13 Hakama Alice 2

Author: Bishamon Mine
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0664js/16/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

A chill ran down Alice’s spine.

Alice, leaving it to fear, leapt backward.
A shinai mowed the place Alice had been a moment ago.

Alice could see Tachibana Mizuki cutting her own shadow in two.

She evaded by a hair.
If she hadn’t experienced life-or-death real combat in Fate Link: Legendia, she probably couldn’t even have reacted.

“Fast.”

Tachibana Mizuki murmured and vanished again.

When Alice dodged left on fear, a shinai pierced Alice’s shadow.
But Tachibana Mizuki’s thrust didn’t end there.

The shinai suddenly changed trajectory and came at Alice. Alice tried to evade by a hair, but she stepped on her hakama hem and fell hard. Falling, though, she somehow evaded the shinai.

Alice evaded Tachibana’s vertical swing while rolling further.
Tachibana Mizuki doesn’t pursue.
In kendo you may attack someone who has fallen on their back only once.

“……Hah hah hah hah……”

But Alice, from too much fear, stayed sitting on her backside and pointed the tip of her shinai at Tachibana Mizuki.
Like a shield.

Tachibana Mizuki looked down at fallen Alice and quietly asked.

“Good sense. But what comes of continuing a boring match like this?”

Here the referee’s “Yame” landed.
Alice slowly stood, still pointing the “shield.”

The two returned to center and restarted the match.

The moment it restarted, Tachibana loosed a kiai and leapt at Alice.
Alice answered this with the shield.

“—— —— ——Aaaah!!”

Fierce sounds of shinai clashing rang, PAN PAN, dominating hushed Kawasaki Gymnasium like powder bursting.

Alice barely kept receiving Tachibana’s shinai.
But Alice understood.

(——This attack of Tachibana-san’s is “different”…… it isn’t the real strike)

She’s trying to make an opening in me.

(She’s trying to make an opening in me, leave me defenseless, and attack)

If I show even a slight opening, an unavoidable blow will come.

So Alice, so as not to make an opening, looked at her own openings.
It was Alice’s first time——the act of searching for “my own openings.”

She saw “her own opening,” and there Tachibana Mizuki dove in as if sliding her shinai.

Alice barely knocked aside and evaded this attack she had somehow been able to predict.

She just barely blocked Tachibana Mizuki’s real strike.
——But what remained in Alice’s heart from this act was despair.

She had prided herself on attacking kendo, prided herself that a way of fighting that takes sen-no-sen was her fight.
And yet the first things she did were “escape,” “waist-retreat,” “skulking.”

What landed on Alice, shocked at her own conduct, was a cold voice.

“A sword isn’t a shield, it’s a weapon.”
“Ah——aaaah.”

Alice had noticed. From some moment, she had been calling her own shinai a shield.

At Tachibana’s temperature-lost voice, Alice began to hear the sound of her own kendo starting to collapse.

 

Suzusaki Suzuhi too was shocked in the stands.

“She’s scared——that Yachimata-san——Yachimata-san who’s always smiling and easygoing, unlike me———”

But——.

(Is that okay? Because Yachimata-san, you’ve been attacking and attacking and winning the whole way here, you want Grandfather to acknowledge you——then if you stop being you, isn’t that no good——even if you make him acknowledge a you that isn’t you, that’s wrong……)

Suzusaki Suzuhi looked around.

She’s scared of people. Already so scared that if she stands out in public her legs shake, she can’t breathe.
But Yachimata-san, who usually isn’t scared——is scared now, trembling, flinching.
Then, to swallow that fear for her——.

 

Yachimata Alice, trembling, tried to understand Tachibana Mizuki.

“What do I do…… I have to understand what this person is…… and some weakness of the opponent……”

The instant Yachimata Alice was about to sink into the swamp of thought again.

Through hushed Kawasaki Gymnasium——a trembling, frightened, terrified…… cheer about to snap rang out.

“Ya-Yachi, mata-saaan, do your beeest…”

At a cheer not allowed in a kendo match, everyone in the gym looked at the owner of the voice. The owner of the voice at once lost the color in her face and went pale.
But even looking down, the owner of the voice didn’t stop.

“Ya-Yachimata-saaan, d-d-d,——do your beeeeeeeeeest——!!”

A scream, full-force——unreliable volume.
She even got scolded by an announcement, “Please keep cheering to applause only.”

The owner of the voice went even whiter and seemed unable to speak, and looking down she clapped small pat-pat.
But that was enough to light Yachimata Alice’s fighting spirit once more.

Yachimata Alice was stunned for a while, surprised that “that” Suzusaki Suzuhi had raised a loud voice in front of people.
Then she noticed.

(Ah, I see———I had it wrong)

“Ahaha…”

Yachimata Alice, who had noticed, laughed with her shinai to her temple.

“What was I doing———”

The feeling that got through.
Yes——if I don’t fight, what am I doing.
This is a fight to have myself acknowledged——isn’t this my fight.

I look at Tachibana Mizuki.
I’ve been chasing only illusions of this girl.

What about this girl was I afraid of.

Rumors and simulations and invisible techniques and huge phantoms.
What is “I have to understand what this person is.”
This girl being a monster, who cares.

Because I lost myself, I was putting a filter on. I inflated my imagination on my own as “scary” and only watched imagination——so I could see even less.
Because I lost sight of myself, I didn’t even notice I had my eyes shut.

“Ahahahahahaha!”
“What are you laughing at, Yachimata Alice.”
“I’m too ridiculous.”

When Yachimata Alice finished speaking, her expression changed.
Fighting spirit boiled all at once. Tachibana Mizuki noticed the danger. But that notice was a little too late.

Alice’s sending step, the floor she kicked, a sudden rush——Tachibana Mizuki’s reaction lagged at the unexpected charge.

“———!!”

“Sorry, Tachibana-chan. I’m going to go with raw strength!”

Though her reaction lagged, Tachibana Mizuki somehow brought it to a tsuba-zeriai.
But on Tachibana Mizuki came Yachimata Alice’s large Western-inherited physical power that Japanese people don’t have.

No fingertip technique, pure strength.
Face mask colliding, gazes crossing.

“Ta——” “Yaaaaaa!!”

Before Tachibana Mizuki could try to parry, a full shove burst on Tachibana Mizuki.

Tachibana Mizuki stepped as if a motorcycle had hit her.——She completely lost her balance.

“Meeeeeeeeeen”

A merciless blow came down from directly above Tachibana Mizuki.

A white flag went up.
The boys of Souha High’s kendo club in the stands all clapped at once.

“She took an ippon!”
“Alice took an ippon!!”
“From that Tachibana, Alice got one!!”

Among the noisy boys, the vice-captain spoke to the one boy quietly looking at the court.

“Tsukahara——Alice went and did it!”
“Yeah.”
“Did you expect it?”
“No, I thought Alice couldn’t.”
“I see. Hey, if it’s Alice, how many times out of ten can she beat you?”
“Zero. She couldn’t take even one——she couldn’t from Tachibana Mizuki either.”
“Hahaha! You’re really awful.”
“But just now, I missed my prediction.”

Tsukahara spoke of the mistake looking happy.
And he smiled fearlessly.

“Do your best, Alice. Show me you too——show me that the you in my head is wrong. If you keep repeating that, your grandfather surely won’t be able to help seeing the real you.”

Once more the two kendoka bowed across the white line.

Tachibana Mizuki stood from the crouch, looked down, and quietly put out a happy-sounding voice.

“———From here is the real match.”

“That” leapt into Tachibana Mizuki’s eyes when she lifted her face.
The moment Tachibana saw “that,” she slightly stirred the heart she had kept like a water mirror.

A shinai held high.

A spine firmly straight, a dignified, splendid posture.
Alice’s stance she is best at.

“———Jodan no kamae———”

A current like electricity ran down the spines of every player, referee, and person with kendo experience in the venue.

Almost everyone in the venue knows.
That Tachibana Mizuki is good at “do.”
——And that Yachimata Alice had won up to the final in jodan, which “exposes the do.”
And yet that in this match with Tachibana Mizuki, Yachimata Alice had sealed jodan.

Tachibana Mizuki laughed.

“My specialty is ‘do.’”
“Yeah. Our captain told me I absolutely mustn’t do this.”

Alice answered blithely.

“Then why?”
“Because I’m good at ‘men.’”
“Fufu——fufufu.”

To Tachibana Mizuki, whose expression didn’t change but who laughed looking happy, Alice declared in a voice like throwing down a challenge.

“The one fighting you isn’t the captain, it’s me! We don’t seal specialties——we throw specialties at each other!”
“That’s right. That’s what makes it ‘our fight.’——Then shall we start the match.”
“Yeah!!”

Tachibana Mizuki took chudan with her shinai.

They have already each taken one.
The next one taken decides this day.
It may be only one day in a long life.
But it might be the brightest moment in a life.

(Amazing.——I’m excited, but my heart is quiet)

In Alice’s vision, only Tachibana Mizuki was reflected anymore.
The audience, the referees, the scenery——rumors and simulations weren’t visible.
Just small Tachibana Mizuki standing, unconcerned.
To Alice that figure came into view without her meaning to look.

Openings——no, even the opponent’s feelings came into view without her being aware.

(Maybe this is what Captain Tsukahara called “clear mirror, still water”——or is it Suu-san’s “zone”?)

But right now either is fine.
Clear mirror still water, the zone, or something else——just, right now.

Tachibana Mizuki answered as if responding to Alice’s thoughts.

“Yes, right now words don’t matter. Just Alice is here, and I am here. That’s enough.”

(Yeah)

“Yaaaaaaaa!!”

Alice charged, substituting kiai for a reply.
She remembered Captain Tsukahara’s words.

“Jodan looks full of openings. But it protects men, and above all it’s fast. Jodan exposes the kote too, but speed can cover it. And chudan exposes the kote as well.”

And men from a tall height. Do from a short height.

The conditions are even.

“Meeeeeeeeen——”
“Doooooooo——”

 

———The winner was———

 

“Kanagawa Prefecture Preliminary Champion, Tachibana Mizuki”

The venue was wrapped in applause.

“Kanagawa Prefecture Preliminary Runner-up, Yachimata Alice”

Applause again.

“……Uu……”

Alice’s tears wouldn’t stop.
Beside hiccuping Alice, Tachibana Mizuki spoke.

“It hurts, doesn’t it——runner-up.”
“…………Yeah……”
“Runner-up, one step short. Way more frustrating than third.”
“…………Yeah.”
“I’ll first. This spring, take the Kanto tournament. So,”
“…………”
“Alice, come take the championship at nationals in summer.”

Alice didn’t answer.

“Let’s fight again.”
“…………”
“At Inter-High.”
“Yeah——”
“It’s a promise.”
“I promise!”

The two women kendoka exchanged a pinky swear.

Suzusaki Suzuhi, who had been watching them from far away, also had tears in her eyes.

“It was an amazing fight———really.”

Suzuhi looked up at the sky from the window behind her.
It was high, high, a proud blue.