Author's Note: I'm including something in this chapter one of you asked for a little while ago.
Enjoy :-)
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CHAPTER TEN
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Lost in his thoughts, Kagetora reached for his usual canvas jacket, prompting Haruie to hastily step in and press a thin, black overcoat from her own stocks into his hand. Oh. All right, then. At least he remembered to let Kasahara open the door for him.
And then, of course, he had to ruin the gesture by recalling all of a sudden that he had yet to give his final instructions for the evening to Haruie and Kiheiji. He turned on his heel (and by some small miracle didn't stumble again). Poking his head into the living-room once more, he gave Kiheiji a firm glance.
"Lights out at nine!"
Haruie grinned at him broadly. A tiny smile also tugged at Kiheiji's lips. Kagetora was at a loss about what his son was thinking about all this, but as long as he wasn't upset about his mother going out to dinner with a man, it should be fine with him.
Much to Kagetora's chagrin, they didn't meet one, but several of his neighbours on the way downstairs. Obviously, the old hags – as Haruie preferred to call them – had nothing better to do than stand and watch the only single woman in their apartment building being escorted down the stairs by a tall, good-looking stranger. One even turned to her friend to whisper into the other woman's ear, never taking her eyes off Minako's "suitor".
"Your neighbours sure take an active interest in what you're doing," Kasahara remarked.
"Absolutely," Kagetora answered loud enough for his neighbours to hear. "I've been under constant surveillance ever since I moved into this house."
"Oh? Why is that?" Kasahara asked when they stepped out on the street.
"I'm suspicious," Kagetora shrugged. "I'm a single woman with a young child and no husband. I turned up who-knows-where-from, so nobody can testify to my respectability. They're more or less secretly convinced that I made up my marriage."
"I can understand them," Kasahara said much to Kagetora's surprise.
He turned and gave the man a sharp glance. "Oh, really?"
"Of course. You're living their own dreams – or at least, they believe you are which practically amounts to the same."
Kagetora blinked. "Their dreams?"
"Their dreams of being freed from society's expectations, of being with other men than the ones they married a long time ago. They would have liked to but never dared and they blame you for apparently taking that freedom. I bet the men were never as hostile towards to as the women."
"You really believe that?" Kagetora asked. Kasahara couldn't know but what he had just described was named projection in psychology: ascribing one's own thoughts, feelings and secret longings to one's fellow man.
"I do. It's called projection in psychology, isn't it?" Kasahara laughed softly at his stunned gaze. "No need to look so surprised! You know I've been spending a lot of time with psychologists – something's bound to get stuck. All these old or middle-aged women unhappy with their marriages are bound to envy a young one who's responsible to no one and can enjoy her life to the fullest."
Kagetora gave him a scolding look. "Not everyone believes in switching partners at a regular basis as a way to enjoy one's life to the fullest. You just think that because it's your –"
"Because it's my kind of lifestyle?" Kasahara suggested.
Kagetora held his gaze for a moment before returning it to the street in front of them. How on earth had such a topic come up at all? "And it's none of my business."
He could hear the smile in Kasahara's voice. "You're my doctor, everything about me is your business."
"I wouldn't know," Kagetora murmured. He almost walked by the car parked a couple of houses away from his own. Kasahara pointed it out to him by opening the door on the passenger side.
"You didn't think I wouldn't arrange for proper transportation, did you?"
It had been years since he had last driven a car, Kagetora realized with a pang of regret. Besides the fact that there was never enough money around to afford one, it wouldn't have made much sense to have one either: Tokyoites got everywhere by metro. Even at six in the morning it would have been impossible to find a parking slot anywhere near his workplace. It was much better not to have to worry about such things in the first place.
He missed it, though, the feeling of control, the speed…Making himself comfortable in the passenger seat while Kasahara closed the door on his side, he realized that he hadn't been this close to a wheel in almost ten years. The car smelled new, of leather and freshly adjusted seat fabric.
He could feel his fingers itch looking at the wheel and the gear box. It would be so easy to bring up the subject of how much he had loved to drive in younger years and –
Of course, he bit his tongue before he could ask anything that audacious.
/\/
Minako was watching very closely what he was doing, Kasahara noticed stopping in front of a streetlight.
In a magazine – and he had been skimming through quite a bit of those while waiting in what felt like a hundred different doctors' practices over the years – he had once found an article according to which most women believed that a man's character showed in his way of driving a car. He wondered what Minako might be detecting from his driving skills.
She was being very quiet, her attention focused on his driving in a way that bordered on impolite. He didn't mind, though. It gave him all the time in the world to watch her from the corner of his eye. She didn't notice, of course. She never did when he stared at her. Kasahara suppressed a smile. He had never met a woman this little aware of her own beauty.
All this time before, she had always been very cautious when he was around – she used to completely focus on him almost as if the tiniest slip of attention might cost her dearly. Now, her attention was elsewhere for the first time. He was just wondering whether this might mean her softening a little towards him, when she stunned him dead again.
"So, how many hp does it have?" she asked, curiously watching the speedometer.
Kasahara could feel his mouth fall open in a decidedly undignified manner. The things she was interested in!
"I'm afraid I don't know," he answered when he had regained his composure. "It's a company car, I don't have one of my own."
"Oh, so you wouldn't know." She looked slightly crestfallen, just as if the answer had been really important to her.
"I believe it's one of those new ones that employ a white light to show when it's put into reverse."
Her face positively lit up. "Is it really? I've never seen one up close."
Inwardly shaking his head, he scanned his brain for snippets of facts he had caught about the engine of the car model.
/\/
His thoughts preoccupied with the various features of the car, Kagetora practically forgot to ask where Kasahara was leading him at all. They had spoken about dinner, so he expected a restaurant, maybe a traditional one, when they stopped in front of a large glass palace somewhere in Shinjuku.
From the outside, it seemed to be one of those huge hotels they had met in sometimes during their fight against Nobunaga. Kagetora ever since associated this kind of place with a mixture of giddiness and boredom, agitated arguments, bad coffee coming by the litre and falling asleep as soon as his head would hit the pillow. Therefor he was completely unprepared for the atmosphere that engulfed them as soon as the doors closed behind them.
The light was very pleasant: a mixture of electricity and candles, it perfectly integrated the blue and silver decoration of the walls. A small pond in the middle of the hall with tiny artificial cascades filling the air with their chortling completed the composition. Just by standing here and listening, Kagetora already felt a large part of the day's stress vanish into thin air.
It seemed that Kasahara had found them a place of quietness in the middle of the city.
"Do you like it?"
"Very," Kagetora had to admit. "How did you find it?" he asked and regretted the question immediately. The last thing he wanted was for Kasahara to tell him about any past dates he had brought here!
"I didn't." The man put a hand on his elbow as the waiter gestured for them to follow him. "There's another place of the same name in Shinjuku. Our secretary is new and made a mistake when she booked a table for a customer meeting here instead."
"Oh." Suddenly and inexplicably pleased with the world in general (as well as with the fact that he hadn't stumbled once since he had gotten out of the car), Kagetora took a seat opposite of his companion.
"This place became a kind of insiders' tip among our sales people and one of them recommended it to me. I visited it about a week before after work and found it suitable for you."
"Is that what you've been doing in the evenings since you left our house?" Kagetora asked to downplay his embarrassment about Kasahara putting such an effort into this whole business.
"Usually, I don't do much at all so far", he answered. "There isn't so much to do except work – and maybe I should buy a bit of furniture now and then."
Kagetora blinked. "I'm prying," he murmured. "Excuse me."
"On the contrary, I don't mind at all." Kasahara smiled at him. "But what I actually had in mind when I invited you here was a kind of trade-off."
"Oh?" Kagetora asked, pretty sure that he knew what was going to come.
"We've known each other for several months now, but I still know little more about you than I did on the first day."
"Maybe there just isn't a lot to know. I think I'm one of the most boring people around."
/\/
Kasahara would have liked to laugh, but refrained from it. He could feel that she meant what she said. "I don't think so at all," he said softly.
The look he received could only be described as doubtful. "Take your profession for example," he tried to explain. "I'm a controller myself, as you know."
Minako nodded. The topic had come up during one of their sessions.
"Of course, we're constantly being told about the importance of our work and it makes us feel quite important ourselves, but let's face it: it doesn't matter that much if I hand in this or that report today or tomorrow. What you're doing is completely different. People's lives depend on you."
"I'm not actually in the life saving department," Minako added for consideration.
"You're in the sanity saving department. I believe that is just as important or actually, it might very well be the same for the people you are seeing to."
She lowered her gaze. Still smiling, he let his own follow. Each holding on to their respective glass of wine, their hands were lying beside each other on the table. He couldn't help noticing how much smaller hers were – lovely fine-boned hands with short fingernails and not an ounce of polish.
/\/
Looking at the strong, slender fingers of Naoe's host body, Kagetora couldn't help imagine them holding Minako down, bruising the tender flesh of her wrists. He had only seen flashes of what had happened during those agonizing seconds when his soul had been pushing hers out of the body he was still possessing today, but even that had been quite enough. Also, his own experience helped him fill the gaps.
And this man had done it. This handsome, sophisticated appearance regarding him from familiar greyish eyes… Just as with the rest of them, Naoe's eyes would always remain the same, no matter which body he possessed. The eyes were just the same and so were the memories of his crime were buried somewhere, out of reach. Did that make him someone different, someone innocent of all wrongs of the past? Was that possible?
Not for the first time tonight, he would have liked to reach out for the barrier in Naoe's mind and put it to the test to see if it still stood strong. He didn't dare. Kasahara was bound to notice, even if he didn't remember and therefor didn't know about such things. And if he did remember…
Kagetora forced himself to breathe even and focus on the here and now. "I don't see it like that," he referred to his job.
"We others do," Kasahara insisted. "Kiheiji does. He is very proud of what you're doing. "
The casual mention of their child made Kagetora take a deep breath. He would never sit here like this with me if he knew…
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"You picked him up from school a couple of weeks ago."
Kasahara nodded.
"What happened?" Kagetora probed, dismissing any plans of addressing the matter discreetly. "Did you have a heart-to-heart with him or something like that?"
Kasahara laughed. "Why are you asking?"
"It's just that ever since he hasn't been as hostile towards you as he used to be. So I'm wondering."
"He was just getting ready for a fight with four older kids when I showed up."
"You intervened," Kagetora took a guess.
"You bet I did," Kasahara answered emphatically. "I mean, four of them? Seriously…"
Kagetora frowned. From an early age on, he had made sure that his son knew the basics of self-defence. In the sixties, the news coverage on topics such as child abuse and sexual assaults on children (often in combination with murder) had gone up, but of course, the growing public awareness of those dangers wasn't the only reason, he had taken a special interest in Kiheiji being able to defend himself. Given his own experiences several centuries ago, Kagetora was in the best position to know that the good old times when such things didn't happen had in fact never existed. People just liked to think that.
In a way, he knew he should be glad that is son so far had only ever had to put those techniques to use against peers, not against adults who meant to harm him. But now he wondered for the first time if the tricks he had been taught hadn't made Kiheiji over-confident in such matters.
"How did he react?"
"Not too pleased to see me, but he warmed up a bit afterwards."
Kagetora's eyes widened. So it had been Kiheiji who had given Naoe the hint with the morning glories! Go figure.
/\/
A tiny smirk appeared on Minako's face. "Did he happen to tell you what went on before?"
"Why they were out to get him, you mean? Do tell."
She put her chin into the palm of her hand. "Kiheiji got into a fight with one of the boys, it seems. To avenge himself, he stole a bucket of pink paint from the art classroom and poured it over their bicycles."
Kasahara burst out laughing. "That's quite original, actually. Did it come off again?"
"I've no idea. Anyway, ever since they've been having it in for him. I can't even say that I blame them."
"Is this exceptional? Or does he tend to get into fights?" Kasahara found that he wouldn't be surprised to receive a positive answer on that one.
"Only with fellow students. Not to mention the – oh, fifty times I had to come and talk to his teachers or the principal."
Kasahara laughed.
"Sometimes I wonder where he gets it from," Minako murmured. Her eyes were taking one a far-away expression as if she were recalling her own childhood. "I was brought up to adjust easily and keep my own thoughts to myself, to be obedient and respectful and to never shame my family." She drew a deep breath. "And his father was... exceptionally able when it came to keeping himself out of trouble and looking after his own interests."
Kasahara tilted his head. Thus, the topic of her late husband had come up much sooner than he had expected, and even without him prompting it.
"Sometimes, looking after one's own interests means to fight," he suggested.
Her amber gaze settled on him as if she found what he had said to be profound. "Let's say in a fight, he never would have picked the losing side."
Kasahara was astonished by this characterization. Plus he had the impression of an underlying sense to the remark – as if there was more to it than he was able to catch on. There was a kind of spark in her eyes when she said this, almost as if she were challenging him to further pursue the subject.
"Pardon me for saying so – but you make him seem like a complete opportunist."
Minako fell silent for a long moment. When she finally spoke, she seemed to choose her words extremely carefully, indicating just how important this whole matter was to her.
"When I first met him, it wouldn't have been that far from the truth to call him an opportunist. He was interested in nothing but his own advantage – or so it seemed to me. As if there was nothing more to him but a deep interest in himself, but at the same time he knew exactly how to disguise this rather petty sense of self-preservation with talk about values such as honour and loyalty."
Kasahara raised a brow. "You weren't exactly smitten with him when you first met him."
"We… weren't exactly friends when circumstance forced us to work together. At first, I thought him a very cold person."
"But he wasn't?"
"He was." A tiny sad smile was reflecting in Minako's eyes. "He was just passionate about some things, too."
Kasahara smiled. "I'm not surprised you had that effect on him."
"Now you're jumping to conclusions." She avoided his gaze.
He couldn't very well tell her that he had been quizzing Sasaki-sensei about her relationship with her late husband – and that the old man had implied the moral influence she had wielded over him. Besides, what would a man be passionate about if not his woman?
"I'm merely watching your interaction with others, sensei," he said in a slightly teasing tone. "Surely you must know that you do have quite an influence on people. Most of them let themselves be ordered around by you without even thinking much of it."
"You're mistaken," she answered simply. "Not about the outcome maybe, but about my measures. Every time I order people around as you put it, I'm secretly surprised that they actually do what I'm telling them."
/\/
What am I saying? Kagetora narrowed his eyes at his own most irrational behaviour. This was hardly something he would ever admit to, and for good reasons. He gave the bottle of wine a suspicious glance.
Kasahara laughed softly and a little amazed at the statement. "You're a very honest character, Minako-sensei… honest to a fault, one might say."
You should be tired of lying…
Kagetora ever so slightly shook his head to throw off the memory, even though it wasn't uninteresting how Kasahara could come to a completely different conclusion about his character than Naoe had. This was where their differences ended, though, Kagetora thought with slight exasperation. Just like his alter ego that Kagetora knew much better, Kasahara had set his mind on him, to get to know him.
There was something however about Kasahara that made him spill his guts in a very casual way. He did his given name honour, Kagetora thought. Yuuto – a character of persistence. As for himself, he was playing a familiar game with altered rules here, Kagetora realized. He was once again trying to convince Naoe that the latter was dealing with just another human being when dealing with him – fallible, weak and insecure, just like the rest of them.
And just like last time, he wasn't being believed – if for different reasons as it seemed.
It happened within a split second. Relief permeated every fibre of his body. He could feel himself relaxing into his chair.
He doesn't know.
Without a thought, he sent a heartfelt smile over to Kasahara.
He isn't hiding anything.
A sudden wave of exhilaration drowned any trace of the bad conscience Kagetora had harboured about concealing the truth from Naoe as he did. With a slightly curious look in his eyes, Kasahara returned the smile before he ordered the bill. If he wondered about Kagetora's sudden mood swing, he didn't show it. His hands came to rest on Kagetora's shoulders for a split second when he helped him into Haruie's coat.
Stepping out onto the street was a bit like waking up from a pleasant dream. It wasn't actually dark, there was never real dark in Tokyo – especially not on this broad avenue flanked by high trees with streetlights between them. It was much noisier, though.
"Let's walk a bit," Kasahara suggested. For a second Kagetora believed he might offer his arm to him and felt himself tense already. But Kasahara proved himself to be adaptive and did no such thing. They walked side by side in a slightly tense and stretching silence that made Kagetora wonder what he could say or do to break it. Thankfully, he found the answer without further wrecking his brains about it.
"My duty starts at 5 pm tomorrow. When do you have to get up?" he asked.
"You mean today?" Kasahara smiled.
Oh. Right. He hadn't realized how late it was getting.
Although there had been a variety of quiet times in his life ever since Aso – caring for Kiheiji when he was a baby, spending hundreds of hours brooding in silence over his textbooks for university trying to wrap his own brain around Minako's topics of fascination, playing with his son, cleaning the flat, running miles and miles along a deserted coastline – he wasn't used to do anything for the sake of its own.
He couldn't remember ever doing anything just for the fun of it in all this time. The child had to be cared for, so that's what he did. Somehow he had to pay the rent, so he took up studying medicine and working at a hospital. And in order not to lose his nerve about this strange new normal life he was forced to lead, he had started running. Free time was scarce and he was actually glad to be so busy. But now he suddenly felt himself seized by the desire to do something out of the ordinary. To stop thinking and worrying about the future, about his mission, about Kenshin finding out about his grandson, about Naoe showing up on his doorstep and demanding explanations… to simply enjoy the mild night and the (so far) unobtrusive company.
It was a dangerous thought – as he was very much aware of, even while it went through his brain. He would be damned if he let himself be lulled into a false sense of security by Kasahara's gentle, deferent ways. He vowed not to let his guard down. And if he had to break into a run, he'd rather do it without the shoes, he decided.
He stopped and gestured for Kasahara to wait for him. Maybe the alcohol had indeed slightly gotten the better of him – females had a lower tolerance than men, wasn't that another one of Haruie's "scientifically proven facts"? – or maybe there simply was no other way of proceeding as he planned without losing his equilibrium. In any case he found himself putting a hand on Kasahara's lower arm, surprising both himself and his companion. Leaning onto the man's arm, Kagetora fingered for the straps of Haruie's ankle-ties and took off one after the other.
"They're killing me," he shrugged as an explanation for his less than ladylike behaviour. Haruie wouldn't be too happy about this, but then, neither of them had to tell her.
Kasahara smiled. "I've wanted to say before: it's a lovely outfit you're wearing."
"Says the one who doesn't have to wear it."
Kasahara raised a brow. "Me in a dress and high heels would be kind of strange. Can you imagine me wearing that?"
"No," Kagetora answered unable to keep a sarcastic undertone from his voice. "I can hardly imagine myself wearing that."
If Kasahara caught the undertone, he didn't show it. "It suits you quite well."
"I'm not so sure about that," Kagetora murmured.
"Certainly, you must have taken a look into the mirror before we left?" Kasahara suggested.
"I'm not really used to all that." He paused. "Dinners and flowers and… and doors being held open for me – that's not me," he tried to explain without hope of Kasahara understanding.
"Too much attention, is that it?"
Naoe would have screwed up at this moment – or long before, actually. Kagetora was sure of it. But Kasahara... well, he was obviously taking his daily dose of whatever it was that made him say exactly the right things at exactly the right moment. Or sometimes – as now – he was hitting a bit too close to home for Kagetora to find it comfortable.
Naoe had called it his flaw – his inability to form relationships, to put his trust in somebody completely. What could easily be misinterpreted as strength was in fact a dangerous weakness. However, what had taken Naoe centuries to find out, Kasahara had caught on within the course of a few months… It was slightly unsettling, to say the least.
And speaking of attention –
Kasahara's mild greyish gaze was suddenly looming close. That much for not letting his guard down. He had stepped nearer without Kagetora noticing.
Kagetora felt an unpleasant jolt go through his body and got ready to retreat from the man's larger frame, only to find that Kasahara had placed his hands to both sides of his face. Gentle fingertips were gliding over his ear shells.
Kagetora opened his mouth to immediately call a halt to all this and felt his breath catch in his lungs. Technically, the man wasn't holding him in place, nor was he employing any force while slowly closing the space between them.
Now what was I going to say, Kagetora asked himself through the haze. Oh, right. Tell him to stop…
Except that he didn't say anything. In his mind, everything seemed to slow down. He just stood frozen, unable to stop their breath from intermingling or Kasahara's lips from finally brushing over his own, light as feathers.
/\/
All right. What he had just done contradicted each and every rule ever set for first dates, Kasahara knew. He simply hadn't been able to stop himself.
She was just too lovely in whatever deep thoughts he could only guess at: her eyes large and dark in her pale face, a nervous vein throbbing right beneath the fragile skin of her neck.
A shop window exploded right next to them.
A strand of Minako's hair hit his face, blinding him for a second. The damaged shop's alarm siren went off.
Kasahara never knew what was happening until it happened.
He felt no fear. Without thinking, he took a step forward, shielding Minako's body against the onslaught, lifting his right hand against the flashes of lightning flying towards them in a horizontal line.
Part of him wasn't even surprised that by some strange miracle the flashes seemed to collide with an invisible barrier inches in front of his outstretched fingers.
/\/
This was something Kagetora hadn't experienced in nearly a decade: the sensation of someone putting up a barrier between him and another's attack. As much as he would have liked to ask one of the dozens of questions running through his bewildered mind like a rapid stream ("Do you remember how did you do that are you hurt what are you thinking do you remember me?") his attention was drawn elsewhere. They seemed to be under attack after all – and it didn't take him a heartbeat to conclude whom it came from.
Burnt child that he was, the first thing Kagetora did was lower his gaze to the ground surrounding them to inspect it for the tell-tale signs of an absorption seal. While he had no idea if Ranmaru was actually capable of doing this without Nobunaga's help, being held in an enemy kekkai that rendered his own powers unusable hadn't exactly been an experience he wanted to repeat any time soon.
But this didn't seem to be the case. Not a second too early, Kagetora whirled around, scanning the near-deserted street and the spaces between the trees for signs of enemy movement. With a soft thud, Mori Ranmaru landed on the pavement a few metres away from them and gave Kagetora an amused glance while bowing with the dramatic grace of a kabuki actor.
/\/
Author's Note: Let's leave it at that for today, shall we? ^_~
I've been asked repeatedly about where the title of this fic comes from. Actually, when you google "Nights with Matches and Knives", this story will come up first ^_^, but the title is a line from a song by Indigo Girls: "Blood and Fire".
I found some of the lines quite fitting Kagetora:
I am looking for someone who can take as much as I give
Give back as much as I need and still have the will to live
I am intense, I am in need, I am in pain, I am in love
I feel forsaken like the things I gave away
But blood and fire are too much for these restless arms to hold
And my nights of desire are calling me back to your fold
Next chapter: "Our relationship wasn't a very good one, was it?"
"Let's say it was good, but difficult. I could never quite understand why my father gave the task of watching over me to you of all people."