ch61-ch80 · 079-ch78
Chapter 78: The Shudo Three Brothers
I’m Shudo Taiyo.
Right now, I’m at my family’s dojo, getting some practice in with my second-eldest brother, Kai.
“Seyaa!”
My right-leg high kick is deftly blocked by Kai-bro.
He’s a good head or two taller than me, and way more muscular too, so I already know he isn’t gonna budge just from taking a hit with his arms.
I immediately twist around and throw a left roundhouse, aiming for his body.
“Nun!”
“!”
But of course, Kai-bro is still better.
He sees right through my move and lifts his knee high, catching my roundhouse with his shin.
And then, even more.
“Haah!”
“Guh...!”
I get knocked flat onto the dojo’s tatami by his palm strike counter.
“Owww...”
“That wasn’t half bad, Taiyo. Most guys’d be done in after two hits.”
Kai-bro stands there with his arms folded, looking down at me as I rub my chest and get back up.
“You talk a big game. That didn’t do a thing to you, though.”
“Well, duh. There’s no way you can beat a current pro fighter like me if you’re not using eiyōso. Our punch weight class is just different.”
With a sigh, Kai-bro drops into seiza facing me while I’m still sitting there.
“I know I can’t take you down, but at least I’ve gotta get to where I can land a hit before you block it, right?”
“Huh? ...You’ve gotten pretty fired up. Is it that much of a bruise to the ego that you got shut down cold by those guys over there?”
Kai-bro is the type who’s completely open and straightforward.
Which is nice and all, but that also means he’ll jab right at the sore spots without even blinking.
“C’mon, c’mon. Don’t sweat it. The guys from the real deal are on a whole different level when it comes to eiyōso, anyway.”
“...Then if you were the one fighting them, you’d be fine losing?”
“Who the hell’d be fine with losing?!”
Kai-bro’s angry face closes in until it’s just a few centimeters from my nose. Talk about total double standards.
Maybe he finally realized what he’d just said from my deadpan expression, because he pulls back and straightens his gi collar.
“Mm... sorry. Guess I can’t exactly tell you not to care.”
“Yeah. But it’s not like I just wanna win, either.”
I know full well that if I went at them head-on, I wouldn’t beat anyone from that other world.
Even so, I went all the way to Fusukino City because I thought maybe I could at least be some kind of deterrent. And I’d been pretty damn confident I could.
And yet, I couldn’t do a thing. My strength was only enough to get flattened by a single hit. And that was against some grunt with no armor on top of it. I even saw a fight that went way, way beyond that level.
“...I’m not enough. Not even close. If I’m gonna protect the things I want to protect, this isn’t nearly enough.”
“Taiyo...”
Kai-bro places a hand on my shoulder as I hang my head.
As expected of my older brother, he seems to know when to read the room for real, especially when I’m genuinely down.
The two of us stay quiet like that for a while, until a third person comes to the dojo.
“Kai, Taiyo. So you were here.”
“Ten-bro!”
The man in the suit, with his hair neatly parted and polished into place, is our eldest brother, Shudo Ten.
After graduating from university, he went straight into our family company, and now he’s one of the executives.
“Ten-bro, it’s still only evening. You’re here early for once.”
Ten-bro always gets home late at night. Coming back after six is rare... actually, as far as I know, this is the first time.
“It’s urgent. The chairman sent me.”
“Grandma?”
At the mention of a message from Grandma, Kai-bro and I both unconsciously straighten up into seiza.
We were raised so strictly that we end up fixing our posture without even thinking about it, even when she isn’t here.
Ten-bro also kneels down in front of us.
“Taiyo, have you seen Grandfather?”
“Huh? ...No, I haven’t. We split up at the station, and I came straight back after that.”
“I see...”
Ten-bro falls into thought after hearing that.
“...Taiyo, among the three of us brothers, you were chosen as the prospective match for the Mikatou family young lady because a large amount of eiyōso was observed in Fusukino City the other day.”
“Yeah, I figured that much.”
“And then the day after, an even stronger reading was detected... and you just happened to be there. But Grandmother doesn’t think it was just a coincidence.”
...Yeah, no kidding. He really is sharp.
“She thinks maybe you knew something was gonna happen that day, right? And she suspects you heard it from Grandfather.”
Ah, I see. So that’s what this is about.
For Grandma, that’s a surprisingly huge misunderstanding.
“I swear, I didn’t meet up with Grandpa.”
“Then why did you go to Fusukino City? The Mikatou family you met with isn’t connected to the Saiū line in any way, is it? Where did you get the information?”
“Mm... it really was just a coincidence. I liked the girl I was set up with, so I just went to see her while I was there for training camp.”
As I keep up my little bluff, Ten-bro peers into my eyes.
His serious face is scary. But it’s not enough to make me flinch. I’m not training every day for nothing, after all.
“..........At the very least, it seems true that you didn’t meet with Grandfather.”
“Of course I didn’t. I barely even remember what Grandpa’s face looks like, honestly.”
Grandpa separated from Grandma and retired when I was still little. I mean, I do remember feeling like he doted on us, but I don’t remember the details.
“Then you fit the conditions Grandmother mentioned.”
“Conditions?”
With that, Ten-bro gives a somewhat dramatic cough.
He really is starting to resemble Grandma in moments like this.
If you’ve got something to say, I wish you’d just say it already. We’re done with our break, and I want to get back to training--
“--Taiyo, do you want to get stronger?”
“!”