Pain

Pain. It seemed all I did was feel pain all the time these days. Every morning, when I arrived at Mifune-sama's home, I would be sent out into the cold and made to run or climb until I could stand no longer. Obviously, my body hurt afterwards.

That was followed by a small break to get the shaking of my body back under control, simply by meditating and regulating my breath.

Mifune-sama's explanation to that was that the human body can endure a lot more than what we believe to be possible and that our mind is the only real limiting factor to progression.

I didn't really believe him. Then he cut apart a huge boulder with a bokken. I shut up afterwards.

Obviously, I had had question about that demonstration, but Mifune-sama had waved me off and told me I would be taught about chakra in due time. My excitement at those words had been palpable.

After I had finished my meditation and subsequently calmed down somewhat, Toshiro-san would step off the veranda and the pain would follow soon after.

Despite the fact that I had been shown a couple of stances that I would go through every evening after my training was complete to integrate my experiences of the day into the way I would stand and move better, Mifune-sama's opinion on the matter was that only going through Kamae* and Katas would be useless, unless they were applied regularly. Hence, I was pretty much fighting the whole day following after my meditation.

I say fighting, but it was more along the lines of a thorough beating that I received at the hands of Toshiro-san. Each day, I would receive more and more bruises until my arms, legs and torso were practically green and blue from his strikes.

Naturally, I couldn't help but think about the usefulness and efficiency of such a training, but after a month under such harsh conditions, I finally managed to somewhat redirect or block Toshiro-san's strikes. Though doing the later was pretty much suicide as he had so much more strength it wasn't even funny. And yet, I finally understood why I was training like this. At least a little.

Fighting someone bigger, faster and stronger pushed me. Constantly. I grew used to the overwhelmingly fast attacks and developed ways to avoid or counter them. Admittedly, my counters would be counter just as well, but still. I progressed. Moreover, I slowly but surely began to see his bokken move.

Once I told Mifune-sama so, he smiled slightly and added one more exercise to my usual meditation regime. After focusing on my breathing for one hour, I would then meditate with my eyes open. But instead of focus on my breathing I would try to observe the ever-present snow that was falling, trying to keep a single snowflake as long as possible in my view.

It was baffling how difficult such a seemingly easy exercise was, as snow seemed to fall rather slowly. Still, the existence of other snowflakes and the constantly interfering wind made the exercise truly difficult. Rain worked as well, but Mifune-sama said that rain was a lot harder and that I wasn't ready for that one yet. I agreed. Let alone the problem of finding rain in the land of iron, but I digress.

Just as I was constantly in pain, I was just as much growing more resistant to the pain and managed to develop a slowly growing will to not give in. Maybe it had been there before but if it had I was a lot more aware of it nowadays.

"Focus." And there it was again, the pain. Snapping back into the present and away from my wandering thoughts, I grit my teeth and tried to put some distance between myself and Toshiro-san.

As the pain was a distraction I could not afford to have bothering me during our spars, I had hoped to led it ebb away a little while Toshiro-san tried to close the distance, but he knew exactly what I was doing and had none of it.

Swift as always, Toshiro-san closed the distance between us, the snow underneath our feet crunching slightly under our ever-moving feet, and brought his bokken to bear on me from the left trying to slash at my wrist horizontally, which would end our spar immediately.

Hence, I slipped my bokken under his with the tip and leveraged the power behind his strike to duck under his bokken while mine would be used like a shield with which I could redirect it up into the air.

It worked somewhat, but once again Toshiro-san didn't bother with anything half-hearted and promptly kicked my still crouched form first into my bent knee, destabilizing me after which his follow up kick to my chest send me sprawling into the snow, all the while wheezing from the lack of air in my lungs.

What followed next was something I had grown pretty much used to, which didn't mean it was something I enjoyed happening. Quite the opposite in fact. It irked me something fierce.

Toshiro-san, with nothing but the twist of his wrist, smacked his bokken into my right forearm that still held my bokken, sending said weapon skittering over the ground and causing me to nearly cry out from the pain of the blow, after which his bokken hovered just over my neck. The defeat rather obvious for all to see.

"Your redirection attempt was a good idea, but you stayed way too close while doing so. You have a weapon in your hands to thrives from having a certain distance between you and your enemy. If you get too close however, without the knowledge on how to use the rest of your body to prevent something like what just happened, then you are a dead man walking. Now, get up. We still have some more time until your lessons with Tanaka-sensei." Toshiro-san lectured me, after which he turned around and stepped back from me where he took position once again.

I heaved myself off the ground, shortly massaging my throbbing right arm, after which I picked up my bokken once again.

Stepping over towards Toshiro-san, with nearly four metres between us, I took one calming breath and prepared myself as well.

While Toshiro-san preferred to cut from above, hence his preferred Kamae being with his bokken held over his head, I preferred the Kamaes that slashed either horizontally or from below. That may partly be because I just could not use the ones that struck from above efficiently against an opponent who was that much taller than me, so that may change in the future.

Hence, I took a Kamae that played a little with the sight of the opponent. With my left leg forwards and my bokken held in such a way that the tip pointed away from my opponent, it made it very hard to gauge the length of my weapon while also enabling me to strike at my opponent's arms when his sword came down upon me. If I was fast enough of course, and that was a big if.

We stood there in silence for a while, waiting for the slightest twitch of our opponent's muscles which would signal the start.

Toshiro-san began. His right shoulder twitched imperceptibly, and I lunged forwards, hoping to end it before he had a chance to strike down with his full strength.

Once I had made my first step however, I realised I had been had. That twitch of Toshiro-san's shoulder hadn't been an indication of his attack. Instead he had decided to twitch his shoulder on purpose, using it as a feint that I fell for spectacularly, which gave him the necessary time to change his Kamae from above to horizontal, making my own Kamae completely redundant and useless.

The next thing I knew was pain blossoming upon my head. His strike had been true and without hesitation, and it didn't take me long to crumble to the ground while I nearly broke my teeth by how hard I gnashed them together in order not to cry out in pain.

"Let's stop here for now. I'll see you tomorrow Mifune-sama, Makoto." Toshiro-san's words echoed faintly at the edge of my perception while I was still focused on the pain at the side of my head.

Soft footsteps landed besides me the next second, which recognized belong to Mifune-sama, and not long after something cool landed on my throbbing skull. Finally, the pain faded somewhat by numbing the whole area.

Glancing up at the crouching Mifune-sama, I recognized that he had put snow onto the point of impact, which I decided to remember for another such occurrence in the future.

"You once asked me why you had to meditate for an hour every day. Back then I didn't give you an answer right away. Now I will." Mifune-sama said while I slowly rose back onto my feet, where I wobbled for a second before finding my balance once again.

Motioning for me to join him on the veranda, we walked over and sat down next to each other. The wood felt freezing cold beneath my legs but I didn't really mind as much as I used to in the past, and thus I focused back onto Mifune-sama.

"Besides preparing your mind for the conscious awakening of your chakra, it helps to calm, focus and centre your concentration. Something which is absolutely needed in a fight, let alone the rest of your life and the situations you will get into as you grow older.

If you are too eager, for fear of pain or lust for blood in a fight, you will fall for the most obvious of tricks your opponent may pull on you, as you just witnessed a minute ago. Both over-eagerness and lethargy in a fight will result in your loss. Find the middle of the two and you will find your struggles will lessen. For that amongst other things, you meditate." And with those words Mifune-sama rose to his feet and left me to my thoughts for a moment.

He was right, I realised. I had been too eager for fear of letting my opponent getting the upper hand and get beaten some more. It was logical, really. But, if I wanted to make progress it was a weakness of mine that I would have to get rid of better sooner than later.

Thus, I decided that I would from now on focus a lot more of my energy on meditating and hopefully reach a point where I would no longer be as easily deceived as I was today. And who knows, it may even have some other positive side effects?

Once I had made that decision in the confines of my mind, I stood up and left Mifune-sama's house behind. It was time for some theoretical lessons with Tanaka-sensei.

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*Kamae= stance, posture, attitude