Restarting My Life After Failing to Protect Girls in My Class – The Day I Was Called the "Demon God of Dragon Slaying" - Episode 4

“Look at you, you’ve really improved in just a week.”

It was five o’clock in the evening after elementary school, in the spacious wooden floor of my uncle’s house.

Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, I threw punches with all my might, listening to the giggles of my cousin, Homura Taichi, who was also in a T-shirt and shorts.

I executed a “Right Thrust,” where I threw my right foot and right fist simultaneously.

As soon as I pulled back, I retracted my right fist while stepping back and lowering my hips into a back stance, with my right side forward.

I kept my right fist at chin height to keep the enemy at bay while hiding my left fist deep at my waist.

This was a scene from the karate kata called Ananku.

Taiichi Homura had taught me every single movement of this kata, showing me how to move my feet, how to stand here, how to do a double thrust, how to do a thrust, how to kick forward, and so on. It was the only kata I knew at that moment.

Knife-hand block.

Middle-level inside block.

Double thrust.

Mountain block.

Iron hammer rib strike.

Thrust.

Reverse thrust.

Front kick.

Elbow strike.

Ananku combined nine different techniques.

It was truly a simple form that deserved to be called “the basic kata.”

There were easy-to-understand thrusts and kicks, and straightforward blocking techniques. If I focused on just the sequence of movements and flow, I could learn it all in less than an hour.

So, having gotten the key to my uncle’s house, I spent the past week practicing this kata hundreds of times while he was away.

As soon as school ended, I ran to the wooden floor of my uncle’s house and practiced the kata alone.

That said, I wasn’t satisfied at all. Not even one percent.

“Well, for a little kid, that’s pretty good.”

“Hey, can you show me Ananku again?”

“Haha. You’re really eager to learn, that’s great.”

If I asked, my uncle would immediately show me karate techniques. Even now, he demonstrated Ananku not once, but twice.

The first Ananku was incredibly powerful.

He moved across the wooden floor with a fluidity that never lost its axis, making me shiver at how sharp a person could be with their thrusts and kicks.

But… the problem was the second Ananku.

The weightiness that should have been present in the first one seemed to vanish… I can’t quite put it into words, but it felt strangely light and airy.

His body axis shifted frequently, and it looked like his hips were always floating. More than anything, there was no sense of being firmly planted on the ground. It was just unstable.

It was like—

It was like “a form performed by an elderly man who was once a karate master but had weakened legs and hips.” The remnants of his past mastery were barely there, disappearing in the moments of his punches and kicks.

If I hadn’t seen “Taiichi Homura’s thrusts and kicks from 2036,” I might have even thought my uncle was just messing with me.

—“I’ll show you the pinnacle of empty-handed techniques”—

That’s what the Taiichi Homura of 2036 confidently proclaimed with his straight punches, knife-hand strikes, and front kicks.

I have a gut feeling about this, but those three techniques, released so naturally from a relaxed state, felt like an extension of “the second Ananku.”

Thinking “that’s bad” while watching an unstable and powerless kata was probably just because I was a complete novice.

First, there was the first Ananku.

Then came the second Ananku.

And far, far ahead, there must be that “pinnacle of empty-handed techniques.”

After finishing the two katas, my uncle said, “You should at least blink. Your eyes are going to go bad.”

He laughed at me, frozen in place on the wooden floor. But there was something joyful in his voice.

“Seriously—what a disciple worth showing the kata to. Even I, after just one week of starting, couldn’t grasp the essence yet.”

As I relaxed my mouth at the luck of having Taiichi Homura as my instructor, I kept my eyes glued to every move he made.

I was desperately trying to learn even from his simple stance.

“Haha. You look like someone I’ve seen somewhere before. ”