Sumiko Story, Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Discoveries</u>
I was half blind. Akira told me when I next woke up. He said whatever got me had got me pretty good. I was lying in a soft bed in an unfamiliar room, pale mid-afternoon sunlight streamed from a paper wall to my right. Gingerly I reached up to touch the large round bandage that covered my eye.

Akira gave me mirror so that I could see what it looked like. The left side of my face was normal, a pale face with a slight blush, and one ice blue eye staring me down. The right side of my face was a different story. Two long ugly scars stretched the length of my face, forming a sinister X over my now blind eye. Carefully I reached up and very slowly pulled off the bandage that shielded my right eye. I could only open the lid halfway because the scars had nicked the bottom of my eye lid (Akira said I’d be able to open it up all the way again once the scars healed.), but half was enough.

Rather than the normal ice blue of my normal eye, this eye had turned a dull silver gray. The pupil was a dull rock gray, while the part that should have been blue had turned to misty silver that reminded me of the sea spry that flies off a wave when it collides with a rock cliff.

I slowly put down the mirror and Akira told me to put the bandage back on.

“Where’s Mother?” I asked him, carefully sliding the bandage back into place. Akira didn’t answer, he just looked away. Then I remembered what I had seen last night, I asked him what had happened.

“I don’t really know.” He answered, gazing out the paper wall, before accounting what he had seen. “Well, Uchito wouldn’t leave me alone after he found out you had managed to beat my test score,” He had that same unfamiliar expression in his eyes that I had seen the night before, but it vanished as soon as he saw I was looking. “So I decided to go for a walk, to get away from it all. I was on my way home when I heard something in the bushes, it dropped this.” He said, holing up kunai (a type of knife used primarily by ninjas) for me to see. It was crusty with dried blood. “I was starting to wonder if everything was okay when I saw the smoke. When I finally reached the house, it was completely engulfed by fire. That’s about when you came in.” He completed his story by jabbing a finger at me. “I think you know what happened next.” He paused before adding “You’re lucky I managed to stop the bleeding, other wise you might have died too.”

Lucky… there was that word again. But was I really that lucky? What did Akira and I possess that had saved us from that fire? Were we really that special? I think you know what happened next… that was what Akira had said, but did I really? The truth was… no. I still didn’t really understand all that had happened. Though Akira’s story helped to clear up a lot… it left a lot unanswered too. Why had we survived? Why did this happen to us</u>? What did we do wrong? And … why did we deserve this?

I had one other question as well.

“Akira…” I started hesitantly, “what … what is dead?”

I had caught Akira off guard with this question. I could tell by the way his eyes widened ever so slightly. Then he closed them and gave a small smile. “Well, you know what someone is like when they’re unconscious, right?” I nodded; everyone in our class knew that.

“Well death is a lot like that… except the person never wakes up.” I was still confused. How can someone not wake up? Akira noticed my confusion.
“You still don’t get it do you?” He gave a small chuckle before continuing, “Death… well it’s… its kind of hard to explain. Did Sensei teach you how to check for a pulse?” I nodded. “Where does that pulse come from?” He asked patiently.

I held my hand over my heart.

“Well, when you die, your heart stops pulsing… it stops beating.”

“So?” I asked “People can fix that right? How does that make you not wake up?”

Akira sighed, “No, Sumi… you still don’t get it. Your heart is what keeps you alive, it keeps you awake. This isn’t helping, is it?”
I shook my head. Whatever this death thing was… it was very complicated.

“To put simply, when you die, you go away.” He explained this with a patience I didn’t know he possessed. But apparently he did.
“When do you come back?”

“You never come back Sumi… you can’t.”

“Well why not?” I asked indignantly.

“Because you just can’t, it’s like birds swimming in the ocean, and fish flying in the sky. It just can’t happen.” He emphasized the last few words, as if that would make me understand them better.

I was starting to understand this ‘death’ thing a little more clearly. Wherever Mother, Setsumi, Father and Uchito had gone… they wouldn’t be coming back. But surprisingly enough, I wasn’t as sad as I might have guessed.

Akira noticed this and shot me a look that clearly stated- why aren’t you sad? I decided to give him a verbal answer.

“I’m not sad Akira, because… because I have you.” I said, wrapping my arms around him, returning the hug from last night. “You’re all I need.”

Akira’s eyes widened and his face gained more color, finally he turned away without saying a word. But that was okay, because I had read what he couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘I love you too.’

~♦~♦~♦~♦~

I found out later that afternoon that we where staying in the dojo. Sensei had given us a room when Akira had shown up last night, myself on his back, looking for shelter. He said we could use it as long as we liked. Eventually we ended up making that our home.

It was a fairly large room with two beds on opposite sides of the room, two dressers, two bedside tables and other various objects of which where included- a yoga pad, a small charred coffee table, a very large rug, a fruit bowl, a basket, a futon and my old doll Sammie. Some of these things we had rescued from the remains of our old house and some Akira would bring back from wherever he had gone during the day.

Akira became somewhat of a mystery to me after that day. He would continue to go to his classes on a usual basis, and always seemed to come up with enough money that we could get by on, and even live in moderate comfort. He never told me where he went though, or where he got the money. Mostly he would just dodge the question, and sometimes he just wouldn’t say anything. Other times he would just leave, sometimes for days, sometimes just hours. We still managed to spend some time together though. My favorite way to pass the time was when he would spar with me over the spread out yoga mats in the middle of our room.

Akira didn’t go easy on me because I was a girl, half blind or even because I was his sister. For that I was thankful. By not going easier on me, he gave me a chance to develop new fighting moves and strategies. I was even able to beat him sometimes, but mostly I was just giving him a good run for his money.

Because of my blind eye my other senses seemed to sharpen. Akira said this was because I could no longer depend on my sight as well, so my other senses sharpened to pick up the slack. The cuts over my blind eye healed up about two weeks after I got them, but they didn’t go away. Instead they evolved into an ugly scar that retained that ominous X over my right eye. As I grew older I allowed my hair to grow over it. Why not? It wasn’t as if I’d be using it anytime soon. Eventually my hair came down so it was just past my jaw bone, covering the right side of my face.

As far as schooling was concerned, Akira became my main teacher for martial arts. The other sensei at the dojo didn’t think it was fair for me to continue training with the boys when they held such a huge advantage over me. So they had me switched over to classes with Anzu. That was her real name, she had tried to get me to address her as Sensei, but I called her Anzu just the same. She was the teacher in charge of training the female ninja, or the Kunoichi as they’re more commonly known.

Being a Kunoichi was all about using your head. They were like the silent assassins; they could sneak into noblemen’s house and kill him in a hundred different ways. Our weapons were almost always disguised as clothing or jewelry, one such example was a hair pin that doubled as a dart possibly dipped in poison. There was also a shuriken disguised as a necklace or bracelet, and even rings that had a small tip covered in poison. Just one small prick was enough to kill. Of course we weren’t allowed to practice with the real things, just cheap knock-offs that broke often.

Learning all this was fun, it taught you how to think. But my real passion was still in martial arts, more specifically Tai Jutsu. In short it is a very effective style of fighting because you learn about the human body and how to exploit its weaknesses, things such as pressure points that can cause a limb to lose its function. You where taught more about flexibility and adaptability so that you improvise your way out of almost any situation you might be thrown into. Plus you got to learn some cool fighting moves.

I loved to watch the boys in class learn about new moves. I especially loved watching Sensei demonstrate techniques known as ‘ninja magic’, but more commonly referred to as techniques.

A technique was a way of manipulating natural elements (such as fire, earth, water, air and lightning) to pull off amazing moves and gain fantastic fighting abilities. The way you use a technique is simple enough to understand; first you take all of you Chi (the positive and negative energy that exists in all living things) and focus it to the place of the body best suited to pulling off the technique you have in mind. Then call out the name of the technique you wish to perform.

This is a lot easier said than done, because a technique can be affected by your emotions. Sensei explained that when you let your emotions drive you mind (like when you shove someone because you’re angry) it causes an upset in your chi balance, creating more good or bad energies, which in turn affects how much of each (good and bad) chi goes into your technique. Consequently this creates a technique that is either too powerful, too weak, or too bizarre.

I always left after Sensei instructed the class to practice. Not because I didn’t want to try them, but because all the boys would start trying to show off for me, and that was embarrassing. Especially since none of them could ever do the technique right. Besides, I really wasn’t supposed to be there anyways.

Among the most powerful techniques where the ones called Blades, these were extremely hard to use and even harder to master. Sensei explained that that’s because a blade often combines two or more pure elements. (You could also use a Blade that had only one element but these were generally not as useful as the ones with more than one.) Then Sensei demonstrated a Blade called the Blade of Light. I soon found out why it was called that. It combined the elements of fire and electricity, forming a gigantic fiery bolt so bright, it blinded my good eye for a moment.

I wasn’t allowed to practice in the main dojo with the other boys, so I trained and practiced secret techniques and blades in the secret of the old clearing I’d been led to years ago by the sight of a beautiful moon. When I grew too tired to practice anymore, I would sit down among Sakura’s roots and listen to her sway back and forth in the breeze. I practiced in secret, not even Akira knew of my little safe heaven where I could escape from the rest of the world. It was hard and pretty lonely sometimes. I couldn’t tell anyone about what I was doing, lest they stop me from doing it. Even when I had mastered a new blade, the trees were the only ones who knew. My best blade became the Blade of Light.

There was just something about the way it gave off so much light that set it apart from the rest. It continued for years, I grew stronger and stronger in secret, learning new blades and techniques away from the rest of the world. And that’s the way my life was for a long time, until I turned 16… before I met Aaron. Then everything changed.