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"Michi? What are you doing?"
The boy's eyes took in nothing except the knife and the metre-long piece of wood in his hand; his ears, nothing but the sound of the edge of his knife whittling away at the branch. He wanted this one to be perfect. It was his occupation and job of sorts to carve these, but this piece was to be for his own use.
"Michi?"
He was semi-aware of the footsteps of his mother softly approaching and sliding open the door to the room.

Tomo Yashira, sok of the local Eishin-ryuu kenjutsu dojo, stepped inside to see what her son was doing. Either training or working on carving his latest bokken in today's case, it happened to be the latter, and he was concentrating especially hard on it.
So far it looked like a standard weapon, but closer inspection from Yashira showed that Michieru had been adding his own personal touch: the "blade", rather than being round or oval, was cross-sectioned exactly like a katana, and even appeared to have a rather sharp cutting edge in the finished portion.
He set aside the small knife he'd been using to fine-tune the edge and picked up a larger one, meanwhile dipping the bokken in the container of water to keep the wood fresh and pliable.
"Very nice work so far, son. It almost looks like a shinken," she noted, using the kenjutsu term for a live blade as opposed to a bokken or the bamboo shinai. "Is this one meant to be used as such?"
Although there had been a slight joking tone in her last question, Michieru took it seriously.
"Not until I become one with it," he replied in a soft, almost effeminate voice.
She watched as he started carving away neat strips of the wood to make the structure and sharpness the same over the whole of the blade. Once or twice he stood up and pointed the bokken straight out, sighting along its edge to be sure it was aligned perfectly.
"Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt your work, but we need some more tamshigiri. We used up the last of them in today's lesson." Michieru opened his mouth to protest, but Yashira quickly interrupted. "I've already ordered them; I want you to go collect them. A little outside time would do you a world of good, neh?"
Yashira had to badger her son constantly to get out of the house, and today was no exception, especially as intent as he was upon finishing his project. Even so, he lightly coated his bokken with water, set it aside, wiped off his knives and went to make himself presentable.
Michi peered at the face reflected from the spring water: unusually pale, round, framed

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