Unlike her two siblings who remained frozen in the middle of the training ground, Yoriichi showed not even the slightest spark of satisfaction.
The boy simply lowered his gaze, staring flatly at the bamboo blade in his hand.
Without a single word, he dropped the training weapon onto the ground and turned away, step by step.
He hated the sensation of wood striking human flesh.
He hated any action that brought pain to others.
“Yoriichi! Wait!”
Michikatsu snapped out of his daze.
One foot stepped forward, his hand reaching out desperately to stop his little brother.
But something was different in his eyes now.
The usual warmth and sincerity of an older brother had suddenly vanished, eroded by a thin mist of confusion that slowly thickened into deep, heavy envy.
Yoriichi stopped walking.
He turned slowly, revealing a pair of eyes that were impossibly clear, yet utterly empty.
“What is it, Big Brother?”
That innocent question sent a sharp pang through Michikatsu’s chest.
The ripple-less gaze that had once felt familiar now seemed completely alien, even nauseating.
*Why do your eyes have to look like that?*
*Don’t you realize what you just did?*
The boy screamed inside his mind.
His little brother had just taken down an experienced sword instructor with a few light taps—an achievement Michikatsu couldn’t even touch despite sweating blood every single day.
*You should be laughing arrogantly, or at least looking proud!*
*Why do you look like nothing even happened?!*
“How… how could you knock him down like that?”
Michikatsu’s voice trembled faintly.
The overwhelming weight of reality made his tongue stiff, forcing the words that left his lips to come out broken and uneven.
Yoriichi didn’t sense any malice from his brother.
With pure innocence, he began to explain what he had seen.
“Before someone moves, their lungs expand first.” Yoriichi slowly pointed at his own chest.
“Their blood flows faster, their muscles tense, and their joints shift. If you pay attention to those changes, you can tell exactly where their attack will go.”
His voice flowed calmly, describing the complex theory as if he were talking about the morning weather.
“If you train your lungs to pump blood faster, your body’s movements will explode in an instant.”
Michikatsu stood rigid, jaw clenched tight.
Lungs?
Blood flow?
Joint shifts?
All those foreign terms buzzed in his ears, impossible for a samurai’s logic to process.
On the other side, Rin Tsugikuni, standing not far away, felt a violent jolt in her chest.
As someone carrying memories from her past life, she knew exactly what her brother was describing.
Rin stepped closer, eyes widening as she stared straight into Yoriichi’s clear pupils.
“Big Brother Yoriichi… can your eyes see through our bodies?”
Yoriichi tilted his head slightly.
A faint trace of doubt finally appeared on his previously lake-still face.
“Rin, can’t you do it?”
That guiltless question became the final blow that shattered the last walls of Michikatsu’s pride.
“Ugh…!”
A suppressed groan escaped Michikatsu’s throat.
He stared at Yoriichi with violently trembling pupils, as if the being before him wasn’t human, but a monster wearing his little brother’s face.
His body staggered backward two steps.
Unable to endure the crushing pressure in his chest any longer, Michikatsu turned and ran from the training ground as fast as he could.
“Big Brother Michikatsu!” Rin called out, about to chase after him.
But Rin’s steps halted when she saw Yoriichi’s shoulders slowly slump.
An unfamiliar shadow of sadness crept across the boy’s face, showing that he had finally realized he had carved a deep wound into his eldest brother’s heart.
Yoriichi’s small hand rose slightly, intending to call out to his brother, but his fingers eventually fell limply to his side.
He stopped himself.
Deep in his quiet heart, he probably felt that his existence would never be able to fix anything.
Yoriichi chose to turn away and walk silently back toward the cramped room in the corner of the residence that had held his loneliness since birth.
“Big Brother Yoriichi…”
Rin stood motionless in the middle of the wide training ground, watching the backs of her two brothers walking in opposite directions, turning away from each other without either willing to look back.
*This is my fault…*
*I shouldn’t have brought Yoriichi here this morning.*
Rin’s gaze shifted to the bamboo sword lying helplessly on the ground.
As if driven by deep curiosity, her hand moved to pick up the wooden blade.
The hilt felt somewhat heavy in her fingers, stained with drying reddish marks—blood from Michikatsu’s calloused, cracked palms after his harsh training.
Instinctively, Rin’s memories replayed Yoriichi’s lightning-fast slashes from moments ago.
Rin took a deep breath, raised the bamboo blade to chest height, and began swinging it to imitate the afterimages left in her mind.
One step forward, a straight slash cutting through the air, followed by a sharp thrust, before she twisted her waist to deliver a powerful horizontal cut.
The wooden blade continued to slice through the silence of the training ground.
Each movement was executed with surprising precision.
The more she repeated it, the more her grip felt fused with the hilt, making her swings faster and smoother.
The motions felt perfectly in tune with nature, flowing without resistance.
Though they looked like ordinary basic techniques, Rin could feel every muscle fiber in her body working in harmony, distributing the load with astonishing balance.
The sudden fatigue she usually felt vanished, replaced by a warm sensation spreading through her bloodstream, as if an invisible blockage inside her body had just burst open.
Rin slowly closed her eyes, letting her body’s memory take control of every slash she unleashed.
The bamboo blade in her grip suddenly felt as light as cotton, and her footing on the grassy ground became as firm as the roots of an ancient tree.
Time seemed to slow down, reducing all the surrounding noise into absolute silence.
Behind her tightly shut eyelids, the pitch-black darkness suddenly cracked open, revealing a new perspective she had never imagined before.
It was as if she had opened a third eye—an abstract vision capable of piercing through flesh to peel back the secrets of the world around him.
The roar of wind from the tip of her blade sounded as clear as a whistle.
A faint, delicate splashing began to echo in her ears, a symphony of her own blood racing through her vessels.
Her heartbeat thundered like the constant beat of a war drum.
Suddenly, his vision captured a transparent silhouette a few steps ahead: the internal organs, strands of muscle, and network of bones belonging to the sword instructor still lying unconscious on the ground.
Rin could even clearly see the flesh beneath the man’s skin turning blue and bruised from Yoriichi’s absolute strikes.
Everything hidden was now laid bare without barriers.
The world around her seemed to strip itself naked, allowing her to read its secrets page by page.
*Is this… the Transparent World?*
*The world that can only be touched by chosen geniuses?*
Rin brushed aside all the questions flooding her mind.
She simply wanted to sink her consciousness deeper into this colorless domain, savoring the absolute wonder offered by her senses—until a voice shattered the silence.
“Rin!”