Hello. This is EK, setting the stage for the long fic that will hopefully
keep her sane during the insanity of second year med school. Let me warn
you that my production rate will not be fast. If anything, it will be
slower than the production rate for Taming a Tiger (one new chapter every
month or two months at the bad stage). But I have to write something that
isn't school-related if I want to stay sane.
The concept is roughly, and quite inaccurately, based on the TV series 24, the one with Keifer Sutherland. I like the concept, but the execution in the series annoyed me somewhere in the middle of the first season, and so I didn't follow all of the 24 hours. ^^ So I guess you can expect 24 chapters out of me within the school year. Yes, I know I'm notorious for E/M, but for this set Misao stays safely with Aoshi. ^^ Feel free to comment, ok?
I chose the contents of volume 24-25. I didn't choose, say, volumes 15-18 or volumes 27-28, because I'm pretty lousy describing battle techniques, and there's too much happening for me to accurately describe (vol. 17 occurs in 30 minutes only!). Also, the events in vols. 24-25 allow for enough artistic license. Where appropriate, manga translations by maigo- chan were used.
..................................
--5:00pm
"'Sao............" Yahiko grumbled, as he dragged his sandals, "I can't..........do this..........anymore............."
"Tell me about it............." Misao grumbled beside him.
"Three days we've been at this, searching high and low, finding clues.........."
"And we're nowhere close to getting at Enishi................"
"Nowhere close." Yahiko made a small sniffle.
Then they both grew silent, as they continued their trudge home to the.............Kamiya dojo. They were thinking the same thought.
Kenshin.
They were doing this for Kenshin. But they were getting nowhere close to finding Enishi, so they can find Kaoru. And bring her back to Kenshin. To prove to him that Kaoru was alive, and that there was nothing.............nothing..............to...........worry about...............anymore.
They had known for three days already. Misao's Aoshi-sama proved without doubt that the corpse they buried was not of a human being, and was not Kamiya Kaoru. Kaoru was alive, somewhere, if only they could find out where. But they could not tell the shell of a man they call Kenshin, not just yet. If they did, especially without having Kaoru with them, their Kenshin would still not return. He would never be that cheerful and dependable friend they had grown to love, never again. He would just blame himself for letting all of this happen in the first place, not being able to protect Kaoru the way he wanted to. He would blame himself for opening up to other people. If he does not die in Rakuninmura, he would die inside, taking Rakuninmura with him in his heart, and he will leave them for good.
But even when Kenshin did find himself, and know his answers, wouldn't it ultimately better to give back Kaoru to him, alive? Wouldn't it be better to show him that he need not regret protecting her?
So they had to find Kaoru, they had to find her. Half of the answer lay in Kenshin himself. The other half rested in their hands.
Of that half, Aoshi, Megumi and Saitou chose the paper and underground trail. The grown-ups allowed Misao and Yahiko to take the high trail. As the grownups played the spy networks and connections, the kids combed the Arakawa docks for whatever information they could find.
The third day of their searching had just ended. And they were all nowhere close to finding Yukishiro Enishi.
As Misao and Yahiko reached the gates of the dojo, Yahiko sighed. He looked straight on, blankly, at the gaping hole in the middle of the practice area. It was still there, a grisly reminder of the terrible fight that occurred within and outside its walls. The fight, that ultimately took away Kenshin's will to live.
"I wanna quit, Misao," Yahiko continued. "We've failed. We're never going to get anywhere! We'll never get Kaoru back."
She bonked him on the head.
"Look who's talking about quitting. And you're the one who wants Kenshin to come back the most."
Yahiko sighed again. "Yeah.........I know............still................"
"I know, I know." She suddenly tugged at her braid. "EYAAAGH! Why can't we get any leads?!"
It was then that they both noticed the old man seated at the dojo's porch, just in front of the hole in the wall. The old man saw them as well, smiled and waved.
"Oibore!" Misao called out as they entered the dojo.
"What are you doing here?" Yahiko asked with a raised eyebrow. The geezer from Rakuninmura was harmless, but he was rather weird, too, with his tattered clothes, long, white beard, and the broken glasses on his nose.
"Weekly begging rounds," Oibore explained with a grin, then held out his hand. "Care to give me something?"
"Thought so," Misao sighed. "Well, let's see.........you want dinner?"
The old man put his hands together and bowed profusely. "Thank you, thank you!"
"Thanks, 'Sao," Yahiko added, as he took out his shinai from the back. "I'll just be here if you need my help about dinner." He raised the wooden sword over his head and took the preparatory stance.
"Oh, sword practice!" Oibore smiled at the boy.
Yahiko nodded. "If you don't do it everyday, you'll never be good........"
".........and a samurai must be strong," Oibore finished, to Yahiko's surprise. The boy looked at the old man, wondering why he knew that.
"Oibore............were you a samurai?" Yahiko had to know.
The old man looked at the boy for a few crucial seconds. The boy reminded him of painful memories. It must have been Yahiko's unruly hair, for Yahiko noted that it was his head Oibore looked at the longest time. He sighed and nodded. "Yes, I was. But I was weak.........." He looked at Misao as well, who had not left yet to make dinner, then back at Yahiko. "I lost my daughter, and my son........so here I am."
That's right, Oibore mused to himself. The girl is now roughly her age, when she left. The boy is his age, too, give or take a year..........
"Hmmmm..........I guess a lot happened to you," Misao sympathized. She closed her eyes, and assumed the look of a martyr. "Alright. From now on, you may think of me as my daughter."
But Oibore laughed at the young ninja. "Oh, I could never do that! My daughter was a thousand times prettier than you!"
"Why you ingrateful---------" and Misao rained kunai on Oibore's hat, then she stomped off to make dinner.
The old man only shrugged and sighed. "Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you leave, you'll find again, but what you throw away, you never get back."
Yahiko was about to dismiss all of the words as an old man's rigmarole, but the next few words made him look intently at Oibore: "I know he's lost things, but he hasn't yet taken the step in throwing them away."
He? Who did Oibore mean by "he"? Yahiko wondered. Kenshin? And if Kenshin, what did this geezer know about him?
Suddenly Oibore brightened up. "Sorry about that, young'un," he interrupted Yahiko's thoughts. "You better start doing those drills. Don't bother about me!"
--5:30pm
First, a man sat beside a small pile of sticks. He took two flintstones and started a small fire. He blew on the sticks, and added more. Then he placed a stewpot above it. He filled the pot with water, then waited for the water to boil. He placed bits of meat in the pot, and stirred. The onions went inside the pot. He took out a cabbage, peeled it, and dropped leaves into the pot. A few more other vegetables went into the stew.
Another man, ragged and dirty arrived, carrying two jugs of sake. Then another man, with another jug and several wooden cups. Yet another arrived, carrying bowls. More and more men came and encircled the stewpot, eagerly savoring the smells coming from the pot.
This was dinner, at the Rakuninmura.
Soon the pot was surrounded by around twenty men, bowls and chopsticks ready. A motley crew they were. Fat and skinny, muscular and sickly. All forlorn and all ragged. Many were now laughing empty laughs, as they told of their adventures for the day. Some were quietly waiting for dinner, the sadness of many years on their faces.
Overhead, a few little birds were disturbed by the noise of the men, and were circling the area.
Chopsticks dipped into the pot, and soon the men were eating. "Man, this is good!" one complimented, eating with relish.
"It's these stews every month that keep me going," another piped in.
"Plenty for everybody," the cook moderated the chopsticks that dove in. "Let everyone have a share!"
"Yeah, the new guy hasn't taken his share!" the first man said.
This made the men all look at their new arrival into Rakuninmura. A tattered young man with unusual red hair and a chained-up sword. So far the man had rarely moved from his place at the wall. His head was buried in his arm and knee. He had not spoken to anyone within the ragtag community yet.
"Hey, how long has he been here?" a regular wayfarer asked the residents in a whisper.
"About a week," one answered. "And he just stays there."
One of the kinder but muscular men called out, "What about you, new guy? Come have some dinner!"
"Isn't it about time you had a drink with us?" another added.
The new man did not respond.
I hear you. He answered in his head. No, thank you. I do not feel like eating. Do not worry about me. I am not worth the trouble. I am not worth it. I do not want anyone worrying about me. I do not want to worry about anyone, anymore. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me, like she did. Like she did.
Only one thought ran constantly in his head. He was not able to protect her. She whom he wanted to protect the most.
A stronger man would have just jumped from a bridge or rammed a sword into his belly. Not him. He no longer had strength in himself to do even that. Life was nothing to him. Death was neither welcome nor avoided. He was too tired. Too tired of walking or moving. Too tired of just being.
Too tired...........must just sleep, sleep out the tiredness.
But sleep brought no relief. It was full of nightmares of the past. He did not know which was better. To relive the awful past, or to face the recent past head-on. Neither was right. And it was too tiring to think about it. He sought that specific state. Asleep enough to be freed from the present. Not asleep enough to be filled with dreams of the past. It was hard to find, that specific state. It was tiring to find...........just tiring.............tiring even to answer the man about eating dinner.............must.............must sleep.............
"He's completely helpless," one of the men grumbled.
The wanderer agreed with him.
"That samurai hasn't eaten a thing since he got here..........I wonder if he's okay," the grumbling man continued.
The birds circling around the pot fluttered closer to the new man leaned by the wall.
"Those are Oibore's birds, aren't they?" the men asked Kuma, the one who talked the most often to the old geezer. Kuma motioned in the affirmative.
"Oibore's not here!" a man told the birds overhead.
That did not stop the little brown songbirds from hovering around the forlorn redhaired man.
"Strange....." the men around the stewpot commented. "Those birdies only come close to Oibore!"
"Maybe they think he's a corpse!" one piped up. "He'll be a corpse soon enough!"
"Dummy! It's crows that flock around corpses, not songbirds!" Kuma puffed at the man. "Still," he mused half-aloud, as one of the birds alighted on the man's chained sword, "there's lots of things strange about that new guy. First, those kids from the outside, now the birds that never got used to us.........."
Kuma recalled something Oibore told the girl and the little boy with her, when they visited the new man. Animals will not come near someone with a bad heart. Did that mean that this man was good inside?
As the rest of the company ignored the motionless stranger, Kuma kept looking at him. The poor man was in a torture chamber of his making. He truly pitied him, and wondered what trauma could have made him so.
He heard the man cough faintly, and breathe short breaths. He had to do something, even a little something.
"You," he pointed at the man currently nearest the stewpot. "fill a bowl with what's left."
"Huh?"
"Just do what I said!"
"Alright!" the man hastily picked out vegetables from the pot.
"You, big guy!" he pointed to another, finishing off a jug of sake. "Pour me a cup, will ya?"
"Now?" the large man looked at him incredulously.
"Now!"
Receiving soup bowl and sake cup from the men, Kuma walked toward the man at the wall. He placed bowl and cup beside him, then tapped him at the shoulder.
"You better eat up, Red," he told him. "Oibore's taken a liking to you. We won't hear the end of it if we just let you die on us. So I suggest you eat."
"Not............hungry.............." the redhaired man muttered.
"I don't care if you don't feel like it," Kuma shouted back. "You WILL eat this." Then he lowered his voice. "Please?"
The man did not answer.
Kuma sighed, and muttered to himself. "I tried, Oibore............I tried."
--5:45pm
"WHAT do you think you're doing, woman?"
"Dinner. You have a problem with that?"
The woman was chopping vegetables too many for one person to consume. From a small pot, the smell of rice cooking filled the kitchen.
"Stop being nice, woman----"
"The name's Kaoru, Kamiya Kaoru............I've told you several times!"
"Being nice to me will not get you anywhere. You still can't get off this island."
"Yes, you've told me: sharks in the ocean, 20 kilometers to nearest port, natural prison. Yes, you've told me. But I can't practice my strokes here, since I have no sword. I have nothing to do. And as I have told you, if I have to cook, I might as well cook for two people. Now, kindly wait. I'll have dinner ready in a few minutes."
"Death of poisoning by Battousai's woman.............a worse fate than losing to Battousai."
Kaoru threw a wooden bowl at Enishi.
..........................
Sometime in his life, Watsuki had been there. He had been depressed. Maybe not to the extent Kenshin had, but he has been there, to portray it so well.
I hope you liked this, and I hope you continue to read! ^_^
The concept is roughly, and quite inaccurately, based on the TV series 24, the one with Keifer Sutherland. I like the concept, but the execution in the series annoyed me somewhere in the middle of the first season, and so I didn't follow all of the 24 hours. ^^ So I guess you can expect 24 chapters out of me within the school year. Yes, I know I'm notorious for E/M, but for this set Misao stays safely with Aoshi. ^^ Feel free to comment, ok?
I chose the contents of volume 24-25. I didn't choose, say, volumes 15-18 or volumes 27-28, because I'm pretty lousy describing battle techniques, and there's too much happening for me to accurately describe (vol. 17 occurs in 30 minutes only!). Also, the events in vols. 24-25 allow for enough artistic license. Where appropriate, manga translations by maigo- chan were used.
..................................
--5:00pm
"'Sao............" Yahiko grumbled, as he dragged his sandals, "I can't..........do this..........anymore............."
"Tell me about it............." Misao grumbled beside him.
"Three days we've been at this, searching high and low, finding clues.........."
"And we're nowhere close to getting at Enishi................"
"Nowhere close." Yahiko made a small sniffle.
Then they both grew silent, as they continued their trudge home to the.............Kamiya dojo. They were thinking the same thought.
Kenshin.
They were doing this for Kenshin. But they were getting nowhere close to finding Enishi, so they can find Kaoru. And bring her back to Kenshin. To prove to him that Kaoru was alive, and that there was nothing.............nothing..............to...........worry about...............anymore.
They had known for three days already. Misao's Aoshi-sama proved without doubt that the corpse they buried was not of a human being, and was not Kamiya Kaoru. Kaoru was alive, somewhere, if only they could find out where. But they could not tell the shell of a man they call Kenshin, not just yet. If they did, especially without having Kaoru with them, their Kenshin would still not return. He would never be that cheerful and dependable friend they had grown to love, never again. He would just blame himself for letting all of this happen in the first place, not being able to protect Kaoru the way he wanted to. He would blame himself for opening up to other people. If he does not die in Rakuninmura, he would die inside, taking Rakuninmura with him in his heart, and he will leave them for good.
But even when Kenshin did find himself, and know his answers, wouldn't it ultimately better to give back Kaoru to him, alive? Wouldn't it be better to show him that he need not regret protecting her?
So they had to find Kaoru, they had to find her. Half of the answer lay in Kenshin himself. The other half rested in their hands.
Of that half, Aoshi, Megumi and Saitou chose the paper and underground trail. The grown-ups allowed Misao and Yahiko to take the high trail. As the grownups played the spy networks and connections, the kids combed the Arakawa docks for whatever information they could find.
The third day of their searching had just ended. And they were all nowhere close to finding Yukishiro Enishi.
As Misao and Yahiko reached the gates of the dojo, Yahiko sighed. He looked straight on, blankly, at the gaping hole in the middle of the practice area. It was still there, a grisly reminder of the terrible fight that occurred within and outside its walls. The fight, that ultimately took away Kenshin's will to live.
"I wanna quit, Misao," Yahiko continued. "We've failed. We're never going to get anywhere! We'll never get Kaoru back."
She bonked him on the head.
"Look who's talking about quitting. And you're the one who wants Kenshin to come back the most."
Yahiko sighed again. "Yeah.........I know............still................"
"I know, I know." She suddenly tugged at her braid. "EYAAAGH! Why can't we get any leads?!"
It was then that they both noticed the old man seated at the dojo's porch, just in front of the hole in the wall. The old man saw them as well, smiled and waved.
"Oibore!" Misao called out as they entered the dojo.
"What are you doing here?" Yahiko asked with a raised eyebrow. The geezer from Rakuninmura was harmless, but he was rather weird, too, with his tattered clothes, long, white beard, and the broken glasses on his nose.
"Weekly begging rounds," Oibore explained with a grin, then held out his hand. "Care to give me something?"
"Thought so," Misao sighed. "Well, let's see.........you want dinner?"
The old man put his hands together and bowed profusely. "Thank you, thank you!"
"Thanks, 'Sao," Yahiko added, as he took out his shinai from the back. "I'll just be here if you need my help about dinner." He raised the wooden sword over his head and took the preparatory stance.
"Oh, sword practice!" Oibore smiled at the boy.
Yahiko nodded. "If you don't do it everyday, you'll never be good........"
".........and a samurai must be strong," Oibore finished, to Yahiko's surprise. The boy looked at the old man, wondering why he knew that.
"Oibore............were you a samurai?" Yahiko had to know.
The old man looked at the boy for a few crucial seconds. The boy reminded him of painful memories. It must have been Yahiko's unruly hair, for Yahiko noted that it was his head Oibore looked at the longest time. He sighed and nodded. "Yes, I was. But I was weak.........." He looked at Misao as well, who had not left yet to make dinner, then back at Yahiko. "I lost my daughter, and my son........so here I am."
That's right, Oibore mused to himself. The girl is now roughly her age, when she left. The boy is his age, too, give or take a year..........
"Hmmmm..........I guess a lot happened to you," Misao sympathized. She closed her eyes, and assumed the look of a martyr. "Alright. From now on, you may think of me as my daughter."
But Oibore laughed at the young ninja. "Oh, I could never do that! My daughter was a thousand times prettier than you!"
"Why you ingrateful---------" and Misao rained kunai on Oibore's hat, then she stomped off to make dinner.
The old man only shrugged and sighed. "Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you leave, you'll find again, but what you throw away, you never get back."
Yahiko was about to dismiss all of the words as an old man's rigmarole, but the next few words made him look intently at Oibore: "I know he's lost things, but he hasn't yet taken the step in throwing them away."
He? Who did Oibore mean by "he"? Yahiko wondered. Kenshin? And if Kenshin, what did this geezer know about him?
Suddenly Oibore brightened up. "Sorry about that, young'un," he interrupted Yahiko's thoughts. "You better start doing those drills. Don't bother about me!"
--5:30pm
First, a man sat beside a small pile of sticks. He took two flintstones and started a small fire. He blew on the sticks, and added more. Then he placed a stewpot above it. He filled the pot with water, then waited for the water to boil. He placed bits of meat in the pot, and stirred. The onions went inside the pot. He took out a cabbage, peeled it, and dropped leaves into the pot. A few more other vegetables went into the stew.
Another man, ragged and dirty arrived, carrying two jugs of sake. Then another man, with another jug and several wooden cups. Yet another arrived, carrying bowls. More and more men came and encircled the stewpot, eagerly savoring the smells coming from the pot.
This was dinner, at the Rakuninmura.
Soon the pot was surrounded by around twenty men, bowls and chopsticks ready. A motley crew they were. Fat and skinny, muscular and sickly. All forlorn and all ragged. Many were now laughing empty laughs, as they told of their adventures for the day. Some were quietly waiting for dinner, the sadness of many years on their faces.
Overhead, a few little birds were disturbed by the noise of the men, and were circling the area.
Chopsticks dipped into the pot, and soon the men were eating. "Man, this is good!" one complimented, eating with relish.
"It's these stews every month that keep me going," another piped in.
"Plenty for everybody," the cook moderated the chopsticks that dove in. "Let everyone have a share!"
"Yeah, the new guy hasn't taken his share!" the first man said.
This made the men all look at their new arrival into Rakuninmura. A tattered young man with unusual red hair and a chained-up sword. So far the man had rarely moved from his place at the wall. His head was buried in his arm and knee. He had not spoken to anyone within the ragtag community yet.
"Hey, how long has he been here?" a regular wayfarer asked the residents in a whisper.
"About a week," one answered. "And he just stays there."
One of the kinder but muscular men called out, "What about you, new guy? Come have some dinner!"
"Isn't it about time you had a drink with us?" another added.
The new man did not respond.
I hear you. He answered in his head. No, thank you. I do not feel like eating. Do not worry about me. I am not worth the trouble. I am not worth it. I do not want anyone worrying about me. I do not want to worry about anyone, anymore. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me, like she did. Like she did.
Only one thought ran constantly in his head. He was not able to protect her. She whom he wanted to protect the most.
A stronger man would have just jumped from a bridge or rammed a sword into his belly. Not him. He no longer had strength in himself to do even that. Life was nothing to him. Death was neither welcome nor avoided. He was too tired. Too tired of walking or moving. Too tired of just being.
Too tired...........must just sleep, sleep out the tiredness.
But sleep brought no relief. It was full of nightmares of the past. He did not know which was better. To relive the awful past, or to face the recent past head-on. Neither was right. And it was too tiring to think about it. He sought that specific state. Asleep enough to be freed from the present. Not asleep enough to be filled with dreams of the past. It was hard to find, that specific state. It was tiring to find...........just tiring.............tiring even to answer the man about eating dinner.............must.............must sleep.............
"He's completely helpless," one of the men grumbled.
The wanderer agreed with him.
"That samurai hasn't eaten a thing since he got here..........I wonder if he's okay," the grumbling man continued.
The birds circling around the pot fluttered closer to the new man leaned by the wall.
"Those are Oibore's birds, aren't they?" the men asked Kuma, the one who talked the most often to the old geezer. Kuma motioned in the affirmative.
"Oibore's not here!" a man told the birds overhead.
That did not stop the little brown songbirds from hovering around the forlorn redhaired man.
"Strange....." the men around the stewpot commented. "Those birdies only come close to Oibore!"
"Maybe they think he's a corpse!" one piped up. "He'll be a corpse soon enough!"
"Dummy! It's crows that flock around corpses, not songbirds!" Kuma puffed at the man. "Still," he mused half-aloud, as one of the birds alighted on the man's chained sword, "there's lots of things strange about that new guy. First, those kids from the outside, now the birds that never got used to us.........."
Kuma recalled something Oibore told the girl and the little boy with her, when they visited the new man. Animals will not come near someone with a bad heart. Did that mean that this man was good inside?
As the rest of the company ignored the motionless stranger, Kuma kept looking at him. The poor man was in a torture chamber of his making. He truly pitied him, and wondered what trauma could have made him so.
He heard the man cough faintly, and breathe short breaths. He had to do something, even a little something.
"You," he pointed at the man currently nearest the stewpot. "fill a bowl with what's left."
"Huh?"
"Just do what I said!"
"Alright!" the man hastily picked out vegetables from the pot.
"You, big guy!" he pointed to another, finishing off a jug of sake. "Pour me a cup, will ya?"
"Now?" the large man looked at him incredulously.
"Now!"
Receiving soup bowl and sake cup from the men, Kuma walked toward the man at the wall. He placed bowl and cup beside him, then tapped him at the shoulder.
"You better eat up, Red," he told him. "Oibore's taken a liking to you. We won't hear the end of it if we just let you die on us. So I suggest you eat."
"Not............hungry.............." the redhaired man muttered.
"I don't care if you don't feel like it," Kuma shouted back. "You WILL eat this." Then he lowered his voice. "Please?"
The man did not answer.
Kuma sighed, and muttered to himself. "I tried, Oibore............I tried."
--5:45pm
"WHAT do you think you're doing, woman?"
"Dinner. You have a problem with that?"
The woman was chopping vegetables too many for one person to consume. From a small pot, the smell of rice cooking filled the kitchen.
"Stop being nice, woman----"
"The name's Kaoru, Kamiya Kaoru............I've told you several times!"
"Being nice to me will not get you anywhere. You still can't get off this island."
"Yes, you've told me: sharks in the ocean, 20 kilometers to nearest port, natural prison. Yes, you've told me. But I can't practice my strokes here, since I have no sword. I have nothing to do. And as I have told you, if I have to cook, I might as well cook for two people. Now, kindly wait. I'll have dinner ready in a few minutes."
"Death of poisoning by Battousai's woman.............a worse fate than losing to Battousai."
Kaoru threw a wooden bowl at Enishi.
..........................
Sometime in his life, Watsuki had been there. He had been depressed. Maybe not to the extent Kenshin had, but he has been there, to portray it so well.
I hope you liked this, and I hope you continue to read! ^_^