Yukina of the Snow
"Once upon a winter's night, in a village beyond the river, a little seed sprung up from the frozen earth and a little miracle opened her eyes to the world..."
When I was at the age when children were supposed to be enjoying the blissful world of sweets and fluttering butterflies, I as already throwing Misao-neesan's shuriken around and causing alarming havoc around the dojo. Whenever Misao-neesan and Aoishi-sempai came to visit, I was always more than happy to unpack for them... that way I could whisk away their hidden artillery. I remember Kaoru scolding me for the daily rips in the shoji screens and the heirloom furniture embedded with the metal stars, since I could not be dissuaded to keep my hands on them.
Naturally they were concerned that I would severely injure myself with those weapons, but after a while they were more concerned about the pandemonium that came flying out of my little hands. Not that they could stop me anyway, or so Yahiko told me -- otousan said my tantrums were worse that screens full of holes.
But like any other toddler, I eventually took interest in other sharp and shiny objects. There was more of Misao-neesan's ninja arsenal -- which my natural instinct to gravitate to deadly weapons always led me to (her hiding places were no use at all); Aoshi-sempai's kodachis, which was very useful back then for endless doodling on the dirt courtyard, and some of Yahiko's daggers. I even took special interest in 'tousan's sakabatou if my memory serves me right... Of course, by then they were no longer alarmed that they'd find me slicing my self or the house in two -- for the most part, they were watchful.
It was the spring of my seventh year when they started to teach me the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, our dojo's pride and life's blood. I found great interest in the arts of the samurai as my father filled me in on bushido, swordsmanship, and anecdotes from a genuine samurai's life. For years to come, I would remember these little lessons and yet still wonder what life my father had led.
He would recount stories of heroism, sacrifice, and reformation over a cup of oocha or shared rice cakes and I, being the sponge that I was, hung on to every word he said. In the end, it was hard to believe that so much hardship and bloodshed could form a nation; that death without mercy can be the catalyst to a new and brighter future, and that the blood of innocents could nourish the soil and bring tears from the heavens to make the land it stained flourish and feed the country to which these innocents have pledged allegiance and have died for.
How could men and women choose to slaughter themselves in the name of right or wrong... which there never was in the first place?
Papa said, while running a loving thumb across the infamous scar on 'tousan's cheek, that 'tousan was at the crossroads of it all, just like that scar. I never had a full grasp of this concept, though. I was only a child after all.
But he also said that we didn't have to fight anymore. "Then why do I have to learn the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, papa?" I asked him.
"For you to learn the virtue of life and mercy." He said.
tbc...