Page 41 of Kotori

"Damare!" Silence! The word cuts through his protest. "You orchestrated this gathering.

You encouraged these discussions. You created forged evidence to turn the Ishida family against me.

You wanted to test my resolve." I stop directly behind Sato-san's chair.

"Consider this my response." My hands settle on his shoulders—not violent, just claiming space, establishing ownership.

"Tell me, Sato-san, what specific leadership failures justify this conspiracy? "

"This isn't a conspiracy," he says, but his voice shakes. "We're loyal servants."

"Loyal servants." I let satisfaction color my tone. "How interesting that loyalty now includes undermining authority, questioning judgment, fabricating evidence, and meeting in secret to discuss my inadequacies."

My grip tightens slightly on his shoulders. "Stand."

He complies on trembling legs, and I guide him to the center of the room where all can see. Tea ceremony suddenly transformed into something far more primal.

"Takeshi," I say conversationally, "please explain to our honored advisor the consequences for questioning your oyabun's authority."

"Hai, Aniki. Response involves public correction. Demonstration of proper hierarchy. Restoration of respect through educational methods."

Educational methods. Such elegant phrasing for what comes next.

"But this isn't simple insubordination," I continue, circling Sato.

"This is coordinated challenge to family leadership.

Conspiracy masked as concern. Fabricated evidence designed to trigger violence between families.

The kind of betrayal that threatens everything our ancestors built.

" I stop in front of him, close enough that he has to crane his neck to meet my eyes.

"What do you believe that level of disrespect deserves? "

Sato-san's mouth opens, closes, opens again. No sound emerges. Around the room, the other advisors watch with the frozen attention of men who've suddenly realized they're surrounded by immanent death.

"I think," I say with quiet certainty, "it deserves creativity."

I gesture almost casually, and two of my men step forward. Almost gently, like museum curators handling priceless artifacts. They guide Sato-san to his knees in the center of the room, positioning him so every face can see what happens next.

"Acknowledgment begins education," I explain, settling back onto my cushion while he kneels before me. "Say: 'I questioned the authority of my oyabun.'"

"I..." Sato-san's voice cracks. "I questioned the authority of my oyabun."

"Good. Continue: 'I betrayed the trust placed in me.'"

The words come out as barely a whisper.

"And finally: 'I accept whatever correction Matsumoto-sama deems appropriate.'"

When he speaks this time, tears streak down his weathered cheeks. Around the room, absolute silence broken only by the whisper of summer wind through garden bamboo.

"Takeshi," I say, not looking away from Sato-san's face, "the tanto."

The ceremonial blade appears in Takeshi's hand—wakizashi shortened for close work, steel folded a thousand times until it holds an edge that could split silk scarves dropped across its surface. Hiroshi makes a sound of protest that dies in his throat when my eyes find his.

"Yubitsume," I announce, as if discussing flower arrangement. "Little finger, first joint. The price of questioning authority."

I accept the tanto with ceremonial reverence, testing the blade's sharpness against my thumb. A thin line of blood wells immediately—perfect edge, perfect balance, perfect tool for what comes next.

"Hand," I command quietly.

Sato-san extends his trembling left hand, spreading his fingers against the wooden block Takeshi produces. The little finger stretches alone, isolated, waiting.

And then I see it.

The missing joint. Clean scar tissue where the first segment should be. Old wound, expertly healed, the kind of precise amputation that speaks of correction performed decades ago.

My blood turns to ice.

Recognition crashes through me. Twenty-six years dissolve in an instant, and suddenly I'm sixteen again, watching my father's blade descend on this same hand, hearing this same man's screams echo off the walls.

Sato-san's face goes ashen as he sees understanding dawn in my eyes. Around the room, absolute silence as everyone realizes what I've discovered—not just defiance, but repeat betrayal.

The memory floods back with crystalline clarity: I was sixteen, standing behind my father's shoulder while he delivered justice to a man who'd betrayed clan intelligence to rival families. The same man who knelt before me now, twenty-six years older but apparently no wiser.

"This is what happens when loyalty becomes negotiable," my late father had said, tanto gleaming in his steady hand. "When service to this family becomes secondary to personal advantage."

I'd watched, transfixed and nauseated, as the blade descended with surgical precision. Sato-san's scream had torn through my teenage composure. Blood had sprayed across my school uniform—the same uniform I'd worn to classes that morning, now baptized in the reality of what our family required.

Afterward, my father had helped bandage the wound personally, had spoken of redemption and second chances while I stood trembling with the weight of what I'd witnessed.

"Every man deserves the opportunity to prove that correction leads to growth," he'd told me later, washing Sato-san's blood from his hands with the same care he used for tea ceremony. "True leadership knows when to show mercy, Kaito. Remember that."

Mercy. My late father had shown this man mercy. Had given him twenty-six years to prove that suffering could teach wisdom, that consequences could inspire loyalty. Had forced his sixteen-year-old son to witness both the brutality and the compassion that leadership demanded.

And here he sits, twenty-six years later, spreading the same poison. Questioning the same authority. Betraying the same trust that my late father had died protecting.

The hurt that crashes through my chest is unexpected, visceral. Not anger—something deeper. Something that tastes like disappointed love and broken faith and the terrible understanding that some people are incapable of learning.

"Twenty-six years ago," I say, my voice carrying across the silent room. "My late father took your finger for betraying clan intelligence to the Ishida family. Do you remember what he told you afterward? What he made his sixteen-year-old son watch as your blood stained the tatami?"

Sato-san's lips move soundlessly.

"He said every man deserves a second chance.

That pain could teach what words could not.

That you would prove worthy of the mercy he showed you.

" My voice drops to something intimate and lethal.

"I was sixteen years old, Sato-san. Sixteen, watching a grown man scream while my father explained the cost of betrayal.

How has that mercy—that lesson burned into my teenage mind—served our family? "

"Matsumoto-sama," Hiroshi starts, finally understanding that this has moved far beyond political maneuvering.

"Silence." The word cuts through his protest. "This man received correction from my late father's hand.

Lived with the consequences of his choices.

Benefited from twenty-six years of renewed trust and continued service.

" I lean closer to Sato-san's terrified face.

"And how does he repay that generosity? With the same betrayal that cost him his finger the first time.

With fabricated evidence to turn the Ishida family against me.

With plotting that endangers not just me, but my daughters. "

The tanto feels different in my hand now. Not a tool for correction anymore. It is an instrument of final judgment.

"Some lessons," I say, raising the blade, "apparently require permanent implementation."

The steel enters just below his sternum, angled upward through the diaphragm toward his heart with the precision my late father taught me on practice dummies before I was old enough to shave.

But this isn't practice. The blade parts muscle and cartilage with wet resistance, slides between ribs with the whisper of metal against bone.

Sato-san's eyes go wide with shock as steel finds its target. Blood bubbles from his lips—dark, arterial, the color of broken promises. His hands flutter toward the wound, fingertips painting crimson streaks across expensive silk before his nervous system accepts what his mind refuses to process.

He topples forward. Blood spreads across expensive tatami mats in expanding pools, seeping into fibers that will carry the stain forever. The metallic scent fills the air, mixing with incense and terror in a combination that takes me back to that first lesson at sixteen.

Some smells never leave you. Some lessons shape everything that comes after.

The silence that follows is absolute. Even the summer wind seems to pause in the gardens beyond.

I withdraw the tanto and clean it carefully on Sato-san's jacket before returning it to Takeshi.

"Some men learn from mercy," I announce to the room, voice returning to conversational politeness. "Others require more definitive education."

I turn to Hiroshi, who stares at the spreading blood with horror that speaks of finally understanding exactly what kind of man leads this family.

"I apologize for the damage to your tatami mats, Hiroshi-san," I say with perfect courtesy. "I'll arrange for replacement, of course. The finest quality. Consider it a gift. A reminder of today's cultural discussion."