Early-autumn afternoon.
Sunlight spilled lazily over the red maples in the courtyard.
Inside the dōjō, two figures—one tall, one short—stood facing each other.
The man on the left was middle-aged, dressed in a kendo uniform, white above and blue below, a live blade in his hand.
His stern face was set, his eyes fixed on his opponent.
On the right stood a boy in a kendo uniform of solid blue, gripping an uchigatana nearly as long as he was tall—long enough that you half expected the blade to slip from his grasp the next instant.
And yet the hilt seemed fused to the boy’s palm.
The clear length of steel reflected the seeping sunlight without a tremor, and his stance held steady as bedrock.
The hall was silent.
A kendo bout, after all, is usually decided in a single instant; before the crisp clash of steel comes only mutual probing and watching.
Time slipped by without a sound.
The man shifted again and again, adjusting his grip—then, with a low, muffled shout, he suddenly stepped in, his blade carving a cold arc of light.
But the boy was faster.
In the instant the man raised his arm, the boy—as if he had foreseen it—struck at the guard of his opponent’s blade, forcing him to retreat a step.
In the gap he pressed forward, and a single side kick struck with a force his small frame had no right to possess, breaking the man’s balance and sending him to the floor.
Thud.
A soft sound as the man’s back met the wooden boards.
Before his broad, powerful hand could close again around the blade at his side, an edge flashed before his eyes and came to rest—precisely, neither high nor low—against the throat he had only just begun to lift.
The man’s pupils contracted.
Then, across that perpetually unmoved face, came a rare smile.
“Well done, Minato.”
“It’s all thanks to your guidance, Chichiue-sama.”
Ryōgi Minato withdrew the blade and stepped back.
The irises that had burned like flowing fire dimmed and settled into gold, and the transparent world in his eyes reverted to ordinary sight.
The razor aura melted away in a blink, and only now—sword hugged to his chest—did the boy look like an ordinary nine-year-old.
“No.
That is your own talent.”
The man rose, shaking his head.
There was no anger on his face at being beaten by his adopted son—only something like quiet gladness.
“With this, the Ryōgi family can rest easy as well.”
He looked at the boy his own father had called “a prodigy certain to one day reach the rank of Sword Saint,” and could not help being glad, deep down, that he had chosen to take the child in as an adopted son on that snowy night years ago.
In only half a year the boy had mastered the Ryōgi family’s self-devised swordsmanship through and through, and had bested him more than once—truly worthy of the name “prodigy.”
“Mm.
That’s enough for today’s bout.
Go and rest well, Minato.”
“Yes, Chichiue-sama.”
There was none of the small talk usual between father and son, no further words of warmth—yet this manner, seemingly cold and truly that of family, was nothing out of the ordinary in the Ryōgi house.
Taking his leave of his adoptive father, Ryōgi Minato carried his uchigatana and left the hall alone.
From the dōjō to the main house was a fair distance—about that between a gymnasium and the classroom buildings, if you measured it by an elementary school’s grounds.
Walking the plank-laid corridor, the boy caught sight at a glance of the young man waiting for him along the way.
“You’ve worked hard.
How is the Family Head faring?”
“Chichiue-sama is as healthy as ever.
But you needn’t stand here waiting for me every time, Akitaka.”
Taking the change of clothes the young man held out, Ryōgi Minato looked at him, puzzled.
“Aren’t you supposed to be my Onii-san’s attendant?”
“Kaname-sama has others to attend to him.
My foremost duty is to look after you and the young lady.”
Suzurigi Akitaka bowed his head respectfully and took the uchigatana from the boy’s hands.
“But shouldn’t you be serving the Family Head?
And it’s my Onii-san who’ll inherit the Ryōgi family.”
“That is not so.
The heirs of the Ryōgi family can only be you and the young lady.
Kaname-sama did not inherit that quality.”
Quality?
Ryōgi Minato frowned.
Setting aside his startling attainments in swordsmanship and the knowledge his mind had somehow held since birth, he was at bottom only a slightly precocious child.
The true meaning hidden beneath those words eluded him; he could only shake his head.
“I… don’t really understand.”
“It’s all right.
You’ll understand in time.
The young lady will become the head of the Ryōgi family, and you will become the keen blade in her hand.”
Ryōgi Minato thought for a few seconds, blinked with half-comprehension, then changed the subject.
“By the way—where’s Shiki?”
“The young lady finished her training a step ahead of you today.
She should be in her room now.”
Suzurigi Akitaka did not use the word “bout,” for only an exceptional existence like the boy before him could truly hold a blade steady at this age—could even defeat a grown man.
As for the other “Ryōgi” he served, “training” was the only word that fit that monthly customary match.
“I see.
I didn’t quite follow some of what you said earlier, but thank you all the same, Akitaka.”
Ryōgi Minato smiled.
In the Ryōgi house, where a kind of cold clarity seemed to run in the very blood, the boy’s sincere smile was one of the young man’s few moments of inner ease.
“You honor me.
This is all no more than my duty.”
His grave face eased despite himself.
Suzurigi Akitaka bowed slightly at the waist and watched until the boy had passed from his sight.
…
Splash—
Sinking his whole body into the tub, Ryōgi Minato sat with his arms around his knees, only the upper half of his face above the water, his eyes gazing unfocused ahead as he began, as if in release, to breathe out the air in his lungs.
Blub-blub-blub—
Bubbles rose from beneath the surface and burst at once.
After four or five rounds of this he seemed to tire of it, and quietly stretched out his limbs, letting the hot water drive the fatigue from his body.
Resting his head against the rim, Ryōgi Minato lifted his right hand.
The dazzling light made his already fair skin gleam like white porcelain—yet the small forearm bared to the air looked rather frail.
Not the strength one might have imagined, but slender, just like any child his age; impossible to picture how such a body could hold a blade steady and bring down a grown man.
Minato himself couldn’t make sense of it.
His body looked no different from his peers’; he only felt that some inexhaustible reserve of energy churned inside him, demanding release.
Just as he likewise couldn’t explain why, since early childhood, fragments of knowledge and experience had welled up in his mind—the overwhelming majority of it bound up with the sword.
This was the reason he was called a “prodigy.” Yet what others found a pity was that, for all his extraordinary talent and precocious knowledge, he possessed no “common sense” or feeling beyond what his age would suggest.
So a “prodigy” was only a prodigious child, not one truly born knowing.
But Minato had never cared to dwell on things so complicated.
In his heart, just now, there was room for only two things to truly settle.
One was the [Sword] that had been with him since birth.
The other was—
Coming back to himself from his daze, Ryōgi Minato lowered his arm and stood.
He dried off, and only then changed into fresh clothes.
In the room’s mirror, the black-haired boy was carefully drying his hair, a faintly troubled look on his childish, lovely face.
He wore a blue-black yukata, and having only just come from the bath he hadn’t yet straightened it; the loose garment had slipped a little, baring a touch of fair skin at one shoulder.
But the boy plainly didn’t care about that.
What troubled him now mattered more to him.
For some time now, you see, his fiancée’s attitude toward him had been growing strange.
—Cool one moment, warm the next.
She’d been more or less like this before, too, but for some reason it had grown especially pronounced of late, the swings wider than ever.
Minato still couldn’t fully grasp the word “fiancée,” but from the knowledge born into him he understood that she was someone very important to him—someone he was meant to protect for life.
And beyond the matter of being his fiancée, she was also his family.
Family looking out for one another needs no reason, so the boy was a little worried: had the girl his own age, who shared the name “Ryōgi,” run into some trouble, that her moods should swing so?
Pressing the towel to his head, turning over the last few days in his mind, Minato—before he could reach any conclusion—suddenly felt that something had appeared in his field of vision.
A few lines, like written characters, drifted across his eyes without warning.
[Rewatching a classic—where the dream began!]
[Wonder if they cut anything.]
[Shiki-nee, best girl—I’m here for her!]
[lmao, the last guy who got obsessed with Shiki-nee was Shirazumi Lio, and he ended up a pile of goo.]
[Weird—I can’t scrub this anime’s progress bar.
And who’s this guy?
Is there even a character like him in KnK?]
[The kid’s fresh out of his bath—what a cutie, I’m dead 💀]
The boy stopped what he was doing and stood frozen in place, tilting his head, blinking, staring blankly at the empty air before him.
What was this?