Kensei Jon's Arc

Chapter 1 of 49

Kensei Jon loved a man he was forbidden to touch. His father's law made sure of it. Kyotori split its people into three classes: Hikari on top, Hoshi in the middle, Hikui at the bottom. Hikui served the Hikari. They could not marry above their birth. Kensei was Hikari, born to the man who wrote the rule. Jeon-min swept the floors of the guesthouse where Kensei lived. That made loving him a crime. Kensei met Jeon-min each night under the cherry tree behind the guesthouse. Pink blossoms fell on the wooden porch with its curved black eaves. There Jeon-min looked at him like an equal, not a servant. Tonight Kensei brought a folded paper. His hands shook as he held it out. "I asked my father to strike the marriage law," Kensei said. "I told him I loved someone below my class." Jeon-min's broom stilled against the stone. "You didn't say my name." "I said it." Kensei watched the blossoms drift. "He listened. Then he wrote his answer." Jeon-min took the paper. He read it under the moon. His face went flat. The law would not change. Kensei's father had signed a new order instead. Any Hikari who courted a Hikui would lose his class. He would fall to Hikui himself. The father meant it as a threat. He wanted Kensei to run from the shame. Jeon-min pushed the paper back. "Then you should stop coming here. You have too much to lose." "I read it a different way." Kensei took Jeon-min's rough hand and held it against the tree. "If I lose my class, the law can't keep us apart. Two Hikui can marry." Jeon-min stared. "You would give up everything. Your name. Your father. Your bed under a roof like this." "I keep you." Kensei's voice held steady now. "That's the trade." He walked back inside the guesthouse. His father sat waiting on the polished floor, the order still wet with ink. Kensei knelt. He set his family seal on the wood between them. "Sign me down," Kensei said. "Make me Hikui. Do it tonight." His father's mouth tightened. He had built the threat to control his son. Now his son took it as a gift. For a long moment he did not move. Then he lifted the brush. He wrote Kensei's name onto the bottom rung. He pressed the seal himself. "You are Hikui now," he said. "You will sleep in the servants' room. You will call me lord, not father." Kensei bowed low. He felt no roof over him anymore, only the open trade he had made. He walked out to the cherry tree where Jeon-min waited. "It's done," Kensei said. "We're the same now." But the servants' room held six beds and no privacy. And a fallen Hikari was a story the whole town would soon repeat.