Snow flew into the air and danced around Tsugi as he flung his chains into the air, launching them straight toward Yamo.
Yamo flicked his sword and the kunai jammed deep into the nearby tree. Tsugi had to tug hard on it to pull it out, causing the tree to explode and it toppled over crashing loudly into the other trees.
The hallucination broke and Tsugi came back to reality standing in the middle of the snowy forest with Yamo before him.
"Let's go again." Yamo pulled out his sword and Tsugi charged, using his motion to hide the initiation of the hallucination.
Each time, the magic lasted longer and longer before Yamo was able to figure it out, but Tsugi’s energy was draining since they’ve been going at it for several hours already.
Finally, Tsugi couldn’t hold his aura still anymore, and broke the hallucination on his own. He panted exhaustively and looked up at Yamo, who stood before him, with his sword down at his side.
“Absolutely amazing.” Yamo grinned ear to ear and approached Tsugi, pulling him in for a side hug. “I am so proud of you. In the short amount of time since you’ve been here, you’ve far exceeded my expectations.”
Tsugi wiped away the beads of sweat on his forehead with his sleeve and looked up at Yamo with a huge grin on his face, showing the whites of his teeth.
“Let’s go home and cook dinner before the other two get back.” Yamo ruffled Tsugi’s hair and they headed out of the woods.
“Yamo, do you think I would get as strong as you three?” Tsugi kicked snow into the air, letting the wind take it. When Yamo didn’t answer he turned to look, but Yamo wasn’t there. He quickly glanced around. “Yamo?!” He called, but only the cold wind blew by. His heart raced, and he started to panic and hyperventilate. Running back, he checked behind every tree, “YAMO!” He screamed and tears welled up in his eyes. His nightmare of Yamo’s neck breaking flashed before his eyes and he panicked even more. “YAMO!” His voice cracked and a rock lodged in his throat.
“BOO!” Yamo jumped out from behind a tree. “Gotcha!” He held his stomach and laughed at his childish prank.
Tsugi fell to his knees and cried uncontrollably. His heart both ached and was relieved at the same time. His loud cry echoed through the woods. Yamo quickly knelt down and embraced Tsugi into his arms tightly. “Hey, hey it’s okay. I’m sorry bud. It was just a joke, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Yamo pulled Tsugi’s crying face into his chest and rubbed his back. “I am so sorry bud.” He leaned his cheek on top of Tsugi’s head and pulled him in even tighter, any tighter and he would've crushed Tsugi.
After a long while, Tsugi finally calmed down and pulled himself away from Yamo, wiping the tears and snot from his face. “I-I had a dream that you died. When you disappeared, it was like my dream came true, and I was just…so scared.” His voice cracked again, and he fought back his tears, but with no success.
“It’s okay buddy.” Yamo pulled Tsugi into his chest again. “Never again. I’ll never do that again.” Yamo pulled him away and lifted Tsugi’s face so they could see each other's faces. “It’s just a dream okay? Everything will be fine. I’ll live for a long time yet.” He smiled and pulled Tsugi in for another embrace. “Come on, let’s head home.”
***
“Look!” Yamo pointed to the rushing river. “You see the salmon? I’m surprised there’s still a few here. I’ll leave it up to you to catch our dinner.”
Tsugi pulled out his chain and threw the kunai right into the fish, and pulled it to shore. “Easy.” He smiled.
“Maybe next time we can try something harder.” Yamo chuckled and ruffled Tsugi’s hair.
Yamo was teaching Tsugi how to filet the salmon to make sushi for dinner.
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“How’d you learn this dish?” Tsugi deboned the meat and handed it to Yamo.
“It was my wife's favorite dish.”
“Your wife?” Tsugi turned to look at him. He had never seen Yamo’s wife, or heard him mention anything about her before.
“Namiko.” The corner of his lip curled into a wistful smile. “She passed away a long time ago.” Tsugi could tell Yamo was fighting back tears, and fighting to swallow dry saliva to push down the lump in his throat.
“How?” Tsugi knew he shouldn’t have asked, but his mouth had moved on its own.
Yamo put the knife down, and washed his hands. “I wasn’t able to protect her.” His eyes watered and he quickly turned away, wiped his eyes and sniffled.
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.” Tsugi tried to comfort him. Yamo walked to the table and leaned on the chair before pulling it out and sitting himself in it. Tsugi approached and sat in the chair next to him.
Yamo locked his eyes to the table, and took a deep shaky breath. “She was a great person.” He chuckled and licked his dry lips. “She loved to learn anything and everything. All the books in the house that you see, those are all hers. She was the one who taught me everything about the human body. She was fascinated by it and how it worked. She didn’t have any magic affinity, so she wanted to learn how to heal the body without magic. The things that she does, it wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before. It was as if she was from a different world, or she may even be a whole nother race.” He chuckled joyfully, making his shoulders slightly bounce.
The smile faded. “She learned about the body to heal, and I learned about it to destroy.” His voice broke and he quickly buried his face in his hands before wiping his face and forced the tears away. He cleared his throat and placed his hands back down on the table. “She didn’t like the kind of work I did with my skills. When we married, I decided I wasn’t going to do that kind of work anymore. Instead, I would work as a mercenary and protect people instead. Which didn’t bode well for the merchants, as they needed my skills. But I didn’t care, my wife’s happiness always comes first.
We’ve been trying to have a child for years with no success. Finally, she researched some herbs that could help, and after a while of trying, we were successful.” A big smile appeared across his face.
“She said if it was a girl, we would name her Miru and if it was a boy she wanted to name him…Enron.” He smiled sadly, and looked at Tsugi with red teary eyes. “Soon enough, I was a father to a beautiful baby girl. She looked just like my wife, with her big light brown eyes and jet black hair.” He looked off into the corner and smiled like he could see them standing there.
“Shortly after Miru was born, Volgan and I had to leave town on a mission. The mission was supposed to take me five months, but I was too eager to return home and finished it in three. It was a very big event in the black market, and there were a lot of different places we had to go to.
I rushed home as fast as I could, but when I got home, the house was filled with the smell of death. The house was a mess like there had been a struggle. Volgan searched downstairs and I ran up the stairs and found….” His voice broke and he buried his face into his hands again. His shoulders vibrated uncontrollably, and he muffled his sobs with his hands.
He sniffed and took a deep breath, clenching his white knuckled fists, and cleared his throat. “...I found my little girl…” his voice cracked again and his chin quivered. “...her blackened decaying body covered in her blanket. Her decomposing skin wrapped her little bones like she had been starved to death.” He pressed his fists to his forehead and tears dropped onto the table like raindrops.
A blurred vision of Yamo made Tsugi realize that he too was crying. He quickly wiped away the tears from his eyes and sat quietly, listening intently.
“I don’t know how long I cried by the bed.” He sniffed and took a deep breath. “Volgan screamed my name up the stairs and startled me. I basically jumped down the flight of stairs. He didn’t say anything, but when I saw him…his fists were bloody and his eyes were full of terror. My heart just…” His face scrunched up painfully and he pounded his fist into his chest. “...I knew something was very wrong. He only pointed me to the cellar and I dragged my heavy feet down the stairs. I wanted to see what Volgan saw, but a part of me didn’t want to. I already knew it wasn’t something I would want to see.
It felt like it took me years to reach the bottom. The whole way down, I kept hoping I was dreaming, that I would wake up and find my wife and daughter in bed next to me. I could still see her smiling face and her hair dancing in the wind. I can still hear my daughter’s babbles and cries of hunger in my ear.
Opening one door after another, I entered the operating room and saw five men knocked out on the floor. I looked around and found her…” He cried loudly, slowly rocking back and forth slightly in his chair, as if to comfort himself. “...sh…she was…hanging halfway…off the table.” His clenched fists shook with rage, and his face turned red with anger. He looked like he was going to be sick. Which was hard to believe from the work that he does. Then again, this was his wife, the love of his life. He took a deep shaky breath, “...Volgan had draped a cloak around her. I ran to her and carefully pulled her onto the floor with me.”
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “Her abdomen was open and her organs were slowly being harvested, while she was slowly being tortured. They had cut her up, little by little each day while she…she was still…alive.” He threw his head back and blinked the tears away. His adam's apple bounced as he forced down another gulp of dry saliva.
“She was calling out…to me.” He sobbed. “I held her hand and I kept telling her, ‘I’m right here’ but it was like she could neither see…nor hear me.” He placed his fist over his heart. “I held her against me and rocked back and forth. Every now and then she would say, ‘my daughter’s hungry, please just let me feed her’.” He clenched his eyes shut and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I placed my cheek against hers and her skin was as cold as ice.
She finally found enough strength and reached up to touch my face.” He raised a hand to his cheek. “She finally recognized me in her final moment and she smiled at me.” His lips quivered uncontrollably.
“Hi.” He cried. “That was her last word to me.” Yamo looked at Tsugi with a broken expression. “Hi.” He repeated like the voice rang in his head. His voice broke and the dam that was so strong, had now completely collapsed.