Makai-Ichi Budōkai – Chapter 5: Nirvana in Black

Bakuga Kōten of the Burning Sparrow School was called next against Kurohane Shigure, the Rain-Crow Ronin, a narrow demon in a lacquered crow mask and a traveler’s cloak darkened by spells of perpetual rain. His sword was longer than his arm and black along the back, the edge flashing clear whenever he breathed; around his shoulders hung wet feathers, though no water touched the ring, and each step he took left a small black footprint that evaporated after his shadow passed.

Mali bounced along. “If this isn’t an unfair match up, what is? 12-year-old Bakuga versus Kurohane, the famed swordsman!” she said with a delighted roll of the tongue. 

Kurohane spoke in a death-growl through his mask, “Start the match, woman. I will start fighting when I please, and anyone in the ring is fair game.”

She pouted and turned toward Bakuga, whose little firefly orbited his goggled hat in loops of buttery gold. The boy waved to the audience and did a little jig. Half the audience laughed. Kurohane did not.

Bakuga stood near the gate with both hands behind his head, smiling at nothing in particular. His firefly circled him in small gold loops. No one who looked at him looked angry afterward, and that, Temujin decided, was worse than if they had.

“You’re lucky the match has to start or else Mali would handle you herself,” she said. “Ready, set, and go!”

The flag fell, and the Rain-Crow Ronin’s sword left its sheath with a silver hiss, a diagonal cut already arriving at Bakuga’s collarbone before most eyes had followed the draw.

Bakuga smiled.

The cut slowed.

It did not stop by force. No wall of qi rang against it, no heroic burst threw Kurohane back.

The man’s eyes grew hazy before he knew why.

A soft yellow light bloomed from Bakuga’s chest and shoulders and palms, widening with the tender speed of sunrise through curtains. The sword continued forward, but the ring had become syrupy with warmth. The black footprint under Kurohane’s sandal filled with gold. His cloak dried. The crow mask tilted. The firefly circled once around the demon’s blade, and that little loop of light opened into another world.

Kurohane Shigure stood in a field.

The ring, the mountain, the demon tiers, the stink of meat and blood and hot iron had slipped behind him without a seam. Before him rolled hills so green they seemed to have forgiven the color green for every battlefield it had ever covered. Each blade shone separately. No mud clung to anything. No insect worried the grass. No shadow stayed long enough to accuse him. 

Far away, rivers curved through the grass in ribbons tapering to creeks to streams, into waves of tiger-lilies and tall grasses. Wind moved over his face and took from him, grain by grain, every little hook by which the world had held him: hunger, debt, sword, sword-name, oath, insult, the old damp cloak, the old black rain, the stubborn shame of surviving things better men had not.

Above him fluttered Nirvana’s little white minions, wheelward doves with wingbeats laughing, feathers burning, leaving silly wakes of pale fire— the last witnesses of pain. Yamāntaka, Yamāntaka! With unshadowed eyes Kurohane reached for them and they winked away into smiles of light.

Above-above, clouds as he knew them but sweeter in this sky, puffy and luminous, pearl at the belly, rose at the rim, cream at the crown, leaving cherryish-red streaks.

He sighed and let his sword— the sword— slip out of his hand. 

On the nearest hill sat Bakuga Kōten, barefoot in the grass, goggles pushed up, firefly resting on one knee. Across his lap lay a yellow-pine mandolin. He played lazily, plucking and flicking a tune out of the strings so simple and sweet that Kurohane felt, with a wet shock of gratitude, that he had known it before birth. Bakuga’s smile held no mockery.

“It looks like we’ve made it to the end,” Bakuga said.

Kurohane tried to answer and found there was no need. Tears ran under the crow mask.

Bakuga patted the grass beside him. He caught a single blade of grass that twirled towards his fingers. “Come on. Sit down.”

The demon sat. The other offered the blade.

He asked something, and forgot the words. He didn’t mind forgetting anymore. Actually, he did not feel bliss. Or happiness. Or grief. Or anger. Or fear. 

He felt emptiness. A good emptiness. Choosing to be here in this body, to suffer its wounds, to cry for its losses, to tremble with its embraces, to kneel to its masters, to rest in its skin, to hear its voice, to smell its rot, to taste its blood, to breathe its last, was his decision. 

The music continued, plink by golden plink, and with each note some knot inside Kurohane came undone. He remembered killing his first master. He remembered the girl at the ferry. He remembered the three brothers in the cedar inn, the old monk who had begged him to take the money and leave the novices alive, the winter he had eaten crow meat and called it discipline. The memories rose from him without accusation. 

They left him as small yellow birds, bright and stupid and free, and Bakuga watched them go with the pleased look of a child who had never wondered what wings cost.

“There,” he said softly. “See?”

Kurohane’s sword lay across his knees. It had followed him into heaven.

Bakuga leaned close and brushed a dry grass-seed from the demon’s sleeve.

“You are free,” he said. “Open the throat. Let it all run out. Then you can leave the wheel.”

Outside, sweaty demons kept grunting and growling, pumping their fists at the arena. Kurohane Shigure had not moved for three breaths.

The sword that had been aimed at Bakuga lowered. Its point turned inward. The crowd quieted by degrees, laughter going uncertain at the edges. Mali’s microphone caught the tiny scrape of steel against the underside of the crow mask.

“Uh,” she said, her candy voice thinning. “Rain-Crow? Honey? We are still in an active murder-zone, technically—”

Kurohane drew the blade across his own neck.

The cut was calm, deep, and exact. Blood fell over his robe in a black-red sheet. He dropped to one knee, then to both. His mask split against the stone. The face beneath it was peaceful enough to make Temujin sick.

Bakuga stood where he had stood before, untouched, hands at his sides, smiling with that awful clean happiness. The yellow aura folded back into him. The firefly returned to its orbit around his head.

Not many bloodstains could leave demons this silent.

Then Mali blinked and, blinking again, lifted her flag.

“Winner! Bakuga Kōten of the Burning Sparrow School! By, um—” she blinked and looked off, and said, “self-inflicted enlightenment? Well, I guess that is very ‘nirvana’ in a way!”

The roar came late and rough.

Temujin did not join it. He unfolded his arms, eyes boggled. “What… the hell!”

Yulaan’s mouth had gone tight, though not from fear. Recognition, maybe. Hatred sharpened around it.

“Evil bodhisattva,” she said.

Sesame stopped floating for a second. “Oh. That’s ugly.”

Temujin looked from Bakuga to the body being dragged away. “I thought that was supposed to be good.”

Yulaan’s hidden eyes stayed on the smiling boy.

“He’s evil.”

The word landed bare.

Bakuga turned toward Enekai and waved. Enekai, after one uncertain moment, waved back with much less enthusiasm than before.

Yulaan’s mouth had gone flat.

Temujin looked at the body. 

“Look at his face.”

Temujin did, and wished he hadn’t.

“See? Grateful. That’s how they get you. They hand you a warm little heaven, pull the fight out of your bones, and then ask for your throat like they’re asking you to pass the salt.”

Temujin swallowed. “And people listen.”

“Would a starving guy turn away from a free meal?”

Sesame’s ears drooped slightly. “That is so much lamer than punching.”

“Oh yeah, ran into one on Gorta,” Yulaan said with a sudden whisper. “Not him, obviously, but the kind of filth. She’s the reason I died long enough to meet my galaxy’s Kaiō.” Her tail curled against the stone. “Only good news is he’s probably not much in a real fistfight. Probably.”

“Probably,” Temujin repeated.

“Probably, yeah. Probably, probably only if he decided, you know, to focus all his chi cultivation on maintaining full nirvana.” Yulaan’s fanged grin came back without warmth. “If not, well, ah you can figure it out.”

Enekai said, “I think I can take him!”

---

Ryūei’s second opponent forfeited before stepping onto the lei tai.

The Daimaō allowed it. Mali made the demon sign the cowardice register, then turned the paperwork into a paper crane and let it fly into the black water, where something swallowed it.

Enekai’s name burned next, and she strode out, grinning; her bracket chibi strode and grinned towards the center of the wheel.

“Ral Enekai of Earth,” Mali announced, both eyes glittering. “The famous staff-fighter, monkey-crowned menace, and pummeler of multiple Earth Kings!”

Enekai walked onto the ring carrying the Ruyi Jingu Bang across one shoulder. “Why does everyone say I’m famous?”

The demon opposite her was a thick, gray-skinned brute named Garanbō of the Mud Shrine. He had a spiked club, tusks, and a sneer that suggested deep confidence in both. Mud charms hung from his neck. His belly bore a tattoo of a laughing guardian king.

Mali brought her flag down, “And, begin!”

Garanbō stamped forward, cracking the ground beneath his foot. “Dumb little monkey brat. I’ll pound you into—”

Enekai moved once.

His chest rippled and raw momentum carried him across the entire ring, and bounced him off the barricade with enough force to crack lotus petals past the walls. He flipped over the rail, struck the far wall, and slid down into a sitting position with both eyes crossed and his tongue out. His sandals fell off.

Mali looked at the fallen demon, looked at Enekai, looked at the crowd, then raised the flag.

“No wonder they call her the Star Queen— Garanbō’ll be seeing stars, all right! Winner! Ral Enekai!”

Enekai bowed to her unconscious opponent, then to Mali, then to the Daimaō, and walked back with the mild dissatisfaction of someone who had ordered a full meal and received a single piece of white bread.

“That was so short,” she said.

“You could have hit lighter,” Temujin said as he patted her back. 

“I did.” She pointed at the fallen man’s chin, several spots down his chest, all the way down to the belly where the laughing guardian-king tattoo now had a fist-shaped cave under his mouth. “I punched him seven times.”

Temujin felt his brow ache, so wide his eyes had grown. How lucky, he thought, that these girls are on his side…

Yulaan had not watched Garanbō after the first step. Her gaze had moved instead across the fighters who remained: Ryūei beneath the arch, Bakuga chatting with his firefly, Mukhahīna Śveta above his ghost-gray flame, Daigen cracking his neck in the shadow of a pillar though he smiled and bowed when he noticed her, and one slender demon in layered pale robes who had not yet fought.

Enekai followed her gaze even if she couldn’t see her eyes.

Mukhahīna. Sitting and floating. 

“Man, that guy looks spooky,” Enekai said. 

Yulaan nodded lightly. “Someone’s making me feel real uneasy right now. I don’t like the energy of this place.”

“Whaddya mean, Yuli?” said Sesame as she floated past the two with a cruet of red elixir, slapping Yulaan on the head as she went.

Yulaan scratched at the air after her and said, “I’m saying there’s someone here I don’t think even I can beat.”

Her head turned again, and Mukhahīna’s eye was dead on her. “And I’m wondering who.”

That eye swiveled sharply, settling on a black condor that Yulaan had only just noticed behind the yogi. Had it been there all along? Then the eye turned back to her. 

“Whatever. Enekai’ll pound ‘em.”

---

The next matches passed in a storm of fists, steel, qi, and worse.

Daigen crushed a muscular duelist by clapping both palms together on either side of his head, then apologized to the judges for the spray. 

A swordsman in funeral white clashed against a blind beggar with a two-stringed fiddle, whose notes bent the air into invisible cords and dragged him heels-first into the black water. Before the jet of water crowned and fell back, the beggar stood, and his torso slipped off his hips.

The swordsman surfaced as a noxious ghost of flesh, bubbled once, and blew apart in the wind.

Temujin noticed only then that they were never in the ring and said, “Wait, those weren’t even contestants…”

Yulaan laughed at the sight, saying, “These are demons. They don’t need an arena or a tournament bracket to start fighting for some personal reason. Reminds me of Kollidor actually.”

Mali stared from half a beggar to no swordsman and lifted both flags. “We thank you for the exhibition match, but please keep the fighting outside the ring to a minimum so the audience can enjoy every bit of blood as clearly as possible!”

When the actual match began, a woman in the far bracket, the succubus Masha of Silk-Wound Valley, defeated a yaksha spearman by kissing the tip of her own finger and blowing the kiss into his ear as a tittering teasing bubble; he smiled, blushed, and found himself propelled by a silk ribbon through the air and impaled by one of the Kannon’s swords. Mali declared the technique “bubbles erotica” with a flourish of her own fizzy pink skin as well as “illegal in seven provinces, and highly educational.”

Sesame drank from the cruet, finished thawing Temujin’s foot, and slapped his calf. “There. Try not to get it frozen off again. I got one actual healing wish for the week, and I don’t wanna waste it this early, and this is your sexiest foot anyway.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

Yulaan’s tail coiled and uncoiled as she paced.

“You’re gonna reopen that wound,” Sesame said, pointing.

“It’s nothing…”

 Yulaan’s jaw tightened.

“This is irritating.”

“I know, I know, you wanna be in there bumping asses with cute boys,” sang Sesame. “Or maybe girls, maybe, habibi. All sweaty and grappling topless bodies.”

“Wh—…” 

Temujin loved, almost as much as Sesame did, how easily one could flummox a bolloi with funny unlawful carnal knowledge in gross kinky jokes. 

Yulaan turned back to the ring and said, “I meant this is all pointless. I can already tell who this is all funneling towards.” She looked again towards the yogi floating through the pavilion, knowing the board’s choices before they burned. 

Mukhahīna Śveta
versus
Hakujō Enshū, the Perfumed Viper of the Hollow Palace

A murmur moved through the arena, thin and pleasurable.

Hakujō Enshū entered first from the western gate. Calling him a eunuch seemed too crude until one looked twice and felt that crude word settling into place. He was tall and svelte, with a waist narrow enough for court robes and shoulders narrow enough to make every movement appear boneless. His face had the smooth, pretty cruelty of a painted palace actor: long eyes, purple lids, lips glossy and pale, fangs appearing only when he smiled. Fine reptilian scales shimmered along his throat, temples, wrists, and the backs of his hands. His black hair fell straight down his back, bound at intervals by little red cords. He wore layered robes of cream and celadon, slit along the sides for movement, and his fingers were capped in gold nail-guards curved like ornamental claws.

Temujin blushed. 

He bowed to the Daimaō. He bowed to Mali. He blew a delicate kiss toward the crowd.

The crowd hissed and cheered back.

Mali, for the first time all day, glanced sideways before beginning her introduction. Mukhahīna had not entered by either gate. He was already there, floating three feet above the eastern half of the lei tai, legs folded in lotus, blade-hands resting inward, ordinary eyes closed. His third eye held on Hakujō’s throat with such perfect straightness that even Mali’s microphone gave a little squeal of feedback.

She recovered beautifully.

“Beloved degenerates and paying guests! To my left: Hakujō Enshū, Perfumed Viper of the Hollow Palace, master of Red Thread Serpent Qi and whatever skincare routine makes murder look that expensive!”

Hakujō touched two fingers to his cheek and smiled.

“To my right—” Mali’s voice brightened by force alone. “Mukhahīna Śveta, the Silent Guillotine Fist of the White Cremation Ground!”

And they kept cheering like the man was their hero.

Mukhahīna floated.

His fingers held a mudra near his knees, thumb and forefinger joined, the other blade-hand mirroring it with impossible delicacy. Bloodless peace sat over him. His third eye promised otherwise.

Mali tiptoed backward, then snapped the flag down.

“Begin!”

Hakujō moved first. His right hand lifted, index finger extended. A red line of chi shot from the nail, thin as thread, bright as fresh lacquer. It pierced Mukhahīna’s chest.

Temujin stood. “Whoa.”

A second thread struck the throat.

Mukhahīna did not fall. His body rocked once in the air. Blood welled from the heart wound, then from the neck, and ran down the brown-black skin in glossy streams. His ordinary eyes remained shut. His third eye did not leave Hakujō’s throat.

Hakujō’s smile faltered, then returned larger.

“Oh?” he said. His voice was sweet, high, and edged. “The cremation-ground saint bleeds.”

The crowd roared for movement.

“Kill him properly!” someone shouted.

“Bleed faster!” shouted another.

Mali held the microphone close to her mouth. “Two clean piercings! One heart, one throat!”

Temujin leaned over the railing. “His chi isn’t dropping.”

Sesame’s eyes narrowed. “No. It’s rising.”

The blood ran over Mukhahīna’s chest, ribs, stomach, then along the folded legs. The blood did not drip. He chose its routes. It crawled along channels no wound had opened: red over brown-black, red through the frost-pale aura, red gathering where the body should have ended.

Hakujō heard the crowd growing restless and disliked it. His sleeve flashed. Six more red threads lanced out: shoulder, lung, belly, heart, heart, heart. Each struck. Each entered. Each left a neat wet mark.

Mukhahīna floated.

His third eye focused.

Hakujō’s lips peeled from his fangs. “Mocking me?”

No answer.

He vanished into serpentine motion. His body swayed without hips, slid without steps. Red thread lashed from all ten fingers now, stitching through the yogi’s robe and flesh. The attacks came from above, below, left, right, a woven cage of killing light. Mukhahīna’s body accepted every line. Blood covered him to the waist. Still the chi rose. The ghost-gray aura thickened, pale flame turning white at the edges.

Hakujō stopped inches from him, breathing harder than pride allowed.

“This is boring,” yelled an oni.

“Cut something off!”

Hakujō’s face twitched.

He leaned in and slapped Mukhahīna lightly across the face.

The sound was small.

“Wake up,” he said. Then he looked up. “Or perhaps… I notice you seem quite fond of your killing eye. Perhaps I should close that eye to let you rest for good.” He pointed at the eye. Red fizzled along his pointing finger. 

Mukhahīna’s feet touched the floor.

Temujin gasped before he knew why.

The shift was total. Floating saint became standing weapon. Mukhahīna’s ordinary eyes opened, blank and dark and— yes, human. His blade-hands unfolded from the mudra and began to move.

At first the motions seemed too slow. Then the afterimages appeared: pale arcs, red threads, ghost-gray flame, every line of Hakujō’s own attacks caught in reverse. Mukhahīna’s arms crossed and uncrossed, leaving pale afterimages that made Temujin think of temple diagrams and funeral smoke.

The red chi threads still pierced him, but now they quivered. The blood on his body glowed where it touched them.

Hakujō tried to pull back.

He could not.

His limbs locked. His pretty face emptied. The red lines that had been weapons became reins.

Mukhahīna stepped forward.

One step only.

Hakujō’s mouth opened. No sound came.

Mukhahīna bent and placed his lipless mouth-plane— no, not a mouth, that smooth impossible absence where a mouth should be— against Hakujō’s scaled throat. A kiss without lips. A blessing without mercy.

Mali blushed so hard her pink skin deepened toward rose. “Ah…! A bold development from the White Cremation Ground! Very intimate! Very fatal! Kids, ask your sect elders before trying that at home!”

Hakujō’s body convulsed.

His spine bent backward. His fingers clawed at nothing. Scales lifted from his throat as though something beneath them had boiled. The red threads snapped one by one and recoiled into Mukhahīna’s wounds. Those wounds closed into dark scars as they swallowed the stolen force.

Mukhahīna crossed his blade-hands at Hakujō’s neck.

For the first time, his third eye blinked.

The blades opened.

Hakujō’s head came away cleanly, still beautiful, still puzzled, fangs wet in the arena light. His body stood for a moment, obedient to the paralysis. Then both pieces fell.

No word had passed from Mukhahīna Śveta.

No shout. No chant. No boast. No courtesy. Nothing.

He turned from the body and walked off the lei tai with his arms behind his back, blade-hands angled harmlessly toward the floor. The blood on him had already dried into scars. By the time he reached the gate, even those had paled.

Mali raised the flag more slowly than usual.

“Winner,” she said, and her voice, though still sweet, had lost one candy layer. “Mukhahīna Śveta.”

The arena erupted after the fact, its courage returning late.

Temujin stared at the place where Hakujō’s head had rolled. His own neck hurt. He realized he had one hand against it and lowered it.

That settled it, who the last eight fighters would be. All of them were under the fighters’ pavilion: Enekai, himself, the strong oni guy, Daigen, succubus lady, and the spooky trio. He didn’t like how calmly Mukhahīna sat in the air with those guillotine fists curved ever so slightly in his direction, but he was used to fate bitchslapping him. He swallowed through his fresh, uncut throat and decided if it came down to it, he’d bitchslap fate back.

Yulaan leaned on the barricade, eyes hidden, mouth thoughtful.

“Why did he put his face against the other guy’s? I see humans do that all the time,” she said. “What the hell is that anyway?”

Sesame gave Yulaan a light head-pat, and said, “All you Saiyans are so frustrating!”