Chapter 1605. Standing Up (5)

This is insane!

Suzuki Ryuichi gritted his teeth as he watched a wooden sword rapidly closing in on him.

Even though the blade’s material was mere wood, it still contained a trace of sword qi. Getting hit by that strike wouldn’t end with a mere broken bone or two for Suzuki Ryuichi.

“Aaaaaahk!”

He desperately swung the bamboo sword gripped in his hands to block the incoming wooden sword.

Thwaaark!

A loud, dull noise exploded when a bamboo sword met a wooden sword. The impact force he felt at that moment was almost enough to break his wrists.

Unfortunately, Suzuki Ryuichi didn’t even have time to notice the pain. He threw himself to the ground without a moment’s hesitation—all because he had sensed the qi coming from another wooden sword closing in on his back!

He tumbled on the ground several times to escape the radius of that wooden sword before lifting his head up from the dirt, a fed-up look now filling his face.

“Aaaaahk!”

“You! You stinking Jap f*cker!”

“Die! Die!”

This... was pure pandemonium!

Suzuki Ryuichi nervously swallowed his saliva while taking in the utter chaos unfolding before his eyes.

Just what the hell is wrong with these people?!

When he left Japan, he swore inwardly to become the best in this place.

The truth was, though, he didn’t expect to receive much from the Koreans. After all, the two sides could become enemies once more in the future. Knowing that, why would the Assembly teach Suzuki Ryuichi and his peers anything useful?

Indeed, the Assembly would probably go through the motions before shooing the Japanese back home.

Despite knowing that, though, Suzuki Ryuichi didn’t care. What he wanted was the protection of the Assembly, or at least the impression of it, after all.

As long as he could make the others believe that impression, he thought he could quickly rise to the top with his own strength.

However, he received a painful realization of how wrong his assumption was the moment he crossed the ocean and set foot in this place.

“Uwaaaaaaah!!!”

A Demon Cult believer wielding a wooden sword was charging straight at Suzuki Ryuichi, his eyes scarily bloodshot. Cowed by that man’s murderous aura, Suzuki Ryuichi reflexively retreated.

Damn it!

He knew that this Demon Cult believer was far weaker than him. If they had fought ten mock matches, he knew he’d win every single time. Even then, he was getting a very painful lesson in reality right now.

He now realized that a real fight was starkly different from a mock fight!

“Die! Die, you stinking Jap f*cker!”

The Demon Cult believer finally closed the distance and chopped down with his wooden sword. Suzuki Ryuichi froze on the spot from that man’s loud yell, unable to even fight back. He even inadvertently squeezed his eyes shut, too!

POW!

Another dull noise rang out, but for some reason, he didn’t feel any pain this time.

When he cautiously cracked his eyelids open, the Demon Cult believer was crumbling to the ground instead.

“Get a grip on yourself, you fool!”

“...?”

Suzuki Ryuichi snapped wide awake when he finally noticed Michihiro standing next to him.

“Fuu-wuuuhk!”

Suzuki Ryuichi hurriedly gulped in a lungful of air and gripped the bamboo sword tightly. However, just as he did that...!

“That’s enough! Stop!”

A bassy, heavy voice rang out in the air, and every single Demon Cult believer stopped attacking immediately. And, as if to say the chaotic melee until now was all a figment of Suzuki Ryuichi’s imagination, they began assisting their injured comrades and stood in lines to one side, their expressions one of nonchalance.

“...!”

On the other hand, the trainees from Japan were still half out of their minds, unable to grasp the situation.

Chang Min glanced at the Japanese, then addressed the Demon Cult believers. “We’ll stop here today.”

“Thank you for your guidance, Elder!”

“We are always grateful!”

“Hmm!”

The Demon Cult believers all bowed to Chang Min to bid goodbye, then rushed toward the far side of the training ground to reorganize themselves.

“...Insane sons of b*tches!” Suzuki Ryuichi loudly gritted his teeth.

After charging at him and his comrades with intentions to kill and maim, these people dared to act like a bunch of kids at the end of a school day, busy cracking jokes with each other while walking away? Actually, he couldn’t even feel angry about this situation anymore.

Every one of them is insane!

He couldn’t quite figure out where to start his criticism.

Should he start with how the Assembly saw fit to throw the new arrivals from Japan into this nonsensical war as their first training session? Or how about repeating this kind of so-called training every single day?

He simply couldn’t comprehend it with his common sense.

Michihiro patted Suzuki Ryuichi on the shoulder. “So? What do you think?”

“About what?”

“This type of training.”

Suzuki Ryuichi’s expression crumpled after noticing the smirk on Michihiro’s face. “Look. I’m not sure about the others, but...”

Rather than “not being sure,” though, it’d be more correct to say he didn’t even want to evaluate them.

“But I’m certain about something now.”

“Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

Suzuki Ryuichi hesitated slightly, then groaned deeply. “Now I know why we lost.”

“...”

As if he couldn’t crack a joke about that observation, the slimy smirk on Michihiro’s face was quickly replaced with an unreadable expression. “I don’t want to agree with you on that one, but it’s impossible not to, now is it?”

Suzuki Ryuichi rubbed his face with both hands.

Damn it all to hell!

In Japan, martial arts were referred to as “Budo”, or the way of the martial arts or the warrior.[1]

It could mean a few things depending on how one interpreted it, but the Japanese martial arts were more like the concept of denial of oneself. The whole point was to endlessly polish one’s blade and gradually complete oneself.

In other words, the Japanese tried to pursue systematic and ritualistic etiquette through martial arts. As such, they enforced a strict discipline when drawing one’s sword. And carelessly wielding one’s sword was also heavily frowned upon. The Japanese believed that one had to follow a set of strict discipline and etiquette when wielding one’s sword. Only then would their actions have a meaning, a certain worth.

However, what about these Demon Cult people?

To them, this is nothing more than war!

When viewed from Suzuki Ryuichi’s perspective, these people were far closer to soldiers than martial artists. Indeed, they were the type that used martial arts as tools of warfare and not much else.

That made them no different from soldiers in his eyes, other than the obvious difference of the weapons they wielded.

Suzuki Ryuichi sighed again. “In the past, I would have ridiculed them.”

Michihiro smirked. “But now you can’t. Am I right?”

“...Yes.”

After all, the Japanese warriors lost to these soldiers.

Japan sought to find “beauty” even in violence. No, it’d be more correct to say they tried to beautify the violence instead.

However, these Demon Cult people only pursued extreme effectiveness.

Was this the preferred method of the Koreans or the Chinese? Or maybe Kang Jin-Ho’s? Suzuki Ryuichi couldn’t figure that out from these few training sessions. Still, there was no doubt that this method had completely defeated the Japanese.

“We’re like the Japanese Imperial Army that kept harping on about the Yamato spirit, only to get their asses handed back to them.”

“Self-flagellation of that level is a mental illness.”

Suzuki Ryuichi sighed deeply at Michihiro’s remark.

Damn it...!

Just what had he been doing until now?

I’ve been flapping my gums all this time, but now...

He thought he’d achieve anything as long as he had an opportunity to do so. Just one opportunity was all he asked for, and he was deeply confident of making the most of it.

However, this so-called training was like a rude wake-up call.

Of course. Something as valuable as an opportunity won’t just be given away.

Even as he wasted time on things like lamenting the situation in Japan, these people were experiencing training of this intensity to improve their skills.

What have I been doing until now?

He gritted his teeth even harder. The shame he felt was so strong that he wanted to hide in a rat hole if he could.

What humiliated him even more was the fact that the Demon Cult people he fought just now were all supposed to be weaklings. However, these people, who were comparatively weaker than him, still overwhelmed him in a real fight.

Dammit all to hell!

Was it because they were more used to real fights? What a laughable excuse that was.

Such an excuse minimized all the work these people had put in to become “used to” real fights. Besides, even if it was true, Suzuki Ryuichi had no right to point that out. After all, he was someone who went around ripping the Yakuza off while lamenting his status until now.

“So, what do you say?” Michihiro asked again.

Suzuki Ryuichi slightly turned to look at him and saw a grin on his face that verged on being a sneer.

“Ah, I see. Looks like you’re finally into it, then?” Michihiro asked.

“What a foolish statement that is,” Suzuki Ryuichi grunted while turning his head away.

He was already into it, after all. Since the beginning, in fact. It was just that this situation had flustered him. That was all.

“This can’t be everything, right?”

Michihiro smirked. “Probably. Even I can tell that they aren’t thinking of going through the motions with us before sending us back home.”

Suzuki Ryuichi chuckled helplessly. These people really were incomprehensible, no?

It wasn’t as if he didn’t believe Kang Jin-Ho or his promise. Suzuki Ryuichi couldn’t say his eyes for people were great, but even he could tell that Kang Jin-Ho wasn’t a liar.

So, Kang Jin-Ho must’ve been serious about training the Japanese properly.

Even then, Suzuki Ryuichi didn’t hold much hope precisely because he believed that a large organization couldn’t be fully controlled by one man’s willpower alone.

Even if Kang Jin-Ho was serious about this whole thing, this organization called the Martial Assembly couldn’t have been happy about transferring its martial art knowledge to the Japanese. Which meant the wall called reality would have stopped him in his tracks.

At least, that was what Suzuki Ryuichi believed. But his prediction had missed the mark by a wide margin.

“I can’t figure out they are even thinking here,” said Suzuki Ryuichi.

“They aren’t thinking at all,” Michihiro muttered.

Suzuki Ryuichi shot a probing glare at Michihiro, prompting the latter to urgently wave his hand.

“Ah, wait. It seems you’ve misunderstood me. I’m not saying these people did all this for fun, that they don’t have a plan for it.”

“Then, what are you saying?”

“They are simply not thinking about it right now.”

Weren’t this and that roughly the same? When Suzuki Ryuichi frowned in confusion, Michihiro smirked again.

“You know, I think the Japanese people’s worst, most useless habit is our tendency to become far too cautious.”

“Since when is being cautious a bad thing?”

“I agree that being cautious is a good idea. However, being cautious, being prudent... That’s a nice excuse when procrastinating, isn’t it? Instead of making the important decisions now.”

“...!”

Suzuki Ryuichi finally figured out what Michihiro was trying to say.

“Sometimes, we gotta charge in blindly without thinking about this and that. Unfortunately, we don’t know when to do that. So, we tend to wait. And wait. And wait some more. We’ll continue to stew in our thoughts even as the water around us starts boiling and cooks our flesh.”

Suzuki Ryuichi furrowed his brow. “Aren’t you being overly dramatic?”

“You can still say that when we’re the victims?”

“Mm?”

What did Michihiro mean by that?

Michihiro smirked again. “Think about it. Back when the peninsula was still an ownerless land, imagine what would’ve happened if our higher-ups had stopped sucking on their thumbs and invaded here without caring about what the Chinese were thinking. If that had happened, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Even if it’s Kang Jin-Ho, he’s only one man. What can he do by himself when both the Assembly and the Yeongnam Group have ceased to exist?”

“...”

“The cost of hesitating unnecessarily was us losing everything.”

Suzuki Ryuichi chose to remain silent, although not because his pride was hurt. No, it was because he didn’t particularly agree with what Michihiro said about Kang Jin-Ho.

Even in an environment like that, I think Kang Jin-Ho would have achieved anything he wanted.

That didn’t mean Michihiro was completely wrong in his assertion, of course.

“The Martial Assembly knows, okay? They know there’s a massive danger looming ahead, and wasting time worrying about the distant future will get them in the same wretched state as Japan. So, they are doing everything they can now while leaving the future stuff to the future.”

Michihiro smirked and muttered snarkily.

“Which is something we the Japanese have failed to do.”

“Whenever you act like this, I honestly get curious about something, Michihiro...”

“Yeah? What?”

“Are you a Zainichi, by any chance?”[2]

“Of course not! I’m a pureblood Japanese. And that’s why I’m so cynical and self-deprecating.”

“Really? What an amazing fella you are.” Suzuki Ryuichi shook his head. “At least one thing is certain now.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

The Martial Assembly was serious about training the Japanese properly. In that case, the Japanese should do their best not to disappoint them, no?

“For now, we should do our best to satisfy their expectations of us.”

Michihiro smirked again. “Don’t forget what that expectation is. We’re supposed to be their meat shields, after all.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Suzuki Ryuichi in an icy voice. “If we can survive being their meat shields, they will have no choice but to acknowledge us.”

“Sounds like you’ve completely become a pro-Korea activist, then?”

“It’s all thanks to you.”

“...? Really now?”

“Didn’t you say there are times when we must just charge in blindly without thinking? As far as I can tell, now is that time.”

“...”

“Whatever happens in the future, that’s for the future. For now, I’ll do whatever it is that I must do.”

“I see. Now there’s a nice mindset.”

The corners of Michihiro’s lips curled up as if he liked Suzuki Ryuichi’s attitude.

However, that only made Suzuki Ryuichi furrow his brow and look away. He knew that Michihiro’s intention was never to mock him for his betrayal, but it still felt that way to him.

No, this is not a betrayal!

He was simply making the correct choice in this situation. And he firmly believed his choice would help Japan out in the long run.

That was what he believed—at least, for now.

1. Budo → 武道 ☜

2. “Zainichi” literally means “residing in Japan” and refers to Koreans and their descendants living in Japan. ☜