Chapter 8: That Shapeshifter, Deployed

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Shinji Tsuguru’s father was a loyal samurai captain that served the Terazawa clan and her father’s best friend. There were centuries of friendship and loyalty between the Shinji family and the Terazawa clan.

As captain of the guards, Tsuguru’s father lived with his wife and son in the samurai village of the old Karatsu Castle and would often bring Tsuguru into the castle keep to play with Rin.

Tsuguru was two years younger than Rin but he was already training to be a samurai like his father from the age of 6. The year the massacre happened, he had gone back to his mother’s clan to learn to learn their martial arts.

While he was there, he received the news that his parents had perished along with everyone else in the Terazawa clan.

He had no need to go back to Karatsu after that.

Now, three years later, he stepped into a castle keep that was looked exactly as he remembered it. The main hall where his father often had meetings with the daimyo, the dark wood staircases he knew by heart from playing tag with the servant boys.

The majestic dining hall where he first met Rin.

It had the same number of round tables and the same hanging scrolls on the walls as before.

Rin sat at the same table like that first time, the one in the middle of the room that was at the centre of everyone’s attention—except now, she was alone.

She looked exactly the same as she did three years ago, petite and doll-like, with a vacant ink-black gaze that seemed to look right through him.

He felt as though he had stepped back in time.

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