A stream of freezing water gushed along the riverbed and Rei placed a wooden bucket into the stream, gathering the water as it flowed past. Once the bucket was filled near to the brink, Rei repeated the process with a second bucket behind him.
Then lifting the buckets in each hand, Rei walked back up the hill of the forest that was partially covered in snow, reaching a small clearing where the snow was less here for reasons unknown to Rei.
Green grass and flowers grew sparsely across the clearing, and at the centre, Zilver was sitting down motionlessly with her legs crossed, her eyes closed, and her beautiful face relaxed. Wind picked up the back of her long silver hair, swaying it gently in the cool air.
“I’m done with the buckets,” Rei announced, walking over to where Zilver was sitting.
Zilver didn’t respond, just as she normally wouldn’t whenever she was sitting quietly like this. The first time Rei saw her doing this, he had naively thought that she had been sleeping, until he once tried to wake her up and received a beating from Zilver as punishment.
Meditation is what Zilver had said that she had been doing.
He had never heard or seen anyone doing something like this in all his eleven years of living back at his village.
Placing the buckets down beside him, Rei sat down near Zilver, copying her posture before closing his eyes to try out meditating as well.
‘What’s even the point of this…’ Rei thought to himself, ‘I don’t get how anyone can sit like this for hours like she does without saying a single word… Is this what she does to train her fighting skills…?’
After a few minutes, he was bored out of his mind. Another ten or so minute went passed, and he was ready to call it quits, having felt like he achieved nothing.
Opening his eyes with a sigh, Rei picked himself up from the ground.
“Sit down.” Zilver said.
Rei glanced to his side at Zilver who was still sitting in the exact same position, her eyes closed, and having not moved even a centimetre the whole time.
Reluctantly, Rei sat back down and tried to close his eyes to meditate again.
“…What am I supposed to be even doing, Zilver?” Rei asked, keeping his eyes closed.
“Nothing.” Zilver replied.
“…”
Rei tried to do nothing as Zilver had said, but only felt restless.
“Should I be thinking about something?” Rei asked. “I feel like my mind is getting barraged with a million thoughts while doing nothing.”
“Just let your thoughts flow, Rei.” Zilver said.
He tried to do as Zilver said.
After some time, Zilver eventually spoke to him again.
“What are you thinking about?” Zilver asked.
“…My parents.” Rei said, then a thought came to Rei’s mind, “Hey Zilver…”
“What is it?”
“Where are your parents?” Rei asked, “Have you always just lived in that hut out in the forest by yourself…? Isn’t it lonely…?”
Zilver was silent for a second, then she said in a cold voice, “Don’t ask pointless questions. Focus on your meditation.”
“S, sorry…” Rei said, then fell silent, doing as Zilver instructed.
“My parents are dead.” Zilver said.
“I’m sorry…” Rei said.
“Don’t be.” Zilver said. “I have no feelings for them unlike you.”
“…”
“I grew up in this forest my whole life, the majority of it spent being trained by my past teacher, another assassin, whom has since passed away.” Zilver said, “Does that satisfy your question?”
“Yes…”
“Good, now concentrate on your meditation.”
Rei nodded, then after a moment of silence, his thoughts returned back to his parents. It seemed that was where his thoughts always led him eventually, and he felt anger and bitterness welling up inside him, screaming at him to seek vengeance.
Zilver opened her eyes, glancing to her side at Rei and saw him sitting there tensely with clenched fists that were trembling slightly.
“That’s enough for today.” Zilver said, and Rei opened his eyes again, watching as Zilver got up from the ground.
“R, right…” Rei breathed out, having not realised his breath had been staggered during the meditation.
Quickly, he picked up the buckets of water chasing over to catch Zilver on her side. She walked quietly without a word, her moonlit face as cold as always, not revealing her thoughts.
But Rei sighed, feeling that he had displeased Zilver.
“You did fine, Rei.” Zilver said, her eyes gazing forward at their path without looking at him. “From today onwards, I want you to keep meditating every day for at least an hour in the morning.”
“And how long should I keep doing this for?” Rei asked, glancing up at her face as they walked side-by-side.
“Until I tell you to stop.” Zilver replied. “If I never tell you to stop, that means you keep doing it for the rest of your life.”
Rei paused, hearing that, thinking about Zilver’s words. He was used to her bluntness by now. Then another thought came to his mind, “Hey Zilver, how long has it been since you started practicing meditation?”
“Since I was 4 years old.” Zilver said.
“And that means how many years…?”
“13 years.”
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“Ah, got it…” Rei said. He had finally figured out something that he had been wanting to know for a long time, which Zilver had persistently refused to answer. “So that means you’re 17 years old now…”
“…”
“I’m turning 12 in a few more months, so that means you’re only older than me by a bit over 5 years.” Rei said.
“Rei…” Zilver said, “You’re just a child…”
“Well, in six years’ time, I’ll be 18 and you’ll be around 23, right? So then I wouldn’t be a child anymore.”
Zilver stopped walking, and turned to Rei, her scarlet red eyes staring down at him.
“Rei.” Zilver spoke in a serious voice, “I want you to stop having these thoughts. I’m not a good person.”
“Then I will be the bad guy too.” Rei said.
Before Zilver could protest, Rei ran ahead, carrying the buckets at his side.
Zilver sighed, walking ahead to follow after Rei.
~x~
Over 2 years had passed and Rei was now 14-years-old, gradually filling out the large build passed down by his father. During this time, Zilver continued to train Rei in all areas of being a fighter from swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, mental aptitude – he had come a long way since Zilver first took him in as an eleven-years-old boy when his village had been burnt down to ashes by bandits.
The silver gleam of the twin blade clashed down on Rei’s sword, sending sparks flying and he held his sword firmly with one hand, grimacing as he felt Zilver forcing the blade down on him.
Rei took a swift step to the side as Zilver pushed her blade down on his sword, and Rei’s sword crashed into the dirt ground, cracking the surface and digging further down.
Then he swayed his head backwards just in time for Zilver’s other twin blade to slice through the air of where his neck was.
He tried to lift his sword up, raising the edge of the blade from the dirt ground where it had been jammed, but he was only able to lift it up by a centimetre before Zilver stepped forward promptly, her feet pushed down on the blade, keeping him from being able to raise the sword before she ran up along the blade, her twin blade whirling for his neck with deadly slashes.
He swayed further back, but each slash of her twin blade was pushing Rei further and further back until only the ends of his fingers were holding onto the handle of his sword.
Seeing Zilver’s twin blades come slicing for his head and not wanting to let go of his sword, Rei let out a roar, ripping the sword out from underneath the ground and swung it wildly around him, causing Zilver’s balance to falter for a split second and she jumped off the blade of his sword and up over him.
‘Now!’ Rei thought, his eyes widening as he saw Zilver beginning to descend from the air.
He swung his sword with all his might at the place where Zilver would land, having predicted that she would not be able to change her landing path mid-way in the air.
Then shock took over Rei’s face when he saw Zilver rotate her body, using the momentum of her fall to perform a flip in mid-air, changing the timing of her landing by a fraction of a second.
But that fraction of a second was all she needed to cause Rei’s sword to swing underneath her harmlessly across the air, and she shot out one of her twin blades forward as she landed, stopping the tip of the blade a hair’s length away from piercing through the centre of Rei’s throat.
Rei froze, holding his sword to his side that was too far away from Zilver to had blocked or countered her attack.
“I lost again…” Rei sighed dejectedly, and Zilver pulled her sword back from his throat, sheathing her twin blades by the side of her waist.
“You’re getting better.” Zilver said, watching his expression. “Don’t be so harsh on yourself.”
“Yeah, that’s what you say… But I haven’t ever been able to land even a single graze on you, Zilver.” Rei said, shaking his head. “Not even once in the two years that you’ve been training me… not a single cut...”
“…”
“And I know that you’re going easy on me as well.” Rei said, sheathing his giant sword behind his back.
Despite having grown a lot taller over 2 years and being slightly taller than Zilver now, the length of his father’s sword was still almost equal to his height.
“Even though I told you not to go easy on me…” Rei added, glancing to his side dispiritedly.
Then Rei turned around, heading back to the hut.
Zilver watched his back for a moment, before following Rei to return to the hut.
~x~
“Rei, I want you to help me get something in town.”
“Huh?”
Rei blinked, wondering if he had heard Zilver correctly as he gazed at her from where he sat on the chair of the dining table inside the small one-roomed hut.
“There’s some herbs that I need that aren’t in this forest, it’s for your wounds,” Zilver said, packing up some stuff on the other side of the hut, “They’re called Iguano. I’ve left some coins in the cabinet next to the bed that you can use to buy the herbs.”
Although Rei had recovered considerably from the burn wounds from two years ago, there were still some parts of his body that had been burnt more badly and were still healing, giving him a constant light pain from the sensitivity of the skin that he had now grown accustomed to.
“You never told me to go into town before…” Rei said, watching Zilver.
“There’s a map inside the cabinet as well that you can use to find your way,” Zilver said, walking to the door of the hut, dressed in her grey traveller’s cloak, and pulled the hood over her head, “I have a job request, so I will be out for several days. Make sure you don't do anything unnecessary.”
Zilver opened the door of the hut, getting ready to step outside.
“Zilver…!” Rei called out, and she stopped at the door.
“Be careful…” Rei said, staring at her back.
He knew that Zilver was going to go kill someone, her job being an assassin. Although Zilver never talked about her trips, it was clearly still a dangerous job with the chance that Zilver might go off one day and never return to the hut.
“You just watch yourself.” Zilver said, then she stepped outside and the door closed, leaving Rei alone in the hut.
Rei sighed, heading over to the cabinet besides the bed to look for the coins and map as Zilver had said.
He always felt so lonely whenever Zilver would go off on her trips, leaving him alone in the hut. He had no idea how Zilver managed to live on her own like this for who knows how long.
Opening the cabinet, he found a pouch containing the coins that Zilver had talked about, and a map, rolled up in a parchment.
‘Might as well get those herbs as soon as possible, so I can get home quickly to wait for Zilver to return.’ Rei thought to himself.
~x~
Rei trudged through the forest, wearing a spare traveller’s cloak, with his father’s sword sheathed behind him. He held the map out in front of him, squinting at it to see if he was going the right way.
The forest around him looked all the same, tall trees growing everywhere, blocking out the view of what was in the distance.
He scrolled up the map, placing it back in the bag he carried over one shoulder, containing the pouch of coins as well.
Already, he had probably walked further from the hut than he had ever done before, and although he knew the way back to the hut like the back of his hand, getting out of the forest was another issue.
Continuing to walk for a while longer, Rei heard the sounds of people shouting in the distance as though a fight was happening up ahead.
Picking up his pace, he ran in the direction of where the shouts were coming from, hearing them getting clearer as he got closer.
“HEEELLLPPP!! SOMEBODDYYY HELPPPPP!!!”
Rei was clearly getting closer to the source of the voice now, and he rushed down a hill in the forest, sliding down on the leaves scattered across the ground for speed.
When he reached the bottom, he saw a group of around six men fighting off a giant black wolf the size of several large bears put together.
The wolf leaped on one of the men, swiping at his torso with his claws, and the man flew backwards, hitting a tree next to where Rei was standing, scattering blood across the floor.
He glanced down at the man, seeing a broadsword in his hand and broken light armour covering his chest. Judging from their appearance, they were probably trained travellers, not mere civilians.
The group of men looked over at Rei and upon seeing his face, their faces turned to shock.
“A boy?! What the…?!” The men gasped.
“What are you doing here in this forest?! Get out of here before you get hurt!!” One of the men within the group yelled at Rei.
Rei glanced at the man, and saw the wolf jumping for the man from behind, and Rei clenched his teeth, reaching for the handle of his sword.
‘He’s not going to notice in time…!’ Rei thought.
Then Rei dashed forward, closing the gap between him and the man swiftly, and leaped into the air at the giant wolf, shoving his sword into the wolf’s mouth and blocking its fangs.
Rei landed roughly but held his sword against the wolf’s massive mouth, its fangs pushing into Rei, trying to bite him, but Rei held on tightly, his blade shaking as he pushed the wolf back.
He glanced behind him at the man that was now lying on the floor, staring up at Rei in stunned silence.
“H, hurry…!” Rei yelled at the man, “Get out of here…!”
Quickly, the men around grabbed the man on the floor, dragging him away whilst their eyes watched Rei in shock. They stopped at a safe distance away, watching Rei from the trees, and Rei pushed back at the wolf with all his strength, shoving the wolf to stumble several feet backwards, its feet skidding against the chilled ground.
“Now,” Rei breathed with a grim smirk, staring at the wolf with his sword ready at his side, “I can fight you with no distractions.”