Location: Guest Quarters, Kiyosu Castle.
Current Date/Time: Nightfall. Late Summer, 1559.
Wood cracked against wood.
The cedar door slid shut along its floor track, instantly severing the amber light of the corridor. Soma Kurogane stood in the center of the pitch-black room.
He dragged his bare heel across the woven straw of the tatami, feeling for the raised edge of the mat. He used the texture to orient himself, backing up slowly until his spine hit a stout wooden post. The untreated timber dug through the thin hemp of his robe. He pressed his shoulder blades flat against the wood, looking for something solid to lean on.
"Breathe," he whispered. "Just breathe."
He let his head fall back, his skull thumping lightly against the cedar. He stared into the pitch-black void, his chest heaving.
"The forge. The sulfur. The gun," he muttered, his voice a dry rasp in the quiet. "It was just a demonstration. He was just testing the weapon."
The hot, heavy pressure of the Warlord's hand felt like it was still burned straight into his skin, a sharp, humiliating reminder of how easily he had been pinned in the private quarters.
"He was testing me," Soma corrected himself, his voice cracking. He closed his eyes tight against the dark. "And my body gave him exactly what he wanted."
He stopped moving. The air tasted of damp earth and the sharp, sour sting of burnt matchcord from the yard. Without the constant noise of Tokyo, the dead silence made his own breathing sound too loud.
Sweat went cold against his neck. The late-summer heat had bled out of the castle walls the moment the sun dropped, replaced by a draft that seeped up through the floorboards. A violent tremor started in his calves and shot up his spine as the rush from getting cornered in that yard finally died down.
Soma locked his jaw. He ground his teeth together until his joints ached, forcing the shivering to stop.
"Let’s see the damage," Soma said softly to the dark room.
He reached across his chest with his left hand. His fingers were stiff from the cold draft. He hooked his thumb under the thick knot of the obi sash at his waist. He yanked the tight knot loose. The top half of the rust-brown robe fell. The rough fabric dragged across his collarbone like sandpaper.
"It's like wearing flour cloth," Soma muttered, wincing as he peeled the stiff fabric away from his skin. "Just a few scratches. I'm fine."
He rotated his right arm to slip the sleeve down. A sharp, blinding pain shot from his shoulder straight up into his neck. He hissed, his breath hitching, and let the arm hang dead at his side.
In the faint, silver moonlight cutting through the upper paper screens, Soma felt his right shoulder with his good hand.
The kick from the heavy iron gun had slammed the muscle flat. A dark purple lump was swelling right where the stock had kicked him. He pressed his thumb against the center of the bruise. The skin was hot to the touch, swollen, tight and throbbing.
The joint still worked when he moved his fingers. No broken bones. He could lift his arm, but the muscle was too chewed up to hold any real weight. He was running at barely half strength.
He dropped his left hand from his chest down to his abdomen. The other problem was just humiliating.
The heavy cotton didn’t yield. Soma hooked two fingers under the waistband, tugging the cloth outward, but the dry, stiff fibers scraped directly over his wet crown. His hips twitched forward against his will. He yanked his hand back, his teeth grinding together as his jaw locked.
"Two seconds in," he muttered, his breath hitching in the dark. "Four seconds out. Drop the heart rate. Lower the somatic pressure."
He tilted his head back, his skull pressing hard into the rough wood of the post. In a clean, white clinic back in Tokyo, the doctor’s voice had been casual, clinical: A high sex drive, Kurogane. It just means a healthy baseline.
Soma let out a dry, bitter laugh that echoed weakly in the pitch-black room. "A healthy baseline. Yeah, right. Out here, it's a liability and humiliation."
His hand hovered over the tight, coarse knot of his loincloth. His cock throbbed, a heavy, demanding ache that wanted nothing more than to be cleared. He could slip his hand inside. In five minutes of friction in the dark, he could bleed the heat onto the floorboards and force his body to reset.
But the second his fingertips brushed the rough cotton, his stomach did a slow, sick flip. If he closed his eyes, his own hand wouldn't be the one he felt. He’d feel Nobunaga’s calloused, massive palm instead. He'd feel those thick fingers wrapping around his shaft but not to let him come, but to choke off the flow at the base, locking him right at the absolute limit.
"Do not do it," Soma whispered, his throat tight, his heart hammering hard against his ribs. "Seriously, do not touch it."
He squeezed his eyes shut, his thighs shaking as he leaned his head back against the post.
"He’d edge me," he muttered, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. His fingers twitched, hovering inches from his groin. "He’d hold me right at the fucking brink, clamp his hand down, and just... leave me hanging. He'd turn my own arousal into torture."
He could almost feel the phantom weight of those heavy hands, pinning his wrists to the wooden post, forcing his hips to tilt up in a desperate search for friction.
"He wants to break you," Soma rasped, clenching his jaw as he fought to steady his chest. "If you start jerking off now, you're basically handing him the remote control. You're letting him own your body."
He yanked his hand away, slamming his palm flat against the cool tatami mat to ground himself.
Instead, Soma swung his left fist down, punching his own thigh with a dull thud.
"No," he whispered, the sound sharp in the quiet. "You do not touch it. You do not let him run your body. Keep your head straight, Soma."
He pulled his knees up, the stiff hemp of his robe bunching awkwardly around his hips. He closed his eyes, visualizing the castle layout to force the blood back to his brain.
"The nightingale floors," he murmured, his voice flat and analytical. "They chirp at any load over eighty pounds. I'd have to step directly over the hidden joist nails to bypass the acoustics. Then the courtyard guards. Say three per rotation."
He took a slow, shivering breath, staring into the dark.
"The outer wall is fifty feet. No harness. High probability of skeletal fracture on impact with the water. No rations. No local currency. Strange clothes. I'd starve in three days. Or some bandit cuts my throat for the shirt."
Soma looked down at the dark silhouette of his lap, where the rigid shape still tented the heavy cotton.
"Nobunaga is a wolf," he whispered, his voice steadying as the logic took hold. "But he needs a builder. Running is a zero-percent survival rate. Staying is... manageable. Just be the tool he needs. Figure out the river accident, get the suitcase, and get out. But right now? You do not touch it."
Wood scraped violently along the floor track.
Amber light cut across the mats. Soma flinched, his left hand instinctively dropping to cover his groin. A low-ranking servant shuffled into the room, dropping to his knees just inside the door.
The servant kept his head bowed, his chin nearly scraping his chest. He wore drab, gray hemp that smelled of woodsmoke and stale sweat. In his trembling hands, he carried a shallow wooden bowl and a strip of clean linen.
A sharp smell of crushed ginger, raw sulfur, and sour vinegar hit the back of Soma’s throat. His eyes watered instantly. It was a raw, stinging paste made to bite through the skin and pull the heat out of the bruise.
The servant placed the lantern and the bowl on the floorboards. He pressed his forehead directly against the cold straw mat.
"Honored Guest," the servant whispered. He did not lift his eyes. "I bring the root-paste. For the bruise from the iron."
Soma kept his back pressed hard against the cedar post. His right shoulder throbbed, the swollen muscle pulsing with every beat of his heart.
"Who sent that?" Soma asked. He kept his voice flat and level. "Did the captain order it?"
"The Lord of Owari ordered it," the servant whispered, his shoulders trembling. "He told the herbalist to crush the strongest root. He said the builder's arm must not be stiff by morning."
Soma exhaled slowly through his nose.
It was a simple maintenance order. The owner was fixing his tool before the morning shift. Nobunaga was making sure his builder could still use his primary arm.
"Leave the bowl," Soma said, gesturing vaguely with his good hand. "I'll do it myself. Go."
The servant's head snapped up, his eyes wide in terror. He lunged forward, his rough, dirt-stained hands hovering protectively over the wooden bowl.
"I cannot, Honored Guest!" the servant gasped. He slammed his forehead back down against the straw, the impact loud in the quiet room. "The Lord ordered me to dress the shoulder. If I go back to the kitchen with clean hands, he'll cut them off. Please. Don't make me fail him."
Soma froze. He stared at the man trembling on the floor. The servant's hands were the cost of a bad job. The sheer weight of the Warlord's rule moved every man in the castle.
"Alright," Soma said. He lowered his hand and shifted his weight forward, wincing as the wall scraped his back. He tried to ignore the tight pressure of the loincloth digging into his skin. "Put it on."
The servant let out a shaky breath. He crawled forward on his knees, dipping his calloused fingers into the dark green paste.
Squelch.
The cold paste hit his bare shoulder. It felt like ice at first, but then the raw sulfur and ginger began to bite into the skin like real fire. The heat sank straight into his bones.
Soma bit his lip, tasting blood. He gripped his thigh until his knuckles went white. He refused to make a sound. The servant's rough, calloused fingers ground the thick paste straight into the swollen muscle. It was a raw, grinding heat that made his vision blur.
The servant wiped his hands on a rag, picked up the clean linen strip, and wrapped it tightly around Soma’s shoulder and under his armpit, tying a hard knot.
Without looking up, the servant gathered his bowl and scrambled backward out of the room.
The cedar door slid shut. The dark returned.
Soma sat alone in the dark. His shoulder burned, the smell of ginger and sulfur heavy in the room. He leaned his head back against the post and stretched his legs out on the mats.
He closed his eyes. He stopped looking for a way out and thought about his suitcase locked up in the Warlord's quarters. He could picture the brass dials, his fingers twitching in the dark as he imagined turning the tumblers.