"Clack"
The sharp clack of bamboo on bamboo was the only sound that could be heard.
Kenji flowed through the spar like water, his two wooden swords a blur of motion.
His opponent, a senior student almost twice his size, was sweating, grunting, and swinging his single blade with the force of a lumberjack.
It was pathetic.
Too slow.
Too obvious.
You're telegraphing that swing from next week.
With a flick of his left wrist, Kenji parried the clumsy overhead strike.
In the same breath, he spun, the shinai in his right hand tapping the boy's exposed ribs with a sound like a woodpecker hitting a log.
Thwack.
The senior student wheezed and stumbled back.
Kenji didn't press the advantage.
He just stood there, leaning casually on his swords, a bored smirk playing on his lips.
"Come on, Haruto-san," Kenji chirped, his voice dripping with false sweetness.
"My grandmother hits harder than that. Are you even trying?"
Haruto's face instantly went crimson.
"You little bastard!" he roared, charging forward in a blind rage.
And that's the match.
Kenji sidestepped the telegraphed lunge with ease, stuck out his foot and sent the lumbering oaf tumbling face-first into the dojo's polished floorboards.
'thud'
Kenji rested the tips of both his swords on the boy's back.
"I win," he announced to the silent, stunned audience of other students.
He scanned their faces with a cocky grin.
"Anyone else want a go?"
No one moved.
Of course they didn't.
"That is quite enough."
The voice cut through the dojo like a razor.
It was low, calm, and carried an authority that made Kenji's blood run cold.
He immediately straightened up, his playful smirk vanishing.
His father, Miyamoto Takeo, stood at the edge of the training floor.
He wasn't a large man, but his presence filled the entire building.
His eyes, the same dark pools as Kenji's, were fixed on him with a look of profound disappointment.
"Kenji. My office. Now."
Miyamoto Takeo's POV
Takeo watched his son swagger out of the dojo, the other students parting for him like he was a young master.
The boy had the talent of a god and the ego to match.
It was a dangerous combination.
He doesn't see the sword as a path, Takeo thought, his hands tightening into fists.
He sees it as a toy.
He had tried to instill the philosophy of the blade in Kenji—the discipline, the respect, the endless pursuit of a state of "void" where the swordsman and the world became one.
But for Kenji, it was all a game.
He was a prodigy, a one-in-a-century genius who had mastered forms in a week that had taken Takeo years.
The boy was born with a sword in his soul.
And that's what terrified him.
He was a weapon that didn't understand its own purpose.
He was all sharpness and no weight.
Miyamoto Kenji's POV
The lecture was the same as always.
"...it is not about winning! It is about perfection! It is about respect for your opponent, for the blade, for yourself! A mindset of victory is a cage. You must seek the void, Kenji. Emptiness. Only then can you truly—"
"—react to anything," Kenji finished, rolling his eyes.
"I know, Father. I've heard it a thousand times."
His father's palm slammed down on the desk.
"Then why don't you listen?! I saw your face out there. The arrogance. The disrespect. That is not the Miyamoto way!"
"The Miyamoto way got the win, didn't it?" Kenji shot back before he could stop himself.
The silence that followed was heavy and cold.
His father just stared at him, the anger in his eyes slowly replaced by a deep, weary sadness.
He looked old.
"Go," Takeo said, his voice barely a whisper.
"Clean the dojo. All of it. And contemplate your failings."
Kenji bowed stiffly and left, the shame tasting like ash in his mouth.
He hated that look.
He'd rather his father yell at him for hours than see that look.
He spent the next few hours in the empty dojo, the scent of wood and sweat filling his nose.
He cleaned the floors until they shone, his earlier triumph feeling hollow and childish.
As he worked, he moved through the forms of the Niten Ichi-ryu, his wooden swords scything through the air.
He wasn't thinking, just moving, letting his body remember the motions his ancestors had perfected.
****
The sun had long set, and a full moon hung in the inky black sky, its pale light filtering through the paper doors.
The compound was quiet.
Everyone else was asleep.
He was just finishing the final form, a slow, deliberate sequence of cuts, when he heard it.
A wet, tearing sound from outside.
He froze, his swords held in a ready stance.
It sounded like a wild animal.
'A bear, maybe? They sometimes wandered down from the mountains.'
Then came the scream.
It wasn't an animal.
It was human.
It was cut short with a sickening crunch.
Kenji's heart hammered against his ribs.
He crept towards the main door, his knuckles white on the handles of his shinai.
He slid the door open just a crack, his breath catching in his throat.
There was a man standing over the body of one of the senior students.
The man was... wrong.
His skin was pale grey in the moonlight, his eyes glowed with a faint, predatory light, and his mouth was stretched into a grin that was far too wide, his teeth far too sharp.
Blood dripped from his chin.
The man's head snapped towards the dojo, his glowing eyes locking directly onto Kenji's.
"Oh?" the creature purred, its voice a low, guttural rumble.
"Another little mongrel is awake."
Before Kenji could even scream, the creature lunged.
The paper door exploded inward in a shower of splinters and torn paper.
There was no time to think.
No time to process the impossible creature that had just burst into his family's dojo.
There was only instinct.
As the creature lunged, its claws extended like sharpened daggers, Kenji did the only thing he knew how to do: he moved.
He dropped and rolled, the demon's claws tearing through the space where his head had been a second before.
The wind from the swipe was a cold caress on his cheek.
He came up on one knee, his two bamboo swords held in a desperate, trembling guard.
"Ooh, you're fast," the demon rasped, its head twisting at an unnatural angle to keep its glowing eyes fixed on him.
It licked the blood from its claws with a long, grey tongue.
"I love it when the food plays. It makes the meal so much more satisfying."
Kenji's mind was a mess.
What is that thing? What the FUCK is that thing?! His entire body screamed at him to run, to hide, to curl up and die.
But a dozen years of relentless, brutal training had carved a different response into his very bones.
The creature lunged again.
But this time, Kenji was ready.
He didn't try to block it.
He moved with the attack, deflecting the clawed hand with his left shinai while simultaneously thrusting the right one forward, aiming for the creature's eye.
The bamboo sword connected.
And snapped in half against the demon's eyeball with a useless crack.
The demon didn't even flinch.
It just blinked slowly, the broken shard of bamboo falling to the floor.
It grinned, which was a truly horrifying sight.
"How, cute."
It backhanded him.
The blow was like being hit by a speeding cart.
Kenji flew across the room, his world become a painful blur, before slamming into a weapon rack.
The impact knocked the wind out of him, and he collapsed to the floor in a heap, his ears ringing.
"KENJI!"
His father's roar was like the sound of thunder.
Takeo Miyamoto exploded into the dojo, not with the cheap bamboo of a training hall, but with the cold, hard steel of his ancestors.
In his hands were his daisho—the matched katana and wakizashi that had been in their family for hundred of years.
The moonlight glinted off the polished blades.
"Get away from my son," Takeo snarled, his voice a low growl of pure menace.
****
Miyamoto Takeo's POV
Fear.
For the first time since he was a child, Takeo felt the icy grip of true fear.
Not for himself, but for his son.
He saw Kenji crumpled on the floor, and a primal rage he hadn't felt in decades surged through him.
The creature before him was an abomination, a mockery of life.
But it was also an opponent, a strong opponent at that.
And Takeo knew how to deal with opponents.
He didn't wait for it to speak.
He moved, his feet gliding across the wooden floor.
He was no longer a teacher or a father.
He was the head of the Miyamoto clan, the master of Niten Ichi-ryu.
He was a swordsman.
He flowed around the demon's wild, clumsy swipes, his blades a silver whirlwind.
He was water, he was wind, he was the void.
The demon was a rock, all brute strength and mindless aggression.
An opening.
The demon overextended a lunge.
Takeo pivoted, his wakizashi parrying the demon's arm while his katana drew a perfect, clean arc.
The blade was a whisper as it sliced through the creature's neck.
It was a perfect cut.
A killing blow.
The demon's head flew from its shoulders, tumbling through the air before landing with a wet thud on the floor.
Takeo stood over the headless body, his breath hissing between his teeth.
He felt a grim satisfaction.
He had protected his home.
He had protected his son.
Then, the headless body began to twitch.
To his absolute horror, the headless torso rose to its feet.
The severed neck bubbled and writhed, and with a sickening squelch of regenerating flesh, the head reattached itself.
The demon turned to face him, its neck cracking as it settled back into place.
It touched the faint line on its throat and laughed.
A deep, mocking, soul-chilling laugh.
"A mere sword?" it chuckled.
"You thought you could kill me... with a sword? Oh, you humans are just the most adorable little things."
Takeo's blood ran cold.
It was impossible.
Unnatural.
His blade, an extension of his own soul, had failed.
****
Miyamoto Kenji's POV
Kenji watched the scene with his eyes, as his father—the greatest swordsman he had ever known, a man he considered invincible—took a step back.
The look on his face was one of pure, unadulterated shock.
The demon, enjoying the moment, began to walk towards his father.
"That was a good swing, I'll admit," it said conversationally.
"But it's useless. You can't kill me. But I can kill you. I can eat you. And I'm going to start with the little one."
Its eyes flicked back to Kenji.
In that moment, something inside his father broke.
The shock in his eyes was replaced by a terrifying, absolute resolve.
"Kenji," Takeo said, his voice dangerously calm.
He didn't take his eyes off the demon. "Get your mother. Run. Take the path through the woods to the east. Do not stop. Do not look back."
"What? No! I'm not leaving you!" Kenji screamed, scrambling to his feet.
"THAT IS AN ORDER!" his father roared, before his voice dropped to a pained whisper.
"Your arrogance was my failing as a teacher. My love for you is my strength as a father. Now go. Live. Let that be my final lesson."
Takeo took a deep breath.
And then he charged.
He didn't attack the demon's neck.
He abandoned all pretense of form and grace and drove his katana straight through the demon's chest, pinning it in place.
The demon roared in surprise and pain, its claws digging into his father's shoulders.
"GO, KENJI! NOW!"
Tears streamed down Kenji's face, mixing with the blood from a cut on his cheek.
He couldn't move.
He was frozen, watching the demon tear into his father, watching his hero sacrifice himself.
His father met his eyes one last time.
There was no fear in them.
Only love.
That look broke the spell.
Kenji turned and ran, stumbling out of the dojo and towards the main house, his father's screams echoing behind him, a sound that would be burned into his memory for the rest of his life.
ps : what do you think ? is it decent enough ?