Edo, Japan - 1833

Ryo has never heard his mother say, “Thank you”, or his father say, “Sorry”. And that’s just how things are in the Otani household.

His mother privately practices tea ceremony, chanoyu, to keep her peace in this household. Every Sunday morning at dawn without fail, he would hear the muffled sounds of tatami mats being changed in her room followed by a brief silence. Then, just as the sun peaks out from the horizon, the trickling sound of matcha tea being poured into the ceramic tea bowls lulls him to sleep once more.

His younger sister of a year, Satori, practices kyūjutsu, the art of archery, to keep her sanity. She drops in on the various lessons being offered at local dojos in the neighborhood like a stray cat — and of course, because she is five years old, the adults training there find her adorable enough to tolerate as she mimics them to the side. 

In reality, Ryo’s father had signed him up for those lessons, not Satori. He sits out of those classes though, a secret that his sister and the practitioners keep for him.

THWACK!

Ryo claps, watching his little sister’s arrow land on a straw target. The practitioners had prepared a smaller target positioned closer at a distance suitable to a child’s strength for her.

“Don’t clap.” Satori turns to him with a pout on her face. “It didn’t pierce through the target.”

“But you’re getting better.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not good enough to use those,” she says, pointing. The dojo opens out towards a semi-enclosed range surrounded by a white stone garden. The targets there are much larger and are full-length ranges that the adults use.

“Well, it’s because you’re a kid.”

“Am not. You’re the baby. You’re too scared to take these classes.” She turns and lines up another arrow.

It stings more than Ryo cares to admit and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to do archery either…or any martial art for that matter. As long as Satori keeps his skipping of lessons a secret, he’s fine with her little careless jabs and giving her the chance to take these classes instead.

“Also, we need to go home soon, Satori.” The setting sun’s orange rays flicker across the wooden floorboards. “You know how Dad gets when we’re late… Plus you lied to him about going to the market with me.”

THWACK!

Satori sighs, lowers her bow and turns to him. “Are you going to tell him, Ryo?”

“No, of course not!”

“That’s what I thought.” With a stubborn sniff, she turns back and resumes her practice.

Ryo sighs. His sister is always like this with him, but in the face of their father’s wrath, she withdraws and quiets. He does so too, perhaps shriveling up more than her, and on the worst days he is thankful to his lack of presence for diverting the crisis away from him.

This is his greatest shame.

THWACK!

She’s down to her last arrow for the day. He leans forward, eager to see if this one will be the one that pierces the makiwara straw target hung upon the wall. It won’t be easy to pierce even though her target is smaller — makiwara targets are cylinders of tightly packed rice straw after all.

Satori pauses and lowers her bow, a tall thing roughly twice her height. Turning back to him, she says, “Shin-zen-bi.”

To which he replies, “Truth-goodness-beauty.”

The phrase is one that the instructor says at the start and end of class, a reminder of the philosophy that underlies the archery to clear the mind. It is meant as a way to develop a virtuous spirit.

“Is it working?” he asks. “Do you feel, uh, a virtuous spirit?”

“…No.” She turns back around and aims.

THWACK!

The arrow pierces through the target.

Ryo whoops. “You did it!” He jumps up and bounces over to her, wrapping her in a hug.

Satori scrunches up her nose as if in disgust. “We’re leaving,” she growls, removing her deerskin gloves.

“What? But you just pierced through the target.”

She rolls her eyes and shrugs him off. She returns the yumi bow made specially for her height beside the full-length ones in the dojo. “Big deal. You can do it too with practice. Aren’t you the one who said we should go home?”

”Well, I’m sure Dad won’t be home until a little later today. Don’t you want to celebrate?” 

“Not feeling the shin-zen-bi.”

Well, no surprise there. Going home is inevitable, and that is a bucket of icy water dumped onto both of their heads.

Satori doesn’t need to put it into words for him to understand: she practices kyūjutsu because its essence is everything that she doesn’t have in her life.

Truth. Goodness. Beauty.

He knows, because he wants it too, whatever it is or looks like.

“Ryo! Hurry up before I ditch you!”

He scrambles back to reality, stumbling over himself to catch up. 

“Did you clean up properly?” comes the voice of the dojo owner around the corner, an old man named Sakanoue-san.

“I did!” Satori yells.

“Good girl!”

Sometimes, Ryo swears she’s the older sibling. His father probably screwed up the dates on their birth certificates because he’s a boy. A family needs its eldest to be a son in this country.

Because a boy is supposed to be worth more.

***

SLAP!

Satori hangs her head, gaze listless and trained to a spot on the ground.

Ryo stays quiet, watching his sister from his seat at the dinner table beside his mother. She’s not getting dinner tonight.

“Have you no shame?” Their father is an efficient one, if nothing else. Swift and quick in punishment as he is in praise, which he gives only on rare occasions — and this occasion clearly isn’t one of those. “If you have so much time to waste playing at the market, learn to host a proper tea ceremony from your mother. Do something appropriate, for once!”

“Yes, Father,” Satori replies. She retires to her room upstairs without another word.

By this point, it’s second nature: Satori drags him to some place their father forbids her from going, they get home, she gets punished over her lie that Father never finds out about, he stays quiet, their mother pretends like nothing happened, and they’d eat and go to sleep, and wake up to a new day.

His father seats himself at the head of the table. Only when he begins to eat do Ryo and his mother do so. The clinking of dishware fills him inside with a sudden wave of coldness. It passes quickly as he swallows the warm miso soup, leaving him instead with a hollow ache in his chest. He shudders.

“Dear,” his mother begins, voice sweet and bright as if what happened mere moments ago was a dream, “how was work today?”

His father swallows his mouthful before sighing, mood lighter than before and tender concern lining his gaze. “I had to use my jitte to subdue a few criminals today.”

“Perhaps you should consider asking for a transfer to become a doshin? Patrol might be less dangerous.”

His father reaches for his mother’s hand, cupping it in his own. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. As a doshin, I’d still be required to engage when there’s unrest.”

“But that’s only if you see it.”

Ryo’s father is a jittemochi, a commoner serving a samurai with the power to arrest criminals. It could be a dangerous job, and perhaps it is why he insists on sending Ryo to the dojos. But…it’s just not his thing. His lips pucker at the mere thought of being an officer.

“Is your jitte…?” his mother starts, apprehension in her voice as her eyes flick down to the small sheathed non-bladed weapon hooked around his father’s belt — a symbol of his father’s affiliation with law enforcement.

“It’s not broken.” His father chuckles and releases her hand, picking up another piece of meat with his chopsticks instead.

His mother shakes her head. “If crime is rising, maybe we shouldn’t let Ryo and Satori out on their own so much anymore. Things used to be safer around here…”

“Satori can stay home with you,” his father agrees. “Ryo will continue to go to the dojos. As a man, he needs to learn how to protect himself and you both. It’s best to start these things early. And,” his father pauses, glancing at him, “we can ask Sakanoue-san to pick him up if you’re that worried.”

His mother sighs and Ryo squirms under the sudden attention. That he would need to continue the duties of a jittemochi when he grows up is left unsaid. It’s the only way for his family to escape peasant status. He knows this much, his age be damned.

Whenever his parents argued about this topic, they did it loudly in front of him and his sister. It’d be stranger if he didn’t understand.

“Okay,” she relents. “As long as Sakanoue-san escorts him.”

“Speaking of Ryo,” his father addresses, turning an expectant smile to him, “how are you finding judo? Any troubles or questions?”

Ryo nearly chokes on a fish bone. “Good,” he manages to say quietly, eager to keep his father in a good mood.

His father only raises an eyebrow. 

Clearly, his typical short answers aren’t enough to placate him today. Ryo thinks of Satori’s practice earlier, the arch of her bow and the whistle of her arrow. “I-I pierced a target today in kyūjutsu…”

His mother claps and ruffles his hair as she coos praise in his ear. His father smiles.

“My son, reaching kanteki level so soon,” his father murmurs. His eyes shine at Ryo with some semblance of pride and affection. “Eat up well.”

He basks in the display of love, warmth filling him like sun rays rising at dawn. He swallows a lump he didn’t know he had, forgetting that it is Satori’s achievement for a fleeting moment. Kanteki, the act of not just hitting, but piercing a target… His sister snuck out day and night for a year to reach that skill and he’s taken the credit in less than a minute.

It sours the edges of that rush of attention. But it’s not enough to curb it.

This is all he’s good at: stealing his sister’s love.

Later that evening when Ryo retires to his room gazing up at the starlight above, he hears his sister’s name being called. He hears her quiet apologies to his father, that she has finished writing lines as the first part of her punishment for lying and acting too brashly. She is told to get on her knees. Clothing rustles and Ryo braces himself, gazing into an abyss of stars.

He hears the thwacking sounds of a belt, over and over again.

He hears Satori muffle her cries, only to fail on the third lashing.

He hears his mother’s trembling voice, pleading for her husband to stop.

And he hears his father too, voice cold and nothing like he was mere hours ago at the dinner table to him.

He hears it all.

And all he does is stare up at the stars, listening to the cicadas chirp in the background of the sweltering night. His mind is empty as his sister’s cries fade into a summer symphony that lulls him to sleep.

Ryo does not practice the cherished art of chanoyu or the respected martial art of kyūjutsu to keep his own peace in this household. 

Instead, he dreams of each day and what could have been if he had made different decisions.

He dreams of a perfect world, of what could have been if he wasn’t so scared.

He dreams of what life would be like if he was the perfect son.

***

Ryo wakes, drenched in his own sweat. It is still dark out and the sleepy stars twinkle modestly in the summer night’s stifling, humid heat.  His sister’s cries have stopped by now. The house is quiet and still. His throat aches, so he slips on his shoes and makes his way downstairs to get some water.

His father’s room down the hall is dimly lit by an okiandon lamp, orange flickers dulled by the paper stretched over the bamboo frame.

“—batch of Enoia.”

“Yes, but it is a part of the recipe, so it is useful.”

Ryo frowns at the unfamiliar voice in the room. Dad has a guest?

“You’re certain of this?” the stranger’s deep voice asks.

“Mostly,” his father replies. “The relationship between Enoia and the Blood of Asphodel is promising.”

It’s not the first time that his father is awake at ungodly hours with a guest in the house. He’s heard them talking before, unfamiliar terms thrown about casually. The strange words are not Japanese, which tells him this is not about jittemochi work — it’s about their family’s role as guardians of an Artifact, a thankless job that they have carried on for generations crucial to humanity’s survival.

“You will need to test this…on who?” The voice is suddenly light and it spurs warning bells in Ryo’s mind.

His father is silent for a moment. “...I have just the candidate in mind.”

“I trust that you will have results by winter. If it turns out to be just another botched batch of Enoia, I will be…very upset.”

Tonight’s particular guest, upon further reflection, isn’t a new one. This voice is one he’s heard quite often, distinct in the way it raises the hair on the back of his neck. It is soft and lilting, deceptive in the way it simultaneously puts him at ease and makes him want to run back into his covers. There’s also a hint of an accent, something foreign in one moment and gone the next. He’s never seen his father’s guests before, but he imagines that the owner of this voice is a tall person, a noble perhaps, donning a simple kimono over lavish clothes of status, face hidden by a straw hat.

“I promise you, Lucifer, I will have made progress by winter.”

Luci…fer? Ryo blinks, rolling the stranger’s name on his tongue silently. Definitely not Japanese. I’ve heard the name before… in Western literature. Dad’s explained this before.

“That’s Lord to you.”

Lord? A samurai? Ryo gulps. If it is true, he should not be listening in on these conversations. The less he knows, the safer he’ll be. But samurai are usually of Japanese decent, not foreigners, he ponders. No, Lord… Lucifer…

Ryo’s eye widen and he clamps his hands over his trembling mouth. He remembers where he’s heard the name. It is akin to an akuma, the demon of all demons. A great evil. The enemy trying to seek out and destroy the Artifacts entrusted to humanity.

What is Dad doing with the enemy?

His father answers, voice tight, “Yes, my Lord.”

“And I trust you will complete your mission in secrecy? If your family were to eavesdrop…”

A spike of panic laces through Ryo’s core. Water be damned, he swallows to wet his parched throat before silently slinking back up the stairs.

He’s just shut his own door when he hears his father pulling back the sliding door of his room downstairs. “Nobody’s there, my Lord.”

“See to it that it remains that way.”