Chapter Thirty Sen #2
fall with him into a dark sea. She would die standing beside her father, and then she would rest.
She could hear the ocean inside her mind once more, could feel its frigid waves kissing her feet, its brine scraping off her
dead skin, peeling her down to the bone. She was the sea and all its secrets. She was a child reborn in salt and sand. She
was a warrior fighting for nothing at all.
“Thank you, Lee,” she said quietly.
Then she turned to her father, bowed, and placed her katana carefully on the ground. She rose to her feet, meeting her father’s
startled expression.
“I refuse,” she said.
For a moment, her father stared unblinkingly at her, as if he hadn’t heard her words. Then at last, his gaze dropped down
to the sword he had given her back when he’d believed she was strong, the sword he’d thought represented her soul.
But Sen’s soul was not her father’s to give.
There was no point in raising a blade to her father, for she could never bring herself to harm him. Instead, she stood unarmed
before him. She had sworn to die on her feet.
“You refuse me?” he echoed, his voice low. “You’ve chosen a foreigner over your father?”
Sen smiled and shook her head, blood running hot down her chin. Even now, he didn’t understand. He had trained her to prepare
her mind to die in battle, and at last, she was ready.
“I’ve chosen myself,” she said evenly. “And you are not my father.”
His expression slid into a frown, his dark shadow stretching longer across the grass, but Sen spoke over him.
“My father died in the rebellion,” she said.
“He died the moment you decided to return home instead of spilling your own blood with honor. He died when you punished me and my mother for not following the rules that you yourself have violated. My father is gone, and the creature that crawled home in his place is a coward .”
With one sharp movement, her father drew his katana. He was done listening.
Sen held her breath as he took a step forward, the sunlight catching on the keen edge of his blade as he kicked her sword
aside. His eyes darted across her form, as if trying to decide where best to cut her. Would he be merciful and cut off her
head first? Or would he cut her abdomen and let her bleed out slowly?
Sen closed her eyes. She heard Lee moving in the dirt behind her, but he wouldn’t be able to help her now. Her father didn’t
miss.
She was four years old again, it was summer in the Shimazu garden, and her uncle was pushing her on a rope swing while her
father stood in front of the blue hydrangeas. On the count of three, let go of the rope, and your father will catch you , her uncle said.
Her father raised his blade above his head with both hands—a vertical cut. He would split Sen from her skull straight down
to her toes.
One! her uncle said as she swung high above the lotus pond and its orange koi, her feet kicking at the sky.
“I regret many things,” Sen’s father said, tightening his grip on the katana. “But my greatest regret of all is that I didn’t
do this sooner.”
Two! her uncle said. Sen looked down at her father on the grass. He had his arms outstretched, ready for her when she fell.
“Chichiue,” she whispered. “Please.”
Three! Sen let go of the swing, weightless as she sailed across the cloudless blue sky. Her father caught her under the arms and swung her in a dizzy circle, then clutched her close to his heart.
A shot echoed across the yard.
Sen opened her eyes just as her father jolted at the sound, turning to look over his shoulder.
On the other side of the house, her mother screamed.
Sen’s father whirled around, eyes flashing with alarm. Even her father hadn’t been ready for the day of his death, it seemed.
He ran off toward the house, toward her mother and brothers, the family he still cared for.
It was the same feeling as when he’d looked away so Torazo could slay her like a hare. She no longer deserved his rage, for
she was no longer his daughter. To him, she was no different from the trees that guarded the property, the lightning bugs
that swarmed the windows at night, the solid wood and rusted nails of the house behind the sword ferns. She was no one, and
so she was free.
Sen turned to Lee, who was struggling to rise to his feet. She knelt beside him and grabbed his shoulder to turn him over,
taking in his sickly pale face, his gray lips.
“He hurt you,” Sen said, eyeing the bandage on his hand.
He shook his head quickly. “Wasn’t him,” he said, his words slurred as he leaned into her.
The sounds of shouting and footsteps came from the edge of the clearing.
“We have to go,” Sen said. “I’ll find somewhere safe for you, then I have to find my brothers.”
Lee groaned and clutched her robes with his good hand, but she lifted him to his feet and dragged him onto the porch. He held
her tight as they walked up the stairs, around the porch, back to Sen’s room.
“I can’t go back,” Lee said when they reached the door, suddenly pushing back against Sen as if he’d only just realized her
intentions. “My dad called the police. I can’t go back to him.”
“If you don’t go, you’ll die here,” Sen said, flinching at the sound of gunfire in the yard.
“So will you,” Lee said, tightening his grip on her sleeve. Tears cut through the dried blood on his cheeks.
“I was always going to die here, Lee,” she said. “This is where I need to be. You never would have met me if I hadn’t died
here.”
Lee shook his head, letting out a low sound of frustration. He was leaning fully into Sen now, his legs trembling. She tensed
as her mother screamed again. She had to go help her family now.
“I’m sorry, Lee,” she said, lowering him to the ground. She shoved her dresser aside and opened the door. When Lee made no
move to leave, she pushed him through.
He was weak and dizzy from blood loss, so he fell back with little resistance. He called out for her, but she slammed the
door closed and shoved her dresser in front of it.
I’ll meet him again one day , she told herself. The way back to Lee is through death.
The thought steadied her enough that she managed to wipe her tears on her sleeve and draw her sword, rushing out the back
door into the yard.
Her father was attacking a group of soldiers by the gate, blood already staining half his face. Still, he cut their heads
off as easily as bamboo shoots. To her left, her mother screamed as two soldiers tied her up, forcing her face into the dirt.
Kotaro sat in the middle of the yard, crying and pounding his fists into the ground. Sen ran toward him, scanning the yard
for Seijiro.
Another gunshot tore through the yard, and Kotaro exploded.
His head burst open, red chunks of flesh and brain spraying across Sen’s face. He flopped forward, his cries silent, blood
pooling fast beneath him into the pale dirt.
Seijiro screamed and hopped down from a tree, running toward Kotaro, but another shot rang out and his abdomen burst, blood and organs spilling past his fingers.
He fell to his knees, a surge of blood rushing past his lips before another shot tore through his neck and he flopped forward, his head hanging on by only a thin tendon.
Sen stumbled back. This had to be another one of her horrible dreams. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the ruined remains
of her brothers, even when nausea nearly brought her to her knees.
Even though she swore to die on her feet, she found herself drawing back into the shadows, a hand clapped over her mouth to
hold back the scream that was building inside her.
Only an hour ago she had thought she didn’t fear death. But now she could imagine her flesh unwrapping itself from the force
of a bullet, could imagine in exquisite detail the pain of bones splintering away.
Footsteps rounded the side of the house and Sen threw herself beneath the porch, rolling into the wet soil and darkness. The
soldiers’ footsteps thundered above as they tore through the house.
This is why I became a ghost , Sen thought, a coldness settling through her bones. Because I trained my whole life to be a hero, but in the end, I died a coward , just like my father.
She bit her fist and cried, her tears wetting the soil as she curled up in a ball around the sword she had never deserved.
Perhaps she was already dead and this was her hell—to watch her family die around her.
Then, from deep below, something began to claw its way up through the dirt.