Chapter 3
Yoshi
Haru approached like I was some wild animal that might bolt.
And maybe I was.
Ever since this thing had awakened inside me, my body felt like it belonged to someone else—something else.
I caught Kaneko’s eye where he stood at the ring’s edge, watching with that intense focus he got when he was worried.
“Now then,” the Prince said, raising his bokken. “Let’s see if we can help you find your balance, young colt.”
Young colt.
I wanted to be insulted, but it was too accurate. My legs felt too long, my arms moved too fast, and every time the power surged through me, I lost all sense of where my body ended and the world began.
“The first thing,” Haru said, circling me slowly, “is to stop fighting yourself. Show me the third form—but at quarter speed.”
“I can’t control the speed,” I protested. “It just happens.”
“Try.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Esumi will help.”
Haru’s blade swung, forcing me to reply, to block, to attack in return. I tried to pull back, but the power surged. My palm connected with his chest, and he flew backward like a child’s toy.
The power raged within me. I felt it snaking beneath my skin, like living arteries carving paths of their own.
“Yoshi, breathe,” Esumi said as he extended a hand toward Haru to help him stand. “This will take practice.” Then he moved around to stand behind me. “I’ll call the count,” Esumi said. “Move only on my count. One movement per count. Ready?”
I nodded, raising my bokken.
“One,” Esumi called.
I tried to move slowly, but the moment I began, that strange fire filled my muscles. My arm blurred forward, the bokken whistling through air faster than thought.
I stumbled, overcorrected, and nearly fell.
“Again,” Haru said patiently. “This time, breathe out as you move, one long, steady breath.”
“You can do this,” Kaneko called from where he and a few other students had assembled to watch. “Remember what we practiced—finding your center.”
“One,” Esumi called again.
I breathed out and tried to move.
Too fast. Always too fast.
We continued like that as the sun climbed higher. Other students came to train in adjacent rings, but Master Ito barked at them to stay well clear of ours. I was vaguely aware of others watching and whispering, but Haru and Esumi never wavered in their focus.
“Better,” the Prince said after my twentieth attempt. “Did you feel that? You held it for half a heartbeat longer.”
Had I?
Everything jumbled together—the attempts, the corrections, the patient voices guiding me through each failure. Kaneko occasionally offered encouragement, his presence an anchor when I felt like I might fly apart.
“Once more,” Esumi said. “But this time, I want you to imagine you’re moving through honey. Think of the air as thick and resistant.”
I closed my eyes, pictured myself submerged in honey. When Esumi called the count, I moved, and for one blessed moment, my arm traveled at something approaching normal speed, at least it felt normal. Then the power surged, and I found myself spinning across the ring again.
“Progress,” Haru said, helping me up. “Real progress.”
The noon bell rang. Master Ito dismissed the other students for the midday meal. They filed away reluctantly, clearly wanting to continue watching the Prince train the strange boy who moved like lightning and fell like rain.
Master Ito stepped forward. “Prince Haru-sama, the meal—”
“We will continue a bit longer,” Haru said, not looking away from me. “If you do not mind, Master Ito.”
The master’s face went through several expressions—none pleasant—before settling on resignation. “As Prince Haru-sama wishes.” He bowed deeply and departed, leaving the four of us alone in the training yard.
My stomach growled, but I didn’t care.
For the first time since this curse—or gift, or whatever it was—had manifested, someone was actually trying to help me control it rather than suppress it.
“Now,” Prince Haru said, “let’s try something different. Instead of slowing down, let’s work with your speed. Esumi, standing patterns?”
They positioned themselves on either side of me, bokken raised.
For the next hour, they called out targets—high, low, center, behind—and I tried to hit them in sequence.
At first, I was a disaster, spinning wildly between them, but gradually, something began to click.
It wasn’t control exactly, more like a growing awareness.
I began to feel where my body was in space, even when moving at impossible speeds.
“Yes!” Esumi exclaimed when I managed to complete an entire sequence without falling. “Just like that!”
“You’re doing it, Yosh!” Kaneko stepped closer to the ring. “You’re actually doing it!”
We continued until the sun passed her peak. I was drenched in sweat, and my arms trembled from exhaustion—but for the first time in weeks, I felt hope.
“I think,” Esumi said slowly, watching me struggle through another pattern, “he needs to see it.”
Haru frowned. “See what?”
“What it looks like when someone who has mastered this gift uses it.” Esumi gave the Prince a meaningful look. “He needs to know what is possible, what he may be capable of once he learns control.”
“Esumi, I don’t think—”
“Show him, Haru.” Esumi’s voice was soft but insistent. “Show them both. They need to know he’s not alone.”
For a moment that felt like forever, something passed between them, a silent conversation I couldn’t interpret.
Finally, Haru nodded.
“Step out of the ring, Yoshi,” he said quietly.
I obeyed, confused, moving to stand next to Kaneko as the Prince and Esumi faced each other in the center. They bowed, raised their bokken, and then—
Haru vanished.
“Gods above,” Kaneko breathed beside me.
No, he hadn’t vanished.
He’d moved.
But gods damn, it happened so quickly that my eyes couldn’t track him.
One moment, he was standing there in the center of the ring bowing toward Esumi; the next, he was behind Esumi, bokken already swinging. Esumi barely spun with guard up in time, but then the Prince was gone again, reappearing to Esumi’s left, striking and vanishing and striking again.
“Do you see that?” I whispered to Kaneko, unable to look away. “He’s not even—it’s like he’s stepping between heartbeats.”
“Between moments,” Kaneko agreed, his voice filled with awe. “Like time itself bends for him.”
Haru’s bokken sang as it cut through air, a high keening that hung in the space between movements.
He was everywhere and nowhere, a blur of motion that resolved into focus for split seconds before dissolving again.
It was like watching smoke fight a shadow, if smoke could wield a sword with deadly precision.
“Look at his footwork.” Kaneko gripped my arm. “He’s not even disturbing the dirt. How is that possible?”
“Control,” I murmured. “Perfect control. Every movement he is exactly where he means to be.”
Esumi defended desperately, his own considerable skill pushed to its absolute limit. He anticipated, predicted, and moved before Prince Haru appeared, but it wasn’t enough. The Prince was simply too fast, too unpredictable, too . . . other.
“He’s beautiful,” Kaneko said softly, then caught himself. “I mean, the technique—the form is—”
“No, you’re right,” I said. “It is beautiful, like watching a storm dance.”
“Or a god walking among mortals,” Kaneko added.
The demonstration lasted perhaps a minute, but it felt like hours. When Haru finally stepped back and lowered his bokken, he wasn’t even breathing hard. Esumi, on the other hand, doubled over with sweat pouring off him like rain.
“Gods above,” Esumi gasped. “I forget . . . every time . . . how fast you really are.”
Prince Haru turned to me. His eyes held something I’d never seen in them before: a depth or understanding—or a recognition.
“This is what you will learn,” he said simply. “It is what you will become, Yoshi. I see it in you. I feel it.”
“You’re . . . like me?” I whispered.
“I am what you are becoming,” he corrected.
“I do not understand how you are so blessed, as this mahou runs only in Imperial veins. And yet, here we are.” He walked to the edge of the ring and dropped his bokken in the rack, pausing a long moment before turning back toward us.
“Your gift feels stronger than mine was at your age. Wilder, yes, but stronger.”
“But how? Why?”
“I do not know the why. As for the how . . .” He smiled, and for the first time since arriving at Suwa Temple, I saw Prince Haru not as the disappointing third son or the Emperor’s castoff, but as something else entirely.
Something powerful. Something dangerous.
“We will figure that out together if you are willing to put in the work.”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Yes, please.”
Kaneko bumped my shoulder. “You’re going to be like that,” he said quietly. “Like a hero from the old stories.”
“Good. Then we start tomorrow at dawn, before your regular training.” Haru glanced at Esumi, who had recovered enough to stand straight. “We will need to be discreet. This gift . . . not everyone understands it. Most will fear it. They may . . . come to fear you.”
“They certainly wouldn’t approve of anyone outside Haru’s family possessing it,” Esumi added quietly.
“Everyone saw when this thing woke up,” I said, unsure how to describe the spectacle of magic exploding from my frail body a few weeks earlier. No one had seen that coming—especially not me.
“They saw something, but I doubt they know what it was. Few truly understand.” Haru dipped his head. “For now, this stays between us four. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Kaneko and I said in unison.
“Go get something to eat,” Haru said. “You will need your strength for tomorrow.”
As we bowed and stepped away, I caught bits of Haru and Esumi’s conversation that followed.
Esumi whispered, “That was the right thing . . .”
“I hope so,” Haru replied. “He reminds me of . . . lost . . . powerful . . . not understanding why.”
“You . . . father and brother.”
“Now Yoshi has us.”