KATANAGATARI 1

“Everything. Why train when you’re the end of the tradition?”

“…”

Nanami sighed again.

She could sigh with the best of them.

“No one’s asking you to be a hero.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for the advice. I’m doing my best. Yesterday I came up with an insane new Fatal Orchid. This one is out of control.”

“Shichika.”

Nanami wouldn’t let him change the subject.

“…What?” he asked.

“It’s been a year since Dad died. Don’t you think it’s time?”

“Time for what?”

“If you can build a bucket,” she said flatly, pointing at the thing strapped to his back, “I’m sure that you can build a boat. Dad was the one they banished.8 I would never make it over there, but you…”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” This was too much. Shichika was done humoring her. “I get what you mean. Same as you, I’ve been on this island as long as I can remember─but I can’t just up and go over to the mainland. I wouldn’t know my left from right, or up from down. I’d wind up dead in a ditch9 somewhere.”

“Still,” Nanami said.

“Training may be pointless. I agree. But the school is the only thing Dad left me─I’m going to uphold the tradition as long as I can.”

“Huh.” Nanami smirked. “I had no idea that you missed Dad so much.”

“Sis.”10

“What? Go ahead. If you want to go fetch the water, go and get it. We can talk about this later. It’s too early for this sort of thing. I’ll make breakfast. Is the water gone?”

“There’s a little left.”

“Alright,” she said. “You can show me your new move later on.”

Nanami stepped back into the hut and closed the door.

Seeing her go was such a relief that Shichika heaved a sigh. And for a man his size, a sigh was not becoming in the least. His sister put him to shame.

“I knew she’d bring it up someday, and I guess today’s the day. But she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. A bucket’s nothing like a boat.”

Maybe their father could have built a boat. Twenty years ago, he built the hut─with his own hands.

But Shichika? No chance.

Not without a single blade11 on the entire island.

This was no exaggeration.

Shichika and Nanami were stuck here.

On this island.

Stuck to their father.

And to his school.

“…”

Did he miss him?

Did he really?

His line about fetching water being part of his training was sincere (it had to be), but it surprised him when his sister referenced his feelings for his father.

He was a great man. They called him Hero of the Rebellion.

By comparison, Shichika had accomplished nothing.

To be fair, having lived most of his life on Haphazard Island, he had yet to have the chance to perform daring feats of valor─but this gave him a lingering sense of inferiority.

Uphold the tradition─

His father had trained him up until his death.

It was his father’s school. That made the training matter.

But Nanami was right. If Shichika stayed holed up on this island, the school would die off with him. She may have been the one to bring it up, but it was on his mind. Hell, even their father must have known─a day would come.

But all the same.

At any rate.

Shichika knew nothing of the outside world─

And didn’t care to learn.

Why bother─such a pain.

“…Here we go.”

He twisted his back to slide the bucket into place and headed toward the mountain.

Across the desert island.

Deserted as it was, Haphazard Island had freshwater─if it didn’t, his whole family would have died of thirst years ago. But the water wasn’t in a river or a well. It bubbled from a spring in the mountain. Because the island was a single mountainous mass, it was hard to say what was mountain and what wasn’t (and in reality, outside of the beaches and the clearing where they kept their hut, almost everything was mountain), but the spring in question sat beyond an especially treacherous pass─not a place he would gladly have his sister venturing for water. In the year since their father’s passing, Shichika had been quietly replenishing their supply, but it seemed that she had finally caught on. Soon she would discover all the other menial tasks he had been carrying out in secret─but what could he do. It was a miracle that somebody as dull as him had been able to delude someone as sharp as his sister for so long.

─Her face.

She did look a little pale.

The hour was not to blame.

Only her brother could possibly have noticed, since already on normal days her complexion was not just clear and white but almost sky blue─

─Still.

What if she is sick again?

When she said the cold air felt nice, could that mean she was catching a fever?

Nanami was frail. That much was certain─encountered in the night, she would be easy to mistake for a spirit,12 if not an actual ghost.13 She had been doing so well─not like this was to his credit, for handling all the chores─yet now that she had caught up on his act, he doubted she would listen if he told her to stay home and rest. More likely she would overextend herself, trying to compensate. The opposite of her apathetic brother, she hated nothing more than sitting still. At first glance, you may think her lethargy shared some aspect of her brother’s grumbling, but at the root, these moods were unrelated. Hers, quite simply, was a function of her sickly constitution.

She would rather be working. Always.

Sick as she was.

Or maybe sickness was the reason─people want what they can’t have, and long to do what they cannot. Surely this was the case for Nanami.

But not Shichika. He hated what he had, and was loath to do the things he could.

My father─

─the hero.

Enough thinking. He closed his eyes.

His head was hurting.

Shichika was not a thinker. Reasoning was not his strength. If there was anything he hated or loathed, it was complicated explanations.14

That was his sister’s territory.

─They were like a bow and string.

Or rather, a mended lid on a cracked pot.15

As Shichika would have it, things were the way they were, and whatever happened happened─period. In his view, it was best to leap before you looked.

“Huh?”

He noticed something.

Shichika knew this island better than anyone, with his father gone─and maybe even when his father was alive. The island was so small. He knew it all, down to the last blade of grass. If something changed, even slightly, he would notice.

“…”

A disturbance in the soil.

Footprints─small, but human.

They were wearing sandals. Flat ones.

Was it Nanami? Couldn’t be. First off, he had no memory of making her this kind of sandal, and second, the footprints were fresh─there was no way Nanami could have overtaken him. Distracted as he was by his confounding thoughts, he had traveled in an almost perfectly straight line, but Nanami, on top of being too weak to catch up to a tortoise, was so easily disoriented16 she was apt to set off for the mountains and wind up in the sea.

It was just the two of them, on the entire island. If these footprints weren’t Nanami’s, and obviously not his, whose were they?

By process of elimination─no, no matter how you thought about it, or even if, like Shichika, you didn’t think, the answer was clear─someone else was on the island.

Not a problem.

Just a pain.

Shichika even felt that his priority was to move on to the spring and fetch water─but he couldn’t let himself ignore this. His father had been on the lookout nineteen years, since being banished, watching for someone from the mainland to show up on the island. While there had been a few near misses, no one had ever come.

Until today.

Sure enough, only after his father’s death.

“If Dad was here, he’d school them and be done with it. But what am I supposed to do? Welcome them? I’d better leave that to Nanami.”

Talking to himself, Shichika adjusted his route. Knowing the entire island─he could guess, from the footprints, what this stranger had been thinking. They were trying to follow the easiest path. Wherever it was easiest to walk─of course, this being in the mountains, there was no path, but that aside, the steps did not suggest that whoever made them had a specific destination─or if they did, they had no clue how to get there.

Or maybe, like Nanami, they were quick to lose their way.

Shichika knew exactly where he was, but if a normal person wandered off into these hills, they would be in deep trouble, quite doomed. But then again, as far as Shichika recalled, he had never met a “normal person.” Twenty years ago, when his father brought them here, he was only four years old. He lacked the perspective necessary to comprehend words like “normal” or “other.” His world had only two people─his father, dead a year, and his sister, whom he saw every day. His father had taught them facts about the outside world─but facts were not reality.

Faced with unfamiliar footprints and the question of who left them, a normal person would have been more cautious─or at least indulged in some degree of speculation, but in Shichika Yasuri’s case, even this variety of thinking was a pain.

Speculation was not among his special moves.

If only he had run home and sought help from his sister, who despite her identical island upbringing was prone to speculation, he would never have been embrangled in the pain-in-the-butt adventure that was to come─but alas, it wasn’t in the cards.

Whatever will be will be.

Things will happen as they will.

Such is the way of the world.

From the way the branches had been bent back from the path, Shichika was able to discern the height of whoever left the footprints. Whoever this was, they weren’t very tall, but no kid either. Small footprints, on their own, could be a kid, but factoring in the disturbance of the branches, Shichika was certain they had been left by a woman.

A woman.

But he didn’t think anything of it.

Well, there was one other thing.

One thing his dull mind couldn’t shake─the way the footprints pressed into the ground. The soil wasn’t squishy, like fresh mud, but while he couldn’t say for sure, it seemed as if the footprints on the left were deeper than the footprints on the right.

Something she was carrying made her favor her left side.

Something heavy.

“Hmm.”

But hmm was as far as he got.

Nevertheless, in short time he discovered that his guess was on the mark─thin as Shichika may have been, he was a big guy with a big stride. And a woman left these footprints. Carrying something heavy. She didn’t know her way. It would have been far stranger if he never found her.

But there she was.

Slim silhouette.

Long white hair─no strand of black.

The hair had made it hard at first to tell how old she was─but she was young. Like his sister Nanami, she left her hair undone, flowing down over her shoulders, but she wore a voluminous kimono in gold brocade. However elegant and brilliant, her outfit was the worse for wearing on a mountain pass, and its hem sprayed thread where it had caught so many pesky branches. Yet her sloppy17 way of dressing made the fraying seem like a fashion statement.18 Each of her appurtenances glimmered with luxuriance. No detail, taken singly, could be rightly called offensive─but as a whole, at least by normal standards, she came across as showy, enough to make you want to take a step back.

Then again.

To Shichika, ignorant of any norm, she somehow made no overstrong impression. Not even her curious hair─but again, there was one thing that caught his eye.

The katana dangling from her left hip.

The heavy thing was a katana.

“Hey, it’s not like you’re not welcome here. People can visit if they like.”

Shichika addressed the woman without hesitation.

Fear didn’t register.

Though perhaps a little fear would have been normal.

“So yeah, just letting you know, now that you’re here, there’s one big rule─no blades allowed. On the entire island.”

“…”

She heard this sudden greeting from behind─

But it did nothing to discomfit her.

Taking her time, the woman turned.

Her countenance was no pushover’s. Eyes perked up at the corners.19 No grandeur left unaired.

Those perky eyes scrutinized Shichika before glancing at the thing slung from her hip.

“Then I apologize.” The woman did bow her head. “I didn’t know, so forgive me.”

“…Hey, I didn’t make the rules.”

His father had.

And thanks to him, he and his sister had to do everything, including cook, without so much as a knife. After twenty years, he couldn’t care less─but truth be told, this was the first time Shichika had seen a real katana.

It was possible that he had seen a sword before coming to the island─but his four-year-old mind had retained no record of it, and besides, seeing something after two decades is just the same as seeing it anew.

Look at that.

A real─katana.

It sure looked heavy.

“How’d you get here, anyway?”

“A boat,” she said. “How else do you get to an island?”

Obviously.

Right. How else.

The question was embarrassing enough to make you want to take it back.

But not Shichika. He went on.

“Why are you here?”

He wasn’t asking to find out. He was merely keeping faith on what his father and his sister told him he should ask at times like this. Unconcerned with how the woman answered, he thought only of what to ask next, or─crap, should he have asked her for her name first?

“I came to see Mutsue20 Yasuri, Sixth Master of the Kyotoryu. Do you know him?”

“He died,” said Shichika. “Last year.”

So she was here to see his father.

In which case, she had a distinct destination after all.

Betraying only a flicker of surprise, the woman caught herself.

“Is that so.” She nodded. “I assumed as much─after all, it has been twenty years─but if he’s no longer with us, you must be─”

“I am Shichika Yasuri. Seventh Master of the Kyotoryu.”

“Ah.”

She smiled.

An understanding grin.

“What was I thinking─how silly of me to ask. What with Mutsue and his family being the only ones who live here. Which makes you─”

“His son. For what it’s worth.”21

“I see. You have a nice build. You’re in good shape. I’d say you pass muster.”

“Past master? I’m the present master.”

“…Yes, of course.”

“If you came to see my father, I hate to disappoint you.”

“I did indeed, but my business remains with the master of your school. Which means, young master, that my business with your father is now with you. Excuse the tardiness of my own introduction. I am Togame,22 the Schemer.”

“Togame?”

What a strange name.

Wait─what did she say after that?

The Schemer?23

Shichika was on the verge of asking his first unrehearsed question, but the woman made the first move.

“Let’s see this Kyotoryu of yours.”

She drew the katana at her hip.

A thin sword,24 four feet25 long.

Its temper line26 perfectly straight.27

Blade engraved with the image of a tiger.

“An early work of Kasamaro Mibu, one of the thirty-six Fugaku28 Swordsmiths─I had feared it may be no match for Mutsue Yasuri, Hero of the Rebellion, but for a go around with his son, it may just do the trick.”

“A go around? What do you mean?”

“Nothing more than its customary sense. Have at you!”

This was the first sword Shichika had ever seen─and of course the first sword anyone had pointed in his face─but he did not flinch. Although his real eyes had never witnessed a sword, his mind’s eye had seen them constantly over his twenty years of training on the island; he hadn’t slacked off in the year since his father’s passing.

He was ready.

Shichika Yasuri feared no sword─

“Gadzooks!”

However.

The many secrets of the Kyotoryu were not to be aired on this precise occasion. Coming at him with her stalwart battle cry, her sword raised high─Togame caught her foot on an outcropping of rock and fell flat on her face.

Thus Shichika, Seventh Master of the Kyotoryu, made the acquaintance of Togame the Schemer.

It was the first moon of the new year, in an era long before Gadzooks! had fallen out of fashion.

■　■

It was founded in the chaos of the Age of Warring States.

By Kazune Yasuri.30

The reputation of katana31 as the epitome of handheld weapons is perennial─a fact destined to go unchanged. Its strengths are too numerous to tally, but if forced to offer only two, they would be that it is long, and it is heavy. Its length makes it lethal, as does its weight. This combination would give anyone the upper hand. But as with all things far and wide, these strengths double as weaknesses. The length of a katana, like its weight, make wielding it impractical.

Thus came Kazune to his philosophy.

Swordsmen, he reasoned, are the strongest creatures on earth. But to truly be the strongest, you must be void of any weakness─even if it means surrendering your strength. He took the discipline places no swordsman before him had dared to venture.

Kazune forsook the sword.

A true swordsman needs no sword─to him, this was the key. For the next ten years, he retreated to the mountains and toiled in seclusion as he shaped the Kyotoryu. And later, in the service of the House of Tetsubi, one of the six daimyos responsible for the current shogunate, his art sent tremors through the battlefield.

Not kenpo of any stripe. And not mutodori.32

This was swordplay─swordless and lethal.

So legend had it.

Legendary, but true? True or false aside, that much was known to those who cared to know. Yet few among the living were familiar with the workings of the Kyotoryu─the only school of swordplay with no sword at play. Its secrets were unknowable, not even rumored. To witness it at work, you had two options─train, or fight─and the former was next to impossible. Kazune decreed the school would only be passed down by bloodline. The gates of the school were more than barred: they were invisible.33 The only viable option was to provoke one of the masters with a katana─and the moment you witnessed the Kyotoryu would be your last. Even if you somehow survived, you would think twice before bragging about losing, sword in hand, to a man without a sword.

The school was shrouded in darkness.

Its techniques had been showcased only twice before the public eye: during the Age of Warring States, by Kazune, and during the Rebellion, by Mutsue. Its powers were only to be loosed amid the chaos and confusion of the battlefield.

And after nineteen years of training under Mutsue, his son Shichika became the newest Master of the Kyotoryu.

“Miss Togame─was it?” Nanami asked in a calm tone, sounding completely at ease.

To recap.

The woman, Togame, who had banged her head against the ground so hard to go unconscious, wound up in Shichika’s water bucket and rode back to the hut strapped to his back. Nanami, changed into a short-sleeved robe, raised an eyebrow when her brother returned laden not with water but a woman─his failure to return with water obviously not being the reason for the gesture─but simply couldn’t leave the fainted woman outside. It took the two of them to carry her in, whereupon they dispossessed her of the glimmering thing slung from her hip. The sword was trouble─though in her hands, not exactly big trouble, judging from her last display.

Nanami had spent more time on the mainland than her brother, but she too had gone these twenty years without seeing a stranger. Nevertheless, she regarded the woman before them with equanimity. Not simply because she did not share her brother’s aversion to thought─Nanami had readied herself daily to meet a situation such as this. She exuded prudence. Should the sky crumble and fall, she would be there to catch the pieces.

Their hut had a dirt floor and a step-up into a single room.

The brother and sister took their breakfast together, discussing what to do next. Just as they finished eating, Togame woke from where she lay at the edge of the room. Nanami stood and offered her a cup of water heated by the fire.34 Let us take it from there.

“You’re the first visitor we’ve ever had─please forgive us for being so ill prepared to entertain you.”

“Please, I owe you the apology. I showed up unannounced.”

Togame accepted the sayu. It seemed that she had known Mutsue had a son, but had she known about a daughter? From the way she had approached him when they met, she seemed to have arrived at Haphazard Island with some intelligence. She must have known─but Shichika could not be bothered to take the thought this far. He assumed that if she hadn’t known, she had put two and two together, which meant that there was nothing left to say.

His virtuous sister knew better than to wait idly for her not-so-virtuous little brother to introduce her.

“I’m Nanami. Daughter of Mutsue Yasuri.” She paused to look Togame in the eye. “I hear you came to see our father─would you mind me asking what your connection was to him?”

To the point.

“We never met,” Togame said. “I wouldn’t call it a connection.”