The next day, I woke up to the usual kick in the side. Today, I was ready. Despite the failure of my attempt the day before, I didn’t feel disheartened.

Immediately after waking up, I started to make my distance, rolling back and landing on my feet, getting my guard up.

Surprisingly, Kenji didn’t start attacking. Instead, he tossed something on the ground before my feet. I looked down. A knife? No, some sword. What was it called again? Um… oh, yeah. A gladius. I looked back up at Kenji, before looking back down at the sword. Well… I wanna go home.

I picked it up and dashed at him in one swift motion, making a wide cut at his neck. Eck, I twisted my arm weird. Kenji pulled one of his own out of a sheath on his waist.

He parried my blow and, before I really knew what had happened, placed the tip of his sword against my esophagus, breaking the skin just a little bit. I froze.

“Your performance has been beyond lacking, Daniel,”

He said, his sword still pressed against my throat.

“So, from today on,”

He pressed a little harder.

“I’m going to start pushing you for real.”

The last thing I felt was the sensation of his sword slashing across my neck. And then everything went black.

“Daniel.”

I could faintly hear a voice calling out to me.

“Hey, wake the hell up.”

Hello? Kenji? Everything was black.

Fuck, did I die? Well… I was already in hell. Surely nothing will be much different. Somehow, I was just glad to escape that bastard.

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“You aren’t dead, you rascal. Now wake up.”

And I felt a sharp pain in my side.

Ah, shit. I opened my eyes. Kenji’s face was above me.

“Again.”

And he drew his sword.

After I died for the first time, I cried and screamed, and threw a temper tantrum. I was sick of fighting. I was sick of feeling pain. I wanted to be free.

So, Kenji killed me again, lopping my head clean off of my body. The second time I died, I woke up feeling fear. I tried to run away.

So, Kenji stabbed me in the back, straight through to my heart. The third time I died, I hesitantly started to fight. This was nothing like the training before. Instead of a bruise or a black eye, now I was being cut into pieces if I didn’t perform well.

It was scary. Too scary.

So I was sloppy, and Kenji killed me. I didn’t really know how to swing a sword.

The fourth time I died, I was angry. I started furiously rushing at him, desperate to hurt him back. To kill him. And so, Kenji made use of my anger, turning the force of my own attacks against me and disarming me before stabbing me through the stomach and twisting the blade.

And finally, the fifth time I died, my head started to clear. This wasn’t any different from before.

No matter how many times I died, no matter how little sense it made, I was resurrected. By Kenji? I didn’t know.

But I did know that if I wanted to stop getting stabbed every ten fucking minutes, I’d need to learn how to use my sword. So I started learning.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten deaths. I didn’t sleep anymore. When Kenji resurrected me, my exhaustion and wounds were gone. So we just fought, over and over again.

Sixteen.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

Nineteen.

I slowly started to pick up on how to use the sword. I wasn’t dying as quickly.

Forty-nine.

Fifty.

I could last a decently long time, now. I hadn’t managed to make so much as a scratch on Kenji, but at least I was surviving for longer.

I stopped counting how many times I’d died. It could have been hundreds of more times. How long had we been fighting now? Days? Weeks? I wasn’t sure. But I could feel it. I was getting closer. Soon, Kenji wouldn’t be the one to kill me. I would be the one to kill Kenji.