I march into Sigmund’s office, letting myself drop down into the vacant chair on my side of his desk. My heart hurts, my head pulses, and I’m almost unbearably frustrated with Sigmund-but I’m hiding that well.
“So, what do you have to report?”
“We found out that Varlagos orchestrated it. He’s the leader of the Graylily. He’s dead now, anyway.” I clutch my left fist, holding myself back from talking about all the casualties we took along the way, especially the one I had to kill myself.
“Anything else?”
I sighed, settling my gaze squarely on Sigmund. “I need to ask you something, Sigmund. Why have you refused to let me make use of your real fighters and instead keep sending barely trained adolescent boys with me all this time? Have you no faith in me at all?”
“Hmmph.” Sigmund frowns, caught in thought for but a moment. “I suppose I owe you the story of the other founder’s fate in order to explain this.”
“Oh, I wonder how this is going to be somehow relevant...”
“I’m sure you’ll see it once you hear it.” Sigmund clears his throat. “The cofounder of this school, Kazuma Itsuki, was one of my best friends many years ago. He was really the original founder of our school, but I-then younger and more arrogant-was sick of seeing so many kendo practitioners act as if their ‘art’ was anything more than a sport, and perhaps even more egregiously considered themselves superior to European swordsmanship arts, so I ended up challenging Itsuki to a friendly duel. I only narrowly won, and so he asked me why I asked him out to such a duel. I explained, and then HE in turn explained that he was an instructor in ken
jutsu
, not ken
do
. After that little mix-up, I decided to hang around and more closely examine what he was teaching, and it was fundamentally sound, especially the segments he did on iaijutsu. So, naturally, I asked if I could cross-train with him. He said yes, and one thing led to another, and we eventually formed our own school-the Haracrein. We were practically best of friends after that silly little feud we had.”
This is starting to sound like a cheap attempt to derail my focus away from the actual answer.
“I don’t see how this is relevant-”
“
I’m getting to that.
Anyway, he says he received a message from someone, someone significant, and he told me he was going there alone. I asked him why he wouldn’t bring any of his students along, he wouldn’t explain why either. Sure, he was going to go there alone, but… I didn’t try very hard to stop him from going there by himself! I didn’t even think anything of it, but Itsuki just up and vanished. Not even a body was found, and for all I know he might not even be dead, but I can’t think of a reason he’d vanish without telling me.” Sigmund stared down at the desk; his voice went quiet. “I can’t help but… blame myself sometimes, I guess, for letting him just go out on his own like that. I never even saw it coming.”
“I’ll be honest, as far as excuses go, that’s a pretty good one, but I need you to know that because you’ve been holding back on me I’ve had to send at least three of my own men to their deaths. Not only that, I’ve had to do terrible shit I never even thought myself to be capable of, all to take the responsibility off of you!” I stand. “I’m glad to have been an effective pawn for you.”
“June, I was never trying to use you as some mere pawn-” He speaks as I’m already on the way out, closing the door behind me as I turn to see Lenny leaning against the nearby wall. He remains stoic as ever, but I can tell he’s starting to get concerned.
“You sure you don’t want to talk about anything with me?”
“I’m sure, Lenny.” I walk out of the church in full stride, a splash of anguish in my heart as I made for the dormitory.