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Her sort of beauty had little to do with physical attributes. It wasn’t the short hair cropped about her ears; it was the way she shook it out and sighed in pleasure when she was enjoying the weather. It wasn’t her big eyes with their dark lashes; it was the way they crinkled up with mirth at the smallest things. It wasn’t her bulky frame; it was the way she threw it around with careless confidence in a world where everyone, ladies and swordsmen alike, stepped so lightly.
I love this.
Misaki wondered, had her voice gotten so small? When had she become afraid to put a single thought into words?
I feel you girl. The world makes girls brave only to break them down when their becoming a women
There were days Misaki could convince herself that it was enough.
Sometimes two of them would sit right next to each other and tell conflicting accounts of the same event.
Foreshadow
‘there are a million ways to tell the same story. Our job as jaseliwu is to find the one the listener needs to hear. Not necessarily the one that makes them the happiest or the one that gives them the most information, but the one they need to hear to do what they need to do.’
So yea this is a theme. Not jus abput the stories we tell but wom writes the story and why? What is the turue of histroy. You can make yourselfs the hero or anyone. You can create histor that can control people intp submissiom nd blind loyalty. So what is the true bout hiatory nd doesn it really matter?
Hyori said with the kind of innocent confidence that could only come from a life lived in the mists of nationalism.
“Any warrior will tell you that even the strong can’t afford complacency,”
it was easy to believe the fantasy of a stable world.
“If I kill you, you’ll be facing me with a sword in your hand.”
And this young fighter had been left to rot here with no grave, no memorial, no one to remember them. Until wind and rain had washed away their face, their skin, their uniform, any indicator of who they were and what they fought for.
The only thing left in the world was pure water, clear as daylight and clean as polished steel.
This was the first time he had had to look at the wisps of the past and wonder what they were really.
Had their lifeblood stained these waters before it was washed to the sea? If so, they must resent the living for washing away the memory of their sacrifice as easily as blood from a shoreline.
“You’re the one with a broken limb. Come on.”
They both walked way with scars
“If there were machines that could improve their work, that’s what they would be using,”
AI you hear that? lol
It was ridiculous, it was beautiful,
She felt sick, standing there, thinking about all the ways the monsters of these alleys could take advantage of Robin’s kindness, all the things they could do to him… It wasn’t a question of whether or not he was going to die. It was a question of whether he would die quickly, with all his spirit intact, or slowly, after the evils of the world had ripped and beaten every shred of optimism out of him. Robin
There were some fights you could only win by being more ruthless than your opponent.
The swordmaster never spoke loudly; he didn’t have to. He was the sort of person everyone leaned forward to hear.
Real power needed no words. It spoke for itself.
But Robin would get back up. Robin would still be fighting,
She was a girl, and no one staked a girl’s worth on her swordplay. It was all just a hobby—a delight if she did well, unimportant if she didn’t.
“There are few things uglier than a wounded ego.
She might never be able to destroy the part of her that was aggressive and willful, but she could bury it. That was what she had thought at the time.
“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.”
I can be strong in any shape,
The cruelest thing she could do was serve her purpose—like he never could.
“Why don’t you try taking responsibility for the things you can control instead of the things you can’t?”
No matter how cold the nights get here, the sun is rising somewhere. Somewhere, it’s making someone warm.”
“See, that’s the hard part,” Misaki said, “coming to terms with what you don’t know, finding the answers, and acting on them without regret. Some people never learn. Some people learn too late.
“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. It’s not going to happen all at once,” she added. “You have to wait for the turn of the season to see what shape the ice will take, but it will form up, clear and strong. It always does.”
listening never made any man dumber, but it’s made a lot of people smarter.”
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. After some coaxing,
it was very possible that the sexism inherent to their upbringing had created a blind spot so opaque that they weren’t capable of recognizing those abilities in a woman.
Amen.
Some people called me selfish—and they were right—but I was honest with myself, and it made me unstoppable. I never had any doubt about why I was fighting, and there was nothing I couldn’t cut through.”
After all, Mamoru wasn’t much like her. Now that Misaki thought about it, he was more like the people she would have killed and died for.
damn. She isnt a mother and maybe if she had a choice she never would have become one. She is a warrior. And this means more then what she is able to do as a mom
He stood perfectly still, his shoulders back, his eyes fixed ahead, but somehow, he had never seemed so fragile. It was as though he had turned himself to ice. If he moved, it would crack.
Despite the destruction they had just witnessed, not one had turned back.
He was accustomed to the feel of blood in all its consistencies, but he was unprepared for a world soaked in it.
It had to be a horrible place to be—old enough to understand what was happening but too young to do anything about it.
Damn. This is so true. Its the youth whose future is in trouble yet they cant do anything about it. We look at youth like they need to sit down and in order to be heard they have to gain that right.
Because in a clean fight, she would lose.
And for the moment, Misaki let herself be thankful for the thing she was. After all, a lady wouldn’t have been able to slice a man’s legs out from under him and then plunge a blade into his mouth when he opened it to scream. A mother wouldn’t have been able to cut a young woman’s head from her shoulders. A human being wouldn’t have been able to turn from their dismembered corpses without a single pang of guilt. Thank the Gods she was a monster.
“I know you koronu like to frame relationships between opposites in terms of conflict,” Kotetsu said, drawing a piece of glowing hot metal from the coals. “Fire against water, light against darkness, day against night, but one who hopes to create must understand that opposites exist to balance and complement one another. This is why the tide-bringing moon follows the drying sun, why day follows night, why men marry women. I believe this is why the two greatest empires are Yamma, built on the power of fire, and our own Kaigen, built on the power of water. The two exist in this realm, not to
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They had created a little boy who was ready to give his life to kill his enemies. A true Matsuda. Misaki’s head dropped onto Hiroshi’s tiny shoulder. The monster crumbled, and she was just a woman, just a mother who had failed her son. “Hiroshi…” Her voice broke. “Come here.” Gathering the boy into her arms, she held him tight, and loved him, loved him as hard as she could, and hoped it would be enough to wash everything else away. Hiroshi, as always, was cold. MAMORU
She was alone, drowning in screams.
Where was the magic in something that didn’t seethe between extremes?
A voice for the silenced, a shelter for the defenseless, a pair of fists for the powerless.
but she hardly expected her own experience to change deep-seated Kaigenese notions of propriety.
this place had become home. Someone had dropped bombs on her home.
