#Half-Step
zn10 closing fiction · Seriousness ★★★ · pure Scent (fiction). No rules or numbers appear.
The white sand spread across the courtyard threw the sunlight back, and his eyes ached.
Sogen liked that. When the eyes ache, one stops seeing other things.
On the veranda sat the lord. One tier below him, hands gripping fans were lined up in a row. He looked at no one's face. He looked only at the man facing him. That was a swordsman's courtesy.
He had heard the opponent's name but forgotten it. He had forgotten it on purpose.
They began at a distance where neither blade could reach the other.
Both stood still. Far apart, measuring each other. The wind swept across the sand once and passed.
Sogen let his breath settle. His master had said, Aiming is not the work of the blade's tip. It is the work of the breath. The opponent's shoulders were minutely raised. It meant his breath was floating high. It meant tension had pooled around his chest.
Already, right there, it had tilted by a thread.
One step.
Sogen entered first. A half-step. The sand gave a short scream beneath his feet.
The opponent narrowed the gap in turn. One more step and the blades would reach — the deciding distance. From here on, no one can simply stand still.
The opponent's eyes wavered. Only for an instant. It was not the blade's tip that trembled — it was the mind that trembled first. Sogen saw it. He had honed himself a lifetime to see it.
He breaks.
The opponent cut first. The fearful always cut first.
The blade grazed past Sogen's headband. One strand, severed. A blade that touched but could not cut through. In the brief gap while that blade spun uselessly, the opponent's composure crumbled like sand from which the water has drained.
Sogen entered.
A half-step. One breath ahead.
Before the opponent's blade could return, his own arrived first. Into the empty space. Into the single gap that the broken mind had left open.
The sound was not loud.
The opponent knelt on the sand. His wrist buckled and the blade fell. From the cut shoulder, something red seeped into the white sand.
It was over. Sogen knew it.
And yet he did not sheathe his blade.
Blood drummed inside his head. The white light of the courtyard blazed whiter still. He had honed himself a lifetime for this one instant, and that the instant had ended so briefly — it galled him. It rankled. More, his body said.
Sogen cut the face of the kneeling man.
He fouled a cleanly won bout with one more stroke. A fallen man, needlessly.
A scream split the courtyard.
There came the sound of a fan folding shut.
A sharp snap. A dry sound. Only then did Sogen raise his head.
The lord on the veranda was not smiling. With the fan lowered to his knee, he was watching the broken man. Beside him, a retainer was rising to his feet, gone pale as death. Had they said he was the fallen man's elder brother? One the lord favored.
"The mood is spoiled," the lord said. To no one in particular.
The courtyard fell quiet. The sand was swept by the wind once more.
Sogen stood with his blade in hand. He had won. He had clearly won. He had broken the man facing him, taken the half-step first, arrived one breath ahead. He had done everything a swordsman could do.
And yet on the white sand, in the very place where he had won, something slowly cooled into ash.
His master taught how to win, a lifetime over.
How to sheathe the blade once you have won, he never taught in the end.
Sogen's eyes ached. It was the white light, he wanted to believe.
(End)