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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Popular wisdom said that a woman as pretty as Hyori didn’t need to be smart. ‘Pretty’ wasn’t even the right word to describe Hyori, in Misaki’s opinion. The woman was achingly, devastatingly beautiful, with an artless smile and eyes as soft as melting snow. Many Shirojima women were ‘pretty,’ but Hyori was the kind of legendary beauty men went to war for.
“Hey now, Setsuko,” Misaki said with a smile. “Don’t make fun of my grumpy husband. He works hard to keep that frown plastered on his face all day.”
“Most strong things are rigid. If you are water, you can shift to fit any mold and freeze yourself strong. You can be strong in any shape. You can be anything.”
“Why don’t you try taking responsibility for the things you can control instead of the things you can’t?”
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.”
“Nothing, son.” She touched his face. “I’ve borne a powerful Matsuda heir. What else could I wish for?” “A smart one?” he suggested.
listening never made any man dumber, but it’s made a lot of people smarter.”
“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.”
Misaki stared. It defied logic. How had a soulless block of ice like Takeru and a selfish thing like her created something so bright? 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.
Misaki was never sure if Takeru refused to drink because he was worried about dulling his senses or just his ability to frown.
A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.
“What are you?” Takeru whispered. Something bigger than myself, she realized. “I’m Matsuda Misaki,” she said with pride and honesty she never attached to those words before. “I’m your wife.” And she attacked him.
“Why are you smiling?” Takeru looked unsettled. “It’s complicated.” “It’s scary.”
Wholeness, she had learned, was not the absence of pain but the ability to hold it.
