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“You keep saying such horrible things about yourself! “Well… that’s because—” “I don’t care why,” Setsuko snapped. “I won’t have you calling yourself useless or evil anymore, you understand? I won’t have it!”
That's so sweet
Could she have caused the miscarriages in her sleep? While she dreamed? Had her subconscious risen like a sleep-walking demon and drowned the babies?
What???!
“My marriage wasn’t like yours, Setsuko. I’m not here because my husband loves me. I’m here to give him sons.”
Sad
“Why don’t you try taking responsibility for the things you can control instead of the things you can’t?”
“You can play weak and dumb with me, but it’s not going to work. There’s a bright, strong woman in there.” Setsuko put a hand on Misaki’s chest. “I’d like to meet her.”
“The things that boy tells you are certainly treasonous.” “I know, Kaa-chan. I’m sor—” “But they are true.”
“Why did you say that?” Mamoru demanded alongside the admonishing voice in Misaki’s head. “Why—why would you tell me that?” “Because I assumed you were man enough to handle it.” Misaki masked her anxiety under a harsh tone of voice.
His nyama was churning, all that terrifying power he had inherited from his father writhing like a knotted serpent trying to free itself from its own coils, strangling and biting itself in confusion.
She supposed this was what a good mother was supposed to feel toward her children every waking moment, but she had not felt it since Daybreak. Since she had something worth protecting.
“You know, I…” She started with a small truth, just to see how it would feel. “I never liked the cold.” Mamoru turned to look at her with a question in his eyes. “I’m a cold enough person—in my nyama and my personality—that I can get quite enough of it all on my own. When it comes to the rest of the world, I like a little heat to offset all the ice in me.
Warmth is so hard to come by in this village… That’s why I watch the sunrise out here whenever I get the chance.”
“I like how I can feel the sun simmering on the horizon even before it comes into view. I like the moment it lights up the fog and then burns through it. That brightness reminds me that there’s a world beyond this mountain, beyond Kaigen. No matter how cold the nights get here, the sun is rising somewhere. Somewhere, it’s making someone warm.”
Beautiful
“Listen, son… when I was your age, I had to face truths that seemed to break the world. That’s what happens when you come into contact with people who aren’t quite like you. You learn over time that the world isn’t broken. It’s just… got more pieces to it than you thought. They all fit together, just maybe not the way you pictured when you were young.”
Indeed
“A child doesn’t have to take responsibility for his decisions. A child can trust in his parents to tell him what to do. A man trusts himself.”
Noted
“I know you might feel broken, but we’re jijakalu. We’re water, and water can shift to fit any mold. No matter how we’re broken and reshaped, we can always freeze ourselves strong again.
Mamoru nodded. “But I… I’m not to repeat anything you or Kwang-san told me?” “No,” Misaki said, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t listen. You can learn a great deal listening to people with different experiences from your own.
listening never made any man dumber, but it’s made a lot of people smarter.”
For a moment, Misaki could only stare at her son. She had never thought of Matsuda history that way—in any way that related to her own experience—and here her bloodied, sleep-deprived fourteen-year-old boy had just connected two pieces of the world she never would have thought to fit together. Maybe she still had some growing up to do herself.
“You know, Mamoru… you’ll be a man sometime soon. But just for today, let me be your mother and tell you in all my motherly certainty that everything is all right. The world is whole. You are on the right path. Everything is going to be all right.”
Comforting
“Someday, will you tell me about your foreign school?” he murmured. “About all the things you did when you were young?” Misaki was not prepared for the ripple of warmth that touched her heart.
This is it, Misaki realized. This was the joy they had all promised, in a single, simple hope: Mamoru might grow up to be different from his father.
My mother seldom thinks that too?
As Mamoru slung Nagasa over his shoulder and carried him toward the washroom, Misaki was overtaken by a memory more distant than Daybreak—giggling through wood-paneled halls with her own brothers.
True to his promise, he never brought any of those conversations home with him, but the change in her son was visible. It was the marked difference between a carefree man and a thinking one.
A swordsman was supposed to be wary of his surroundings. But it was one thing to be attuned to wind and water droplets, another to analyze and understand human actions.
There was a sharpness to the way he looked at everything around him—a hunger—as he scrutinized the rough edges and shifting layers of his world, trying to make the pieces fit together.
Becoming a man
He suspected as he held Chul-hee’s gaze that it was only a matter of time before little Atsushi was treated to the same horrible revelations he had experienced the day he met the northern boy.
The storms, Kaa-san said, were a reminder of their place in the world. “Ours is borrowed power,” she would say, “a gift and a blessing. The true power belongs to the gods.”
It wasn’t unusual for the Matsudas to have the TV on while they ate meals. Most of the time, it was background noise—an endless procession of ignorably bland propaganda.
“That’s not real,” Mamoru said quietly. “What?” “That,” Mamoru pointed just as the image disappeared from the screen. “That photo of soldiers handing food out to civilians. They used it a week ago when they reported on the storms in Heibando and Yongseom.”
As Misaki looked more closely at the wreckage on the screen, she couldn’t say that the landscape and architecture looked particularly familiar. It had been a long time since she had been to Ishihama, but she was sure that the landscape was rockier than the place they were showing.
“Is that respect?” Mamoru demanded, pointing to the screen. “They won’t even give us the truth about what happened to those people. Do you call that respect, Tou-sama?”
He was giving Mamoru a chance to back down—a chance any sane person would take under the weight of that icy stare. But Mamoru had apparently gone insane. “I’m feeling fine, Tou-sama,” he said without hesitation. “Respectfully, I just want to know how you feel about your government lying to you.”
That boy is bold
“A lot of things. He says the hurricanes the government keeps reporting aren’t really natural storms; they’re Ranganese attacks.” The feeling in Misaki’s stomach turned from anxiety to pure dread.
Takeru had told her to fix Mamoru. Well, she couldn’t fix the fact that he was confused and angry. She couldn’t fix the fact that he was fourteen. What she could fix was his technique.
Badass
The hard thwack of wooden blades against one another woke an old joy in Misaki, and suddenly she was moving on pure unfettered instinct, driving her opponent back.
Honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure that was true. It was common for one fighter to be able to spot another just by the way they moved, and Takeru and Takashi were two of the most perceptive fighters she had ever known. Sometimes she found it difficult to believe that the brothers could have shared a roof with her all these years and not picked up on her combat background.
Somehow, despite everything, despite this tiny village, his frigid father, his bitter mother, his brainwashing school, despite all of it, Mamoru was growing up into a good person.
“Ow!” He stepped back, shaking out his hand. “How are you so strong?” “I’m not. I’m bouncing off your misplaced force and redirecting it against you. I’m sneaky like that.”
Work smarter not harder
“You were that powerful?” Mamoru said, and—bless his heart—he didn’t even look skeptical. “No,” Misaki said honestly, “I was never as powerful as you, nor as talented. But I was decisive and willing to fight dirty.”
Firebird and Whitewing were symbols meant to draw attention. They stepped onto a street intending to be seen, heard, and feared. Nobody thought to fear their creeping Shadow until it was too late. Misaki was an ambush predator. Her preferred tactic was to take out a criminal’s heel tendons before he noticed her crouched in the shadows.
If you don’t have confidence in your choice, you won’t commit to it. And if you don’t commit, you will fail.”
“Do you fight for personal glory? So the name Matsuda Mamoru will go down in history? Or do you fight for the thrill? Or the privilege of serving your Emperor? You need to ask yourself these questions. The only way to find that conviction you’re missing is to know beyond a doubt what you’re fighting for.”
Purpose and intention
“I never had to kill anyone, but…” Misaki paused to rub the skin between her thumb and forefinger where a blister was forming. “But what?” “I would have.” Misaki lifted her head to look her son in the face. “If it came to it, I would have killed without a second thought. If it was to save Robin, I would have killed as many people as I needed to.” “Who’s Robin?” Mamoru asked. “He’s…” Warmth. Hope. The sun burning through the fog. “A robin is a Carythian bird. It’s a metaphor.”
Her first teacher had been her father, who had trained her alongside her brothers for fun, not realizing he was planting the seeds of what would become a deeply rooted love for fighting in his daughter.
“Something I learned is that the act of fighting in and of itself isn’t important. What was really important to me was protecting the people I cared about.
Hunger had brightened Mamoru’s eyes, and the smile of a fighter’s high had turned the corner of his mouth.
Takeru could feel a dewdrop slide off a blade of grass halfway across the village—and cut it in half before it hit the ground.
In an objective sense, Takeru was perfect. From the precise lines of his face to the powerful ligaments of his arms, his whole body could have been sculpted by a numu angel of the ancient world. The perfect weapon.
“And what is Dai-san supposed to do?” she demanded. “He has a wife and a small child at home. How is he going to support them on a part-time salary?” “That is not my brother’s concern,” Takeru said coldly, “nor is it yours.” “Of course it is! Hyori is my friend.” “It’s not your place to criticize the head of this household.” Misaki bit down on her pride, as she had for so many years. “You’re right. It’s not,” she conceded, “but am I not allowed to worry about my friend’s happiness… and my husband’s?”
Dynamics
“You love your job at the village hall. You love crunching numbers.” Love was perhaps a strong word. All evidence suggested that Takeru was incapable of love—but the only times Misaki could ever remember him being remotely animated were when he talked about his work at the mayor’s office. It was usually mind-numbingly boring stuff like budget management, but it seemed to give him satisfaction.
I know of many who find this work to be gold, but it is imo mind numbingly boring
