I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

They heard the group before they saw them.

Voices spilled into the corridor the moment Shigeru pushed open the door to the shared area where his people had been settling in, and the reaction was immediate when Nathan and Hanzo appeared behind him.

Sana’s face lit up first, her smile arriving before she had fully registered what she was seeing. ”You are here!”

”Destiny,” she announced, turning to the others with the conviction of someone presenting an obvious fact.

One of the men gave her a flat look. ”We separated from them and they ended up in the same inn in a city this size. That is coincidence, not destiny.”

”Coincidence?” Sana turned on him with genuine offense. ”We parted ways completely, walked different streets, and Shige found them at the exact moment they were being turned away. What exactly would it take to convince you?”

”I think it is destiny,” Yuwa said beside her, nodding with an expression of solemn agreement. Then she glanced at Nathan and Hanzo with a smile that carried something knowing underneath it. ”Destiny for what, exactly, remains to be seen.”

”Before any of that,” Shigeru said, raising a hand and pointing toward the room directly next to his own, ”let these two actually get through the door. Room is right there.”

”Thank you,” Hanzo said, inclining her head toward Shigeru with genuine courtesy before following Nathan inside. She pulled the door shut behind her and let out a quiet breath.

The room was modest but clean, large enough for two bedrolls with space between them, a small table near the window where the sounds of the evening city drifted up from the street below.

”I don’t know whether this is fortunate or not,” Hanzo said, keeping her voice low. ”Something feels off about them.”

”Off how?” Nathan asked.

She was quiet for a moment, turning the question over. ”I’m not certain. Perhaps I am reading too much into it.”

”The only thing notably off about that group,” Nathan said, ”may be that every man in it wants to sleep with you.”

Hanzo turned and gave him a look that could have cut glass.

”And all the women wanting you,” she replied pointedly.

”It could be useful,” Nathan said, with the casual tone of someone thinking through a practical problem rather than making a joke. ”If it produces information worth having.”

Hanzo stared at him. ”You already have women.”

”Several, and they matter to me,” Nathan said simply. ”But they are not here. When there is a genuine need and they are not present, I do what is necessary. That is where the line sits.”

It was not a complicated calculation for him. If Yukihime had been in this building he would not have entertained the thought for a second, it would have been an insult to her and he had no interest in offering her that. But she was not here, and certain situations called for certain approaches.

Though in truth he had no real intention of taking it there tonight. Hanzo’s instincts were worth paying attention to even when she could not fully articulate them, and there were more pressing matters demanding their attention than gathering loose intelligence from a group of mercenaries.

”Let’s focus on Genzo,” Nathan said. ”Though if you wanted to draw out information from those men, you would find it easier than you think.”

The look she turned on him this time had more heat in it.

”I am not as shameless as you,” she said.

”I doubt you are,” Nathan replied. ”You are a virgin.”

The color that rushed into her face was immediate and thorough, and she had absolutely no argument to offer against it, which made it worse. She turned slightly away from him and said nothing.

A knock came at the door before the silence could stretch into something more awkward.

”We are heading down to the bar,” Shigeru’s voice came through the wood, easy and unhurried. ”Come have a drink with us if you like.”

Nathan considered it briefly. A bar full of people loosened by drink and festival anticipation, and a group that had already shown a willingness to talk. It was not a bad environment for learning things, and learning things was more or less the point of being here right now.

He glanced at Hanzo. She gave him a look that communicated clearly that she had no interest in going anywhere near whatever was about to happen downstairs, and that she was also not entirely pleased about being left behind, both of those things simultaneously.

Nathan opened the door.

”Just me,” he told Shigeru.

Shigeru smiled and stepped back to let him through. ”Good.”

They found the tavern tucked into the far side of the ground floor, a warm and low ceilinged space that smelled of cedar wood and warm rice wine and the particular comfort of a room that had been full of people for most of the day. The noise level was considerable but not unpleasant, the kind of collective noise that comes from people who are genuinely at ease rather than performing it.

Shigeru moved through it like a man who had walked into a hundred rooms exactly like this one, scanning for a table with the practiced eye of someone who knows what he wants and how to get it without making a fuss. He found a long one near the inner wall and claimed it immediately, spreading his group along the benches with the easy authority of someone his people were accustomed to following without needing to be asked twice.

Nathan settled beside Shigeru at one end. Sake arrived quickly, alongside plates of sushi and other small dishes that were already disappearing at a rate that suggested nobody in the group had eaten properly since morning. The atmosphere dropped several degrees of formality the moment the first cups were filled, which was more or less what Nathan had come down here for.

Shigeru took a long, satisfied pull from his cup and set it down with a contented sound. ”So,” he said, turning toward Nathan with a conversational ease that felt genuine enough. ”Are you planning to enter any of the competitions?”

”Competitions,” Nathan repeated, the word carrying just enough flatness to communicate his level of enthusiasm.

Shigeru laughed. ”The festival runs them every year. Swordsmanship, archery, wrestling, drinking if last night was any indication of your interests.” He gestured vaguely with his cup. ”A man with your obvious capabilities could take his pick. I’d put money on you in most of them.”

”And what would be the point,” Nathan said.

”Prizes, for one thing. Recognition. There are rewards worth having if you place well, and the better competitions get noticed by people worth being noticed by.” Shigeru paused just long enough to let that land. ”The Daimyo himself attends. Has been known to personally acknowledge winners he finds impressive.”

Nathan was quiet.

The idea turned itself over in his mind without any particular invitation. He had come here looking for a way to reach Norihiro that did not involve battering through walls and guards and whatever artifacts the man kept close to him, the kind of approach that would announce itself long before it arrived and give Norihiro every possible opportunity to prepare. A competition, on the other hand, was a public and sanctioned reason to be seen, to move closer to the center of things without triggering the defenses that surrounded it. Whether it would actually produce a clean opportunity to finish this quietly was another question entirely, but the proximity itself had value.

He would not dismiss it before he understood what it actually looked like.

”What competitions?” he asked.

”Oh,” Yuwa said from further down the table, leaning forward with a grin spreading across her face. ”Suddenly much more interested.”

”Who knows,” Nathan replied, giving her nothing.

Shigeru smiled into his cup. He had the comfortable expression of a man who had just watched a conversation go exactly the way he suspected it might. ”Come with me tomorrow morning. I will walk you through it properly. Better to see it than have me describe it badly.”

Nathan picked up his sake and took a measured sip. ”Fine,” he said.

Shigeru raised his cup in a small and satisfied toast to nobody in particular and drank again, and the table around them continued on into the warm and unhurried noise of the evening.

After lingering for another hour with the others, Nathan finally excused himself and made his way back to their room. The warm glow of sake still lingered in his veins, leaving him pleasantly heavy-limbed and more tired than he cared to admit. The long evening of laughter, stories, and shared drinks had taken its toll, and each step down the quiet hallway felt heavier than the last.

When he slid open the door to their modest room, the soft lamplight revealed Hanzo already fast asleep on the only bed available. She lay curled on her side, her dark hair spilling across the pillow like ink on rice paper. Her breathing was slow and even, her face softened in a way it rarely was while awake—free from the usual tension and guarded watchfulness.

Nathan paused for a moment, watching her. As expected, the grueling journey had worn her down, but it was more than just the miles they had traveled. The constant worry over her uncle’s fate had clearly drained her far more deeply than she was willing to confess, even to him.

Without a second thought, he slipped off his outer robe and eased himself onto the bed beside her. The mattress dipped gently under his weight, but Hanzo didn’t stir. He settled and closed his eyes.