Cardfight!! Vanguard: Heiwa - Volume II

#3: On the Red Spider's Thread

The Nijimura family.

None of the family members knew for sure when or how the Nijimura came to be.

Some said they were present during the Meiji Restoration, as one of Emperor Meiji's greatest supporters.

Others said they existed centuries before that, as forces that lead the attack against the Shimabara Rebellion.

There were even some who claimed that the origin of the Nijimura family was older and that they came to be during the Sengoku Period, as forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu, that kept serving him after the start of the Tokugawa shogunate.

And though unlikely, some said that they were a great clan centuries before all of that, during the Heian period, as a clan that stood against the Minamoto and Taira clans.

But no matter the claims, there was no exact point in time for their origin.

There was only an ideal.

The ideal that the Nijimura blood stood above the rest, as one of the most proper bloodline to exist in Japan. The perfection of their name could only be rivaled by the Imperial Family and by the shinto gods themselves.

Their claim of perfection had become such a guiding force for the family that the bloodline became strained out, and they became one of the rare families to not be divided into several branches. There was no need for second children.

The Nijimura haven't given birth to more than one child in the same generation since end the nineteenth century.

To keep the tradition of perfection the Nijimura carried, the current head of the family, Nijimura Maruo, married a woman whom he met by chance on a rainy day, named Kotomine Nagi.

Nagi was a widowed mother of a young girl called Kotomine Airi, who Maruo deemed as his own daughter and raised her as such.

But even so, he still chose to continue the legacy of perfection the Nijimura had, and some years after their marriage, Mauro and Nagi had a child, who Maruo chose to name Nobuyuki.

The first part of his name, Nobu, written as 伸, meant 'extend'.

The second part of his name, Yuki, written as 幸, meant 'happiness'.

Maruo chose that name as a sign of the extended, almost eternal, happiness Nobuyuki would have living as a member of the Nijimura family, and as the next head of the family.

But the same way Maruo and Nagi met during a rainy day, they saw each other for the last time during a rainy day.

The day of the end of the Nijimura family.

Airi arrived at the Nijimura household to loud yells from her brother, aimed at their father as he made the final verdict of the situation that had happened in Hirabayashi. Their mother was also present.

"Choose whatever last name you want to have from here on out. As per my legal obligation as the one regarded as your father, I will keep paying for your living expenses until you are legally regarded as an adult. After that, whether you join some good college, or end up cut open and sold for pieces on the dark corners of the world, it's none of my concern. Trash like you as no right to be called a Nijimura, little less be in my field of view." Maruo spoke.

"Oi... What are you talking about, father...? B-but I do what you wanted... I-i kept the Nijimura name atop the others!" Nobuyuki exclaimed.

"You brought nothing but shame to this family! And do not call me that. You having my blood running through your veins only means unworthy filthy has tainted the Nijimura bloodline!"