Anchihiiroo - Origin of an Antihero

by Jeremy Rodden

  “Yeah,” she answered, “but if you don’t focus on your mind training you will never make it to the next step.”

  I groaned. I knew she was right but I had learned very quickly that admitting that to Suzaku usually ended in getting mocked. She insulted me frequently anyway so I tried to avoid giving her more reasons to do so.

  As I approached the door to the mind sensei’s hut, I noticed a piece of paper pinned to it. It was a note addressed to me.

  “Is he not home?” Suzaku asked over my shoulder.

  “Yoshi,” I read aloud, “before I can train you, you must solve a simple riddle. A man needs to cross a river with a fox, a goose, and some corn. He cannot leave the fox with the goose or the goose with the corn and can only fit one at a time on his boat. How does he cross without losing any of them?”

  I glanced at Suzaku, who let out a shrill laugh. “It’s an old riddle,” she explained.

  I continued to read, “Do not knock on my door until you have an answer. If you give me a wrong answer even once, I will not train you. Signed, Bodhi.”

  I sat down and leaned my back against the hut. I was never good at games like this with the other children. Yuki would usually sort out the answers well before the others. I cheated from him whenever I could. I looked at Suzaku, who was grinning.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  She feigned a hurt look and flew to the top of the hut to perch. I tried to work out the riddle in my head. I kept getting muddled so I tried talking it out loud instead.

  “If he takes the corn first, then–no, the fox would eat the goose. So he has to take the fox or the goose first.”

  “Should I take a nap?” asked Suzaku from above me.

  “You could just tell me the answer and we can be done with this.”

  “I can’t do your homework for you, young man, or you’ll never learn,” she said in her best motherly voice.

  I waved her off and thought about the riddle again. “So he takes the fox first–wait, the goose would eat the corn. Okay, so he has to take the goose first. Then the fox. But the fox would eat the goose on the other side.” I smacked myself in the face.

  “Did that help?” the phoenix mocked.

  “No.”

  “Try it again, then.” I looked up at her and she covered her face with a wing and pretended to fall asleep. Her fake snoring was not helping me concentrate.

  “So if he takes the corn second, the goose would eat the corn if he left it there to go back to the fox.” Suzaku snorted. I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me or trying to point out a flaw in my logic. I crossed my legs and tried meditating and thinking only on the riddle, ignoring the unhelpful phoenix that was supposed to be my companion.

  The answer became clear to me when I stopped worrying about figuring out the answer.

  “Ah!” I shouted, rousing Suzaku from her fake sleep. “He brings the goose back after dropping off the fox, switches the goose for the corn, then goes back again for the goose!”

  I banged on the door. It opened; a small, ancient man stood inside.

  “Took you long enough,” he said without humor.

  “You were listening to me?”

  “Yes. And if you don’t speed up your logic, you’re going to be here for a very long time. That riddle is for children.”

  “But I am a child,” I answered.

  “Then you are no great hero, child. You must remove that idea from your mind. Heroics know no age and a hero is separate from time itself. You must think of yourself as a hero and not a child. We must open your mind, Yoshi.”

  Suzaku chimed in from the roof. “Maybe you should hit him with a brick then. It will be faster.”

  “Lady Suzaku,” said the old monk, “it is a pleasure to meet you.” He bowed, which was awkward since she was on the roof right above him. “You must be hungry after your long sleep. Won’t you come in for a meal?”

  The phoenix flew down and through a nearby window, landing on a table inside the small hut. She pointed a wing at Bodhi. “See, there’s a man who knows how to treat a lady. Let’s eat, pops.”

  “So what do I need to do to finish my mind training?” I asked Bodhi as he prepared food for Suzaku.

  “Begin it, for one.”

  “Wasn’t the riddle on the door the beginning?”

  Bodhi laughed. “No, that was just to see if you were too dense to teach. That riddle is a basic riddle that most six year olds can solve.”

  I felt my cheeks get flushed. Suzaku would have mocked me but her beak was already full of food.

  “The first lesson I can give you, Yoshi, is that you must always consider different ways of solving any puzzle set before you.”

  “Why is this important for me to become a great hero? I should be learning how to fight, to use a sword, to get stronger. How else will I avenge my family?”

  Bodhi paused and looked up. Suzaku stopped eating momentarily to glare at me. The old monk put a fresh plate of food in front of the phoenix and walked to me. I was only thirteen but he had to look up to stare into my face.

  “You must put revenge from your mind. You cannot think logically if revenge is your goal. Your destiny is greater than one of revenge. You are to become a hero for all of Animetown, not just for your own vengeance.”

  He paused and took a deep breath.

  “Can you promise me that you are capable of that?”

  I looked at Suzaku, who gulped down a mouthful of food and pleaded with her eyes. It was the first time I sensed any sincerity out of her since she hatched so I looked back at Bodhi and lied.

  “Yes, sensei.”

  The next few months were mundane and repetitive. Bodhi would give me riddles, word puzzles, and number games to work on every day. He had me read histories of Animetown and then quiz me on tiny details.

  Before I knew it, nearly a year had passed. I felt like my brain was getting a workout every day. I didn’t feel any smarter but I could definitely sense that my thought process changed over the months. I saw subtle hints in the way sentences were worded in the riddles Bodhi would give me.

  Suzaku actually seemed shocked when I would answer a riddle immediately or solve a clever word game before Bodhi even finished telling it. I was starting to be able to look at puzzles and see answers instead of questions.

  Bodhi started giving me different riddles. I got stuck on one that he gave me that had a ton of small details and I couldn’t figure out how they all pieced together.

  “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘not see the forest for the trees’?” Bodhi asked me one day.

  “No, what does it mean?”

  “That some people get so focused on the trees,” Suzaku chimed in, “that they can’t see the forest. Sometimes it isn’t the details that are important but the whole picture. Sometimes details are useless.”

  I grinned at my phoenix companion. As I worked on my mind games with Bodhi, she started to be nicer to me. She had also nearly doubled in size since she hatched. Her six-foot wingspan forced her to stay outside most of the time.

  “I understand.”

  “Good,” Bodhi answered, “because I want to give you your final test, the Great Mental Trial.”

  I perked up. I knew that once I finished with Bodhi that I would be able to move on to the sensei that would train me on fighting and weapons. I looked at Suzaku, whose head was resting on the windowsill from outside the hut. She nodded at me.

  “I’m ready,” I said. “Is it a riddle? A puzzle? What?”

  Bodhi walked to a nearby cabinet and pulled out a wrapped package. He returned to where I was sitting and placed it on the table. He opened it slowly and revealed a small multi-colored cube. There were nine spaces on each side of the cube covered with six different colors.

  “What is this?”

  “The greatest test of the mind, patience, and logic known to man: the Color Cube.”

  I stole a glance at Suzaku, who nodded in agreement with Bodhi.

  “It looks like a toy,” I
blurted.

  “And it is,” Bodhi responded. “Sometimes toys and games are the greatest gauge of our abilities. Not everything has to be life and death to test us.”

  I picked up the cube and started rotating the sides. Each of the sides could rotate in several directions, moving the colors from one face to another. Bodhi explained that the goal was to make each of the six faces match colors simultaneously.

  “That doesn’t sound so hard,” I replied.

  Bodhi laughed. “Then I shall leave you to it. I have an errand to run. I shall be back in the evening.”

  I began rotating the various sides in different directions without thinking. One of the lessons that I had learned in the year spent with Bodhi had been that if you over-think things, you might miss how simple they are. This lesson did not help with the cube.

  I tried thinking ahead as though I were playing one of Bodhi’s number games. I thought about where different colors would end up based on how I rotated. I was able to get one side finished but the other five would be a jumble of colors.

  Suzaku watched me for a while before she fell asleep with her head on the window. She had built a nest outside the window so she could participate in the lessons when she wasn’t out hunting to sustain her fast-growing size.

  “Thanks for your help,” I grumbled at my sleeping phoenix friend.

  My fingers were starting to get sore when I got three of the sides completed at the same time. I thought about all the lessons Bodhi had given me on how to think, logic, and how to see the solutions to every puzzle. I also thought about how this little cube was the only thing stopping me from leaving this hut and learning how to be a real warrior.

  “I hate this cube!” I screamed and flung the toy at the wall next to Suzaku’s window.

  The crash woke the giant red bird, which looked at the scattered pieces of the plastic toy and shrugged. “Did that help?”

  I walked to the window and looked at the pieces of the Color Cube. I smiled and patted Suzaku on the head. “Yes, it did.”

  I picked up the half-broken cube and the small squares that came off. I threw the pieces onto the table, ignoring Suzaku’s sleepy pleas for explanation. I rummaged through drawers in Bodhi’s hut until I found a jar of adhesive. Back at the table, I broke apart the remaining squares and reassembled the color cube with all six sides matching.

  “You seriously just did that?” Suzaku asked.

  “What did you say about the forest and the trees?” I reminded her. “The details are useless. I was told the goal was to make the sides match. Do they match?” I held up the completed cube to her.

  “I suppose they do, but–“

  “But nothing! What did I learn this past year? There are many ways to solve a puzzle. I solved it.”

  “By throwing against the wall.”

  “Yes.”

  Suzaku snorted. “You going to explain to Bodhi how you solved it?” My silence answered her question. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

  When Bodhi returned from his errand, he praised me for completing the Great Mental Trial so quickly. He gave me the location of the sensei that would train my body for life as a hero. I left the hut with Suzaku following close behind. I hoped the glue would hold long enough for me to get away without getting caught at cheating.

  Part Four: The Body Sensei

  Suzaku berated me for my deception of Bodhi while we traveled on a small boat from Hiun to the isolated mountain town of Kajiba, home of the next sensei. I tried to remind her that Bodhi never told me I had to follow the rules of the toy to achieve the goal.

  The smells of sulfur and fire wafted downriver from the town before we even reached it. When we landed on shore, we noticed that the men and women all had hard features and blackened faces. The people seemed to be carved of stone, like the mountain itself.

  Their homes were actually cut into the mountain’s face. There were sculpted ladders running up and down the rock for traveling up and down. I could sense immediately that you had to be tough to live here. I was excited to meet the next sensei.

  “You must be Yoshi,” said a woman who approached me at the shore. She had very short black hair and the same chiseled face and body as all the other residents of Kajiba. She wore a sleeveless shirt and shorts.

  “Yes. You know of me?” I beamed. She pointed to Suzaku, the giant red bird on the ground at my side. “Not too many young men known to be traveling with a phoenix these days.”

  I felt my cheeks get hot. I had forgotten that Suzaku was much more conspicuous than I was.

  “Yeah, don’t worry. He may have passed through mind training but he’s still kind of an idiot,” Suzaku explained.

  I ignored Suzaku’s insult. “I am here to meet with Tsuyoi for warrior training,” I said in my toughest possible voice. “Where can I find him?”

  The woman grinned. “You won’t find him anywhere.”

  There was a glint in her eye that made me think about how she phrased her response. Maybe Bodhi’s teachings weren’t all that useless after all?

  “You’re Tsuyoi, aren’t you?”

  She directed her response to Suzaku. “I thought you said he was an idiot.”

  Suzaku shrugged. “Even a dim light bulb gets a spark once in a while.”

  “So I’m going to learn how to fight from a girl?” I said. It was not a good thing to say. Tsuyoi swept my legs and I landed hard on my back. I looked up and saw Suzaku and Tsuyoi laughing at me. It dawned on me right away that I was going to have to redefine my idea of girls and fighting. I guess the dim light bulb can spark more than once.

  Tsuyoi offered me her hand. I was amazed at how strong she was as she lifted me to my feet effortlessly.

  “If you ever say anything like that again, your training ends immediately.” I could tell she wasn’t joking. “You must never underestimate an opponent, whether it be due to size, age, gender, or any other reason.”

  “Yes, sensei.”

  Tsuyoi motioned for me to follow her. Suzaku lingered behind. I tilted my head in question at her. “You just got owned,” she said.

  “Thanks for the update.”

  Woman or not, Tsuyoi was everything I had hoped for in a sensei. She taught me more offensive maneuvering than the aikido taught at Suzaku Temple. When I wasn’t training, I was put to work in the forges of Kajiba. I learned that the village’s main form of commerce was creating weapons from the minerals mined from the Kajiba Mountain that gave the town its name.

  Half a year passed quickly and I loved my time training with Tsuyoi. I felt my body getting stronger. At first, I would become winded after an hour of hard battle training with her. She taught me to push past the tired and keep fighting, finding body reserves I didn’t know I had.

  I would wake before dawn and start the fires of the forge. After breakfast, I would train for hours. Tsuyoi did not believe in using training weapons and immediately started with real swords. She was so fast and strong and never let me rest. Many nights I nursed wounds as my new lessons for the day.

  That was the routine until I met Gisei.

  Being raised in a monastery, I didn’t have a lot of experience with girls. The first time I saw Gisei, I nearly burnt down one of the forges. I was operating the foot bellows for the tatara of one of the weaponsmiths. I was supposed to maintain the same rhythm to keep the fire at a certain temperature for the steel the smith was forging.

  Gisei entered with a basket of bread for the smith, who happened to be her father. I saw her smooth face below her wild two-toned spiky hair. I followed the line of her neck with my eyes and did not realize that I had increased the rhythm of the bellows with the increased beating of my heart.

  “Yoshi, you idiot!” I heard Suzaku scream from her perch in the rafters of the forge. I had added so much pressure to the forge that the fires spat out of the opening and onto a wooden table nearby. Suzaku flew down and smothered them with her enormous wings.

  The story got to Tsuyoi fairly quickly and my lesson that afterno
on included a verbal assault about losing focus and some other stuff that I don’t remember. Something about Gisei took my focus away. Tsuyoi ended the lesson quickly.

  # # #

  I woke up the next morning with a raging headache. It couldn’t remember why I was in such pain. Suzaku reminded me.

  “Tsuyoi ended your lesson by knocking you unconscious with a kick to the back of your head.”

  “Ahh,” I groaned.

  “Yeah, exactly. You need to get up, though, and get to work at the forge.”

  “I can’t focus. I can only think about that girl. Chichi had talked about his daughter before but I can’t believe how beautiful she is. She’s so . . . wild.”

  Suzaku flew from the window into the room and landed at the foot of my bed.

  “You travel with a giant talking bird and that girl strikes you as wild?”

  I shook my head. I felt my brain moving around. “You know what I mean, Suzaku. My whole life has always been so controlled since I ended up at the temple at age five. She seems so . . . uncontrolled.”

  “You got all that from one look at her?”

  I swallowed. I didn’t want to admit to Suzaku that it was more than just Gisei’s wildness that caught my attention.

  “Look, Yoshi, you’re almost fifteen years old. It’s very common for a human boy to start noticing girls, but you don’t have the luxury of being a normal boy, if you haven’t figured that out by now.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says your destiny. Says me. I slept for a hundred years waiting to sense the core of a hero for Animetown, Yoshi. I did not hatch to have you throw away your destiny for hormones.”

  “It’s more than that, Suzaku!”

  “Sure it is.” She shook her head. “You’re just a kid–”

  “And you’re just a stupid bird, what do you know?”

  The phoenix opened her beak to speak again but paused. She shook her head. “Fine, then. I’m not going to argue with you about this. Come talk to me when you’re ready to be a hero instead of an idiot boy.” She flapped her wings in a great gust and tore through the window.