by Rick Scott
“Your time will come, Kenji,” Shinoto said, resting a hand on his forearm, perhaps sensing his thoughts, or even catching the dejected look on his face. “Keep training. It’s what did it for me. Remember, I spent 16 years as an Off White.”
He chuckled and pointed at her robe. “You’re still an Off White.”
She nudged him back. “I’ll help you get your gold stripe too. Then we can train to join one of the mystic schools together.” Her eyes then widened as if suddenly remembering something. “We can train together now! Now that I’m rebirthed, I can start all over again at base tier with you. I’ll come over to your house tomorrow after work. How’s that?”
Kenji couldn’t resist the infectious smile she had as she looked up at him.
“Thanks, Shinoto,” Kenji said with a nod. “I’d like that.”
She was nothing if not enthusiastic, even if it would likely lead only to more disappointment. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Oh, look what the elders gifted me!” Shinoto said as she unwrapped a small cloth in her hand and then showed it to him. Within it was a yellow apple the size of a pea.
“Was that from the tree we rebirthed last month?”
“You should know,” Shinoto said with another jab to his side. “Didn’t you place the ropes on it yourself?”
Kenji chucked. “Probably.”
For all his lack of internal strength, Kenji was blessed with at least one gift from the heavens, even though at times it felt like a curse. He was tall for his age. And his height was matched only by his strength. But in a village where youth was prized as a symbol of great power, his appearance served to only mark him as an oddity. But thankfully his work in the orchards was well-suited for his body.
Kenji looked again at the diminutive apple in Shinoto’s palm. He had seen such fruit numerous times. If it was from the tree he presumed, that apple contained over two centuries of concentrated essence. To be granted such a gift would make even a mystic warrior envious.
Cultivating was a slow process, accelerated only by one’s prowess with the mystic arts. But even if one was a prodigy, it took time—years. But nature concentrated Qi of its own accord and for a tree rebirthed twice in over two hundred years, the fruit it produced was potent. Shinoto could perhaps skip the entire first or even second tier of her new ascension by eating that apple and channeling it through her body.
“I want you to have it,” Shinoto said and thrust it into his hand.
He blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been training for as long and as hard as I have, Kenji. Harder even. I’m sure you must be on the cusp of a breakthrough. If you channeled that apple, perhaps you could ascend to the eighth tier right away.”
The thought was almost fantastical—to reach Jade tier instantly? But there were reasons why he hadn’t even reached the first tier yet. “My father said it won’t work like that for me. It isn’t that my doma is weak or diluted…it’s like… it’s like it doesn’t exist.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Shinoto said. “Every living thing has one. Even animals. How do you think the great spirit beasts come about?”
She had a point. But if that were true, it only made the real truth that much worse. “Then what my father says is true…my doma is damaged.”
Shinoto grew silent and cast her eyes to the ground.
Normally she probably would have pushed the issue more, but she perhaps knew the reason as to why his doma worked more like a hole-riddled bucket than the vessel of spiritual containment that it should.
“It’s okay,” Kenji said. “It is the fate the heavens have dealt me. My father always told me I was lucky to have survived with only this scar. My mother…she was not so lucky.”
Kenji had never known his mother. The traumatic birth that had claimed her life had indeed scarred his own and he still bore the mark to prove it. He felt absently for the scar tissue right below his navel, the point where his doma should be.
“I’m sorry to have reminded you of that,” Shinoto said.
He smiled at her. “It’s no bother. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the fruit will work. But it’s your gift, not mine.”
“I want you to have it,” she said, thrusting it to him.
Kenji pushed it back to her. “It’s your gift, Shinoto. You’ve earned it. And if you want to become a mystic warrior someday, you’d make far better use of it than me.”
“Our plan is to still go together, remember?” She nudged him again. “Me the Soul Master and you the Sword Saint. Or did you want to become a Fist Master? With your build, you’d make a great Fist Master, I think.”
“A Fist Master?” someone said. “He’d be lucky to make it to first tier!”
A cackle of laughter followed.
Kenji looked up to see three boys in robes trimmed with orange, each with a single stripe of gold.
“What do you want, Chet Fai?” Shinoto glowered at the boy in the center.
Chet Fai was tall for a ten-year-old, his long hair pulled into a braid much like Shinoto’s, his eyes sharp and jade like hers as well. Next to him, his two flunkies, Wu Long and Shiro, leered and scoffed like jackals.
“Yeah,” Wu Long, a plump boy with a bald head, said. “He’d need a hundred-year rope to rebirth by the time he ever reached Jade.”
The boys laughed again. The third boy, Shiro, didn’t say anything as usual. He was small, even when he’d been a teenager. But what he lacked in height he made up for with cunning and wit. Shiro came from one of the few families to have been blessed to have a mystic warrior among them—or at least one that actually returned to Han Village. His father had been a Soul Master of the Lavender Sect, one able to manipulate Qi stored in his doma to throw powerful elemental bursts from his bare hands. And by his rapid advancement, Shiro, if anyone, was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps—to be picked from their village to join one of the Mystic Schools.
“Why are you hanging around this cripple?” Chet Fai said without even looking at Kenji. “It was embarrassing before when you were both teenagers, but now to be seen together is outright shameful. Don’t you feel the stares?”
“Leave us alone!” Shinoto said.
Kenji rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. He’s probably right.”
Shame crept into his stomach as he said it. Even now, amongst the four of them, he felt like an outsider. Like a giant idiot. He should be the same height as them, the same age as them—the same tier.
“See,” Chet Fai said. “Even a dog knows its place.” Chet Fai looked at him then, a repugnant smirk on his lips. “Good dog.”
Shame shifted to ire. “There was no need for that. You made your point, Chet Fai.”
The smirk on his face grew into a bemused smile. “Oh? You look like you want to hit me now. Would you like to try, Off White?”
The jackals laughed again.
“I’d like to see him try,” Wu Long said. “Chet Fai could kill him with his little finger.”
“Damn right, I could.” Chet Fai leveled his eyes at Kenji. “You remember that.”
“Bet you couldn’t if he were rebirthed,” Shinoto said. “You’re a coward, Chet Fai. If you were equal rank, you’d be the one to be killed.”
“That right? You think he’s special?” Chet Fai scoffed with a laugh. “The only person he’s been able to kill…is his own mother.”
Kenji’s stomach lurched with an explosion.
He was off the step before he knew it, his fist flying. The move took them all by surprise and his knuckles slammed full force into the soft, ten-year-old face of the near twenty-year-old Chet Fai. Pain snapped through his wrists as the force of his hit lifted the boy off the ground. Chet Fai flailed in midair before landing hard on his back, winded.
Time stood still.
The rapid thud of his heartbeat raged within Kenji’s ears. What have I done?
His anger quickly receded into fear as Chet Fai lifted himself off the ground. Already steam was pouring from the b
ruise he’d left on Chet Fai’s cheek, the orange-tiered gold stripe channeling his Qi to remove the pain and reform any damage to his body.
Curse the nine hells…
The tiers of ascension were not martial forms, but they were the foundation. Even a third tier could outdo Kenji’s enormous body in terms of raw power, strength, and stamina, even while in the body of a child. And now he faced an angry third tier with a gold stripe.
Essentially an eleventh tier.
Every cultural instinct in Kenji’s body screamed for him to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness. Even Shinoto, who stared with an open mouth, was conveying the same thing through her trembling jade eyes.
Kneel! Kneel!
But then something else filled him, something alien but not unfamiliar. He’d experienced it only a few times before. Once when he had dared to climb a hundred-foot banyan tree and nearly fell, catching his footing at just the last moment. Another when he chased off a pair of wolves that had wandered into the orchard.
It was like anger and resentment mixed into one, swelling his heart with fire and pride.
Defiance—that was the emotion—an insolence bold enough to war against even the heavens themselves. And now it was aimed at Chet Fai.
“Take your best shot,” Kenji said.
Fearlessness took him as he prepared to face the repercussion of his actions. If it ended with only broken bones, he would be lucky. Chet Fai’s lip curled with anger and even from ten feet away, Kenji could feel the pressure of his inner strength build as he gathered Qi from his doma.
Chet Fai leapt forward with a lightning-quick strike.
Kenji did nothing to stop it, prepared to harden his defiance with blood. A second passed but the punch never reached him. Confusion took hold as he looked up to see not Chet Fai standing before him, but the much-taller figure of his father, Ben Fai.
Ben Fai looked only in his thirties, but was perhaps fifty by now. He shared Chet Fai’s long hair and jade eyes. Eyes which now blazed like hot coals as he held onto Chet Fai’s outstretched hand like a vice.
“What is the meaning of this?” Ben Fai bellowed, looking between them.
“He struck me!” Chet Fai said. “The Off White struck me!”
Ben Fai looked to Shinoto. “Is this true?”
Shinoto glanced at Kenji with an almost-apologetic frown before turning back to Ben Fai. “Yes. He did.”
Ben Fai released a long breath through his nostrils, his eyes piercing Kenji’s own. For a moment, the defiance dared to rear its head again, but humility and perhaps common sense finally prevailed and Kenji sank to his knees.
“It is true. I struck him. I deeply apologize. It was a rash decision made in anger. Please forgive this one for his insolence and unrestraint.”
“I deserve to regain my honor!” Chet Fai said, glaring up at his father. “He has offended our family!”
Ben Fai tossed his hand towards the ground. “You are still a boy in my home. Your honor is not your own. And you will not soil mine by striking an elder’s son.”
Relief ran through Kenji at hearing the words. It appeared his station in life had saved him once again. But Ben Fai didn’t seem happy about it. He leveled his jade eyes at Kenji. “Go home to your father now, Kenji. We will not speak of this exchange. Do you understand?”
Kenji nodded profusely. “Absolutely. Thank you, Master Ben Fai. You show me tremendous grace with your discretion.”
“That goes for all of you,” Ben Fai said, looking over his shoulder at Wu Long and Shiro. “Go home to your families.”
The two boys ran off then and Ben Fai looked to Shinoto and Chet Fai. “You two… inside. Now.”
Ben Fai marched into the general store, followed reluctantly by Shinoto who gave him a small wave she dared not Chet Fai or Ben Fai to see. When she disappeared inside the general store, Chet Fai approached him next.
“Consider yourself lucky, cripple,” Chet Fai said as he stopped just before the door. “If you ever touch me again, I’ll kill you.”
Kenji could feel the anger and hatred in his eyes. Chet Fai meant every word of it.
He left then, but not before spitting out words that, to Kenji, were far more threatening than the first. “Stay away from my sister.”
Chapter 3 - Waru
Kenji didn’t head home straight away.
It was late afternoon and his head was swimming with everything that had just taken place. After stumbling hazily through the crowds in the village square, he made his way past the rice paddies and farmlands towards the northern orchard close to his home. Han Village lay within the bowl of a valley, surrounded by thick forests and a lake to the south. The distant hills glowed orange with the fading sunlight which spilled onto the tall pear trees as he drew close to the orchard.
He vaulted over the low stone wall ringing the ten or so acres that housed the well-spaced trees. As the oldest orchard in the village, some of the trees here were well over a century old. But Kenji didn’t come for the trees. He made straight for the wooden tool shed to the west of the orchard and climbed the rickety ladder onto its thatched roof.
A wave of depression washed over him as he fell onto his haunches and stared at the soon-to-set sun.
Curse that Chet Fai. How did someone as wonderful as Shinoto end up with the same parents as him?
Kenji couldn’t remember a time when Chet Fai hadn’t been a source of pain to him, and it had only become worse as the years went by—when it became clear that his advancement was impeded. It was as if Chet Fai saw his infirmity as somehow contagious and was convinced it was affecting his sister’s advancement as well. Seeing him with her, despite her rebirth, was perhaps a sort of last straw for Chet Fai.
But while Chet Fai was openly hostile about it, at least he was honest.
Kenji was sure there were others in the village who felt the same way about his friendship with Shinoto…his father being one of them. He was doubly grateful now for Ben Fai not punishing him. If word of what happened got back to his father, it would only be the beginning of pain for him.
He felt again for the scar on his doma, the source of all his troubles. With no doma he could not store Qi; without Qi, he could not ascend. Without ascending to at least Jade tier, he could not be reborn. And without being reborn, he could never court Shinoto.
“What did I do in my former life to deserve all this?” he said to the heavens.
Shockingly an answer came back: “You probably drank too much wine and chased too many women…” A belch followed. “… like me.”
Kenji stood and ran to the ladder. “Waru?”
The wrinkled, smiling face of the fieldhand beamed up at him from the foot of the ladder. “Help me up, lad.”
Kenji descended halfway down and then made good use of his strength to literally drag the half-drunken Waru up the ladder. He then rested him as gingerly as he could upon the rooftop. “How much have you drunk?”
“Only my third bottle,” Waru said and produced said bottle from his mud-stained robes. Waru was a wiry old man of perhaps sixty, with sun-beaten skin, a white beard and placid eyes capped with white brows. He placed the white ceramic bottle to his lips for a long sip of rice wine. Or at least that’s what Kenji assumed it was.
Kenji chuckled. “At least you had the decency to not get drunk at the ceremony.”
“Huh?” Waru looked up at him, bleary-eyed. “What ceremony?”
He had to be kidding. “Shinoto’s rebirthing ceremony. Did you not know? Why did you think we had the day off?”
The fieldhand shrugged. “I thought you’d just forgotten to come to work.”
Waru finally laughed and Kenji couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. He was quite certain Waru couldn’t tell half the time himself. He sat next to Waru, who offered him the bottle, but Kenji politely declined.
“Still not drinking yet, huh?”
“My father says it’ll slow my progression.”
“Which is coming along swiftly, no d
oubt.” Waru laughed again.
Kenji kicked him in the foot. “Not funny.”
“So how’d it go?” Waru asked. “The rebirth. That was your girl, wasn’t it? Shinoto?”
Kenji sighed. “I wouldn’t call her my girl, but yes…It went fine. She’s now seven years old again.”
He almost did feel like taking a swig of that bottle. And if not for the wariness of what exactly was in it, he may have. He glanced at Waru and saw his future: a shriveled fieldhand of sixty years or more, never tiered and never rebirthed. Kenji had never asked why or how he had become so. Perhaps some birth defect such as his own, or an injury in his youth.
He did recall Waru mentioning once that he had joined the imperial army as a conscript during the great uprising. But whether that led to his infirmity or was a result of it, Kenji was not sure. The Zhou Army was far less picky than the mystic schools when it came to recruits. So long as you could heft a spear, you were fit to be fodder on the battlefield. It was hard to imagine Waru even lifting a spear, much less wielding one. For as long as Kenji had known him, old Waru was simply a fieldhand who worked the orchards by day and drank heavily by night.
What a life…
Kenji all at once had compassion and contempt for the man.
He was perhaps his only other friend in the village.
“I suppose I’ll be looking to ask someone else to the festival now,” Kenji said resignedly.
“Don’t give up yet, lad. You’re young still. The fates have much in store for you. Trust me.”
Kenji chuckled. “I wish I could be as sure about it as you.”
Waru sipped his bottle. “The girl fancies you, Kenji. I’ve seen it when she comes around here.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.” Waru tapped the air with his index finger. “If there’s one thing old Waru knows…it’s women.”
Kenji chuckled but then sighed. “Won’t matter anyway. If I can’t be rebirthed with her, what’s the point? It’s hopeless.”
“Why?”
Kenji gave him an accusatory look. “Are you sick in the head, old man? How am I supposed to court a seven-year-old?”