She hated this house. It was too small for her family, but only because her father insisted on cramming it full of servants he couldn’t afford. There were no rooms for the servants, so they slept in the hallways where Sen could hear them breathe all night, could see their shadows shifting through the paper doors like a dark, restless sea. The servants had so little to clean and cook these days, but her father insisted on keeping them. Samurai were meant to have servants, and to admit they were too poor for them would be immensely shameful. So the servants dug up the barren garden for roots to eat, played with her little brothers, and tried not to look Sen’s father in the eye.
She hated the garden, the way the temperature dropped and rose starkly depending on what side of the house she was on. In the southern yard, it was the burning height of summer, and in the shaded northern yard, she couldn’t stop shivering as she looked out at the dark sea.
Sen also hated her room. It was the most exposed, facing the forest, where the soldiers would attack from. But that was why she’d chosen it—there was one small window that she could see through even when lying down. If someone came in to attack her family, they would have to go through her first.
The one thing she didn’t understand was the sliding door to nowhere.
Where there should have been a closet behind a sliding door in her room, there was only a cement wall. Sen wondered who had lived here before her family, why they had made such a door.
A shadow filled the doorway.
Sen dropped the mosquito netting, drew her sword, and spun around—a clean turn that brought her to her knees, because the ceilings here were too low to strike while standing.
Her blade clanged against another, the reverberations of pure metals echoing across the yard through the open door. Sen’s father lowered his blade, nodding in wordless approval. He offered no praise, because praise was only for when Sen exceeded expectations, and her father had long stopped underestimating her.
Her father—at least, the man he had been before—was a man of shadows. He existed in the spaces people forgot about, was only seen when he wanted to be. His skin was bright with scars, his dark eyes keener than his blade. Sen’s mother always said that Sen looked so much like him, and nothing made Sen prouder. Her little brothers had round, happy faces, like full moons. They weren’t meant to be warriors. But Sen and her father were too sharp to hold in your hands, too bright to look directly in the eye.
The man who had returned from Satsuma wearing her father’s face had lost his hard edges—he was blurred and soft and gray, like a storm cloud. His blade sliced cleanly through the air with the exact strength and precision it always had, but now itlooked more like a practiced dance than an extension of his soul. Sen could sense the hollowness in his eyes, like he was trapped somewhere far away.
Sen knew this much to be true: her father never would have returned from Satsuma alive. He was the most traditional samurai Sen had ever met, and if he hadn’t been killed in battle, he would have spilled his stomach on the battlefield in shame.
Whoever had returned home was not her father.
Sen tried to spoon mushy rice into Kotaro’s mouth, but it rolled down his chin, wasted. If only he understood how hard food was to come by these days, he would have been more grateful.
The whole family sat down at dinner, which was only some barley mixed with rice, and miso soup with a few cubes of tofu. Sen remembered back when they’d had yellowtail with shiso, devil’s tongue noodles, prawns and boiled greens, daikon mixed into every dish. But those days were long gone. The Shimazu clan no longer existed, so they could no longer pay their retainers. Sen’s father did odd jobs in town, but he had no skills in any kind of manual labor, and there was no need for Confucian scholars or hired arms anymore. There hadn’t been for a long time.
Today, her mother’s food was even more tasteless than usual. The rice felt gray as it scraped down her throat, leaving her just as hungry as before. Perhaps the rice had become too thin and her mother had mixed some strange new herb into it. But Seijiro loved to complain, and he didn’t seem bothered by it, so Sen didn’t dare bring it up. Her father hated being reminded of how far they’d fallen.
“Sen, you’re making a mess,” her mother said, snatching the spoon from her hand and feeding Kotaro herself. “Do you want your brother to go hungry?”
“He doesn’t like it,” Sen said, shrinking back. “It’s not my fault he won’t eat.”
“You claim you can wield a sword, but you can’t even manage a spoon?” her mother said.
Seijiro laughed and their mother beamed at him, jamming a spoonful of rice into Kotaro’s mouth.
“Onesan doesn’t know what to do without a katana in her hand,” Seijiro said. He turned to Sen with an impish grin. “What will you do when you get married and your husband asks for dinner?” he said. “Will you sayjust a minute, darling!and start chopping cucumbers with your sword?”
Sen’s mother and Seijiro laughed, which made Kotaro laugh even though he didn’t understand, dribbling more rice porridge down his chin. Sen didn’t laugh, but none of them seemed to notice. Sen’s father ate in silence beside them.
“You can’t cookoruse a katana,” Sen said to Seijiro.
The smile dropped off their mother’s face. “Be kind to your brothers,” she said, adding another spoonful of porridge to Seijiro’s plate, even though she’d already given him the biggest portion. “And he’s right, Sen. You don’t have any skills a husband would want.”
Sen poked at her porridge. “You don’t think being able to cut someone in half in a single strike is a useful skill?” she said.
When no one answered, Sen looked up. Seijiro’s face was screwed into an expression of disgust, and her mother’s face was pinched with disapproval. Kotaro stared at her open-mouthed, likely because no one was feeding him, but the weight of their stares felt heavy all the same.
“Don’t be disgusting, Sen,” her mother said after a moment. “We’re eating dinner.”
If you can call it that, Sen thought, but she lowered her head and took another bite.
Sometimes, Sen felt as though she’d been born into the wrong world.
Her mother and brothers lived together, her father had his own fortress, and Sen sat on an island in a thousand miles of dark sea.
“Everyone be quiet and eat,” her father said at last.
