On Saturday afternoon, Silas arrived at the entrance of the Shin’ō Academy as agreed.
He had swapped his academy uniform for a simple outfit in plain colors.
Nanao didn’t come.
When Kaien saw Silas turn up alone, he understood the situation and didn’t ask about it.
Once the two of them met up, they left the Seireitei and headed into West Rukongai.
After several fairly busy streets, the buildings around them gradually thinned out and the ground began to roll.
At last they reached a spacious manor set on a low hill, well away from the crowded part of town.
“Um… the house is a bit of a mess, and there are two rowdy ones inside. Bear with it, senpai.”
“Come on, no need to stand on ceremony with me. Let’s go.”
Silas laughed, though he was curious about the Shiba family manor he was about to see.
The first thing to catch his eye was the pair of enormous carved stone arms on either side of the manor gate, eye-catching to the point of absurdity.
They rose out of the ground, muscles bulging and lifelike, holding a huge banner up high with a name splashed across it in flamboyant strokes.
Shiba Kaien.
Silas stared blankly at this commanding piece of decoration.
Kaien rubbed his nose and gave a dry chuckle.
“Ahem. It’s a custom left over from my father’s generation. He said the Shiba family might decline, but its spirit must never sag, so we’ve kept it up.”
As he spoke, a commotion and a beast’s snorting broke out in the distance.
“Oh oh oh, brother, you’re back! I just got the groceries!”
A sturdy wild boar with jutting tusks came thundering toward them at full speed, a rough-looking young man on its back.
The boar charged headlong, kicking up a trail of dust, and was about to plow straight into Silas and Kaien standing outside the gate.
“Ganju!!”
Kaien’s vision went dark.
The next moment he flashed to the boar’s side, caught the back of the young man’s collar with one hand and pressed down on the animal’s head with the other.
For all its reckless charge, the beast’s front hooves buckled under that one-handed pressure, and it came to a snorting halt.
Kaien set his little brother down and immediately rapped him on the head.
“How many times have I told you to watch the road? You nearly ran down a guest. Apologize!”
“S-sorry, bro…”
“Apologize to the guest!”
Ganju, clutching his head, finally noticed Silas standing to the side looking slightly awkward, and stammered as he bowed.
“Sumimasen, Vane-san.”
“It’s fine. Plenty of spirit in him.”
Silas waved a hand to show there was no harm done.
A lively voice came from inside the gate.
Silas looked over to see Kūkaku hurrying out.
She had changed into a simple outfit in red today, her face bright with a radiant smile, her eyes sparkling as she looked at him.
“Hey, Kūkaku.”
“Come in, don’t just stand at the door. Ganju, get this stupid pig round to the back!”
Kūkaku booted Ganju in the lower back and sent him stumbling.
“Bonnie isn’t a stupid pig…”
Ganju rubbed his back and grumbled as he steered the boar toward the rear yard.
Inside, the Shiba family manor was even stranger than it looked from the outside.
Once the door opened, there was a staircase running down underground.
To enter meant going down first.
“Our family’s in the fireworks business, and we blow the house up by accident fairly often, so we just built it underground.”
Kaien explained it to Silas with a laugh.
Once they had sat down in the reception room, Kūkaku called out.
“Kinhiko, Ginbiko, we have a guest!”
Two tall, stern-faced middle-aged men, dressed in gold and in silver respectively, answered and came out, bowing to Silas in perfect unison.
“Welcome to the Shiba family.”
Their bearing was steady and their spiritual pressure dense.
They kept it deliberately in check, but Silas could tell these two were formidable.
“Forgive the intrusion.”
Silas returned the greeting.
He could feel a hint of scrutiny in the respectful gazes of Kinhiko and Ginbiko, though there was no ill will in it.
“These two have been with the family since my brother and sister and I were small. They’re called servants, but they’re practically family.”
Kaien introduced them to Silas.
At that, the pair quickly waved their hands.
“We wouldn’t presume. Please don’t say such things, young master.”
“Ah, you two.”
Silas understood.
These two most likely dated back to when the Shiba family still stood as nobles in the Seireitei.
Once the introductions were done, Kaien invited Silas to sit, and Kūkaku soon brought out tea and snacks.
Ganju tidied himself up and came running over as well, sizing Silas up with open curiosity.
Kinhiko and Ginbiko took charge of dinner.
After they had talked a while, several quite lavish home-style dishes arrived at the table.
Kūkaku naturally sat beside Silas, putting food into his bowl now and then.
“Try this, it’s Kinhiko’s specialty stew.” Get faster updates on g.com.
“I supervised this fried fish myself. The timing came out just right.”
Silas’s bowl piled up like a small mountain, which left him slightly overwhelmed.
Beside him, Ganju had his head buried in his rice, his mind off somewhere unknown.
Kaien looked at his carefree little brother, remembered the incident at the gate, and felt his temper rise.
“Ganju, you’re not a child anymore. What kind of example is it, riding a wild boar and tearing through the streets all day?”
“You can’t get into the family’s fireworks craft, and all you like doing is running around with a pack of wild kids. Didn’t you nearly knock over somebody’s vegetable stall last time?”
Hearing that, Kūkaku joined in from the side, her tone a little teasing.
“Exactly. The Shiba family was wealthy once, and even now that we’re… well, the way we are, we’ve never produced anyone whose great joy in life is riding pigs around all day.”
“Our brother really is worried about it. Just the other day he told me that if it comes to it, we might send Bonnie off to a farm somewhere far away for a while, to help you settle down.”
“Huh? No way, brother!”
At the thought of his beloved pig being sent off, Ganju panicked at once, forgetting his food entirely, his face falling.
“Bonnie is very well behaved. We haven’t done anything bad, we just run a bit fast. I’ll be more careful, alright…”
His voice grew smaller as he went, plainly short on confidence, but his eyes were full of stubbornness and conflict at the prospect of losing this one joy.
Seeing him like that, Kaien felt equal parts exasperated and helpless, and rubbed at his temples.
“Bad or not, tell me this. What useful thing can you actually do? Getting you to sit still and learn something is harder than climbing to heaven.”
Ganju opened his mouth and found nothing to say to that, and only lowered his head, dejected, scratching absently at his hair.
He knew his brother meant well.
He simply couldn’t work up any interest in skills that called for sitting quietly.
The vast Rukongai, and the freedom of galloping with the wind at his back.
That was what he longed for.
Kaien let out a soft sigh.
“Never mind. Let’s drop it. Just eat properly for now.”
Ganju made a sound of agreement, but he had clearly sunk much lower.
Kaien gave Silas an apologetic smile, and Silas shook his head to say it was fine.
Silas watched the scene, his thoughts moving quickly.
He hadn’t expected to walk into a family quarrel here.
Ganju’s problem was that his passion happened to run in a direction his family had no expectations for.
He trained and rode pigs and made it look like riding a motorcycle, and had even gathered a crowd of followers to ride with him.
To ordinary people it looked like mischief, but from another angle…
didn’t that line up rather well with an idea of his own?
He set down his teacup and spoke quietly.
“Kaien, Kūkaku, I actually think Ganju’s hobby might be put to proper use.”
“I’ve had an idea for a while now. I don’t know whether you’d be interested.”