If You Know the Enemy and Know Yourself, You Will Win
Talent.
Every student who enrolls at Lua Academy possesses it.
Whether great or small, only those with talent beyond what any ordinary person could hope to match are admitted.
Of course, as mentioned, even the students of Lua Academy vary in their level of talent.
If the smallest measure is talent that merely qualifies one as a genius, then there are also those whose gifts are so extraordinary they etch their names into history.
And Kana had just witnessed such talent with her own eyes.
Arin. Her first friend in the same class.
When Arin completed an absolutely impossible task during swordsmanship class, Kana felt the wall of talent for the first time.
Slicing a stone smaller than your sword is easy, but cutting one larger than your sword is incredibly difficult.
And if that stone is several times the size of the blade, wielded by a teenager whose body has yet to fully mature, using a mass-produced sword? Even more so.
It had been a truly impossible assignment.
Aria had given them a month to make progress, but on the very first day it should have been impossible.
That was why, when Arin sliced through the boulder that had seemed as massive as a mountain, Kana felt the wall.
And seeing that wall with her own two eyes, Kana felt a small but stubborn emotion sprouting inside her heart.
It wasn’t jealousy toward Arin. From the beginning, Kana had never once considered envying her.
If she had to define the feeling, it was self-reproach. Yes, that word fit best.
Reproach for what? For her own weakness.
Because she lacked talent. Because she had no talent for the sword and therefore fell behind everyone else.
Of course she had entered the academy to learn cooking, and she had only taken swordsmanship for that purpose, but the fact that she couldn’t keep up with the other students during class still weighed heavily on her.
She even prided herself on having more real combat experience than most, yet her skills refused to match that experience, which only intensified the pressure.
The pressure was so great that she sat on the stairs outside the main building, completely unaware that class had already started, letting out one heavy sigh after another.
“Haa……”
She had told her parents she would work hard, that she would try until she dropped, so what on earth was she doing here?
Kana muttered to herself and scratched at the ground. She pressed her fingers hard against the stone floor, trying to neutralize the pain in her heart, but of course nothing changed.
Her fingers just hurt.
And so Kana let out another sigh. That was only natural.
She buried her face between her knees and tried to soothe the ache in her chest.
“I don’t want to fall behind……”
She didn’t want to fall behind, but her talent wouldn’t allow it. On top of that, she had no real interest in the sword, so she didn’t even feel like making the effort. There was no hope.
Kana rubbed her face with dry hands, frustrated by her utterly hopeless future.
What was she supposed to do?
“I want to become stronger……”
She gazed up at the sky, repeating a question that had grown so familiar it bored even her.
“What are you doing here?”
“……?”
A question mark floated across her face as red hair blocked her view of the sky.
It had been a clear blue sky without a single cloud, yet now the only thing cutting through that blue was bright red hair and a pair of grey eyes looking down at her.
The moment she realized the figure belonged to a person, and then recognized that person as Yeonha, Kana jolted in surprise and toppled backward on the spot.
“M-M-Master?!!”
“Yeah, it’s me. What kind of worries could make you sit here sighing and looking so miserable?”
Yeonha caught Kana’s back with her foot as she fell, helped her up, then plopped down beside her. The casual movement confirmed beyond doubt that this was indeed her master, so Kana spent a moment calming her startled mind before covering her mouth with one hand.
It wasn’t for any grand reason.
She had simply wondered whether the woman she intended to take as her cooking instructor, the same woman who had defeated those demons yesterday, might be able to solve this particular worry of hers.
The swordsmanship she had displayed yesterday had been truly astonishing, after all.
Still, under normal circumstances Kana would never have shared her troubles.
No matter the worry, if it was hers alone she would simply store it away in her heart.
But something had shifted inside her.
Maybe it was the confident expression on Yeonha’s face that seemed to say she could solve anything. Or maybe Kana had carried the burden for so long that a small crack had finally formed in her heart.
Whatever the reason, Kana glanced at the woman now sitting beside her, then slowly, hesitantly, opened her mouth.
“Um…… I realized it during swordsmanship class. I’m noticeably weaker than the other kids. And since I have neither talent nor interest in the sword, I thought I was beyond saving……”
“Hmm.”
“So when I saw Master’s swordsmanship yesterday, I was amazed! I thought I wanted to be like that too. But of course I don’t have the talent……”
“No talent, huh? Is that it?”
“Is that…… it?”
Kana had spoken with difficulty, laying out her worries, but when Yeonha raised an eyebrow and asked that, Kana tilted her head in confusion.
She genuinely didn’t understand. What did she mean, “is that it”? Was she saying there should be an even bigger problem?
If so, Kana thought that was rather cruel, but the next moment Yeonha let out a sigh and spoke again, making it clear that wasn’t what she had meant.
“From what I see, there aren’t many kids with as much talent as you. What the hell kind of worry is that?”
“Huh? What are you……!”
Kana almost shouted that it was nonsense, but the utterly sincere look on Yeonha’s face made her snap her mouth shut.
Did she really have talent? But if she did, she wouldn’t be falling behind everyone else in sword class.
Like Arin, for example.
She reconsidered, just in case, but it still sounded ridiculous. She had no talent for the sword.
So Kana tried to tell her so, but before she could finish, Yeonha cut her off.
“Master. I really don’t have any talent for the sw—”
“No talent for the sword? Obviously. Since when does a chef need to be good with a sword?”
A chef had no reason to be skilled with a sword. Yeonha said this while drawing the kitchen knife from her waist before Kana could even respond.
“You’re trying to become a chef, not a swordsman, right?”
“Yes? Ah, yes!”
“Then why are you grabbing a sword instead of a kitchen knife and feeling disappointed in yourself?”
Yeonha scratched her head with a genuinely baffled expression.
For some reason their conversation kept missing the mark. That was what Kana thought as she stared at Yeonha.
The reason was probably that their perspectives were completely different. Because their viewpoints differed, Kana couldn’t understand what Yeonha was saying, so she cried out.
“B-But cooking can’t be used in battle!”
“Ha……? What the hell did you just say?”
The moment the words left her mouth, Yeonha’s face twisted into a scowl and she growled.
Kana realized she had misspoken and quickly covered her mouth, but it was too late. She had touched the reverse scale.
With an expression of pure rage that Kana had never seen before, Yeonha grabbed her by the nape of the neck and started dragging her away. All Kana could do was flail helplessly as she was pulled along.
The place Yeonha dragged her to was behind an empty training ground not far from the stairs outside the main building.
“Hm, this size looks about right. The boulder you mentioned should be around this big.”
“Ah, yes. That’s almost exactly the same.”
Despite having hauled Kana over in a clear fit of anger, Yeonha now spoke in a perfectly calm tone as if nothing had happened. Kana nodded in response.
The object Yeonha pointed at was a rock embedded deep in the ground. It was roughly the same size as the boulders used in swordsmanship class, so Yeonha led Kana to stand in front of it.
She stroked her kitchen knife and the rock in turn, then slowly raised the blade and said,
“I don’t feel like explaining it twice, so watch and learn. Lay out the cutting board, hold the knife, and prepare the ingredients. Got it?”
“……”
……What was she talking about?
Kana blinked, understanding the individual words but not their meaning.
Seeing her reaction, Yeonha seemed to decide that further explanation would be useless. Instead of speaking, she moved the hand holding the kitchen knife.
Slower than when she had first lifted it. A relaxed motion, as if showing something to a small child.
And then.
“……Ah.”
The moment Yeonha’s hand moved, a sensation Kana had felt only once before wrapped around her body. Her eyes flew wide open.
The feeling that the ground beneath her feet was no longer ground.
The feeling that a sharp guillotine hovered above her head.
And finally, a brand-new sensation: the rock in front of her no longer felt like a rock, but like an ingredient.
When she experienced those sensations again with her own body, Kana finally understood all the words Yeonha had spoken at once.
At the same time, she understood why Yeonha had gotten angry when she said cooking couldn’t be used in battle.
What Yeonha was showing her right now was nothing more and nothing less than.
Cross Slice
the sight of someone cooking a boulder.
Shhk──
With a low murmur, the rock fell to the ground in four neat pieces.
It looked exactly like a potato that had been sliced and prepared. Kana approached cautiously and ran her fingers over the cut surface of the rock Yeonha had sliced.
“It’s so smooth……!”
The surface was perfectly flat without a single bump, smooth as polished steel. Kana turned to Yeonha with eyes full of awe at the flawless cross-cut boulder.
“Master……!!”
“Ugh, so annoying. Anyway, now you understand that cooking can be used in battle, right? You have more talent for this than anyone else in this academy, so come learn it properly.”
“Yes! I’ll definitely come! No matter what!!!”
Yeonha muttered a curse and pushed Kana away from her burdensome gaze.
But even that hand felt full of gratitude, because it belonged to the person who had so cleanly resolved her worries.
The problem she had carried for so long, the one she had never been able to solve, had been fixed this easily.
The gratitude was so overwhelming it brought tears to her eyes. Kana jumped up and down with joy.
Of course.
“Oh, by the way, aren’t you supposed to be in class right now? It’s been about thirty minutes since it started.”
“…………Huh?”
It took less than ten seconds for that wave of gratitude and emotion to shatter completely.