![]() ![]() She also noted that, despite his decades of experience, he was unable to work the meteorite ore into proper swordmaking metal, to his frustration.Įiji wasn't the only one she observed, however. Mizu didn't reveal her mixed heritage or her real gender to Eiji, fearing he would reject her. He told her "a smith signs his name", but Mizu chose to engrave her blades with the same insignia as her master. When Mizu began forging kitchen knives on her own but soon became discouraged, he teasingly told her to perfecting her skills by making 1,000 kitchen knives until she was ready to make a sword. Over the years, she became Eiji's trusted apprentice and he her foster parent, with her referring to him honorifically as "Swordfather." He emphasized to her the importance of not making steel too "pure" and hard, or it would become brittle thus, some "impurity" would always be needed at the center. Mizu proved a quick, observant learner, and Eiji increasingly confided the subtleties of the art of swordmaking to her, telling her a sword was the soul of the samurai and that its' edge was the difference between life and death. Though tapping her (lightly) on the head with his tongs whenever she made a mistake, he gradually encouraged more of her involvement in sword-crafting, giving her life a sense of structure, shelter and skills she had lacked before. When she remained in the morning, Eiji began indirectly giving her a few preparational tasks around the forge, then suggested she hammer out the impurities in a piece of white-hot steel, keeping time with his tongs. When she claimed she had somewhere to go, he dismissed her Mizu started to leave, but then snuck back into a corner of the forge, deciding to shelter from the rain and her tormentors a little longer. Noticing his struggles to retrieve it, Mizu helped him dig it out and cart it back to his forge, where he gave her a meal. Later that night, the blind sword-smith Eiji arrived to collect the metal ore within the meteorite. When she unexpectedly lashed out in response to their cruelty and fought them, Taigen prepared to bash her head with a rock, but he and the others were suddenly frightened off by a meteorite that crashed into the cliff nearby. ![]() The town children, led by Taigen, mercilessly bullied her, eventually chasing her to a cliff's edge during a rainstorm and tearing off the mask, comparing her eyes to a dog's and calling her 'mother' a whore who killed herself for bedding a "white devil". Although she made a grave marker for her 'mother' and swore to avenge her even if it cost her life, Mizu was left with no options but to scavenge the refuse-heaps and gutters of Kohama to stay alive, hiding her eyes behind a makeshift mask and growing her hair back. Soon after, her hut was set aflame she escaped, but having heard her 'mother' screaming and unable to find her afterward, assumed she was dead. One day while her 'mother' was in a drugged stupor, Mizu ventured out and encountered several local children, who were frightened by her unusual appearance her more rounded blue eyes were usually only depicted in oni or other dangerous supernatural beings in Japanese folklore. She eventually shaved Mizu's head to make her resemble a boy, since she claimed the 'bad men' would be looking for a girl. Though they had moments of warmth, her 'mother' became Increasingly addicted to opium at the brothel she worked at, hitting and reprimanding Mizu if she even went near the windows. As a child, she lived with her 'mother' in a hut at the edge of the village, forbidden to go out or the 'bad men' would find her. She was given to a maid, who posed as her mother, by an unknown individual, and taken into hiding at the fishing village of Kohama. Shortly after her birth, Mizu was targeted by an assassination attempt, which claimed her mother's life instead. ![]() Due to being seen as a half-breed monster or demon for her heritage, Mizu has usually concealed her blue eyes with a mask, wide-brimmed hat or tinted glasses, though she does not need them to aid her vision. There were only four such men in Japan at the time of her birth, and all Westerners had officially been forbidden from entering the country since 1633. Mizu was born in Japan around 1637-38 to a Japanese woman who was raped by a white Western trader. ![]()
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