Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin.
Sorry if anything doesn't match up to what really happened, this was for my English class and I highly doubt my teacher would know any better, lol. :P
Also, this is before he met any of the others, I didn't want to have to explain them in the essay. :)
The thing that I regret most about my life is that when I was young, I had joined the
Ishin Shishi at the start of the Bakumatsu war in 1863. While this is a seemingly small
revelation, it leads to a much bigger stain on my soul than I had originally intended. This one,
being the talented young swordsman I was, was hand chosen by Yamagata Aritomo to be a
hitokiri (manslayer) for Choshu. The style of swordsmanship I used is called the Hiten Mitsurugi
Ryu which was taught to me by my sensei Hiko Seijuro XIII, this technique allows this one to
draw his blade with 'god-like' speed which turns out to be quite effective when killing another
human being. When I joined the Ishin Shishi at age fourteen, it was this one's sole intention to
help the people of Japan. My sensei had asked me not to leave, that the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu
was too powerful to take any side in the war, and that it was meant only to protect the
innocent. Unfortunately, I had other ideas in which to help build a stronger and safer Japan. I
fought for the Ishin Shishi until the year before the end of the war in 1869. I had felt nothing
for the people I had slaughtered the first few years I had been in Choshu, but it had all changed
when a drunken woman had caught me in the middle of one of my assassinations. Instead of
killing her as was the normal ritual for unwanted witnesses, I brought her back to the Kohagiya
which was the headquarters for the Ishin Shishi and where this one was currently residing. I
suppose you could say we were holding her captive there, but she was treated no less aside
from the lecherous glances given to her by some of the other men in my company. During the
Ikedaya Affair, my cover was blown as the Hitokiri Battousai; the name of Battousai came from
the technique of Battou-jutsu which is used in the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. My leader Katsura
Kogoro, sent me and the woman that had seen me that night, Tomoe, to hide in the village
known as Otsu as husband and wife. We stayed there for a while and gradually fell in love with
each other. Just as this one had begun to think he would lead a normal life, tragedy struck.
Tomoe's younger brother came to visit us, and this one thought he had just missed her and
wanted her to come home, but they had plotted against this one to betray me for I had killed
her fiancé without knowing it a year earlier, she didn't want to go through with it though and
telling her brother this, he left. I had gone into the village later on to get some food we needed,
but upon my return, she was gone and all that was left was a letter explaining everything she
had planned and that I should meet her capturers if I wanted to see her again. Despite being
deeply hurt that she had betrayed me, I went, I loved her after all. On my way, the men had set
traps to weaken me so they could take me out easier, when I had reached the building they had
her in, the last man came out to fight me, but being greatly injured I could barely fight him off.
Tomoe seeing this, ran between us to protect me from being killed and I wasn't able to react in
time, slicing her all the way from her shoulder to her hip. This one had killed the man with the
slice as well, but it meant nothing now, for I had killed the one I loved. On her deathbed I
vowed that after the war ended I would never kill again. After her death, I had realized the
value of life, and the weight of all of the lives I had taken had begun to sink in. So I guess you
could say most of this one's life is one big regret.