Snowblood

Chapter 6: Jian Wu

He fights sleep the way he fights any other enemy, Yukie thought, looking at her sleeping lover. The difference was that sleep always won sooner or later, and it would be better for him if he were beaten by it more often. Often she was awakened by anguished groans and croaked attempts to call those he had lost, his son, his wife, even his daughter. Drew, Lisa, Kari... All the things he suppressed by day came forth when he slept.

It wasn't until their fourth night together that Matthew allowed himself to fall asleep in the same room with her, and even then he woke up whenever she turned over in bed. Nowadays he didn't stir so much as a finger should she get up and walk around the room, although he still slept fitfully, and on one memorable occasion, shoved her out of bed while he was sound asleep. She wondered if he slept that way at home, if he thought of any place as home these days, and suspected it didn't matter where he was or who he was with.

She did not know if she was the only person he was sleeping with, in either sense of the word, but she did know that between the two senses, sex and sleep, the latter was the deeper intimacy for him.

In sleep that harshly handsome face was still grim. It only softened a little when he laughed, for that moment, and set again immediately. She smiled, remembering the first time she made him laugh, early on. She asked him, quite seriously, if he minded that she was just using him for sex.

The look on his face was beyond words before he laughed and replied, "Be my guest!" She didn't think he realized what a relief it was to her that he left and went home, leaving her to think her own thoughts and live her own life without all the work that went into a relationship. What there was between them was so simple, so easy-going that it hardly seemed real to her.

He'd thrown the covers partly off, and the ambient light of a urban night silvered the shiny patches of scar tissue here and there—no new ones anywhere, and she had had a good look. She was glad he hadn't been injured again. He was a man whose life story was written on his body. The horrible burn scars on his left forearm were a parting gift from his ex-wife, he'd told her. During an argument, she had slammed down a pan of smoking hot oil, and splashed him by accident, or so he said.

But if Lisa Darrow had marked him, so too had Yukie. The scar where she had come close to cutting off his ear still remained as well, but in turn she still bore the line on her throat.

What a way to meet...

Fourteen months earlier:

She had learned learned about the Jian Wu match from a patient, Deirdre Clark, who had come to the Salazar Group for help when her cheap and fast cat-girl alteration had gone wrong. The genehack in The Dirt had botched the pelt, her body had rejected the implants, and faced with scarring, allergic reactions, and tissues that were going necrotic, she had come to them in pain and fear, begging to be normal again.

The bad pelt had to be removed before repair work could begin, and freezing was a gentler way to remove it than surgery. Yukie handled such cases; she had a gift for  knowing exactly how much, how deep, how long to freeze the tissues without damaging healthy skin and muscle. Her skill with cryotreatment was one of the reasons why the Salazar Group was known for their treatment of skin cancers.

It was during the third session that Deirdre, who was looking at the wall rather than at the ongoing treatment, asked, "Say, Doctor Kuwano, what is Jian Wu, annyway? I mean I know it's a martial art, but whazzo different about it?"  Her accent was sometimes an impenetrable mystery to Yukie, but that was easy enough to understand.

She looked at the plaque Deirdre was studying, an old award of hers from the regional Jian Wu competitions. "It can be either armed or unarmed combat. In competition, it is a dual fought by two combatants, each armed with two swords and accompanied by drummers."