A Backwards Isekai

4: Cars

Katsuki still remembers the first mistake he had made as newly appointed warrior of his clan, and while the details of the incident were rather fuzzy due to not receiving any punishment, it gave him insight to the ideals of the world he lived in. What he was taught to do in class was hard to remember when staring reality in the face.

He remembers a woman, young and in her late twenties when he watched her being violated. Her cries for help were far away and when Katsuki ventured in their general direction to see what was happening, he found himself in a home far from the rest of the village markets.

At the time, he didn't know if it was his right to venture in the house of a family that were most likely having a squabble. But when it came to being duty-bound to the law and making sure others are to obey those same principles, he made himself present and entered the home.

The woman's screams were reduced to cries as his eyes fell downwards, watching in horror as her fingers grated so hard against the floor, her nails seemed to be ripping in a desperate attempt to crawl away. She leaves a constant trail of blood at his feet, but katsukis gaze fitted themselves at the familiar man behind her, back arched as hips pistoned themselves against her like an animal in heat.

Her pleas are left unanswered and ignored by both, one too stunned as he watches the other, a samurai-to-be classmate, chase away at his pleasure, finding bliss in the woman's agony. Katsuki is only brought back when he feels a grip around the front of his feet, and looks down to look the woman right in the eye.

"Please..." she chokes a whisper as her blotchy cheeks and eyes shine with her tears. "I'm married."

Two things happened.

The first, was to immediately draw his sword in step with a maneuver to kick the assailant off of the woman. In the adrenaline, all Katsukis mind focused on was the fact that the husband of that woman had just been robbed of his rights from her violation.

The second, he put his teachings into practice and made a clean cut to his friend's throat with a swing of his blade just as the girl had collapsed at his legs. As the fallen samurai bled and fell to the floor with a disgusting squelch of his neck snapping sideways, the girl he just saved filled the house with screams of horror.

His teachings said this; if anyone were to commit these crimes, including theft, murder, and rape, it is a disrespect to the laws and social order, and they are to be punished accordingly.

If a samurai were to act without honor, Seppuku was performed to regain it.

The rape of a married woman, was punishable by death.

The situation fit both the criteria, and Katsuki did only what he was told to do by his masters and teachers, and killed the samurai he thought had the honor and discipline deserving of his friendship. It's only later that Katsuki learns his mistake, and was told that the woman was not married, and that his justification was unjust.

While he feared his own life for acting on his own accord, he wondered why there were separate punishments in the act of violating a woman. He wondered why the law considered the husband of the wife to have been robbed of its rights instead of the wife's own virtues.

The rape of an unmarried woman, was punishable by forced labor or banishment.

A samurai raping a woman with a lower rank, weren't labeled as criminals.

That was the world Katsuki lived in before his untimely, but incredibly honorable death, and its ideals still baffled him when faced with their constitutions. However, they pale in comparison to what he has so far experienced in the few hours he's been thrusted into this new, complex world.