Closing one door

It's still the middle of the night, and I probably have quite a few hours left to spare before I have to leave.
I honestly haven't slept all night.
Between meeting her again and knowing that I am getting sort of abducted today, my head has no time to rest. My thoughts are racing all over the place, and I've felt like jumping out of bed and running off to some faraway place for hours on end.

Before I leave for a day trip that'll probably take years, there is one last thing I have left to do.
I very gently knock on the wall next to the Shoji door of my sisters' room. Louise is such a light sleeper, my walking here probably already woke her up.
After a tiny bit of silent rustling, the door slowly opens a crack, then I see Louise's head poking out, and the door flies open before I can even gesture to be silent.
Lucky for me, Lia catches the door before it slams against the edge of its rail.

Right before Louise opens her mouth, I gently put my hand on her head "Shhhh."
"Sorry I woke you up, but I have to go on an unexpected long journey today."
"I don't know where I'll end up,or how long it will take."
"However, I swear on my name that I will do all I can to return here when I finish the journey, or if I hear something urgent happens here."

I can see a tear in Louise's eye. I stroke her hair to soothe not only her, but myself as well. Part of me wants to make the most of this opportunity to live with samurai, but I will for sure miss my cute little sisters so much.
I can't afford to show signs of weakness or my wavering heart to my sisters before I leave. I have to make sure they can feel at ease, knowing their brother will be just fine.

Lia is the first to respond: "Why do you have to leave?"

My sisters don't have to know that I technically got sold off to a noble. I cannot tell them the entire reason, but surely at least some of what I respond with instead is going to be true.
"There are a lot of people being terrorised by magic beasts out there and I have to help them. Sorry if that's selfish towards you two."

I can feel a tear trying to break through my guise of strength, so I decide to end my farewell here.

"Take care of each other and mum for me, okay?"

"Don..."
Before Louise can finish the sentence, I can see a sudden movement in the corner of my eyes. Probably Lia putting her hands over Louise's mouth to keep her silent.

"Wherever you're going, take care and be careful."
"If you don't keep that promise, I will drag you back here myself."

Compared to the fairly meek girl I grew up with, this statement is spoken with a surprising amount of conviction. It rings loud in my head, even though she whispered it so as not to wake our parents. Honestly, she has grown so much from the little girl she was just a few years ago. I hope I won't miss the opportunity to see her become a strong woman if this trip takes too long.
I gently close the door of our house, probably for the last time in a couple of months, if not years.

The bitter taste of saying goodbye to my sisters has yet to leave my mind. To make matters worse, as I've been walking and thinking... The excitement of seeing my blacksmith's princess again has been turning into a fear of never seeing her again. I could promise my sisters that I would return, but I can't possibly ask of her to wait for me. Who says she even wants to meet me again after today? Ugh, I honestly prefer fighting magic beasts over thinking about all this emotional stuff.

I approach the field where we first met, at least an hour or two before the sun rises.
Yet I can already see a silhouette waiting for me, holding a sickle.
I suppose she did say 'before dawn' instead of 'when dawn breaks.'
I would have left earlier if I had known the person doing me a favour would be this early.

"Hey!"
"So you made it back here!"

"Yeah..."
"We did promise to meet here with the repaired sickle after all."
What am I saying? Am I trying to imitate father or something?!
I wanted to say something like "I'm glad to see you again", but I'm so embarrassed I can't even think straight. Feeling all choked up, the right words just won't leave my mouth!

"That we did. Here you go."
"Father said it was a challenging job with so much reinforced iron in a curved shape."
"Why do you even use such a reinforced sickle? Wouldn't a polearm or sword be better?"

"I'm not exactly supposed to be using the sickle, remember? It's made for farming."

"Dad said it was modified to be stronger than it ever needed to be to cut plants, as if it were a weapon."

"I don't know anything about that, but it sure is my favourite amongst all our tools."

"On another note, here you go."
"I think the way it was molten, combined with the coincidental defeat of a certain fire-based magic beast, may have given away where I got the sickle. B-but he didn't ask many questions and even told me not to mention anything to my mother."
"He did give me a dagger with a leather sheath on top of the sickle, as a way to thank the person who accidentally threw their sickle in a bonfire the same day the magic beast got slayed."

I can't help laughing at least a little bit at this poor excuse of how the sickle broke.
"Throwing my sickle in a bonfire? I might be careless, but it's not that bad!
To be fair, I don't think there's any acceptable excuse anyone could think of for turning a sickle into whatever that was outside of combat."

"I-I did my best, okay!"
I can feel the warmth radiating as she blushes. I guess she really did think about it for a fairly long time, only to have it collapse instantly.

"I appreciate the effort, even if it didn't work out."

She playfully pouts a little until she breaks her act and starts smiling.

After thinking it over for a little, I decide that even if I am leaving soon, it would be way more rude to not take the dagger her dad made especially for me, than taking it and not being seen again.

"Considering my sickle looks better than before I broke it, I can only imagine how good a blacksmith your father is. I'm sure it will come in handy next time I get my sickle fried."

"Yeah, my dad is pretty impressive, sometimes he even gets orders from the daimyo's court!"

Well... that just kind of ruined the moment for me... I don't blame her, of course... She couldn't have known.

"Oof, sorry, is your father some kind of Ronin?"
The way she waves her arms all flustered has it's own charms, I'll watch her struggle for a little bit as I think up my answer. She stutters as she tries to recover after letting her curiosity get the better of her.
"O-or actually, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine too!"

She doesn't know my family or even what village I'm from, surely it won't hurt if I tell her?
Besides, it takes multiple hours of walking to get from A to B. Even if word spreads, odds are very low anyone will be able to put two and two together.

"My dad is not a Ronin, but because I'm fighting magic beasts, he kind of arranged for a samurai to 'adopt' me without my knowing. Except I overheard them."

"Oh..."
"And you're okay with that?"

"Honestly, I do like fighting magic beasts, and they will have better equipment, information gathering, medical facilities, training centres and fellow fighters to save the day when someone gets injured, disarmed or both..."
"But I'll really miss my sisters, and honestly, you too."

"You'll miss me? We barely know each other!"
she turns her face down a little before saying something that makes my heart jump out of my chest.
"But I feel the same way..."
"I know you might be on a tight schedule, or have other things to do today, but if you don't mind..."
"We could lie in the grass for a little bit, just looking at the stars."

"To be honest, I don't really know what to do today..."
"Or in general..."
"All I had to do was say goodbye to my sisters, so that's what I did right before I came here."

"Guess that means you've got time to look at the skies for a bit, might help you refresh your thoughts as well."

After lying there for almost an hour, we watch the sunrise together.

"Whatever battlefield you might be at, just remember that the stars you see there will be the same stars that both me and your sisters are looking at."

"Thank you so much, that helped me calm down."

"Anytime..."
"Go get them, future samurai!"

"Will do, can you thank your dad for the sickle and the dagger?"

"I'm sure he'll be glad our saviour liked his craftsmanship. He doesn't have to know you're only my age, though, that's our little secret..."
"I guess my sister knows as well, hope you don't mind."

I wave one last time before I finally turn around, knowing that I will miss her dearly while I chase my first dream as the son of a samurai.

On my way home, there are only two things I have left to do.
1: Get my encyclopedia.
2: Make sure I don't cause a ruckus that draws the attention of my sisters or anyone nearby...

I hope the samurai and his men don't plan to pick me up on this side of the forest, but just to be sure, I start dashing through my usual trail between the trees to make sure they won't catch up before I grab my encyclopedia from the hollow tree.
You might be wondering how I can read even an encyclopedia when I'm only a commoner.

Truth is, I can't...
The encyclopedia uses a lot of text I don't understand, but it also has clear symbols.
Like for frost rabbits, the first three bars right below the main image are only filled a tiny bit. From what I've learned after looking through the book and fighting some of them, the first probably means fortitude, the second melee attack power, and the third is almost certainly magic power.
For the flame wolf, the first was about half filled, the second was only filled to a quarter. As for magic power, that was only about a fifth. I wonder if that had anything to do with the long delay, because its flame sure wasn't weak!
The fourth was about halfway filled for both the wolf and the frost rabbit. I think it might be speed. The fifth, I don't know. It was close to empty on almost all of the creatures' entries in the entire book.

The drawing of an ember wolf using its breath, followed by an hourglass with a very filled bar was comprehensive though.
In retrospect, that information did almost cost me my life!

As I approach the end of the forest, inching ever closer towards home, I can hear a twig snap behind me.
I drop my scythe on the ground and raise my hands: "I don't intend to fight, I'll go with you."
As I turn, I see one of them sitting in a tree to my left and three, including a guy that looks like the boss, behind me, where I heard the twig snap. 

One of them spits on the ground as the leader signals me to follow him.
Another picks my scythe from the ground and follows behind me.
Another samurai appears out of thin air. 
No, honestly! He's just walking next to me now and I have no clue where he even came from!
The samurai seem a little disappointed by my surrender, but I don't really care.