CH_8.44 (309)

CH_8.44 (309)

Sune Jakusho had been looking forward to the evening for the entire week. He had been making progress with the geisha, Yuri, and thought it would be another week before her futile resistance would crumble. He didn't mind her reluctance and defiance—in fact, he appreciated it—the prize was so much more enjoyable when the hunt was a real challenge.

He had visited her every week without fail, showered her with gifts, and done everything a geisha would expect from a patron. The more she refused to sleep with him, the more he wanted her. It wouldn't have been different if she had simply been playing hard to get more benefits from him, but she did not go beyond keeping company and making conversation with the men she saw, and that's what made her so enticing.

Her allure only got stronger when she remained unbudging in the face of increasingly lavish gifts. When wealth and riches didn't sway her, he tried something else. He made two of her patrons stop seeing her through simple 'persuasion' and let the news reach her ears that he was behind it. He had been quite charitable to the geisha house itself, granting him some influence, which he used to put pressure on Yuri through her own people.

He put pressure on her from all sides, slowly isolating her.

Jakusho chuckled. He couldn't wait to see what kind of face she would make today.

"Hey, go faster," he said, kicking the driver's seat back.

"Y-Yes, sire," said the Jakusho's civilian driver of two years.

"Bloody useless," Jakusho said to his two lackeys from the gang coming along with him. They would spend some time with some cheap girls because they had no money to spare for finer entertainment, and they enjoyed themselves every week on his dime.

"Are you going to bed the geisha today, big brother?" asked one of his lackeys.

"The longer you cook a stew, the more flavourful it becomes. This one is going to be ready any day now. If not today, next week might be the day I feast," Jakusho said with a haughty smile when he saw the envy in his other lackey's eyes.

Jakusho craned his neck back and looked up at the sky. His smile went away. He enjoyed playing with his prey as part of the hunt, but there was a limit to his patience. He preferred to be a strategic hunter, but if intricate finesse wasn't enough, he didn't mind becoming a butcher and going in for a straightforward kill.

If the woman didn't understand her role as the whore she was supposed to be, then he didn't mind showing her the light of reality.

The horse pulling the carriage suddenly neighed loudly, immediately following the carriage screeching to a violent halt and drifting to the side, almost sending the three men flying out of their seats.

"You imbecile! What are you doing!?" Jakusho screamed at the driver and slapped him in the back.

"S-Sire, it's not my fault," the driver winced in pain, "the carriage in front of us suddenly lost its wheel."

Jakusho didn't need to be told, as he saw the carriage collapse in the middle of the street.

The back right wheel shattered on the ground when he got up to punish the driver. The people on the street were agitated because of the sudden accident and had moved away from the collapsed carriage while also gathering around the accident because of curiosity.

"Drive around it and be quick. I will cut your pay if I'm late," Jakusho said, shooting a nasty glare at the driver. He clicked his tongue as he returned to his seat. "Fuckers, why do they own carriages when they can't take care of them."

As the driver tried to get them out of the mess, Jakusho gazed around and saw a beautiful young woman with striking amber eyes. She was looking at him and smiled when their eyes met. He smiled back while giving her a look over. She was wearing a grey cloak covering her entire body, but something in her expression caught her attention.

It was confidence.

The woman was beautiful, and she knew it. More importantly, she didn't mind using it to her advantage. Jakusho desired to see that kind of confidence shattered and gaze at its broken remains—just the thought of it brought him pleasure. So when her arm slipped out of her cloak, and she beckoned him with a finger, he went to her while the driver got them out around the accident.

The shinobi struck while Jakusho spoke, catching him on the back foot. He parried and blocked the floating kunai held up by appendages. Two more appendages suddenly grabbed his arm and yanked hard, forcing him to shuffle to maintain his balance.

"You fucker!" he cursed as he swung his sword to cut through the appendages, and when they hit the ground, he realised it was water because it splashed him.

He flowed into his next attack and raised his sword up to swing it down as the shinobi threw a punch which was never going to reach him because of the distance, but a force hit Jakusho on his face, startling him and throwing him off before he could swing his sword.

He didn't know what hit him. Another shinobi ninjutsu? But he recovered quickly and raised his guard as the shinobi moved in close. His eyes tracked the water appendages and the kunai—but the shinobi punched him. Jakusho raised his arm to block it as he readied the sword in his other hand for the counterattack—he was going to cut his head off.

The plan to counterattack didn't come to fruition when he felt his arm crack as a ruinous force assaulted his arm.

"Argh!" he screamed as he felt his arm grow heavy as it failed due to his broken arm.

He gritted his teeth and haphazardly struck out a kick that somehow connected, pushing the shinobi one step away, which wasn't enough. He slashed with his sword to launch a chakra crescent, which the shinobi couldn't ignore easily and ducked while rolling sideways.

I need to escape. He no longer wanted to confront the shinobi with a broken arm. He knew that if he engaged the shinobi for another minute, other samurai would arrive at the scene, and he would have a backup, but he didn't like the risk that came with the plan. It was better to escape and cause as much commotion as possible in hopes that it would scare the shinobi away.

Jakusho turned in the opposite direction as the shinobi rolled away and dug into his pocket for a smoke bomb when he felt cold metal dig through his back before the sharp pain made him stop. He turned back to see the cloaked woman he had met at the roadside step away from him with his blood on her hands.

"Y-You—"

Anger overrode pain as he raised his sword to strike her down. Four more kunai hit him in his side— one slipped between his ribs, two tore into his thighs, one ripped his oblique apart, but the one that did him in went through his neck. The woman had stepped away but charged him the moment he was hit, stabbed him in the heart with a kunai, and pushed him to the ground.

He had already lost strength in his body and collapsed like a sack. As his body went cold and his blood pooled on the road, the last thing Jakusho heard was a conversation between his assassins.

"Let's leave before trouble arrives," said the woman to the masked man who walked closer.

"Yeah, just one moment," said the man before he knelt beside him and took out the first kunai that had hit him in the arm.

Jakusho mustered all of his strength to grab the man's arm while he cried, which only came out as blood gurgles because of the kunai in his neck. The man didn't even need to put any strength to shrug off his hand.

"Rest. Everything's over now," said the man softly.

Those were Jakusho's last words before the man ended his life with one last stab.



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