Authors: Brandon Chen
Yata was at Keimaro’s side and was
examining him to make sure that he wasn’t hurt. “Holy crap, Kei! You scared me!”
he exclaimed, out of breath. “After a commotion like that, the guards are bound
to come somewhere around here. We’d better get going. I’ll take the girl with
me since I live alone. Hopefully when she wakes up, she can answer some
questions. Come over first thing tomorrow morning, okay?”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Keimaro said, still
sitting on the ground.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You seem like you’re still in one piece,”
Yata said. He finally spotted the scrape from the tiger’s swipe and frowned. “That’s
a nasty cut you’ve got there. We don’t know anything about that creature. I
suggest you find out if that’s poison because…. I mean, you’ll need to get it
treated if it is.”
“If I was poisoned, how would I explain to
the doctor how I was infected with such a poison?” Keimaro muttered, slowly
pushing himself to his feet. His leg erupted in pain, and he almost toppled
over. Luckily, he hopped a foot and steadied himself, shaking his head in
disbelief. He turned to look over his shoulder at the area where the creature
had been only minutes before. His heart was beating rapidly against his chest,
and he gulped. “What the hell was that thing?”
“I don’t know,” Yata muttered. “That’s one
of the reasons why we aren’t ready to leave the village yet, I guess. We will
be fine. We just need to train ourselves to be stronger in case we encounter
one of those things whenever we do decide to leave the village.” He lifted the
girl over his shoulder casually and nodded with a reassuring smile at Keimaro. “Go
on; go home. The longer we stay out here, the higher the chance of someone
finding us with the girl. I’ll take her to my house. Come over first thing
tomorrow.”
“Got it,” Keimaro said and turned from
Yata, beginning to walk his normal way home. A part of him wanted to rush after
his new friend so that he wouldn’t be alone anymore, but he knew that right now
he had to get home. It was getting late. Turning back to look at the direction that
the beast had run in, Keimaro exhaled. He was alive; that was good. And
something else had happened. Something exciting. Every day had been the same
within the small village of Bakaara, but tomorrow was going to be different. He
rubbed the back of his neck in disbelief and sighed. Man, how were they going
to keep this girl a secret? Everyone in the village already knew each other.
They would need to make up a story—and even so, her clothes were unrecognizable.
Someone would clearly find out that she is foreigner. He ran a hand through his
hair as he walked through the village. Since night had fallen upon Bakaara, it
seemed that hardly anyone was in the streets. It was common for families to
spend time with each other at nighttime, except for a few of the guards who
would switch shifts.
The market square’s center was surrounded
by many different wooden buildings that had been built—and rebuilt—from the
original wood that had inhabited the land, since no one could leave for more
resources. Keimaro walked on the tiled ground past merchants’ tents and
caravans filled with fruits and vegetables from the farms. These were locked
for the night and packed away to keep them safe from thieves. Though, not many
people had the guts to steal. The village itself only had a population of
around ten thousand. That might’ve seemed like a lot for a small village, but
everyone was spread out over vast fields of farmland. Bakaara was mostly a
farm-driven society, with the villagers surviving off of grown foods. There was
only one area on the entirety of Bakaara’s grounds that somewhat resembled a
city, and that was located in the center of all of Bakaara. The land, however,
was nothing in comparison to how vast the empires were. Bakaara was nothing but
a speck in comparison to a kingdom like Athens.
Keimaro continued walking past the markets
toward the long, stretching farmlands that filled the rest of Bakaara. Finally,
he locked his eyes onto his house, a small cottage in the distance in the center
of a reasonable amount of farmland. The crops had already begun to grow,
filling their yard and towering over Keimaro.
Keimaro walked up the path and opened the
door slowly to find his mother, father, and younger sister sitting at the
dinner table. He broke the silence with his footsteps and plopped in a chair
silently, exchanging glares with his father. He looked down and saw beans, rice,
and corn on his plate. There was never any meat because the amount of animals
they bred was limited. Meat was considered a luxury that was eaten only on
special occasions. But Keimaro knew that the elders probably had meat every
single night.
“Dinner is ready, Kei!” Mai, his four-year-old
sister, exclaimed. She had shorter black hair like Keimaro with small, gleaming
dark eyes. She sat upon her mother’s lap with a bright smile on her face, as if
she were having the time of her life. She waved her spoon about cutely until
their mother calmed her down by guiding her hand to the food.
“Where have you been?” his father asked,
his eyes on his food as he began to spoon some corn into his mouth. His black
beard had been trimmed to stubble. His blue eyes flickered across the table at
Keimaro’s mother, and he cleared his throat. “You’ve been coming home later
than usual these past couple of weeks.”
“I went out for a walk.”
“Where to?”
“Since when is it any of your business
where I walk to?”
“Since I became your father,” his father
snapped loudly, turning his head abruptly to his son. “Now, when I ask you
where you were, you’ll tell me. Were you doing something suspicious, Kei?”
“Why would I have any reason to do
something suspicious?” Keimaro muttered, running a hand through his hair as he
sighed. “There’s nothing to do in this damned village anyway.”
“Where did that come from?” his father
said, raising an eyebrow.
Keimaro shrugged and shoved some peas into
his mouth, chewing slowly before finally swallowing hard. He began to speak
without making eye contact with his father. “Father, will you teach me how to
fight with a sword?”
Silence reigned at the table. The only
sounds were the crackling and popping from the fireplace. When Keimaro peeked
from the corner of his eye, he saw his father frowning at him. The older man
put his fork down on the wooden table and scoffed. “I’ve already been teaching
you how to defend yourself with your fists. Why would you need to learn with a
sword?”
“I was walking around the perimeter of the
barrier today,” Keimaro said simply, “and I saw a beast outside of the barrier.
I knew that he couldn’t get in, but I was still afraid. I couldn’t move. I
simply watched as the beast bashed into the barrier over and over again….”
“What the hell were you doing at the
barrier?”
Keimaro ignored his father’s words and
continued with his fake story. “It made me think, what would I do if the
barrier weren’t there? Would I run, only to be hunted down again? This barrier
won’t be here forever, father! Don’t you understand that? If I don’t learn how
to fight, then I will never be able to face the horrors of the world! Whether
it be another mage that takes down this barrier himself or some psychotic fool that
assassinates all of the elders of the village, the barrier will eventually come
down!” He slammed his hand on the table and glared at his father with a look
filled with confidence. “Do you simply expect for me to sit here and watch my
family’s life be put in jeopardy when those monsters finally do break in? When
it comes down to it, nothing is going to protect us except ourselves. You can’t
place all your faith in the damn invisible shield that surrounds us! Everyone
in this village looks around blindly and accepts life in this miserable,
isolated, piece-of-crap land that we own. Hasn’t anyone else wanted to see the
outside? The barrier will come down someday, father. When it does, wouldn’t you
want me to be able to defend myself against the cruelty of the world?”
“The barrier is here so that we can be
isolated from the cruelty that is the world,” his father snapped, shaking his
head in disbelief. “You have no idea what’s out there, Kei! If the barrier ever
broke down … you would die no matter what. Even if I taught you how to fight—”
“Then you’d prefer me to just accept my
death rather than fight back against the forces that would take my life?” Keimaro
snapped.
His father was silent for a moment and
closed his eyes, massaging his temples as he tried to calm down. “I refuse to
teach you a useless technique that will only get you into trouble and, even
worse, give you another way to hurt yourself. Leave me to eat in peace. At
least allow me that luxury in my own home.”
Keimaro ignored that last comment and
continued to shovel food into his mouth forcefully before he finally picked up
his plate and brought it to the sink. He washed the dishes that night in
solitude, before finally walking upstairs to his room. He heard his mother
urging Mai to take a bath, but the young girl kept complaining, saying that she
would do it in the morning. Keimaro smiled.
He passed by his younger sister, who was
sitting outside her room with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was
pouting after having the miniature argument with her mother, but her eyes
glistened when she saw Keimaro. The older brother squatted down in front of her
to pat her head. “Hey, Mai. How was your day today, hmm?” he asked with a warm
smile.
Mai was rubbing an eye with her fist,
completely exhausted. She looked as if she were ready to fall asleep right on
the spot. “It was good. I aced my test at school today! The teacher said I was
the brightest in the class,” she said with a yawn.
Keimaro lifted Mai into the air and held
her in his arms as he began to walk to her room. “Is that so? Well, you’d
better get a good night’s rest, okay, Mai? Keep doing well in school. And don’t
fight with Mom. She’s just doing what’s best for you,” he said with a smile as
he placed Mai down in her bed and pulled the blankets over her. He watched Mai
snuggle up with a teddy bear that Keimaro had bought her for her birthday. It
was made from leftover scraps of resources that the village hadn’t used. It
wasn’t the best present, but she cherished it like it was the greatest thing
she had ever received. Keimaro didn’t know if what he had said at the dinner
table was true, but if the monsters really ever did break in, then he would
never forgive himself if he didn’t have the power to protect Mai. He watched as
Mai fell asleep within a minute and turned his head to the hallway as he heard
the floor creak behind him.
“Kei, I want to speak to you,” his father
said from the doorway.
Keimaro stood up straight and walked to the
hallway, closing Mai’s door silently before turning to address his father.
Before he could speak, his father said, “Your
teacher told me about your little incident at school today. What do you think
you were doing? Fighting with Buu again? Why would you do that? I thought that
we agreed that you shouldn’t fight.”
“Yeah?” Keimaro muttered, not meeting his
father’s eyes. “So, I should just let him beat me every single time that I go
to school? Are you so oblivious that you don’t even notice the bruises and
beatings that I receive every day? Or is it that you’re like the rest of the
idiotic adults of this village and don’t care if I get beaten every day and
teased? You wouldn’t even care if I died, I bet.”
His father stared at him with a look of
shock and disbelief. One hand balled up into a tight fist at his side as he put
the other hand on the wall with a snarl. “Look, Keimaro—”
“Look what? It’s true. Not to mention, if I
learn to fight, I won’t just be able to protect Mai, I will be able to defend
myself against the evils that exist within this stupid cage that we live in,”
Keimaro growled, looking into his father’s eyes with a convinced glare. “I know
that you adopted me as a child, father, but that gives you no right to treat me
the way you do. That gives you no reason to accept the fact that your own son
was almost beaten to death today. Are you going to look the other way again? Or
are you actually going to do something? The teachers all turn the other way as
if nothing happened. There is no authority. There is no one that will stop
these bullies from harming me. So, it’s either that you prevent these bullies
from harming me, or I’ll do it myself. Teach me how to defend myself.”
His father stood there and closed his eyes.
There was nothing for him to say. He was unable to tell Keimaro why the bullies
were harming him. He was powerless in this situation. “I’ll teach you. My style
of combat is unique. It is unlike any style in the globe. I explored much of this
world back in my day before the wards around the village were put up. But, my
fighting style is very difficult. No one else has mastered its speed and
accuracy. Don’t expect to be able to protect yourself in a month or even six
months. It’ll take a year merely to grasp the concept of my style. Perhaps two
years to begin to master the way of the sword, and that is only if you train
every single day with maximum effort.”
“You know I would do anything to obtain the
strength to protect Mai and me,” Keimaro said.
“Then we begin tomorrow,” his father said
simply before walking past him in the hallway. He left Keimaro standing there
alone, watching the shadows dance around the candles on the wall.