Warning: My mood in creating a dramatic GinHiji situation has returned
Disclaimer: The manga is in its' epic arc… where's the anime adaptation!?
She Forgot To Give Back What Belonged To Me
Extract 11
There's Nothing You Can Do About The Past, So Do Something About The Present
They chased the bandits away and quashed the violent flame. Everyone was busy in trying to get the village back in order and could not spare any men to look for a mere servant.
Hijikata's hand was slapped away as he tried to help one of his older brothers who was lying on the ground next to him. The action slightly hurt him although he acted as if it didn't bother him. Instead, he turned and ran towards Tamegoro and his wife, Minami, making sure that the two are alright before he heads off to search for Himura Yuzuki.
He ran towards the direction where he had last seen her, calling her name although it was drowned out by the villagers who are still trying to save the people under the crumbled buildings.
He searched for her, high and low, and at last found her lying on the meadow with an injury to the back of her head.
Little Hijikata gently slapped her cheek as he called her name, waiting for her to regain her consciousness.
Glazed eyes slowly opened and as she recognized the person in front of her, she hugged him tight and cried on his shoulder. Her body trembled as her sob intensified.
As much as he asked, she said nothing but the words I'm sorry.
Once again, they have seated themselves next to the low table. Himura poured the tea and served the rice crackers to the guests while Gintoki busied himself on snacking on the forgotten strawberry Pocky.
The atmosphere was sombre as no one spoke. There was only a rustle and a crunch for every strawberry stick that the perm-head took out of its package.
At last, Himura Yuzuki resigned herself to be the first to speak.
'The fire…' she stopped and tried again.
'The bandits…'
She could not look him in the eyes and with fists clenched on her lap, she conveyed to him the guilt that she had carried for all these years.
'I am so sorry. It was all my fault.' Her forehead and hands are plastered on the ground, performing a dogeza* to convey her sincere regret as she threw her pride away in exchange for his forgiveness.
'Himura-san, stop that.' Hijikata frowned. 'I just want to know how it became "your fault". Because it's not like you set the village on fire and called the bandits to raid our house, so I can't possibly imagine how it's related.'
Hijikata crossed his arms, his expression soured as he waited for her explanation. Gintoki expressionlessly watched the two with dead-fish eyes, munching on the Pocky like a rabbit munching on a carrot.
'That day I was taken by a bandit, he told me who it was that ordered the attack.' She slowly raised her head and gulped. 'It was my Father.'
Hijikata could barely concealed his surprise. 'Your Father? Why? What made him-…'
'…-it was a warning. He wanted me to return home.' Now seated comfortably, Yuzuki started to tell him a long story of her family.
'This incident is in a way related to my family situation. My Father was the artisan that made the Scarlet Match as I have said before. He was a skilled man, passionate in his work and thoroughly obsessed over his art. Even the last Shogun admired his dedication on his work that had produced amazing result over the years, such as the first production of portable lighters and its' varieties. No one could compare to him in this field.'
Hijikata recalled the sadness behind her smile. '…A great man but the worst Father, right?' she had once said to him in the cool breeze of a summer afternoon.
'My Father could be said quite the peculiar person. He wandered from town to town in order to look for a new inspiration for his work. In this town, he met my Mother who was a Miko in this exact shrine, and fell in love with her. They were quickly married. My Mother quit from being a Miko, moved away to Kyoto and built a happy family there…
…or they were supposed to.'
Pausing for a breath, Yuzuki took a sip of her lukewarm tea. Noticing that Gintoki had run out of Pocky, she offered him another package which he took gladly.
'Ne, Toushirou-kun, do you believe in love at first sight?' She directed the question at the startled raven-head.
He wondered as to where the story will lead and gruffly answered, 'No'.
She bitterly laughed.
'That's good for you, Toushirou-kun. I'm glad you're not a romantic, it saves you from heartbreaks. Because in this world, there is no such thing as love at first sight. People's feeling are fleeting and emotions change like the weather. My parents were supposedly "in love", but their "love" only lasted until I was seven. Father was immersed in his work again by then, and gradually started to come home less and less.'
Yuzuki smiled but her voice was harsh. 'In the end, he never came home.'
Hijikata saw her for the first time. Behind the mask of kindness and inner strength that he saw all those years ago, she was in fact only a girl hurt by disappointed expectation.
'Mother was a frail person from the start, and being neglected like that, she became sickly. It was only my Mother and I; the two of us in that large house. We lasted ten years without the Head of the Family and only envelopes of money arriving monthly in our mail.'
'But there was that one time, he came back.' Her anger rose in remembering, and the hurt that she experienced clearly showed on her face. The two men silently listened. 'I can never forget how happy I was, thinking how happy Mother would be to see him. At last he was finished in his task, I thought. At last he's coming home for good, I thought. We can be a family again; the hope in our hearts resonated as we both sincerely wish it to come true. But it turned out…
'She was the only one who was in love.'
Flashback
'Father, you've come home!' She bounded up to him happily and stopped short. 'Your hand!' she exclaimed in surprise, 'it is injured! Let me treat it.'
She found the first aid box and carefully tended the wounds. Blisters and callouses formed along with fresh burns that are a part of his job and passion.
She was relieved that he has returned, because Mother has become vulnerably weak. She wanted him to stay, to be by their side forever, but he hadn't uttered a word since his arrival.
'Father, Mother have longed to see you. Please visit her, I'm concerned with her current condition and a visit from you, Father, will make her very happy I'm sure.' Yuzuki reached for the hand to grasp it in her own. But she was thoroughly surprised when he slapped her hand away.
'Father?' her voice trembled. She swallowed to clear her throat, believing that what happened was an accident and he meant nothing by it.
'Father, come. Mother is waiting for you.' She reached for those hands once again only to see them retracted out of her reach.
'I'm leaving.' It was the first and last time a deep voice spoke, forming the words she least wanted to hear.
She scrabbled after him. She tried to grab the green sleeves of his kimono, the words Why? No! Please, formed from her mouth.
He ignored them.
The noise must have woken her. Yuzuki heard the soft voice, saw the frail figure leaning against the doorframe, trying to stop her husband from leaving too.
She coughed her heart-wrenching coughs and he paused but only for a moment.
Taking the papers he needed, he put on the straw sandals and left with the unfamiliar men who waited outside.
Yuzuki ran to help her Mother as she collapsed. The coughs and blood, the tears and heartbreak; they are out of place in the fine weather of midsummer.
'WHY!?' she screamed towards his back as she sobbed her little heart out. The tears running down her pretty face was frequently wiped by the blue sleeves of her Mother's crane-patterned kimono, smearing the silky material with a taste of death.
'WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!?' She shouted, her voice hoarse from the constant screaming but she received no answer, no re-assurance, no justification for the lifeless body that is turning cold in her own pale fingers.
He did not turn back, and with the followers he had gathered, he left them in that lonely house.
A mother and a daughter.
A girl and a corpse.
'He neglected you and your Mother?' Hijikata quashed the flame from his cigarette. A short moment ago, he found the jacket she had folded and reached for the cigarette in his side pocket. He lit one and was awarded with a glare from her for breaking the cigarette-ban rule just a moment ago.
She nodded to his question.
'Then I don't understand.' Hijikata proceeded to reach the package for another cancer-stick. 'Why did he want you to come home? Moreover, how did he know where you were?'
Yuzuki beat him to it and snatched the cigarette package away, offering a bowl of rice crackers in its place. 'He sent people after me and promised a reward money. Someone must have seen me when I ran into your house and hid in the storage.'
The two samurai noticed her lack of answer to the first question and pressed no further.
'The story didn't finish there, right?' Gintoki slurped on his tea and continued, 'you said, you killed your Father?'
Something clicked in Hijikata's mind. 'Did you go home? Is that the reason behind your disappearance?'
She nodded once again.
At last, a part of the puzzle fit in. Only another half is left to discover the whole truth but she was silent. They can see her thinking, weighing something in her mind until at last she decided, 'Can we continue this in the Shinsengumi Headquarters?'
The days that she came back from the meadow, injured after the kidnapping, Himura Yuzuki was behaving rather strangely.
She insisted that they took a family photo and though Tamegoro had refused countless of times, -due to the condition of his eyes-, she stubbornly persisted. That Autumn day, they gathered in front of the house and the photographer took the shot with practiced ease.
Some days after, Hijikata found her in the middle of the night, writing something on a book that seems deeply familiar to him. He didn't dare to disturb her for her expression had shown her to be in deep concentration.
Exactly two weeks after the fire incident, she disappeared without a trace.
Under the guise of running an errand, she had left and never came back.
'Good work, Commander.' Yamazaki saluted the Gorilla Commander as they passed each other in the hall.
'Good work to you too, Zakky. With this, we have comprehended the Most Wanted man for the Scarlet Match incident,' said the happy gorilla.
'It's not the time to be happy yet, Kondo-san. We still haven't found out where the blueprint is and that's the only thing those higher-ups want,' said Sougo who was passing by who had by chance overheard the conversation.
'We'll just have to wait for Tosshi to come back. Interrogating Nezumi shouldn't be a problem for him and it'll be a matter of time before he confessed.'
The gorilla laughed out loud in confidence. Yamazaki also smiled in his faith of the Vice-Commander. The atmosphere was happy, before the Sadist broke the mood thoroughly.
'We're trusting the interrogation to a Vice-Commander that lied to his Commander, went missing on his duty and haven't contacted us in several days?' Okita raised the issue with a poker face.
The gorilla was silenced.
The corner of Yamazaki's mouth dropped as he finds the topic awkward and he hurriedly excused himself to occupy himself with some other sort of menial tasks.
'Now now, Sougo, the important thing is that Tosshi was found and he was alright. They are on their way here to bring the criminal Himura Yuzuki as well. So doesn't that at least serves enough for an apology?'
'Kondo-san, you're too soft on him. You might think that's enough, but I don't.'
Okita Sougo, the King of Sadists, smirked his famous smirk.
'Not at all.'
A/N: I haven't abandoned this! So Hooray for another chapter! XD
*dogeza according to Wikipedia: kneeling directly on the ground and bowing to prostrate oneself as touching one's head to the floor to convey deep apology, express one's desire for a favour or show deference to a high-ranking person.
*Miko: Japanese shrine maiden. They assist Shinto priests in Shinto rituals. Miko cannot marry as the white kimono they wear symbolise their purity (thus, maiden).