The clatter of wood hitting wood echoed throughout the dōjō, followed by loud shouts before another clatter was heard. The two men pushed against each other with their bokken before one finally managed to push the wooden sword aside, causing the other to stumble back a few paces before regaining his footing.

 

“You’ve improved, Hirose. Your master would be proud.” Breathing hard, he settled back into a defensive stance, his feet set shoulder width apart with his knees bent and his bokken held out in front of him. 

 

Hirose sighed, his lips turning down into a frown as he lowered his own bokken, holding the wooden sword at his side as he fought to catch his breath. “Not like it matters much anymore.”

 

The man’s shoulders visibly slumped, “Come on. It’s not often we get to practice like we used to anymore.”

 

Hirose’s smile was bitter, still not moving back into a fighting stance. “Exactly why it doesn’t matter, Miyazaki.”

 

A tense silence fell over the two of them, the crickets in the bushes outside the only sound to pierce it. Miyazaki leveled his old friend with a hard stare. He didn’t need to be reminded of this, not now. Not when he finally had a moment to pretend like nothing had changed; but Hirose would not bend, meeting his stare without faltering even in the slightest. Well, if there was one thing that hadn’t changed over the years, it was Hirose’s infallible stubbornness.

 

With a loud sigh, Miyazaki stood up straight, mirroring his friend’s stance and bowed at the waist, officially ending their sparring session before turning on his heel to place the bokken back on the rack.

 

“Wait,” Hirose’s voice was laced with regret. “Wait. I’m sorry. I know how hard all of this has been for you. I shouldn’t have said that.”

 

Miyazaki ignored him, striding past him and toward the sliding door. “Why apologize? Like you said, it doesn’t matter.”

 

“Don’t be like this.” He ran a hand through his short, dark hair. Yet another unwanted change. “You can resist it all you want, but if we’re going to win this war, we need to change. The world isn’t going to slow down just because we can’t let go of the past.”

 

Miyazaki barely even looked over his shoulder as he slid the door open with a bit more force than was needed. “It’s one thing to let go of the past, but what the world is asking of us is too much.” He stormed out of the dōjō, not even waiting to hear his friend’s response.

 

It was an argument he had often, but only with Hirose. They had known each other for years. They trained at the same dōjō, studied the same style of fighting, enlisted in the same samurai corps, and were now captains of their own units. They had climbed through the ranks together and had planned to continue doing so, hopefully even coming to master their fighting style somewhere down the line. Miyazaki smiled fondly as he reached his room, sliding the door open as the distant sounds of canon fire suddenly echoed through the night. The smile quickly disappeared, replaced with a bitter scowl as he stepped through the threshold and slid the door firmly shut behind him in a vain attempt to block out the far off gunfire. 

 

It was the year 1867 and Japan was at war. The armies of the Tokugawa Shogunate were battling with those of the Emperor for control of the country. As of right now, things weren’t looking all too good for the Shogun—the man that Miyazaki and his men fought for. And yet, it wasn’t the thoughts of impending defeat that plagued the samurai captain’s mind.

 

Lighting a few candles to illuminate the dark room, he paced back and forth with his arms folded as he attempted to push back his long simmering frustration. Step. Step. Step. Turn. Step. Step. Step. Turn. His long strides made it easy to cover the entire length of the small room, the tatami mat barely managing to soften his heavy footfalls. Each time he turned to face the front of his room, he was forced to stare at his mounted katana, sheathed and untouched. The faint glow of the candle light made it look a darker color than it actually was, the bright blue hilt an almost inky black as the flame flickered with his furious pacing. 

 

With each turn, it became harder and harder to ignore the blade. Miyazaki could practically hear the metal caged within its wooden prison begging to be set free. It longed to sit at his hip again, to feel the cool breeze of the fall air, to taste blood again. He paused mid-step at the back of his room, looking back with a hard gaze and firmly set jaw. His hand twitched, his own yearning to feel the reassuring weight of the blade winning him over as he crossed the room, gently lifting the katana from its display by the scabbard. His hand gingerly wrapped around the hilt, slowly drawing the sword from its cage. The sound of metal scraping against wood was a lot brighter than he thought it would be, akin to the bells rung at the temples whenever you offered up a prayer. 

 

With the katana’s full length free, Miyazaki set the scabbard aside, settling himself into the familiar fighting stance. His knees bent, his feet shoulders width apart, and his fingers gingerly—but firmly—wrapping themselves around the hilt. A sense of ease washed over him, the familiarity causing a long forgotten calm to overtake his mind. With a deep breath, he lifted the sword above his head, took a step froward, and swung, releasing the air in his lungs with a loud shout. He stepped back, lifted his sword, and repeated. Over and over again. His room was hardly even a fraction of the size of the dōjō, limiting his movements. He felt restricted, trapped. Trapped in a world that no longer had a place for him. He dedicated his life to mastering this art. Day after day of training, of repeatedly swinging the sword no matter the scorching heat or blistering cold until he could do it on impulse and without hesitation. This katana had all but become an extension of him, and they wanted to yank right from his hands.

 

Without thinking, Miyazaki moved into a sharp twirl and swung from the shoulder, the katana cutting through the air sharply, only to come to all too sudden of a stop. Jerked from his thoughts, he looked to the side to see that he had misjudged the width of his room, and the blade now sat embedded in a wooden support beam. A dry laugh escaped him, wiping the thin sheen of sweat from his forehead before he yanked the blade out with a swift jerk. He was almost disappointed in himself, there was a time when he would have thought himself able to cut clean through it. Hirose would have laughed at his stupidity and proceeded to help him cover up the damage.

 

He huffed, looking down at his blade and seeing the slight chip in the otherwise pristine metal. Miyazaki never understood how his friend was able to accept the change so easily. They tried to fight Chōshū more than once with just their swords, only for it to end in a blood bath. They had access to Western firepower, leaving the Shogun’s forces unable to even put a dent in their armies. Miyazaki lost count of the men he had lost to bullets. Men who had bravely charged into gunfire and canon fire as ordered, blades drawn and never once looking back. It was after that they got their hands on guns, it was after that they began to practice shooting instead of thrusting and swinging a blade.

 

“It’s for the good of the country,” Hirose said. “If the Shogun can take back control of the country, we never have to worry about using these things again.”

 

It wasn’t true and they both knew it. War had changed forever. There was no room for the samurai anymore. They had to either adapt or die.

 

More than once, Miyazaki had been tempted to accept death. To throw his damned rifle aside in the midst of battle and draw his sword, lunging into the hail of bullets raining down upon him. To cut through as many men as he could before death finally took him. At least then he would know that he died a samurai, with his katana in hand and the crimson blood of his enemies staining his clothes and mixing with his own. The temptation was fleeting, and his selfish desires were always squashed upon remembering his men would be left leaderless, leaving his rifle firmly clutched in his hands as he continued to pull the trigger.

 

The fading light of his candle caught on the shining metal of the katana, causing him to look down and see his reflection. Even in the dim light, he could see the difference in his appearance. His midnight black hair was once long enough to be pulled back into a proper topknot, but now barely came down past his ears in favor of a more Westernized style. “If we are going to fight like Westerners, we will look like them too,” his commanders had stated. He had scoffed at the idea then, and he scoffed at it now. 

 

Look how far that has brought us, he thought. Our forces stretched thin and barely enough gunpowder to blow a hole in a bamboo stack.

 

His, dare he say, handsome features now began to show his thirty years. His frown lines more prominent and the creases in his brow deeper than they ever had been. To think there had been a time when he smiled more than frowned. Even during the harshest of battles he was able to find a way to smile afterwards. But now he felt nothing. With every bullet he shot, he felt a piece of his soul leave with it. 

 

Heaving a sigh, Miyazaki knelt where he placed the scabbard, carefully sliding the sword back into its sheath. The sound it made was duller this time, smaller, like the sound of a glass being placed on a hard surface. His heart sat heavy in his chest as he placed it back on its display rack. The next time they were called into battle, this blade would sit at his hip as it always had, but the fact that it was little more than decoration now did nothing to ease his mind. This world was moving too fast for him, and he was in danger of being left behind.

 

The sound of canon fire continued to echo into the night, followed closely by an explosion that shook the compound ever so slightly every time a shell made contact. If the units charged with pushing the Emperor’s forces back were not successful, there was a chance that Miyazaki and his men would be called to battle by morning. He continued to kneel before his beloved weapon long after the light from the final candle finally went out.