With the salt still burning in my wounds, I had barely sat down when a servant came to fetch me. It wasn't the old one. This one was younger, thin as a skeleton, with lowered eyes.
I was guided to two men in very old armor, whose stains could no longer be distinguished between rust and blood. They stared at me as if evaluating my usefulness before saying a word.
Without saying anything, they kept walking, and I followed them.
The stone path was uneven, the gravel scraped the soles of my feet. It was an ascending path, like a symbol of ascension.
At the end of the path, the main residence.
Taller than the dojo, it was made of polished dark wood.
The curved roofs jutted out with pointed tips, and at the ends, carved birds peered into the courtyards with fixed eyes. It wasn't a large castle.When I entered through the door, the air inside was denser. It smelled of aged beeswax.A sweet and stuffy smell. The oak beams creaked with each step, giving me away.
The guards led me through a narrow hallway. Light passed through the cracks of the paper windows, illuminating the darkness in stripes.
At the end, there was a black door, taller than usual, with rusted ironwork in the shape of intertwined roots at the bottom. One of the guards knocked three times, with a measured pause between each knock. Inside, the air smelled of:dye… and parchment.
Daisuke was not seated. He was standing in the center of the empty room, his figure blocking the light from the only high window. The smell was different there: sword oil, I thought.
A low table was between us. Dark figures on it, but the dim light didn't let me see any detail, only shapes. He stepped aside. The light cut across the table, revealing an open scroll, so stained it looked like it had been handled a thousand times.
Something shiny, metallic? It was on a dark cloth."Did you eat salt today?" said Daisuke. It wasn't a question. His eyes slid to my legs, where the skin still throbbed. He took a step forward, toward the table. His index finger, the same one he used to test blade edges, touched the shiny object.
The tantō. I recognized it immediately, short, serrated near the hilt.
"Salt hardens the flesh." He pulled the weapon by the hilt, letting a thread of blood drip. "But it's steel that proves character." He threw it to the floor, between us. The impact made the scroll on the table tremble, briefly revealing the outlines of the edges and red stains.
The tantō weighed more than it should in my hand. The serrated blade reflected my face — Ichiro's face, but with something strange in the eyes. Something that didn't belong to a child.
Daisuke watched the way I held the weapon. His forehead furrowed, but not in suspicion. In recognition.
"Hmm." He rubbed his chin, where a scar ran down to his neck. "The last time I saw you with a blade, you cried like a baby."
I pointed the weapon at the ground, as I had seen the veterans do.
In one fluid motion, Daisuke corrected my posture, twisting my wrist until the blade was parallel to the ground.
"Like this." His hand was rough as tree bark. We always keep the tip up!
He didn't question my sudden skill. In his warrior mind, blood was blood. If I could kill, I would be Kiyohara.
"Show me," he ordered, pointing to the stake in the corner. Its torso was stuffed with dried intestines.
I advanced. The first cut was clean. The intestines squirted out with oozing pus.
Daisuke didn't smile. He nodded.
The first cut had been too good. I noticed by the way the intestines slid along the blade, too easily, too clean.
Daisuke noticed too.
His eyes narrowed, but instead of questions, he gave an order:
"Again."
I struck again. This time, I let the blade enter at a crooked angle. The entrails resisted, sticking to the saw like glue.
"Hmph." He snorted, approving the failure.
Red blood ran down my forearm as Daisuke kicked the stake. Behind it, what really mattered was revealed:
A dead deer.
That was just the beginning.
Daisuke didn't let me put down the tantō for three hours. My hand became an extension of the blade, my fingers stuck to the hilt with dried blood and sweat.