Blood like a good sake must not be poured in haste or needlessly. Once poured the sake will never again return to it's original glory.
Neither will blood, a lesson learned much too late.
- Preface -
The sound of an arrow flying through the air
The sound of a blade meeting that arrow mid flight
The pitter-patter of the rain as it begins to fall
The sound of death…
These sounds I will never forget, for they will always be ingrained in me just as the events leading up to this point shall forever be ingrained in my mind.
I was raised on the streets of a city called Hanamura. A simple runner of sorts, for the most prominent crime syndicate in the city, the Shimada Clan. I was a small time clan member not directly related to the clan by either blood nor birth but instead by luck of chance, if it can be called such. Living the street life in Hanamura can have one of two outcomes, you can live day to day scraping to get by hoping the clans aka the Big Fish ignore you and just keep walking, or you can turn to the clans for support and protection. Neither option comes easy nor do either of them guarantee a long life. Scraping by on the street usually leads to getting "stepped on" by the Big Fish more often than not purely by collateral damage. The second option… well it certainly was a "better" alternative for most but by no means a safer one. It typically required one to become of use to a Big Fish and swallow the pride our ancestors used to bet their lives on. Being a runner for the Clan mostly meant you were the first to fall should anything ever go wrong. We were a dime a dozen, and didn't usually last long during skirmishes between clans.
But I digress. That's enough about me for now, because for this story, I may have been there and this may be from my eyes but, I am only a witness, a testimonial of a story that must live on for generations to come. I have bore witness to the actualization of the old stories of the Twin Dragons you used to hear as a child before being tucked into bed. You may know part of the story, but i have for you, the part those old story teller never mentioned. A tale that I feel must live on for generations to come. A bond, a misunderstanding, and regret led by betrayal.