Chapter 7: A Kiss in the Rain

Chapter 7: A Kiss in the Rain

The garden viewing was a torturous affair. The air, thick and heavy with impending rain, felt as suffocating as Lord Nobunaga’s presence. He walked beside Akina, his voice a smooth, proprietary drone as he pointed out the features of a garden he did not own, speaking as if he were already its master. The faint, cloying scent of his plum blossom perfume mingled with the damp, earthy smell of the soil, a combination that turned Akina’s stomach.

Every polite smile she offered felt like a betrayal of herself. Every deferential nod was a small death. Nobunaga’s hand would occasionally brush her sleeve, a seemingly accidental touch that lingered too long, making her skin crawl. He was marking his territory. And with every touch, Akina could feel Kenji’s presence behind them growing heavier, more charged, like the darkening sky itself. He was a silent storm cloud tracking their steps, his discipline a fragile dam holding back a flood of fury.

Akina knew she could not endure another moment. Her elaborate schemes and defiant games had led her here, to the very precipice of a life she could not bear. She was cornered, not by walls, but by her father’s ambition and Nobunaga’s cold cruelty. The memory of his bruising grip on her arm, and the blazing, protective fire it had ignited in Kenji’s eyes, was her only solace, her only weapon. She had to force his hand. She had to make him choose.

A low, distant rumble of thunder echoed from the mountains. The wind began to rise, whispering through the pines, carrying the metallic tang of ozone. It was the signal she had been waiting for.

"The bamboo grove is said to be particularly beautiful when the wind blows," she said, her voice a placid murmur that belied the frantic beating of her heart. "The sound is like a thousand tiny bells."

Nobunaga waved a dismissive hand. "Bamboo is common. I had hoped you would show me the Golden Pavilion."

"Another time, my lord," Akina said, offering a deep, flawless bow that was both respectful and a final act of dismissal. Before he could protest, she turned and walked away, not back toward the main house, but onto the narrow path that led into the dense, swaying forest of bamboo.

"My lady!" The call came not from Nobunaga, but from Kenji, his voice tight with alarm and exasperation. She ignored it, quickening her pace, the hem of her kimono flicking against the damp mossy stones.

The first heavy drops of rain began to fall, fat and cold, staining the lavender silk of her shoulders. She heard his heavy, crunching footsteps on the gravel path behind her, gaining rapidly. She plunged deeper into the grove, the towering green stalks closing in around her, their leaves beginning to hiss and rustle in the strengthening wind. The world dissolved into a shifting maze of green and grey.

Just as the drizzle turned into a downpour, a hand clamped down on her shoulder, spinning her around. It was Kenji. His face was a mask of thunderous frustration, his topknot coming undone, dark strands of hair plastered to his forehead by the rain.

"This is madness, Akina!" he growled, using her given name for the first time, the sound of it a shocking intimacy in the roar of the storm. "We must return. Lord Nobunaga—"

"I will not go back to him!" she cried, her voice thin but fierce against the wind. "Did you not see him? Did you not see the way he looks at me? The way he touches me?"

"It is not my place to see," he bit out, his jaw clenched, rain streaming down his face and into his beard. "My place is to guard you, not to question your father’s arrangements. Now come."

He tried to steer her back toward the path, but she planted her feet, resisting him with all her might. "Guard me?" she laughed, a wild, broken sound. "You will guard me while he puts me in a cage? You will stand outside my door while he breaks my spirit? Is that your honor, Kenji Tanaka? To watch and do nothing?"

"My honor is in my duty!" he roared, the sound swallowed by a sudden, deafening clap of thunder that shook the very ground beneath them.

"Then your duty is a lie!" she screamed back, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks. She took a step closer, jabbing a finger into his solid, rain-soaked chest. The fabric was coarse and wet, the muscle beneath it hard as stone. "You look at me. I see you. In the garden that day, in your room with the sake... you look at me and you feel something other than duty. Do not stand there like a stone statue and lie to me!"

He recoiled as if she had struck him. His face, already a storm of conflict, crumpled into something akin to agony. All the control, all the discipline he had so fiercely maintained, was being stripped away by her words and the fury of the storm.

"You don't know what you are asking," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "This path… it leads to death. For both of us."

"This marriage is already death," she whispered back, her defiance melting into a raw, desperate plea. "I would rather have one true moment than a lifetime of lies with him."

She closed the final distance between them, pressing herself against his large frame. She could feel the frantic, heavy beat of his heart against her own. She raised a trembling hand to his face, her thumb brushing over his wet cheek. His eyes were wide, lost, the eyes of a man pushed beyond all endurance.

Fueled by a chaotic mixture of fear, defiance, and a desire so sharp it was painful, Akina rose on her toes and crushed her lips against his.

For one agonizing second, he was completely still, rigid as the bamboo surrounding them. His lips were cold from the rain, unyielding. A wave of despair washed over her; she had miscalculated, she had ruined everything.

And then, the dam broke.

A low groan tore from his throat, a sound of pure, unrestrained agony and release. His arms, which had been frozen at his sides, came up to cage her, one hand tangling roughly in the wet hair at the nape of her neck, the other pressing into the small of her back, pulling her so hard against him she could barely breathe.

His mouth answered hers not with tenderness, but with a desperate, pent-up passion that bordered on violence. It was a kiss of starvation, of a man who had denied himself for so long that he had forgotten how. It was clumsy and fierce, a devouring, frantic claiming. It tasted of rain and sake and months of unspoken longing. It was not the gentle kiss of a courtly romance; it was the collision of two worlds, a release of stored lightning that left her breathless and reeling.

He broke the kiss as abruptly as he had started it, his chest heaving, his breathing a ragged counterpoint to the percussive roar of the rain on the leaves above. He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes squeezed shut, his large body trembling with the force of his unleashed emotions.

The wildness of nature had mirrored the wildness in their hearts, and now, in the aftermath, there was only the sound of the storm and the horrifying, exhilarating weight of what they had just done. The world had irrevocably shifted, and they were left standing in the ruins, soaked to the bone, their secret finally, catastrophically, spoken.