Overhanging pine…
adding its mite of needles
to the waterfall
—Matsuo Basho
"Himura-san, could I speak to you for a moment?
"Ah yes Ikajima-san, a lovely day, isn't it?" Kenshin wiped his brow. The day was actually quite hot, and he'd ended up all the way at the far end of the market trying to get enough food to feed their makeshift but very hungry household. The vendors seemed to have sold out of the items that Kenshin needed that morning. It was wonderful for all those farmers and craftspeople who were now seeing the benefits of a prosperous era, but it was frustrating for him who had gotten to the market at the same time as ever, but had to accept apology after apology from pleased-looking sellers. He hoped Ikajima-san would not keep him too long. The poor old lady was very sweet, but tended to chatter on and on. Where was her daughter? Usually the sensible Hanako-san kept her elderly mother in line, but she was nowhere to be seen in the wide street beside which Ikajima-san was resting in the shade under the branches of an obliging tree.
"I don't see dear Kaoru-chan with you today," the diminutive lady observed. "Is she still at home this morning? She often does the marketing with you I've noticed."
"Kaoru-dono had to go out this morning, but I expect her to return to the Kamiya dojo at any time." Kenshin hoped that this would be enough to politely excuse him from the conversation.
Kaoru would soon be finishing her morning lessons at the Maekawa dojo, and Kenshin wanted to have lunch on the table and dinner well in hand by the time she got home and changed. Perhaps then they could discuss the situation in the garden. If they could just take down one or maybe two of the big pines at the edge of the property there would be enough sun for a decent garden of their own and Kenshin could grow some of their food instead of having to constantly fight over market vegetables with their neighbors. Kaoru was very attached to those trees, but if he made it clear that this would be saving them money in the long run, she should come around.
"...Hmm?"
"Oh, please forgive me Ikajima-san. This one let his thoughts get away from him and did not hear your question properly. Please repeat it."
Ikajima-san actually looked a little bit flustered and fanned herself more vigorously with the large woven fan that she carried.
"I was just mentioning, Himura-san, that Kaoru-chan has looked a little tired lately. Not that she
looks unwell—she is a lovely young woman and very healthy! Such lustrous hair and sparkling eyes. It must be from all that exercise! Though she has her mother's eyes, and I don't recall Maoko-san being much of one for thumping about in the dojo—not that it is a bad thing! Her ancestors have been samurai for hundreds of years. Kaoru-chan is a credit to her family for trying so hard to carry on her father's sword style after so much misfortune!" Ikajima-san stopped fluttering her fan abruptly and peered intently at Kenshin. "Wouldn't you agree, Himura-san?"
Kenshin hesitantly nodded, unsure if he was merely agreeing to Kaoru being a credit to her family, whom he had never met and so couldn't speak to their wishes, or all the rest about her hair and eyes and mother and looking unwell. Had Kaoru been looking unwell? She had seemed as bright and bubbly as ever that morning.
Ikajima-san sighed, as if he had disappointed her.
"Himura-san, I beg you to forgive an old woman, but my late husband Koichi's first wife was Maoko-san's aunt, so my step-children grew up with her as her cousins, and with all of them being lost in the wars, and to the fevers. . .well, poor as it is I still feel a bit of a family connection to Kaoru-chan. So I'm sure you'll forgive me when I say I'm concerned. All of us who knew the family are concerned."
Maoko-san...Kaoru's mother! Kenshin nodded, trying to keep it all straight. Ikajima-san looked at him skeptically.
"You are concerned that Kaoru-dono is unwell?" Kenshin smiled brightly. "This one is sure Kaoru-dono would appreciate your concern, Ikajima-san, but I saw her just this morning as she readied herself for the day and I can assure you that she is in excellent health." Hoping that he had seen this odd conversation through to its conclusion, Kenshin bowed and adjusted his grip on the baskets he carried.
Ikajima-san was now fluttering her fan, faster than ever, eyebrows raised in shock.
"Himura-san!" the old lady sucked in a breath and drew herself up to a full height that didn't even rival Misao. "I am aware that times have changed, but I would thank you not to go about speaking of Kaoru-chan, the daughter of samurai, as if she were a common trollop!"
Now it was Kenshin's turn to draw a shocked breath.
"Ikajima-san! I would never—!" Kenshin thought back over what he had said. What could possibly have sounded—oh. The old woman must have assumed... He blushed. "Ikajima-san, I beg your pardon, but when I said that I saw Kaoru-dono this morning as she prepared to leave, I meant that I met her in the yard as she gathered her gear for teaching at the Maekawa dojo. Nothing more...intimate." He squirmed as he said the last bit, knowing that his cheeks were rivalling his hair for brilliancy. "This one hopes he has never spoken of or to Kaoru-dono in any way other than with the utmost respect, of which she is fully deserving."
To his surprise, the old lady wasn't flustered or embarrassed as he would have expected at the resolution of this misunderstanding. Instead she looked even more keyed up.
"You claim that Kaoru-chan is deserving of respect, and I would agree with you. She is a sweet girl, though clearly very headstrong and naive. Why then, have you persisted in treating her with such disregard? Have you no concern for her reputation? Her future?"
Kenshin was completely unprepared for this accusation, though as he reviewed the conversation and considered the respectability and connection of Ikajima-san to Kaoru's family he supposed he shouldn't have been. Still, he couldn't quite form a reply, and so he stood there, gaping, as the tiny old lady continued to lay into him.
"You've been living with her, under the same roof, for more than a year! Hardly a season has gone by without some new wild tale of someone dying, or almost dying, or thugs threatening your home. You go about speaking with abject humility yet you are clearly a swordsman of some importance. Despite the ban, you carry a katana and the police just nod to you as you go about your business. Yamamoto-san says that Chief Uramura speaks of you in the most reverent tones but won't tell anyone of your role in the government. If you are such an important man, why are you shaming Kaoru-chan by refusing to marry her?"
Kenshin's head was spinning. How had he missed all this? It was true that he tried to keep to himself, but he felt he should have been a bit more aware of what people were saying about him.
"Ikajima-san, unfortunately you have been misled. This one is not employed by the current government. It is true, I did play some small role in its beginning, but I have been but a humble wanderer for the ten years before I came to Tokyo. If circumstances were different, I might have had something to offer Kaoru-dono other than protection and support, but as it is there can be nothing more."
"Then why have you remained at the Kamiya dojo for such an unseemly period of time? You claim to offer protection, but from what I understand any threats are drawn to you for your 'role' in the war and not to Kaoru. Is this not correct?"
Kenshin's hands were aching from where he clutched the market baskets and tofu buckets. He
longed to set them down, but wanted to be able to flee this distressing conversation as soon as possible. The realization dawned that he had vastly underestimated his opponent.
"That is correct," he admitted. He sighed, and set the baskets down anyway.
"And yet this one stayed," he said, halfway to himself. There really was no point in denying it. Two unmarried persons of the opposite sex who were not close relations simply could not stay alone together without inviting speculation, and as the time spent in the circumstance extended, the worst would naturally be assumed.
"Because she asked you to."
Kenshin nodded warily. How could the old woman know that? And if she did know that, why had she so grossly misunderstood the rest of the situation?
Suddenly the fierce look was gone from the old lady's face. Instead she looked as if every one of her years was weighing on her.
"Himura-san, it was impulsive of Kaoru-chan to ask you to stay with her. It is quite possible that she did not know what she was asking of you. However, it is also possible that you did not know what she was asking of you."
Kenshin wasn't sure he wanted to know where she was going with that. Kaoru couldn't have known what she was asking. She was far too innocent for such manipulations. Yet she had asked, in her straightforward manner, for him to stay with her. Had he been the naive one, to think she didn't know what that would mean for her future? In that case he should have left immediately rather than drag her down into the mire of his own past. In any case he should have left. Yet he had stayed.
"What would you have me do then? Leave her alone, after all this time?" As he said it, Kenshin felt himself grow angry and fearful and he realized he'd known deep down that his status as lodger at the Kamiya dojo had been existing on borrowed time.
"Of course not," snapped the old woman. "The damage is already done. The only men who would take a woman who has been abandoned like that would be after her property. Do you think there's any chance of her leading a good life with a man like that?"
Kenshin's stomach turned at the thought of Kaoru with someone like the Hirumas. Kaoru would never allow it. But would it be any better with anyone else? What if someone younger, more clever or fairer of face tried to snare her? Would she be discerning enough to intuit their ill intentions? His presence in her life was enough to ward off that sort of attention, but if he were gone—no, he could not think it.
"I suppose that freeloading street fighter might marry her, but I wouldn't trust that man not to gamble away the dojo as soon as the marriage register was signed!"
"S-Sano?" Kenshin couldn't even wrap his head around the horrors contained in Ikajima-san's statement. Sano would never marry Kaoru. Even to save her from disgrace? asked a small part of himself. He would not dignify that with an answer.
"If that boy were a few years older it might be worth waiting for him to grow up. His family were well-known Tokyo samurai before they fell on hard times, you know. But as it is he is far too young for her."
Kenshin shook his head to try to dispel the wrongness of this last, but it was useless. The idea of Kaoru and Yahiko made his skin crawl.
"So all things being as they are, it should fall to you to marry her. And you say you won't!"
"No, Ikajima-san! It is not that I won't—it is that I can't. This one has nothing to offer Kaoru-dono. Nothing but this sword which as you rightly say is only good for warding off the specters of my own past."
Ceasing the fluttering of her fan, Ikajima-san leveled a piercing look at Kenshin.
"She loves you. I think you know this. Kaoru-chan, for all her virtues, is not a particularly subtle girl. She thinks the sun rises and sets on you. It's obvious to everyone. Do you think she wants anything other than you?"
Again Kenshin blushed furiously. How was it that the old woman could speak of the most private things without turning a hair? Though he supposed he was being unfair. For the aged, marriage was a matter that needed tending to just as any other, and Ikajima-san worried that no one was tending to Kaoru. But how could he marry her? How could he have any right after all the trouble he had heaped down upon her?
Ikajima-san softened at his obvious distress.
"You seem to think there is nothing that you can give Kaoru-chan, or that giving her yourself is not enough. But if you marry Kaoru properly, you will be giving her back her good name. She is a stubborn girl, and very infatuated so I know she has pretended to herself that she doesn't miss it. Don't you think she'd like to have more students? No parent in their right mind would allow their child to be taught at the Kamiya dojo now, but if you two were married and had children of your own learning the style I'm sure the scandal would pass and the school could grow again."
"Children…" Kenshin could hardly form a coherent thought on the subject. A child would be at once a terrifying thought and much more than he had ever hoped for in his bloody and itinerant existence.
"Yes. Children are exactly what a girl like Kaoru-chan needs to steady her. And if you persist in thinking you have nothing to offer her, consider this: if your past is truly something that you would put behind you, the best gift that you could possibly give Kaoru-chan would be to leave behind your former self and take on the Kamiya name. Precious few others would ever consider such a thing unless desperate or mercenary. Give Koshijiro's spirit the son that he never had in life to carry on his legacy. If you think Kaoru-chan can do this on her own you are sorely mistaking the power a young woman alone has against the force of society. Allow the Kamiya Kasshin School to become what it was meant to be—a transformation of the way of the sword for a new era of peace."
Kenshin carefully drew a measured breath. He realized that while he interacted on a daily basis with ghosts from his own past, the dead in Kaoru's life had never seemed very real to him. To Ikajima-san, Kaoru's parents were known and loved and not forgotten. It had been extremely insensitive of him to gloss over Kaoru's situation in the face of his own struggles. In its own more ordinary way, her situation was more pitiable than his. At least he had his sword and connections from his past. He had even mended bridges, to some extent, with his master. Kaoru was an orphan with only the memory of her family's respectability keeping her roof over her head. She deserved better. And yet, there was none other who would give that to her.
"You have given me much to think about, Ikajima-san," he said, bowing low to her.
"I just hope it does some good. I've seen too many family lines die out in my time. I'd hate to see Kaoru-chan's opportunity over before she even has the chance to realize what she'd be missing." The old woman gave a sad smile, then slowly rose with Kenshin's assistance and made her way back into the market to meet her daughter.
Kenshin stood watching as Hanako-san rushed up the street to collect her mother, calling out apologies for being so late, and finally shook his head. It was high time he got back home. Perhaps if he mentioned the price Natsuzuma-san had quoted him for the wood from the pine trees Kaoru would see reason and let him take them down. If things were going to progress after all this time, they would need the money.