Location: Bathhouse (O-furo), Kiyosu Castle.
Current Date/Time: Early Evening to Next Morning. Late Summer, 1559.
The cedar door clicked into its frame. The heavy thud echoed through the anteroom, severing the intense, suffocating heat Oda Nobunaga had brought into the bathing chamber. Soma Kurogane stood alone in the thinning steam.
He gripped the wet rim of the cypress tub and hoisted himself out of the scalding water. The cooler evening air hit his shoulders. Goosebumps broke across his scoured skin. He stepped onto the damp floor slats, his chest rising and falling as he looked down at his waist.
His cock was completely hard, standing parallel to the floorboards. The rigid, nine-inch length was engorged with blood, pulsing heavily against his inner thigh. The circumcised glans flushed dark red, throbbing in time with his elevated heart rate.
Soma locked his jaw. He gripped the edge of the tub until his knuckles turned white.
"Right. Perfect," Soma muttered, leaning his weight against the wood. He scrubbed his wet hands over his eyes. "Just heat and adrenaline. The engine gets overloaded; the pressure blows out. Basic mechanics. Absolutely nothing to do with him."
He reached down with his left hand and wrapped his fingers around the base of his erection. He applied firm, clinical pressure.
“Calm down. Just breathe,” Soma said, his voice dropping to a low hiss. He forced himself to take deep, measured breaths to slow his racing pulse. Hold it. Let it out. “The guy is just a boss checking on his investments. He wants the math for the ditch and the walls before morning. That’s my only job here. Don’t let him mess with your head.”
His pulse slowed as he kept up the steady breathing. The tight, painful pull finally let go, and his erection softened enough to drop flat against his stomach. Soma let out a long, ragged exhale and released his grip.
He stepped over to the low wooden bench and picked up the long, unbleached cotton strip of the fundoshi. The coarse fabric had felt like fiberglass all morning, sawing relentlessly against his skin during the long walk through the mud and leaving him raw. He needed a workaround to fix the layout. Holding his shaft flat against his stomach, he pointed it straight up toward his navel.
He brought the heavy cotton strip up between his thighs, pulled out the slack, and wrapped it tight around his waist, locking the knot down hard against his hip bone. The raw tip is tucked safely behind the thick fold of the waistband. It stopped the fabric from rubbing when he walked, but it left a clear, prominent bulge pushing against the front of his loincloth. It was an awkward fit, but it kept the seams off his skin.
"Honored Guest," Toichi called from the corridor, his shadow shifting against the paper screen. "The sun has fallen. The Lord of Owari expects the geometry you promised him."
Soma picked up the Aizome indigo silk kosode and slid his arms into the sleeves, the smooth fabric gliding easily over his shoulders and the tender bruise on his arm. "The layout requires a flat surface and actual light, Toichi," Soma answered, keeping his tone flat and even.
"I can't draw an interlocking joint in the dark. The building starts at dawn."
"The Demon King does not wait for the dawn, Honored Guest," Toichi said. Soma stepped into the tapered legs of the Kukuri-hakama and tied the heavy cords squarely over the thick bulge of his cloth.
He rolled his shoulders, checking how the fabric moved. "Lord Nobunaga doesn’t have to wait for the dawn; he just has to wait for the ink to dry," Soma said, sliding the door open to look the scarred retainer in the eye. "Get me back to the quarters. Bring a good lamp and clear off the low table. I’m drawing the final lines tonight, so the Sovereign has his math before the sun comes up."
The morning fog over Kiyosu Castle burned off early, leaving the sweltering heat of late summer over the courtyards. Light hit the wooden spikes of the outer walls, and the air smelled of wet ash, manure, and marsh mud.
His lower half was a constant hassle. Tucking his flesh upward in the fundoshi stopped the cloth from sawing him raw, but keeping it pinned meant the coarse waistband had to be cinched down with a punishing grip. The rough fabric dug straight into his hips with every step, forcing him to shorten his stride and limit his hip rotation to kill the side-to-side chafing.
He blocked out the irritation and kept his eyes on the foundation trenches ahead. "Keep moving," Soma told the guards, his voice carrying clearly over the damp ground. "I need to check the trench depth before the crew starts hauling the main logs."
They cleared the last row of supply sheds, and the harsh rasp of crosscut saws tearing through raw cedar hit them instantly. Twenty bare-chested men from the carpenter guild were swarming the timber piles. In the middle of the mud, Kinoshita Tokichiro stood on a flat stone block, completely covered in wet clay and sawdust as he shouted and pointed, directing the heavy logs with sharp hand signals.
Spotting the indigo silk, Tokichiro scrambled down, his bare feet slapping loudly through the muck as he sprinted over. He pulled up exactly three paces away and gave a sharp bow from the waist. "Gishi-sama," Tokichiro said, wiping a streak of dirty sweat from his forehead. "The men were here before the sun hit the wall. The markings are down in the dirt."
"Give me the headcount, Tokichiro," Soma said, his eyes scanning the site to check the materials against his layout. "Did Genjo fight you on the shift divisions?"
"The chief grumbled, but he remembers the iron splitting the wood," Tokichiro said, stepping closer to lower his voice. "I split the twenty men into three crews. Ten men are down in the trench right now, clearing out the rotted foundation logs with the hemp ropes. That's our heavy hauling force."
Soma tracked a group of massive carpenters digging their heels into the mud. They hauled a blackened, ruined timber out of the stagnant moat water hand over hand. "And the secondary unit?"
"Five men are at the dry benches, stripping the bark and shaving the fresh surfaces," Tokichiro said.
"They prepare the materials, so the workers never wait for wood. The final five men are resting by the fire, drinking hot water and salt. In two hours, the resting men rotate into the trench, the trench men move to the benches, and the bench men rest."
Soma analyzed the cycle. Tokichiro had taken a theoretical labor rotation and applied it flawlessly to the physical reality of a sixteenth-century worksite. The timber moved continuously. Zero bottlenecks.
"The rotation holds," Soma said. "You organized them perfectly. Keep them cycling on the two-hour mark, and the labor force won't burn out before sunset."
Tokichiro grinned. "I watch the mud, Gishi-sama. But they cannot cut the wood until you give them the magic lines. The fresh cedar is waiting on the main bench."
"There is no magic in the lines," Soma said. "It is just applied geometry. Show me the wood."
Soma stepped into the mud. The filthy sludge soaked the hem of his silk hakama trousers. He walked to the scarred wooden workbench. Genjo leaned on the handle of his iron adze.
Genjo offered a short nod. "The wood is stripped, Builder," he said, his voice cutting over the saws. "We are ready to cut the teeth of the joint. Show me where to strike."
Soma reached inside his kosode. He extracted three identical, smooth strips of flattened cedar. He had whittled them by the oil lamp the previous night. Each was exactly one foot long. He laid them flat on the unhewn foundation log.
"We aren't drawing lines today, Genjo," Soma said. He handed one of the cedar strips to the chief. "You are going to use a uniform measure."
Genjo frowned. He turned the thin piece of wood over in his thick fingers. "It is just a stick, Builder."
“We need a standard, Genjo,” Soma said, his voice level. “When a man gets tired, his eyes play tricks on him. The light changes, and the saw drifts. If you cut these interlocking joints by guessing and you're off by a hair, the beam is useless. The moment you put the heavy tower on top of it, all that pressure is going to find that single millimeter of space. The friction breaks, and the timber splits.”
Soma laid the second strip flush against the edge of the log. He pointed to the exact center.
"Every dovetail cut on this palisade has to be identical," Soma said. "Lay this stick flush to the edge. Mark the top, mark the bottom. That gives you the exact width of the joint. No estimating. No feeling the wood. You just apply the standard."
Genjo’s jaw tightened. He gripped the iron handle of his adze. "You ask my men to work like blind mules," he said, stepping into Soma's space. "My men know this wood. We know how deep a saw must bite before the cedar surrenders."
"I am not questioning your skill, I am removing the variable of human error," Soma said. He stood his ground. "The male and female end of an interlocking joint have to match perfectly to transfer the weight. If your saw bites too deep, the wedge can't create the necessary friction. The joint rattles in the wind, and the wall ends up in the moat. You are a unified force today, not individual artists."
Soma placed his hands flat on the rough timber.
"Every man cutting a joint uses the stick," Soma said. "If I inspect a beam and the teeth don't align with the measurement, I order the timber thrown into the fire. You start over. The math doesn't bend for anyone's pride. Are we clear on the layout?"
Genjo stared at the cedar stick. He looked at the rusted iron spikes lying in the mud from the previous wall's failure. He turned toward his men.
"You heard the Builder!" Genjo roared. He threw the measuring stick to his lead sawyer. "No man trusts his eyes today! We cut to the stick! Move!"
The rasp of crosscut saws dominated the worksite. The carpenter guild operated with relentless, mechanical efficiency.
Soma pulled his straw sandals free from the deep muck. The suction made a heavy, wet sound. He walked toward a chaotic pile of ruined timber near the edge of the moat. These was the foundation logs Genjo’s men had hauled out of the trench, deemed useless due to river rot.
The pile smelled of wet decay, fungal bloom, and stagnant water. Soma bypassed the obvious, compromised beams at the top. He scanned the lower layers for the specific logs that had anchored the watchtower corners.
He stepped over a discarded beam.
Soma knelt in the sweltering mud beside a twelve-foot cedar beam. The center of the beam was spongy, filled with thick clusters of white fungal rot.
"Moisture rot," Soma said quietly. "The iron spikes rusted out. The entry point expanded. The dampness penetrated the core fibers."
He wiped the slime from his fingers onto the rough hemp of his hakama trousers. He moved down the length of the beam, inspecting the sections that had been buried deepest in the mud. He found another patch of severe fungal rot near the base. He ran his thumb over the decayed wood.
The rot felt wrong.
Soma leaned closer. He used his thumb to scrape away a thick layer of gray clay and white fungus from the edge of the rotted section. The wood underneath was dead, but the boundary between the healthy cedar and the decayed core was incredibly sharp. Natural rot followed the organic grain of the timber, spreading unevenly as the moisture found the path of least resistance through the fibers.
This rot did not spread naturally. It was contained within a perfectly straight line.
He reached into his kosode and pulled out his precision-milled drafting pen. He used the cold edge of the aluminum casing to scrape deeper into the rotting wood. He cleared away the fungal bloom, exposing the raw timber underneath.
Beneath the rot, etched deeply into the dense heartwood of the cedar, were three parallel incisions.
The cuts were barely a millimeter wide. They were invisible under the layer of mud and fungus. They were not the jagged marks of a slipping saw or a stray adze strike. They were precision cuts, executed with a thin, razor-sharp blade. They went straight across the grain of the wood, deliberately severing the natural fibers to create an artificial entry point for moisture.
Soma traced the metal casing of his pen along the incisions. The cuts were uniform in depth. Someone had calculated the exact angle needed to breach the outer sapwood and expose the vulnerable heartwood directly to the stagnant moat water.
He moved to another discarded log. He scraped away the mud near the most severe sections of rot. He found the same incisions. Three parallel cuts, hidden beneath the decay, positioned exactly where the maximum vertical weight of the watchtowers would impact the foundation.
The sabotage was highly calculated. The perpetrator did not need to break the wall with a hammer. They weakened the load-bearing beams and let gravity and the damp moat do the rest. The wall was designed to collapse under its own weight, disguised perfectly as natural rot.
Soma stood up. He wiped his hands on his thighs. He scanned the worksite. The carpenter guild cut the new measurements. The ashigaru guards stared at the perimeter line. No one watched the discarded timber. The Saito clan had men inside Kiyosu Castle, actively dismantling the Warlord’s walls.
"Tokichiro," Soma said. He projected his voice just loud enough to cut through the saws.
Tokichiro dropped a thick hemp rope and jogged over to the mud pile. He stopped two paces away.
"You called for me, Gishi-sama," Tokichiro said. He glanced at the ruined timber, then at Soma. "The guild is cutting the angles. Is there a flaw in the discarded wood?"
"Walk with me," Soma said. He stepped away from the timber pile and moved toward the edge of the western moat, putting distance between them and the carpenter guild.
Tokichiro followed, his bare feet slapping the mud. At the edge of the stagnant water, Soma stopped. He crossed his arms over his chest.
"The rotting timber they pulled from the trench," Soma said. "It isn't failing because of the dampness or the rusted iron. It is failing because someone is actively cutting it."
Tokichiro went completely still.
"I found deep cuts beneath the fungus," Soma said. "Someone used a very thin blade to cut across the wood at the exact points where the watchtowers bear down. They severed the fibers to let the moat water rot the core of the wood. It is active sabotage."
Tokichiro swallowed. His throat clicked in the humid air. He looked back toward the palisade. "The Saito," Tokichiro said softly. "They cut our legs before the battle begins."
"The identity of the saboteurs is a secondary issue right now," Soma said. "If we report this single beam to Lord Nobunaga immediately, he executes the entire carpenter guild, the trench diggers, and the perimeter guards just to ensure he kills the spy. We lose our entire labor force, and the wall stays broken."
Tokichiro nodded slowly. "The Lord of Owari burns the entire field."
"We need evidence," Soma said. "I need to know the exact scale of the cuts before we sound the alarm." He stepped closer to Tokichiro. "You offered to be my shadow. This is your first task."
"As you command, Gishi-sama," Tokichiro said.
"Use the labor rotations," Soma said. "While the men are moving the timber, you personally inspect every single log pulled from the trench. You are looking for the cuts beneath the rot. Do not confront the carpenters. Do not raise the alarm. Plot the exact location of every compromised beam on a map of the western wall. I need to know if the sabotage is isolated to the watchtowers, or if the entire area has been compromised."
"I will map the rot, Builder," Tokichiro said. "I will find every cut in the wood. No man will know I am looking for the blade."
"Take the next few days," Soma said. "Use every rotation. Do not miss a single cut, and do not let the guild see you looking. Once we have the full map, we take the gathered evidence to the Lord Nobunaga."