Rookie Sword Bearer Mai Honda Stands Her First Watch at Window 5 — 'I Learned That Not Drawing Is Also the Job'

According to the Hinokuni Sword Bearers' Association, of the 108 who passed this autumn's exam on September 26th, successful applicants were expected to build basic skill at their respective lineage and regional training halls before entering rotation for accompanying field operations and window-room guard duty. Mai Honda, 23, took that first step on the night of the 28th, standing a training watch at the window-room guard post of stable Window 5, "the Sword Country," behind the Third Appraisal Center in Kameido. Window 5 stayed closed throughout, with no opening that night. Honda's role was to watch over access to the research room still being entered by the window's decoding team (previously reported October 24th), and to confirm coordination with the window keeper on the overnight shift.

■ A Licensee From Outside the Lineages

As previously reported, Honda is, as far as records show, the first successful applicant with no family ties to the Kanome, Minase, or Himuro lineages. Raised in an ordinary salaried household, she was drawn to the field by a general-education university lecture. A senior sword bearer from the Kanome lineage accompanied her for this training session. "Honestly, it was my first time inside the window room at all, and just having the glass closed on the other side made me tense," Honda said. "If it had been open, I think my legs would have locked up even more." The senior sword bearer who accompanied her said, "Without a lineage's forms to lean on, she traces the basics carefully. You could tell she was watching everything closely."

■ "I Learned That Not Drawing Is Also the Job"

After the session, Honda told this paper, "Before I joined the association, I imagined a sword bearer's work mostly as the moment of drawing during a field operation. Standing in the window room for real, the hours when nothing happens at all are overwhelmingly longer, and I feel like I understood, physically, that holding steady through those hours is the job." True to what she said when previously reported on September 26th — "passing isn't the end, the real training starts now" — her reflection on day one of training was similarly understated. "There wasn't even an occasion to draw today, and I think that was a good thing."

■ Chitose Kaname: "A Window Room Seen Through Eyes Without a Lineage"

Chitose Kaname, 41, head of the Kanome lineage and author of the column "The Sword That Stays Sheathed" (previously reported), offered a comment on Honda's first day of training. "I've accompanied more field operations than most, but the window room is a special kind of posting even for me. I'm genuinely curious how someone who came without a lineage's forms sees that place." She had said, when the exam results were previously reported, that "someone without a school's forms can sometimes rethink the weight of 'not drawing' from first principles," adding on the 29th, "Hearing about her first day, I still think that's true."

■ Association Chairman: "The Window Room Is a Flagship Posting for Not Drawing"

Soichi Gamo, 66, chairman of the Hinokuni Sword Bearers' Association (previously reported), said, "Among the duties under the Sword Carrying Special Provisions Act, window-room guard work has one of the lowest rates of drawing a blade. For a rookie like Honda, learning the weight of waiting in her own body, this was, if anything, a good first posting." The training is expected to continue at a pace of a few sessions a month for now, with Honda set to enter rotation for accompanying field operations sometime after the New Year.

■ Her Family's Reaction: "I've Never Been Shown the Sword"

Honda's parents, in their ordinary salaried household, were initially uneasy when they learned their daughter wanted to become a sword bearer. "Honestly, at first I wanted to object," her father told this paper. "But watching her drill the basics harder than anyone, I couldn't say anything anymore." Honda laughed, "I've never shown the sword at home — the rule is you can't carry it off duty anyway, so there's nothing to show even if I wanted to," adding, "when I told him my first posting was a night I never drew it, my father seemed a little relieved."

■ Also the Decoding Team's Workplace

The decoding team working on Window 5's sent object — made up of the Hindi Federation's mathematical analysis team, Hellenic historian Nikos Zafiras, and music teacher Ushio Kishiura, 74, all previously reported — has confirmed that the symbols are arranged in clusters of two to four, though decoding the meaning continues. Honda's first training session did not overlap with a decoding-team work day, but the Dimensional Survey Division's window keeper on duty said, "Having sword bearers rotate through is reassuring for us too. Whether the window opens or not, just having someone standing watch changes the feel of the room."

■ Training Postings Vary Among the Other 108

Honda is the first of this autumn's 108 licensees to begin window-room training, but the association says most of the others are still building basic skill at their home lineage halls, with none yet started on field-operation training. The difference in posting owes largely to individual preference and each hall's own judgment; an association official noted that "window-room slots are few, and it isn't a posting everyone can reach early." Honda herself was modest about it: "I don't think I'm especially ahead of anyone. I'm told a slot just happened to be open."

■ A Brief Exchange With the Window Keeper, Late at Night

During the session, Honda exchanged a few words with the window keeper on duty. "It was my first time having a sword bearer there, and at first I wasn't sure what to say," the keeper recalled, adding, "On a night when you don't know whether it will open, just standing side by side in silence changes the air in the room. I realized that alone was enough." Honda laughed as she recounted it: "He offered me tea. I had no reason to say no, so I had some." It is not unusual, by custom in the Dimensional Survey Division, for those keeping watch in the window room to share a cup of tea side by side.

■ Where the Autumn Exam's Rookies Stand

Misaki Okiura, 26, a second-generation Drifter and one of six nonhuman-trait licensees among the previously reported 108, commented on Honda beginning window-room training: "Honestly, it surprised me a little that someone from outside the lineages got into the window room first. I sat the exam with my own worry about whether my traits might get in the way of judging, so Honda's path doesn't feel like someone else's story to me." The association says it will keep tracking how each of the 108's training postings proceeds, and, true to Chairman Gamo's "quality over quantity" policy, will not rush anyone's placement.

■ Reporter's Note

Where a lineage-less sword bearer would first stand duty has been a storyline this paper has kept an eye on. That it turned out to be not a scene of drawing during a field operation but a quiet night in a window room where nothing happened feels, if anything, closer to this institution's true shape. Honda's remark — "I learned that not drawing is also the job" — quietly echoes what Kaname said when this paper previously reported on the exam results: that what really matters is every single year spent not drawing the blade.