Note: Nobuhiro Watsuki is trash who deserves to be in prison. Enjoy the fic.

The Game

It got muddled on the old bridge on the east side of Kyoto city. The numbers he used to count in his head. It was like a little game.

"C'mon, baka," his master said, corners of his mouth curling in a condescending smirk, "if you don't make the number I'm making you run another round." Hiko Seijuro was not a man of empty threats. "Count."

"One." Kenshin slashed his wooden bokken. "Two." He struck again, the wind off the weapon blowing the leaves harshly back in a sudden jolt. "Three."

"Faster."

"Four."

The same few strokes. Up, down, left, right, diagonal. The most integral and basic strokes known to a swordsman. Kenshin had made the same motions a hundred thousand times before, and he would perform them a hundred thousand times more. Then Hiko stepped in to test him. He never let up, not even a little. He hardly did, what with his expectations.

"Five." Kenshin struck. Hiko met him back this time, pushing his bokken down and then ruthlessly thrusting for his open shoulder. Kenshin had to learn to move fast.

"Six."

"Not bad," Hiko remarked, and he had enough time and speed to tilt his bokken and recenter Kenshin's bokken for him, "Now faster. Harder. Until you stop thinking."

Until he stopped thinking?

"…Six….seven—"

Hiko swivelled, sending the flat side of his bokken to his ankle and making him wince. "Don't miscount."

How could he be counting and not think at the same time?

Hiko Seijuro was not patient enough a man to explain.

On the old bridge of Kyoto, grand, spacious, wide enough to shepherd over three carriages at once in a line. Strong enough to hold four canons wheel to wheel and a half-battalion all bundled around, on the opposite side, Kenshin stood with the Ishin Shishi.

The game, as Hiko put it, got harder and harder. Kenshin was made to count his strokes, count them until he could continuously strike without being finished off by Hiko in a single blow. It had forced him to strike with such amazing speed that the only indication that an attack had being launched was when he slipped the blade back into its sheath with a soft, slow click. It had honed him into the kind of swordsman that moved and reacted rather than thinking out how to move step by step. The strikes came to him naturally.

Like playing a perfected song on a string instrument. Like breathing.

(Alone, far away from that idyllic cottage house in a isolated clearing, away from the sting of cold waterfall that supposedly soothed his cramped muscles, it finally dawned on a boy apprentice what the counting meant. The strikes came to him practiced when they ate into bone. Each strike was one body down, one opponent dealt with. Precisely one kill.)

On the bridge there was gunfire and embers and canon-shots; sounds of shouting and screaming and shells clattering to the floor, something akin to heavy rainfall. Continuous, never letting up, thundering.

He counted. Kenshin jumped over the line of canons and started from where he'd left off.

"Eighty four."

He spun, swiping his blade cleanly beneath a man's chin, sidestepping and leaving before the body had even fallen.

He evaded a sword to the side, jerking left and then thrusting from underneath an arm. "Eighty five."

(The slight shock of a canon hurtling past his head. Something loud crashing and heat furling alive behind him, grazing his back. The threadbare parts of his gi blackening, on fire. Kenshin had been jerked away by something, his teeth clattering violently in his head as he was thrown forward. It wasn't the heat or the skinned palms or splinter on his collarbone that startled him. It was the awful, aching ringing. The ringing that threw him off his composure, thrusting him into a loud yet deaf world, where everything was still much the same.)

Someone used the moment to nick his ankle with a blunted katana, and Kenshin was not Kenshin because he was not needed, that someone everyone called Battousai resurfaced from the confusion.

Battousai parried the next strike, ending it on the third. His body leapt back into action, going through unthinking motions as he plowed down the battalion. In a way, the moment had made him immune to the canon fire, instinct pulsing through him like blood. Gunfire clattered to the ground, but he couldn't hear it anymore. There was no time to even count. Kenshin's mind went near blank. He killed.

At the end of it all, his ears were left ringing in the moment where the canons had gone off, someone else's blood dripping down his neck.

"How many…" he murmured.

The dead were circled around him. He couldn't see faces or wounds, he couldn't match it all to the numbers. The realisation came to him. All of a sudden he was overcome with a primal, absolute need to follow the discipline drilled into him all those years ago. He was lost, crazed even, by the thought of the numbers — the numbers — he wanted— needed to know how many he'd killed.

Half of the bridge collapsed, sending a tumble of wheels and metal and bodies into the water. Kenshin watched on, spiralling.

It was the day he stopped counting how many he'd slain.

Over a rowdy dinner with war tested Ishin Shishi lined up and down the largest room, a cheerful, sake-tipsy comrade slapped him on the back and slurred aloud, "how many's the number again, Battousai?" he boasted for him.

"Tch! Higher than you could ever dream of yours being, ya dimwit!"

"Hey, hey, let the man live! What's the number, Himura?!"

"I've fohr-gotten too! What's it now— the count—"

Kenshin put down his chopsticks, curled over, and threw up right in his lap.

"Forgive my…impertinence."

"Hahah!" The Shishi howled with laughter. "— It looks like Battousai can't hold his drink."

He didn't drink, because it all tastes like…like—

"Blood." At the end of the game, when Hiko was satisfied enough by Kenshin's counting, he sat him down on a log near a small fire. His hands were utterly shredded, red and stinging. "It's getting everywhere. Brace yourself." Hiko held Kenshin's hands in his and poured his nightly sake over them. Kenshin winced and yelled in pain.

"...That's what you get when you fail to learn the moves correctly. Why do you still need to think about the intricacies of the same strike after a hundred, two hundred strokes?!" Hiko huffed loudly, released Kenshin's hands, and calmed down before finishing bandaging him. "Ridiculous."

"Three hundred and twenty-five."

"What?"

Kenshin lifted his head. "Three hundred and twenty-five strokes. I'm trying," he muttered. "I'm trying."

"Well try harder," Hiko said.

He took off, back to the cottage. Kenshin counted the steps Hiko took until he could no longer see him.

Notes.

Honestly...absolute and total obedience to your master/parent was 100% normal and expected in asian/japanese culture and Kenshin's time. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't look abusive in today's time. Hiko loves Kenshin and Kenshin loves Hiko ultimately but...they're just very troubled.

This is an excerpt from a fic I wrote in 2017 before the news dropped that watsuki was a pedophile. So. I've lost the drive to finish that fic, but I'd already written ten whole chapters of it. So I reworked some of it including this short piece to post on ffnet. I am an_earl on AO3 and will also be posting there. I mainly post on AO3 now, but it felt right to post RK here since this is where I started.