Ronin Without a Master
"We are not made of flesh and blood alone. We are built from the wounds we refuse to close."
— Letter from Hotaru no Yakusha
---
Dawn in Kamakura was a pale, sick thing.
Light spilled across the tiled roofs like watered-down wine, unable to wash away the black that clung to the city's bones.
Some mornings, the mist smelled of incense. Others, it reeked of blood.
Today, it smelled of both.
Shindō Motsura moved through the waking streets as if the crowd itself were smoke.
Merchants pulled open wooden shutters, fishermen dragged empty nets across stone, children darted between carts chasing scraps of warmth.
All the while, Shindō's shadow passed over them — long, silent, unblinking.
In his gait, there was no pride of the warrior caste, no echo of a lord's banner.
Only the weight of an oath broken so completely it had become its own kind of faith.
They called him Ronin.
But a man without a master is not always a man without a cause.
Sometimes, he becomes something worse.
---
Near the edge of the market square stood a half-ruined teahouse.
The sign hung crooked, paint eaten by rain and neglect.
Inside, the floorboards smelled of mold and spilled sake, and the walls were paper thin — perfect for those who wished to hear what should not be heard.
It was there that Shindō waited.
Not for tea. Not for warmth.
For the one whose lantern burned blue in the night.
---
Footsteps. Slow, deliberate.
The masked figure stepped inside, robes brushing the floor, as if afraid to disturb the dust.
Even seated, Hotaru no Yakusha felt taller than the walls could contain.
He did not remove his mask.
Instead, he placed the lantern on the table between them.
Its flame burned low, but steady — the color of an old bruise.
> "The blade on your back," Hotaru whispered, "is not what makes you fearsome."
"It is the emptiness you've carved inside yourself."
The words struck deeper than any steel.
Shindō's hand twitched toward his nodachi.
But there was no anger behind the movement — only the ache of instinct born from too many betrayals.
---
"Why me?" Shindō's voice was raw, gravel ground underfoot.
He had spoken so little these past years that even syllables felt like old wounds reopening.
Hotaru's head tilted, mask catching a slant of morning light.
> "Because a man who has killed everything he loves can no longer be bribed by hope. Only by meaning."
Meaning.
A word as heavy as iron, as hollow as a broken drum.
---
The teahouse walls seemed to lean closer, listening.
> "There is rot in this land," Hotaru murmured.
"A sickness that calls itself peace. It must be burned away, so that something pure may rise from the ash."
Shindō's eyes narrowed.
> "And what rises will be yours to command?"
A pause. Then, the gentlest laugh Shindō had ever heard.
> "No. What rises will belong to no one. That is why it must burn."
---
Outside, wind rattled the paper screens.
Inside, two men sat: one masked, one scarred; both equally haunted.
Shindō did not speak again.
Nor did Hotaru demand an answer.
Some decisions are not made in words, but in the marrow of the bones.
---
When Hotaru rose to leave, he left behind only a single folded letter.
Sealed with black wax stamped in the shape of a firefly.
Shindō stared at it long after the echo of footsteps died.
In its weight, he felt the first tremor of something dangerous:
Not loyalty. Not redemption.
Purpose.
---
In the streets beyond the teahouse, life staggered on — merchants haggling over rice, children laughing, priests chanting sutras to half-believed gods.
And in the middle of it all, a ronin without a master sat alone, holding a letter written in darkness.
He did not yet know it, but this was how ruin begins: With the promise that even ash can be reborn.