Walking in Toyama, an old man with two swords and a gourd finds a bar. He slides open the door and enters, bowing to the owner of the establishment. It's a large bar, with two floors and a span in the middle, wooden corridors lead to small rooms with sliding doors. Center tables of dark, gleaming wood with cushions around them are perfectly distributed on tatamis throughout the place.

"Do you have any other troublemakers around here that I can defeat?"

Chapter 6 - Wanted

The owner replies:

"Why do you want to protect us from these idiots?"

The old man arms him and the gourd makes a dangling motion, hanging by a red rope.

"Ah, you just want more sake, then?"

The straw hat moves and the owner of the establishment concludes that the man has nodded his head in agreement.

"Well, all is at peace around here, we don't need you. Come on, get out, you'll scare away the customers."

A fusuma door is burst open at the end of a hallway, with a geisha running and a man shouting.

"Who do you think you are for charging me? You should be honored, woman!"

The old man turns to the owner of the establishment and says:

"In peace, huh?"

He holds out the gourd to the owner.

"We don't need you, you're just a dissatisfied customer, we can change that."

Right behind the angry man, three swordsmen come out of the room, all wearing elegant but very drunk clothes.

They draw their swords and walk toward Geisha. The owner turns to the old man, takes the gourd, and speaks, in a tired voice:

"Damn! Go on, get on with it."

A drunken samurai walks up to the geisha. He raises his sword, preparing to kill the woman with one blow.

"You shouldn't have disrespected my lord."

The bar owner yells at the old man, but the next thing he knows he is looking at a straw hat, which falls to the ground. The samurai executes the final blow on the woman but feels his arms being thrown backward. He realizes that now an old swordsman in green hakama stands between him and the geisha on the floor.

The bar owner is amazed at the speed of the swordsman, who has traveled three kens in just an instant. Looking now at the wooden floor next to the hat he notices, incredulously, a depression in the floor made in the shape of the old man's sandal.

The training forces the samurai's body into a fighting stance, but as he holds the hilt of his sword in front of his body he looks deep into the eyes of the meddling swordsman. Not the eyes of an ordinary person, a shiver runs up his spine. This old man has seen hell and survived to tell about it.

"That's going to be an interesting fight! Hm?"

Small pieces of a glistening material fall around him. In front of him the old man slowly puts away his sword and he understands: he had already lost the fight because the blade of his sword was broken and only the handle remains in his hands.

The samurai cannot accept this, he must understand how strong this old man is, as a follower of the art of the sword he cannot move on without seeing him in action. He takes his wakizashi from its sheath. The two behind him also want to test his strength and assume their attacking stances, with the sword raised above their heads.

The geisha understands that if she stays there she will die, so she gets up and runs away. The rich merchant lord of the samurai tries to go after her. One of his warriors notices a small movement of his opponent's eyes and shouts:

"SIR, DON'T MOVE!"

The old man stomps so hard on the floor in front of him that the tatami of the entire hall ripples slightly as if a stone had fallen into a lake. His opponents inexplicably feel that the reach of his blade is greater than the very room in which they stand. The air seems to vibrate as he slowly bends down, changing his stance. His hand hovers over the handle of the katana and the samurai feel that if he draws his sword they will all die.

The owner of the establishment leaves along with the geisha and waits outside.

The samurai with the wakizashi looks over his shoulder at the two accompanying him.

"Yori, Tompa, forgive my selfishness, I cannot run away from this duel now that I have seen how this man fights."

The two nod, changing their offensive postures to defensive ones.

"We are ready!"

The lord of these samurai tries to run off again, but just as his foot touches the ground for the next step, the old man's hand grips the hilt of his sword.

ZAHDOOM!

The geisha and the owner of the bar hear a bang and the straw hat flies outside, swept away by a current of wind. A long silence follows.

"Is it over?"

"I don't know, but I'm not going in either."

The old man leaves the bar with two gourds of sake in his hand, thanks to the owner with a curtsy, compresses the geisha with a second one and leaves.

The sight of destruction and death that the two have as they walk back inside the bar stirs their notions of what is possible to do with a sword.

......

Stumblingly he walks and drinks the loot he got from his work. Walking through town, he passes a large curved bridge full of people that connects the central part of town to the other side of the river, the rich side, east of Toyama Castle. He sees the gate to the Asano estate and stops for a second. His expression changes to something more gentle. He stands there in silence for a few moments until he takes another sip from his gourd and continues on his way.

A large man wearing a striped hakama bumps into the old man. He gets annoyed.

"Watch where you're going, you drunkard!"

The gray-haired swordsman looks at this samurai and burps. Nervous at this man's lack of manners, the samurai tries to concentrate on his duty.

"If I didn't have to spread these wanted person posters all over town, I'd finish you off right here!"

He walks over to a small wooden mural, takes a brush from a bucket of glue at the base of the mural, and sticks a new piece of paper. Arata Haru's face is poorly drawn, but it is recognizable thanks to the large scars on his face. The reward written just below is enough to make a person never have to work again in his life.

Trying to get a better look, the old man comes closer and takes the poster off the mural.

"Hey, you old bastard, what do you think you're doing?!"

The old man walks off as he folds the poster and puts it inside his kimono. The samurai grumbles, putting another poster on the mural.

"Damned drunkard..."

The old man makes his way to his mountain hut, but his drunkenness causes difficulties when walking on the rough roads. He stumbles and rolls down a ravine, and the reward sign falls off his kimono.

Without realizing it, the swordsman finds his way home and takes a long nap.

......

In the treetops at the base of the mountain, a figure traverses large areas. A small blond boy climbs and jumps at an impressive speed. He watches the roads, but today they are empty. When he finally tires, he lies down on a high branch.

He looks up at the clouds in the sky between the leaves of the trees.

"Yuu...you couldn't have died like that. All those promises..."

Gori relaxes and sleeps. The sun drifts in the sky while the clouds drift in the opposite direction. The temperature changes as the hours pass into the late afternoon.

When the boy wakes up again, he realizes that he has slept all afternoon. He almost falls off the branch as he tries to sit up, but quickly holds on with one hand, letting out a relieved sigh. He swings himself up and jumps to another big branch a little lower. From there, a point of light shines in the corner of his eye. Fire?

He becomes curious and, carefully so as not to make too much noise, approaches using the relief of the forest to his advantage. He sees a group of five men, all armed with swords, using a torch now as night begins.

"We won't find him, we'd better give up."

"Give up if you want, I'll keep going. Did you see the posters in town? Did they raise the reward for him again?"

"But we've already been looking for him for a week!"

"Shut up!"

"Damn the Arata clan!"

Gori doesn't understand what is happening, but he must report to the mountain robbers. He leaves using the trees as masterfully as before. When he feels safe he descends back down to ground level, however, he realizes that he has stepped on something.

'A piece of paper?'

He puts his hand inside his clothes, thinking he might have dropped Yuu's letter, but that is not the case. He picks up the paper from the floor and unwraps it, but the darkness doesn't allow him to see very well. He tries to read it, straining his vision.

"A-ra-ta?"

It is the name the men were talking about. He puts the paper away and heads toward the mountain robbers' hiding place.

When he arrives at the temple, the moon is already in the middle of the sky and the thieves are sleeping in their tents. He doesn't find Hideo in his tent, so he decides to go to the temple. As soon as he enters the great hall, Tobi takes him by the collar and puts him against the wall.

"It was you, wasn't it, you rascal! Disappearing for days, not participating in ambushes, of course, it could only be you!"

"Let me go, Tobi!"

"Spit it out, traitor!"

"Have you been drinking again?! Let me go!"

Hideo rests a hand on Tobi's shoulder.

"Calm down, let him go."

Tobi looks deep into the supposed traitor's eyes, reciting a silent threat, and releases him, causing Gori to fall on his butt on the ground.

"What's going on here?"

Hideo crouches in front of Gori and asks composedly.

"Where were you all day Gori?"

"I went to check the roads to the north... I spent most of the day sleeping to tell you the truth."

Tobi intervenes again.

"Are you going to believe that, Hideo?"

"I'll ask the questions here Tobi. If you're not comfortable with it, get out."

Hideo reaches out to Gori, helping him up. Tobi casts another contemptuous glance at the blond boy and leaves the temple. Gori sees Izumi, Minamori, and Bou sitting near the brazier in the center of the hall. Only half of the candles in the room remain lit, making the temple darker than usual and, to Gori, even more mysterious.

Hideo joins Izumi and Bou and Gori asks:

"What's going on?"

Izumi replies, as one who is already tired of thinking logically about it, summing up the situation in one simple sentence.

"We were robbed Gori and only noticed it a short time ago."

For Gori, this explains why only they are here trying to understand what happened, probably by the time they realized what happened most of the thieves were already asleep.

Hideo continues.

"It must have happened in the late afternoon since until this morning they were still here."

"What was still here?"

"The food. Several bags of rice and meat from the last few days' hunting."

Minamori recounts what has happened in the last hour:

"I was the first to notice when I entered the temple to pray and saw that the secret room was open."

The mountain thieves keep everything they steal in the same place, in the temple. A large crack in the rock wall behind the large statue of Buddha gives access to a small natural stone staircase, which finally leads to a cave below the temple. It is dry, large, and difficult to access, perfect for storing food, weapons, and treasures. They have named this place the secret room. Usually, they cover the crack with a large rock that Hideo made Bou bring into the temple as soon as they discovered this place.

All the thieves know that about this, but apart from Bou, no one can drag the rock alone, so he had been the first suspect and the second of them to be awakened by Minamori, right after Hideo.

"We thought Bou is the only one who could have stolen it since only he can open the door by himself..."

"But we realized that he wouldn't have been able to carry the amount of food nor the weapons that were stolen."

"They took the weapons too?"

"Not all, but at least half."

"Then we realized that more than one person would be needed to carry out this theft. Izumi and Tobi are the only ones with horses, so we woke them up next, and question them."

"And...?"

"Their horses were stolen, but they were asleep."

Izumi laments.

"Wara was a great horse...Kind of stubborn, biting at times, but he ran a lot. I can't imagine anyone managing to put bags of rice on him to get away, he didn't like saddles."

"Maybe they let the horses loose so we couldn't chase them."

"I asked Tobi to sneak a look at all the stalls to find out if anyone was missing and you, Gori, were the only one who wasn't here."

"But I couldn't have taken the rock and I couldn't have carried it all by myself either."

"We know, but Tobi held to the theory that you betrayed us."

"In the end, we concluded that you can't have anyone here, but a large group of people who are somehow very good at getting in and out of places quietly."

The image of his malnourished family comes to Hideo's mind.

"Now we need to get a lot more food, if not in a few months we will die in the winter."

"But with fewer weapons, it will be even harder to ambush."

"We still have the old ones..."

As they talk, Gori takes out that paper and unfolds it, to finally read what is written. When he sees it, the sound of the conversation seems to fade away. His mind focuses entirely on the drawing in front of him and the written reward. He slowly turns to Hideo, his voice shaking.

"Hideo, I think... t-that I have a solution."

......

Haru wakes up in a tent outside and goes to pee in the bushes. When he sees some empty tents on his way back, he wonders what happened. He goes to the temple, but upon hearing his name being mentioned, stops walking near the entrance and hides, just listening to the conversation.

"Arata Haru?"

"Is that drawn guy Haru?"

"You can tell by the scars."

Haru leans over and sees Gori holding a wanted poster.

"What if we turn him in? The reward is sky-high!"

No one says anything else for a while. The sound of the ember is the only thing that can be heard, being muffled only by the sound of the wind. The silence in the hall is broken by Hideo.

"How much money?"