Chapter One: Wheel of Fortune

The young woman headed toward the market as fast as her feet would carry her. She was a slight, but hardy looking girl and therefore all who chanced to look up at the moment she passed may have seen a pink blur racing past; by all accounts, at record speed. Some even thought about timing her for fun. Before they could try to distinguish her face as the sound of her wooden Geta sandals approached, a gust of wind picked up and blew dust in their eye, and as their vision was impaired all they heard were the sandals clacking away down the main avenue.

"Why the haste?" some would ask as the running girl came to near misses with people's baskets, shoulders or children. Those who lived in town were familiar with this daily routine in the market. Some of the locals came by especially to catch a glimpse of the girl who ran like the wind. She was a recent transplant a few years ago to their town. Most knew her as a friendly, but not necessarily loquacious girl who was comfortable with strangers but slow to divulge how and why a girl of her age would land in this particular town unaccompanied and without much purpose except to work and eat. The girl worked for the strict mistress of the local inn in their seaport town, just north of Nagasaki. If she didn't collect supplies for the evening meal in time for the guests to be satisfied by sunset, there would be no dinner for her. As most observers guessed, dinner was very important to this young lady. Every day before sunset, they would watch the girl display her Herculean strength uncommon in a girl of her frame as she carried bags of grain, buckets of fish and baskets of vegetables and seasonings in her arms, on her shoulders and on her head as she hurried back to the inn.

"You'll wear yourself out like that, Fuu-chan," called out the old woman of the apothecary shop. As Fuu streamed by, the old woman, threw out a large, juicy prune from her basket. On cue, Fuu caught the prune in her mouth and chewed on it as she made her way back to the Hinode Inn. She ignored the sputtered laughter and tried not to blush when the old apothecary told her that her need to hurry contributed to her constipation, which was what the prunes were supposed to cure.

Fuu nearly fell over with embarrassment. Just as she was about to continue her dash at full speed a croaky old voice called out to her. Fuu stopped and looked around to locate the origin of the voice. An ugly painted face of an old woman in wide-rimmed straw hat, strangely familiar, came forth from the shadows.

"Vase…lady?" said Fuu, recalling that somewhere near Edo on an earlier adventure, this old hag had told her fortune and warned her to stay away from vases that day. That was probably one of the most unlucky days of her life. In fact, that entire journey when she was fifteen was riddled with unlucky days. Fuu learned the hard way to pay attention to fortunes from then on.

"The wheel of fortune comes full circle," said the hag cryptically.

"Sorry?" asked Fuu, wondering if some clarification was to follow. But, since Fuu had no money to pay her to elaborate, the old woman returned to the shadows without another word, turned the corner and disappeared.

"Okaaay…." said Fuu, cocking her head to one side at the weird encounter. She shrugged and continued on her way. And just like that, the girl who was named after the wind, disappeared from the marketplace as quickly as she came.

"Geez, I wish the apothecary wouldn't be so open about my problems, Momo," said Fuu to her pet, a small brown flying squirrel that followed her everywhere. Unknown to most, Momo hid inside the folds of Fuu's pink kimono, ready to strike any hand that ventured near Fuu's "peaches." Momo had followed Fuu because nuts were hard to come by in the winter, and Momo was tired of such tedious things such as hibernation and procreation that her ilk were inclined to do each year, in an endless cycle until they died or were killed. The two had been inseparable since Fuu left her hometown and never looked back.

"My constipation isn't that bad," she muttered as she hauled in the last of the sacks of grain onto the wooden rack for the cooks. Suddenly, her stomach grumbled and went numb. Her elbow accidentally knocked over a basket and a daikon radish rolled out in a semi-circle onto the floor of the hallway.

"I'm so hungry," she complained to no one. After her mad dash back to the inn, Fuu hardly had the energy to pick up the radish and so she resolved to stare at it, willing it to go back in place. Should I eat it? she thought to herself. Before she could contemplate the possibility, she heard footsteps coming down the servant's stairs.

"Your food's in the back, Fuu," said a nasally voice behind her. The proprietor, Miss Suzuka, who was nearly forty but insisted on being called "miss," tapped her wooden fan against the wall as she surveyed the goods.

"Hmph. I see that you haven't forgotten the spices this time. At least you're capable of using whatever you have for a brain." Fuu held her tongue.

"Hurry up then, before I find something else for you to do before bed," said Miss Suzuka.

Fuu left without a word and headed towards the smell of steamed rice and sautéed fish cakes. In fact, she prided herself in her ability to ignore her employer's snide remarks and unkind attitude as part of her daily routine. A younger Fuu, the one who was forced into the labor market out of necessity after living a life of secluded leisure as the daughter of a samurai, would have given a pointed retort—and probably would have gotten sacked thereafter. Long gone were the days of fireworks in the summer and steaming red bean cakes in the winter at her mother's side. Time and hunger taught Fuu that pride can be set aside for food. In fact, Fuu was quite a connoisseur of Japanese cuisine. From Kyushu's shabu-shabu to Hokkaido's ramen, Fuu had made it a point in her young life to travel and taste all the food of Japan before she died. Such was the grand scheme in the simple heart of Fuu Kasumi.

After she gobbled down her food, an unseemly habit that was no match for a fierce metabolism that maintained her slim figure, she made sure to hide herself in some corner of the Inn to remain unnoticed. Last time she was caught doing nothing, one of the head servants gave her chamber pot duty. Fuu nearly lost her dinner after she had eaten it, which, in her mind, would have been the real tragedy.

Just as she turned the corner to her usual hiding spot in one of the unused balconies that overlooked the ocean in the distance, she ran into one of the servers.

"Fuu, what are you doing here? Miss Suzuku will scold you if she found you wandering near the guest quarters."

"I was just on my way to find a quiet spot to digest in peace," replied Fuu as she started to move away. The servant caught her sleeve in his hand.

"Hold on a sec, Fuu. We may have a use for you. There are prominent guests here tonight and we can't afford to make any mistakes or we'll be skinned alive by the proprietor. Can you help us with something important?"

"What's more important than my digestion?" sulked Fuu.

"I know how you value your digestion, Fuu. Remember when I gave you my meat bun when Miss Suzuku sent you to bed without supper for being late? I think it's safe to say you owe me one."

She sighed. "I always repay my debts. What can I help you with?"

"One of the serving maids twisted her ankle. Unfortunately, someone left a daikon radish in the middle of the walkway to the kitchen. One of the cooks tripped over it, and he fell over taking several people with him, and so we're short on help right now."

"What? I can't serve people, I mean look at me," said Fuu pointing to the cracks and calluses on her fingers as well as her windblown hair and dirty toes.

"A pair of tabi socks, a fresh frock with long sleeves and make up will do. We even have an extra wig," said the serving girl Rin from behind, summing up Fuu with a quick glance from head to toe. "The mistress won't even recognize you."

"I'm dead if I'm caught," sighed Fuu.

"The serving maid's dead if the proprietor finds out she can't work on our busiest night of the week," sighed Rin.

"Because I'm a nice person and the world would be a dark place without duty," said Fuu resignedly. "I'll do it."

With that, she was led away by Rin to the servant's changing quarters. Fuu was a lower servant, one who worked behind the scenes since Miss Suzuku found her unfit to present to her customers for being "totally without charm." The actual serving maids dressed up in dark purple kimonos with elegant blue obis and wore a similar wig adorned with a simple brass comb that adorned the Inn's emblem of sun and crane. The servers were very good looking, and their beauty traditionally amplified with powder and rouge to make their skin look almost porcelain white save for the pink glow of their cheeks and lips. Hinode was well reputed for its established image. If Fuu did anything to taint that image, reminded Rin, Miss Suzuku would be unforgiving.

Fortunately, Fuu would not be serving the important guests in the main hall. She was sent to wait upon the lesser rooms of the ordinary guests. Her duties for the night would be mainly waiting outside in the lower hall with the other first level servants until someone called to either bring more food or more sake.

Just as Fuu and Rin got into position in the hall, two guests, one on each side of the hall called for assistance. Fuu stood there for a moment, wondering which door she should take.

"The one on the left is really troublesome tonight," sighed Rin. "He's been asking for sake nonstop and he looks the type to skip out on a bill. If not for the woman he's with, I wonder how'd he ever get into an inn like ours. I wonder how she deals with his wandering hands. I'll take the one on the right."

"You'd force a customer like that on a newbie? You're crueler than I thought. Let's flip for it," said Fuu. She pulled out a coin from her pocket and tossed it towards Rin. Before it landed, she called out, "I get my pick if it's heads." Rin caught the coin, and just as she did, Fuu was already kneeling down and opening the sliding door on the right.

"Cheater!" whispered Rin as she grudgingly shoved the coin in her pocket and made for the door on the left.

As was instructed, used her most polite speech to greet the customer and ask how she could be of assistance. As she looked up Fuu nearly fell over with shock when she saw the man in the room. Though his wire-rimmed glasses had gone missing since that last swordfight with Kariya Kagetoki, the man who killed her father by order of the government, his sleek black hair knotted in one long tail and solemn pale face were unmistakable. In the few years they had not seen each other, he had not changed, though his clothes did seem a little more traveled. In that moment, Fuu could not express the myriad of feelings that rushed to her all at once, which she later recounted as being part happiness and delight, and also part disappointment. The happiness came with seeing a friend who seemed bound to her in destiny, and the disappointment came not because she missed the face of her other friend who traveled with them in that small time frame of her life when she was fifteen, but in seeing Jin with a lovely woman she only knew as "Kohana," who had been a prostitute in Edo. Fuu averted her eyes quickly, fearing recognition and feeling somehow embarrassed to be in the same room with the two supposed lovers.

"More sake, please," said Jin.

"At once," answered Fuu politely. She got up to retrieve the empty sake bottle on the lady's side of the table. She stopped short when she realized the woman was staring intently at her.

"It is you," smiled the woman in an epiphany as she caught Fuu's hand, recognizing the young face behind the make up upon closer examination.

Before Jin had a chance to take a better look there was a sudden commotion from the hall. Fuu spun around just in time to see someone being thrown through the doorway of the opposite room, past Rin as she shrieked, across the narrow hallway and heading straight for her—much to Fuu's horror. In that split second she realized it was too late to duck and so Fuu closed her eyes tightly and braced for impact. Suddenly, she was pushed aside with great force and she rolled sideways several times over the tatami floor until she found herself lying on top of Jin.

"Fuu?" he said finally, recognizing her face through her make-up. Fuu's deep blush was covered by the powder. Was that the first time he had ever called her by name? Her attention was then taken away by the mess in the room. She turned to see the man amid the mess that was once the black lacquered table, now broken in half, and the cracked serving ware to see a drunk but familiar face brushing the food off of his clothes.

"Damnit Mugen, can't you at least stop groping women when I'm talking to you??" demanded the voice of an angry female from the other room. Imanho Yatsuha, detective and undercover agent for what constituted the police force in the outskirts of Edo near the Hakone Checkpoint, cracked her knuckles, ready to give her drinking partner another beating. Clearly, they were both dangerously drunk.

This somehow seemed the most fitting end to the evening on Fuu's first and probably only night as a server and possibly her employment at the Inn. She couldn't avoid Miss Suzuku's attention now. The servant who convinced her to serve tonight ran to their aid, but put a hand to his forehead as he saw the unpredicted outcome. Surely, Miss Suzuka would have their hides. Fuu rolled off of Jin, took one of the sake cups that had scattered in her direction and threw it at Mugen. It bounced painfully off his head and he turned around.

"Can't you drink sake in peace? Are you trying to get me fired?!"

He squinted at her and an expression of recognition came to his face. "You--?"

The words of the old hag rang true in that moment as Fuu sighed. She imagined an immense wheel rolling on top of her to crush her.

Author's Note: I found myself searching my shelves for something entertaining. I came across my DVDs for Samurai Champloo and after watching, realized how much I really liked this series. The Baseball Blues episode seemed strangely out of place and I was convinced the episode with the mushrooms was a hallucinogenic dream of Fuu's, but overall I really liked it. When they parted in the last episode, swords broken and going three different directions I think the creators meant to say that they were not going to meet again and they would all three lead peaceful lives but their friendship would hold them together forever. Being a JinxFuu fan, naturally I found it hard to leave it at that!

So here's a story written in the week before I return to reality, because I think Jin was really hot in that last fight with Kariya. (Mugen was also cool, so he can be in this story too.)

-Kero (7/27/08)