Chapter 2

"Welcome home."

When Rio announced his return, his mother, who had been doing some knitting, looked at him with a puzzled expression.

"Already back?"

"Yeah. I won’t go there again. It’s better to practice on my own."

"…Huh?"

Because the sweat made him feel uncomfortable, Rio was about to go get a cloth and a basin, but his mother, with a troubled look, pointed to a chair.

"Sit down for a moment."

"I’d rather do it later."

While pinching the sweat-soaked clothes stuck to his skin and sending air into them, Rio sat down on the chair. His mother put down the knitting she had been working on and looked straight at him.

"Rio, even though the number of evil beasts has decreased, there are still many of them. Recently, there have been incidents where unknown animals have turned into evil beasts and attacked villages and travelers. You should go to the dojo."

"If it’s about learning to protect yourself, there’s no point in going to the dojo. The master doesn’t even scold the lazy students; instead, he approves of them. All you learn there is how to make excuses and change the subject. It’s ridiculous, so I’m going to build my strength on my own."

Rio, who refused to back down, looked straight back at his mother, who made a bitter face.

"Teenagers are always like this…"

This time, Rio made a bitter face.

At fifteen, Rio was indeed in the middle of his rebellious phase, but he didn’t remember ever being particularly rebellious. He just wasn’t obedient, and he didn’t intend to be rebellious.

"When your father comes home, you should talk to him properly."

"I don’t think the conclusion will change. Can I go clean myself up now that we’re done talking?"

"Go ahead."

With a sigh of resignation, his mother saw Rio off as he went to get a cloth and a basin.

He drew water from the stream behind the house and was wiping his body with a wet cloth when he heard footsteps.

It seemed his father, Baldo, had already returned.

"Rio, is it true that you came back after insulting the dojo?"

His voice was already angry.

The scene at the dojo must have been relayed to him, and he had rushed back from the fields.

After drenching his head in water and feeling refreshed, Rio turned to face Baldo.

Baldo, who also worked as a lumberjack while farming, stood with his thick arms crossed. His brows furrowed, and he seemed to be waiting for Rio’s explanation, but it was clear that he had already decided to scold him and wasn’t willing to listen.

Still, since he had been asked, Rio had to assert his own righteousness.

Though he found it troublesome, he opened his mouth.

"I don’t intend to go to the dojo to learn how to take shortcuts or deceive people."

"Stop making excuses. You just came back sulking after being completely defeated by Yudo. I know everything."

"You don’t know everything, Father."

As if affected by the increasingly hostile atmosphere, the chickens in the adjacent coop began to cluck.

The father and son shared a similar expression of annoyance at the noise.

The clucking seemed to have defused the tension, and Baldo sighed.

"It’s still dangerous around here. Even I, while cutting wood, have been attacked by beasts. The Oksu-style swordsmanship of the Rakudo school is a famous style adopted by the royal knights. If you learn it, you might be able to join the lord’s knight corps."

"Knight? You’ve got to be kidding. With the mentality of learning shortcuts and half-hearted techniques, they can’t fight in a group. That’s why Rakudo couldn’t become a knight and ended up in this remote village—"

"Shut up! Stop it!"

Admonished by Baldo, Rio, who realized he had said too much, closed his mouth.

However, his thoughts didn’t change.

"I don’t intend to go to that dojo. I’d rather practice swordsmanship on my own."

"Indeed… Well, it’s too late to go to the dojo now. But you absolutely need to know how to protect yourself. From tomorrow, you must do running exercises. Make sure you build up the leg strength to run away if necessary."

"Understood."

When Rio nodded, Baldo muttered, "I wonder who you got this stubbornness from," and went back inside.

Rio sighed as he wiped the water droplets from his body.

"Sulking and coming back, huh. But the one who’s twisted is the student’s nature."

Though it was his own doing, he sighed again, finding it troublesome, and hung the cloth around his neck, looking at the forest.

The trees rustled in the wind, as if spreading unpleasant rumors.

※

The next day, after helping to pull weeds in the field, Rio completed his running exercises by circling the field ten times.

He then went to the shed and pulled out some leftover wood from when they had built a fence around the field a few weeks ago. He made a makeshift wooden sword and, in the afternoon, checked the grip and lightly swung it.

"Still too long."

He stopped, pondering whether to adjust the length of the handle and the blade.

"It’s not just about swinging it around. Maybe I should think about a strategy and make it accordingly."

Rio picked up the scraps of wood left over from making the wooden sword and began writing on the ground.

"First, the premise is to fight alone. Then, the ability to quickly escape. And—"

He looked at the forest. The area around the village was cleared, but deeper in, the visibility quickly worsened, and the ground became muddy. The trees obstructed the space needed to swing a long sword, and quick reflexes were necessary to deal with sudden attacks from wild animals.

"If the enemy is in a group, I should disrupt them to avoid being surrounded, and the premise should be to move around. I can’t match the strength of beasts, so I don’t need to block attacks."

As he wrote down the necessary techniques and mindset on the ground, Rio unconsciously smiled.

The tension and the excitement of building something from scratch, something that might not even be useful, were enjoyable in a way that just learning from others couldn’t match.

He thought seriously, filled with dreams and ideals, and devised training methods to make them practical.

"The wooden sword should be about two-thirds the length of the one used at the dojo. I’ll add some weight for training."

The amateur-made wooden sword, already warped, became even more distorted with the sudden changes. Smiling wryly, he heard laughter from a distance.

"He’s making his own wooden sword!"

"And it’s really bad!"

"It suits a loser who ran away after losing to Yudo, doesn’t it?"

"Indeed!"

Realizing that the voices laughing at him belonged to Yudo and the other two lazy students, Rio snorted.

"See? Going to the dojo doesn’t make you grow inside."

Thinking that it would be a waste of time to deal with them, Rio started measuring the wooden sword and considering how to attach the weights.