Girls coo over the story of their meeting, but no one is at all impressed by their coming together. If anything, people to whom to the story is later told, including Megumi and Sano, lament that they failed utterly to match the early drama of their acquaintance. Their romance is not a stunningly sweet tale, or even a very interesting one.
Kenshin is in the process of doing something mundane and domestic, related to the wellbeing of the dojo, and Kaoru walks up to him, asking in blushing tones if he would mind explaining to her, and possibly demonstrating, the appropriate way to kiss. Every girl in the neighborhood has, she justifies, been kissed already, except for her, and evidently it is affecting her marriage prospects.
Kenshin is extremely discomfited. First of all, to be reminded that Kaoru has marriage prospects, which she does, given the size of her family property and more personal charms, and secondly, to be asked to teach her in a subject that still, to his knowledge, belongs in the bedroom.
He begins by saying that, no, he cannot demonstrate, and goes on to enumerate, without getting into his own issues, the many ways in which his doing so would be a dreadful idea. For instance, girls that go around kissing men are considered loose, and men that go around kissing girls are considered dishonorable villains. For instance, he has not kissed anyone in many years, and would hate to give her bad instruction. For instance, Yahiko might explode if he were ever to find out.
Kaoru dismisses these objections as ridiculous; she's not going to go around telling anyone specifics about her kissing misadventures, she trusts him, and Yahiko will never have to know. These are all reasonable arguments, he's aware. They live in the same building, after all, and are frequently alone together, so as long as they are careful, and he is always careful, even when he is only doing laundry, no one will ever know if his lips and hers touch. Her faith in his ability is gratifying, but now he breaks out one of his better arguments.
He is by no means an expert in the field of kissing.
In extremely halting terms, he explains his romantic history. His marriage was, by and large, one of convenience and innocence, even though affection was present, and as such he only barely has more experience than Kaoru herself. This is not strictly speaking true, and he suspects even as the words leave his mouth that she does not believe them.
Either way, she argues that even that slight advantage gives him something to teach her.
It is at this point that he becomes cornered into giving up his real objection, although not without the difficultly of extracting molars.
If he were to start kissing her, he is not at all sure that he would be able to stop. He is not at all sure that he would be able to restrain himself to merely kissing. He is not at all sure that he would be able to prevent himself from doing something truly reprehensible.
It occurs to him that perhaps the reason Kaoru had come to him with this request in the first place is that she does not consider him to be a man. A powerful warrior, yes, a dear friend, evidently, but not as a creature of animal instincts. She most likely has never considered that the cock between his legs holds nearly as much sway over his brain as any street thug's. Most likely, she has never even considered the idea of his having a penis.
These are the thoughts he thinks as he watches her subside into blushing silence. It is unfortunate that her large-eyed expression and red cheeks are so inflammatory to that part of his anatomy she has just been, obliquely, reminded of. He begins to retreat when she blurts out the thing that proceeds to change the course of their lives.
Maybe, she says, he should just marry her.
She goes on, stammering about how it wouldn't matter then, and he'd have a home, not that he wouldn't anyway, but someday if she marries someone else...and besides, not one thing would have to change, except kissing.
He feels very much like he's been brained with a beam, or possibly Sano's old and tremendously oversized sword. She's offering marriage, the total surrender of her person and property, in order to facilitate some kissing that will probably not be that good if it happens, which it won't.
And yet.
A very large part of him, the part that is so very uncomfortable with the notion of Kaoru marrying literally any man in the world apart from himself, wants to take her up on it. Wants to show her more than kissing. Wants to discover with her all the things he never learned in his marriage to Tomoe. Marry her, that part says, and then show her what all the fuss is truly about.
The very small part of him that is not corrupted and evil insists that to behave in such a manner would be the baldest dishonor, not only licentious but also duplicitous, and starkly admonishes the rest of him that to touch Kaoru, to kiss her, would besmirch not only his honor but hers as well.
The very small part loses, by a landslide.
He places hands on her shoulders, to quiet her, and somehow it leads to his mouth up against hers, hot and damp, simultaneously chaste and deeply sexual. She is whimpering by the time he pulls away, and his first coherent thought, after he finishes cataloguing the pleasant sensations they have evoked, is an expletive unpublishable by anyone's standards.
He is a man who had sex all of three times when he was fifteen, who has remained wholly celibate for the thirteen years since those first forays into coitus. His body is not overwhelmingly pleased by the interval, and is quite eager to get back to the business of carnal knowledge.
At this point it becomes clear to him that he will have to marry Kaoru, or he'll have to leave, right now, never to return, because otherwise they are going to burn in hell. Even without the transfixing gaze of her glazed blue eyes, he cannot contemplate the second option.
They are wed three days later, quietly. She wears her mother's kimono, and he wears her father's. Both sets of clothes were designed for somewhat taller and generally larger people, so both of them look slightly comical, but they don't care. Sake is sipped and their union blessed. They walk home hand in hand, drawing attention from all quarters, but attention is nothing new for the red-haired assassin and the firebrand kendo princess.
That night, Kenshin demonstrates everything he knows about the bedroom arts, and soon she has outstripped him. It is a rich learning experience on all sides, an exercise in creative mutual satisfaction.
Three months later Kaoru is struck down by flu, except that she isn't. Six months after that, a red-haired ball of fury enters their lives and is named Kenji.
There is little in it to titillate or amaze, but Kenshin cannot find it within himself to care. It is important to him that he met her—so incredibly important—and it is wonderful that their lives wove together so naturally, so completely. Whenever someone laughs or shakes their head or sighs about anticlimax, he steals a look at him wife, at their son, and smiles.
They've had their great epic, their saga of terror and violence. This story is just for the two of them.