text: Sugiyama patted his middle as he walked. His small medicine box was missing. It had been attached to his belt by a silk cord ending in a toggle. The ends of the cord were cut. The courtesan must have removed it, perhaps as payment. Well, all the common people thought of was money. He was mildly disappointed. He had thought she was above such considerations.
  
  The outskirts of Miyako were rising above him. Houses clustered together thickly and he passed shops and inns. Walls enclosed the villas of the wealthy. The jostling travellers kept a decent space from him, but nonetheless their presence was irksome. Also, the previous night's exertions, pleasant as they had been, had made him sleepy. Sugiyama wandered into a lane in a small village. Spying a half-ruined wall and expecting to find an abandoned villa behind it, he leaped the barrier. A large formal garden in the Chinese style, poorly kept but still very elegant, met his gaze. Through the trees and bushes he could make out the roof of a small thatched hut or outhouse and he made his way in that direction.
  
  He broke into a clearing and saw that he had made a mistake. Though unkempt, the garden was not abandoned. Beyond a pond, on the far side of the hut he could see the outline of a large dilapidated villa. A middle-aged woman was standing at the hut. She heard Sugiyama's step on the gravel that ringed it, and turned expectantly.
  
  When she saw Sugiyama her face changed to an expression of alarm. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
  
  Trying to put a good face on things, and not wanting to be mistaken for a mean robber, Sugiyama strode confidently forward.
  
  "Sugiyama Tamasaburo. I heard the water and came for a drink," he said gruffly and walked past her. He was halfway to the pond when he discovered he had made a second mistake. A young woman was drawing water from a stone cistern served by a tiny stream of clear water by the pond's edge. And from the interior of the hut he could hear the sound of movement. He walked on, ignoring the baffled stares of both women. He reached for the bamboo dipper the young woman had dropped and helped himself to a drink.
  
  "What are you doing here, eh?" a male voice addressed him from the hut. An exquisitely dressed middle-aged samurai strode over to Sugiyama while the young girl ran for the shelter of the hut.
  
  "Drinking," said Sugiyama succinctly, and put the dipper carefully down on the parallel golden bamboos that rested on the stone basin. The bamboo thumper, filling and emptying its load of water, accompanied his words with a timeless tock, then another.
  
  The samurai strode over to Sugiyama and stared at him insolently. "I am Ueda Masahige, of the Satake clan, and I am not used to being addressed that way."
  
  "Sugiyama Tamasaburo. And I don't care how you like being addressed."
  
  The two women huddled together by the hut.
  
  The samurai clenched his jaws, slid back a step and drew his sword in the elegant motions of the Tamashii-ryu school of sword fighting. He balanced on the balls of his feet. His blade was held pointing slightly forward in chudan kamae ready position. His left hand gripped the blade at the pommel, right near the guard. His eyes focused lightly on Sugiyama. He breathed lightly, alertly.
  
  Sugiyama grinned coldly, then lazily drew his plain sword from its plain lacquered scabbard. He held the sword loosely at his side, one handed, in no recognizable position. His weight was distributed fairly on both feet, completely relaxed. The Satake swordsman smiled slightly. The ronin was a fool. That overconfident pose was good for impressing the yokels with one's insouciance, but he was an experienced, high-grade swordsman. He inched forward slightly, improving his position to the optimal distance.
  
  As Ueda's weight shifted, Sugiyama slipped forward in a deep zenkutsu-dachi stance, his right foot extended well forward. His sword flashed out at knee level and he snapped back to full height stance. Ueda stared down horrified as his shin fell to one side, his uncontrollable weight to the other. He had time to see Sugiyama's eyes move from his own falling body to the horrified eyes of his wife and her maid.
  
  Sugiyama strode forward, reversing his sword. The back of the blade deflected Ueda's feeble blow and he plunged his own tip, backhanded, into Ueda's solar plexus as he passed. Ueda's body tried to arc off the ground as Sugiyama pulled his blade free. He stopped before the two women, smiling hungrily. He flipped the blood off the blade automatically, wiped it with a tissue from the store in the bosom of his robe, and started to resheath. The moment's inattention almost cost him his life as the samurai's new widow drove her tanto dagger straight at his belly.
  
  Sugiyama twisted aside and seized her forearm, twisting her to the ground with his hip. She fell heavily, but tried to rise and attack him gamely.
  
  "Run Ocho," she screamed. "Run!" but the younger girl was trapped between the interior of the small hut and Sugiyama. Panic had paralyzed her and she huddled in the corner watching the older woman fight the samurai with wide eyes.
  
  Breathing heavily Sugiyama strove to control the woman's struggles. Her elaborate hairdo became undone and her long hair turned dusty with her efforts. The struggle had also disarranged her expensive silk kimono. She had stocky legs tipped by white tabi socks. Her lacquered black geta clogs had fallen off. Sugiyama finally got her in the grip he wanted, her arm twisted painfully behind her back. He grinned down at her and she turned her face away, as if aware of her immediate future. Sugiyama crushed her to him then forced her thighs apart with his knees. She cried out, still trying to struggle as he exposed his long flesh sword. It threatened her with a blind eye. The paralyzed girl within the hut looked on and the single eye at the end of the man's organ seemed to wink at her hypnotically.
  
  Sugiyama's blood was pounding in his ears as it always did after violence. Forcing the woman down with his weight and locking her in place with his hand, he fumbled with his other for her opening. She tried desperately to twist away but was unable to avoid him. The soft crown came into contact with the lips of her cunt and Sugiyama forced his way into her brutally. She cried out in pain as his ravishing member tore up her canal. One final cry and then silence as their hairs met, mashed between their pubic bones.
  
  She stared blankly at the trees as he moved inside her. Her body began betraying her and responding to his thrusts. She struggled to maintain her control, not to betray to her ravisher the touch of pleasure she felt.
  
  Sugiyama turned his head from the sweaty face of the woman he was in and peered into the tea hut. The young girl, her breasts barely budded, was squatting against a wall. Her eyes were bright, focused intently on the juncture of the couple's thighs. Her hand crept to her crotch. She saw Sugiyama's eyes on her and snatched it back. But then, like an independent-minded organism, it crept slowly into her lap. Sugiyama's senses were aroused. The hand moved to open the pink kimono she was wearing and expose smooth thighs and a juncture of faint black down between them. She opened the lips of her pussy and displayed her treasures to Sugiyama's enraptured gaze. He pumped furiously into the woman beneath him, who grunted with the effort of his body. The girl was staring at Sugiyama directly now, her little finger diddling a tiny clitoris not six feet from his head. His hips were moving without pause into the body of the elder woman, her arm still twisted painfully beneath her.
  
  The young girl started rubbing her cunt furiously with her hand. She was smiling dreamily now. Sugiyama clutched the plump body of the dead samurai's wife and gritted his teeth. He did not want to climax before his ghostly paramour did. She rubbed harder, and her other hand moved to her chest and exposed her young breasts to the ronin's gaze. The young woman started jerking suddenly, her eyes rolled back into her head and her eyelids closed. Sugiyama's sperm boiled out of his balls at the same moment and he jerked and twisted above the soft body of the woman. She cried in pain at the pressure it put on her arm.
  
  Sugiyama collapsed, panting heavily. The young girl rose from her seat next the wall. Sugiyama rose to his feet. His cock, shiny and trailing a faint string of milky fluid, stood out horizontally from his black hakama trousers. The young girl smiled once, whirled, and slid quick as an eel through the tiny rear opening of the tea house.
  
  The woman on the ground groaned and opened her eyes. Sugiyama looked down at her, then at the back of the hut. It would be useless to search for the girl now. The woman followed his gaze with concern. When she saw the hut was empty, she smiled with triumph and braced herself for his reaction.
  
  "I only wanted a drink," Sugiyama insisted calmly. He turned to go and the woman watched his back, pulling her kimono over herself.