Dororo: Part Two
Nakamura Masaru
Part 3: Kagemitsu
Chapter 15
The woman was dressed like a villager. She appeared to be fleeing for her life. Her eyes were fixed on Banmon as she ran. Her hair streamed behind her and the fog parted in front of her, leaving white trails to either side of her arms.
The woman kept running until she reached Banmon. She put her back to it and crouched down, making herself small as if she were afraid. She was younger than both Hyakkimaru and Dororo. Hyakkimaru guessed that she was about the same age as he'd been when he'd first met Mio.
"What now?" the woman cried out. "Straight across the border, or down to the Oki River Valley?"
Dororo turned toward her. "Oh? Where are you headed, miss? Are you in trouble?"
"I must get away!" the woman said. She ran past Dororo and Hyakkimaru, descending the hill that Banmon stood upon at a rapid pace.
Dororo frowned. "What's up with her?" he asked.
Hyakkimaru sensed the presence of two other people moving toward Banmon. Maybe they were after the woman. They were coming fast. Before Hyakkimaru could sense anything more about them, they came into view.
Dororo rubbed his eyes and squinted at the men, then drew his knife. "Are they Daigo Clan lackeys?" he asked.
"You there!" one of the men called out. "Did you see a young woman crossing the border a few minutes ago?"
Dororo glanced toward Hyakkimaru. "Yeah, aniki and I saw a woman run past us a little while ago. Why?"
When the men asked for more detail, Dororo pointed in the opposite direction of where the young woman had gone. "The fog's been so thick that it was really hard to tell if it was a man or a woman," Dororo said.
"Yeah," Hyakkimaru said. "If you say it was a young woman that we saw, we'll believe you. You probably know more about what's going on than we do."
"Go after her!" one of the men said. "Hurry!"
One man ran east, where Dororo had pointed. The other man ran westwards.
After a few moments, Dororo and Hyakkimaru heard a shout: "She's here! Follow my voice!"
Neither Dororo nor Hyakkimaru recognized the voice of the man who had shouted. How many people were chasing after this woman, anyway?
Another man sprinted up to Banmon. Hyakkimaru glared at him. The man was tall and muscular, but there was no threat in him. He was out of breath and seemed bewildered by the thick white fog. "Who are you?" the man asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Huh?" Hyakkimaru affected a look of puzzlement. "Don't ask us anything. We were resting here and just woke up."
"Yeah." Dororo yawned, though it was obviously fake. "We should be asking you guys. What the hell's going on this early in the morning?"
Two men returned to Banmon with the woman clasped between them, the fog moving around them like soft cloth. The big man that Dororo and Hyakkimaru were talking to seemed to be their leader. Two other men returned shortly after, making this a group of five, plus the young woman.
Hyakkimaru had an uneasy feeling. Were these men bandits? They were all armed, though only the big man wore much by way of armor.
"Why were you resting here?" the big man asked. "Are you her friend? Were you helping her get away?"
"We have no idea who she is, so…"
"They're lying! Seize them!"
The four men gathered around their leader, then made a loose circle around Dororo and Hyakkimaru.
"What's the big idea?" Dororo asked. "We ain't got no problem with you boneheads."
"We have to bring you in," the leader said. "If you are friends of hers, you'll regret lying to us."
"Who the hell is she?" Dororo asked.
"You don't need to know."
The four men approached. Hyakkimaru put up no resistance, so neither did Dororo—until they brought out rope to bind Dororo and Hyakkimaru's hands behind their backs.
"That's going too far," Dororo fumed. "Let us go!" He slapped the men's hands away and drew his Claw.
In the brief moment that the men were distracted by Dororo's blade, Hyakkimaru located a sasumata1 leaning against Banmon. He picked it up and struck the leader across the chest, forcing the man to stumble back a step. Then he seized the leader's sword from its scabbard and tossed it away. In the same fluid movement, he kicked the leader in the crotch and sent him to his knees.
Dororo brought the hilt of his blade down at the base of the skull of one of the attackers; he fell to the ground, unconscious. He threw his knife at the man who moved to attack him.
Another man with a sickle and chain threatened Hyakkimaru. While Dororo kept the others at bay, Hyakkimaru moved in a semicircle, forcing the man's weapon to follow him. He struck the weapon's handle with the sasumata's metal cap, using its momentum to send it soaring out of the man's hand.
When he turned around, the other men surrounding them were drawing back in fear. This fight was over almost as soon as it had begun. Dororo and Hyakkimaru were more accustomed to fighting demons than people, and demons tended to be faster and more powerful than ordinary opponents. If it seemed like they were showing off a little, it was only because their opponents were so weak.
Dororo stooped to retrieve his knife from where he'd thrown it.
The forked tip of the sasumata had grazed the leader's chest, so he was bleeding. Even without his sword, he was determined to keep fighting, so Hyakkimaru brought the metal cap of the sasumata up and used it to knock the wind out of the leader. The leader's eyes rolled back in his head as he fell.
"Don't worry," Hyakkimaru said. "I didn't kill him. He's just passed out."
"I didn't kill no one, neither," Dororo said with a perfectly placid expression. "Looks like we've caught ourselves a big fish, aniki." He admired the scabbard of the leader's knife, then swapped it out with his own. After he'd tied the new scabbard to his hip, he took the sasumata out of Hyakkimaru's hand.
Dororo stood there with his knife in one hand and the sasumata in the other, appearing genuinely fearsome. "You'll need more than that to deal with the likes of us," Dororo said. He sounded a bit disappointed. "What, no arrows? No cannons? You got any monsters we could slay?"
Hyakkimaru gave Dororo a fond smile. No one else gave them any more trouble as they started their trek downhill toward the Daigo Clan's fortress. The woman who had been fleeing from the others watched them go, using the hill to hide. At the bottom of the hill, there was lushly overgrown thicket, so Dororo and Hyakkimaru were soon out of sight of Banmon. The men chasing the woman also fled into the thicket, so she was left alone.
The woman moved along a mountain ridge, staying out of sight. She stared at Hyakkimaru as the white mist swirled behind him and thought, He's beautiful…
Hyakkimaru sensed that the woman he and Dororo had seen at the border was still watching them. Why is she still here? Isn't she frightened of those men who were chasing her?
He felt her attention sharpen on him, specifically, and frowned. Well, if it's me she's after, then she's obviously looking for trouble.
The morning mist dissipated a little as Hyakkimaru and Dororo walked. The cicadas started their morning song, filling the air with a gentle humming noise.
There was a ravine close to the Daigo Clan's fortress. Hyakkimaru and Dororo decided to descend into the ravine for water. Hyakkimaru washed himself and his clothes in the shallow water while Dororo went upstream, looking for bugs to trap and eat.
Dororo was very practiced at catching insects. He picked one up, dropped it in his jar and closed the lid. Sometimes he would pop one of his catches in his mouth and chow down. He would have preferred fish, but there were none swimming in the stream.
"Guess we'll have to go to that damn fortress town if we want decent food," Dororo muttered. "What a pain in the ass."
Hyakkimaru and Dororo hadn't been to a town or a village in quite a long time. It might be nice to see other people's faces again, and to have hot meal prepared by someone else. Dororo cupped his hands so that his voice would carry, then called back to Hyakkimaru: "Yo, aniki! How ‘bout we look for an actual restaurant or somethin' when we get to town tonight? I'm starving."
Hyakkimaru looked at him. He was frowning.
"If we ain't got money, I'll steal something good for us in town," Dororo said. "I just want to eat something that's actually good, for a change. You feel me?"
Dororo couldn't remember the last time he'd had a really good meal. Food was important to him, but he hadn't thought about it in a long time, and now, the thought of it made him upset with himself. "I'm a falcon, so I'll hunt," he said. "But I'm sick of short rations and bottom feeders."
Suddenly, Dororo realized that Hyakkimaru had gone without good food for just as long as him, if not longer. He felt motivated to find some food that would show Hyakkimaru exactly what he'd been missing out on. Hyakkimaru never smiled when he ate--he almost never smiled at all--but Dororo was now determined to steal some halfway-decent food to make that happen.
Hyakkimaru didn't say anything. Dororo snorted.
"Fine. I'm in charge of finding something good for us. See if I won't."
Dororo's attachment to good food and good cooking might have been some vestigial remnant of when his mother had treated him as a girl. Dororo wasn't bad a cooking, and he wasn't opposed to having an actual home--after he'd killed Kagemitsu Daigo, of course.
Dororo tsked. "You had enough time to kick that guy in the crotch and get him down and you didn't even take his money? We could have bought something good with that…" Dororo rubbed sleep and water from the stream out of his eyes, remembering the man that Hyakkimaru had knocked out. He approached Hyakkimaru, then kicked him in the crotch in frustration.
Dororo must have kicked harder than he'd intended, since Hyakkimaru's eyes went flying out. They were artificial, of course. Hyakkimaru gasped, then stood up straight with a resigned sigh and went to retrieve the eyes. Dororo noticed that they seemed to me made of metal. Were they gold? Could they be traded for something?
Before Dororo could propose something like that, he glanced up at the eyeless Hyakkimaru's face and shuddered. There were two empty holes where the eyes should be. Now that he thought of it, he realized that Hyakkimaru's eyes often did appear golden in sunlight, but even if they were pure gold, Dororo didn't want to sell them. Seeing Hyakkimaru like this was way too creepy.
"Sorry," Dororo said. "You should put ‘em back in. You look weird like that."
"I don't really care what I look like." His eyes were in his hand. "Why did you kick me, anyway? Were you trying to hurt me?"
"Did a little kick like that actually hurt?"
Hyakkimaru hmphed. "You know it generally hurts worse when you kick a man there, right?"
Dororo blushed a little. "Duh! Everyone knows that!" He frowned and looked away.
After retrieving his artificial eyes, Hyakkimaru continued hunting for demons in Daigo Clan territory.
The first demon that Hyakkimaru and Dororo encountered after entering Daigo Clan territory a few days before was a huge one with limbs that were all made out of vines. The demon's general shape was that of a severely overgrown akebia2 shrub. Moving around the demon and striking it shook purple fruit loose from the vines. When the fruit fell to earth, it exploded, sending sticky birdlime3 flying in all directions.
The demon had been causing trouble in the area before Hyakkimaru and Dororo’s arrival, so they managed to collect some information on it before they fought it. Demons didn’t have proper names, but what Dororo learned of this demon made him nickname it “Bit-Open Mochi Demon,” since biting into a mochi rice cake and squeezing would cause the sticky stuff inside to come out. A name like that might seem demeaning or disrespectful, but Hyakkimaru and Dororo didn’t know what else to call it. Demon battles never started with polite, formal introductions.
After the demon was defeated, red mist rose into the sky and disappeared. Hyakkimaru and Dororo burned the withered vines for good measure. As the mist cleared, Hyakkimaru started feeling the tell-tale signs of a body part returning.
It was...his penis.
The shock of that was something he didn’t want anyone to see, so he doubled over, and when the old one fell off after the new one grew in, he waited for the old one to turn to ash before letting it leave his clothes.
This was a somewhat embarrassing development, but not an entirely unexpected one. When Jukai had started teaching him about pain, he’d told Hyakkimaru that burning flesh was among the worst sensations, and he’d revealed pressure points and sensitive places on the body that could be used to make people fall over or pass out. That was when Hyakkimaru had learned that kicking a man in the genitals was one of the worst kinds of pain, but he’d never experienced that for himself.
“You must never do such a despicable thing,” Jukai had said primly. “That’s something that won’t be forgiven, if you’re truly a warrior.”
Jukai had never kicked him between the legs, and he’d never tried to do the same to Jukai, either, since he’d seemed to feel so strongly about it. But Hyakkimaru had always been curious, and now, he didn’t need to risk harming anyone else to indulge his curiosity.
Hyakkimaru picked up a rock and hit himself with it, hard. His vision whited out and he stumbled to one knee, gasping. That really did hurt. The worst thing about the pain was that it came in waves, starting at his groin and radiating outwards. He thought that the worst of it had passed and tried to get up again, but another wave of agony hit him when he made the attempt. His vision whited out at the edges again. If he pushed himself too much too fast, he would probably pass out.
Throughout his quest, Hyakkimaru had experienced terrible pain, both in demon battles and when he recovered body parts. These experiences made him translate pain as strength. Regaining his human body was what he wanted. His artificial body couldn’t feel pain and was self-healing, but it wasn’t his: not in the same way his own flesh and blood was.
Sensation in general was a very human thing, completely different from the dark numbness of his early life. Pain was one sensation, but not all of them were quite as unpleasant as that.
After his first experiment, Hyakkimaru tried different amounts of force to determine where the pain threshold was for his new body part. He discovered fairly quickly that it would hurt even if he didn’t use a lot of force. That seemed like an unusual design feature. It wasn’t consistent with his legs, which were just around it, or his back.
Hyakkimaru tried to embrace the contradiction in the same way that he’d embraced pain as a concept. This is what it means to be human. This is what it is to get body parts back. This is what I want.
He was able to understand what Jukai had meant now, about not kicking that area in battle. He laughed at himself. Damn, that hurt. I won’t be trying that again anytime soon...
Hyakkimaru didn’t usually feel happy when he regained a body part. There were still so many to get: the quest seemed endless. But he was glad of getting this part back. Maybe his time with Dororo had made him more expressive and demonstrative since he’d left the mountain. Or maybe he was starting to gain an awareness of what it meant to be human.
“You never told me how it feels when something grows back,” Dororo said. He looked a little uncomfortable, but curiosity won out over social awkwardness. “I can tell it hurts, but there are a lot of kinds of pain. Is it sharp or dull? Hot or cold? Does it linger or just come and go?”
None of the above, Hyakkimaru thought but didn’t say. He snorted, but gave no other answer.
Dororo turned bright red. “Fine, don’t tell me. But I know what being kicked in the ‘nads feels like, at least. And it doesn’t hurt so much that I’d double over, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hyakkimaru said patiently. “You’re a big, strong man, far superior to us ordinary men.”
Dororo couldn’t tell if Hyakkimaru was mocking him or not. He frowned.
Hyakkimaru guessed that Dororo hadn’t seen many naked men up close. He got the same sense from Dororo as he’d gotten from Jishōni, the Buddhist nun. Dororo either hadn’t seen a lot of people naked, or had no interest in seeing that.
How do you describe something like that to a woman, if they’ve never seen it? Hyakkimaru thought.
Now that he understood Dororo’s reasons for wanting to be a man, Hyakkimaru respected those reasons and tried not to bring up gender in conversation. It didn’t really matter, anyway. Dororo being biologically female didn’t make him less of a fighter--or less of anything. What was different wasn’t less than: Hyakkimaru saw no intrinsic difference between men and women, aside from some obvious physical characteristics.
But Hyakkimaru could see into people’s thoughts and souls. That was what truly differentiated individual people: their memories, abilities, and experiences. In that way, there was no difference between men and women at all.
Regarding Dororo specifically, his desire for revenge had nothing to do with biology. What had happened to him could have happened to anyone. He still loved and remembered his parents, and wanted to avenge them. Who could blame him for wanting something like that? And if he had to hide his more obvious female characteristics from the world to make himself safer, well--Hyakkimaru understood that, too. Jukai had trained him to survive no matter what. Dororo’s life had taught him many of the same lessons, in a different way. Survival above all, and revenge if the opportunity arose: those were the things that Dororo wanted.
I wonder if Dororo would consider himself a woman if he’d been raised by his family, and the war hadn’t come to them. Is pain what made Dororo want to be a man?
He wanted to ask, but he knew he shouldn’t. Causing Dororo more pain wasn’t something he wanted to do. They were friends, and they weren’t supposed to hurt one another on purpose.
Dororo and Hyakkimaru continued to travel and fight demons. Hyakkimaru’s clothes were wearing out, and he had no others. He regretted throwing away his patchwork cloak the previous summer.
If he wanted clothes, Hyakkimaru would either have to work or steal. One night, while he was mending his clothes next to the fire, he said, “I’m thinking of looking for a job in the next town we pass through.”
“A job?” Dororo asked. “You thinking of being a bodyguard or a guard at a tavern, or somethin’?”
He nodded. “I could use some clothes, and we might be able to get better food in town, too.”
Dororo agreed, and the next day, they moved out of the open wilderness and found a road. They were passing over a bridge when Hyakkimaru said, “You might want to wash up before we reach a town,” he said. “The way you smell now...well...”
Dororo had never washed himself during their travels--or if he had, Hyakkimaru didn’t remember it. He understood why: to wash himself, Dororo would have to remove his clothes. Dororo wouldn’t do that. He would fight demons and armed soldiers without batting an eye, but taking off his shirt was the one thing he wouldn’t do.
Even in this remote spot, there was a chance that Dororo might be seen while washing. Hyakkimaru might see him, even if he promised not to look. Hyakkimaru didn’t get the sense that Dororo was ashamed of what he looked like, but of how people would treat him if they did see him.
This wasn’t the first time Hyakkimaru had asked Dororo to wash. The first time he’d asked, Dororo had spat at him.
“What am I, a woman?” Dororo had complained. “I’m a man and I smell like one. You’re the weird one for wanting to wash. Who needs hygiene?”
Hyakkimaru understood that Dororo wouldn’t mind being clean--in fact, he’d prefer it--but his parents had ingrained in him that he must never be naked in front of others. Hyakkimaru didn’t have his own nose back yet, but even he could sense that Dororo stank, to the point where Dororo himself could barely stand it. He could only imagine how other people would react to Dororo when they reached a town or a village.
Dororo kept himself filthy so that Hyakkimaru wouldn’t get too close. He was on guard against the rest of the world, too, but Hyakkimaru was near him every day. Hyakkimaru could go into town to find work alone--that way, Dororo would be able to bathe by himself--but Hyakkimaru didn’t know if Dororo would wash himself, given the opportunity. Getting clean meant that more people would see what he looked like, and that meant they might see his more feminine characteristics.
“If you go hunting, the animals will smell you from a mile off,” Hyakkimaru said. “Take a bath.” He went down the river bank, putting his back to Dororo. Why was he so stubborn about this? Was this because of the war, too? If not for the war, would Dororo have settled in a village by now, gotten married and had children like a normal person? Hyakkimaru found that hard to picture--but not impossible.
If the world were less dangerous, Mio would have been married and had her own children by the time she was Dororo’s age. Hyakkimaru was fairly certain of that, because Mio loved children. He had the stray thought that he might have married Mio--but no: she deserved something better than that. She deserved a home and a life lived in love and safety. Dororo did, too, but Dororo’s version of a happy life was undoubtedly different from Mio’s.
What would Dororo be like if he didn’t carry hatred for his father’s murderer with him everywhere, like a burden weighing him down?
Dororo’s father had given him his legacy, just as Hyakkimaru’s father had shaped his life by selling his body when he was an infant. Neither Dororo nor Hyakkimaru knew it, but they were steadily approaching the source of their pain and problems: Hyakkimaru’s father.
After washing up, Hyakkimaru entered the castle town that had been built to support the looming fortress of the Daigo Clan to look for work.
1 The sasumata, literally "spear fork" is a pole weapon used by the samurai class and their retainers in feudal Japan. It was a weapon commonly used for capturing criminals. A sasumata looks a bit like a spear, with a long pole, but instead of coming to a point at the tip, it forks out into two or more prongs. The opposite end of the sasumata pole would often have a metal cap, or ishizuki like those found on naginata and other pole weapons.↩
2 Akebia quinata is a climbing evergreen shrub that grows to 10 m (30 ft) or more in height and has compound leaves with five elliptic leaflets that are notched at the tip. The woody stems are greyish-brown, and the flowers are chocolate-scented. The fruits are sausage-shaped pods which contain edible pulp.↩
3 Birdlime is a sticky substance spread on to twigs to trap small birds.↩
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