“Heat,” Daichi muttered. “Everything felt . . . hot.”
“Weight,” from Kenta. “Like the air was heavy.”
“I saw colors,” Teshi admitted quietly, the only other to sense anything truly different. “Everyone had different colors.”
Giichi nodded at each response, but his eyes found mine. “And you, Yoshi-san?”
I opened my mouth and froze, a fish on land unable to take in air. How could I describe what I’d experienced? The vast intelligence that had touched my mind? The feeling of recognition, of purpose, of something ancient acknowledging my existence?
“I saw the board,” I said finally, borrowing a Go metaphor. “Not the pieces or the players, but . . . the game itself.”
Something flickered in Giichi’s ancient eyes. It wasn’t surprise, but something deeper.
“Interesting,” was all he said. Then, to the group: “Practice this each morning before your physical training. One hour. Learn to expand your perception. Some of you will find it easier than others. Some may discover gifts they did not know they possessed.”
He moved toward the door, then paused.
“The rebellion thinks to break us by sowing mistrust, but when you see the patterns that connect all things, you understand thatweare threads in the same tapestry. Division weakens the weave. Only unity strengthens it.”
He left, but not before his eyes found mine once more. His gaze was measuring and thoughtful, as if he was reevaluating something, perhaps reassessing everything he thought he knew about the weak boy from AnzuHan. And then he was gone.
“That was weird,” Kenta said as we filed out.
“Fucking useless,” Daichi corrected. “How does darkness help us fight?”
But his hands trembled slightly, and there was uncertainty in his eyes, despite the bravado filling his words.
“Did anyone else feel . . .” Teshi started, then stopped. “Never mind.”
“Feel what?” I asked.
“Like there was something more, something we weren’t quite seeing . . . like Master Giichi was showing us a door but not opening it all the way.”
I said nothing, but my skin still tingled where Giichi had touched my head. Whatever had flowed through that touch—magic, power, divine will—it had been meant for me alone.
The others had received a lesson, but I had experienced something else entirely.
That evening at dinner, everything felt different. I could still sense faint threads at the edge of my perception. When I looked at students whispering about Prince Haru’s arrival, I saw not just their words but what lay beneath—fear breeding anger, anger breeding division, division breeding weakness.
The rebellion didn’t need to defeat us with swords. They just needed us to defeat ourselves with doubt.
But the vast intelligence that had touched my mind through Master Giichi’s fingers had shown me something else, too: a pattern larger than the temple, larger than the rebellion, larger than the Empire itself, a game being played on a world-sized board I was only beginning to perceive.
And somehow, impossibly,Iwas meant to be a player, not merely a piece. I couldn’t explain how I knew it, but the certainty of it settled into my soul.
That night, as I again lay on my mat, I tried to recapture that moment of vast awareness. It flickered at the edges of my consciousness like a dream half remembered, unwilling to return in full. But one thing remained clear: Master Giichi knew something. He haddonesomething. His touch had been more than instruction—it had been an awakening of sorts, though not the kind I’d expected.
“You must awaken,”Nawa had said.
Was this what she had meant? Was this the beginning of something more? Not the awakening of my body to inhuman strength, but of my mind to something far greater.
I had no idea what was happening, where this might lead, or if this was simply another of the monks’ endless exercises that would lead to still another lesson. And yet, despite it all, I felt a flicker of something I’d thought long dead, a feeling that had abandoned me on the streets of Tooi, at the points of pirates’ blades.
I felt hope.
Chapter 34
Kaneko
