The Watanabe Kazoku Manor

[podgie_bear]

As Takahiro was lead away by some of the women of the house who would see to his wellbeing and while Toshiro's orders to search for any more danger to the family were carried out, Toshiro sat in his study and tried to contain the anger he felt at what had happened in the supposedly safe environment of Watanabe Manor!

Looking down at the small gold locket that had fallen from Takahiro's nerveless fingers, he wondered where it had come from, it look to be very old. Examining it closely, he found a small catch amongst the ornate gold filigree decorating it and when he pressed it, the locket opened and out fell two items. A small and obviously very modern data chip and a piece of rice paper that had been folded very small to fit inside the locket. Carefully unfolding the rice paper, he found a message printed upon it in beautifully executed ideographs.

Dredging through his memories, he recognised some of them as being ideographs he had seen in history tapes. Ideographs that came from the ancient Japanese writings of old Earth, writings so old that they were ancient even before the sleepership brought his people to Sirius to find their new home! Suddenly, he felt an excitement that he had not enjoyed in years. As a boy he had studied these very same types of ideographs and he had been expert at translating them back then, did he still have that ability?

…………………………………………..............………..

As the house guard entered Toshiro's study to inform him that the Manor grounds were secured and that extra guards were patrolling to ensure that no-one could possibly enter them without permission now, he saw something in his master's face that he had never seen before. His master had greeted the news in a distracted manner and waved him away without even shouting at him, which was most unusual. But even more unusual was the look of what seemed like fear on his face as he burned a small square of rice paper and allowed the ashes to fall into his waste bin.

---