Year: 1708
Location: The Isolated Village, Northern Territories
In the dimly lit room, surrounded by the scent of old books, John's eyes were drawn to one in particular—Sasaki Kojiro. The old woman, Alina, had picked it for him, insisting it was the perfect place to begin.
John, now sixteen, had spent most of his life within these walls, learning from the woman who had taken him in as a child. For ten years, she had tried to help him overcome the challenges of his mind, but results were scarce. Now, he was determined to prove himself.
He began reading, his fingers tracing the delicate ink on the pages. Hours passed, yet nothing changed. He felt no connection, no understanding beyond the words themselves. Frustration grew within him as he moved to close the book, but then—a single paragraph caught his eye:
Sasaki Kojiro was the first samurai to use his imagination as a weapon and as a strong advantage, visualizing and simulating countless strategies simply by opening his mind and granting it freedom.
John felt as if he had been struck.
"I never gave my mind its freedom," he muttered under his breath.
"YES, YOU NEVER DID!" Alina's voice rang from the hallway, startling him. She had been listening.
Determined, John reopened the book, willing himself to see more than just ink and paper.
As he turned the first page, something changed. His surroundings dissolved, the scent of old books replaced by something sharper — iron, sweat, and open air.
He was there.
Feudal Japan stretched before him like a world that had always existed just beneath his skin. He stood among it, not as a ghost watching from a distance, but as someone who belonged. He could feel the uneven ground beneath his feet, hear the distant clash of steel, smell smoke rising from a village he had never seen but somehow recognized.
A young Kojiro moved through this world with quiet intensity — unremarkable at a glance, extraordinary in motion. John followed him through years of relentless discipline, feeling every loss as if it were his own, every adaptation as if his own mind had made it. Kojiro didn't just train his body. He trained the space between thought and action, collapsing it until there was nothing left but pure response.
Then came Ganryujima.
John felt the weight of it before he understood it. The island was small, the sea indifferent. Musashi arrived late — deliberately late — and John felt Kojiro's stillness in the face of that provocation like a hand pressed against his own chest. Not anger. Calculation. Kojiro had already fought this duel a thousand times in his mind before his blade ever moved.
It wasn't enough. But the loss wasn't the point.
The point was the mind that had made it possible.
John exhaled slowly as the vision receded, the dimly lit room returning around him like a tide coming back in. His hands were trembling slightly. He hadn't noticed when that started.
He had done it. He had truly seen beyond the pages.
Overwhelmed with excitement, he turned to Alina. "THANK YOU!" he shouted as he rummaged through the stacks of books, eager to find more stories of legends.
Then, a thought struck him—the book that had fallen from the window the day before. He had forgotten about it in his frustration.
John searched everywhere. He overturned boxes, checked every inch of his room, but the book was gone.
"MOM! HAVE YOU SEEN THE BOOK I THREW FROM THE WINDOW?" he called as he rushed downstairs.
Alina, calmly stirring a pot over the fire, shook her head. "Are you sure you didn't lose it somewhere?"
John's heart pounded. The woman… the one who got hit by it!
He didn't know her name, where she lived—nothing. But he had to find her.
Without thinking, he bolted toward the door.
"You… are… free… to give up on your dream."
Alina's words stopped him cold. The challenge. The rules. His dream of leaving the village. He had nearly forgotten.
His body froze, caught between curiosity and discipline. Slowly, he turned to face Alina. His eyes moved from the door to Alina and back again, just once, before he stilled. He hadn't slept the night before—he had been practicing, pushing his mind beyond its limits.
Then, his body gave in. John collapsed where he stood, slipping into deep, dreamless sleep.
The Next Morning:
Alina had left at dawn, searching for the woman who had taken the book. When John was awake, he found something unexpected—drops of blood leading to his bedside, and next to them, the missing book.
He picked it up without hesitation, his mind too focused to wonder where the blood had come from.
Its title read: Kong Qiu.