Left Behind by the Hero, I Opened an Inn and the Sword Saint Never Checked Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Roof in the Rain
The first guests arrive and the Sword Saint mends her leaking roof in the dark; his left arm will not lift, and she holds the ladder as he falls. Hook: his torn shirt shows a long, half-healed scar.
By the third evening Tomoshibi Inn had two paying guests besides the Sword Saint.
They were rice merchants on their way south, a stout man and his nephew, and they had stopped only because the lantern was lit.
"Never seen an inn at this fork," the stout one said, wiping his bowl with a piece of bread. "Best miso in three provinces, though."
"That's Tamae's miso," said Hanae. "I only boiled the water."
"Don't listen to her," said Tamae, from the stove.
Hanae grinned, because it was the first compliment the inn had ever had.
She went around the tables pouring tea.
At the end of the long table, Jiro Kurogane ate his third bowl in silence.
He had sat there for every meal since the duelist left.
He did not talk, and he did not look at the merchants, and the merchants did not know who he was.
Every time she passed with the teapot, he looked up.
That was all, only a look.
But it was the look of a man who had spent twelve years being stared at, and was learning what it felt like to be seen.
She pretended not to notice.
She did not do it well.
That night the rain came back.
She woke to a drip on her forehead and a second drip on her pillow.
She lay in the dark and listened to the roof pour water into her grandmother's house in at least six places.
"Fine," Hanae told the ceiling. "Fine."
She dragged a bucket under the worst one and put a pot under the next.
Then she went to the merchants' door to check on them.
The nephew was snoring in a puddle.
She pulled the quilt up over his head, and she stood in the hall in her nightgown with a candle, listening.
There was a creak above her, and then a soft scrape.
Someone was on the roof.
She put on her sandals and went out into the rain.
The ladder was against the eaves, which was her ladder, with the repaired rung.
At the top, in the dark, a tall man was crouched on the ridge with a roof beam across his knees.
He had found the broken rafter over the merchants' room, and he was trying to brace it up with a plank from the woodshed.
He was using only his right hand.
"What are you doing?" Hanae shouted.
"Your roof leaks."
"I know my roof leaks! Get down!"
"One minute."
"You're a guest! Guests don't mend the roof!"
"This guest does," Jiro said, and he heaved at the beam.
His left arm rose to the height of his chest and stopped.
She saw it from below, by the light of the candle, in the rain.
He tried to lift it higher, and something in his shoulder locked, and his whole body jerked.
The plank slid out of his right hand.
He grabbed at the ridge, and missed.
Hanae dropped the candle and ran up the ladder.
She did not think about it.
She went up four rungs.
He slid down the wet tiles toward her, and she put out both arms and caught him.
It was like catching a falling door.
They went down together on the ladder, her back against the rungs and his weight on her, and her arms wrapped around his ribs.
For a moment neither of them moved.
The rain ran down his face and dripped off his chin onto hers.
He was very warm, even soaking wet.
She could feel his heart slamming against her chest, fast and hard, and under it the long uneven breath of a man in pain.
"I have you," she said, before she knew she was going to.
"Hanae."
It was the first time he had said her name.
It was hardly a name at all, only a breath, and it did strange things to her knees.
"Down," she said, in a very high voice. "We're going down. One rung at a time."
They went down one rung at a time.
At the bottom she steered him into the kitchen and sat him on the bench by the stove, and she lit the lamp.
He was wet to the skin.
His indigo coat was torn open along the left shoulder, where it had caught on a nail.
The shirt under it was ripped to the collar.
She dragged the cloth aside to see if he was bleeding.
He wasn't bleeding.
Down the side of his neck, over his shoulder and across his back, ran a long scar.
It was not old.
It was pink and raised and still shiny, where the stitches had been taken out only a few weeks ago.
"Who did that?" Hanae whispered.
He didn't answer.
He pulled his collar back up, with his good hand, and she saw that his fingers were shaking.
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