Chapter 19, Part 2
1090 Words
Whenever he had time, little Kai liked to look out into the wide, green valley just beyond the clan’s hidden mountain sanctuary. It was lush and heavily forested area, covered with varying shades and types of green foliage from many species of trees and all sorts of plants. Every spring and summer, flowers provided breath-taking visual contrasts as they bloomed in various vivid shades and hues that stood out from the greenery. In autumn, the leaves turn to fabulous shades of yellow, orange and red, making the valley look like it was ablaze with fire. Even in the dead of winter, the valley covered in pure white snow drifts is a strange and haunting, but calming sight.
There were slender but towering bamboo groves, groups of camphor and lacquer trees, giant oaks, lofty pine trees, flowering wisteria trees, willow trees with leaves that trailed like feathers. Here and there were elm trees, groups of paulownia shrubs, massive cedar trees, maples, flowering cherry trees and thorny thickets.
It was a wondrous view that never failed to put the little orphan’s mind and spirit at ease. Sometimes, on a clear and sunny day, he could even make out the faint gray outline of a distant seashore.
Gorō, the shinobi who took him under his wing and was charged to train him into the ways of the Yamanoha assassin said that was where they found him.
Fortunately, the sky was like a glass ceiling made of pure blue crystal with only a few of the faintest wisps of cotton-like clouds scudding across it. In addition, the weather was a perfect textbook example of a fine spring day.
As usual, the boy sat down on a grassy patch and quietly gazed at the scenery, his eyes in particular fixed on that seashore where he supposedly came from.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Kai gave a start. He suddenly found his sensei sitting next to him. The boy heard not the slightest sound or movement that could have alerted his presence or even his approach.
“Sensei! I … I was just, um … about to go back to, to … the practice hall,” Kai stammered. His face was a bit red with embarrassment at having been discovered playing truant.
“Hmph! Drop the excuses, kid. It doesn’t take a genius to guess where you’d be,” the shinobi replied gruffly.
Kai looked down at his lap, wrapped up in that smothering and uncomfortable feeling that only comes with guilt at being found out, as well as not a small amount of resentment at finding an outsider stumbling upon his personal and private secret.
The shinobi lightly rapped his knuckles on the sullen boy’s head. “Moping about the fact I’m already in on your little secret won’t help you, Kai. Not to mention that you’re just wasting your time.”
But he still moped silently, keeping his head bowed. His lips curled in irritation.
“Fine. Have it your way, brat,” Gorō grunted. He got up and coolly turned to walk back to the cliffside entrance. “I’ll tell on your martial arts teacher, Master Daigo, that you’ve been playing hooky, eh?”
In a panic, Kai jumped up and ran towards Gorō. Stopping in front of him, he knelt and bowed until his forehead touched the ground before the man who raised him, but whom he looked on as more of a mentor rather than a parent.
“Sensei, I beg of you. Please.”
“Beg what of me, boy?” Gorō retorted.
“Don’t tell Master Daigo where I’ve been.”
“Bah! You make such a fuss out of an insignificant thing, Kai! It’s not like you violated a major rule!” the shinobi scoffed. “I don’t think Master Daigo will kill you for that - yet.”
“It, it isn’t just … that, sensei. But I don’t want Master Daigo to get mad at me too,” mumbled Kai.
“So what is it then?” Gorō demanded. “I haven’t got all day, brat!”
Kai still kept his head bowed with his face very close to the dirt. He replied, “I sometimes go here to look at the seashore where you and sensei Shuya found me.”
The shinobi dropped on one knee, his gruff voice replaced with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Why do you do it then, Kai?”
Kai gulped a bit. A tight little knot of fear and tension wrapped itself around his gut. Sensei will laugh at me …
“Because … because … I don’t know what my mother looks like. Or my father.”
“Get up, Kai.”
The boy raised his head, puzzled and hesitant at the subdued, almost neutral tone of the man’s voice. His sensei Gorō was back on a sitting position on the ground. This time the expression on his face was serious but unreadable.
“That was a small fishing village, one of many that was struck by both drought and something else.”
“Something else, sensei?” Kai no longer bowed but sat next to him.
“Aye, something in the sea that poisoned the fish and made them unfit to eat. I heard it happens rarely. Bu when it does, it causes a lot of damage and hardly leaves any fish alive. Almost nobody in that village could stand on their own two feet when Shuya and I looked the place over. That was how badly that area was hit. We didn’t even bother to ask around for any information because the few people who still survived were more like zombies than people. The woman who was with you at that time had only enough strength to open her eyes and say your name - Kai.”
“Sensei, do you remember if the woman said anything else?”
With a grim expression on his face, Gorō could only shake his head. “Shuya and I spent the rest of the day burying her and all those who passed away in a mass grave hidden in one of the rocky cliffs next to the beach. Around 10 people, if I’m not mistaken. It was the least we could do.”
“Did you and sensei Shuya do anything else after that?” the boy asked.
“No. We went home after we finished burying them. Both us had no more energy or inclination to continue recruiting.”
- Writer
