Yumi is the daughter of an unmarried peasant girl. Her mother was disowned by her family and driven away from the village to make her way as best she could, pregnant with no knowledge of the world but what she had gained in the rice paddies. That she survived long enough to deliver the child is a testament to her tenacity, and Yumi was born, strong and healthy, in a ditch by the side of the Spirit Road.
Shugi Yakemori was near the end of his year's long journey around the Dragon Empires, when he heard the screams of a baby. He found the girl held tight in the arms of her dead mother, and took her with him. For reasons that even he could not articulate, he knew this child was destined to be his, so he bought a nanny goat from a peasant family for milk, and brought goat and child to his hovel in the mountains.
The girl grew up strong and healthy, helping him in his garden, and learning the way of the sword-saint from him as soon as she was able to walk. His was not the way of the samurai, or the barbarian warrior, but a mystical path that demanded as much of her mind as it did of her body. Days, they practiced kenjutsu and iaido, mastering the katas on the treacherous mountain paths, and at night they studied ancient lore, as she learned arcane secrets.
Yumi was fourteen when the Yoshi brothers found Shugi's home, hidden in the mountains. Twenty years earlier, Shugi had faced their father Hiroyo, the renowned samurai, in a duel, and defeated him. Though the duel was only to first blood, Hiroyo considered the stain on his honor irreparable, and committed hari-kari the following dawn. Shugi knew nothing of his death, for he had taken ship for Dtang just after their duel. The three sons of the dead samurai swore vengeance, and though it took them twenty years, they honored their oath in the end.
Seeing them coming, Shugi locked Yumi inside the house and went to face the brothers. The eldest, Haji, he beheaded quickly, but the others, Yato and Hayao came at him like wolves, staying out of his reach and striking when his attention was on the other. Yato died, but his death gave Hayao the opening he needed to hamstring the aging sword-master. That was when Yumi finally kicked down the door, and rushed to her mentor's aid.
One swift strike of Hayao's sword cut her face open, and she fell on the spot. Only the same, instinctual hunger for life that had kept her alive long enough for Shugi to find her kept her from dying that day. When she woke, Shugi's body lay beside her, his head and sword claimed as trophies. Aside from a few peasants and traders who had come with gifts of food for the great warrior, Shugi was the only person she had ever known.
It took her a year to find the Yoshi castle, and she would have killed herself trying to avenge her mentor had not a monk seen her and correctly guessed at her purpose.
"They waited twenty years for their revenge, but they succeeded," he whispered to her. "Will you allow yourself to fail in your hurry to die?"
Yumi saw the truth in his words, and returned with him to the Twilight Monastery. For three years since, she has honed her skills and pursued her study of the way of the kensai, but she has never forgotten her oath, to reclaim her Master's Sword.
