A year before any of this.
The carnival came to Serenia every November the way the cold did, without asking. They set the lanterns up along the riverwalk on the twelfth and lit them on the fifteenth and by sundown of the sixteenth there were enough people on the bridges to make a stranger forget the city had ever been quiet. Paper fish hung from wires above the stalls. Roasted chestnuts. Sweet rice in red paper cones. A man in a fox mask played a string instrument badly and was loved for it.
Ryo was sixteen.
He had not yet been given a blade. He had not yet seen a Kaimon. He had not yet stood on a rooftop and watched a girl he was beginning to love disappear through an amber gateway. He was a boy in a winter coat that was a size too big, because Kujuro had bought it that way on purpose so it would last him through the winter after this one. He liked that the coat was too big. It made him feel like he had time.
Kujuro walked behind him.
Rumi walked beside him.
"Slow down, big brother."
"I'm not going fast."
"You're walking like the carnival is going to leave."
"…"
"It's been here for three days, Hiroshi's mom said. And it'll be here tomorrow, and the day after."
"… Mm."
"So you can slow down."
She was eight. She had her warm-brown hair in a half-up style she had clipped in herself with only a little help from Kujuro, and her small yellow star-shaped hair clip sat slightly off-center because she had not let her father straighten it, and her mittens were the same color as Ryo's coat because Kujuro had asked her if she wanted to match her brother and she had said yes very seriously the way she said yes to all the questions that mattered. One of her mittened hands was tucked into the cuff of Ryo's sleeve. The breath came out of her in small pale clouds, smaller than theirs.
"Want a fish?"
"… A what?"
"A fish. The paper ones. They have green ones this year. Hiroshi's mom said the green ones don't fade as fast."
"… Sure."
She let go of his sleeve and ran ahead three steps and pointed at the stall with both mittened hands the way she pointed at things she wanted Kujuro to buy for her brother and not for her, because Rumi had a strict private rule that she never asked for anything for herself at the carnival, only ever for him, and this was the first year he had figured out the rule and had pretended he hadn't.
Kujuro paid for two paper fish.
Rumi tied hers to her own coat sleeve. She tied Ryo's to his sleeve too, because his fingers were colder than hers and she could see him struggling with the knot. Her tying was clumsy. The knot held.
He looked down at her.
"Thanks, kid."
"You're welcome, big brother."
Kujuro saw the small ceremony and made the small sound he made when he was proud and did not want to embarrass either of his children.
They walked.
-----
The river was black. The lanterns reflected off it in long golden strokes. Ryo passed a stall where a woman was selling apples coated in sugar so red they looked artificial. They were not artificial. The red was from the fruit's own skin, which the woman had a method for caramelizing without losing the color. Ryo did not buy one. He stopped to watch her work for a long time.
Rumi noticed the stop.
She did not say anything for a moment. She tugged once on his sleeve, a small careful tug, the kind a sister gives a brother she is checking on, and when he looked down at her she had her cheeks puffed out the way she did when she was about to say something serious and didn't want it to sound serious.
"You're sad."
"…"
"It's okay to be sad about an apple, big brother."
He almost laughed. He almost cried. Whatever the muscle was that lived between those two things tightened once and let go.
Kujuro stepped up on his other side.
Kujuro Kenzaki was forty-eight. He had been a fisheries inspector for twenty-six years. He had been a widower long enough that the word no longer had the temperature it used to have, but not so long that he had stopped noticing the dates the temperature came back. He spoke softly and rarely and had never, in his son's memory, raised his voice at his children even once, and Ryo had not always understood that this was a gift until he had spent enough afternoons at Hiroshi's apartment to know the alternative.
"Kenzaki."
"…"
"You're stopped at the apples again."
"…"
"You stopped at them last year too."
"…"
"You don't have to buy one. You don't have to not. Whichever one is honest, son. She'd be proud of you for stopping at all. Most people don't stop. They walk past every November and don't notice they had a feeling about it. You stopped. That counts."
"…"
"Take your time."
Ryo took his time.
He did not buy the apple.
He decided he was not ready, and he decided that not being ready was an acceptable answer, and he kept walking, and the woman with the apples looked up as he left and gave him a small nod the way some adults give children they don't know nods, the kind that means I saw you and you're alright, and Ryo nodded back the way children give adults they don't know nods, the kind that means thank you for not asking.
Rumi did not understand what had just happened. She understood that something had. She wrapped her mittened hand around two of his fingers and squeezed them, gently, with the small careful strength of an eight-year-old who had decided her brother needed holding.
He let her.
-----
Later, on a bench overlooking the river, Rumi was off near the lantern-stringer's stall watching a woman tie paper carp to a wire frame. Close enough to be seen. Too far to hear. Kujuro and Ryo sat with their breath misting and their hands buried in coat pockets and the lanterns reflecting in long gold strokes off the black river. Music came from the stall by the bridge. The man in the fox mask had not gotten any better at his instrument and people loved him more for it the longer the night went on.
Ryo watched the river.
"… Pops."
"Mm."
"If something happens to you and Rumi …"
"Nothing's going to happen to us, Kenzaki."
"… But if it does."
"Mm."
"I'm going to take care of both of you."
Kujuro did not answer for a beat.
"Both of us."
"Yeah. You and Rumi."
"…"
"I know I'm sixteen. I know I'm not big yet. But I'm telling you. If anything ever happens, I'll take care of you both. I won't let either of you carry it alone. I promise."
Kujuro looked at his son. His son was looking at the river. The paper fish on his coat sleeve was the green that the carnival woman had said wouldn't fade as fast.
"Kenzaki."
"… Yeah."
"You already do."
Ryo looked at him.
"You have for seven years. You don't see it because you live inside it. You make sure I eat. You make sure your sister sleeps. You take her plate from her when her hands get tired before she finishes. You sit beside me on the porch when I don't know what to do with the evening. You don't think you're doing those things because you've been doing them since you were nine. But you are. You have been the one taking care of us, son."
"…"
"I don't say it because I don't want you to feel like you have to. I want you to keep doing it the way you do it, which is without making either of us feel small."
Ryo's eyes filled. He did not let it past his eyes.
"… I'll keep doing it."
"I know you will."
Rumi came back from the lantern stall with the woman who tied the paper carp. The woman waved at Kujuro from a distance and went back to her work. Rumi sat down on the bench between Ryo and Kujuro with her star-shaped hair clip slightly more crooked from running, and she did not ask what they had been talking about. She was eight, and being eight she was bad at most kinds of restraint, and the one thing she was not bad at was knowing when her brother and her father had been talking about something quiet, because she had grown up in a house where quiet had been the most important thing in the room more than once a year, and she had learned the shape of it.
She leaned against Ryo.
Her shoulder was small. Her temple rested against his arm. His hands were cold. The two met where her face was and made one warm circle.
He almost cried for the third time that hour.
He didn't.
The carnival went on around them.
-----
A year later. The same November. A different boy.
Ryo sat on the rooftop of the apartment building with his right hand wrapped in a strip of cloth Mei had pulled from her own scarf without asking. The cloth was pale blue. It was for the trembling, which was not stopping anymore, which had not stopped since the pact two nights before, which had begun to come on without warning even when the blade was nowhere near him. His breath misted in the November air, and a little more than that, and only he could tell the difference.
The roof was where he came when he needed to think.
It had been where he came when he needed to think since he was twelve.
The hatch behind him opened. He did not turn around. He knew the rhythm of the climb. Slow, careful. Forty-nine years old. A small hesitation on the third rung, where the metal was loose. The hatch closed. Footsteps across gravel.
Kujuro sat down beside him.
He did not say anything for a while. He looked at the city. The streetlamps. The Registry tower in the distance. The dark stretch where the boundary had not finished healing from the breach.
"… You're cold, son."
"… I know."
"Your sister noticed."
"… I figured."
"She put a blanket on your bed this afternoon. She didn't tell me she was doing it. I caught her trying to smooth the corners. She didn't see me see her."
"…"
"She's nine, Kenzaki. She's not supposed to be the one putting blankets on people."
"…"
"I'm not telling you that to make you feel worse. I'm telling you so you know she's noticing. Which is what your sister does. She notices."
"…"
"I'm worried too."
"…"
"Not because you're cold. Because you've been cold for two days and you haven't said a word about why, which means you've decided you're carrying this one yourself, and we promised each other a long time ago that you weren't going to do that anymore."
"…"
Kujuro did not push. He had never pushed. He had been a fisheries inspector for twenty-six years and a widower for long enough to know the difference between water that was trying to settle and water that needed to be left alone, and he sat beside his son and let the water settle.
The wind came up off the eastern flats. Cold. Not cold like Ryo was cold. Just cold.
Ryo finally spoke.
"… Pops."
"Mm."
"I made a promise."
"You make a lot of those."
"I made one to a spirit."
"…"
"She lives in the blade Yua left me. She came to me three nights ago, and she offered to lend me her power so I could stand against Kyou Ren when he comes. I accepted. I said the words. The cold I'm carrying is what it costs."
Kujuro was quiet.
"And you accepted."
"I did."
"Without asking your sister."
"… Without asking her."
"Without asking me."
"… Without asking you."
"Mm."
Ryo waited for the disappointment. It did not come.
"Kenzaki."
"… Yeah."
"Do you remember what I told you on the bench last November?"
"… Yeah."
"What did I tell you?"
"… You told me I'd been taking care of you and Rumi for seven years. That I lived inside it and didn't see it. That you didn't say it because you didn't want me to feel like I had to."
"Mm. And what's the part you missed?"
"…"
"I told you that because I wanted you to know that you'd already chosen, son. You'd already chosen the kind of person you were going to be, and the choosing was done before you knew you were doing it. The blade in your bedroom isn't what made you that person. It's the tool you picked up because the person you already were needed one."
"…"
"You didn't ask me before you took the spirit's pact because you'd already decided. You decided when you were nine. I'm not disappointed in you for not asking. I'm proud of you for the answer."
Ryo's eyes filled for the second time in a year. He did not let it past his eyes for the second time in a year.
"… Pops."
"Mm."
"Can I tell you something?"
"Anything."
-----
He told him.
He told him slowly, because he had not put it in words yet, and because the words mattered. He told him about the system that taught children to be blades before it taught them to be children. He told him about Yua at seven, running a form ten times while her instructor opened her shoulder for correction. He told him about Theron's wife and daughter, killed by the Registry under the protocol of protective custody. He told him about Saren Valk, who had folded napkins and asked the city's name and had been sent across a continent to kill children. He told him about Kyou Ren, who had grown up watching his parents pretend not to be a clan, and who had inherited a hatred large enough to require a god to satisfy.
And then he told him what he had been thinking on the roof.
"… Pops, I don't want to be the kind of Hunter the system makes."
"…"
"The system makes weapons. It takes children and it sands them down until they're sharp on one side and the other side doesn't matter. That's what it did to Yua. That's what it almost did to Theron. That's what Kyou Ren is afraid I'll become if I keep walking the path Shinrō put me on."
"…"
"And he's not wrong to be afraid of it. Because the path will do that, if you let it. If you decide that being a Hunter is the only thing you are. If you stop being someone's son. Stop being someone's brother. Stop stopping at the apple stall in November because she liked them. Stop being a person, and become only the blade."
"…"
"I'm not going to be that kind."
He looked at his hands. The right one was wrapped in pale blue. The trembling was small but present.
"I'm going to be the other kind. I don't know what to call it yet. I don't have a word for it. But I know what it looks like. It looks like a Hunter who stops at the apple stall. Who takes the plate from the tired hands. Who sits beside the boy on the porch when he doesn't know what to do with the evening. A Hunter who is also a person, and who stays a person, and who fights anyway. Who fights because they're a person. Not in spite of it."
"…"
"I want to change what the word means, Pops. I don't want kids being given blades before they're given childhoods. I don't want Yua to be the last seven-year-old the system gets. I don't want Kyou Ren to keep being right about what we are. I want him to be wrong. I want him to look at me, after everything, and have to admit that the thing he hates didn't get me. That it doesn't have to get anyone. That there's another way to carry the blade."
He paused.
"And the only way I get to make that argument is if I'm still standing when he's done trying to talk me out of it with his."
Kujuro looked at him for a long moment.
The wind came up off the eastern flats. The streetlamps held. The Registry tower was very far away.
"… Kenzaki."
"… Yeah."
"You're going to win."
"… Pops, I don't know if I'm …"
"I didn't say you're going to defeat him. I said you're going to win. They aren't the same word. You know that. Your friend is going to come here, and he's going to swing a blade at you, and you're going to do whatever you do, and at the end of it, he's going to walk away or you're going to walk away or both of you will, and the one of you who won will be the one who held onto the person he was when the night started. That one is going to be you. I know it. I've known it since you were nine."
Ryo's eyes were wet now. He did not try to hide it anymore.
"… I'm going to bring him back, Pops. Not all the way. He's gone too far for all the way. But far enough that he hears me. Far enough that we can find Yua together. Far enough that he sees what I want to build and he wants to be in it, even if he doesn't believe in it yet. He's my friend. He doesn't know how to be saved. But he can still listen. And I'm going to make him listen if I have to bleed cold for the rest of my life to do it."
Kujuro put his hand on the back of his son's neck.
He did not say anything.
He did not need to.
-----
Below them, the city of Serenia did what cities do at night. Light moved. Sound moved. People who did not know any of this had happened ate dinners and held conversations and laughed at television they had seen before. The carnival was not in town this November. The carnival had ended a week ago. The lanterns had come down.
Somewhere east of the city, in a clearing under a tree old enough to have seen a generation of Ametsuchi come and go, a boy with gold fractures in his eyes was walking toward the western boundary, and his blade hummed at his hip, and his coat moved in the wind, and he was getting closer.
On the rooftop, Kujuro Kenzaki sat beside his son.
He looked at him.
And what he saw, he saw twice.
He saw a thirteen-year-old boy in the kitchen four years ago, standing on a stool he was already too tall for, lifting a too-heavy pot off the stove because his father had come home late and his sister was hungry. The boy had not asked for help. The boy had set the pot on the table without spilling a drop. The boy had served his sister first, and his father second, and himself last, and the boy had not known anyone was watching him do it.
He saw a seventeen-year-old young man on a rooftop with a wrapped right hand and a cold he was carrying for a friend he had not given up on, deciding what the word Hunter was going to mean from now on.
The boy had been thirteen, in a kitchen that smelled like steam, doing the work no one had asked him to do.
The young man was seventeen, on a roof under a November sky, doing the work no one else could do.
Both of them, Kujuro understood without surprise, were the same boy.
Both of them had already won.
🌀 END OF CHAPTER 76