Defeat is death.
Put another way, if I had not died, I had not yet been defeated.
Approach every battle as though it might be the final one of this life.
If an arm is cut off, fight with the other.
If that one is cut off as well, kick with your feet.
If even your legs are cut off?
Crawl and tear at them with your teeth, if that is what it takes.
Holding to the martial artist's mindset handed down by the Sword Saint, I took Master's wooden sword on my shoulder.
Because I lunged forward, what struck my shoulder was the section just above the hilt.
It was the part that carried the least force.
Thanks to that, I felt pain, but it did not hinder my movements.
Master seemed quite startled by my reckless yet rational move.
As I watched his widened eyes, I seized Master's hand and twisted it.
Was it because he was flustered?
Even Master, whose wrestling was first-rate, helplessly dropped his sword.
Having accomplished my purpose, I backed away and kicked my fallen sword into the air.
I caught the airborne sword, gripped it once more, and looked at Master.
“Isn't that right?”
Master regarded me with a complicated expression, then flipped his wooden sword up with his foot and caught it as I had.
Then he asked gravely.
“You have changed greatly in the single day I have not seen you. Is there a reason you are going this far?”
“Wouldn't it be strange if I did not?”
A martial artist proves himself only with a weapon.
Some die, others live, and only those who live can prove themselves.
That is a martial artist.
At the meaning I had quietly conveyed, Master's eyes grew deeper as he smiled wryly.
“I cannot say you are wrong. It is a good mindset.”
“I said that I would live as a martial artist, as a swordsman. So please face me as a swordsman as well, Master.”
The proof that I had not learned swordsmanship from someone else was complete.
But the situation had changed now.
I was taking a step beyond that and speaking of qualifications and bearing.
The mindset needed to live as a martial artist.
Acknowledging me, Master gripped his wooden sword with a far more serious expression.
“That is how it should be. Then let us begin again.”
“Yes.”
The instant our brief exchange ended, Master swung his wooden sword at me again.
It was a sword more devious and ruthless than before, one that thoroughly targeted my weaknesses.
Master guided the clash toward the tips of our wooden swords so that the center of his own sword would not waver against mine.
His seasoned response drove me onto the defensive again.
It could not be helped.
The difference in our basic strength and speed was too great.
People often say that strength is not especially important in swordsmanship practiced in everyday clothes, but that depends on the circumstances.
If skill were equal, how could the sword of a dying patient be the same as the sword of a healthy young man?
My relationship with Master was the same.
With my troublesome leg, I could not move as freely as Master. My stamina was lacking, and I was weaker as well.
Master was dynamically exploiting those weaknesses.
If my grip weakened in a situation like this, I would lose my sword again.
This time, the tactic of trading flesh for bone would not work, either.
Earlier, Master had been flustered by the ferocity displayed by the boy he had only ever thought of as a child.
It had worked only once because I was his disciple and he had held back.
Even in such an advantageous position, Master had prepared for a follow-up strike. If I tried again something he had already seen once?
I would wager everything I owned that he would stop me before I could even attempt it.
With every move available to me shut down, I was pushed back in a daze.
Merely watching the incoming attacks and blocking them was exhausting.
“For all your bold words, nothing has changed.”
“Not yet. Not yet.”
Like a breakwater holding back a surging tidal wave time and time again.
I gritted my teeth and perilously parried and blocked Master's sword.
How long had I swung my sword in a state of self-forgetfulness?
When my breathing grew ragged and my vision began to blur.
All at once, Master and Master's sword vanished from my sight.
‘Vision is talent. It is a precious asset that cannot be acquired. But it is only the beginning.’
Instead, my sight filled with an old man walking alone along a snowy mountain path, a sword drawn in his hand.
He spoke in a voice drier and more desolate than the one I had dared to imitate.
Yet it was a complicated voice, mingled with pity and pride.
‘Perspective is experience. It is the way of seeing the same thing differently according to what one has lived through and felt. But that is why there are things one cannot see.’
Sword Saint Johan.
In my dream, I was a great martial artist who could cut through even a biting north wind and a freezing blizzard with a single sword.
For some reason, that great martial artist looked sorrowful, pitiful, and heartbreaking to me.
Because I knew the cruel and agonizing life that he, once like me, had lived.
Whatever I felt, the old man did not stop.
Neither his limping walk nor the meaningful words he left behind.
‘Insight is seeing the essence. It is seeing the truth without being swayed by emotion or desire. Thus, insight is discernment and self-examination.’
As I listened to the old man, I slowly followed him.
Limping like him, but with a vigor unlike his.
Step by step, I placed my feet in the footprints he left in the snow.
How long did I walk that way?
All at once, the old man stopped.
I stopped as well.
‘Do not use Vision, and do not use Perspective. They are ways of seeing, yet they are not truly seeing, and thus they are not right.’
The old man, who had been giving teachings as precious as gold and jade, suddenly turned around.
A scar ran across one eye, and wrinkles deeper than the scar were carved into his face.
That face, filled with the marks of a fierce life, was barren.
It was a face that seemed to have become winter after living amid it all his life.
He spoke to me.
‘Use only Insight. Only by seeing rightly in that way—.’
When the old man briefly broke off his words, I was startled.
The old man, who had seemed as if he would never change, was smiling.
It was a pure and beautiful smile, like a child's.
‘You can cut winter and call spring.’
As though playing, the old man began to dance buoyantly with his sword.
At that moment, an astonishing change occurred.
The clouds that had been pouring down a blizzard split apart along the old man's sword, and sunlight shone through the gap.
Wherever the sword pointed, the thickly piled snow melted and shoots sprang up.
The shoots that grew in an instant soon bloomed into flowers, and a butterfly that had flown in from somewhere fluttered over the flower bed, dancing with the old man.
Emotion filled my chest so completely that I could not speak, and I simply stared blankly.
Then, all at once, everything returned to how it had been.
The overcast sky poured down a blizzard again, and every flower withered.
The butterfly lost its life and fell.
In the middle of that barren scene, the old man spoke to me.
‘I came only this far. But you will be different.’
He passed on a cherished wish he had held his entire life, one he might have wanted to fulfill himself.
“Do not become a sprout that blossoms when spring comes. Become a sprout that blossoms and calls spring. Call forth your own spring, one that will never set.”
With his voice growing more distant, winter melted away.
The old man melted away as well.
A world, a life, vanished, and what entered my sight was a sword.
A wooden sword fell fiercely toward my brow.
At the same time, it was a question.
‘Have you given up already?’
A question he had asked because he did not want me to give up.
Feeling Master's heart within it, I knocked the wooden sword away.
“Hm?”
Until just moments ago, all I had done was frantically meet my sword against the incoming blade.
That was not proper defense.
For true defense had to be an attack in itself.
In that sense, the defense I had made this time was true.
Rather than meeting the sword tips, which were bound to be shaken by the impact, I stepped forward and took Master's sword with the center of my own.
Feeling that difference, Master admired it, but immediately turned his rebounding sword and launched a follow-up attack.
‘I can see.’
Watching that attack, I felt something change within me.
Where my eyes had previously followed only the sword, they now followed Master.
His chest swelling and falling with each breath, the flow of force running up from his ankles, and even the movements of the sword born from it.
For now, however clumsily, I was observing Master.
The result was astonishing.
I could see a gap in the sword that had been pressing toward me like a tidal wave without a single opening.
I could see the movement that would come next, and even the intent it held.
If I could see it, I could block it.
So I blocked Master's sword with less force and less movement, yet with greater composure.
As a result, the nature of our sparring changed.
Realizing that he could no longer force me into a contest of stamina, Master stopped his offensive and retreated.
“You have already grown again. Astonishing.”
“I was only lucky.”
“If talent is luck, then it is luck. No, talent itself is the product of heavenly fortune.”
“I am grateful to my parents. And….”
“And?”
“To you as well, Master. A good bond is as much a heavenly fortune as talent.”
At my heartfelt words, Master smiled bashfully.
“I have done nothing.”
“No. My sword was born from Master's teachings.”
How to hold a sword, how to see an enemy, and even the mindset of a martial artist.
In the Sword Saint's life as well as mine, Master had taught me all of it.
I had let the teachings pass by when I was learning them, but they had been engraved in my memory.
The Sword Saint, who had left the city as if bewitched, survived by relying on those teachings, and his enlightenment was passed on to me.
I smiled and raised my wooden sword.
In gratitude, and to show him how what he had passed on to me had bloomed.
“It is embarrassing to hear you say that, but it does make me happy. Still, it is about time we ended this, is it not?”
“Yes.”
As I raised my wooden sword, Master raised his opposite mine.
With that answer, he strode toward me again and swung his sword horizontally.
An attack that could block every attack and turn into any attack.
Facing an attack that was terrifying in the hands of an expert, I spoke.
“I will end this.”
Unlike before, I struck Master's wooden sword with all my strength.
Because of the difference in strength, ordinarily only my wooden sword should have been knocked away and forced back.
But this time was different.
I struck the weakest part of the incoming wooden sword with the strongest part of my own, and both swords were knocked away at once.
In that momentary opening, when we were both defenseless, I stepped forward.
The sword that called spring was unimaginably distant, but I followed the sensation the Sword Saint had left within me.
Resolute and proud, I drove forward at Master.
“Huh?”
“Crazy, he's going forward from there?”
The trainees watching us marveled at the unexpected move.
But Master was different.
He used even the force driving his sword away, turning his wrist to recover it and striking down at me.
If things continued like this, I had no choice but to helplessly offer up my head.
I smiled.
This was exactly what I had intended.
I would break the endlessly connected series of strikes and forcibly turn it into a contest decided in a single exchange.
I would pour my soul, my entire life, into a single sword stroke and bring it down.
The moment the downward slash the Sword Saint had named the Single Stroke collided with Master's wooden sword.
With a loud crack, both wooden swords broke.
Yet the wooden swords, their force still undiminished, struck each other's shoulders.
“I have lost.”
It was a situation similar to before, but I smiled bitterly and admitted defeat.
This time, I had been struck in the middle, not near the hilt where the wooden sword began.
In a real battle, my body would have been split diagonally from the shoulder onward.
My wooden sword had struck Master's shoulder as well, but its blow had been somewhat weak.
Even if it had been a real sword, it would have done no more than cut the skin or lodge in the bone.
Refusing to admit defeat here would not be fighting spirit, but obsession.
Rather than admirable, it would only be petty.
“No.”
To my surprise, Master denied my words, threw aside his broken wooden sword, and strode over to pull me into a tight embrace.
Flustered by the reaction I had never expected, I heard Master whisper.
“Was this sparring not meant to be a proof from the beginning? Then you have won.”
“Master….”
“It was original and fine swordsmanship. I acknowledge it. Your swordsmanship is undoubtedly yours.”
Master took a step back from me, who was deeply moved, and swept my hand up into the air.
Taken by surprise, I wore a flustered expression as my body was half lifted off the ground, while Master shouted in a ringing voice.
“Applause for Johan, who showed us such splendid swordsmanship!”
The children were briefly flustered, but then they cheered and clapped enthusiastically.
It was the first praise I had ever received in my life, and my face turned red.
Master whispered to me again.
“I am proud of you, my disciple. You have put forth a truly wonderful sprout.”
The words were more moving than the cheers striking my ears, and I bit my lip to keep from crying.
Instead, I smiled brightly, even if my face twisted in a strange way.
My first recognition was far too sweet.
Sweet enough that I would never forget it for the rest of my life.