Noriko

I’m terrified. My hand keeps slipping on the magazine as I try and reload, they’re soaked with sweat. My arms begin to shake as I hear bullets whizzing past my ear towards the enemy. Just what I need, to get shot in the back by my own buntai. Finally I slam the magazine into place and crank back the charging handle. 30 rounds are all mine, just show me one of them.
Some idiot I don’t recognize runs past me screaming through clenched teeth, no cover, shooting at apparently nothing. A ship sees him, a deep hum is the only sign of their attack. The first thing to catch fire is his clothes and the grass underneath him, I look away as the rest of him catches and he begins to scream. But it doesn’t last long, it’s like he’s been put inside a high powered microwave. The smell is horrible. No need for medics this time, and no time to process that horror. One of those monsters has come into view from around the side of a burning bus. Its companion ship moves on, looking for its next barbecue.
The monster is twice my height. No pupils to speak of, I can’t tell if it’s seen me with those black compound eyes. I don’t wait to find out, I unload fire and fury and hate with each column of hot steel that leaves my barrel. The rhythm and recoil is intoxicating, each beat a chance to accomplish my goal. I don’t care if I live or die. I have to stop this one from moving, stop it from cutting and tearing, stop it from breeding.
With help from my tracer rounds I quickly adjust my aim, at least a dozen shots hit perfectly at its center. Fibers chip and splinter from its exoskeleton with every connection I make, but they aren’t getting through. I move higher, at least I’ll leave a nice scar on its ugly alien face. It moves toward me with terrifying agility. My aim is still true, and I break off the tip of one of its mandibles before I feel the sickening click that means the end of my bullets. I have no reload, not that I would have time to set it. I’m going to die without a single kill. All of my training, all that time imagining this moment, and all I got was a piece of its mouth. I instinctively draw my knife. It has giant blade-like limbs for forelegs. “No fair.” I say out loud, cringing. Were those really my last words?
It’s coming for me, its clicking legs closing the gap between us with unnatural speed. My ears begin ringing, there’s a light in my eyes. I squint and see the light is the reflection off of a blade. The Angel of Death stands in front of me. Her naginata is dripping with blood, not the scythe I would have expected. The Angel rushes forward. Now I know she isn’t human, no human has ever moved this quickly or perfectly.
The Angel swings her blade.
I see a foreleg flying into the air. Before it can hit the ground she sinks her blade into the monster’s chest where I had chipped away at its armor. The beast can only begin a horrible scream because with her next movement she’s embedded the blade perfectly between two plates in its exoskeleton at its throat.
My enemy lay on the ground twitching, steam coming up from its wounds which are pulsing out thick black blood. A two thousand year old weapon has done what all the rifles in my buntai couldn’t.
Death stands over her kill, and now I can take in the sight of her. She isn’t an angel after all, but her appearance is just as impossible. In front of me, removing and wiping off her blade is an Onna-musha, the female Samurai. Her hair is done up in an elaborate bun with a long wooden pin running through it. She’s barefoot, fair skinned, and wears a loose-fitting, ornately stitched kosode. She is straight from the pages of an edo period history book. I call out, but as she turns and I’m about to see her face, the scene ends.
I wake up in sheets drenched in my own sweat.
I tear them off of me and quickly move to the window. My feet hit the floor quicker than I expected, causing me to roll across the floor mat. I remember I’m at my father’s house this week. It’s no wonder my shoulder is tight, I’ve always hated the rooms here. The firm shikifuton on the floor always takes me a couple nights to get used to. Instead of a window I now feel through the dark for the bamboo lattice of the door that separates my room from the inner courtyard. I find it and I’m released into moonlight and cool air. I quickly don a kimono hanging by the door and pull my long braid out of it, letting the sweat on the back of my neck cool me in the breeze.
My father is painfully traditional. The courtyard, which he always makes me help him maintain, resembles an old Zen Monastery, complete with dry landscape gardens and a surrounding raised deck. The cedar planks of the deck creak under my feet, a reminder that everything around me is ancient and constantly in need of repair. Across the garden from my room there is an open stage where my family operates a Kabuki theater. As a child I would love exploring the trap doors, watching the actors apply their makeup, and seeing my father turn the revolving floor of the stage.
I walk out into the moonlight, which seems to only accentuate the craftsmanship of the stage-pillars of polished cypress wood, the roof curved like a dragon’s spine. The stage itself is worn smooth by generations of performers' feet gliding across it in carefully measured steps.
And there at the center of it, moving as if the centuries of history were all culminating in herself, is Rei.
My twin sister wears a vintage black kimono with our house name, or Yagō, emblazoned across it. The fabric swirls as if a paid actor itself with every perfectly controlled movement. I’ve asked my father for one of my own but he insists I wear more feminine floral designs. He claims it’s because it looks better with my darker complexion, but I see his true motivations. To wear the Yagō would imply I have a place in its future. But Rei is clearly the unspoken inheritor. Only she could convince my father to go back on centuries of men traditionally performing all roles in the theater.
Rei’s gestures are somehow precise and fluid at the same time, a flick of her hand and a tilt of the head punctuating each move. Even without the full makeup of a performance, her face is a mask of serenity, flawless and infuriating. Our father worships her for her perfection, for the effortless way she embodies tradition. But I’ve seen behind her mask, beyond all of the grace. Rei hides a ruthlessness, like the blade that her character hides beneath silk in tonight’s third act.
She finishes the sequence with a powerful stomp. The sound reverberates through the night air. I step down onto the gravel. She doesn’t miss a beat and turns to me with a polished smile.
“Couldn’t sleep, Nori?” she asks. Employing a nickname for me that she knows I hate.
“How could I, with you stomping around at all hours of the night?” I reply.
“Effort never betrays you.” She says, quoting our father while bowing theatrically.
I roll my eyes. “Maybe not. But it doesn’t guarantee anyone will notice either.”
She straightens. “You mean Father.”
I don’t answer, which is answer enough. Rei steps down from the stage, brushing a speck of dust off of her sleeve like it’s a final gesture in some invisible script. “He does notice. Just not in the ways you want.”
“That’s easy for you to say, he actually wants to see you succeed. You’re an investment.” I let the words hang there, heavier than I meant them to be.
She tilts her head. “You chose Mother. You chose the city.”
“I chose not to live in a museum!” I snap.
“And yet here you are. Sneaking out to watch me perform before dawn.” She takes a step closer, voice low. “I’ve watched you from backstage during the performances. I know what they mean to you.”
The gravel shifts under my feet. “Don’t confuse my care for this theater as admiration for you. Better yet, just don’t try to understand me.”
Her voice softens in that maddening, superior way. “I don’t have to. I just know you better than you want me to.”
She exhales and changes the subject. “I’m going to be busy all day helping the Saitō twins with rehearsal. They’re basically helpless. Can you pick up natto and vegetables later? Oh! Get a lot of garlic. Shall we have gyoza tonight? We didn’t get to in the city after you picked that fight with mother.”
“You are objectively the most annoying person that has ever lived.” I reply.
“You can use Obaachan’s shopping trolley, it’s in her genkan. You won’t even need to change, you already look the part of a grocery attendant.” She says, looking down at my shoes.
I step forward and that’s all that it takes to wipe the smile off of her face. Rei may have inherited our mother’s grace and beauty, but I inherited our father’s strength. It could be fun to practice the O-goshi throw I’ve been learning in the city. But my teacher has forbidden me from practicing Judo outside of the privacy of our class. Martial arts are forbidden and citizens are required by law to report its practice to their local District Office of the Terran Governance Council.
She backs away and looks toward the stage. “We’re doing Chūshingura tonight.” she says, changing the subject again. She’s good at that.
Of course we are. The ultimate loyalty play. “You’ll be the noble one again.” I presume.
She smiles. “And you’ll be in the audience, pretending not to mouth the lines.”
I start to reply, but stop. She knows I still remember every beat. She walks past me toward the house, not waiting for my answer. “Don’t be late. It’s your last chance to see a true samurai before they go extinct.”
The sun has begun to rise and I watch it now while considering my sister’s words. A true samurai. I remember my dream. The smell of burning and me lying in oily soil looking up at that haunting woman. I’ve never had a dream that felt that real before.
I get on with the day. I don’t like the chore, especially coming from my younger sister, but the house is running low on supplies. Besides, getting away from the house will keep my father from filling my morning with other tasks. I collect my bag and the shopping trolley and head out through the side gate. It’s still early but it will take over an hour to get to Magome. Obaachan’s trolley rings out with each bounce on the cobblestone trail, thanks to dozens of bells she’s sewn onto it to alert the bears in the forests surrounding Nakasendo trail. I smile imagining her hunched over frame walking the trail to collect her blueberries.
In Magome I go about my usual routine. Sturdier foods at the bottom of the trolley, softer foods and vegetables towards the top. I overhear fishermen complaining that the coastline has shrunk back nearly a meter over the last few years, giving them the additional work of extending the dock. Even Earth’s massive oceans aren’t safe from the Vorarae and their sleepless industry. Our nation’s main contribution to their cause is the pumping and shipment of water, four massive Vorarae orbital tankers making three pickups each every year.
The last thing I grab is gyoza. Rei’s request was annoying, but I do love gyoza, and I usually arrive back home from this walk starving and needing extra calories. I make my way back to Tsumago around the same familiar bends in the trail and crossing the same bridges.
Just like my father’s home, everything in this area is ancient. But the trail I love. The trail and the forest don’t clutch tight to history and tradition. Trees topple, rivers change course, generations of animals come and go. As a young girl I once swore I even saw a tree moving in the corner of my eye. As I consider this, several kilometers into my walk, something catches my attention. Off of the trail, a stone shrine I’ve never seen before peaks at me between the trees, at the bottom of a stone stair about a hundred steps down.
Always open to a detour I descend. I look back and see the trolley I left behind appear further away than I thought it should, but I continue. Off the stone stairs now, I crunch along a fine gravel road cutting a line through massive old growth cedar trees and ending at the shrine. At its entrance hang paper streamers that look modern and almost out of place here.
This doesn’t feel like a traditional shinto shrine, it feels older. I realize why something feels so different about it, there’s no sound. No crows screaming, not even any wind.
I glance back toward the forest, the cedar branches are perfectly still. Even the leaves beneath my feet seem strangely quiet.
I climb the couple of steps between me and the shrine entrance. The shrine itself is smaller than I expected. Its roof is blackened with age, the wood beneath it dark and polished from decades of rain. There are no offerings, no coins, no plaques explaining its history. Just a single weathered wooden door, which I open now.
Inside, the air smells faintly of cedar and something floral I can't place. There is a small stone altar at the back of the room. Behind it hangs a faded scroll. I step closer. The painting is almost completely washed away, but I can still make out the figure of a woman standing in the center. She carries a naginata. My stomach tightens. The woman is dressed in a flowing robe, her hair pulled into an elaborate knot.
I stare at the painting. No. I take another step. The position of the weapon. The way her body is turned. Even the strange wooden pin through her hair. It's her. The woman from my dream. My heart starts pounding. 
“That's impossible.” I say outloud. But the sound is muted and stale in the small stone room.
 I lean closer, searching for some obvious explanation. Maybe I saw this somewhere as a child. Maybe my brain stitched together something I'd forgotten. Maybe the woman in my dream wasn't as specific as I remember.
In the distance I hear the sound of bells. My bells, my trolley! I race back out the door, sprinting up the steps and only looking back once at the shrine to see the door closing on its own. About half way up I can see a bear has got half of its head under the flap at the top. I scream and throw a rock up towards it. The surprise is effective and it runs off, but I can see that in its mouth it's carrying Rei’s natto. I reach the trolley and find the rest jostled but intact. I quicken my pace to get back home, before the bear can decide it wants more.
Later that night what seems to be the entire town pours through our gates and settles in their seats. I catch the familiar smell of incense, lit to set the mood for the performance. It snakes through the rows of seating like a living thing — cedarwood and frankincense, mixed with the faintest trace of greasepaint and rice powder coming from the dressing rooms backstage. I stand behind the paper screen near the wings, watching from the shadows. The stage is lit in soft amber, the crowd hushed. We’re packed tonight — families, local officials, a group of boys in school uniforms whispering too loudly before being shushed.
The play begins. Betrayal, sacrifice, revenge. The audience reacts in practiced ways — gasps at the right moments, polite silence where expected. I find myself mouthing along again despite myself. The rhythm of the lines is burned into me. Then a metallic bang sounds from the outer courtyard — not part of the play.
The actors freeze. The musicians stall a measure too long. I push forward, peering around the screen.
At first, I think it’s part of a set change — but the stagehands aren’t moving. A shout comes from outside. Then boots.
Guards in all grey uniforms burst into the room from both wings and the audience entrance. They’re armed. No ceremony. No explanation. The lights flicker, then surge brighter. The head guard steps forward, a tablet in his hand.
“All individuals between the ages of fifteen and eighteen will report to the stage immediately for testing and selection in a unique and new government training program.” There’s a stunned silence, then shifting and murmurs as parents clutch at sleeves.
Rei hasn’t moved. She’s still in full costume, sword in hand, expression unreadable. I step onto the stage without really thinking. The light hits me hard. For a moment, Rei and I lock eyes, then take our places on the line.