Record of Wortenia War: Volume 1 Read online

  “You sure?” The young man sneered. “I’ll gladly play along with your request! But do you really think you can beat me with your bare hands, when you couldn’t even beat me with a sword?”

  But the old man said nothing, simply motioning with his chin for the boy to put away his sword. Abiding by that demand, the boy sheathed his sword and placed it against the bamboo stacks as well, then turned to face the old man.

  He propped his left fist along his face, and lowered his right so as to cover his median line. Shifting his center of gravity to his left leg, he curled the toes on his right foot inward. It was a stance that balanced attack and defense, enabling him to both freely shift from punches to kicks on demand and hide his vitals from attack.

  For these two, unarmed battle was just as lethal as swordplay. The suspense made their breathing catch in their throats. But the silence was soon suddenly disturbed... by the sound of the boy’s stomach growling in complaint, of course.

  He had awoken before dawn, and their training had gone on for over an hour. It was right about the time his stomach would begin to loudly protest its hunger. But his teacher and grandfather wasn’t lenient enough to cut training short just because his grandson was hungry.

  Crap, I’m starving... C’mon, Gramps, just finish this already...

  But pray as he might, the old man showed no openings in his stance. If anything, he was visibly raring to go, and propped to take advantage of any careless opening the boy might expose.

  The boy was kicked out of bed early in the morning and forced to participate in lethal training on an empty stomach... When suddenly, an angel descended to save him.

  “Would you cut it out already?! I go to the trouble of making you breakfast and this is what you do? God. Why are you two even playing around so early in the morning?”

  A girl clad in an apron, her black hair tied in a ponytail, appeared at the edge of the boy’s line of sight. She was an attractive young woman with willful black eyes, standing a hair over 170 centimeters tall.

  Her name was Asuka Kiryuu.

  “Me? Playing around? With this geezer? Your humor could use some work...”

  At the very least, the young man wasn’t going on these bouts of early morning practice, waving real swords around or fighting in semi-mortal unarmed combat, for fun.

  “Well, what were you doing, then?” Asuka narrowed her eyes at the boy, who shook his head in an almost offended manner.

  Her pointed question made the boy tilt his head quizzically, looking for the right words to describe what was far too dangerous to be considered normal training.

  “...Trying to kill each other?”

  The moment those words left his mouth, a blunt sound echoed against the bamboo stacks, and with it, the sound of a fist clashing against an open palm.

  “O-Ouch...”

  “Stop talking like a moron already!” Cocking a perfectly shaped brow in annoyance, Asuka threatened him with ladle in hand.

  Where did she even pull that from?

  The ladle Asuka was currently holding had landed a blow on the young man’s head, brandished in what could truly be described as lightning speed.

  As extremely refined as his physical capabilities were, the blow she had landed still smarted greatly. As proof of his capabilities, he had caught the attack the old man unleashed on him — a fist with the third finger’s second joint extended like a horn — the moment he flinched from Asuka’s attack. It lacked the force of a normal punch, but in exchange was optimal for penetrating the opponent’s vitals.

  In this way, the boy had blocked the blow aimed at his temple with a reaction that was equally attributable to both instinct and reflexes developed from ruthless training. And despite that, he failed to block the girl’s attack.

  Though, if anything, this was far preferable to what he had read in old comics. Whenever the hero in those comics would try to lay a hand on another girl, the heroine would bash him over the head with a hammer. He could usually avoid speeding bullets, but oddly never succeeded in dodging the heroine’s hammer.

  Indeed, surely this situation was the lesser of two evils. As well built as his body might be, a blow from a hammer would still kill him...

  “Ah, Asuka. Enjoying your quarreling newlyweds act?” The person who had just been responsible for the boy being beaten over the head with a ladle addressed Asuka with a nonchalant expression.

  Not a trace of the intimidating vigor he had during training remained in his voice; he seemed like an amicable old man you might find anywhere.

  I might have blocked it, but he still launched a surprise attack at me, and here he goes, just laughing like nothing happened. This is why I hate this geezer...

  Honestly speaking, even though it was his grandfather, he couldn’t keep up with this disparity in his behavior.

  “What are you saying, Gramps! I’ve got a boyfriend already... And besides, like. This is Ryoma we’re talking about.”

  Saying this, Asuka directed a meaningful gaze in the boy’s direction. The kind of look a cat might eye a mouse with. It seemed no matter how he replied to this, it would walk him straight down the path to hell.

  Seriously, this is no joke. I don’t want this any more than you do.

  If one were to consider her as a young woman, Asuka Kiryuu was indeed very attractive, and the young man had no intention of denying that. But it was also a fact that the years they had spent together invalidated something that would have made their relationship develop into a romantic one. In this young man’s eyes, Asuka Kiryuu was something of a sister.

  Not that he had the courage to voice those words anywhere but in his heart. He was more familiar with his cousin’s personality than he cared to be. So he held his tongue. This was the only safe path available to him. No one would have to get hurt this way.

  “Don’t say that, Asuka.” But there was someone here adamant on disturbing this peaceful equilibrium. “You wouldn’t be coming every morning to make him breakfast if he was just a childhood friend, would you now?”

  The old man stubbornly kept teasing Asuka. Was it out of true curiosity he was doing this, or did he have some ulterior motive in mind? Whichever it was, the end result would not be one the young man would appreciate.

  But contrary to the boy’s expectations, Asuka simply smiled innocently.

  “Nah, not really. I’m not doing this for free, after all. My monthly allowance gets upped by a cool twenty thousand yen for doing this!”

  Those words made everything click into place in the young man’s mind. So she wasn’t doing this out of the kindness of her heart. Apparently, his aunt had negotiated things with Asuka to boost her allowance in exchange for this.

  “Ahh... To think my own flesh and blood would be so miserly...”

  As the old man whispered those words with exasperation, a certain thought floated up in the back of the boy’s mind.

  Right, auntie made a killing in trading stocks, didn’t she...?

  Like mother, like daughter, it seemed. Asuka Kiryuu was graced with an attractive face and well-formed figure, as well as a sharp, keen head on her shoulders. On top of this, she was friendly and amicable, and didn’t come off as a snob, either. This winning combination made her one of the more popular girls in school.

  She excelled at cooking, and she was capable when it came to cleaning, laundry and handicraft, among other housework. She was, in many ways, perfect. True, she could be strict when it came to managing a budget, but that just meant she had a sense for economics; it couldn’t be really seen as a point against her.

  And while she may have seemed like the ideal girl to anyone else, the boy couldn’t help but laugh at the idea. He was far too close to Asuka to view her as a woman.

  “Aaah!” Asuka suddenly raised her voice, examining the watch on her right hand. “I’ve got archery club practice to get to, so I’ll be off. Make sure to wash the dishes when you’re done, got that, Ryoma?!”

  With that parting remark, Asuka took off her a
pron with an exaggerated caricature of a calico cat drawn on it, and ran towards the main building.

  “Hmph... Such a hurry this early in the morning.” The old man said, crossing his arms with a satisfied expression.

  “Wouldn’t we have more time to eat if you didn’t tease her so much, Gramps?” The young man pointed out this valid criticism.

  In practice, this old man’s tendency to say the wrong thing at every turn and ruin the atmosphere for the sake of his own enjoyment was truly a bother.

  “It’s because you don’t show enough respect to your elders.” The old man said, puffing up his chest without so much as a trace of remorse.

  He had no intention of addressing the younger man’s complaint. Apparently the word ‘introspection’ didn’t exist in his lexicon.

  Damn geezer! I’ll end up strangling you one of these days...

  Grandfather or not, he truly was bothersome.

  “Haaah...” The boy gave a long sigh, one that betrayed his true feelings.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Ignoring the old man’s question, the boy made his way to the main building. Wasting his time on dealing with his grandfather left him with little time to eat, to say nothing of washing off all the sweat. As detached as the boy was from his appearance, going to school when he smelled of sweat like this was out of the question.

  He went on to take a shower and wash off, as he did every morning. Then, after changing into his school’s blazer uniform, he walked over to the dining table, only to find his breakfast had long since gone cold. As expected.

  The boy’s name was Ryoma Mikoshiba. He was, as one could probably surmise, a young man who wasn’t quite blessed with joy in his life, at least from the perspective of the common person. Ryoma saw it differently, however.

  Every day, he practiced martial arts with his grandfather, the kind of severe training that would likely be seen as nothing else but abuse from the eyes of a bystander. When he was still an unskilled child, scrapes and blue marks were an everyday occurrence, and given that he trained with a wooden sword and no protective gear whatsoever, a fracture or two was to be expected.

  Despite the old man going easy on him at times, he was still hospitalized after taking a blow from a wooden sword to the head. It was that kind of severe training, but Ryoma stuck to it nonetheless. He’d kept up this routine for as long as he could remember, so he’d been going at it for at least ten years.

  Had he truly wanted to stop these training sessions, there were plenty of opportunities to do so. The ward’s child welfare department was an option, as were Asuka’s parents, the Kiryuus. They all offered their aid to Ryoma, but he still chose to reject their help by his own will.

  One reason for that was, his grandfather wasn’t a purely strict person. Outside of training, the old man treated his grandson with honest affection. If nothing else, he didn’t have the kind of cruel, distorted heart that would derive pleasure from hurting a child.

  And the other reason was, Ryoma himself enjoyed his grandfather’s training. A combat theory that assumed true combat, and mental training based on the premise of combat with one’s life at stake. It was inherently different from modern martial arts, which had mostly been converted into sports. If one were to categorize it properly, the training Ryoma went through felt closer to military training.

  It was a martial art that would seem like heresy from the perspective of modern times, but it seemed to be a perfect match for Ryoma. In fact, one time in primary school, a teacher invited him to a judo training session, but Ryoma never went back there after the first visit. His young heart sensed that it wasn’t what he was looking for.

  And ever since, Ryoma had devoted himself to that training with greater vigor. He may have cussed and complained every day, but he willingly chose to live with his grandfather in this quiet neighborhood in the Suginami ward.

  Ryoma’s parents had apparently passed away when he was a child. ‘Apparently,’ because his grandfather never specified how they had died. He didn’t know if it was by disease or an accident, and he’d never so much as seen their graves. They could still be out there somewhere, alive and well, for all Ryoma knew.

  However, he honestly didn’t care one way or another for his parents, who had never been there for him. Alive or dead, it didn’t change the fact that they never raised him. And so, he had no interest in them. Ryoma Mikoshiba was, for better or worse, a realist.

  While different people have different notions of what counts for attractive, Ryoma was by no means an ugly man. He wasn’t much of a pretty boy either, though. His facial features were what one might positively call manly, or put more negatively, distinct. It could be more simply summed up as a typical Japanese face.

  His physique was, in a word, large. His upper arm was about as thick as a slim woman’s waist. But this mass wasn’t the result of fat, but of perfectly developed and tempered muscles of steel. His arms and thighs were as thick as logs, putting him in contrast to the thin macho types that were popular nowadays.

  His fellow high schoolers gave him the nickname ‘The Sleeping Bear,’ inspired by his usual gentleness and beast-like physique. Or at least that was the surface-level explanation. Only a select few were aware of the true meaning behind that name, and they weren’t ones to speak on the matter openly.

  No, even they weren’t aware of Ryoma’s true self.

  Ryoma had his own personal complex; his face made him seem older than he truly was. People had estimated his age at anywhere from twenty-four years old to an embarrassing thirty years old. The kind of estimates that shocked Ryoma so badly, he would lie in his bed moping over them.

  That said, it wasn’t that his face actually seemed that much older. He didn’t have a baby face or anything of the sort, but it was overall average. He could have passed off as a year or two older, but that was it. If any factors could be attributed to the problem, it was his calm demeanor coupled with his distinct physique, ill-befitting to a regular Japanese person.

  If there was any positive side to all this, it was enabling him to buy alcohol at convenience stores without the cashier bothering to ask for ID. Once, when Ryoma was a kid, his grandfather had gotten drunk and offered some to him as a joke; this led him to develop a taste for alcohol.

  His grandfather wasn’t particularly noisy about the matter either, never really warning him too strictly about it. If anything, he seemed happy to have someone to drink with.

  Ryoma’s hobbies were watching movies, reading books and playing video games. While his athletic skills were far from bad, he was the type of person who enjoyed being alone in his room. He wasn’t anti-social, but he didn’t appreciate things being too lively. Owing to these traits, he didn’t attract much attention in school except when it came to his size, and he naturally didn’t have a girlfriend.

  And so, seen from the perspective of the common person, Ryoma likely seemed like a young man who wasn’t quite blessed with joy in his life. And that was probably the value of the person called Ryoma Mikoshiba. But if he had lived on longer in Japan like this, he would surely someday come across a woman he would love and go on to create a warm household with her.

  But the goddess of fate had no plans of allowing this humble dream of his to come true. For on this very day’s lunch break, he would be cast down into hell.

  “Phew, finally time for lunch...” Ryoma Mikoshiba sighed as his final lesson for the morning drew to a close.

  While it wasn’t a school centered on getting students into university, it was still a public high school with a fairly high admittance rate. Ryoma had only enrolled this spring, but the material was already very hard to keep up with.

  Ryoma wasn’t particularly dumb, but he tended to show exceptional intelligence when it came to topics that agreed with him, while not being quite as smart when it came to topics he didn’t like. In other words, he had a fundamentally whimsical and free personality.

  Ryoma stretched hard in his chair. His favorite topics were history an
d literature. He could be described as having an interest in the humanities, but despite that, he was terrible when it came to English.

  I mean, I live in Japan. Why can’t I just study Japanese and leave it at that?

  The day’s fourth class was that very same abhorred English, and the exhausting weight of that fact weighed down tremendously on Ryoma’s nerves.

  Well, whatever. I’ll just eat lunch on the roof, and maybe take a nap. It’s nice out today and all.

  While mumbling complaints that didn’t particularly gel with modern-day international society, Ryoma reached into his bag and took out a wrapped lunch box. Asuka had made it for him that morning. With his lunch box and a plastic bottle full of tea in hand, Ryoma made for the classroom’s door.

  But one of his classmates, who was preparing to eat lunch with her friends in the classroom, suddenly called for him as he was about to leave.

  “Mikoshiba... Are you going to eat on the rooftop again? How about you have lunch with us for once? I wanted to talk to you about club activities, too.”

  Her voice stopped Ryoma near the door. And after a moment of hesitance, he turned to her and said with a smile, “Sorry, I can’t. Maybe next time!”

  It wasn’t that Ryoma didn’t want to eat with the girls. No, the appeal of eating lunch with the girls in his class wasn’t lost on him in the slightest. But he had two reasons to refuse her offer.

  The first reason he refused to eat lunch with his classmates was a fairly simple one; he didn’t want them to see his boxed lunch. Asuka always adorned it with cute garnishments, and it didn’t match with his own image, or at least so he thought.

  Someone out there had once gotten the idea to invent what was known as the chara-ben. It was a boxed lunch whose ingredients assumed the shape of various cartoon characters, and went on to become an art form mothers from all walks of life would pour their own blood and sweat into mastering.

  And Asuka was quite proficient at making them, too. Her creations ranged from a certain electric mouse from a video game, to just about any other character one might think of. And Ryoma had to admit her skill at doing so was certainly impressive, and even admirable. Whenever he stood in the kitchen and tried to cook, he came to appreciate just how skilled Asuka was.