After all, when have Samurai masters ever been so kind? It's already a blessing if they don't just chop up a few random passersby for fun—how could they possibly be so merciful and virtuous?
If you believe that, you're a total dumbass!
This is a classic case of the earlier generations chopping down the trees and the next ones getting roasted in the sun. Japanese Samurai make a habit of acting like assholes, coming up with all sorts of bogus taxes. Besides the usual annual tribute and corvée, there's "segmented tax," "beam-and-column tax," "additional land tax," "military rations," "horse-rental tax"—you name it, they milk the villagers dry, suck the marrow from their bones, drain them of every drop, until their reputation stinks to high heaven. And then Harano the transmigrator shows up, gets caught in the crossfire for no damn reason, and even if he wants to do a good deed to earn some street cred, no one dares to believe him.
The "Mongol Doctor Project" got stuck right from the get-go. Ah Man laughed her ass off, nonstop trying to convince him to just give up—who cares about a bunch of clueless commoners, let them drop dead if they want! Wouldn't it be better for all of us to keep partying, eating, drinking, and hibernating in comfort? Even Harano had no good idea for now—it's not like he could force people to come for treatment, right?
Not to mention, he didn't even have the balls (or leverage) to force people to come get treated.
After two days of quiet waiting, he was grinding medicine in the yard, already considering whether to hire a "plant" to be the first one to eat this crab—just set an example and prove there's really no trap, and that he absolutely, definitely wasn't scheming to molest every girl in the village.
And just as he was deep in thought, suddenly there was a flurry of urgent hooves. He looked up to see a green-clad Samurai tearing down the road at full gallop, scaring the villagers half to death—chickens flying, dogs jumping, people scrambling. The Samurai didn't slow down at all; at the fence he squeezed the horse's belly, bounding over in a flying leap and crashing down in the yard, yanking on the reins and shouting anxiously, "Where's the doctor? Didn't someone say there's a doctor here? Who's the doctor? Doctor, get out here!"
Because he yanked the reins so hard, the horse was super pissed. Yeah, it stopped, but not before tossing its head, neighing, pawing, and spinning in circles, totally trashing all the medicine drying in the yard, forcing Harano to retreat to a corner just to dodge—face instantly turning black with rage.
It scared the hell out of him—he thought someone had come to rob him again, and this time they'd upgraded from river bandits to cavalry!
Inside the house, Ah Man was guarding the fire, roasting medicine, dozing off so hard she was drooling—she got jolted awake, hair wild, rolled out the door still in a daze, flopped to the ground and shouted, "What's going on? Is it an earthquake? Ow! Shit—A Qing, quick, come here, I think I got a charley horse, hurry and help me get outta here!"
A Qing wasn't around—he'd gone herb-picking with the Momo'i brothers and Jiulang's wife. Ah Man called a few times, didn't see anyone, her brain finally clearing. She stared at the mess in the yard, all the medicine trampled to shreds, and instantly went into a rage explosion—after all, she'd spent days painstakingly preparing all that stuff (well, okay, mostly it was Harano's hard work), and the one time she looks away, it ends up like this?
Plus, the guy was here alone, no armor, and even if he had a horse, he wasn't that scary—so her eyes turned fierce as hell. She whipped around and hobbled back inside, then came charging out wielding her hand axe, and pointed it straight at the rider, cussing him up and down: "Bastard! What the hell do you think you're doing here, you dung beetle? Dare to come here and act wild—you damn near scared my... you damn near scared my donkey into pissing itself! Are you tired of living?! Get your ass down here, kneel, apologize, and pay up. I swear, you short me a single coin and I'll chop you to death!"
The green-clad Samurai looked to be fifteen or sixteen, but was almost one-seventy tall, with thick brows and big eyes, wide shoulders and sturdy build. He wore a plain gray robe beneath an emerald green haori with white patterns, and his hair was tied up in a chasen topknot (like those scrubby brushes for matcha tea in Japan). Even though it was just a regular outing—not a battlefield—he had these curtain-like arrow-guard armguards strapped on, and for some reason, a blue cotton hand towel tied around his neck…
Yep, this was one of those "edgy, flamboyant" Samurai who don't give a damn about anyone or anything, treat all rules like garbage, and have a raging temper to go with it.
This green-clad Samurai was no exception. He'd only just managed to calm his horse, when up comes Ah Man wielding her hand axe and cussing him out—really going hard, too. The Samurai flipped out instantly, cradling his chest with one arm, and yanking his sword with the other, honking back at her in his nasally voice: "Bastard, who the hell are you calling names, you filthy commoner? You... you…"
Turns out he wasn't great with words, kind of vocab-challenged, and for the life of him couldn't come up with something as savage as "dung beetle" to throw back. Meanwhile, Ah Man started circling to his side, yelling non-stop, her insults getting nastier by the second: "Yeah, I'm calling you, dung beetle! What, you wanna go? You ARE a dung beetle, your whole family's dung beetles, your whole family steals poop balls for a living!"
"Bastard, you… you… bastard!"
The green-clad Samurai started stammering even worse, face flushed in fury, to the point of overheating. He gave up trying to yell, jerked the reins to turn, eyes blazing, fully on guard against getting his thigh chopped by that axe—and at the same time, ready to charge with his horse, squaring off with Ah Man for a real smackdown, and at this rate, somebody might just get killed before this was over.
Harano was off to the side, face getting darker by the second—what the hell kind of bonkers mess is this? Was this era a literal madhouse? Nobody seemed to value their own lives, which totally fried his modern brain!
Dying over such dumb crap just wasn't worth it. He rushed to break up the shitshow, yelling from the corner of the yard, "Cut it out, both of you! Knock it off!"
Ah Man calmed down a bit too, and seeing who the guy was, got worried about screwing over her sugar daddy Harano, so she didn't keep cussing. But she still glared hatefully at the green-clad Samurai—she already couldn't stand Samurai, and now that she'd seen this guy, she straight-up loathed him, probably plotting already to spread rumors about him the minute his back was turned.