I'm hungry.
For me, this is a crisis. Hundreds of times more serious than anyone else would think.
Every time my stomach growls, a faint cold sweat breaks out on my back. Anyone who heard that would laugh and call it an exaggeration. But I mean it.
Because when you go hungry, you lose muscle. Skip meals, and apparently the body starts by whittling away at the sinew. Nobody told me this; I learned it by testing it on my own body. However hard I train, two days without food and my arms are a size thinner. The lifeline I worked so hard to build up just slips away, wasting thinner and thinner. I can't stand how frightening that feels.
And if I lose muscle, what then?
When an assassin attacks, I won't be able to shake him off. I won't be able to outrun him. He'll pin me down, and that'll be the end.
In other words, for me, being hungry is the same as "death taking one step closer."
So I eat rice cakes on horseback. I gnaw dried persimmons as I walk. In the middle of a council or in the middle of town, the instant my stomach growls, I pull something out of the pouch at my waist and toss it in my mouth.
Taro is especially handy. Boiled, roasted, even raw, you can gnaw on it anywhere. It fills you up. It keeps the muscle from shrinking. Keep one tucked in your sleeve, and when the moment comes, it's reassuring. More reassuring than anything else.
So I never let go of my taro. Even at council, my hand drifts to the pouch without my noticing. And while I'm munching away, strangely, I calm down just a little.
This is how my retainers see it.
"Our lord will not forgo food even on the march. Like a ravening wolf."
No. Absolutely, firmly, no.
Well—a ravening wolf eats because it doesn't want to die. I eat because I don't want to die. That much, I'll grant. That part's right.
But a wolf doesn't gnaw on a taro, shaking, because it's afraid of losing muscle.
And at night, I swing a spear on the earthen floor. Until I'm drenched in sweat and out of breath. I run through grappling forms against a pillar, and I haul heavy stones up a slope at a run. My nails split, my palms tear open, and still I don't stop.
Because if I stop, it comes into my head. Someone creeping toward me out of the darkness, even at this very moment. Me, my arms gone weak, unable to shake off that hand, my throat slit. So I swing. I swing because I'm terrified. Every time I shoulder a stone, I'm chanting in my head, "I don't want to die yet."
People see this and call me "the young lord of surpassing valor."
Don't be ridiculous.
I don't want to be strong.
I just don't want to die.
These freakishly swollen arms, this belly like a boulder—they're not proof of courage. They're proof of cowardice. The crystallized form of a plea for my life, built up while I shook, scared out of my wits. I wove this armor out of flesh. I knitted it out of bone. So no one could ever strip it off me.
I set the spear down and catch my breath. Sweat drips from my chin.
I bite into a taro and look up at the night sky.
People come up to you smiling and betray you without a second thought. But muscle never betrays you.
At least, not as much as people do. Not by a long way.