A drabble, with spoilers for "Evanescent Encounter" (episodes 24, 25, and 26).
Dedicated to Mariphasa Hecatene, my beta--and so much more. A gift, m'lady!
The Reversed Blade
Once, when he was still a youth full of golden millet dreams, Mariya had followed a whim and drawn an omikuji at a temple, though he usually did not credit the truth of such predictions. The fortune had read: "Remember, young man, that the sword cuts both ways." The fact that it had apparently gotten his age, sex, and occupation right made it stick in his mind.
He thought of its words more than once in the course of his career, at times when his decisions produced unexpected negative consequences. The fortune was in his mind the night he stalked the halls to his kinsman's bedroom because, dammit, he had liked the boy, and the dojo's future prosperity would never be sweet to him now.
Sixty seconds later, Mariya had decided that the meaning of the oracle was far more literal than he'd ever previously suspected.