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Kenji's Hero
by: MrFoshizzlePro
Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin. All rights to this wonderful series goes to Nobuhiro Watsuki.
Kenshin was busy cooking in the kitchen as an excited bustle of ki pattered by. For a second, he threw a glance in the direction to where he had last sensed the childish ki. He became suspicious. Now what was Kenji up to...?
He shook his head and returned to work. Whatever it was the little tyke was up to, Kenshin wasn't going to interfere.
Unless it becomes out of control, Kenshin added. That is when I will take action, de gozaru.
Kaoru hummed cheerfully out of her room, bright and beaming for no particular reason. Today just appeared to be a good day. "I wonder what my anata is cooking?" she thought aloud. "It smells great!"
On her way to the kitchen, there was no noise coming from inside Kenji's bedroom that caused her to stop. Kaoru stared at the shoji left ajar by her careless five-year-old. She knew that Kenji was unusually quiet today and this made her worry. Sliding the shoji open further, she found Kenji laying in the middle of the floor with an ink stone and a dripping paintbrush clutched between his fingers. He swept the inked brush across the paper messily, sending a spray of black specks dotting parts of the paper.
Kaoru stepped in. Kenji's head rose and he smiled brightly upon seeing his mother's face. "Okaa-san!" he exclaimed. Scrabbling to his feet, the bubbly little boy picked the paper from the floor and presented it proudly to her. "Look what I drew!"
Kaoru blinked and looked down to the freshly inked paper in her hands. She grinned.
"Is this why you've been so quiet today?" she asked.
Kenji bobbed his head up and down. "Uh-huh! I wanted to make it perfect. I made it for Tou-san."
Kaoru gathered him into her arms and laughed. "Well, I'm sure Tou-san will love it. How about we go and show him?" Kenji's eyes lit like stars. "Do you mean it, Okaa-san?" he chirped, eyes wide as saucers. Kaoru nodded in response.
"Okay!"
She set the squirming child to his feet and watched him race out of the room quickly. She sighed happily, thinking, Kenji really admires Kenshin so much. I hope that it'll stay this way for a very long time to come.
"Tou-san! Tou-san! Look what I drew!"
"Oro? Kenji?" Kenshin was in the middle of forming a riceball when he heard Kenji's delight-filled calls nearing the kitchen. And there stood the auburn haired child, a spitting image of his father except for the large sapphire eyes he had inherited from his mother.
There was a momentary pause before Kenji barrelled in a fit of giggles into Kenshin's unsuspecting legs. The riceball dropped from his hands and he all but toppled to the hardwood floor with a thud. Kenji bounced on his chest, urging his father to take the paper held in his hands.
"Look, Tou-san! Look!" Kenji repeated himself over and over until Kenshin, chuckling to himself, sat up from the floor and said, "Alright Kenji. You win. Now-" He moved the jumpy boy to his lap. "-what is it that you want to show me?"
The paper pratically flew into Kenshin's face. He blinked at the black blob presented close to his eyes, unable to make anything of it. "What is this?" he pondered, taking the paper politely out of Kenji's posession, pulling it back a little ways to view what was on it.
And instantly, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. An ink drawing stood out in bold black ink on the paper. It was a short stick figure with a ponytail (?) flying straight to the right of its body. In one hand, it held a pointed stick. However, in its other hand, there was a large blob indicating another hand joined within the first stick figure's own. Kenshin's gaze grazed over the area until he spotted a similar stick figure, smaller than the other but almost identical only with a smaller ponytail sticking out from its head and carrying nothing in its hand.
Two dots for eyes and curved lines for smiles were drawn on the stick figures blank faces. Kenshin looked down at Kenji. Kenji was smiling sheepishly, meeting his father's eyes without hesitation.
Kenji said, "The big one is suppose to be you, and the little one is suppose to be me. And the words at the top-" The tip of his finger pointed to a jumble of scribbles inscribed over the top of the paper. "-say 'To Tou-san, my hero. Love, Kenji'" He looked up to Kenshin again, hopeful. "What do you think? Do you like it?"
Kenji thinks... I'm a hero? Kenshin never thought he'd see the day when his little boy would think of him as a hero. All the bloodshed and along with it the lives he had taken, for once, there was another who saw him in an entirely different way.
Kenshin rubbed the top of Kenji's head and smiled. "I think it's wonderful," he replied, tickled. He knelt down to his son and hugged him tight, never wanting to let him go. "I love you, Kenji, and I hope to always look like a hero in your eyes."
Kenji wrapped his arms behind his father's back as far as they could extend and laughed with joy.
"You'll always be my hero, Tou-san!"
And with that, Kenshin's spirits rose, and smiled brightly as he continued the warm embrace between himself and his son.
Owari
I hope you enjoyed this little story as much as I have writing it ^-^ Thank you very much for reading! I greatly appreciate it, indeed I do!
-MrFoshizzlePro