Chapter 67
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The first time it happened was in 1812, when Master Sotama and I moved from the island of Okinawa to the island of Kume. Things had gotten too "hot" on Okinawa — the Japanese had brought in fresh troops backed by local mages and local shapeshifters called Hengeyokai. What, did someone think those didn't exist in this country? They'd be wrong.
So the resistance decided to go to ground for a while. To regroup and prepare a series of counterstrikes. That's why they shipped us off somewhere out of the way — so we wouldn't accidentally get caught in the crossfire. The resistance couldn't afford to lose its strongest combat assets.
For me personally… almost nothing changed. I hadn't sailed to this country to fight. I'd come to learn. So I learned. Training was daily, the Master worked with me directly, and that was all I needed… well, almost. There was one small problem. The local women… absolutely refused to sleep with me. I was a gaijin. Shameful. Back when I was on Okinawa, bigger cities, I'd gotten by with prostitutes — yujo, as they called them locally. And everything had been fine. Japan makes that sort of thing easy. They take a relaxed view of it. Far more relaxed than Europeans.
But on Kume-jima, yujo were scarce. More accurately, nonexistent. And the "respectable" local girls couldn't be with a gaijin — it was forbidden. Mother and Father said no. Get caught and you'd never live down the shame.
So I trained and endured. Endured and trained.
Until a local fisherman told me about a local landmark — a rock called Mifuga. There's one like it along the coastline. A beautiful spot. Scenic view. And the thing about it is that this rock has a hole in it. A through-and-through hole, with a clear view of the sea on the other side. Elongated, looking very much like a… a female reproductive organ.
And I wasn't the only one who saw it that way. For the locals, that rock was a sacred site. Women who couldn't conceive came there to pray about their troubles. And apparently it even worked for some of them. Or so the rumors went.
I… am not a virtuous man. Not even slightly. Even in the original story. I've never been one for high moral character. Never was, never pretended to be — especially not in my early years. And I'd never once bothered to respect any kind of sacred site… at least until I became a monastery abbot. But decisiveness? I had that in abundance.
In short, I heard the legend. I heard that in a couple of days, another poor woman would be going to that rock to pray in the evening. I fashioned myself the most frightening mask I could — carved it myself from wood, spent two evenings on it — with a cloth hood to cover my hair. Then I slipped over to Mifuga, hid myself inside the "hole," settled in, and waited.
She came. Sat down to pray, closed her eyes. I quietly climbed out of my hiding spot. Naked. Nothing but the mask. And standing at full attention. I crept toward her. Crept close, stood still, and waited. I was already burning up, far beyond the point of reason.
Then she opened her eyes, and my cock was swaying right in front of them. Back and forth, back and forth. And it's, without false modesty, a rather impressive size — well, I'm not a small man overall, so it figures.
She raised her hands to the sky and thanked the Kami for answering her prayers.
And after that, well — what followed is obvious enough.
She didn't leave Mifuga until morning. Walking a little bowlegged, but with such a happy smile on her lips.
A week later, another woman was making her way to Mifuga after dark, hope in her eyes and her lip caught between her teeth.
But then, nine months later, when blond-haired babies started being born… I thought the locals were going to come after me with pitchforks. I'd already gotten ready to jump from the cliffs into the sea. Even found a good spot for it — a treacherous stretch where the underwater rocks were sharp and the currents were vicious, a place every local knew well: fall from there and you don't swim out alive. And they wouldn't find the body.
But no. The locals never came for me. Blond babies? So what? Kami sent them. End of story.
And honestly, that made a certain kind of sense — the Japanese occupiers had cut down so many of the men back then. There weren't enough of them. Not enough to go around for all the women. And not one of those women wanted to lie down for the occupiers' soldiers.
The Ryukyuans hated the Japanese with a burning passion. Even now, that hatred hadn't fully faded — even though they'd shed blood together against the Americans.
And Mifuga became famous across all of Ryukyu after that year. Women came from across the entire archipelago. Sometimes two or three at a time.
I started shaving my head. Down to the skin. Better safe than sorry.
And when the children grew up a little, the Japanese suddenly found things getting very "hot" again. As it turned out through practical experience, my Gen-X passes down through inheritance.
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Yui… the son of that very first woman who had come to Mifuga. A sharp boy. Quick-minded. He'd been able to add two and two in his head, divide by two, and one day he came to me directly. He was ten years old.
He came. Was I supposed to turn him away? There had never been any particular warmth between us, but we couldn't exactly call each other strangers either.
Master Sotama took him on as a student as well. Along with another dozen or so children… all with blond hair and blue eyes.
In time, Yui became something like an Elder among the locals. Master of the Shindo-ryu School, Yui Creed. A family school — closed, private. No outsiders accepted. Only Creeds. And there were plenty of them on Ryukyu. Back when they standardized names and conducted the population census, all the blond-haired Ryukyuans took the name Creed. It became the most common surname on the archipelago. What a nightmare.
"What about Mifuga?" Natasha asked, after Yui finished his story. We were sitting in his kitchen, at his house. Why Yui telling it? Because I'm not exactly gifted with words.
"What about Mifuga?" he said, feigning surprise. "Even after Dad left, lonely women kept coming to her… and they still do. The mask survived, after all. So another fifty years and there won't be a single dark-haired person left on all of Ryukyu."
"Is that why the Americans couldn't take Okinawa?" Romanova said, frowning.
"No one can take us now. Not anymore. Not ever." Yui let the smile drop from his face. I understood him. He remembered the occupation era perfectly — and the horrors that had been committed during it.
"And you yourselves?" Natasha asked, her voice tightening.
"We're peaceful people. We don't need anyone else's land. We live long lives. We're in no hurry." Yui smiled. Natasha shivered.
As for me… I was perfectly zen about it. So my descendants were living on Ryukyu and multiplying. What did I care? This was Marvel. Some Galactus would show up eventually, and it wouldn't matter one bit what color the hair was on the people living on some tiny archipelago.
But then came a question I genuinely hadn't expected. Logical, though, in hindsight.
"Are gaijin women allowed to come to Mifuga?" Natasha asked.
"Why would gaijin women be any different?" Yui shrugged. "Our Kami shows no one less than His full grace."
Natasha nodded to herself, as if confirming something in her own mind. And I stretched into a filthy grin, watching the look come into my son's eyes — warm, and very, very interested.
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