Shades of Gray
Disclaimer: I'm only doing this once for this chapter. All other times will refer back to this chapter, because it's MORE than unlikely that I'll magically be able to buy the rights to Rurouni Kenshin between now and the time I finish the story. So, ha. Don't sue me. I'm not claiming rights to it or making money off of these fanworks. Just borrowing the characters for a little while…
Chapter One: Ordinary
Logically, if one is not dead, then one must be living. And in following, if someone is not living, they must be dead.
The words were as well ingrained into my mind as were all my years of training. They echoed through my being as a part of my existence in a neverending chant questioning my existence. It was instinct in as much as my overwhelming need to periodically check my cell phone for any indication of a new mission, even now, after several years of inactivity. I keep my sword sharp. It drives her insane.
Her: the one who destroyed any semblance of structure in my fragmented life. I lived half of my life by an oath to save life, and the other half by a sword that stole life. She was the one who changed everything by changing nothing at all, simply by being. There was no logic to it, just that her presence alone set things in motion that could not be undone.
She was born a completely normal, unremarkable girl in Tokyo. She had a normal, unremarkable childhood, with normal, unremarkable parents. She went to a normal, unremarkable high school, and then managed to make enough of herself to get into a college. Tokyo University, to be precise. That alone should have been my first indication that she was perhaps not so ordinary as I had thought. She was really quite brilliant, but I didn't know any of these ordinary things until much later; it didn't matter to me, anyway. Unlike you who will know them now, because you will want to know whom she really was. I'll tell you now, thought, that she was perfectly ordinary and unremarkable until she met me. I could wax poetic on the meaning of the right person at the right time, but I don't even know if it was that. There is no reason for what happened, except her.
It began so very quickly, with hardly any indication of its own significance, one ordinary morning. For all my training, I had no idea how things were already changing so rapidly for me. It was only in retrospect that I found that the transition from my former life to the path of change had begun so early on.
"Himura-san!" The sound of my young neighbor woke me from my reverie, which centered on the previous night. I closed my eyes long enough for a blink and saw the blood splatter on the white walls and the snow-white carpet. A scream echoed in my head.
"Aa?" I answered the boy—a particularly odd college student—as I slid my key back into the keyhole of my door and locked it.
The young man smiled at me with his youthful face and pushed his brunet bangs out of his face. "I didn't hear you come in last night."
You weren't meant to, Seta-san, The thought rushed through my head as I pocketed my key and picked up my briefcase. "I came home late," The answer was cold and a bit heartless, but I cared not how others felt. It didn't matter; Seta-san was hardly offended by my cool demeanor.
Instead he shrugged and slung his own case over his shoulder, turning for the stairs. I followed silently. He was a new medical student at the University and his classes were in the hospital there, which happened to be just next to my office. He always walked with me, no matter what. Somehow, he did not annoy me.
"Did you come home late?" The boy puzzled aloud and laughed with less feeling than one would usually laugh with. "You must have."
"You fell asleep over your studying again."
Seta-san shrugged. "I was awake until three-thirty studying. I couldn't stay awake after that."
I shrugged indifferently, but laughed at him inside. Medical school had been difficult for similar reasons for myself. I didn't mind his company, even if I thought he was naïve. It was as though somehow there was something in him that I connected with.
We passed a newsstand and I scooped up a paper, tossing payment to the man as I did every day. I hid a smirk at the headlines as we entered the subway station and boarded our train. Seta-san and I took seats next to one another and I read the article about a new case in a long string of recent murders. Some 'mad-dog' killer, or—worse—a power-driven madman armed with an unrevealed weapon. The police were careful with releasing any details about the crimes. Details only the killer would know.
Details only I would know.
"Terrible murders, don't you think?" Seta-san offered me another one of those strange, disinterested smiles. "But it seems that they have a strong idea of who this killer is."
I shrugged and folded the paper. "There are awful things that happen all the time in Tokyo. We'll see what the police find, I'm sure." The words were uninterested and blank as I handed it off to him.
"Perhaps they'll catch him soon."
And perhaps not, My mind shot back. "Perhaps," Was all I answered.
I didn't plan on being caught anytime in the future. I killed with a reason, not because I enjoyed the feel of blood rushing over me, or the feeling of power as I held my victim's life in the balance. Not for money, insanity, or sick lust. I despised the killing. I was a doctor, and I had taken my Hippocratic oath to save life. Killing didn't make sense for me, but I did it anyway for the sake of a belief that I was killing those who had brought suffering, those who had been targeted for stepping too far out of line. I had a reason to kill, and it went deeper than the syndicate. I killed for the sake of convoluted justice metted out by Katsura and the underground he controlled. There was more than that, painfully intimate reasons to kill that drove me to kill until every single one of the people involved in all the ills of the world, all my personal demons, were dead. I dared the police to catch me.
The next stop was Seta-san's and mine. We stepped off of the train and watched it shoot past into the tunnel as we mounted the stairs with our separate destinations outside the station in mind. As I was walking through the ordinary station, a completely unremarkable doctor who could perhaps be mistaken for a foreigner if I were not already known by the people there, a young college girl breezed past me. I ignored her, but found my nostrils lingering on the mysterious scent I couldn't quite place.
Seta-san turned to me as I stopped to think of the source of the unfamiliar smell. "Himura-san? Shall we continue?"
I nodded numbly, starting up the stairs to the outside world, where the sun was shining happily on the ordinary morning. "Let's go," I stated blandly.
Logically, if one is not dead, then one must be living. And in following, if someone is not living, they must be dead.
The words were back, ringing through my head again and again. My telephone rang out a single, urgent beep to tell me that I had a new message. A new mission. A new article at my newsstand with another desperate plea for public cooperation.
But what is someone who is neither living nor dead?
End Chapter One