“Are you hurt, young miss? Did they force you to drink? That’s dreadful. People like that bring disgrace to all fighters. Don’t worry; you’re all right now. I’m not going to harm you. I’ll take you someplace safe.”
Tiger thought, Young miss? Me? It was an easy mistake, as she did look rather childish—the regression of her mental age had reached into her appearance. Either way, the warrior seemed to think he had rescued a civilian—and he might not have been wrong at that. Tiger had long since stopped considering herself a warrior. This phase of her life was, at its essence, a cry for help and for someone to save her.
When she spoke, it wasn’t to firmly insist she was a warrior, or that she was no “young miss,” or that she hadn’t needed any rescuing. Instead, falteringly, fearfully, meekly, and with her words all tangled up, she asked how he could do everything so right—how she could do what was right—and do so without hesitation, doubt, or mistake.
He gave her a puzzled look. She blushed, embarrassed by her question, although whether it was noticeable or not was unclear; she remained, in effect, still drunk. No matter how much her thoughts had sobered, her cheeks had been flushed from the start.
“Hmm,” he said. Apparently, the puzzled look was not directed toward her but toward the question itself. “I’ve never thought about it before. Tell me, young miss, do you want to do the right thing?”
She responded with a demure nod. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that. Young miss indeed.
He said, “Well, let me think about it. Sometimes it can be good to put one’s principles of conduct into words.”
He sheathed his saber, and his expression turned thoughtful. Then, moments later, he nodded, seemingly having found his answer—and so quickly, after she had struggled with it for so long.
“First,” he said, “you decide to do the right thing.” He put his hand on the hilt of his saber. “Then you do it.” He drew his sword in a swift, smooth motion, and said, “That is all.”
Decide to do the right thing. Then do it.
Her hopes fell—right off a cliff. The philosophy was so esoteric he might as well have not said anything. Maybe he’d tried to simplify it because he thought he was speaking to a child, but if that was the case, he overdid it by far.
She found herself saying she couldn’t do that, and that was why she hurt.
It was at that moment she realized she still hurt—that she hadn’t forgotten her anguish or washed it away with booze. It had been with her the whole time.
The swordsman said, “Don’t you see? The point is that you can’t do the right thing unless you first decide to do the right thing. One way or the other, people err. Circumstances carry them into misdeed. Without any reason, without any thought, without any intention, they find themselves having been turned astray, onto the wrong path. The opposite never happens. No one says, ‘Without realizing it, I found myself doing the right thing,’ or ‘At some point I must have started doing good deeds,’ or ‘I inadvertently did something right.’ Without intent, there is no being right. Proper conduct requires proper intent. Without first deciding to do the right thing, you can’t do it. If you say you hurt because you can’t do the right thing, that’s because you haven’t decided that’s what you want to do.”
He’d done his best to simplify it for her, but he didn’t pull any punches. Ultimately, his advice remained too abstract for a mere mortal, but his words were just what her tumultuous heart thirsted for, and they stung her core like a disinfecting splash of alcohol in a wound.
The man continued. “There are many reasons not to do the right thing, plenty of causes for indecision and fear. People can blame it on others or on society at large—or even on the times or on fate. But what people who don’t do the right thing must understand is that it’s not because they can’t, but because they don’t. You certainly don’t have to force yourself to behave the right way, but never allow yourself to forget that the choice was yours to make. Everyone who does right follows the steps: decide, then act. To remain on the first step while fretting over the second is the height of folly.”
The master seemed to consider the lesson concluded, but Tiger still didn’t fully comprehend it. They were both warriors, but the gap between them was like that between an adult and a child. Despite not understanding, she wanted to. She wanted to become someone who could understand.
Then, despite her being uninjured, he carried her on his back to a nearby town—as if she really was a child—and she didn’t object.
When they arrived, he said, “Be careful from now on.” Now that he had taken her to safety, he seemed about to return straight to the battle.
Tiger still wanted to talk to him and even faked feeling unwell to try to get him to stay.
“I can’t do that,” he said flatly. “I have other girls like you to rescue. It’s my job. Now, try not to go near a war zone again. I’ll pray that you’ll never meet another killer—another slayer—like me.”
He was right in everything. He walked the right path in the right way. He looked at the contradictions of war with clear eyes, and he battled them head-on.
She felt painfully aware that to him she was just one person among a great many others. She and he were supposedly both warriors, but they weren’t the same. She wondered if only people such as he truly had the right to be called warriors—but the thought didn’t upset her. Instead, for the first time, she felt as if she had a purpose. She hadn’t felt like this when she followed the path she had been taught or when she had decided to stray from it.
The next time I meet that man, she thought, I want to be someone he can acknowledge as a warrior.
He told her he would pray that they would never meet again, but he could pray whatever he wanted.
First decide, then do.
She would likely never understand what was right or what purpose fighting held, but at that moment, she decided to start living again. She decided to reexamine the thoughts she had excised from her mind. On that day, she had found someone to inspire her—someone who had built a mighty wall that closed off her previously unhindered life.
Tiger didn’t have to search long before learning that the master who had given her the incomprehensible advice was also the warrior said by some to be incomprehensibly strong—the Fighter of the Ox—and that his name was Ushii. But the world was large and its battlefields countless. She had been hasty to assume she would encounter him again and was beginning to give up on the idea of ever meeting the master swordsman, when the Zodiac War came.