Yamashiro Takuma laid the wooden swords and position map beside the training ground, and many of the children instinctively fell silent.
It was not because there were so many props, but because they could already tell that their teacher was about to combine the things he had drilled into them separately over the past few days. Wooden swords meant rhythm, feints, gaining half a step and losing half a step; the position map meant fire, wind, escape routes, and the second half of the sentence. Either one alone was exhausting enough. Putting them out together meant that what came next was no longer about "I can do a certain move" or "I know a certain judgment," but whether they could read the situation first and choose their method in a single breath.
Kiyo stared at the pile of things, looking as though he wanted to curl into a ball. "Has Sensei been thinking too highly of us lately?"
Morita Yu replied from beside him, "You should cherish the moments when people overestimate you."
Takuya leaned off to one side without speaking in a hurry. Yamashiro Takuma used a wooden branch to draw a very simple field on the ground: a slanted line represented a low wall, two planks represented obstacles, a corner of the training ground was circled with strips of cloth as the "teammate position," and a straw target stood on the other side as the "opponent." The children first had to walk through the field with wooden swords, then explain beside it: if they had fire or some other means at hand at that moment, would they use it, and why?
In other words, their teacher was finally forcing them to put the principle of "save the technique for the second half of the sentence" into practice instead