Excerpt from The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, Sam Bett, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Because she liked it.

It was fun.

In the heat of it, she could let go of everything. Winning was great, but she also found it thrilling to be up against an overwhelming force. Shindo even liked the pain and bitterness that came with it. They stimulated her. Way more fun than manga, pop music, or clothes. A day came when she realized violence was her only interest.

If she hadn't been cut out for it, she probably could have bailed and led a different life entirely. But she didn't, because Shindo had a gift. Or at least her grampa thought so. She was a natural. Born to train. To build muscle. And to use it.

Her grampa knew judo, karate, kenpo, and the fighting styles where you used weapons or equipment. He knew every way there was to win a fight. And he taught her everything. His lessons were not linked to any school. No bowing or formalities. Every move or method was fair game. The objective was to ruin your opponent. This wasn't martial arts. It was violence.

At fourteen, one of Shindo's teachers asked her to try out for kendo. An athlete of her caliber, they said, could easily pick up a scholarship to a top school. She told them college didn't interest her. The teacher urged her to at least compete, assuring her that she could take a national title, but when Shindo told this to her grampa, he gave her a stern warning.

"Start with the martial arts, and you'll never fight again."

Martial artists had to separate themselves from violence. As a discipline. This meant violence was a pleasure saved for people like her and her grampa. People who came from nowhere, who belonged to nothing.

By eighteen, Shindo had lost both of her grandparents. With no one left to fight with but the brown bears, she left home and set off on her own, heading to Tokyo in search of a new fight.

As she stepped into the changing room after her bath, a drowsiness consumed her. Must be her period, she thought. Back in her room, however, she collapsed face down on the row of cushions where she slept.

That's when she burped.

(Huh?)

The burp tasted like chemicals.

(Shit, they got me)

She wasn't on her period. She'd been drugged. This was bad. Don't fall asleep, she told herself, as her eyes shut and she fell into a deep sleep, losing consciousness.

SHE HAD A dream. White sky and blue ground stretched out to the horizon. She could hear a child crying. At first it sounded like a sad cry, but with time she realized they were yelling in a voice shaken by distress. A giant bird flew across the blue ground.

They were in their yard at home. Grampa had strung her upside down from the big tree. The white landscape and the blue sky had been flipped. If she stayed like this too long, her blood would pool inside her head, and she would die. If she wanted to survive, she had to use her stomach muscles to sit up and break the knot around her feet herself. No matter how she tried, her stomach wasn't strong enough and she fell back, upside down and swinging. It was hard to breathe. Was she going to die? Would her own grampa let her die like this? She had to do it, had to push through. Otherwise, it was over. Hard to breathe. Breathe.

Excerpted from The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani. Copyright © 2024 by Akira Otani. Excerpted by permission of Soho Crime. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.