Healing Wounds

Himura Kenji walked along the path of cherry blossoms. A sakubatō hung by his bony frame. For once, the fifteen year old didn't enjoy the cherry blossoms. He didn't even notice them. Kenji's thoughts were on his father, Himura Kenshin, who had died earlier this week. He still felt numb at the thought of his father not being there in the world. Strangely, the youth didn't feel grief or sadness from his father's death. Instead he felt a sense of relief. His father was gone, and would not hurt him or his mother again.

Kenji had despised his father for as long as he could remember. At the age of four, he first felt the emotion of anger pulsing through his veins. At the time, he couldn't understand why his father wasn't there. As time passed, it came clear to Kenji that his father made the decision to leave Tokyo, his mother, and his young son to help people in need. His father had a choice to live in the present in the Meiji era, or become the morose hitokiri again. He chose the past over his wife and son. Kenji didn't understand why so many people admired his father. The name Hitokiri Battousai was known to him all his life and Kenji wondered why they admired Himura Kenshin more than the assassin he was. He wondered how his mother had fallen in love with a gentle rurouni who carried a sakubatō.

As a child, Kenji had waited for his father just like his mother. They both waited ceaselessly for months at time. His father and his mother's husband would always come home with a smile on his face, uttering "tadaima" softly to them both. The next few days would be idyll, and a blissful smile would appear on Kenji's mother's and father's faces. However, a couple weeks would pass until Kenji's father became remorse, broody, and silent again before he left. At eight years old, Kenji stopped waiting for his father. It was always the same, and he came to a conclusion that his father cared more about the people of misfortune than him, his flesh and blood. It was around that time that his mother began to notice his recent demeanor towards his father, and she tried to tell him stories about when he was very small; of how his father loved him very much then, as he did now. Kenji did not remember those times, nor did he want to.

His father came home less and less, until Kenji and his mother wouldn't see him for half a year, and then when he came home, he would wander again. Until the war with China, Kenji didn't understand why people needed his father's strength. Then the answer came clear to him. Those people believed that his father possessed true strength. They had heard his history in the Bakumastu and beyond that. His father left soon after that, and his mother was once again waiting. Kenji didn't want to wait anymore he decided to seek out his father's own sensei, the very swordsman who made his father gain that strength that tore him away from his family. Hiko Seijūrō was his new master's name. Before the ancient swordsman accepted him into his apprenticeship, however, he told Kenji this: "I do not care for your reasons for coming here. You are older than your father when I first trained him." He noticed the hatred in Kenji's eyes when he mentioned Himura Kenshin. "Would you like me to tell you why your father is the way he is? What caused him to be the man he is? The man who you despise very greatly is not the man you see with clouded eyes." Without waiting for Kenji to respond, Hiko Seijiūrō continued. "Your father was young when I found him. He was ten years old, and had already seen far too much blood, and pain. He was a slave. It was the year of Edo, 1861. I had saved him from master less samurai from ending his life, but I failed to save what was precious to him. Too many people had died. I told him to go to the mountains to find refuge from the senseless war, but even then, he would not listen to me. The boy stayed, and buried everyone who had been murdered that night, including the murderers, each with crosses." He meet Kenji's shocked gaze, contempt in his eyes.

"You do not understand your father, as you can see. When I showed him my surprise about this, he simply replied, "'After they died, there were no longer bandits or slave traders. Just dead bodies.'" He then told me about the three white stones he was standing in front of, and said that he wanted to protect those women, as they had for him. They had sacrificed their lives to save him, and your father was saddened by the fact. I told him that he would remember the weight of their bodies, but will remember their sacrifice forever. I told him he could protect the people he cared about, and I renamed him. His name was Shinta, and I renamed him Kenshin. For years, Kenshin did remember their sacrifice. Eventually, he abandoned his training to defend the weak. I'm certain even you have heard of the Bakumatsu. He didn't return, and his sanity paid for it. I sometimes wonder if he ended more lives than saving them. You stand before me, with shock and denial on your face," he told Kenji. Contempt echoed in his voice. "That tells me you know nothing. You have not known war or pain. You have not known what it is like to end a life, or save one. You do not know what it is like to lose something precious to you. You say you want to know what true strength is? True strength is not something you can obtain. Kenshin had that strength, as did many people before him. You so ignorant and naïve that you don't even have any strength. You are half the man your father is, Kenji."

Kenji felt the sakubatō in his hands. Perhaps he didn't possess true strength, as his father did. He felt the cool blade in his hands, and he felt voices emerging from it. Voices that his father and Yahiko-san had protected. He didn't know his father, which was true. However, Kenji still had chance. Then he too could protect the people precious to him. Maybe only then he could become a legend.