Episode 5 - Scorn

Yukimura waited for Jin to raise his hand.

He was down by one point, in a match to two. But the situation was worse - he couldn't read her at all, couldn't trust his insight, couldn't trust that his insight would be untrustworthy. She was going to defeat him on this next throw, going to prove he was too weak to join the team, too weak to avenge his brother.

"Kotei Jin." Her voice was like ice-cold razors. "Raise your hand, or walk away and stop wasting our time."

Weakly, he did. His voice came out as barely a mumble:

"Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot."

It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at.

"A... tie?" They had both thrown Scissors. Had he been wrong? Was Yukimura not as strong as she seemed?

"Again." Her voice's tone hadn't changed.

"Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot."

Another tie - a pair of Papers.

Jin shook his head. What's going on?! He looked up at Yukimura, studied her carefully. There's got to be something I can use-

Then, his blood went cold.

"It looks like you understand now." Her eyes were hidden by the light reflecting off her glasses. "We're not tying because we're evenly matched. I'm choosing your throws for you."

"But-"

"Why don't I just finish you?" She gripped one lens of her glasses again between forefinger and thumb - almost, Jin suddenly thought, as though she was pretending to crush him. "I'm not letting you off that easily. For you to come here and play at this level - it's an insult to Bosatsu's entire dueling team. You only have two ways out of this duel now - beat me, or give up. That, or just wait for the hammer to fall." She raised her fist. "Again."

The throws landed like weights on Jin's back.

Scissors.

Paper.

Rock.

With each tie, it became harder for him to raise his head, more of an effort to make his throw.

~

Thousand-Devil Kotei stood before a sea of spectators. His hand sliced through the air, his Scissors effortlessly dispatching his opponent's Paper.

Victory. Three points to zero.

Kotei turned as his opponent wept. Over his shoulder, he shouted - "Maybe if you had another hundred years to train." Then, he strode out of the arena as the crowd erupted in cheers. Only one more duel remained to determine the Junior Grand National Champion.

Just inside the antechamber, a staff member ran to him, handed him a phone.

As he listened, his confident smile faltered. After he understood what they were saying, only a few words made it past the roar of blood in his ears. Fell - terrible accident - gone - sorry - sorry. And Kotei Jin had been here, dueling, when it happened.

He felt his fighting spirit shatter.

~

Paper. Rock. Paper.

Yukimura was shouting now. "Kotei Jin! Why are you here?"

He could barely speak. "For... for my brother."

Rock.

"Your guilt has been holding you back all this time. But if you want to avenge him, you have to release it!"

Scissors.

"These feelings - you have to turn them into a will to fight!"

Paper.

Then, something snapped.

"UUUUAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!" Jin's voice was ragged. For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was his breathing.

Then, suddenly, his arm whipped out to the side. His hand formed a symbol that wasn't one of the three throws: his index and middle finger extended and held together, the others curled down under his thumb - the 'Blade'. The significance of the Blade is that only two fingers need move to form any of the three throws - making it a sign of great power.

"It worked," whispered Ryoichi.

"You want to see my strength?!" Jin's arm swung forward, and his fingers touched the center of his forehead - his 'third eye'. "This... is the Thousand-Devil Eye."

Mizumigawa leaned forward hungrily. "Finally we get to see it!"

Ryoichi watched intently. "The Thousand-Devil Eye... it really is an incredible technique. It's the culmination of Kotei-san's finely-honed insight, a mode of thought that allows him to process sensory data with incredible precision and discover his opponent's strategy... almost as though he can read their mind."

Jihara said nothing, stayed perfectly still.

Jin felt his strength flowing back into him. Now, he could clearly recognize the subtle posture shifts that Yukimura had used to guide his throws - it had been easy after she had destabilized him in the first throw. It was a formidable strategy - she'd taken advantage of his emotional state and his finely-honed instincts, leading him to decide throws without knowing what cues he was reading. But now that he could see it, it had been rendered useless! The only thing unusual was that there had been no shift since he used his Thousand-Devil Eye - she was going to use the same strategy. A test, to see if he had really regained his insight? Jin grinned. If so, he'd be happy to oblige her.

They raised their fists again.

"Rock! Paper! Scissors! SHOOT!"

Yukimura looked at their throws impassively. "Scissors cuts Paper. Well done." She cocked her head to the side. "So you weren't bluffing just now."

"Hah! Of course not!"

"I had to check. One more point left."

"Rock! Paper! Scissors! -"

Jin analyzed her new stance in a flash. She had shifted, but it was clearly just an attempt to disguise the same strategy. Of course, at this point she expected him to see through it. She must have been hoping that he would see this and decide she must have altered her signs so as to mislead him. But she was too relaxed into her stance - she was in reality still using the same strategy, betting that Jin wouldn't expect her to really be using a method that had just been broken -

"SHOOT!"

Yukimura's Scissors cut Jin's Paper.

"What?!"

"Sorry, Kotei-san, that was a mean trick."

"But how did you hide your strategy?"

"Oh, I didn't. I was using that same strategy throughout. The reason you couldn't read my choice was because I selected my final throw before our match by rolling a die. It was by chance that it beat yours." She shrugged. "In any case, it doesn't matter. You've reawakened - if you used your Thousand-Devil Eye from the start, this could have turned out much differently. Perhaps next time ." She sniffed. "Well done, Kotei-san. But you'd better train hard so that doesn't work again." She turned to walk back to the bench.

"... Thank you, Yukimura-san."

She paused. "Don't act like you're finished. You still have two matches left." But still, there was the tiniest hint of a smile on her face as she returned to the bench.

Mizumigawa leapt up and dashed to the platform Yukimura had vacated, spinning to face Jin. His eyes were like lasers.

"Kono reiatsu," she muttered to herself, grinning.

She pointed at him. "Kotei-kun, don't think that just because you have the Thousand-Devil Eye you'll be able to beat me. It's going to take much more than that."

There was a faint buzzing, as a fly passed her head. Then, a sharp snap - as she struck it out of the air with the back of her hand, almost too fast to be seen.

"Are you ready?!"

~

Yukimura lowered her eyelids and muttered, "I can't believe Mizu-kun actually released a fly in here just so she could swat it like that."

Ryoichi snickered. "I don't know, I thought it was pretty cool."