered indeed if she could not see how a single glance would give the lie to that. She wore cotton the finest money could buy, and he --

Well, okusama had told him he might as well be naked for the amount of thread between him and the elements. No man -- not even the chonin -- would believe that they came as a pair.

“Why do I need a plan, ojou-san?” He shrugged a shoulder, the lapel of his kimono rubbing over the knobby spur of it. “The truth is fine enough.”

Teeth as pale as pearl sink into those lips, not just thoughtful but -- worried. Ha, he had known there was something strange about this cousin story.

“Y-yes,” she agrees, stuttering over the lie. It’s easy to see, now that he knows where to look. “That should be -- be fine.”

Traveling is easier outside of the post stations.

The cobbles are not quite as worn, of course, and some of the stones have ceded back to the earth through the long years, but the crowd is thinner the longer they walk. It’s not to last, Obi knows, not with Tosuka-juku only a few ri away, but it’s nice to stretch his legs, to let ojou-san fall away from him as he falls into his natural stride.

Despite the tight press of the long grass and the pale trunks that spear up from the earth along the road, salt hangs heavy on the air. It’s a reminder, a warning: just because it cannot be seen, the ocean is never far away. They may have left the houses that squatted shoulder-to-shoulder behind them, trading the sight for lush paddies thick with early harvest, but civilization lurked around every corner, only steps away.

Unfortunate for a girl who meant to outrun it.

Obi turns, hooking his hands around his hips, and watches ojou-san crest the last rise. She doesn’t look like she could outpace a tortoise at this point, red-faced and trundling along behind him. It’s not yet midday, the heat nowhere near its worst, but ojou-san is breathless, that fine kimono keeping her at little more than a hurried mince.

She should look ridiculous -- and maybe once, hours ago, she did. Any other rich girl would have already folded by now, would have told him to run back to Hodogaya and hire a kago for the next leg of the journey, but --

But ojou-san just keeps walking. That man, Kino, thought he knew her, but the delicate lily he had painted so passionately with his words not hours ago has yet to bloom -- or perhaps, yet to wilt. Ojou-san is small and pale, but she is not dainty, not frail.

Her head is bowed as she marches forward, only watching that she puts one foot in front of the other. It’s just his arms, outstretched to catch her shoulders, that keeps her from tromping into him wholesale. “Easy there, ojou-san.”

Her head jolts up on her neck, like a deer catching a scent upwind. She blinks, those jade eyes so wide and full he thinks he might fall into them if he looked long enough.

“Why have you stopped?” Her breath pants from her chest no matter how she tries to catch it, how she tries to still it. “Is something wrong?”

“Not at all, ojou-san,” he assures her, giving her his widest, most charming smile. Her mouth immediately bends at the sight, a frown marring her pretty face.

Huh. That’s not how women usually react. He must be losing his touch.

Obi shrugs instead, dropping his hands from her shoulders. “Just thought we might rest up here.”

He nods to where the brush thins, a copse of elms bowing enticingly through the long grass. Water burbles excitedly on the air, and though it’s no flowering paradise, it comes close enough for a girl raised in a city. Almost as good as okusama’s gardens, by his count.

Ojou-san remains skeptical. She takes a long, assessing look, her mouth jutting in a thoughtful pout. Clearly, it does not meet her exacting standards for landscaping. “Do you normally stop here?”

That pulls him up short. He glances down -- she can’t be serious -- but she’s only staring back, steady and fearless, and --

And if it were only him, he’d be walking until well after midday, only stopping to rest his eyes when the sun was at its hottest.

But ojou-san is not him, not road-worn and hard. Determined as she is, she’s used to regular meals, to more than the occasional, thin comforts opportunity provides. She cannot walk from dawn to dusk with no break between, only the long grass at her back when she beds down for the night.

It would be a mistake to tell a woman like ojou-san this.

“When I travel alone, I am not kind to myself.” Even in his hesitation, she has not dropped her gaze, has not wavered. Kino had been right -- she looks delicate, like a painted girl upon a shelf, but he had missed that porcelain is not soft, that it breaks because it will not bend. “But ojou-san reminds me that I must be.”

He truly must be losing his touch; not long ago those words would have made any girl melt, would have made them lead him into the grass themselves to hear his other honeyed words, but ojou-san --

Ojou-san just nods her head and says, “Then we keep walking.”

With a casual grace he had yet to see from her, ojou-san swerves around him, that sack of hers bumping hard against her back with every step.

For a full minute, he can do no more than stare, watching her small back scuttle down the road as if he were a stone in her path, a temporary nuisance, easily forgotten. As if she needed no man to take her to Kyoto; she could get there all by herself by just putting one foot in front of the other.

Women are meant to be carried, the merchant had told him, as if imparting some great kernel of knowledge. It would be a pain if she were to swoon from the exertion.

Obi bites back a laugh. That man hadn’t know her at all.

And neither would he, if he just kept letting her walk away from him.

“Ojou-san!” He hurries after her, sandals slapping the cobbles beneath his feet. The noise only seems to make her shuffle faster, as if she might outrun him with her kimono wrapped as tight as paper on fish at the market.

“Ojou-san!” He slips around her, walking backwards to keep her in his sight. “Really, we should stop to rest.”

“There’s no need to slow down,” she insists. “Not on my account. I can keep going--”

A point she proves rather spectacularly, by tripping right over her own feet.

The movement isn’t even conscious -- one moment she is falling, and the next she is not. It’s not until she looks up at him, eyes and mouth gone wide, that he realizes his hands hold her up, that he is the one who has caught her. A second later and she would have been pressed against his chest, like some distressed maiden in a wood cut.

His fingers clench. Good thing he’s so quick.

“O-obi?”

Ah, that’s right he’s still holding her. Too gentle, he sets her back on her feet, and, with more effort than it should, peels his fingers from the fine weave of her kimono.

“We should rest, ojou-san,” he repeats, and this time her shoulders round in defeat. “Come on. I think there’s a stream just over here.”

She eyes him warily -- no doubt her merchant friend had insinuated all the nefarious things ronin could get up to in the long grass with an unwatchful ojou-san, though perhaps he had skimmed over the parts where those same girls begged them to do it again -- but whatever warnings she’s been given, she swiftly disregards it, coming to limp up beside him.

“Did you hurt yourself, ojou-san?” he asks, arching a brow. She hooks a hand around his elbow.

“N-no.” A lie; she’ll need to get better at telling them, if she expects to make it to Kyoto. “Just...tired.”

“As you say, ojou-san.”

Obi means to annoy her when he gets to his knees, the rich soil at the stream’s bank smudging into his kimono. Every inch of his smile is guileless, carefully crafted to make him seem as innocent and servile as possible as he says, “Oh no, ojou-san, it would be this man’s pleasure to serve you--”

But it is him who ends up perturbed.

“Ojou-san!” It comes out sharper than he means, but honestly, honestly --

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she lies again, her hands catching on his shoulders to balance herself, which she needs, because --

This morning, ojou-san had slunk around the sliding screen, her obi perfectly wrapped and her tabi pristine and white, and he had nearly laughed at the sight of it, at the thought that this rich little girl put on fine clothes and expected to keep them that way. But now--

“You’re bleeding.” Red has soaked through, rubbing onto the thong between her toes, and she hisses as he pulls her sandals off, one by one, the wooden soles clattering on the dirt.

“Only blisters.” This, at least, is the truth, for all the good it does them. His fingers catch at her ankles, dragging the tabi down around her heel, up over the ball of her foot --

“Ah!” she hisses, fingers digging hard into the meat of his shoulder. “I mean -- it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

Guilt pricks at him, a thousand cuts. He had seen the zori, had known the wood soles would drag heavy on her feet, but --

Ah, there is no good way to say, you were supposed to be complaining.

“You should have said something,” he grunts instead, urging her down until she can rest her foot in the stream.

Ojou-san opens her mouth, steeling her breath for a protest, but it leaves her on a sigh the moment her foot hits the cold water. Her head tilts back, eyes shut, and she -- she groans, long and loud, with that same timbre she had in the tea house only days ago, and --

And there’s no need to be thinking about this. Not now, when there’s no drink to blame. He doesn’t need a problem, no matter how easy ojou-san makes herself one.

“You don’t need to worry so much.”

He blinks, fingers caught in her second tabi, right where the ankle meets the heel. “Ojou-san?”

“About me,” she tells him, eyes slitting open just enough for him to catch jade framed by black. “You don’t need to worry so much about me.”

Her toes clench as he pulls off her last tabi, hiss caught tight between her teeth. He looks up at her with a hum, all innocence. “It is what you’re paying me for, ojou-san. Quite well, I might add.”

“You don’t need to slow down for me,” she insists. “I can keep up.”

He sits back on his heels, raising an idle brow. “The man with money sets the pace.”

“I know you must be used to--”

“Oh, ojou-san,” he sighs, smile too sharp. “You don’t know what I’m used to.”

What he’s used to are hard men who have made harder decisions, who need a blade between them and the trouble they’re leaving behind. He’s used to rich ojou-sans and fathers who pay him not to touch, not to even speak, to just escort a box from one house to another. He’s used to a hole in his belly that burns bigger every day, and bleakness at the edge of night, where he wonders whether he’ll live to see the dawn.

And this, this -- the jingle of ryo in his pocket and the promise of more, the full belly and the hand-mended clothes, the strange ojou-san who will walk herself bloody to keep from being a burden, and the soft way she had looked at him not a day before and said Obi-dono --

This is what he doesn’t know. What he isn’t used to.

Her gaze fixes on him, too wide and too green. “Not this,” she ventures, confident.

“No,” he agrees. “Not this.”

She nods, sitting back on her hands, leaving the only thing between them the sound of the stream and her breath in the stillness.

“We should get going as soon as you’re rested,” he says, grimacing as the words come out. They are exactly what they don’t mean, not when ojou-san is so eager to prove her worth. “Not now. But when you’re done.”

“I can be done now.” She lifts her feet from the stream, and oh, how they tell a different story. “If we need to go--”

“No.” He holds out a hand, hovering just over her shoulder. He’s touched her before, but it’s dangerous. Each time it is harder to let go. “We have plenty of time. Take your rest now. We’ll be on our way soon, and we’ll stop again when the sun gets hot.”

“We don’t need to stop for me,” she insists, though she does not lift her legs again. “I can handle a walk.”

“I don’t doubt you could, ojou-san.” Despite himself, his mouth curls. “But this is longer than you have ever journeyed.”

She bridles. “You don’t know that! I spend plenty of hours walking.”

He only just bites back his sigh. “It is nearly five ri from Hodogaya to Fujisawa.”

“Fujisawa?” Her face is paper-pale, gaze fixed to her feet. Even through the water they look red, angry. “You don’t mean to stop at Totsuka-shuku?”

“No.” He crouches down, picking at the grass. “Too crowded.”

“I’m used to it.” Her hand lifts, smoothing the edge of her scarf. “It’s easier to disappear in a crowd.”

Where is she? that foreigner had yelled. Is the whore inside?

“True,” he allows. “But it is too close to Yokohama. Easy to run into people you know.”

She looks at him. “Is that a problem you have?”

He looks back. “Do you?”

Her gaze skitters away, back to where her feet soak in the stream. Now would be the perfect time to ask about the foreigner, about this cousin who waits for her Kyoto, about the man he had taken her away from --

But he flops down on the grass instead. Prying question isn’t what she’s paying him for.

Her feet are still red when she pulls them from the stream, but in his inexpert opinion, inspected at a safe distance, they at least look better.

“It could be worse,” ojou-san confirms, setting them down on the hem of her kimono. She’s careful not to let them touch the ground, not to let the open blisters get dirt in them, but – it makes for an awkward pose. She raises one foot, grunting as she fails to set it over her knee, then the other and –

Hells, she’ll be giving him a show at this rate.

“Ojou-san.” He reaches out, shocked to find her ankles so chill against his skin. The stream had looked warm in the sun, but mountain waters make for poor baths. “Let me help you.”

He settles her heels on his knees, letting her toes drip over his thighs, and she just – stares. Not at him, at least, but at her feet.

“Is something--?”

“No!” Her cheeks flush, two large splotches, like she’s been slapped on both sides. “I mean, thank you.”

There’s no reason for his chest to squeeze so tight, and he shrugs to loosen it. “It’s what you’re paying me for.”

She doesn’t answer that, just considers him carefully before bending over, small fingers rubbing over the raw places between her toes and under them. It’s ridiculous to watch; ojou-san is no geisha, elegant and flexible. Her knees spill out as she reaches across them, and there’s so much pale leg to see at once it would be overwhelming, if any of this was in the least bit enticing.

He half expects it would be from the way his heart pounds over the most innocent things, but instead he has to bite his lip to keep back laughter. It had been a wonder to him that a girl such as ojou-san hadn’t been snapped up by a nice boy with a good family, but –

This answers that. It’s been a minute at least, and she still hasn’t noticed.

“Huh,” she hums, sitting back. The only modesty she performs is to absently flip her kimono back over her legs, and even that seem rote, a force of habit rather than any actual shamefulness. “Something will have to be done.”

He does not say, clearly, though it sits at the edge of his tongue. There’s no point in rubbing salt in the wound now. She’ll have time enough to regret as they limp to Totsuka-shuku.

“Ah! My bag.” She holds out a hand. “Could you give it to me?”

She already has one, sitting right next to her in a shapeless lump, but her eyes are fixed to the one by his hip, not just a tied up cloth but a satchel.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, squirreling it from his outstretched hand, clever little fingers already working the clasp. “Ah, yes, this will help.”

A small pot sits in her hand, squat and ugly, and when she removes the cover, it smells – medicinal. His nose wrinkles, even where he sits. “What is that?”

It’s a stupid question when it stings his eyes like this, and he’s glad that instead of answering, she bends forward, trying to reach her feet again –

“Ojou-san,” he drawls, plucking the pot from her palm. “What have I said? It is this man’s pleasure to serve you.”

Her mouth hangs open, watching as he sets the cap aside, and for a long moment, he thinks she might protest, might insist on doing it herself. Instead, her jaw snaps shut, mouth rucking up in a moue of belligerence, and she says, “You’ll need to spread it on thick, but make sure the blister is still covering the skin when you do.”

The unguent is pungent this close; it’s an effort not to make a face as he works, inspecting her clammy toes for raw places. They wiggle as he threads fingers through them, smoothing the cream against her skin, and he grits down on the temptation to test her, to run one long finger down the sole of her foot and watch her squeal –

“There,” he says instead. “Done?”

She nods. “Well done, Obi-s—“ She bites down on her lip. “Obi. Now all we need to do is wrap them.”

That seems simple, at least, right up until he picks up one of the tabi lying limp on the bank, and – “Haah, ojou-san,” he says, biting down on a grin. “I think we’ve overlooked something.”

Her gaze curves up to his, eyes wide. “Oh? Oh.” She rubs a finger over the damp toes, and it comes away red. “Those are ruined.”

“To put it lightly,” he agrees, dropping them back to the bank. “Though I suppose we could wash most of it out, if you don’t mind waiting for it to--”

“No need.” She’s already rummaging through that bag of hers, and with a bright smile, she thrusts out a handful of cloth strips, so clean he can still smell the soap. “I have these!”

Ojou-san is a far more patient teacher than he deserves.

“That’s fine,” she tells him, her fingers brushing the long bones of his hand as he tucks the end of the bandage behind her heel. It trembles beneath her touch, and he makes a fist to stop it.

“Not too tight?” he asks. “Or too loose?”

Both had been a problem, while she’d been guiding him. “No,” she assures him, “it’s just right. You have very deft hands, Obi!”

How is he supposed to resist such temptation, when she makes it so easy?

“Here.” Her zori are already in her hands, the thongs staining her fingertips, but he takes the pair of sandals at his hip, straw and humble, and holds them out. “They’ll be too big, but it’ll be better than those.”

She blinks, sandals flopping over her fist. “Waraji?”

“Wood is good for the city, when you don’t mean to walk far,” he tells her. “But not all the way to Kyoto.”

“Oh.” She stares down at them, wide-eyed. “That makes sense. When I’ve walked before, it was barefoot.” At his look, she adds, “When I pick herbs. Like for the salve.”

He has never in his life seen a rich girl barefoot, and certainly not picking herbs, but –

“We should get going, before the sun gets too high,” he says instead. She’s busy tying his sandals, trying to make them fit a foot probably half its size. Ojou-san should have bought a smaller ronin.

Obi gets to his feet, slinging his pack over his shoulder. With only a moment of hesitation, he picks up her satchel too, and then the bag right at her hip—

“No!”

Ojou-san lunges, feet tripping up in the waraji’s ties, but it’s already far, far too late. He practically drops the thing in surprise, feeling how heavy it is. As it is, it just hangs in his hand like dead weight.

She’s been carrying this the whole time. Since before they even left Yokohama. No wonder her feet are worn raw. “What do you have in here, ojou-san? Bricks?”

“No, it’s not--” Her eyes are so wide, so fearful. “Books! It’s all books. For my studies. Please,” she’s never sounded so close to begging before, not even in that tea house, “let me carry it. It’s my burden.”

He holds her gaze for a long moment, then lets it drop between them. The metallic clink is unmistakable. “As you wish, ojou-san.”

It’s not worth fighting over, that’s what he tells himself. After all, he wouldn’t trust him with his money either.