This was definitely one of the weaker stories written by Shungiku Nakamura-san. It starts interesting, but the story pretty fast loses it's focus on the concept, if there ever was one. Moreso, the four chapters rise even more questions that never get answered, and the characters are far away from acting in a way you would expect it.
Going deeper:
Tetsu is a not so lucky kid that lost his mother due to illness and got sold by his father to a brothel to come up for his debts. To seek revenge and kill his father, he tries to become the student of a samurai hitman(hello Kenshin) named Shino. Ofc, Shino is not amused about the new nuisance in his house and tries to chase him away. But when he sees the determination and desperation of the boy, he slowly starts to open up.
So much for the "main plot". While it's totally understandable that the boy wants to seek revenge for what he had to go through, everything gets brushed off pretty fast by "childish innocence" that is completely inexplicable. After all he had to endure, he attacks his father with a knife, which tricks him into a trap of the brothel to take him back in. But when Shino comes to save him at the last second, he STILL protects his father, just because they share the same blood. I doubt anyone, even during that time and at that age, would do something like that.
While the story arc around the boy was a serious letdown, the story around Shino and his childhood friend Hanjuurou was way more interesting, but also a giant tease. As a kid, Shino had overprotective parents that made him dress as a girl and never leave the house in order to protect him because of his weak constitution. If he really was sick, or if he was weak because he never left the house, is unclear. However, joung Hanjuurou saw him and immediately fell in love with him, going as far as secretly taking him outside and kissing him. But when he tried to propose, their parents let them know that they both share the same gender. And that's it. Meh. While Shino, growing up thinking he is indeed a girl, seems to still have feelings for Hanjuurou, Hanjuurou never gets close to him in that way again, and the story ends with that kind of relationship between the two (except for the last "I want to eat you" which came so sudden that it feels like "Oh damn I forgot I write yaoi, here take this!").
While all of that would be acceptable as "that's how life is, unpredictable", you can't find an excuse for all the unanswered questions risen by the story, because that's just a poor writing job. Shino normally has black hair, but when he enters "killer mode", his hair miraculously changes the color - we never get an explanation for it. Moreso, Shino mentions that Hanjuurou is "the only one to stop him in that state", whyever. Not like it matters because he acts exactly the same as always when he has white hair, no bloodrush at all.
We also never get an explanation why the mansion of Shinos parents looks like a ruin. We don't know the exact age of the characters, but if we guess it's ~10 years after they met as kids, it's a pretty fast downgrade for someone from a wealthy family.
And that's how the story fades out, with more questions than before, a half-assed love story and a kid that became a servant instead of a samurai. The End.
This whole letdown gets even worse because the additional oneshot-story at the end is far better than the whole rest of the book, so if you don't have that much time, read chapter 5: Castilla and skip the rest.
@sofistree As much as I know from some other manga I read, it's one of several superstition-driven rituals to dress up your sick male child as a girl to keep evil away from it until it's grown up.
@mangafan321
Those were different times. Being the henchman of the emperor was a great honor, and it seems like he only got jobs to get rid of bothersome people, like the group that, unlike him, randomly murdered innocent people just for fun.