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[Continuing chapter 8]
“Can you find a way to get this to Inaba?” Hiroki handed a string of cash to Katsumi. “I believe he would resist if I tried to give this to him directly.” The sun had reached the tops of the western hills and the ground, mercifully, had solidified again as the temperature dropped. He found himself anticipating a hot bath and a restoring bowl of soup one they had returned to their rented mansion. The mansion’s bath-house was finally open, its large and comfortable tub now available to him.
“Why would you do this for him?” she asked.
“Why did you escort us to him?” he asked in reply.
“I knew he was not a threat to you,” she said, “and wanted to prevent your killing him. I knew that you would have killed him had you found him for yourself.”
“You may be right about that.” He watched as Shiro and Tetsuo strode along the road to the river; they appeared to be competing with each other to see who could move fastest without actually breaking into a run. “Certainly I would have had a lot of trouble keeping those two from killing him.”
“You no longer see Inaba as a threat, though. Do you?” There was that maternal look again, in her eyes and the set of her mouth.
“What an odd person you are,” Hiroki said, quietly. “He’s no client of yours, is he?”
“No.” She blushed, briefly. “He couldn’t afford me. And that’s saying something, Lord Hiroki, because I am not expensive.” She paused for just a moment before adding, “Though I certainly intend to be.”
They walked in silence for a while; then she said, “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m giving him a little bit of money,” Hiroki said, “because I hope he will be of some use to me. I want to find out who was behind the attack on us, and he is the best placed to do this. Also, I have considered it a responsibility of mine to try to help others as I was once helped. I know what it is like to be as hungry as Inaba looks to be.”
“What an odd person you are,” she said with a smile.
“You appear not to be the only person to think this,” he told her, thinking of Hosokawa Katsunata’s insistence on exhuming his past. “Perhaps our mutual oddness is the reason I find you so interesting, Katsumi. Which reminds me: I have another book for you. May I deliver it to you tonight?”
She slowed her pace, and he could see her calculations in the wrinkling of her forehead. “I think so,” she said eventually. “I do have a couple of … appointments this evening. But neither has call on more than an hour of my time. So I should be back in my room by the beginning of the hour of the rat.”
“That’s late for a poetry lesson.”
“Oh. I thought you merely wanted to give me the book.” She laughed. “I can stay awake to discuss poetry if you want to, Lord Hiroki.”
“There are different ways of appreciating poetry, Katsumi.”
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Chapter 7 Chapter 8
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