Himura Kiyo sat silently, waiting for her mother. She heard her mother tell Yahiko-san that her father was coming home. Kiyo had smiled at the news. Her father had been gone for four long years to fight in a war he didn't want to fight. "He had made a promise to the Meiji government," her mother, Himura Kaoru, had told her more than once. "That is why he is fighting in a war that he does not want to fight in." When her mother had first told her this, Kiyo had been eight years old and hadn't understood. Now she was ten years old, and understood the promise her father had made years ago to the Meiji government and why he had made that promise."Your father was your age when he began to study the swordsmanship of Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryu," her mother had told her yesterday after telling her that her father would be coming home. "Four years later, when he was fourteen years old, he left his master to fight in the Bakumastu. The war would have been lost without your father, and became known as Hitokiri Battousai." Kiyo had shuddered at her father's name during the horrible war that he didn't speak of. She knew that his name meant Battousai the manslayer. Closing her eyes, Kiyo tried to imagine her father slaughtering nameless samurai and swordsman alike, but couldn't. Her father was too gentle for such things.
Himura Kenji, her older brother, however, was fascinated by their father's past. He relished their father's former raw strength and mercilessness, and seemed to resent the calm and gentle man who he was now. Kenji wanted to learn Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryu, the swordsmanship of Hitokiri Battousai, not Kamiya-kassin-ryū, their mother's swordsmanship. It pained Kiyo and her mother more than he would ever know. Kiyo once asked Kenji what he wanted with Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryu, and had replied hotly, "I want to find what true strength is." Although Kenji was four years older than her, Kiyo already knew what true strength was. Her mother, father, Megumi-san, and Yahiko-san knew what true strength was as well, but Kenji wanted to know the past. He wanted to know why his father had been so feared during the Bakumatsu more than thirty years ago. That was why when he left to find their father's master Hiko Seijūrō in Kyoto, Kiyo wasn't surprised.
Kiyo wanted her father and nothing else. He was all she needed. A faint smile appeared on her lips when she remembered all the times she and her mother had welcomed her father home after his travels. Kenji was notably absent. But Himura Kenshin always had a smile on his face as he was welcomed by his mother and daughter. Kiyo vaguely heard her mother call for her, but stayed for a moment. I wish you would come, Kenji, she thought. Today is the twenty-sixth year of Meiji, 1893. You were born in the twelfth year, and I the fifteenth. Our mother and father were born during a war, in a time of heartbreak and bloodshed. That time has passed. Kiyo's mother was relieved to see her daughter beside her, and together they walked the harbor where they would reunite with their family member. Today is day of peace, Kenji. Can't you see what our father sacrificed a part of himself for?
