Journal of Kazami Yuuji

[Kazami Yuuji]

The following documents have been deemed class 1 classified documents by the Imperial Ministry of Defense.

Reading these documents is a capital offense under Han law.

For those with Class 1 security clearance ONLY.

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Case file (Agent Kazami Yuuji) Age 11

We moved away from Lu Kou two weeks after my sisters death, at the time i still could not absorb what had happened. She had been my entire life, the girl who taught me how to get by, the one who gave my life meaning. When my parents ignored me or worse told me i was worthless, it was Kazuki who held my hand and told me that "Hard work is a talent in it's own right." Without her what was i, the worthless little brother...a cry baby who no one wanted.

Worse it was my sister who kept the family going, she was an artist and he work even at such a young age made money for kept our family above the poverty line. My father had depended on her and with her gone he took to drink, beating me and my mother. It was not long after that my mother and i left. We didn't know where to go but we knew we could not stay, the beatings had gotten too bad and for my part, i was too scared to face up to my father or the reality of my sisters death. I am a coward, i always have been, now she is dead what good is someone like me?

We have moved to a small village in a north near Ru Ran, but this place isn't much better either. We were naive to think anyone would welcome strangers in such hard times. The local look at us with scorn or worse out right suspicion, we have no friends or allies here. But at least we are safer...i hope.

Second Entry 3 weeks later

I learned a lesson today, if you flee it's best not to stop or leave a trail. My father tracked us down eventually, we had left Lu Kou to find us and tracked us all the way here. To him we were his property and he was not done with either of us. He broke into the cabin that had become our home and forced himself onto mother. I was so afraid but at the same time, i was angry...furious in fact. I felt a deep hatred building inside, so i grabbed the half empty wine bottle he had brought with him. Then quietly as he attacked my mother i suck up behind him. I am a coward after all...he never heard my coming over the sounds the two of them were making. I cracked the bottle over the back of his head, that was when my life took a turn for the worst.

A shard of the broken glass pierced the skin at the back of his neck and sliced one of the blood vessles that carried blood to the brain. My father bleed out flopping on the floor like a fish out of water, i had not meant to kill him of course, i just wanted to stop him but...i had killed my father by my own hand. I wondered if my mother might be greatful but how could she be, to a monster like i had become. She broke down in tears and said nothing too me until an hour afterwards. She begged me to step outside for a while, i agreed someone had to dig a grave after all. I will never forget what she said to me before i left. "I'm sorry Yuuji." i was the last thing she ever said to me.

By the time i returned...we needed two graves, my mother had hung herself from the rafters of the tiny cabin. She had not the strength of will to carry on any further. She left me alone with no one left who gave a damn about me and who could blame her...a dead husband and a worthless peice of trash like me as her son.

But since her death...i've always hated weak willed women and those who can only say "Im sorry."

[Kazami Yuuji]

Case file (Agent Kazami Yuuji) Age 11

Two dead parents and sister, i had lost everything but my own life and that had little value left to me either and yet, i was not the sort of dog that would just flop over and die. I was have always been too stubborn to die a convenient death like that. So it was i turned to one person left in the world who might take me in, he was an old friend of my fathers. That ought to have been enough alone to set off warning bells given the sort of man my father had been but...really their was no one else left. This man's name was Zheng Yu...the most vile human being I've even had the displeasure of meeting.

I would later find out my father had once been Zheng's subordinate, the man was a powerful bandit from Ru Nan district. When i arrived at his camp in the hills, he seemed friendly at first, i didn't even notice fighting pit dug into the ground, or the cages meant for slaves that he had erected. I thought naively he might offer me help, i was very wrong. Zheng was the sort of man skilled only at making excuses that justify nothing, he is someone whose life has no value. Although i suppose the same goes for me. After i arrived Zheng had his men beat me like a dog and then threw me in chains and locked me in a cell for three days, during which time i was routinely beaten as i waited to find out what they were going to do with me. At that point in my life, I couldn't find any value in anything. I was a brat who may as well be dead.

Yet i was not alone in the darkness of that place. Zheng had been raiding local villages for months, taking any children that caught his eye and imprisoning them. They were in little better state either, beaten and abused. It seemed that Zheng had something of an attraction toward children and he prayed on them. I was not spared his attention either, perhaps as revenge for my killing my own father. Did i deserve this, at the time i was quite certain i did. Yet that was not the end of it. Zheng wanted us as his servants, not to wait his tables but to use as agents...assassins. He figured children were seen as innocent and weak making us the perfect weapons. So it was that then the training began and that grim place became my first school.

It started with training in how to use knives and then bows, we were taught the basics to make poison and how to move without making noise. Those who did well got extra food, those that failed were beaten. It was then after all this time in the world...that i finally found something i was good at. I was uniquely gifted i suppose which only made the other jealous and hate me. It was like my brilliant sister had once told me 'when you're a genius what you gain isn't fame and recognition as much as hate and enemies'. Their was only one person their who treated me like a human being, a young girl around my age called Mai Ling. She helped me threw the worst, although we were not exactly friends our relationship was strictly about helping each other survive that place. Then it came time for graduation day!

I finally learned the use of the fighting pit, two children were thrown in a time with a single knife tossed in between them, the winner walked out alive and loser was to die. It was an empty shell at the time, a broken person who thought things could not get any worse. Which was when i learned i would be fighting Mai Ling. When i stepped into the light and saw i would be fighting her my heart skipped a beat. Which was a surprise, i had not thought it even worked. She moved first, grabbing the knife and coming at me first, yet she had never really been my match. After a scuffle that left me lightly wounded i grabbed her wrist, taking back the blade and moved it toward her throat. One blow would have done it but...i could not do it...not again.

After what i had done to my parents i had developed a sort of mental block toward killing, i could not bring myself to do it not again. I tossed the blade aside and failed Zheng Yu's test. He had me beaten and thrown back into the cage, since Mai had fought well she was allowed to graduate. I am not sure what happened to her after that. But i hope she managed too survive that place.

[Kazami Yuuji]

Case file (Agent Kazami Yuuji) Age 11

Having failed the test i was consigned back to the infernal darkness and bitter cold of the cells, little more than a play thing for Zheng Yu's amusement. In those moments locked in the darkness all alone, i can honestly say i wished for death. Not just because of the beatings or the things Zheng Yu inflicted on me in private either. I was not only a murder but a patricide as well and yet even after having been trained and honed into a weapon, something i was truly good at being...i had failed again. All i would have had to do was strike, stab that girl and my freedom would have arrived i could have had purpose again in this world. Instead i had thrown it away, clinging to a sentimentality that had never gotten me anywhere, so what was i now...an assassin that could not kill? I was just a broken tool..a broken child who might as well be dead anyway.

The others who had been with me at the start were all gone now, either they had survived like Mei Ling and managed to pass the final test or...they were no doubt rotting in a shallow grave buried out behind the fort. I had no one to talk to anymore and frankly i was just waiting for death, one that would certainly come the moment Zheng Yu tired of amusing himself with me. It was the only thing i had left to look forward too, until the moment that everything changed. I was still chained up in the dungeon when i heard the sound of battle from just outside.

I would later learn that Zheng Yu had picked some very powerful enemies, he had been planning to revolt against the Han and take over Ru Nan, ruling it like a prince in the olden days before the Han dynasty. In so doing, he had drawn the ire of those that protected this land. No i speak not the Han military who can act only in the light of day with official permission and the Emperor's sanction. I was rescued by a black ops unit called the 'Han Special Defense forces' a secretive group who put protecting the Han first and call other concerns second. Their operations were not on record, their operatives little more than ghosts. Although i knew it not at the time.

It was the middle of the night when they attacked the fort, slipped over the walls at midnight they slit the sentries throats before they could get off a warning before storming down into the camp. The bandits although well trained were out of their element fighting against an opponent used to operating in the darkness. Most of them fled along with Zheng Yu who regretfully managed to flee via a secret tunnel before they could hunt him down. I heard the battle from my cell and wondered if Zheng Yu would win and then finally come to kill me or if the others would simply leave me here to die as well. Shortly afterwards i got my answer.

When the door finally opened two people walked in. The first was a young women, with long dark hair and a scowl across her face, i didn't know her name at the time, but this was the day i meet Liu Ye my future employer. The second was an elderly man with a longbow slung over one shoulder and a warm smile. His name was Shen Yi my future master and the man to who i owe everything. I expected them to leave me their to die, after all what was i to them but a lose end, i had even worked previously for the group they had just exterminated. I was just a worthless brat who might as well be dead.

"What shall we do with him Shen? Might be easier to put this one out of his misery." Liu Ye had suggested, but Shen had only shaken his head as he looked into my eyes as if weighing my worth on a set of scales.

"No...this one can still be saved." That was all he said to me and honestly, back then the foolish brat i was, i didn't believe him.

[Kazami Yuuji]

Case file (Agent Kazami Yuuji) Age 11

I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings for the record, I was scum a worthless being who was not worth saving. Although I had failed the final test and not be able to murder that girl, I had already killed many times for Zheng Yu during my training. He forced me to take drugs to improve my abilities and would send me off into the night to remove those that stood in his way. Too cowardly to oppose him and frankly little more than the broken shell of a child, I just didn’t care anyway. I carried out his orders and did things I can never take back. Their is blood dripping off my hands. At this point, no matter how I change, the things I've lost won't come back. So when I say I’m not sure why my master bothered to save me…I mean it. I was as much guilty as the others at that place, yet I alone was given a second chance at life. Not that I appreciate it at first.

Case File Agent (Kazami Yuuji) Age 13

By the time I got out of that place I was broken both in body and mind. It took my master a very long time to bring me back to anything approaching normality. In fact, most people would still describe as being pretty damn strange. And yet I can honestly say I didn’t make it easy for my master either, or show him very much gratitude at first. As I said, I was a brat who could not see any value in living, yet even so he didn’t give up on me. Slowly with a great deal of kindness and patience he nursed me back to life. After two years of living with him i eventually started to live again, or at least something close to that. Slowly day by day he gave me something approaching a reason to live, as well as passing down a lot of his own ideals and views to me. Even to this day i find myself quoting the things he taught me. More than anyone else, he is the reason i am still alive, he made me into Kazami Yuuji.

Not that his methods were what you might call kind. I have no hesitation in saying he was a crazy old bastard and a crappy cook at that too. He was the type he would rest in an arm chair with his feet on my back as i struggled threw my daily set of push ups, drinking rice wine as he lectured me about the value of hard work. He was an infuriating old man who never did as he was told, which used to drive Liu Ye crazy.

According to my master, when you're a kid, just being a fast runner makes you popular with the girls. In you're teens, it's holding your own in a fight. After that, brains make you popular. his point seemed to be, "Run fast, hit hard, and read books." To which he made me run every morning, before routinely beating his martial arts into me, usually with a stick before ending the day by hitting me with a stack of books. Yet i owe him everything, the debt i owe him in fact can never be repaid.