“What’s this about exactly? I’m not even cool like that.” Ji-ho asked, curious why the swordswoman stood before her with a pair of full steel katanas. The offer had been pretty consistent for about a month now. This girl, whom Ji-ho only knew as the client with the replaced drawing arm.
“You again…”
“You fixed my arm. I wanna try it on you.”
“You’ll lose.”
“You don’t know th–”
And in that moment, this poor girl could feel the cold steel of the blades she’d brought gliding through her. As if Ji-ho had already ended her life six or seven times. In all this, the kumiho lazily pulled on the hand-rolled blunt as the shock of the ‘attack’ rattled through the young woman.“How many did you count?” Ji-ho asked. Her passively cold killing intent barely subdued by the smoking. To which the young woman said nervously, “F-four…Or five…?” And as the kumiho nodded, walking back into her studio and taking care not to close the door behind her, the kitsune walked in behind her. Nervous as to what had just happened, and even more nervous about what was to come. The first duel, one of the mind, had ended. Zero to one.
Pointing to the workdesk, Ji-ho gestured for the young woman to put the blades down. Upon doing so, they were quickly scanned, and their makeup was displayed to both of them on a screen overhead. Ji-ho looked over the information carefully. The kitsune tilted her head, watching the kumiho. “They’re darksteel.” She said, to which Ji-ho nodded. Taking another pull from her blunt and blowing the smoke lazily into the air. Mumbling to herself, but just able to be heard by any awake pair of ears in the room. “I see…But not totally. You bought them separately…” As the kumiho studied, the kitsune stood and looked around in awe.
Walking over to the table, Ji-ho gestured at the various jars, tinctures, and cans. “Everything’s got silk in it, if you’re looking to stay sober. Ahh, but anything in the fridge is good. Have whatever. Which one did you want? The swords, I meant. Older, or newer?” The kitsune again seemed baffled, knowing their short legacy. “I just had them forged! They’re barely a month old, so–” Ji-ho sighed, hearing the dismissiveness of this information. The smoke that filled her lungs was pouring out over the room. “Okay, so you don’t care? Is that what that means? Newer or older doesn’t matter?” The question again baffled the kitsune. Who nodded to confirm the assertion. “The forge was what, maybe two weeks apart. And neither one cut anything after their test cuts of bamboo. So yeah, I’d take either–” And so Ji-ho chose the one she preferred. Cutting off what was no doubt a lengthy explanation. “Kay, so this one’s mine. And I’ll keep them both after. Payment for the session. Can you rez yet?”
Looking out ahead of her, suddenly the kitsune’s fate started to narrow in its focus.
‘Can I…rez? T-to the…I can, right? I mean, I have before. But…Uhm…’
The conversation felt so fast. Her tail swayed quickly behind her for maybe a frame. Her pupils narrowed, but only for a second. She was positive that this time her quarry would bend and fight her. Instead, she was being swallowed by the infinitely meandering darkness that was Ji-ho Koetsuji. Or Gukkebi, as all of her guests would have known her. And now that she was here, it felt less like a good idea.
Looking for anything she could hold onto to gain some sense of power, she walked over to the refrigerator and searched until she found a bottle of nutrient-enhanced water and took it out. “I’m Shiki, by the way. I…I’m sure you don’t remember names like you remember jobs. I’m a freelancer. Why…Why do you care about when the swords were made? I asked for two identical blades. I know every sword is unique, but how different can they be if I wanted nothing but raw darksteel?”
Ji-ho rolled her eyes and pointed to the screen, where the information was till displayed. What seemed clear to her was perhaps less clear to her guess. And as she’d already had payment in the form of the weapons, she opted to point it out to her. “Wrong idea. When fighting with anything, you want something durable. Time is the first assault on durability. Especially for a sword. When the metal was harvested, where even, that matters. Regional makeups in iron ore now are different from those in the past. See this,” Ji-ho weakly pointed to the amount of ‘latent magical residue’ in the readout. “The one I have has 0.00897. Yours has 0.00852. That’s like forty infused parries, if you’re careful. Which I am betting, you don’t do. See the issue?” And it was starting to come into focus for Shiki that this was something beyond her. Ji-ho’s dense explanations, the mention of abilities she didn’t even know to try and grasp. The fine details of blade work. All of it felt like a failure on her part. As Shiki quietly drank from the water bottle, her ears lilted just slightly. Just enough to confirm the second loss of the day. That was zero and two.
“Shiki, right? What’s this for?” Ji-ho asked, walking from the workbench with her blade, which hummed and beeped as it removed the information for the blade that no longer sat upon it. “Could have been anyone else. And honestly, shoulda been. Why come fight me? Who will probably kill you and take that arm back if you don’t rez like you claim to be able to…What’s worth it?” Taking a seat in a plush chair that was not far from her, with a blade in one hand and a blunt in the other. With another drag, she watched Shiki. Who, at this point, had found resolve in such a question. “Because you’re the Gukkebi. The best sword in the forests. I don’t need to win, but I’d be stupid to NEVER fight you. Only L’s can turn into W’s, y’know?”
She said it nervously, but it was the first point she made that Ji-ho was pleased to hear. Happy enough that she ashed the blunt in her hand and put it off to the side. “Ah, so you’re one of those ‘Love of the game’ types. I could cut you down a thousand times…You’d get up and run it back. The worst kinda fighter,” she laughed. Smiling as she unsheathed the blade just enough to see her own odd-hued purple eyes in its pristine reflection. “I was positive we’d go for the hat trick. But you’re actually just naive. This is…Better, somehow. A sweep would have been boring. Tell me, Shiki. Who will you tell that you lost? I always find that people like talking about their fights with me. And they never reflect reality. It’s always so different after…”
Shiki tilted her head, unsure of what to do. But she did look down at her feet to make sure she was not being ‘swept’ literally. As she didn’t really feel out of Ji-ho’s range. Not in this studio that was largely draped in shadow and vinewire work. “Ah, well…My big sister, maybe. She’s a witch with Forest Song. She’s really all I have for people in my life who care about this kinda stuff. I…Yeah, I guess just her. But I wouldn’t lie! Like…Who’d buy it, right? I’ve only been using a sword for like nine years. Eheh…” And it was clear at a glance. From how she stood to how she held that bottle. This particular vixen was trained well in some capacity. But in that soft evaluation of Shiki, Ji-ho found everything she needed. Ji-ho sheathed the blade and gestured over Shiki to sit in the chair across from her, which she did after taking up her katana from the workbench and falling hard into the chair.
“Slick,” Ji-ho remarked. “Protect yer neck, I like that. Just out of range now. Why’d you do that?” Shiki looked at her and tapped her chin for a second before answering as honestly as she could. A pair of odd-hued blue eyes looking back at her. “It just makes sense. Even if there’s a low chance you’d do it, why not spend the movement on the extra inch or so?” Ji-ho nodded, placing her sword on the table between them and going to reignite her blunt. “Nope, you’re right. And it saved your life that time.”
“Yeah, I could tell. Eheh…”
The duel had finally arrived for them both. Up until this point, Ji-ho’s assault was one of the mind. She’d nitpick and needle. Exposate and meander. All to land here, across from a young swordswoman who saw fit to fight her. And in fairness, this was a request Ji-ho was happy to indulge. She’d kill this girl if she were ill-prepared, yes. But she would not disrespect her by dismissing her casually. Not now. Instead, Ji-ho’s eyes closed, and she began to smoke the time away. Taking a deep draw before blowing it up into the vent over her favored seat. “Shiki, you’ve been a treat. And I can tell you care a lot about this shit. My mom would groom you into a goddess back in her day…But that’s not my bag. And you know that. So we can do this, and you can take your L’s and try to make them a dub. I’ll never tell a human no. My family and I are all about radical freedom, even if it kills ya. But…Does it feel like the move still?”
Shiki thought for a moment. Then another. She thought and thought for as long as it took Ji-ho to smoke down her blunt. Somewhere in the neighborhood of ten minutes, if time was still working as it should. In that time, Shiki reflected on everything until this moment. She didn’t know what she couldn’t see, and what she ultimately could not do. The nature of the contest even felt stranger than when she appeared. That firm ‘you’ll lose’ from early on felt very much like a fact of the moment, and not of eternity. Shiki nodded, placing the blade on the table with JI-ho’s.
“No. I think I get it now. The L can become a W, sure. But if I just spent more time learning…It’s not all hands and skills. I should know more than I do. And fighting you would only make me look bad. You can keep the swords. I’ll come back for them when I think I can win them off of you.”
“That’s what I figured. I knew you were good.” Ji-ho smiled through her smoky haze. Bright fangs glimmering in the low light. “Here, let me kick you out. I’ve got a client in like an hour.” Standing up from their seats respectively, Ji-ho walked off towards the door of her studio, and Shiki followed closely behind her. Taking in all of what she could as she left. It felt like suddenly her understanding of the form changed; it was hard to explain. But looking around at the parts and tonics that Ji-ho produced, she had a new appreciation for the mind that made them all work.
As Shiki left the studio, Ji-ho was pleased to wave her off. Though before she was too far from the entrance, Ji-ho felt compelled to ask a final question.
“What was the match score today, Shiki? Just curious if you know what you did.”
Looking up into the sherbet colored sky, she nodded. “1-2, I think. But I’ll win next time! I promise!” And with that, the kitsune would dash off into the evening. And Ji-ho shook her head in some disappointment as her opponent left her sight.
“3-2, kid. Congrats. You can tell all your friends you beat me. Or your sister, I guess.”