Just as Saeko Busujima was letting her mind wander, the situation on the floor took a strange turn.
One second before, Seiji Fujiwara's movements had been full of the stiffness and lack of coordination typical of a beginner, every transition between postures showing visible signs of conscious thought.
The next second, the arc of his swing suddenly became textbook and forceful.
It was a transformation without any transition.
As if an invisible grandmaster had taken over Seiji's body in that single instant, correcting the motion of every cell down to the strictest standards.
His grip on the sword became flawless. Every swing landed precisely along the trajectory Ryumu Busujima had demanded, neither a hair more nor a hair less.
Saeko almost thought her eyes were deceiving her.
She rubbed them and looked again, focusing.
There was no mistake.
Seiji's movements no longer showed a trace of awkwardness.
He stood there, the distance between his feet, the bend of his knees, the straightness of his back and waist all forming a perfect stance that combined stability with explosive power.
That was not all.
A few more minutes passed.
Seiji had completely mastered every fundamental sword technique of the Busujima school, from the frontal cut, the kesa cut, the reverse kesa cut, to the horizontal cut. Each motion was as precise as a textbook diagram, even more powerful and coordinated than her father's own demonstration.
He was no longer simply imitating. He was understanding, absorbing, turning these techniques into his own instinct.
Each swing now stirred up a faint and impressive whistle of wind.
"Hmmm!"
That was the unique sound that only came when a wooden bat tore through the air at high speed.
It was a level only achievable when every ounce of strength, drawn from the heels, through the hips and waist, and on to the shoulders and arms, was finally channeled into the tip of the blade without the slightest loss.
It was a threshold that countless kendo students had to spend years of bitter, sweat-soaked training even to brush against.
Without realizing it, Saeko lowered the arms she had been holding across her chest.
Her body leaned forward slightly. Those sharp eyes, which had moments ago held a trace of indolence, were now wide open, fixed on the man on the floor as though staring at a monster wearing human skin.
This... how was it possible?
From an outsider who couldn't even hold a sword properly, to one who had mastered every basic technique and could send sound through the air, he... he had done it in less than ten minutes?
It overturned every notion of kendo she had built up over the past dozen years.
On the other side, Ryumu Busujima, who was personally guiding the lesson, was shaken a hundred times more violently than his daughter.
As a master who had steeped himself in kendo for over forty years, he could clearly feel that Seiji was improving with every single swing, at a speed visible to the naked eye.
From clumsy to standard, from standard to skilled, from skilled to... perfect.
In the beginning he had needed to keep correcting him, but very soon, Ryumu found he had nothing left to say.
Every one of his student's motions seemed to have been forged through a thousand refinements, with no flaw to be found.
He even sensed in his student's techniques a kind of pure "principle" that he himself had never reached. As if his student were not learning the sword, but expounding the very essence of kendo itself.
This rate of learning had completely exceeded the bounds of comprehension built over his decades in the art.
He had taught countless students, more than a few of them hailed as "geniuses."
But even the most gifted of those children had needed weeks or even months to do what Seiji was demonstrating now.
This could no longer be described by the word "genius."
Was this... the reincarnation of a Sword Saint?
While the Busujima father and daughter were both stunned, Seiji stopped his motion.
He twirled the sword casually, rested the suburi-bo on his shoulder, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a calm smile.
"Warm-up's over."
His gaze turned to the stunned Ryumu Busujima.
"Next, practical training."
"Master Busujima, please."
It took Ryumu several seconds to recover from the massive shock.
He looked at Seiji, his eyes filled with bewilderment and doubt.
An unparalleled prodigy? No, impossible... in all of history, there has never been anything like this... or could it be that his physical coordination is just exceptionally good, and he's trained with similar weapons before?
He turned the possibilities over in his mind, but not one of them could convince him.
He took another suburi-bo from the weapons rack, resolving to feed his cuts with the greatest care so as not to injure this distinguished and impossibly gifted personage.
But when he returned to the floor and stood across from Seiji, his expression abruptly shifted.
It had changed.
Seiji's entire aura had changed.
If, moments before, he had still been like an uncut gem rapidly revealing its inner brilliance, now, with his attention fully sunk into the sword in his hand, he was like a peerless divine blade drawn from its sheath.
A sharp, refined aura, like that of a swordsman tempered through a thousand forgings, radiated outward from his body.
It was no longer mere physical pressure but a spiritual sharpness, as though countless invisible blades were stabbing at Ryumu's nerves.
That aura was enough to make even a veteran like Ryumu Busujima feel a jolt of unease.
This... this can't be...!
A storm raged through Ryumu's mind.
This kind of aura, this kind of gaze, was absolutely not something a beginner could possess.
This was the bearing of a grandmaster, one that could only be forged through countless brushes with life and death.
Before he could even recover from the shock, Seiji moved.
He took the initiative and attacked.
His footwork was steady, his form lithe.
The suburi-bo in his hand seemed to have come alive.
His techniques were precise and seasoned, his timing honed to an exquisite edge.
This was nothing like a beginner.
It was more like a top-tier master who had been immersed in kendo for decades.
Ryumu received the strike, dumbfounded.
Crack! The two wooden bats clashed in midair with a heavy, sharp sound.
An immense force traveled through the bat from his opponent, numbing the web of his hand and forcing his footing to stagger.
In an instant he felt enormous pressure and had to summon his full focus to respond. A film of fine cold sweat began to bead on his forehead.
By the side of the floor, Saeko had long lost her earlier scorn and impatience.
What replaced them was naked disbelief.
She watched the man on the floor, who now seemed possessed by the spirit of a Sword God.
She watched the flowing grace and powerful beauty of his swordsmanship.
Saeko could feel her blood beginning to heat, degree by degree.
A bloodlust toward "the strong" she had forcibly suppressed for so long, one she had almost forgotten, was being slowly stirred awake from the bottom of her heart, beginning to writhe.
The battle proceeded as an utter rout.
Ryumu Busujima, a kendo Hanshi 8th dan who had been famous for decades, was now being toyed with like an apprentice who had only just stepped through the door.
The techniques he had thought himself so skilled in were riddled with openings in front of this opponent.
Every attack he made was dissolved in a simpler, more direct way, then turned back against him.
"Ukifune!"
Ryumu gritted his teeth, his wrist snapping, the suburi-bo slicing in along a tricky line.
He had thought he could force his opponent back, but Seiji broke straight through the center with nothing more elaborate than a basic frontal cut, full of righteous force.
The strength behind it was so great he almost lost his grip on the sword.
In the span of mere minutes, Seiji's swordsmanship was still evolving at a speed visible to the eye.
His techniques grew freer with every exchange.
Sometimes they were the sharp slashes of Busujima-ryu.
Sometimes they shifted into the precise thrusts of Hokushin Ittō-ryū.
There were even tricky moves from ancient schools mixed in that she had never seen before.
It was as if every form of swordsmanship in the world had been smelted in a single furnace, and he could draw any of them out at will.
Finally, in what looked like a casual exchange of blows, Seiji's style of swordsmanship abruptly shifted.
All the techniques vanished.
What replaced them was a roundness, leaving no trace, like an antelope hanging by its horns.
Every stroke of Seiji's was now the inevitable response to the principle of heaven itself. No longer bound to any school or any technique, only the pure stroke that existed for the sake of cutting.
In those few short minutes, with the same ease as water finding its level, he had broken through into a realm that existed only in legend.
Sword Saint.
Ryumu Busujima was struck with absolute terror.
He realized he could no longer defend at all.
A seemingly ordinary cut from Seiji, in his eyes, became an inescapable net of heaven and earth.
That one strike seemed to have calculated his every retreat and sealed off his every counter.
No matter how he dodged or parried, the final outcome was always the same.
He would be defeated.
This was no longer a gap in skill. It was the crushing weight of realms apart.
By the side of the floor, watching this scene, Saeko's desires came to a full boil.
She could no longer suppress them.
Strong.
Too strong.
A diseased excitement surged up to the top of her head. She felt her cheeks burning, her heartbeat hammering as if it would burst.
Her eyes had turned crimson with overstimulation, fixed on the man on the floor, her breathing growing ragged.
She wanted to rush at him.
She wanted to cross blades with him.
She wanted the sword in his hand to run her through.
She also wanted to use the sword in her own hand to leave her mark upon him.
...
Just as Saeko's inner desires were about to burst free of the cage of reason, Seiji, on the floor, seemed to sense something.
That burning gaze, filled with primal desire and a thirst for killing.
Like the final fuse, it ignited the vast ocean of kendo knowledge in his mind.
Boom! Seiji felt the last shackle on his kendo knowledge shatter inside his skull.
His will seemed to break free of the body's restraints, of technique's restraints, of the restraints of every realm.
He arrived at the supreme realm of the Sword God.
He slowly stopped his pressure on Ryumu Busujima, turned his head, and glanced toward the corner of the dojo, at the girl whose eyes were red and whose whole body was trembling.
It was only a glance.
But within Saeko's senses, it was as if she had seen an invisible divine sword cross dozens of meters of space and cut into her heart.
In that instant, the dojo vanished, her father vanished, the entire world vanished.
Her consciousness was pulled into a pure white void, and before her eyes there was only that gaze, transformed into the first beam of light cleaving the primordial chaos.
A sharp, tearing whistle. Saeko's breath stopped. Her face went pale as paper.
She felt as if her entire world had been split in two by that gaze.
She seemed to see her entire soul, in that single moment, severed, ground to dust, reduced to nothing.
She even felt the illusion that her own head had already been struck from her body.
It was a death experience that came from the level of the soul itself.
But the next second.
When that terror of death reached its peak, she discovered, in utter disbelief, that another unthinkable thing had happened.
In the deepest part of her soul, a hideous, bloodthirsty beast had long crouched.
It was the Inner Demon, the lust for killing born of her bloodline, that had tormented her for years, kept her tossing through countless sleepless nights, and at one point made her fear and even loathe the path of the sword.
Now, beneath the light of that "divine sword's gaze," the beast let out a piercing, pitiful wail.
Then it was cleanly severed and purified.
Every violent, dark, frenzied thought melted away as fast as snow under sunlight.
A lightness and clarity she had never known, long missed, spread through her entire body.
As if a great mountain that had pressed down on her soul had been lifted in an instant.
Her world opened wide.
In utter astonishment, Saeko looked at the man on the floor once more.
That diseased, bloodthirsty desire in her eyes had vanished without a trace.
In its place was deep reverence and gratitude.
That one glance of his had not only "killed" her, it had also "redeemed" her.
Seiji calmly withdrew his gaze.
He knew, of course, what had just happened.
He had read the original work and understood Saeko Busujima's inner struggles and pain.
That final breakthrough into the new realm had let him cut away, in passing, the very root that had agitated her Inner Demon.
Consider it a little something extra in return for this premium "whetstone."
At that moment, Ryumu Busujima, in front of him, could hold on no longer.
Seiji pressed in with a casual stroke, and the suburi-bo in Ryumu's hand let out a pitiful cry of strain before snapping inch by inch and scattering into countless splinters.
Ryumu staggered back several steps, until his legs finally gave way and he dropped to one knee on the floor.
He gasped for breath in great heaving gulps, soaked through with cold sweat, as if he had just been pulled from a river.
Ryumu stared at Seiji in awe, his voice trembling as he spoke.
"You are a born... Sword Saint..."
"This old man... has nothing left to teach you..."
His voice was filled with hollowed-out defeat, and a trace of fervor at having witnessed a higher realm.
The pinnacle of kendo he had pursued his whole life was, in front of this young man, nothing but a starting point that could be reached in half an hour.
The gap left Ryumu Busujima in deep despair.
"What a pity... a pity..."
Ryumu sighed softly to himself.
What a pity that such a great man could not possibly devote all his energies to the sword.
Otherwise, the history of kendo would surely have been rewritten by his hand.
Seiji lowered his blade and stood still. The divine, transcendent aura on his face slowly faded, and he returned to that lazy, easy manner.
He smiled and offered Ryumu a few words of praise.
"Master Busujima, your swordsmanship truly lives up to its reputation. I have benefited greatly."
That polite remark made Ryumu's face and ears burn red.
Benefited greatly?
From beginning to end, it had been a one-sided beating, with him as the one being "taught."
"In addition," Seiji continued, "the monthly fee we agreed on will not be reduced by a single yen. It will be transferred to your account tomorrow."
Ryumu knew this was the best outcome he could ask for.
He bowed deeply, voice full of gratitude. "Thank you, Mr. Fujiwara! Thank you, Mr. Fujiwara!"
Then, as if he had just remembered something, a sharp glint flashed through his eyes.
He offered an invitation of his own. "Mr. Fujiwara, your might is unmatched, but you must be a little weary. If you don't think it beneath you, this old man would be so bold as to invite you to my humble home to enjoy the hot spring inside our family's hall, a tradition passed down through the Busujima family for many years. It would help wash away your fatigue."
The words were dressed up as gracious courtesy, but the true intent was obvious.
Seiji thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Very well."
Ryumu was overjoyed at the answer and quickly turned to his daughter, who was still standing dazed where she was. "Saeko! What are you standing there for? Hurry and prepare the car. We are escorting Mr. Fujiwara!"
At her father's words, Saeko gave Seiji a long, deep look.
That look held a thousand things at once.
The relief of one who had survived a calamity, the gratitude of one who had been redeemed, profound reverence, and a faint trace of a girl's first, fledgling admiration.
Then Saeko bowed deeply to Seiji.
She turned and strode quickly away.
In a corner where no one could see, she clenched her fists tightly with excitement.
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