The birds scream, and the waking world welcomes me back.
My steps rattle old, sullen teapots that wear the dust of neglect.

Someone is coming today, a boy; I can’t remember what they’re like though. I wonder what challenge he'll bring with him. His kind tends to favour things like Hannya Masks, but who knows?

Each lift of the sword, each swing and subsequent halt of the inertia serve to remind me of the good times I had with feisty Miyouno-kun. How was he to know what was and wasn’t too rough? Even so, the pain in my left arm isn’t eased by the memory, just contextualised. My breathing is like that of one of the monks on the mainland, but only when I’m too focussed to notice.

“You did it again” Treacle affirms me, as she always does during practice.

Continuing my monk-like practices, I lower my head to my father’s memory, to a headstone crafted by yours truly. Father’s fondness for the stench of rosemary is one of the few things I learned about him. His name still dances on my head, and like always, my brow furrows in the deliberation of what it could truly be.

The eiei trees I planted last winter have grown nicely. I stare at the fleshy, moist bark of the thin, spindly thing. As I raise my fist, preparing to reduce it to chunks of lumber, I think the same thought I have every day.

The candle is gone, yet its wax burns. Or is this the lumber as well?

“He’s here, sir”

“I’ll be right there, thank you” I answer.

Oh…

I’ve been hearing that same voice for so long, so why do I still believe it?

Delusions of grandeur as I strike the iron. In my youth, I yearned to make a blade capable of cutting the grass, just as the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi of legend did in my favourite fables. Mine have always been good and well-tempered but they’re never… “it”. I’ve wept a hundred tears for thrice as many blades, none of them capable of cutting the grass. The child is long-dead, yet here I am, dragging their dreams around.

Father, for as distant as he may have been, was keen to warn me of such scathing, unending failure.

The flesh on my hide screams, seared by the error of my incompetence. Every single day, I wager the skin on my back, just as my father did, just as every man that came before did. Tattooing is not favoured here and it is an art practiced by few. But to us of the Yorokobe clan, tattoos are everything. We must all prove ourselves by decorating ourselves with a piece unrivalled by any other we may ever hope to create. Across our backs, we brand ourselves without masterpieces, a symbol that our mastery, our finest works belong to us alone. We have all had to rend the flesh over and over, so that we may try again until we achieve our goal.

It has been 20 years since my father left, and I wonder,

surely I am the man he always dreamed I would be…

I mustn't disappoint. “Trust the needle. That is the only thing” He echoed our mantra to me.

Every day is another sword, another tree, another apology to him.

When does it end? When do I know I am the man my father envisioned? Nothing has changed.