Fall, 2278.

The unarmored blackguard with the straw hat of a rice farmer and white fur did not say even one word, having his back turned to his hand-crafted farmhouse as he sat on the rooftop of his farm amid the endless rain and thunder with a weary face and tired infinity.

A jindo of a scarred, reluctant frame, unable to speak without coughing up cancer-riddled blood; progenitor of the unrivaled CQC style Nex’aori-Zah. Here he was, in his final days.

Seven days left.

“If you can be happy in the most tragic of moments, then you’ve won.”

That’s what he told himself in his head since he couldn’t actually speak anymore. And yet, it never really meant a thing. Maybe it would’ve if he was ever happy, to begin with. And he was.

…

Was.

…

Isaac hated lying. And yet, he still did so. To his husband and his son. He could’ve been a monk, but he wasn’t. He left the monastery and used their martial arts for war instead of warming the earth’s cold graves.

He hated himself, what he couldn’t do, for his cancer, for all of his men that couldn’t make it, for making his husband a widower and his son an orphan. And he was scared. He was still scared of being forgotten in the last week he had to himself as just an ill farmer, waiting for the cancer to take him.

And even though he knew he could never atone for what he did, he still wanted to try and be a better man.

…

The white-furred farmer tilted his straw hat up with a shaky, conditioned, and ironically lazy index finger, staring at his rainy crops with sheets of storm washing over them with his baggy, ice blue gaze.