CHAPTER 18
Befitting to Inherit the Name
First Friday of October
“Lord Hanzou, I’ve finally found you,” whispered the shinobi girl all wrapped in chains.
This was the aboveground portion of School District 22. Unlike the other districts, almost 100 percent of city functions here were provided by underground facilities. The surface was entirely covered with various wind turbines. Steel bars crisscrossed like jungle gyms, piled up to thirty stories high, with three-dimensional arrangements of propellers here and there generating power from the wind.
One young man with a bandanna around his head stood alone in the center of that uncanny, propeller-filled scenery.
It was Hanzou, leaning against a vertical support beam as he leveled his gaze on the girl, Kuruwa, who was wearing a yellow mini-yukata that was transparent around the waist.
“I cannot believe you would fake your identity, sneak into the city, and then chase me around for almost half a year,” said Hanzou. “What’s driving you to go this far?”
“A restoration. Of the noble and upright house of the Hattori—and furthermore, for the rise of the Iga,” she answered smoothly.
But Hanzou, upon hearing that, sighed in disbelief. “You don’t actually know what a shinobi is, do you?”
“……”
“If you go far back enough, it’s clear they started out as bandits, hired by some big-shot military commander or other. Couldn’t be further from noble and upright houses. Some of them were granted titles later, sure, but the further back you trace our roots, the clearer it becomes that we were the kind of nobodies you can find just about anywhere.”
Hanzou shoved both hands into his pockets, then continued, “Listen to me, Kuruwa. A shinobi’s rightful place is as the weeds, as the skittering vermin, as the supporting players… As soon as you start talking about noble and upright houses, you won’t be able to survive in this world. And do you know why not? If those of us meant to hide in the dark shine just a little too brightly, a blink of an eye later and we’ll all be dead from a focused strike.”
“That is nothing but evidence that those who roost in high places truly fear the shinobi. But we have entered a new age, an era in which we must begin to act in more efficient ways.”
She really wants a place to call home that badly, huh? Hanzou shook his head. The saddest thing was that even though he considered her an idiot, he did understand where she was coming from.
“I’m telling you this for your own sake,” he said. “Learn from the weeds. Heed the wisdom of vermin. Respect the supporting players. Weeds are everywhere. Vermin never go away. And supporting players blend in with the scenery. Equipping oneself with all these things and distilling them, concentrating them… That is the way of the shinobi.”
“Shall we never understand one another?”
“Not so long as people don’t endeavor to understand.”
“Fine, then. In that case…”
He heard a click from inside Kuruwa’s right sleeve. She only had one; her left arm was exposed up to the shoulder. She made a slight motion, and the chains enveloping her jingled.
“I shall cease my attempts at persuasion,” she continued. “I shall force you to surrender, then use you to craft a tool for my personal quest to restore the Hattori.”
“That’s a pretty radical way to propose. Did you want to have children or something?”
“Yes, indeed, if it is also necessary. By force, if need be.”
Hanzou couldn’t help but sigh at how seriously she said that. “Planning on taking out a gun?”
“I… No, I’ve abandoned such things… I was told they aren’t very fitting for a shinobi…”
“?”
“Er, more importantly, although the mechanisms within firearms are complex, there are techniques that effectively render such mechanisms unstable.”
Hanzou, confused by all this, listened as Kuruwa tried her best to speak calmly.
“In fact, there are some models which will malfunction should their magazine become twisted by even a mere millimeter. Against you, Lord Hanzou, I believe it best for me to face you with a simple weapon instead.”
Clang!!
A loud metallic noise resounded, and a thirty-centimeter-long sickle appeared from Kuruwa’s sleeve. She removed the chains around her body, then attached the sickle to one end. On the other end was the metal shackle bound to her ankle.
“A chain and sickle, eh?” Hanzou asked with his hands still buried in his pants pockets as he narrowed his eyes. “Not a true weapon of the shinobi… Unconventional and concealable but too conspicuous.”
“……”
Kuruwa didn’t respond to the attempt at conversation.
However, it wasn’t that she tried to crush him without giving him time to speak:
Voom!!
No, it was because Hanzou’s body was suddenly right beside Kuruwa’s.
She gasped, but by the time Kuruwa tried to back away, Hanzou had already taken the last step up to her. His right hand, which had been in his pants pocket, had come out at some point. And it was drawn back into a fist.
However, the light caught something up his sleeve.
The moment she realized it was a sharp edge, Hanzou’s fingers were already flying at her face.
“?!”
It was so fast that only her neck was able to react, which she just barely managed to swing out of the path of danger.
“A dart…!!”
“This is what real shinobi use.”
In his hand, Hanzou held an extremely short arrow, about fifteen centimeters long. This one was specifically designed for stabbing rather than throwing. An assassin’s tool, sometimes called the world’s smallest short spear.
For Hanzou’s next thrust, Kuruwa was forced to coil her chains around her hand and use them to block. The primary use of a chain and sickle was to rely on centrifugal force and throw the weighted end of the chain at an enemy to entangle their weapons and limbs, leaving them vulnerable to attack with the sickle. But with rapid blows coming in such close quarters, Kuruwa didn’t have time to swing the chain around and get it up to speed.
Forced into a defensive battle, Kuruwa ground her teeth.
Hanzou wasn’t being serious about this. A true shinobi would have made sure to kill her in the first exchange. And if he’d failed, he’d have immediately escaped. But he wasn’t playing this by the book—did he intend to pin her down and settle this peacefully?
“You have…underestimated me a fair bit…!!”
Abandoning her respectful tone toward her senior, Kuruwa kept part of the chain taut with both hands and swung the rest of it. The attack had no curve to it and ended up more like a jab, and Hanzou veered his head away to dodge it.
Kuruwa took advantage of that opening to put distance between them.
She dove behind a steel pillar for the wind-power generators, possibly meaning to keep some cover between them.
“…!!”
Hanzou immediately surged forward. Without giving Kuruwa time to rally, he wheeled around the pillar, using his momentum to deliver a ferocious roundhouse attack. The tip of his dart thrust forward to slash through the fluttering yellow fabric.
But then his face darkened.
The only thing there was her yukata, which she’d stripped off and left behind.
A loud whoosh shot through the air.
Hanzou’s attention homed in on the sound. Kuruwa had manuevered around the beam in the other direction, mirroring his own steps. Stripped down to her underwear, she bought herself a fraction of a second to swing her chain. It formed a circle with a one-meter radius. She swung the chain around two more times, then a third. Hanzou, seeing the speed and energy the weight was gaining, heard his body scream danger.
Here it comes!!
She would be trying to tie down his weapon with the chain, and, with his movements sealed, she would close in on him with her sickle at the ready.
Fortunately for Hanzou, the chain and sickle were easy to predict. Because the wielder needed to whip the chain around in circles to build up energy, they had to let go at just the right angle at just the right time or else the weighted end would fly off in the wrong direction.
A revolving weight and an unmistakable sound splitting the air.
As Hanzou concentrated on these two things, he heard a much louder whoosh filling his ears.
I just have to—?!
He shifted his center of gravity to dodge sideways, but then he noticed something.
Kuruwa still hadn’t let go of the chain.
The whooshing noise had been nothing more than Kuruwa making the sound with her own mouth as a feint.
“Shi—”
He’d noticed the ruse, but now that he was already leaning in one direction, he couldn’t immediately shift in the other. Thanks to his hesitation, he ended up freezing in place and not moving at all. This time, the chain hurtled toward him, ready to take his life.
The moment she flung the weighted end of the chain, Kuruwa knew that she had won.
Hanzou wouldn’t be able to dodge this blow. The thick chain would coil around his right arm, preventing him from moving. After that, she only had to yank the chain, throw her opponent off-balance, and dive in for the finishing blow.
She knew she had a decisive advantage, but somewhere inside, she still felt something akin to loneliness.
In the end, was this all Hanzou’s strength—and that of the Hattori family—amounted to?
She gritted her teeth, but her chain flew true.
It soared in between his side and his elbow, then wrapped around his arm like a snake—
Fwoom!!
—and then it slipped through his arm entirely, flying off into the distance.
“Huh…?”
Kuruwa, pulled by the unforeseen direction of the chain, ended up leaning slightly forward.
The chain should have wrapped around Hanzou’s arm, but instead it had gone right through it, like it had hit a sheet of paper. It took Kuruwa a moment to actually realize what had happened.
Hanzou’s right arm flapped.
Or rather, his arm was no longer in the long, flapping sleeve. Kuruwa had aimed for his arm but had hit nothing but the fabric of his sleeve.
Hanzou’s right arm was probably scrunched up inside his shirt.
He couldn’t stab with a dart like that.
However…
That didn’t mean he had only one weapon.
Whoosh!! Hanzou bolted forward. Though Kuruwa immediately tried to block him with her chain, she couldn’t move the way she wanted to since the chain had missed and pulled her body along with it.
She was only off balance for a fraction of a second.
But that was enough for Hanzou to press the advantage.
“A…”
And in that moment, Kuruwa was, for some reason, smiling.
As she watched the finishing blow drawing nearer, the girl who wished for the restoration of the Hattori clan was practically beaming.
“Amazing, Lord Hanzou!!”
Something glinted in Hanzou’s left hand.
Hanzou quietly peered down at the collapsed woman.
Lying there in nothing but her underwear, she wasn’t bleeding badly. At the last second, Hanzou had pulled back the dart in his hand and merely punched her instead.
“…Sheesh. That’s a pretty happy expression for someone who just got beaten up,” Hanzou scoffed, clicking his tongue.
The way she lived wasn’t in line with the secret teachings of the shinobi. The kind of mindset that strove for a singular purpose even if it meant death—that was something he’d thought was reserved for those following the Bushido code, intent on protecting peace and order in Japan.
He could never live like that.
Shinobi were like the weeds—like vermin: just supporting characters. In the end, even after one friend named Komaba had died and another friend named Hamazura had been lost to him, he’d been living the same life as always, just on his own.
Ninjas certainly weren’t strong or admirable.
As the previous battle attested, the secret behind the ninja arts was to use subtle tricks to tip the flow of battle in your favor, then take advantage of it to launch an attack at the opponent’s blind spot.
Therefore, Hanzou, who wasn’t a special person by any means, never engaged in any combat where he couldn’t kill an enemy in a single blow with absolute certainty. And that habit was a fundamental characteristic of anyone who lived their life as a spy—he understood that.
It’s so sickening, though…
Hanzou shook his head and collected the mini-yukata Kuruwa had left behind. She was a kunoichi who had learned that technique, but he didn’t have the heart to just leave her lying on the ground half naked. He spread the mini-yukata over the unconscious young woman like a sheet.
“……”
But then, he felt paper rustle.
He fished around a little inside the sleeve; he found a short report.
A list…of Uncut Gems…?
Natural espers were a minor rumor even in Academy City. Was Kuruwa planning on making them her allies and creating a new team of ninjas or something?
Sure, strictly speaking, shinobi were creatures of science. And unlike Hanzou, Kuruwa wanted a flashy, grand, noble group of ninjutsu users. From that point of view, simply having a unit composed of nothing but Uncut Gems must have been pretty appealing in its own right.
But Hanzou was frowning for a different reason.
He thought to himself quietly, the list of Uncut Gems in his hand.
…Why does Kuruwa have a top secret Academy City document like this?
Kuruwa was descended from the shinobi, but she’d also taken close to half a year to catch Hanzou. She couldn’t have been very skilled in the art of acquiring information from across a large region, even if she was good at blending into the scenery and sneaking through large crowds.
Whoever made this list is using Kuruwa to try to accomplish their own goals. But who? And what are they after?
He thought about it for a while but couldn’t come up with an answer.
…What the hell is going on in this city anyway?
He crumpled the report in his hand.
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