#One Step More
zn09 closing fiction · Seriousness ★★ · pure Scent (fiction). No rules or numbers appear.
Before the winter mountain gate, once more I caught hold of my master's hem.
"Not today, Master. The snow is up to the knee."
Elder Genshin, instead of answering, retied the cords of his straw sandals. The knuckles of his fingers were like a dry plum branch. That those hands had once made people tremble, I still find hard to believe.
In the village they called him Kensei, the Sword Saint. I hated the word. Because the character for "saint" holds an ending within it. That all has been accomplished, that there is nowhere further to go. People want to enshrine a legend and keep it complete. Because then their hearts rest easy.
"The footprints of a snowy day are the deepest," the Elder said, rising. From his knees came the sound of a dry branch snapping. "So today is good."
Leaning on his blade like a staff, he took the first step.
The mountain road was no road for men. The old folk of the village called it the domain of yoma and waved their hands in refusal. At the full moon, blue will-o'-the-wisps streamed in a line beyond the ridge, and the unlucky woodcutter never came back.
"Why bother?" I asked, pushing through the snow. "You have already won it all, Master. The name, the story. Now no one would say a word if you sat by the hearth."
"I won, yes," he said, catching his breath. The white of his breath unraveled long. "And so people put a full stop to my story. Kensei, they said."
The Elder halted his steps and turned to look at me. The two eyes within the wrinkles were clearer than the sunlight on the snowfield.
"But, Ryo. It was they who put the full stop, not I. I still do not know… how to grip the blade half an inch deeper than yesterday."
Half an inch. A man who had given his whole life to moving a mountain was speaking of half an inch.
Atop the ridge it waited for us.
Its height was as if two old pines had been stood upright, and it was wrapped in a mist that held the snow. A spiritual object said to be born of the congealed grudge of warriors who died on an old battlefield. The village's oldest fear stood there.
I drew my blade, and my hand trembled. The Elder did not tremble. He only smiled.
"Look," he whispered. Not to me, but to himself. "What I still do not know is as vast as that."
In that one word, I understood. The reason he had never stopped in all his life. He had never feared an enemy. He had only — wanted to know more. To the end, and even after the end.
The spiritual object spewed mist and struck down. It was as if the whole mountain were falling.
The Elder's blade slid in beneath it. It was not fast. It was not splendid. It was only — a single line, honed over a lifetime until at last not one speck of excess remained. The one straight line an aged body drew upon the snow.
The mist scattered. The will-o'-the-wisps faded, and at the last a single point of light, no larger than a firefly, gathered at the tip of his blade and went out.
The grudge dissolved not as a scream but as a long sigh. The sigh of one who at last rests.
On the way back, I reached out my hand to support him. He refused it.
"This one step I still go on my own legs."
"Did you see something today?" I asked — meaning the half inch.
The Elder was silent for a long while. The snow had stopped, and a red sun was bleeding toward the edge of the ridge.
"I did," he said with a small laugh. It was a boy's laugh. "Tomorrow I will see something else again."
His words were so light that the bridge of my nose stung. People had wanted to enshrine him as a finished story. But he was a man who, even after the final chapter, turned one more blank page. What he would write there, no one — not even he himself — knew.
I understood. What I followed was not Kensei. It was that unstopping back, leaning on his blade to take one step more even after becoming Kensei.
"Master," I said, following behind him. The footprints were deep. "Will you come again at the next full moon?"
"I will," he said, his shadow lying long across the snowfield. "A road ends when a man stops, not when the mountain runs out."
And he took one step more.
(End)