Samurai NOT

Chapter 28

The sword, once beautiful and shiny, was now ugly and mangled.

Even so, Ei could still sense her master's soul when she hugged the broken weapon.

By the time she got back, it was already night. The priest asked nor said nothing, not even when he saw the new scabbard on her waist. He just hugged her. But when he realized the stare of her hands, he took her inside right away.

Ei sat on the corner with her head down as the priest treated her wounds. Though she didn't notice, it wasn't just her hands; her feet bled as well. She was walking around the forest with her bare feet.

But that pain was nothing compared to what the girl felt when she saw the coat covering Tadayoshi. Even so, she couldn't help but thank the priest in her mind.

"Eiko-chan..." a voice brought her back to reality. It took a moment for her to stop cutting the tree and turn to Ryuu-sensei. "We have enough."

Only now Ei noticed she had cut enough trees to make another small clearing. Nodding absentmindedly, she cut the trunks into smaller pieces with the priest's help. Despite wanting to do it all by herself, Ryuu-sensei insisted on helping. Only then the girl remembered she wasn't the only one grieving.

By the stories Tadayoshi told her, they met thanks to their respective masters. Ryuu-sensei was the disciple of some priest in some temple and in one Yasuhiro-sama' travels to visit an old friend, the swordsman and priest became friends.

They know... knew each other for a long time... much more than me, the disciple thought as they carried everything to the pile of logs before the temple.

Ryuu-sensei organized the smaller pieces of wood while Ei spreads the dry leaves around Tadayoshi's body.

It was the priest suggestion to burn the swordsman's body.

At first, Ei didn't want. But the idea of bury her master on that mountain made her insides burn. This mountain doesn't deserve to be master's resting place...

So they went with Ryuu-sensei' suggestion.

Ei wanted to burn the temple as well, but the priest was firmly against it. According to him, the villagers would need a place to perform their rituals, even if it wasn't the real temple.

She didn't care at all, but he said Tadayoshi wouldn't do something like that. The disciple wasn't so sure her master wouldn't but kept quiet. Though she knew a lot about her master, there were many times when he surprised her and even seemed another person.

I never knew about this either, Ei thought, clutching the small books inside her clothes. One she had seen many times. Tadayoshi used Yasuhiro-sama' diary to teach her how to read. She even flipped through a few times, but it never interested her.

Like everyone, she held the samurai as a legend. Looking into that could ruin her ideal. Tadayoshi knew about that and laughed everything, saying the old man was like the tales, but people had embellished much of his deeds.

But the other book... All this time by her master's side, Ei had never seen that book. After hesitating, the priest handed her before they went to sleep. Uninterested, the girl flipped through and read the first pages. When she realized what it was, she shut the book close, the tears rolling down her cheeks.

The disciple recognized her master awful handwrite. Ei couldn't sleep and spent the entire night holding the book, thinking if she wanted to read or not. In the end, she decided she wasn't ready, and just watched the sun rise while hugging the diary.

"Kaguya-sama!" Ryuu-sensei screamed suddenly. The priest placed the last firewood around Tadayoshi and turned.

Ei turned around slowly. She didn't sense none of the four our people walked towards them. Or they're really good in hiding their presence or I'm too distracted... Staring the newcomers, the swordswoman considered the latter to be true.