"Fourteen!" Isao Kondo continued, "In my opinion, the Hijikata Go Die Style was entirely Sougo's way of limiting his own strength..."
"..." Other people practiced sword techniques and forms to attack more effectively, or rather, to make their attacks cleaner and sharper. But Sougo?
Just listen to what Boss Kondo had to say: he had created the Hijikata Go Die Style purely to restrain his own strength. If those words were used to describe someone else, Hijikata would only laugh them off. But when used to describe Sougo—Toshiro Hijikata believed them completely!
That pervert Sougo had been able to fight him to a standstill before he had even encountered kendo. Yet after taking up kendo, he was still evenly matched with him. No matter how he thought about it, that was impossible. Sougo had only been eleven or twelve when he entered the dojo, not even fully developed yet... Meanwhile, Hijikata was already in the prime of his life! Of course, Hijikata had never doubted his own talent for kendo. Though Sougo was freakishly strong, setting that monster aside, no one else could last more than a few moves against him!
Sure, that was because he had never met a true strong opponent, but... even Boss Kondo, who had taken him in, could only hold out a little longer than others after Hijikata began studying kendo. Only Sougo... Well, in Boss Kondo's words: "Fourteen, you're a swordsmanship prodigy seen once in a thousand years. But Sougo... I always feel that if sword saints like Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro had lived in the same era as him, they'd probably have been too afraid to even pick up a sword, much less be called sword saints. Because in front of Sougo, there are only two possibilities for someone calling himself a