"Hush, little one!" the mother told her crying baby daughter. The woman struggled to keep her pace while ensuring steady breaths. This was particularly hard for her since she has cholera. But she was not alone: this type of disease was widespread during the To Ku Gawa Era. The baby she was carrying may also have inherited it. The baby, on the other hand, squealed wildly in her arms as she ran furiously from her predators – thugs who have invaded their village, ransacking their livelihood and killing-off anyone across their path. She and her six-month old baby only managed to escape in a lucky way.

The sound of hard footsteps, rustling with the grass, grew louder. The thugs were getting nearer.

"Pl… Please…" she said under her breath, sweat trickling down her forehead. She was running out of breath. "Not Saya… not Saya…"

The baby girl cried harder in her arms. The woman looked over her shoulder. She could almost see the lines of their faces from a distant. One was already raising his spear, targeting her. Her heart skipped more beats, and without warning, she tripped from a tree stump, her baby girl falling from her arms. The chase was over.

Panting, the woman pushed herself up and grabbed her baby in her arms, holding the beloved for the last time. She cowers under the security of the tree which tripped her. She caught a glimpse of the katana, which appeared silvery under the pale moonlight, before closing her eyes, doomed to die. The baby girl cried harder, not just because of the fall, but because of her mother's tightened caress. They waited for the final blow which would end their lives, until – they heard it: gunshot. A scream of three men.

When the woman opened her eyes, she saw the dead bodies of the thugs, blood was gushing from them. She looked up and saw two men approaching her direction. She recognized them. They were saved.

"Ayashi-san!" they called, hurrying forward, their guns dangling on their backs.

"Are you hurt?" the younger of the two asked. He was barely eighteen years old, with shirt dark hair and fair eyes. He was a very tall teenager.

"Iie," Ayashi replied, grateful that they came. A great sense of warmth spread across her body. She rose from her cowered position. The young man helped her.

"Arigato," she said. Ayashi had bruises all over her. The two men could tell that the thugs chased Ayashi long enough to kill her from fatigue.

"How is everyone in the village?"

"Many died," the older of the two men said. He was a middle-aged man with balding white hair, and a partially-toothless grin. He was also very tall. This man was the younger one's father. "Two of your neighbors died. They were protecting their farms. The thugs took the chickens."

Ayashi's wide azure eyes fell on the weapons which accompanied the two men.

"Where did you get those?"

"From the thugs," the old man replied. "We have to go back to the village. It's safe now. They've gone. Some were driven away after hearing the gunshots. Five of them died. With those three – " he pointed at the corpses which lay in front of them " – eight are dead."

"Father, Ayashi-san, please. We have to go back to the village. They need us there."

Ayashi turned to leave when suddenly, she felt it – her strength gave up. He body fell to the ground with the baby still in her arms. She coughed wildly.

"Ayashi-san!" the two men cried, coming over to her. The young man took the baby while his father nursed Ayashi.

"It's the disease isn't it?" the old man said, placing Ayashi's head on his lap. "Cholera…"

"Yes," she replied, blinking beadily. Tears clouded her eyes. "Please, Kyo-san… my daughter…"

"We'll take care of her…"

"Father," the young man told Kyo. "She's not…?"

"I've always known that my time was up," Ayashi said. "Soon, I will be reunited with my husband and then we will be together again. I will die with the same disease that killed him."

"Don't say that," Kyo said, putting his hands on the woman's brow. Her sweat was cold. "He would have wanted you to live."

Ayashi savored the crying sound of her baby girl before she allowed herself to be engulfed into an eternal state of oblivion…

A mighty thunder steered Soujiro Seta in his sleep. He opened his eyes and saw a dying camp fire in front of him. A gust of wind swept in his direction, making him shiver slightly.

He rubbed his eyes.

"A – are… the same dream," he muttered under his breath, trying to remember. But he can hardly picture it anymore. The faces of the characters in his dream blurred the more he tried to remember them. He suddenly felt a cold sensation on his dead: water droplets.

"Rain?" he said, looking up. Another gust of wind. He shivered again. "Perfect… just perfect."

"Aachoo!"

Soujiro wiped his nose. He had spent the whole night huddled under a tree while sadly watching the rain crush the warm campfire he had made for himself last night. The rain poured all night, that he had fallen asleep standing under a tree. But it didn't matter. It was a short-lived sleep. The next thing he knew was waking up to find himself all wet and soggy.

'At least I was able to get away from that old man in the village.' He recalled passing by a nearby village the day before. An old painter he had come across with pleaded him to be a model with only a leaf to cover his loins, for a painting. Soujiro stretched with all his might. He changed into different clothing which he brought with him. He tucked in his favorite blur kimono in his bag and decided that he would let it dry later on in the evening.

He walked on. It looked as if nothing had happened last night – the day was bright, sunny and exceedingly warm. He smiled to himself.

"Well, let's see… what should I do today?" he cheerfully said out loud. "Today's a nice day and I should relax from my wandering a bit. I guess even Mr. Himura took breaks in his journey."

He had an idea of eating in a tea shop for lunch, just for the fun of it.

"And with a little bit of money," he said. Ever since he had left from his services for Shishio Makoto, he had been used to fend for himself. His stomach grunted in response.

"Besides, I haven't had a decent food for a month now."

The village, after all, did not look like a village at all. It looked more like a ghost town, seemingly uninhabited for a long period of time. The houses were beaten up by the weather, the sun silhouetting from the holes on the roof. The screens of the windows were graying and patched. Agriculture was down, the animals – chickens, dogs, cats, ducks – were unusually skinny, that even a common thief would not dare to steal one. The occupants almost reflected that impoverished picture during Japan's Meiji Era. They were seemingly the image that was brought about by rampant corruption the villagers were dressed in rags; most of them had untidy hair. The men looked as if they do not bother to shave. The children were all skin and bones. Their parents allowed them to run along and play with their malnourished condition, mingling with the farm animals in the process. Farming, on the other hand, was the primary livelihood of the villagers. Soujiro felt a sharp twinge of emptiness in the air as if he had when he and the rest of Shishio Makoto's army ransacked the Shingetsu Village not so long ago. The image of the residents – their hapless aura and apathetic faces reminded him of what has become of the Shingetsu Village, which later on turned almost into a ghost town. The unhealthy state of their agriculture and the untidy state of the village reminded him of the old dark days when he was a servant of a tyrant who wanted to take over Japan.

'This is terrible,' he said to himself, looking at his surroundings, which looked as if it looks back. Eyes followed him as if the residents were not used to having visitors, let along passersby.

'Just keel on moving, I'm sure nothing bad will happen,' Soujiro told himself, keeping his head down so as not to catch anyone's eyes.

'I'm just a passerby… lalalala…' he looked at his surroundings. Eyes were indeed following him. He chose to ignore them. It was like being watched by skulking vultures, waiting to tear out what's left of him. He was starting to get annoyed. He kept his eyes fixed at the distance, keeping a casual smile to his face.

Two young children, who both had copper skins, ran past his way. They were probably playing something. They were about five years of age, barely reaching the height of Soujiro's hips. Soujiro watched them as they frolicked by his side, with faint smiles on their faces. One of them picked up a twig and started thwacking the other, who whimpered in the process. The two chased each other and almost stepped on a chicken picking on the earth in search for food.

"Oh you nuisances!" Leave my chicken alone!" a toothless woman said, picking up her chicken. She was holding a walking stick to support her weight.

"Stop – bugging - my – chickens!" she shouted, thwacking her walking stick on of the children. The children immediately ran at a distant where the old lady could not reach. One of the children looked back at her and put out his tongue.

"Beh! Old Fag!" he jeered.

"How imprudent!" the old lady exclaimed. "Mischievous brats!"

With that, the old lady, turned on her heels and snuffed the chicken she saved.

"What are you staring at?" she sneered at a young man as he went past her.

Soujiro chose to ignore her. He did not bother to look back. All he wanted to do was get out of the village. The two children frolicked again. They stopped at a nearby house in their path and placed their ear on its wall. They giggled slightly of what they were hearing, and then later moments of listening, they frolicked again, the other child fondly thwacking his defenseless playmate. As Soujiro walked past the house which the two children has eavesdropped, he knew why they were laughing – there were two angry voices heard from inside the house: one belonged to a woman, the other, to a man.

"I go home with no dinner on my plate!" the man said.

"Well, then make one yourself!" the woman replied in a mocking voice. "I have children to take care of! I have a house to tidy! I have a mountain of laundry to wash! You, on the other hand, go about frolicking with your mates, fucking around the city!"

"Why you – "

Soujiro thought that it was a good time to test it: he pretended not to hear. The two children stopped frolicking now when the other one saw that his playmate was already bleeding on the brow from all the thwacking… he cried furiously for a parent that did not seem to appear anywhere. The other child stared for a while at his playmate and his bleeding brow and without any further hesitation, he ran away, leaving the other to cry frantically. None of the villagers seemed to notice. Soujiro walked past the child. He stopped to his tracks. He felt an unspeakable emotion in his chest which made him want to help the child. He remembered when he used to cry this way for a parent that was not there to dry his tears for him. It was a very disturbing scenario. But he chose to ignore the child's cries until he has reached the outskirts. He looked back at the village.

"The strong shall live and the weak shall die," she said under his breath. "This would have been the end result of Mr. Shishio's world – a place where every day was a fight to survive; an apathetic world where everyone will be forced to be stripped-off from their emotions; a carnal urge of survival alone would exist."

And he, Soujiro, was the first to be molded by Shishio Makoto's vision of the world – an unfeeling killing machine.

"Oro?"

"Kenshin," Kaoru said impatiently, displaying her usual pout. "A woman normally holds the arm of her lover when they're out together. You should know better than say 'oro' to me!"

She squeezed his arms tighter. Sanosuke, Yahiko and Misao, who were behind them, laughed even harder.

"Hey Kenshin," Yahiko shouted. "Act like a gentleman! I could give you a run for your money!"

A bandaged fist, almost the size of Yahiko's head, had banged the boy on top.

"Don't mind the twirp, Kenshin!" Sanosuke said, not removing his fist on Yahiko's head. Misao giggled at their side.

It was almost three months now ever since the battle with the Juppongatana, that the Kenshin-gumi decided to take a break and travel. They left Kyoto very early in the morning. By afternoon, they were near their destination. The road, which they took, was a very fine road. Combined with the beauty of the clear blue sky and her sunny companion, the day was absolutely perfect for travel. The area was surrounded with trees that shade them from the heat and ray of the sun, the leaves silhouetting on their heads. Kaoru kept convincing Kenshin to walk side-by-side with her, while clinging into his arms. Kenshin hesitated, thinking that the idea was a joke since Kaoru did not usually behave this way.

"Kaoru-dono," Kenshin started. "I really feel awkward, I'm Sorry."

"There's really nothing to be awkward about."

"But – but…" he scratched his crimson head, hoping that it will open into little red pieces and collapse.

"I just remembered," Misao said, peering above the trees. "We're heading north aren't we?"

"Hai," they chorused.

"Isn't it that Soujiro Seta is also heading north? No chance that we might bump into him, eh?"

There suddenly became a change of wind: the group fell silent, their faces darkened as if the whole battle with the Juppongatana has come into them again. Soujiro Seta was the right-hand man of Shishio Makoto. His 'Sword of heaven' matched Kenshin's God-like speed. He was infamously known to them as the only person to have ruined Kenhisn's Sakabatou in halves. He was also known for assassinating Toshimichi Okubo, making him one of the most sought-after fugitives at this point.

"I haven't met him personally," Yahiko said, resting his bamboo sword on his shoulder. "But if he's managed to break Kenshin's sword in half, then he must really be a genius. Isn't he, Kenshin?"

Kenshin nodded. Yes, the boy was a genius no doubt but there was something incredibly yet melancholically strange about him. He was like an impenetrable brick wall, a stronghold that remains unshakable despite its weak foundations. "The strong shall live, and the weak shall die." The young man's voice echoed in Kenshin's head. These taunting words have haunted his dreams for months since that battle against Shishio ended.

'True, I 've always smiled in the rain. But the truth is, I was crying. Is it really that bad to be weak? I've always wanted to be strong, but… but… killing people… wasn't what I wanted! I never wanted to kill people!'

The sun peaked from the entangled leaves above the group as they marched on their travel, remembering the happiest and the worst of times.