Each step down the hallway was louder than it had any right to be, echoing in her head over and over until her other foot came down to replace it. The normally short distance had seemingly stretched out to the edge of where she could see, the end of the hall a distant goal.

Then with another step she was there, the time having vanished, throwing her forward to the end of the path almost faster than she could process. A small part of her noted that a cold sweat had covered her hand as she reached out to open the door.

It revealed the open courtyard that was laid out behind both the school and the house, with people all around the edges. Every one of them gave off the sense of pressure that marked them as swordsmen, auras that could be felt even in their relaxed states.

Tenjo slowly made her way over to where her grandfather stood, flanked by her mother. They said something that slipped past her ears, passing over her like an errant gust of wind. Daichi gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and she took in a deep breath and gathered her focus.

"As I am holding the meeting this year," Noboru said, "I can pick when you will go out. Of course, I chose for that to be the first match. Getting used to going in blind is something necessary to master."

She nodded, and he continued. "When someone else steps onto the center stones, that will be your sign. For now, wait over at the far end."

The feeling of eyes settling on her as she took her position was almost something physical, and Tenjo had to resist the urge to look around at the crowd. Instead, she placed her hand on the hilt of her sword, and focused on it.

Her attempts at a draw cut earlier had all failed to live up to her mental image. Despite that, she felt a strange compulsion, even in these circumstances to try again. There was a missing piece of the puzzle, and she was on the cusp of finding it.

On the far end of the inner stones, a young man stepped up, a katana not unlike her own at his side. As she did likewise, they both stepped forward again and exchanged a slight bow. As she bent her back, Tenjo kept her eyes stuck to her opponent, focused on his hand floating just above his sword.

She attempted another calming breath to let go of the tension in her body, and found that her mouth had entirely dried out. Only a handful of paces away, her opponent drew his weapon and took a stance.

The sword was held pointed up at his left shoulder, a position in which an attack from any position could be quickly defended against, but where it was difficult to attack the far side without first moving.

Did this mean he planned to let her strike first? Would he strike from the strong side, or was it a trap to make her focus to much on only one angle? Or was that the goal, to make her think about going around his hidden plan to his normal attack would land?

She didn't know, and because of that it didn't matter. She couldn't know what his plan was, or how he would move and strike. In that case, what mattered most was her own movements, and her own attack.

As Tenjo dashed forward, her hand tightened again on the hilt of the blade. The movement came to her mind again, an angled strike that cut downwards towards her opponents unguarded right shoulder.

And this time, the movement was better, the final lacking piece missing. As the sword carved a flawless silver arc through the air, the final piece had been filled. The one thing needed for the attack was a target.

The katana had doubled in speed, and the faint silver glow was more than a trick of the light. It was the signature technique of the Crescent Moon school, named for the path it drew in the air. When used, it was twice the speed of any normal blow, and it had only a single restriction. It could only be used when drawing the sword from the scabbard.

Yet this wasn't enough, and the boy in blue intercepted the attack, cutting against it directly and then sending a horizontal slash back at her face. Tenjo leaned back out of its reach, and used the opportunity to grasp her sword with both hands.

Then they both struck at the same time, blades meeting between them as sparks flew. She was only slightly quicker to recover, but it was enough to grant her the next attack. One after another she rained blows on him, each one aimed at the point farthest from where his sword was currently.

Her opponent was slowly forced to give more ground, and her strikes came closer to breaking though his guard with each exchange. Then her sword met nothing but air as he jumped back out of reach and raised his own weapon above his head.

The cold sweat had been replaced by one of exertion, and though her heart still raced with emotion, the crushing fear had slowly formed into excitement as she became focused on the clash of swords.

This time Tenjo advanced without hesitation, cutting upwards in an attempt to sweep the downward blow aside and land the strike to his neck. She set the angle of the sword so that the incoming strike would be directed along its length until it hit the handguard.

As the blade began to fall it changed, becoming thicker and longer, the weight and force behind it increasing until it was able to smash her sword down, nearly sending it spinning out of her hands. Without a second of waste, he cut back up, and where her guard had been broken, it met flesh.

The blade slashed up, the tip starting to part the flesh of her chest before it flashed less than an inch away from her right eye as she leaned back. The moment it passed by her head Tenjo made her own cut up, and took the forward wrist of the one in front of her.

For a moment, there was a strange stillness between them. Neither moved, and both had their eyes drawn to the point of impact where her sword had passed cleanly though his raised hand just below the joint.

Then his face twisted as the pain and realization set in, and the feeling of perfect satisfaction inside her vanished as quickly as it had come.

Something else welled up instead, a sense of guilt as she gazed at the severed limb that lay on the ground before its owner, his face a mask of suffering that he desperately tried to suppress. The pain from the short and shallow cut to her body stung as she panted for air, and try as she might, Tenjo couldn't help but imagine how much worse the wound she had dealt would feel.

A man appeared to help him off the stage, perhaps his master or a fellow student. Another collected the hand, leaving only the fresh blood on the stones, running slowly into the cracks as a reminder of the man who had been there seconds ago.

It was a fair fight, she told herself. He knew this, he had agreed and even worked towards this. He'd cut her first, she just cut more truly to her target. Somehow, those excuses in her head sounded hollow, justifications she couldn't really believe.

As she began to take a deep breath to steady herself, bile started to rise in the back of her throat, cutting her off. She swallowed it back down, leaving the burning sensation lingering behind as she did so.

Suddenly, everything felt off again. The way the sword was held in her hand, somehow too tight and too loose at the same time. Her clothes were like weights constricting her movements and not letting her breathe, yet also airy and light, as though they weren't there at all and she stood bare before the crowd.

That thought brought the watchers back to mind, and all of a sudden they were all that she could think of. Was her panic as obvious as it felt? It was as though a thousand sets of eyes fell upon her, each one with a mixture of condemnation and contempt.

The ground below her was no longer solid, the blood in the cracks having oozed past where she stood as it swayed below her. Or was it steady, and she was the one wavering like a candle's flame in the evening breeze?

Tenjo forced her eyes up just in time to see her next challenger step out in front of her, sword already drawn. It was a one-handed blade, thin, straight, and long with a minimal guard. The tassel on the end matched her green robe, the fine silk swinging back and forth between them as the sword was raised to point at her heart.

She countered with a similar stance, blade directly in front and ready to move in any direction with the shortest possible difference. The tips of their blades were only inches away, making the distance in reach even more obvious. Her opponents sword wasn't much longer, but the ability to fully extend her one arm meant that she could remain completely out of range while still being able to strike.

Focusing on the technique helped Tenjo settle her mind, giving her another more pressing thing to focus on. The opponent in front of her that had offered a challenge to overcome, just the same as every other match.

Unlike the last match, she wasn't the first to advance. Instead, a thrust came at her eyes, and as she batted it aside her enemy took a half step back to prevent her from coming into range with her strike. Then, another attack came, this time aimed at her forward arm.

Each attack was from just far enough away that the two-handed weapon couldn't reach, and the step back the moment the blades met was just enough to maintain the space with Tenjo's step forward as she readied a counter.

Another blow, and this time she was ready, stepping forward as soon as it started, and then again instantly as they swords hit, only to realize her mistake a second late as the sword she had deflected to the side came back under her guard to cut against her unprotected abdomen.

As she was forced to stop, the woman across from her regained the lost space, and wasted no time in following up with another attempt to break her defenses. This time, Tenjo stepped back herself, admitting defeat in this exchange.

For a moment, they were both still as they strove to analyze the others next move. Then the girl in green returned with another stab in a mirror of the match's beginning. It had the same result, being smacked aside by the greater leverage and power of the two-handed blade.

It was a reversal of her favored style, to slowly attack the opponent and create gaps in their guard while remaining safe. The only difference was that this one used distance, rather than forcing a focus on defense with the number and style of blows.

There it was, the weakness. Between each attack, she had time to reset before the next one, rather than each strike building on the last. That was the real fundamental difference between them.

As the next attack came, Tenjo stepped into it again and caught it on her katana. Instead of knocking it aside and attacking, she continued to hold it away as she advanced, preventing it from cutting towards her or pulling back.

An attempt to slide it down only resulted in it being knocked back by the hilt, and so as her opponent stepped closer the one-handed combatant was left with no choice but to pull it the other way, up the sword and into the air.

In doing that, she created a free space between them, with both in the other's range. Tenjo sized the opportunity, and started a horizontal cut to slice open her throat. Then the pained face of the boy from before flashed in front of her again, and she saw a phantom image of her new opponent lying dead on the ground.

She changed her strike to a defensive one instead, pulling back halfway through to block the last-ditch counter cut that would have arrived too late. As the blades sparked, she saw the last dregs of her chance to finish this, and she let them drain away with a sinking feeling as they opened up space once more.

Now the second exchange had ended, and neither combatant had suffered any injury, much less a defeat. Both of them had already had plenty of chances to see the other’s styles, and to understand the weaknesses in them.

As Tenjo locked eyes with the woman across from her, a single thought floated into her mind with an undeniable truth to it.

The next time, it ends.

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Chapter end

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