KATANAGATARI 3

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All ten of which he had trained at the Heartland Dojo.

If she had wanted to, of course Togame the Schemer could have rejected1 the offer from Twelfth Master Zanki Kiguchi, which depending on your stance was totally absurd, safe to dismiss as an impertinence─but reject it she did not, instead instructing Shichika to do whatever Kiguchi asked of him.

Clearly, toward the goal of capturing Oto the Cured.

In the wake of the match over the Cured, Togame figured it would benefit them to stay connected to Kiguchi─the intention, in typical Togame fashion, was to use the downtime this created to hatch a different scheme.

However, none of this sat well with Shichika, who was the one who had to become a follower of a different school. Carefree as he normally was, it vexed him terribly to think how he would ever face his father or his sister, but beyond that, being forced to relearn swordplay with a sword, the bane of his existence,2 was such a pain.

Although.

In that sense, the experience was probably much more painful for Kiguchi, despite being the one who proposed the arrangement─at the very least, she must have been stunned to discover how little Shichika really knew about how to swing a sword.

Ten days in, they had yet to advance beyond the basics of the swing.

He couldn’t even hold the sword correctly.

He kept on dropping it.

When he raised it high, it fell behind him. When he swung it down, it slipped3 from his hands.

More than once or twice, he had clocked himself in the forehead─and somehow, these were the only times he swung the wooden sword correctly, adding insult to injury.

For Shichika Yasuri, the kaleidoscopic footwork of Kyotoryu Form Seven, the Kakitsubata, was a piece of cake, but somehow the second he picked up a wooden sword, he stepped on his own toes, and would have looked inelegant beside a toddler.

He was so bad he made it look like he was doing it on purpose.

And yet he was simply listening to Togame, setting aside his deep pride in the Kyotoryu, for the time being, to receive the teachings of the Heartland School from Kiguchi.

Although.

If they had been here even six months earlier─Shichika never would have agreed to join another school, even if Togame was the one asking.

He had been raised to be a sword and to obey his owner’s every wish, but the idea that there were orders he could only follow now that he had become more than just a sword─was new for him.

“That’s good for now, Master Shichika.”

Kiguchi called it a day.4

Her pupil had once again failed to show any sign of progress. She handed Shichika a tenugui, which he used to wipe his sweaty body.

Luckily, we might say, Shichika was blessed with endless energy, allowing him to endure Kiguchi’s brutal training regimen without a peep (not that he was learning any)─but by extension, this demonstrated that Kiguchi’s own stamina rivaled Shichika’s.

Over the past ten days.

Shichika had paid witness to her strength.

First off, she was strong in body.

But she was also strong willed.

Most people would have tossed a pupil so unbelievably inept as Shichika out the door after at most three days.5

“Sorry for being such a bad teacher,” Kiguchi took the blame. “The fact is, I’ve never taught someone before─I’m probably messing up all kinds of things. You’ll just have to bear with me.”

“…”

Zanki is way too serious, thought Shichika.

Really─the rest of them were nothing like this.

How can this lady be the owner of a Shikizaki blade?

Shichika tried to insinuate as much (although examining things objectively, what came out of his mouth was fairly direct after all, tactless as he was).

“Nothing of the sort,” Kiguchi said, shaking her head. “I know that Madame Togame is asking me to hand over Oto the Cured for the sake of the nation, but I’m too immature to act against my personal concerns.”6

“Sake of the nation, huh.”

Since obviously Togame could not tell Kiguchi she was doing this to further her career, and to eventually exact revenge on the entire bakufu, she had given her the usual spiel, in their first session of diplomacy, about the Sword Hunt for the Twelve Possessed of Kiki Shikizaki being carried out for the “sake of the nation,” but as it turned out, Kiguchi took her stated purpose at face value.

The opposite of Ginkaku Uneri, despite both of them being swordsman.

The idea that no one who speaks on behalf of the nation is up to any good─would never have crossed her mind.