Disclaimer: This is getting redundant. I don't own Rurouni Kenshin, period.
Writer's block's annoying as hell. Somehow this chapter managed to turn out better than expected. Read and review now.
Chapter Three: The Cat, the Dog, and I
A tiny moon lit up on the inky boundless sky. I ran, it ran. I took one step, it took one. Proud and at leisure, it was always ahead, sticking a sickle-shaped tongue at me.
"Why doesn't tonight's moon look like the other night's?" I wondered aloud, not really expecting an answer. Even though Shishio-san was right here, his mind was likely to be in the "plotting mode". Again. For a man who thought he was king of the world, thinking about stuff like...being king of the world required a good deal of concentration, attention, contemplation and such. Answering a kid's question on the amazing wonders of the universe was definitely not on the list.
So, I made up my own answer instead.
Maybe it had to do with what the moon was made of. Something pure and white...Sugar? Salt? Hmm...couldn't be, because then the wind would blow it all away. Milk? No, otherwise Japan would be drowned in milk--although that'd mean the poor people could have milk to drink...anyways, it had to be something else.
..."Yatta!" I almost screamed out in excitement. Had to clamp a hand up my mouth before Shishio-san scowl at me for "blocking his train of thought heading its way toward world domination" (I had no clue what that meant).
Where was I? Oh yeah...
Ready? Here it comes:
...the moon...
...is...
...a...giant...
...ricecake!
At this shocking revelation, the moon fell down, crashed against the rocky edges of Mt. Fuji and shattered into lots and lots of shiny pieces.
Don't worry, I was just joking. The moon was still intact. It wouldn't be tomorrow or the day after, though. The rats--not just your average warehouse rats, but rat monsters--'d nibble on it, chunks after chunks, until all that left was a bare, pitch black sky. Trust me, rats could chew up anything. The Seta family had forced me to sleep with them before. Nasty, nasty creatures.
"Itai!" Apparently my face just slammed against something. The pain wasn't pleasant, but it was a good thing I ran into a tree and not off a cliff. I did not believe in what people said about learning to fly on the way down. Had I been able to fly, I'd flap my wings from the rice warehouse and let the Seta family eat my dust. Knowing this, they had gone ahead and cut off my wings, strap a rice barrel on my back and bury my dreams in the dirt. Wingless, this little bird could never take flight.
On days that I was too tired to fall asleep, I murmured the make-believe stories to myself until my eyes drooped. Shishio-san'd remained indifferent to my making a fool of myself as long as he found it not disturbing to his solace. If he did, he'd order me to stop. With Shishio-san, there were plenty of orders and few explanation. If curiosity wouldn't stop nagging me, I'd have to create my own answer. Most of the time, the ideas I came up with were silly and childish. Shishio-san'd flatly shoot them down: wrong, wrong, wrong. And then proceed to a mature, highly philosophical answer that threw my mind into a wild whirlwind of confusion.
Given this, the ricecake moon and rat monsters were liable to be wrong too. But that's alright, I've had fun with my make-believe story. Shishio-san could never see the moon the way I saw, or think of rats the way I thought. Logic had squeezed every morsel of imagination out of the man to make room for more reality. Real life issues like how to gather an able army for the take-over or just simply where we should go next to shake the policemen off our tail...
"We're stopping here. Go talk to the owner." ordered Shishio-san, gesturing toward the shabby house surrounded with wild weeds and grasses ahead. It looked more fitting for ghosts than people, though Shishio-san's demeanor was sure to scare any ghost away.
The owner was slow to answer. Behind the rotting hatch was a pale, disheveled woman carrying a wailing baby in her arms. Its crying sounded like the yowling of a cat in pain.
"What the hell are you doing at this time at night? Get out if you don't want me beating the daylight out of you. Shoo, you little rascal! Go home!" She snapped at me, irritably.
I immediately put on my sweetest smile, "I'm so very sorry, ma'am. Please let us stay here for just a short while. We'll keep to ourselves, you won't even notice our being here." Pushing the money into her hand, I added, "Take this as compensation for all your trouble."
However, the woman's attention wasn't on me anymore. Her eyes were fixed on Shishio-san, utterly horrified and then turned hysterical. "Out! Get out! I know the low life son-of-a-bitch who sent for you! Hiring thugs to assault a widow and her baby to steal her land! Kami damn you all to hell! Out of here now, I say!" Furiously, she threw the money in my face and slammed the door shut.
"Are we going to kill them?" I knew the man wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.
"No, I'm not a thug." He gave the hatch a forceful thrust--though it wasn't necessary, given its deteriorated condition. The flimsy hatch fell off its hinges and crashed onto the ground.
Trembling, the mother clutched fiercely to her baby, which was making the most distressful sounds I've ever heard. "Go away, go away! Why won't you leave us alone?"
"I will. I don't know the scum you were ranting about, and frankly don't care. The boy and I are staying, though. Don't worry, I won't hurt you..." An apathetic smirk. "...and won't be concerned with you either."
He kept his words. During our stay, we lived like ghosts among the living. The mother let us--or rather, was forced to let us--live in a separate guest wing, which was dusty and smelled of rot. Nobody complained, because it also happened to be the room that leaked the least when it rained. All of us ate rice with salted dried fish while the cat-baby ate snow crab and oyster soup. It stared blankly at the new toys bought with the new money, did not grow better despite the costly, nutritious foods she fed it. Still the same tiny stature, dumb cat-like face, and the sorrowful yowling that crushed the mother's heart. She carried it on her back almost every single waking moment--while working on the fields, going to the market, cooking and cleaning--lest the cat-baby brought harm on itself. I envied the love she showered on her cat-baby. She didn't turn its face to the mud even if it was born a freak...
I wasn't a freak, how could my own mother throw me away?
But then, what kind of child killed his family? What kind of child admired a blood-thirsty murderer? What kind of child swung sword day after day, aspiring to be strong like his mad sensei?
Perhaps my mother saw through the damned freak in me after all.
Training kept me busy. Waking up before the rooster called and train until the crickets chirped was the norm. So far I've been practicing kata, which turned out to be a bigger pain than it looked.
"Don't just swing the stick like an old woman sweeping the house! Swing, slash, and stab. Every sword technique ever created involved these three moves. Once you've nailed them, you're on the way to become a killing machine."
My "swing, slash, and stab" was feeble. Not only did I fail to hit the hanging dirt bag, it flew back and gave me a black eye.
"Practice forty times. Don't you dare put down that stick until you're done."
"But, Shishio-san..."
"You want to be strong, don't you? If you can't even do this, go stab yourself." With that said, he lit his pipe and went away.
I swung, slashed, and stabbed like crazy. My brains completely shut down, only the body moved-each movement aching to the bone. It seemed that someone had taken the day and stretched it longer and longer like a rubber band, just to spite me. When Shishio-san returned late at night, I was a wreck--lying next to the fallen dirt bag (finally knocked it down), hands bleeding and ankles sprained.
"Soujiro."
"How many times have you done it?"
"A lot...lots..." The smile was dazed and crooked.
"How many is a lot?"
"I...can't say..."
"You're trying my patience, kid."
"...don't know how to...count..."
"Why the hell didn't you say so?"
"You said go die."
He cursed.
Once I could get up to my feet again, we started a new training session that was even more dreadful than the last. Shishio-san took out a round golden object from his pocket.
"What is that, Shishio-san?"
"A watch." Pointing at the tree at the crossroad that I bumped into the other day, he said, "Run up to that tree and back to the house in six seconds, ten times straight. Each time you foul up, do over ten times more. I'm keeping count, go."
Do over, do over, do over the whole day. The next morning, I opened my eyes and saw a gnarling, angry dog. Did Shishio-san give up on me?
"Are you going to feed me to the dog?" Scared as I was, I was smiling like an idiot.
"Yes." He replied drily. And dropped the leash.
I swore, it was a demon dog. What kind of dog would chase after a bag of skin and bones anyways? Its sharp teeth ripped my skin off: arm, feet, and buttocks. At the end of the next day, I passed out--either from lost of blood or exhaustion, or both. In my red-tinted nightmares, I was surrouned by the dog from hell. A doctor from the village was called on to tend for me, who was said to have "some sort of freak accident".
"The injuries aren't lethal, but I need to see the dog that bit him. If it had rabies, then I afraid..."
"What's going to happen to him?" came the mother's voice.
"He dies. There is nothing I can do."
to be continue...
Author's Note (edit July 6th, 2007): I finally remembered where I read about the Crie-du-chat (cry of the cat) syndrome, which is the disorder that the cat baby in the story has. It is resulted from partial deletion of chromosome 5, causing the infant to sound like a meowing cat (due to problems with the larynx & nervous system), and become retarded in growth and cognition. Of course, they didn't know any of this back then, so they just thought of the baby as demon-possessed.