When the peonies bloom.

Late Autumn Part 1

"What do you want?" He put his hand on his hips before sighing and heading behind the counter. "You're going to have to be quick." He added.

"Um... in her haste of getting to the shop Tomo's mind was too jumbled to tell the man what she needed. Her brain was stuck between trying to remember what herbs her father used or just straight up telling the man what sickness she needed medicine for.

"Are you playing games with me, young sir?" The old man raised an eyebrow before he ducked under the counter and pulled out his abacus.

Tomo shook her head. "Sorry." She looked down the depths of the shop with sacks of different dried leaves, barks and seeds for customers to fill their bags with.

Seeing as his warning to hurry did not hasten this strange client's actions, the owner ignored her and continued restocking his medicinal drawers.

"I-I want what you're filling in that drawer." Tomo called out.

"Hm." The man grunted and grabbed a scoop. He dug it into the drawer and poured several pieces of the bark onto his scale.

"That should be enough."

The man nodded and pulled weights along his scale bar to balance them before pouring them onto a piece of paper.

Naming the first herb managed to start the flow of naming the other several herbs her father used to pack for his patients.

"I'm impressed you managed to remember the doctor's script off by heart." The owner said as he tied string around to secure the paper bound parcels containing her precious herbs.

Tomo blushed a little, paid and left. She felt some relief having the bundles of medicine now in her hand despite being slightly poorer. As she walked down the road, she visualised pouring the medicine into a clay pot and fanning the fire and watching the tea in case it bubbled out.

Although in the real world, her attention was also hooked upon two individuals chatting in a hushed manner to one another as they looked at her and back at a poster with an individual's portrait on the community notice board. They dropped their conversation and dispersed when one of them noticed that their presence had caught her attention.

She waited a while for them to walk far enough before curiousity got the better of her, drawing her closer to the notice board herself.

In that moment when she saw the portrait for herself, her forbidden question that she tittered around the edges of had finally been answered, confirming her worst fear. Indeed, the portrait on the poster was a splitting image of her and her unmistakable scar on her forehead. Her heart skipped a beat. Ogawa Tomomi was a wanted criminal by the Edo police. That statement felt like a boulder that fell from the sky and she was watching fall towards her waiting for the moment it would crush her.

Tomo felt breathless and dizzy in the aftermath of slicing those men out in the open in front of so many spectators that damned night. Tomomi's mind was so fogged by shock and fear the rest of her became rock solid and numb. She didn't even feel the thin tweed string carrying her medicine bundle cutting into her fleshy palm. The eyes of the portrait felt like they were staring into her soul like a silent command to give herself up for punishment. The visualisation of being tied up and being thrown into a jail cell awaiting her death made her sweat profusely. Even such mere thoughts rattled her.

Footsteps of a passerby crunching against street gravel managed to crack her out of her nightmarish train of thoughts. Tomo looked around the streetscape, no one else was around to pay her much attention. She quickly made a dash down street back to the wharf to be carried back to her ironic safe house.