Reborn in Blood

[Muramasa]

Sakura Festival, Planet Honshu
818 A.S.

"You look worried, brother. What's exactly disturbing you?" Seiji asked in a confident tone, actually not bothering to scan Hideo's rather pale face but focusing his glance on the people sitting under the cherry tree in front of the table that they both were now sitting on.

"You know exactly what bothers me, and I won't change my opinion about it." Hideo replied sternly, also looking in the direction of the cherry tree, where a lass on his early 20's would begin dancing shyly while several family members around her would cast smiles and clap their hands gently.

"Ah... You and your military codex and whatever verbiage linked to it. Brother... Brother... Marrying her will strengthen the position of our family, eventually subverting one of the very few Hogosha families in Honshu to our con-..."
"Or they'll subvert our family to their control and thus strengthen their position across Honshu even more?" Hideo finished in a sharp tone, having never doubted on interrupting Seiji's sentence everytime he would find a flaw in them, despite the fact he was still the older sibling.

"Who else besides an Iwakura would know better about handling the business of Optronics, brother? Please..." The older brother laughed, catching the attention of his fiancée who stopped dancing and let her cheeks become blushed, wondering if Seiji's laughter was aimed at her. Clearly noticing the small misunderstanding, he shook his head at Hideo and stood up from the table. "See? Now unless I forward my apologies to Yuko-chan, we will indeed have her family stomping us. Enjoy this day, in memory our defunct father."

Hideo narrowed his eyes as he watched his brother walking back among the Aikawa members to offer a cynical bow at the girl, who eventually returned a smile and accepted Seiji's offer to resume together the slow dance she had started before. He had a hunch the Aikawa, as self-proclaimed protectors of Kusari like the rest of Hogosha families, would find the annexation of Iwakura's electronics conglomerate as one of the many stragetic moves to settle in the planet's underworld, and money laundering required of a 'willing' legal company

Whether this feeling would actually come into reality or not wasn't part of the wisdom that his father granted him upon death, but as junior officer of the Naval Forces he had already learnt about better safe than sorry.