Ninja (Major Editing)

Chapter 6

Three days later, Arata and Yuki set off towardsKyoto. Yuki still didn’t think it was a really good idea to infiltrate a samurai household without knowing what it was like inside, but that was because Arata never told her that he once lived there and knew the layout. She also thought that it was too dangerous because the residents might be too strong too handle if they had to fight them. Arata had to agree with her.

The first thing they did upon their arrival was to go to a motel. They each had a room to themselves, but the two rooms were right next to each other in case of an emergency. Then they went out to find dinner at a restaurant. Arata was a bit uneasy. He kept glancing in every direction so they wouldn’t get assaulted easily.

“Ease up Arata,” Yuki chided, biting into her warm, stuffed, steamed bun. In a lower voice, she added, “It’s not all about the mission you know.”

Arata took a look at the bun he was holding. “I guess you’re right.”

They had a quiet dinner while observing the people around them. Arata took interest in a small fight that had broken out on the second floor, and Yuki was looking at a loving couple in the corner while they were talking.

“I’m heading back first Yuki. You can stay here for a bit longer, but remember to get back before its too late, okay?” Arata said.

“You’re leaving?” she asked.

“I want some rest before tonight.”

“I’ll head right back. I’m almost finished.”

He headed out, paying for the food along the way. Once he got back to the motel, he jumped up onto the roof with his personally ocarina that he had brought just for the trip. It brought back nice, old memories of him and his older sister. But everything changed once she died in a mission that she was unwilling to take. That’s when his whole view on life changed.

He started playing the music that his sister had made up herself, lost in deep thought.

 

***Flashback***

“Nee-san, what is that?” the five year old Arata asked, looking up at his sister who had just turned eleven.

She stopped playing and handed the ocarina to her little brother. “It’s an ocarina, Arata. It plays music.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Of course I can,” she said, smiling brightly.

 

(Fifteen Years Later)

“Are you sure you have to go?”

Arata and his sister were sitting in his room, a grave atmosphere engulfing the room.

“I have to go, even though I don’t want to,” she said.

“But you know the dangers of this mission.”

“We all do, but it has to be done. A samurai lives to finish the mission without fail. We have to be loyal to the clients who hire us, and there is no backing down once a mission is offered. That’s the way life for us is. You know that well enough.”

“Nee-san…”

She stood up, walking over to him and planting a kiss on his forehead. “I’ll be back. Meanwhile, you should look after this for me.”

When she left, Arata looked down at his sister’s ocarina that she had placed in his hands. Tracing his fingers over the carvings, he wished his sister the best of luck.

But she never returned.

 

***Flashback End***

 

And his whole perceptive of life changed. He and his sister had been close and he understood that if it wasn’t for that mission she didn’t want to take, she wouldn’t have died. He decided to choose his own path and ran away from home, taking only his most prized possessions with him. And that was a katana to defend himself with along with his sister’s ocarina and his own that she had given him when she had started to teach him how to play it. He cherished the two a lot.

He felt a presence getting closer to him and stopped playing to see who it was. Yuki appeared next to him, looking intrigued at his playing. “That was pretty,” she said. “You don’t have to stop playing.”

Putting the instrument back into his bag, he stood up, and crouched at the edge of the roof. “It’s about time to get ready.”

He leaped off, landing with only a soft thud, and went into his room. His katana was already on the table, so all he had to do was strap it on him where no one would see it. Hoping that he didn’t need anything else, he met with Yuki outside of her door.

“Come on,” he said.

“Do you have a weapon?” she questioned.

“It’s just hidden.”

They walked out as normally as a normal citizen would, but there was no one to even watch them. Arata led the way, with Yuki following close behind him. It was an eerie night with not a single gust of wind or another sound other than the sound of their soft steps.

Arata halted in front of the large household. The steps were clean like the way he remembered them and the front of well maintained.

Yuki stopped next to him. “Is this it?”

“This is it. We’re not going through the front of course.”

“I know.”

With a moment of hesitation, Arata got onto the roof and looked down at the place where he used to live. Yuki clambered on after him. “Let’s get started,” he said, jumping down off the other side of the wall.