Disclaimer: These characters belong to a lot of Japanese people, namely people like Tite Kubo and Shonen Jump. You'll notice how none of those are me. Not responsible for epileptic seizures or allergic reactions. May contain eye-and-brain-bleeding levels of radioactive CRACK and/or peanut products. Please sit a reasonable distance from your computer screen.

Author's Note: I usually don't write these! Heh! But I think one is in order for this fic.

A guqin, commonly translated into English as a 'zither', is a kind of Chinese stringed instrument. Its lowest note hits somewhere around the same range as a cello, and it's played on its back, with the strings up. They're very old instruments - archeologists have found guqin dating back about 2500 years, and the instrument itself has a history of about 5000 years. You can check out the Wiki if you want more information on them.

But what do these have to do with Japanese characters? Japanese culture itself is only recorded to be between 1800-2200 years old. After a tribal period, Japan rapidly began to adopt a more Chinese social order (including their literature and art). That began about 1600 years ago, and by about 1000 years ago Japanese culture had soaked up all it could. Depending upon how old you think Shunsui is, either he or his parents would have lived through that period.

And that's our history lesson for the day!

Feedback: Or I'll send you meat pies. ~ Hit that review button!

The Guquin

by Crystal Dawn Phoenix

While trying to teach the evil empress of the Shang, Su Daji, to play the guqin in exchange for his father's freedom, the Chinese scholar Ji Bo Yikao was reported to have said that one must not play the guqin under the following circumstances: when one is in mourning, crying, of a heavy mind, angry, sexually aroused, or frightened. He further said that one must not play during thunderstorms, great grief, while unkempt or drunk, without incense or knowledge of music, or in a dirty environment.

Unfortunately for Bo Yikao, all this instruction didn't keep the empress from turning him into meat pies and feeding him to his father when he didn't sleep with her.

So from this we can gather exactly two things. Firstly, when the empress asks you to sleep with her, no matter how evil she is, you do it. Secondly, there are rules one has to follow to play the guqin.

As you can imagine, I don't play very often.

Spending most of my time either drunk or unkempt seems to rule the possibility of playing out entirely. There are times, however, when I am unfortunately sober because I have incurred my lovely Nanao-chan's wrath, resulting in my liquor supplies mysteriously vanishing for several days, sometimes weeks, at a stretch. During these times, none of my regular drinking friends will supply me; none of them are foolish enough to bring that wrath upon themselves, although it is always worth asking. Usually, my only respite comes in the form of alcoholic cakes made from a favorite bakery. If Nanao knows what they contain, she doesn't let on. This is something of a compromise.

It usually takes three or four days for the alcohol to work itself completely out of my system, longer if I have the cakes. By this time, Nanao's anger has usually subsided to the point that I don't have much longer to wait anyway. If I have committed some particularly grave offense, though, this drought can continue nearly indefinitely.

Say, perhaps, that I have injured myself in battle, or worse, in simple revelry. If the wound was particularly grievous or frightening, I can usually expect to be grounded, so to speak, for the better part of a month under the pretense of my health. Worse yet, should I be found smelling of perfume or with lipstick on my collar, or even if a friend reports back to her that I have been, the drought could continue for several months. Should I actually have the audacity to allow Nanao to see me with another woman in the flesh, I would be better served to simply start hiding then and there. My nose was not meant to take that kind of abuse.

Those last two are particularly strange to me; if anything, Nanao has always discouraged my affections. But she is as overprotective of me as I am of her, and even occasionally shows small flashes of well-suppressed jealousy. I have consciously tried to tone down the tomcatting a bit for her sake, but old habits die hard and I'm not quite ready to settle into a life of celibacy just yet. Besides, should she ever decide that my attention should not stray from her, she has but to ask. In the meantime, though, it seems this is just the way things are.

It is at these times of intense discord that the guqin will come into play. Music may have charms to soothe the savage beast, but it would seem that it soothes an angry Nanao-chan as well.

At these times, after I have been sober for weeks and Nanao's ire shows no signs of abating, I bring the old, dusty, stringed instrument down from its shelf in my office. After cleaning it, and the office, and myself up, after lighting the incense, I usually leave the door open and begin to play. Nanao will usually hear it from an adjoining room, and after a few minutes of finding a reasonable stopping point with her paperwork, will slowly begin to creep closer to the music. When she reaches the doorway of my office, I play until I reach the end of the piece, and then I finish up for the day.

The next day, the drought will always have ended and I will have my freedom again without fail.

But perhaps I should start at the beginning of my association with this instrument.

There was a saying when I was a child, that a gentleman was never far from his guqin or se. As such, Father and his friends and associates played, and he believed his sons should play as well. Brother and I were given endless lessons; he for the culture, I for the discipline. Unfortunately for Father, music lessons failed to turn me into a well-disciplined noble gentleman, and it wasn't much longer before I was using the skills I had learned to impress girls. With such hard work and dedication, is it any wonder I soon found myself at the Shinigami Academy?

For years, I continued to play sporadically. It was never anything I held a great deal of passion for, but the ability sometimes came in handy and was a pleasant diversion. As the years passed, however, the times I would play became fewer and farther between. By the time I became a Captain, my instrument was nearly only a display piece. My days became too full of writing and drinking and carousing, of friends and subordinates, to bother practicing much anymore. After Lisa disappeared, I didn't even bother looking at it for several years at a stretch; I was no longer in any shape to play.

The next time I recall noticing it was when Nanao pointed it out. Shortly after she'd taken her post as my Lieutenant, she decided my office was filthy and needed to be cleaned out. In the process of digging through one of my abandoned bookshelves, she unearthed the guqin.

"A koto, sir?" She handled it as though it were made of tissue.

"Older than that, my dear. It's a guqin." I took it from her and idly plucked a string. The tension was bad and the string was old. The years had not been kind to my old friend.

I could see curiosity flitting across her face. "Do you play?" She finally asked the question after the curiosity became too much to bear.

"Ahh, not for several, several years now." I noticed the nearly hidden look of disappointment on her face as she turned back to clearing the clutter. I placed the guqin on my desk; later I would clean and polish the wood and replace the strings. But after that maintenance, I would not touch it again for many years.

Then, one February day fifteen years ago, I made the disastrous mistake of bringing an unseated officer from another division into the office while Nanao was pulling overtime and finishing up paperwork. I don't know why I thought it might be a good idea in the first place, but the look I got from her for my trouble was chilling. Certainly it killed whatever mood there was and I went to walk the poor girl home, but by that time Nanao had excused herself, practically leaving frost in her wake.

The next day when I returned to the office, everything seemed fine at first. Everything was in its usual impeccable order, the paperwork was slowly churning along. As the minutes passed, however, I began to notice something was amiss. True, Nanao was working at her desk, diligent as always, but there was a different air about the place. She sat stock straight, not acknowledging me as I arrived and looking directly at her paperwork, lips set in a firm, straight line.

It was then that I noticed it. Everything was preternaturally still. The other officers made no sounds and stayed as far from her office as they could, only the brave daring to deliver papers to her or even pass by. I said nothing and retired to my office; if she didn't love me, why should I deny myself female company, even if it was only for a night?

Later that day, I would discover that my office had been completely and methodically ransacked of liquor. Even the nooks and crannies that I had thought completely hidden and impervious to theft had not been left untouched. When I mentioned my plight to Nanao, she showed no sympathy, instead coldly saying that it would do me good to be sober for a little while.

Stricken, I resolved to leave work a bit early and find the nearest bar before a truly hellish hangover set in. Alas, it was not meant to be! The bar nearest our offices refused to serve me, something very much like pure fear in their eyes as they rushed me out the door and back into the street.

So I tried the next bar. And the next. And the next after that.

After something like twenty different bars had turned me out, I came across my dear drinking friend Rangiku. Instead of turning me away, she warily took me back to the last bar that had kicked me out, and ordered me a large pot of hot tea. To my protests, she ordered herself some sake. I was, as usual, paying.

"What were you thinking?" she asked, looking as though she were completely exasperated with me.

"That it's just horrible that no one in town will give me anything to drink," I whined back in response. Really, how cruel could she be, drinking in front of me like that?

"It's your own fault, you know." Although I had a sneaking suspicion as to what this was all about, the scope of this conspiracy seemed too great to truly consider.

"But Rangiku-chan! I've done nothing to deserve this! I'm an innocent man!" Technically, I felt this was true. How it would look to Rangiku was another matter entirely. The Court of Love was quite a different place from a court of law.

"After how long you've chased her, can you honestly say that? You're lucky this was all she did. You don't want to know what she said last night. It was pretty colorful for her." This conjured images in my mind that I shall not trouble my gentle readers with. Rest assured, they involved high notes, lots of blood, and were not very pleasant at all.

"She told you about that?" I was wounded, but not very surprised. I assumed Rangiku wasn't the only one she'd spoken with, considering the reaction I was getting from the bartenders that evening.

"She did. You're kind of a pig, you know that?"

"I appreciate that we have the kind of relationship where you can honestly say these things to me, but I'm not really sure it helps at this point." And it didn't. I was starting to realize that I'd honestly hurt my Nanao-chan. And I didn't even have the comfort of a bottle for it.

"Then apologize to her."

She made it sound like the simplest thing in the world. But what kind of apology could I make that didn't sound like a backhanded accusation? Certainly it wasn't her fault that she wasn't ready to, or didn't want to, return my affections. And I wasn't ready to accept the life of a monk for the promise of a love that might never happen. What could I do?

This stalemate lasted for months. The silence, the frigid air of the office infecting the early spring weather, it was unbearable. Several times I almost apologized to her outright, the words stopping just short of my throat. I asked, I begged, I pleaded for her to talk to me as she once had. Nothing seemed to help.

The men and women in our division began to gossip about our miserable situation. Oh, certainly the work was still getting done, the offices were still clean and tidy, the paperwork was still turned in on time. But the atmosphere, the morale, was absolutely terrible. Nanao herself was slightly less cold to our people than she was to me, but that didn't say much at all. Their warm, if slightly awkward and bossy Vice Captain was gone, replaced with someone foreign and painfully rigid.

Things could not continue this way.

Determined to end the standoff, I woke on time one morning in early May. I showered, shaved, styled my hair carefully, and put on my best uniform before heading into the office a full four hours before I normally would have. I even wore my tabi! Our subordinates could see that on this morning, I meant business.

I breezed past Nanao and into my office. As I passed, I caught a glimpse of her stunned face; I had caught her off guard. By this point, the office was actually alive for once, hushed voices murmuring conspiracy theories about their Captain's unusual behavior. Had I lost my mind? Had Nanao's silent protest finally prompted me to straighten up and fly right? Was I replaced by some devious Hollow, and secretly waiting to devour them all when they least suspected it?

I waited for a while - I think an hour, maybe two - before I actually put the plan into motion. In the meantime, I sat at my desk actually doing work with the office door open. Nanao came in a few times to deliver paperwork, but she did no more than place the papers on my desk and stare quizzically at me for a few seconds before turning and walking out again.

And then I figured I had waited long enough. I lit the incense I usually kept in my desk (it's nice to have it on hand for special occasions) and pulled the guqin down. With a soft rag, I took it back to my desk and wiped the body free of dust. Then, I began to tune it.

I could see the back of Nanao's desk from mine. The straight way she held herself told me that she was paying attention to the gentle plucks and twangs I made as I tuned. I knew she had never heard me play before, and I was sure it was something she'd been curious about since she'd seen the instrument the day she was cleaning my shelves several years prior.

Once the tuning was done, I paused for a moment. There was a tension in Nanao's back, as though she wanted to turn and watch but was too proud. Then I slowly began to pluck out the chords to an old song called 'Flowing Water'. Halfway through, I looked out my office door; Nanao's desk was empty.

Attempting not to miss a note, I scanned the adjoining chamber. There she was, at a file cabinet between the desk and my door. Satisfied, I looked down again, concentrating on the melody. When I lifted my head again, she was closer, this time standing inconspicuously at a small table. And later still, closer still, pouring a cup of coffee and casting quick glances in my direction.

Her countenance had softened. My pulse sped. If I became too excited or distracted, I wouldn't be able to play another piece; unfortunately, it seemed as if that was exactly what would happen. But the line had been cast, the bait swallowed; she was now standing half-hidden by the door frame, shyly sipping her coffee. Slowly, the others in the office began to join her, quietly gathering around the doorway to listen.

As I struck the final note and rested my hands in front of me on the desk, the stillness of the office was broken by the applause of our subordinates. It had been so long since I'd last played that none of them had even heard it before. Nanao simply stared and said nothing. The next morning, I'd find some of my liquor returned, as well as my normal, warm Nanao-chan.

Things have continued much in this way ever since.

And that brings us to today. It's been about a month since the last time I drank, and more than a year since my last dalliance with another girl. Alas, my Nanao-chan is a harsh and unsympathetic mistress! So it was with steadfast heart and sober mind that I dressed and groomed myself well this morning and headed into the office.

Now when our subordinates see this production, they know what to expect. "Our Captain is in the doghouse" they say, or else "He is apologizing for something". They listen intently for the music to start, and when it has finished, they listen intently to see if they can discern what has prompted the performance. As Nanao never says anything afterward, most of this is in vain. But it is clear to them that she loves these performances and understands they're for her.

And so, I began to play. As was customary, it drew Nanao, as well as the rest of the office, to my door. Something was different this time, though. Perhaps it was something off in the look on her face, or her countenance. She looked almost... troubled about something.

As the song began to draw to a close, instead of silently standing in the doorway, she left the throng and stepped inside my office. Wordlessly, she slid the door shut behind her, to the disappointment of the officers around her. This did not dispel the crowd; instead, I could tell they had clustered even tighter around the cracks in the door to listen.

Was this it? After long, long years of waiting, was she finally going to sweep everything off my desk with one hand and fling herself across it into my arms? Or perhaps she would take those tidy pins out of her hair and untie her belt right there? My thoughts raced alongside my pulse. Thankfully, the song was coming to an end, as I was rapidly leaving a fit state from which to play it.

Finally the last note sounded, slightly discordant and off-key. It was a timid confession that my mind had wandered far afield from where it was supposed to have been. I wondered if Nanao had noticed.

But no. When I looked up at the woman who stood just on the other side of my desk, there was a slightly pained expression on her face. I silently wondered if my playing had become that bad over the years.

"Sir, may I speak with you for a moment?" Just speak? Ahh, I should've known.

"Of course, Nanao-chan. Why don't you tell me what's on your mind?" I idly plucked at a string, not wanting to look on that wounded expression for too long.

"I know that... for years you've only played for us when I'm angry with you. Usually..." Her voice trailed off and by this point I had begun to watch her face again. The hurt had begun to mix with nervousness, her eyes refusing to meet mine. "Usually, this is your way of making up for... being with another woman."

Now this was a change of pace. Nanao was not usually so candid about things of this nature. Nor had she ever come this close to admitting she might have been acting out of a sense of jealousy. Even now, her cheeks had turned an appealing rosy color. Yet more interesting was the use of the word 'another' - did she already consider herself mine? I could not bring myself to interrupt her, so enrapt was I with possibility.

"But lately... lately you haven't even looked at other girls." Now this was truly surreal. For years she had scolded and nagged me over those bad habits. Could it be that now she was worried that I hadn't been indulging in them as I'd used to? I glanced out my office window just to make absolutely sure that the ground was still on bottom and the sky still on top.

"Could it be? My dear Nanao-chan, could it possibly be that you're concerned about your Captain's virility?" Making light of her concerns probably wasn't the best course of action, but something about it was so absurd that I couldn't help but comment. "Should you ever decide to see for yourself..." Her expression moved from concern to frustration rather quickly.

"No, I am not." Ah well, it had been worth a try. After a few seconds, though, that flash of exasperation melted again to reveal more concern. "I'm worried that you're... going to make yourself unhappy for my sake, sir."

This was a new and rather interesting development. Was she trying to be selfless? She had never before been concerned for my comfort when doing something she deemed to be 'for my own good'. In fact, the topic of the conversation looked as if it was making her incredibly uncomfortable.

"I wonder... could Rangiku-san possibly have prompted this conversation?" It was a stab in the dark, but I felt I'd hit the nail on the head. She had known about our predicament for many years, often listening to both of us complain about the other in our turn. Quite a while hence, I believe, she'd grown tired of taking the role of relationship counselor and had proceeded to give out roughly the same advice whenever Nanao brought forward another complaint - "Why don't you just sleep with him?" Her advice to me was frequently more colorful and full of name-calling. In either case, Rangiku was well aware that I hadn't had another woman in quite a while.

From Nanao's reaction, I could tell that I had hit the mark. "You shouldn't worry, Nanao-chan. Although... if you're that concerned, I could always look up some old flame." That suggestion didn't seem to sit well, either. But I had a feeling that nothing I said would at that point.

"That won't be necessary. I just... don't want you to hold yourself back for my sake." If this was some sort of 'move on without me' speech, I had no intention of accepting it. Judging from her expressions, though, it seemed to be of the 'no, no, don't mind me - I want you to be happy' variety. Which I also had no inclination to accept.

"If I am holding myself back, it is because I want to. I do believe there's a simple solution that would satisfy us both, though." I didn't have to elaborate. The nonplussed expression on her face told me that she knew exactly to what I was referring.

"No, sir." It was the answer to the unasked question.

And thus, the cycle will begin again. Tomorrow morning, I'll find some of my stash returned, the storm having blown over, peace having returned to the office. Things will continue in much the same way as they always have, with me avoiding work and Nanao hunting me down to sign some paper or attend some meeting. If I'm lucky, perhaps my regular friends will even welcome me back to the bars tomorrow evening, with open arms and full cups.

But somehow, I feel as though something has changed today, some balance shifted. Perhaps I've come closer to winning her affections once and for all. Or perhaps she's overcome some internal hurdle that she hadn't been able to master before. Perhaps we've both grown a little less selfish.

Either way, a respite from sobriety will be more than welcome.