There are 2 rooms in the cabin of this sailing ship.
One of the two rooms is larger and the other is smaller.
The smaller room was for the only two women in their group, A-Machi and Rin.
As for Ogata and others, they all went to squeeze into another slightly larger room.
Although the number of people is slightly larger, as long as they are squeezed together, Ogata and others can still stay in that slightly larger room.
Because of seasickness, Amachi and Lin spent most of the day sleeping in their room.
It is now the 5th day at sea.
Perhaps it's because their bodies have become slightly accustomed to the rough sea, but A-Machi and Rin's bodies are much better now, and they are no longer as uncomfortable as they were at the beginning, unable to even stand up.
But their health has only improved a little.
They still have to spend most of their day in bed.
At this moment, Ogata was kneeling behind Omachi's head, letting his head rest on his lap, massaging his head.
When he was still on modern earth, Ogata once learned some massage techniques that were effective in relieving dizziness and headaches.
And this massage technique just comes in handy now.
Under Ogata's massage, Atachi's expression, which was originally tense due to discomfort, relaxed slightly.
Just when Ogata was concentrating on massaging Atachi, Lin's murmur suddenly came from beside him:
"I actually get seasick too...it's so embarrassing...well...it's so disgusting..."
Lin, who was originally stubborn and refused to admit that she was seasick, now finally admitted that the reason why she felt dizzy and nauseous was because of seasickness.
Although both Rin and A-Machi are prone to seasickness, Rin's physical condition is much better than A-Machi's.
Without the help of others, A-Machi could not even stand up straight, but Rin could barely stand up on her own strength.
Probably because Rin's body is much stronger than Atachi's.
As soon as Lin finished murmuring, Mamiya, who was kneeling above her head, comforted Lin in a helpless tone:
"Lord, some people are more prone to seasickness than others. Just like some people like spicy food more than others. It's all innate."
Just like Ogata was kneeling on the bedside, letting Omachi rest on his legs, massaging Omachi's head. At this time, Mamiya was also kneeling on the bedside, massaging Rin's head.
The only difference was that Lin didn't rest her head on Mamiya's lap.
When Ogata used this head massage on Omachi for the first time, Mamiya was very interested in Ogata's massage method that could effectively relieve dizziness and headaches.
Mamiya asked Ogata very directly to teach him this massage method.
This was not an embarrassing request, so Ogata readily agreed to Mamiya's request.
Ogata clearly remembers that the first time he used this massage method to relieve Atachi's dizziness was the first night at sea.
It was also on that night that Mamiya asked Ogata to teach him this massage method.
Then after Ogata taught Mamiya this massage method that night, in the morning of the next day, Mamiya was able to massage Lin with a much more skillful technique than Ogata...
"By the way...I heard that Katsukuro also suffered from dizziness last night..."
At this time, Lin opened her eyes slightly and looked at Mamiya behind her head.
"Is he okay?"
"Shimada is fine." Ogata answered for Mamiya, "I just feel a little dizzy. He is sleeping in the room now."
Last night, Shimada, who had never sailed on a sailing boat like this before, also developed symptoms of seasickness.
However, Shimada's symptoms were much milder. He was just a little dizzy. He was not like Omachi and Rin who were vomiting and had trouble staying awake.
…
…
Under Ogata's massage, Amachi felt much better and fell asleep again.
In order not to disturb A-Machi's rest, after A-Machi fell asleep, Omoto quietly left the room and went up to the deck. Ruma Miya continued to massage Rin alone in the room.
As soon as he arrived on the deck, Ogata saw Genichi squatting at the end of the bed and drinking "oolong tea" with a leisurely expression, and Makimura and Asai sitting side by side on the bedside.
Seeing Ogata come out of the cabin, Makimura immediately turned his head and asked Ogata:
"Brother Ogata, how are my lord and Miss Atachi?"
"They both fell asleep." Ogata said as he walked towards the bow of the ship where Makimura and Asai were, and then sat cross-legged next to them.
The three people sitting side by side on the bow looked at the sea in front of them.
Under the bright sky, waves hit one after another continuously, the splashing waves sparkled with thousands of silver lights, and the endless sea was rippling with countless bright water waves like mercury.
"...It's so free." Makimura said coldly.
As soon as Makimura finished speaking, Ogata and Asai on the side raised their heads in agreement.
The sailing ship they were traveling on was not a big ship, and there was not enough space for Ogata and the others to compete with others and practice their swordsmanship. Ogata could not gain experience even if he wanted to.
At the same time, because the space is not large, there is not much they can do.
The most common way they spend their time these days is to get together and chat, or go to Yuan Yi to have a few drinks together.
Yuan Yi had almost no luggage and only brought a bunch of wine.
After boarding the ship, Yuan Yi spent nearly half of the day at the stern.
Drinking wine while bathing in the sea breeze is so comfortable.
"Would you like to go swimming?" Makimura asked.
"No, there is no bathing place here. I don't want to get dirty sea water all over my body." Asai shook his head.
"And the waves here are very high, so it's not a good place for swimming." Ogata added.
"That's right." Makimura nodded.
"By the way, where is Mamiya?" Asai turned his head and looked back, looking for Mamiya, "Why didn't you see Mamiya?"
"He is currently giving Miss Kinoshita a massage in the room." Ogata said.
After saying that, Ogata paused.
Then he had a complicated look on his face and said quietly:
"Mamiya's learning ability is really strong... Now if you bring any outsider over to watch me and Mamiya's massage techniques, they will definitely think that I am the apprentice and Mamiya is the master..."
"Mamiya's learning ability is very strong and his understanding is extremely high." Asai turned away from looking for Mamiya, "No matter what he learns, he quickly masters it. This is why he has so many skills.
"
"...I've always been curious."
Ogata, whose eyes were still fixed on the sea in front of him, suddenly asked Asai.
"Asai, I can understand your use of honorifics towards Miss Kinoshita and Mr. Genichi, but why do you also use honorifics when facing Mamiya? Is it because he is the old man of your Calabash House?
?”
"It's not because Mamiya is the old man of our Calabash House that I use honorifics towards him."
Perhaps because he is really free now, Asai, who is usually taciturn, rarely used a very detailed vocabulary to introduce to Ogata the reason why he uses honorifics towards Mamiya.
"I only respect those who are stronger than me in swordsmanship."
"In terms of swordsmanship, in the whole Gourd House, only the Lord, Genichi, and Mamiya can easily defeat me."
"I am in awe of Mamiya's superb swordsmanship and the many skills he possesses, so I respect him very much, so I will speak honorifics to him. It's that simple."
After hearing the words "he has so many skills" from Asai's mouth, Ogata smiled knowingly.
"What did Mamiya do before?" Ogata asked casually, "It seems like he has been to many places... Was he also a wandering ronin before?"
Ogata's voice fell as he asked this question.
Makimura and Asai fell into a long silence.
The somewhat too long silence between the two made Ogata frown slightly involuntarily.
Just when Ogata was about to ask why the two of them were suddenly silent, Makimura suddenly said in a deep voice:
"……have no idea."
"...Huh?" Ogata tilted his head.
Asai continued what Makimura said:
"Except that the Lord may know what Mamiya did before, none of us know where and what Mamiya was doing before joining Calabash House."
"We have also asked Mamiya himself this question, but Mamiya has always been perfunctory and confused about this issue, and never answered our question directly."
"When I asked my lord, he was also very secretive about Mamiya's past."
"Don't say it's Mamiya's past." As soon as Asai finished speaking, Makimura shrugged, "We don't even know where Mamiya was born, what swordsmanship he used, or how strong he is."
"Mamiya doesn't have any accent when he speaks. You can't even tell where he comes from based on his accent, and he never says where he comes from."
"Not only does Mamiya not talk about his past, he also never reveals the swordsmanship style he uses."
"We only know that Mamiya is very good at using the sword technique."
"From the time I joined Calabash House to now, I have never seen Mamiya go all out... Ah, no, or rather, I have never seen any enemy successfully force Mamiya out of his full strength."
"We have never seen Mamiya use all his strength to fight against the enemy."
Ogata had been listening quietly to the two of them.
After hearing Makimura's words, Ogata suddenly realized that he himself had never seen Mamiya go all out to fight against the enemy.
In every battle Ogata has witnessed so far, Mamiya has always looked calm and composed.
Even when he fought on Butterfly Island with the elite of the shogunate army in a narrow corridor, after the battle, Mamiya was still in a state of ease, with almost no injuries left on his body.
"...I guess the job Mamiya did before he followed the master and joined Calabash House was definitely not a very honorable job... The job Mamiya did before may have been related to murder." Asai suddenly said this coldly.
.
"Is it related to murder?" Ogata cast a confused look at Asai, "Why do you say that?"
"Asai, are you going to tell Ogata the old story about the old monk who was paralyzed by fear?" Makimura's rhetorical question contained a hint of helplessness.
"This story is not a secret. Everyone in our Gourd House knows it." Asai said, "It doesn't hurt to tell Ittousai."
"Did anything happen to Mamiya in the past that made you suspect that the work he did before was related to murder?" Ogata asked Asai.
"This happened a long time ago." Asai whispered, "Once, Mamiya and I went out of town for some matters and passed by a temple."
"There is a very old monk living in that temple."
"It was night, and Mamiya and I planned to stay in this temple for one night."
"I was the one who went to negotiate with the old monk whether he could borrow a corner of the temple for us to rest for one night."
"The old monk was very easy to talk to. After I made my request to stay overnight, he readily agreed."
"However... after I led Mamiya, who was waiting outside the temple, into the temple, and the old monk saw Mamiya... the old monk's expression at that time is really difficult to describe in words."
"There was no blood on his face. He was so scared that he collapsed on the ground... In short, he looked like he had seen a ghost."
"The old monk was slumped on the ground, backing up on his hands and knees, away from Mamiya, and yelling something like, 'I have never seen anyone kill such a heinous person.'"
"No matter what, I won't leave a palace in the temple."
"We have no choice but to leave that temple."
"When leaving the temple, the old monk also advised Mamiya to study Buddhism for the rest of his life and do more good deeds in order to wash away the accumulated sins of murder and the resentment of the deceased."
"It was also from that time on that I began to doubt that what Mamiya had done before might not be a very honorable job..."
"If Mamiya's previous job was really related to murder...then the number of people he killed before must have been quite a lot..."
"The murderous crime on the body is so heavy that it can make a monk paralyzed to the ground...how many people have to be killed..."
As soon as Asai finished speaking, Makimura on the side chuckled a few times:
"The monk might be talking nonsense."
"These monks like to talk nonsense."
"When I was in Kyoto, I met a monk who said that I had a noble minister and would definitely become a big shot like Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the future."
As soon as Makimura finished speaking, Asai shook his head:
"You were not present at that time, and you did not see the monk's appearance and expression at that time."
"If you had been there at that time and seen with your own eyes how frightening the look of fear on the monk's face was, you wouldn't have thought that the monk was talking nonsense." Asai said seriously.
"Don't you, Mr. Gendai, know what Mamiya did before?" Ogata asked.
"Hmm, I don't know."
As soon as Ogata finished speaking, Genichi's voice came from the stern of the ship.
Ogata, Makimura, and Asai all turned their heads and looked at Genichi who had been sitting at the stern of the boat drinking "oolong tea".
"Mr. Gendai," Makimura said, "It turns out that you have been listening to our conversation just now."
"Although I am not young, my ears are still functioning well. And this boat is not so big that the sound from the bow cannot be transmitted to the stern."
After raising the wine glass in his hand and taking another sip of "oolong tea", Genichi said slowly:
"I've never been very interested in other people's pasts, so I never asked Mamiya what he did before joining Calabash House."
"Only Xiaolin knows Mamiya's past."
"but"
Speaking of this, several meaningful rays of light flashed in Yuan Yi's eyes.
"Although I don't know Mamiya's past. But from the swordsmanship used by Mamiya, I can roughly guess what Mamiya's previous occupation may have been."
"Is there anything wrong with the swordsmanship used by Mamiya?" Asai, who had always been expressionless, now had a hint of curiosity flashing in his eyes.
"You young people don't have enough experience, so you can't see any difference between the swordsmanship used by Mamiya and ordinary swordsmanship."
"The swordsmanship used by Mamiya takes the three words 'fast', 'accurate' and 'ruthless' to the extreme."
"And when Mamiya kills people with his sword, he always subconsciously cuts to certain special parts of the human body."
"In the whole world... there is a kind of person who is best at using this type of swordsmanship..."
"What kind of person?" Makimura asked urgently.
"Well... I won't tell you." Yuan Yi shrugged, "Whether Mamiya was that kind of person before, I'm just guessing. I'm not sure either."
"And since Mamiya never told you what he used to do, and Xiaolin is also very secretive about Mamiya's past, it means that Mamiya doesn't want his companions to know about his past."
"So we respect Mamiya's choice and stop asking about Mamiya's past."
After saying that, Yuan Yi took another sip of the "oolong tea" in the cup.
"... Mr. Gendai is right." Asai sighed softly, "Since Mamiya doesn't want to talk more about his past, we won't ask any more questions. Let's stop this topic... Let's talk.
Let’s do something more interesting.”
Ogata and Makimura both nodded in agreement.
The three of them once again turned their attention to the sea ahead.
Looking at the sea, after a long moment of silence
"Would you like to go swimming?" Makimura asked.
"No, there is no bathing place here. I don't want to get dirty sea water all over my body." Asai shook his head.
"And the waves here are very high, so it's not a good place for swimming." Ogata added.
"That's right." Makimura nodded.
"Why does this conversation sound so familiar..." Ogata murmured with several black lines appearing on his face.