My Ninja Girl 4 by Gideon Caldwell (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

held by a white hair tie, a solemn look on her face as she went about the room helping Youseg’s attendants assist Soraya with breakfast. It really took an army, and as usual, the kitsune wanted to be in charge of food.

Youseg looked up to Micah as he came down the stairs, the smile in his eyes wavering just a hair. “Ah, just the man I wanted to speak to. Would you care to join me for a walk?”

“Sure,” Micah told him. He kissed Yuri on the forehead, and finally broke from her side.

“Good, right this way.”

Youseg led Micah outside, and from there toward an area of the compound that Micah hadn’t been in before, under an archway covered in flowering vines amidst more Plains Dweller statues, which reminded Micah of how he had first encountered Bunni, back at Tsomo’s shrine. A few of the statues had veils over their faces chiseled from bronze and stone, which added a bit of mystery to the setting. Butterflies fluttered in the air, even though it was a cool morning, Micah noticing that they had tiny hairs on their wings accented by the morning light. He was startled once an enormous wind chime sounded off, and then calmed by the deep hum that seemed to resonate through the area and through Micah’s core, its rumbling low and beautiful.

“I had no idea this was here.”

“It’s a little secluded, if something can be secluded in a monastery such as this. When I first came to possess the place, it was less protected than it is now, and you could see it from the entrance. I had the archways added, which connects to the fence and eventually, the vines will grow even thicker, separating it a bit more from the rest of the compound.” Youseg stopped before the large wind chime, easily as tall as Micah, which hung from a statue of a man lifting his arm toward the sky, his rabbit ears flat against his head.

“I’ve heard the sounds of the wind chime before, but I never came over here,” Micah said.

“That’s what you get for not exploring. May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

Youseg turned to him. “Always explore. Always.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“But listen to me, rattling off like I’m some sort of sage. Trust me, I’m not; I’m just a man who had a vision, made some money off that vision, and now I have this,” he said, gesturing toward his monastery. “That’s not why I asked you to join me. I wanted to speak to you privately about something I haven’t mentioned yet.”

“Related to Milsung’s death?”

“No, nothing like that. I was being truthful last night when I told Yuri that I hadn’t foreseen anything about that. And what a surprise. I never could have predicted another ninja would show up randomly. But I digress. Now that you have plans to return to your country, with the hopes of bringing Ahmey over to your cause, it’s time that I tell you something, the truth, if a vision can be considered as such.”

Micah looked to the man, who was now gazing up at the statue they stood before, his hands behind his back. “The truth?”

“As you know by now, and as your friend Choro certainly knows, the series of graphic novels I wrote so many years ago were only partially published in your country, because of the direction in which they went. I told you that I’d had seen up to the point that you would somehow join me, but I didn’t want to write myself into the story, leaving the graphic novels to end on somewhat of a cliffhanger, but a win for our heroes nonetheless. As was to be expected. But the truth is, I have seen what happens next, and I hope what has been revealed to me isn’t something that comes to pass. I pray as much.”

“You have?”

He shifted his perspective to Micah, lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. “In my visions, the person from our time makes the ultimate sacrifice in the end. Micah, what I’m telling you here is this: I have foreseen your death. I whole-heartedly believe you will succeed in changing Neo-Hokkaidan society; without a doubt I believe that. But from the multiple visions I’ve had, it is your death that will truly spark this change. You need to be prepared for this. There have been details in my vision that have been wrong before, and I pray that this is the case here, but you may have to give your life for the good of the others, and for your society as a whole. Are you prepared to do that? Are you prepared to make that kind of sacrifice?”

Micah looked back up at the statue, the enormous bell hanging from it absolutely still. It was as if time had frozen, the butterflies he’d seen earlier all but vanished.

“Yes,” he finally said, thinking of his parents, thinking of his grandmother, the ninjas, his two wives, Liza, and Choro. If all it took was one man’s life to change an entire society, who was he to get in the way of that? He had lived a good life, and things had gotten even more interesting up toward the end. There was also the possibility that what Youseg had seen in his vision was indeed false. While he had been right about certain things, he said himself that he wasn’t always correct, which left something Micah hoped to truly rely on—chance.

“Yes,” Micah said again, with finality. “I’m ready for that to happen.”

“It may not even be up to you,” Youseg said, a flash of sorrow in his eyes. “But at least you know now what has come to me. I do have a word of advice for you: I would keep this from the others. It is perhaps best they don’t know, because knowing may