Intermission | Grave contemplations (private)

Moss was the only tombstone an Onmitsukidou’s grave needed. Zhi stood at the edge of one such marker, his sandaled feet sinking into the overgrown grass at the edge of the mound. There was a cold wind today that had blown away all te clouds. For once, the northern Rukongai’s sky matched the winter that it had trapped so long ago, cold and empty. The setting sun created an equally lacking twilight. To Zhi, the sky seemed bruised. 

When he sensed another spiritual presence, Zhi became a ghost. The Uneitai-Gundanchou left no imprints in the grass and his spiritual aura was all but gone. He hid behind a tree, his ears trained enough to pick out what she was doing. She was strong, easily lieutenant class, but he didn’t know her aura. That could have meant a thousand things, or it could have meant nothing. 

“Why are you here?” Zhi asked. He threw his voice, making it so she couldn’t pinpoint from where he was speaking from. 

Depending on her reaction, he’d handle her as either a threat or just a random passer-by. 

She was a child. Zhi could tell that from the way she spoke, the tone of her voice, and the overall feel of her reiatsu. Sure, this woman might have had a mature body, but that changed little. To Zhi, all shinigami were children. Only a few, such as the late Kunpuu Izumi or the Soutaichou, had the maturity able to properly fit within the military. Still, all types were accepted. It made functioning for the Onmitsukido more difficult than need be. 

But Zhi was a teacher, above all else. He had a calling to fulfill, even now. “What is murder to you?” he asked, his voice being cast all around. “If you don’t even know what it means to kill, or have a reason, then your blade is weak. It is an eagle without wings.” 

“You are a child,” Zhi harshly spoke. “You are a child who does not understand the meaning behind the term critical thinking. A child who is wielded by a sword, and not the other way around. I suppose your title of Juichibantai-Sanseki is well placed, given this knowledge.” 

With one quick step, so fast that it seemed to never happen, Zhi was standing a solid twenty feet away from Shizuka. His hands were crossed behind his back and his lone eye was narrowed. The air between them had been made intentionally tense by his arrival, and like a hawk he had analyzed every last bit of her body and behavior. 

“So then why is a child standing at these graves?” Zhi took a step forward, but that step was heavy with danger. 

“Step out of that stance, you fool. I may be old but a child like you still can’t best me.” 

Zhi ignored most of Shizuka’s remarks and shifted his hard look to the mounds that littered this clearing. Fighting here was something he would not like to do, though he doubted it would last long. The Juichibantai-Sanseki, despite her position, was to Zhi as a novice was to a master. Not because of the skill she surely had trained for, but because of the massive gap in experience that he noticed. 

“Do not delude yourself to think that I came here to meet you. I came here to pay my respects.” Zhi nodded towards a mound by her feet. “And any advice I could tell you would be useless. A shinigami who is wielded by their sword is the same as a master lead by their dog. 

“You are a thousand years too early to understand anything I would say to you, Kobayashi Shizuka."

“Hmph.” Zhi pointed to the mound by Shizuka’s feet. “Aoi Tsuchimaru.” 

His finger trailed to another grave just behind her. “Ichibana Kira.” And another. “Harusame Kitara. 

“All of these shinigami I knew. Good men and women, each of them. Now the lie dead in unmarked graves, as most shinigami become. Though I fail to see what that matters to you, child.” 

Crossing his arms behind his back, Zhi began to pace through the makeshift graveyard until he came to one mound slightly smaller than the rest. A sigh escaped his lips, white in the cold mountain air, and he felt the weight of his years pressing down on him. “If you have no business here than leave, Kobeyashi.”  

“You’re either stupid and in the wrong place, or you’ve been lied too. Look behind you.” Zhi nodded at the tree behind Shizuka. There, carved into the bark, were the kanji for the number two. “That is proof that I am in the right area. These are the graves of shinigami I once worked with, and all of which died in . . . unfortunate circumstances.” 

At that, Zhi let out a white sigh and walked to another grave. Head lowered, he murmured a few prayers to a god that didn’t exist, and continued on to the next grave. After doing this three times he looked back to Shizuka, anger flaring in his lone eye. “Why are you still here?” 

“I don’t know what I expected from a child,” Zhi said. “But you agitate me by defiling my prayers. We are in the Northern Rukongai, district sixty-four Yaseppochi. These graves have been here for a long time, Kabeyoshi. A very long time. And I have been coming here just as long. 

“Whatever connection you feel here I am sure is false. There is no connection between a child such as yourself, one who can barely manage to draw her sword to fight, and a place as sacred as this. Do you even know what it’s like to have your fellows die? To have the woman you love fade in your arms, or the man who saved your life five consecutive times die on the sixth?” 

Zhi turned to face Kabeyoshi fully now. He narrowed his lone eye, and for a moment it seemed lost in the past. 

“Do not answer. You know nothing.”