Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume24 Chapter2 2

The Bout. Part 2

I met Nana about a third of the way from our house to school along the normal route.

"Gokigenyou, Yoshino-sama."

After greeting me, Nana put the rough map I'd faxed her into her coat pocket.

"Gokigenyou. That's quite a bag you've got."

Little wonder. She'd have a full set of kendo clothes, armor and shinai.

It may have been obvious, but Nana was wearing regular clothes. Since she had to use normal public transport to get here, wearing her kendo gear was out of the question.

Daughter of the Arima dojo, youngest of the four Tanaka sisters. I know we'd talked about it, but seeing her with that bag made me realize again that she really had come here for kendo. She'd been at the inter-school kendo tournament, and both my uncle and kendo aficionado grandfather in Yanaka knew of her, but I'd never actually seen her holding a shinai.

We walked together and not long after Nana asked:

"What happened there?"

"There? … Ah."

She was pointing at the gap between my miniskirt and knee-high socks, where some skin was exposed. Overall the skin was whitish, but there were patches of purple or black, like a spotted cat. She was probably asking about what caused them.

"Ah, I had a bit of a fall."

The remains of my end-of-year bike training. Even so, most of them had faded so skirts were no longer forbidden, but that Nana sure had sharp eyes.

"Yoshino-sama."

"What?"

"You sure fall down a lot."

"… Well, excuse me."

I was a bit annoyed. I didn't fall down often enough that you'd point it out.

It seemed like Nana had been nearby when I fell down all those times recently. Despite how I looked now, I never used to fall down in the past. Because I'd always walked slowly, to take care of my heart. Naturally, running was completely unthinkable.

(Is that it?)

Since I've got better, I've stopped paying attention to walking and running. As a result, I've been falling down.

"Nana."

"Yes?"

"Why did you want to have a match with Rei-chan?"

I asked. I wanted to know what her goal was.

"Why indeed?"

She responded with a smile and a small gesture of confusion.

"Are you dodging the question? Is it something you can't speak about?"

"Does it look like that?"

"I don't know, that's why I asked."

I was a little annoyed. Just a little. And only annoyed, really. But sensing that, Nana made a follow-up remark.

"I'm sorry. Did my choice of words offend you? But even I don't know. So no matter how you ask me, I can't give you an answer."

"You don't know?"

"Yeah. I just thought I wanted to have a bout with her so I said it. I'm not yet able to analyze why I wanted the match."

By saying "not yet" it implied that there would come a day when she would be able to perform that analysis. Either that, or perhaps she expected to get that answer today, the instant she crossed blades with Rei-chan.

"Are you strong, Nana?"

I asked. I didn't know what her skill level was. Since she wanted to have a match against Rei-chan, the only reasonable conclusion was that she was comparatively talented.

"No."

Nana answered immediately. It didn't seem like she was being humble. It was as though she was just stating a plain fact. Like answering the question "1+1" with "2." So even if the truth was that she was crazy strong, at least she didn't think of herself that way.

"But you're ranked, right?"

"No, I don't have a rank."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Is that so strange?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you have a rank, Yoshino-sama?"

"No, I don't, but."

But that was because I was a newbie, who'd only been practicing kendo for less than a year.

"But you're a daughter of the Arima dojo."

"When I was born, I was a daughter of an office worker."

"But your grandfather's the head of a dojo."

"And your uncle's the head of a dojo."

The uncle she referred to was, obviously, Rei-chan's father and he was unquestionably the head of the Hasekura dojo.

"My older sisters, all of them, have ranks. To each their own."

To each their own – but they all did the same thing.

I'd only seen the second and third Tanaka sisters at the inter-school tournament and, regardless of the match outcomes, they were both unquestionably skilled. The oldest sister, who'd participated the year before, was a rank above Rei-chan, so the Tanaka family was a strong group. It didn't seem like Nana, the fourth daughter and the only one to be taken in by her dojo leading grandfather, would be weak.

To each their own. Rank was certainly a measure of skill, but there would be people out there that were skilled and unranked, so it wasn't a complete measure.