The moment Che entered the training ground that day, he saw several short wooden swords added to the rack.
The wooden swords were not long. Their blades had been wrapped round and round with old cloth, and every edge had been sanded smooth. They were clearly not meant to hurt anyone, but to teach children new to sparring about distance, rhythm, and the meaning of "stop at the point." Even so, the moment wooden swords appeared, the atmosphere became completely different from the past few days.
Kiyo stood in the line, his eyes lighting up. "Can we finally fight today?"
Morita Yu replied, "You'd better learn not to beat yourself into tears first."
Yamashiro Takuma stood beside the rack, picked up a wooden sword, and lightly tapped it against his palm. The sound was brief and dull. It was not loud, but it quieted every child at once.
"Today, we're practicing distance," the teacher said. "This isn't about strength, and it isn't about seeing who can charge more convincingly. You may only tap, lift, press, and block. No wild swinging, no chasing someone down for a second strike, and no pretending you weren't hit after you've been touched."
The moment he said that last rule, someone on the training ground could not help laughing. Everyone clearly knew that when they really started, the most likely problem would not be someone deliberately hurting another person. It would be someone who had obviously taken a hit, yet still tried to smooth it over with stubborn words.
Che looked at the wooden swords, but his heart did not feel light at all. He knew that today's lesson would finally pull all those earlier lessons of "watch, stop, report, yield" into something closer to actual combat. Once wooden swords touched, many things in people's