素振り
Suburi


素振り (suburi): n. Kendo. The move of thrusting a (wooden) sword downward from a starting position above one's head.


He saw Touga twice before lunch, once coming out of Physics, with a bubble-headed blond on his arm, and the second time in the greenhouse in the garden, with the Rose Bride. He could not see very well through the glass, and one of his contacts had fogged up unfathomably between Chemistry and Japanese Literature. It must be the pollen in the sunlit air, he thought.

After lunch, he only saw Touga once, at the Student Council meeting. Miki was late. Juri sat through the proceedings with a distracted air, twirling a lock of her hair around the end of her pencil. He counted the twirls of her finger in his head above Touga's droning monologue. The duel arena was overcast that day, but the roses were in bloom.

The Rose Bride was not there.

After the meeting, he stalked the emptying corridors of Ohtori, hating the huskiness of rose perfume in the air, hating the way the sun set between the distant hills even as he entered the dojo. He could smell the roses in here too, smell their intoxicating sensual fragrance against the musty rafters of the roof, the rotting wood that was as uniquely Japanese as sakura in the spring. Not roses, he thought, and brought his shinai down furiously even as the last rays of the sun disappeared.

He imagined it was Touga there across from him. Their shinai would cross just so, he thought, measuring the distance carefully and taking two paces forward. There would be Touga's eyes behind the kendo mask, Touga's fingers white on the faded ivory of the hand-guard. Touga's bare feet, slipping across the ground, muffled on the ancient wood. Touga's hair, fanning behind him with each sword-stroke like the windblown manes of runaway horses.

He waited until the clock tower had struck six 'o clock and then he went to the dojo window to watch the cars cross the highway bridge beyond the academy walls. Their headlights were fuzzy through his bad contact lens, like seeing the world through tiny water droplets in the rain. He took a deep breath and blew it out, feeling a sudden intense desire to take his shinai and thrust it through the white roses blooming on the rosebush by the window.

The clock chimed six thirty, and he tore himself away from their bobbing, pale faces, so blandly lovely in the moonlight. He would have preferred red roses, he thought, as he swung the shinai down blindly again and again, hacking through the thick rose-scented darkness. When he closed his eyes, the aroma seemed to retreat. He thought he could smell the distant river, the coming storm, the scent of Touga's nearness like roses after the rain.