White Paper
"The world of the sword is truly vast."
Iris began, her expression as blunt as ever.
"A single millimeter of error can decide the outcome. There are as many paths as there are errors, and every school has its own way of walking them."
"……"
"Which means, in that sense, you're a lucky one."
Iris drew herself up slightly, her face turning serious as she added:
"Because you met me."
Sian stared at her with a flat look. He thought that if self-praise could be delivered with that much confidence, it counted as a talent in its own right.
Of course, he knew that voicing the thought would earn him a fist before anything else, so he wisely kept his mouth shut.
"Besides, when it comes to the sword, you're a complete blank slate."
She held out a wooden sword she had apparently prepared in advance.
"Someone taught badly has to unlearn their bad habits first, but you won't need to bother. Starting from nothing, you simply get it drawn onto the blank page—correctly, from the very first stroke."
Watching Sian take the wooden sword, Iris continued.
"This will be the sword you carry from now on."
Then, after a moment's thought, she tossed out one more line as if it were nothing.
"Treat it the way you'd treat a lover. Gently."
"……Can I ask one question?"
"Ask."
"If I learn this, can I split a mountain too? And block a rain of arrows with nothing but my bare body?"
A low sound of appreciation escaped Iris. Hoh.
"I don't know where you heard about that, but you're in luck. Those are the ones called Swordmasters."
Swordmaster.
It matched exactly what the old man had once told him.
"It's also the realm you'll be pursuing from here on."
"Oh."
"With talent like yours, ten years under my instruction should be more than enough to get there."
Sian broke into a wide grin.
The truth was, he had spent the past several months half in doubt. Simply knocking on an old tree over and over hadn't felt like it would change anything dramatic. The heroes in novels all grew noticeably stronger in leaps and bounds, but apart from his strength improving a little, he'd seen no special difference.
"Then, though it isn't official yet, we're master and student now—so let's exchange names."
Names, huh.
Sian pondered for a while, then spoke his original name.
"It's Sian."
"Si…… Shi-an?"
"Sian."
"So, Shi-an, then?"
"……Let's go with that."
And so Sian—for the first time in his life—had a teacher.
By the time they reached the village, the entrance was packed with people waiting for Iris.
Sian swallowed dryly.
Having scraped by on more than thirty years' worth of wretched human connections across two lives, he was thoroughly unaccustomed to crowds this large.
"So, how did it go?"
"Don't worry. It's been settled."
"R-really?"
She nodded, and only then did the crowd's faces ease with relief.
With the tension gone, their attention shifted naturally to the boy hiding behind her, watching them all.
So who exactly is this scruffy little boy?
The villagers were curious, but no one asked. The state of the child cowering behind Iris was proof enough of the kind of time he had been through.
"On behalf of the village, thank you truly. We've heated water for you—please wash up and rest well."
And so Sian was able to lay his body down in the inn rumored to be the most luxurious in the entire village.
Comfort—his first taste of it in years.
As he sank into the soft bed, his muscles, stiffened into a single knot, seemed to melt away.
'……Come to think of it, I don't know how I lived like that for so long.'
Bluntly put, it had been a life like hell. It was hard to believe he had driven himself that far.
But he was satisfied.
It was nothing like the old days, when he could only lie in bed waiting for the day he died. Here, he could accomplish things with his own hands. He could reach for what he wanted and actually grasp it.
'……Now I'm actually looking forward to training tomorrow.'
Violence was nothing unfamiliar to Sian.
For a great many years, he had swung his fists to survive. No excuses, no regrets—neither had been necessary. On that mountain, the law was survival of the fittest, and Sian had simply followed the law.
So what about this time?
"Kgh—!"
Sian collapsed where he stood, clutching his stomach. Something hot surged up from his throat, and it didn't take much guesswork to know it was stomach acid.
When he cautiously raised his eyes, he found Iris looking down at him, her gaze hollow.
"You're going to fall from just this much?"
Sian bit his lower lip and pushed himself upright.
Even as he did, he was replaying the exchange he'd just had with her.
'……I clearly reacted first.'
Then, before he knew it, a dull thud had landed in his abdomen and his knees had buckled on their own. What followed was pain beyond description, and all Sian could do was choke back the groans.
"You're wondering why you got hit, aren't you?"
"……"
"It's simple. I used swordsmanship, while you just swung as hard as you could."
Iris swept the wooden sword down with one hand.
"I was swinging at exactly your level just now. My strength and my speed were equal to yours, or below. And even so, this is the gap that appears."
What is swordsmanship, really?
Is it simply a matter of holding a blade and cutting well?
That is the thinking of street thugs and mayfly mercenaries, nothing more.
True swordsmanship encompasses all of it: the feel for distance from one's opponent, the rhythm of breath, the eye that reads the smallest shifts of muscle, and the capacity to gather the full weight of one's body into a single point at the tip of the blade.
And so swordsmanship is, in the end, a continuous series of choices.
"When to step in, where to cut, how much force to commit. A difference too small to see decides victory and defeat. That's why swordsmanship has no single correct answer."
This was also why so many schools of the sword had been passed down through the generations.
Because there is no correct answer, each school is inherited according to the aspiration its bearers pursue.
Some pursued speed above all; another sought weight; still another chose the middle path, leaning toward nothing.
"Yet among all those countless branches of the sword, there is one thing they share. Can you guess what it is?"
Sian swallowed dryly.
As it happened, he had a guess.
"……They all wield the sword as if it were their own body."
"Correct."
A faint smile touched Iris's lips.
"The sword is nothing more than an extension of your body. Swordsmanship is not the study of cutting things with a blade—it is the study of a second body, longer than the one you were born with, and of how freely you can move it."
"……"
"And if you make everything I teach you truly your own…"
Iris pressed the tip of the wooden sword firmly against Sian's chest.
"Then I promise you this—not a single soul on this continent will be able to cross blades with you."
From that day on, Sian's days began with the sword and ended with the sword.
Spring.
From the time the snow began melting down the mountainside, Sian's days moved within a fixed frame. Before dawn even broke, Iris would lead him up the mountain.
She would put a wooden sword in his hands and offer only a single word.
"Cut."
Cut what, exactly?
In that instant, a hazy realization brushed across his mind, and Sian quietly closed his eyes.
In the pitch-black darkness, all he could feel was the flow of air drifting around him. Nothing lighter, nothing more trivial—and yet, for that very reason, a substance more concentrated than anything else in the world.
"There. That's it."
He swung.
And for that entire day, he repeated that single motion and nothing else. From the shoulder, not the arm. From the hips, not the shoulder. Until his body memorized the flow of force that began at the very tips of his feet.
"Again."
"Again."
"Once more. Again."
By the time the light faded each evening, Sian's palms were always covered in blisters.
Iris said nothing as she watched him. Instead she sat down beside him and simply took up the same motion herself.
Around the time spring was ending, Sian realized something all at once: he was no longer swinging the sword. The sword was simply following through, like part of his own arm.
Summer.
In the season when the heat pressed down on the mountain, Iris stood face to face with Sian for the first time, wooden sword leveled at him.
"From now on, I'll be your opponent."
The first bout was, as always, a total defeat. Clutching his stomach and rolling across the ground—dozens of times a day. But the tenth loss and the hundredth loss were unmistakably different.
"Just now—what did you see?"
When Iris asked, Sian had to answer.
That her shoulder had dipped, ever so slightly. That her gaze had moved half a beat ahead of her body. The things he had once seen nothing of were, at some point, beginning to catch his eye one by one.
On afternoons when sweat poured like rain and the crack of wooden swords blurred beneath the cicadas' song, Sian would sometimes forget even why he was taking such a beating.
All that remained was the sense that he must not lose sight of the woman before him—not a single one of her movements.
By summer's end, Sian grazed her collar for the first time. It was barely anything at all, but Iris's eyes narrowed for the very first time.
Autumn.
In the season when fallen leaves buried the yard, Iris's instruction dwindled noticeably. Instead, there came more and more days when she simply watched in silence.
"Today, do it alone."
Sian was bewildered at first, but soon understood her meaning.
Everything she had taught him—distance, breathing, the shifting of weight—the time had come to string those pieces together on his own.
In the process, Sian met failure beyond counting. He would swing the sword to match the direction of the wind, then suddenly realize it meant nothing and start over from the beginning, again and again.
Only after those nights had piled up could he split a falling leaf in two before it touched the ground.
Iris simply watched from the shade of the trees, rarely opening her mouth. But when Sian finally cut the leaf, he never knew that the faintest of smiles had crossed her lips.
Winter.
On the day the first snow fell, Iris picked up a wooden sword once more after a long absence.
"This is the last one."
Sian didn't bother to ask about the weight packed into those words.
Instead, he lowered his stance.
It was different from before. Sian's sword no longer chased after her. Rather, it was already there, waiting at the spot, before she even moved.
For the first time, Iris's eyes went wide.
As the bout wove back and forth, their footprints tangled across the snow. And at last, the tip of Sian's wooden sword touched the nape of Iris's neck.
Silence.
Snow settled on both their shoulders.
Iris lowered her sword slowly. An emotion he had never seen passed across her face. It was not surprise. It was something closer to sheer disbelief.
"……So you've finally learned to wield it as your own body."
Sian sank into the snow, gasping for breath. It felt as though all the pain and stubbornness he had swallowed across four seasons were being washed away in a single exchange.
"Close your eyes."
Sian's eyelids sank shut. Iris's hand came to rest quietly on his back, a faint warmth passing through her palm.
"What do you feel?"
Sian couldn't answer easily.
Instead, as though searching for something in the darkness, he slowly pushed his senses inward.
The first thing he caught was the beat of his own heart.
Next, the rhythm of his lungs swelling and settling.
And at last, a familiar weight flowing down his right arm—a single unbroken line running from the fingertips that gripped the sword to the very edge of the blade.
"……I can feel my body."
Sian said.
The arm was the sword, and the sword the arm; the boundary between them had dissolved to somewhere he could no longer name.
"Hold on to this feeling. Never let it go."
Iris's voice was lower than usual, and clearer than it had ever been.
"Because what you felt today is everything you will chase for the rest of your life."
Unity of Body and Sword.
It was a year and a half later when Sian at last reached that realm.