Lee swallowed and peered back at the house through the branches. When his own father wasn’t in a good mood, there was little consequence beyond his stern expression and look of disappointment. He had a feeling that Sen’s father’s displeasure would not be as simple.
“Part of your world spilled through into mine,” Lee said. “I had to escape here.”
Sen exhaled stiffly through her teeth, then looked to the moon as if it could give her answers. After a moment, she stood up straight. “I know where you can hide,” she said. “I’ve seen my brothers crawl there before.”
“Crawl?” Lee said, but Sen was already walking, waving for him to follow.
Sen moved like a shadow through the forest while Lee tore through it like a hurricane, snapping branches with every step. She glanced over her shoulder, teeth clenched as they moved, but she must have known there was nothing to be done. Lee was a torrent, in this world or any world.
She held out an arm to stop him as they reached the clearing once more, glancing around. The voices of men arguing in the distance echoed across the yard.
“Now,” Sen said, grabbing Lee by the sleeve. He slipped in the dirt but she dragged him along, relentless as he tripped into the bare moonlight. He thought she meant to bring him back into the house at first, but she released him just beside the door and jerked a finger at the low porch.
“Crawl under there,” she said. “Don’t make a sound. I’ll come back for you.”
Lee hesitated as he stared into the darkness beneath the porch. He would barely be able to move underneath it. Like he was crammed into a suitcase.
“Lee,” Sen said desperately as the voices drew closer.
Lee dropped to his stomach and crawled.
He fit under the porch easier than expected. Maybe because he was a mealworm, a centipede, something gross and undesirable with thousands of prickly legs—that was how everyone always looked at him, anyway.
He shuffled as far as he could away from the moonlight until he felt a cement foundation against his side, then rolled onto his back so his mouth wasn’t crushed into the soil. The dirt here was cold and damp, like a frozen grave. Strips of light fell across his face, and he could just barely make out the patterned roof over the porch. He held his breath and imagined he was a corpse, that this was his resting place, and somehow that made it easier. He turned his head to the side, where he could see Sen’s ankles, her wooden shoes and white socks.
And there, coming from the forest, were two sets of footprints.
Lee’s heartbeat hammered in his ears. He was not a corpse, not yet, but he might be soon. If Sen’s father looked toward the clearing, he would clearly see that two people had emerged from the forest, that one of them had crawled beneath the porch. Lee remembered the keenness of Sen’s blade; her father’s was probably just as sharp.
He bit down on his sleeve, afraid that he would make a sound. Footsteps approached, one a steady beat and the other tripping up the path, scraping at the dirt like they were being dragged along.
“The forest is clear,” Sen said, her words clipped.
“So he was alone,” said a man’s voice, gravelly and tired, but so low that Lee felt it through the ground. Sen’s father, most likely.
“Yes, Chichiue,” Sen said.
Her father’s footsteps drew closer, and Lee could see his wooden shoes, his white socks splattered with blood. The secondman’s socks were dirty and torn, one of his shoes missing. He fell to his hands and knees with a sharp cry of pain, and Lee could see that his arms were soaked with blood. If he only looked to the left, he would see Lee beneath the porch.
“This is what you wanted to see so badly?” Sen’s father said. “Here you are, then. Here is my house, where my children sleep. You got your wish. It is the last thing you will see before you die.”
Then someone lifted the man to his feet and the world thumped above Lee, the sky darkening. Sen’s father had dropped the man onto the porch. The wood was only inches from Lee’s face, and he could smell the sweat and blood, mud from the man’s robes leaking onto him. The man rolled over and scratched at the wood as if trying to rise to his feet, but he fell back down.
“Please,” the man above Lee said. “Please, I don’t work for anyone, I swear it.”
But Sen’s father’s feet were angled toward Sen—he wasn’t even looking at the man.
“It is a good opportunity to test the sharpness of your blade,” he said.
Sen said nothing, and Lee did not understand at first what her father was asking.
“My brothers are waiting on the other side of the wall,” Sen said quietly. “They will hear.”
“Let them,” her father said. “Your mother has raised them like girls. They need to understand the way that we live.”
For a long moment, no one spoke. Lee could only stare at their feet and try his best not to breathe.
“A true samurai would not hesitate,” Sen’s father said at last, followed by the sound of a blade unsheathing.
