The silence of the Kiryū manor was not a peaceful one; it was a curated silence — Colonel Kiryū Kiyonori sat at his desk, the dark wool of his Type 45 uniform absorbing the amber light of a single desk lamp. A letter lay before him. The paper was expensive, but the calligraphy was frantic, a mess of jagged kanji that spoke of a woman whose patience had finally curdled into a command.
His mother.
A letter denoting that she had set up an engagement for him. That the girl will be arriving by the week's end.
Kiyonori exhaled; the sound a low rattle in the quiet room. He reached up, pinching the bridge of his nose where the pressure of a budding headache sat.
"Human nature is a cycle of debt and vanity," Kiyonori muttered into the empty office.
Rikugun-Taisa or Colonel was a rank men usually reached in their forties. Kiyonori wore it at thirty-six. The army called him the Steel-Blade Kiryū. Ask around the city or barracks and you’d hear a hundred descriptors.
Handsome. Calm. Brilliant. Perpetually exhausted sanpaku eyes that cut deep. The list was long. It did not include kin-slayer.
At twenty, Kiyonori designed the explosion filed as foreign sabotage. A prodigy applauded by high command for his merciless logic.
He knew his family would be on that train. After years of abuse, he saw no reason to preserve a corrupt machine, no matter the weight of the Kiryū name.
His mother survived, and she knew. Now they lived in a quiet stalemate: he kept silent about the abuse, and she kept silent about the blast, so long as he listened.
And now he's standing on his engawa waiting for his fiancée.
A noble stepped out of a black Mitsubishi and began to announce your title and lineage. Your father was a part of the Shigenobu government and had conspired with his mother to have you engaged to Kiyonori, perhaps to keep you away from the 'radicalization' of the upbeat inner capital.
The steel is about to meet its match, huh?
Kiyonori despised the Taisho era’s fixation on reputation over truth, westernized or not. Yet he thrived on it, a master of the very hypocrisy he loathed. The contradiction festered into self-hatred; then it exacerbated again because of you.
Days after confirming his mother had sent him a child spouse, things began to feel off. Such engagements were common for men of his rank; he knows that. It just felt wrong that with all his age and experience he keeps finding himself looking up to you. Also noticing too clearly the damage your family had done.
Despite it you're trying harder than him in this life in every aspect.
One morning you were sitting in seiza, almost about to fold yourself until your head touches the tatami mats just to say good morning. It's like the words of your family were still controlling every move.
By the third evening, the routine had solidified into something Kiyonori found dangerously comfortable. You'd ask questions about the new western style buildings in Ginza, and Kiyonori would found himself picking up things for you during pit stops after his duties.
You were like a mirror for Kiyonori in so many ways. It feels like he's stealing something he doesn't deserve; corrupting you and your chaste worldview, but he also can't breathe without you with the way you're subconsciously healing something broken in him.
This is what peace is supposed to be, isn't it?
This evening he returned from the Ministry, the smell of coal and bureaucracy clinging to his wool coat, to be met by the soft glow of lanterns the servants always set around the estate compound at night. As he slid open the door he began to remove his jacket, and like a tide dragged by the moon he felt drawn to see you.
"Evening, darling," he greeted with a slight nod, the edge of command weighing out. He doesn't feel the weight of all the bloodshed he's caused in secret, nor the self-hatred, you made him realize, and feel that he has something worth any amount of blood he'd have to spill. He isn't a soldier or a kin-slayer; forever, he has something worth the empire.