Author's Note: I'm sorry that right now I'm a bit of a crazy rush, so I can't reply to each person who reviewed (thanks to all of you!!!) but I'm just going to post this and run— but beware, you'll hear from me again soon!
Chapter Twenty-One
There was nothing to do in Kobe— his hands were as good as sliced off at the wrists. Unable to stay in Housho's house, where his blatant contempt for the circumstances that had brought him there, echoed amid its walls.
Reiji was just as glad to see Saito leave, temporary respite until the man returned. Walk out with fading footprints. He collected his hat and knives, and left soon after his guest. He did not like the dirty smell of cigarette smoke hanging about his own house.
The war had never brought the Shinsengumi to Kobe. The city was alien, and even more sop, because he was coldly alone inside, and lost, having lost everything he had ever had.
Saito stopped by a roadside shop near the house he could bear to be in, buying a packet of cigarettes even if he had not finished the last one. He passed the coins over the counter, a tinkling, metallic measure of his material loss. It neither eased nor replaced the weight heaving down on his shoulders.
He noisily ripped off the cellophane, crunching it in his fist, feeling it roll and be crushed against his palm. It was a bleak morning, he thought, an empty morning.
Of own accord, his back was straightening, his shoulders stiffening, and his feet falling sharper, and his hand unconsciously raising his fingers to his lips in a practiced movement.
Only when the roughened fingertips brushed against his mouth, did his eyes snap open.
He jerked his head around to glance at his surroundings. He was standing in a street lined by dilapidated buildings.
Old shops, what had been a pub before the roof had caved in, a dress-maker's sign hanging out the door. What caught Saito's eye was the one with the door flung open. It was the only one that seemed inviting, sunlight illuminating the dark interior.
It seemed to be an art-seller's place, and his sheer curiosity was tempting Saito powerfully. He had started to enter, foot on the step, when his whole body seemed to slump, and he sank down on the steps.
He would have slowly drowned, if the ground would open to swallow him up. It was only then that he noticed what was trapped beneath his shoe as it fluttered out from the shop.
Shifting his foot, and bending down, he peered at it, a hard punch slamming into him, sending him reeling.
Eerily faceless people stared up at him from the fallen sheet of paper. A woman in a crowded market, the people thronging the vendors and their goods leaving an unconscious ring of clear space around her like she was marked...
The signature was like ice slapped against his cheek.
T.T. He knew those lines of drawing, and he knew that signature.
Bekku, the bachelor artist, came hurrying out of the shop, and Saito wordlessly handed the picture back.
The unthwawing anger that had lasted all day seeped insidiously into evening, poisoning them. Reiji Housho walked back to Kobe on foot, a long, dreary journey that made his mind wander madly. He was splattered with blood, where one of his knives — thrown from the back of a wild careening carriage — had killed a man.
His job had been done well, but Reiji did not feel like a rich man. He did not ever understand how his own life had been defined by the number of lives he took.
He thought of Saito— and the dragon stirred drowsily again. How different were the two of them? Saito too lived and stole ... but Saito was never happy. He never found happiness. Reiji was reminded irresistibly of Tokio Takagi, and maybe Saito was resigned to consuming misery because he had lost happiness at a time when he'd thought he'd never find it...
Beneath the dragon's roaring, he felt a trickle of pity for the life Saito was now forced to lead.
There were no lights glowing in the windows of his house, and hiss heart leaping with (shameful) elation, Reiji wondered if Saito had really left, after all. After all, as the Englishmen said, an ounce of pity doesn't clear a pound of debt.
He was decidedly cheery as he breezed into the house, lazily discarding his hat and coat and arsenal of knives, the latter with a careless clatter. He went straight to the kitchen, to find the sake jug, and went around to the tiny backyard to enjoy his drink in the moonlight.
Reiji Housho froze on the backstep of his own house.
Saito Hajime was still there, smoking against the fence.
"Housho."
Reiji started at the sound that whispered through the darkness and moonbeams, amid which he could make out the glowing feral eyes above all and anything else. Was it only him, or was there underlying hesitancy in Saito's voice? He replied carefully, slowly, measuredly:
"Hajime."
Once more, at breakfast, the following day, Reiji was accosted.
"Did you know?"
"I know a lot of things, act'ally, Hajime."
"About this."
Saito leaned over to nudge something beneath Reiji's plate. It was the picture he'd bought from Bekku. With one finger, he rapped the table exactly over the rushed initials in the corner. "That, Housho. That."
"Tee-tee," read Reiji bemused. "What's it? The artist's signature? So what?"
"It's Tokio's," said Saito softly, dangerously, watching with each word he uttered. Waiting for recognition at every step.
"Tokio?" Nothing happened.
"Tokio Takagi."
"Sorry? Sound'a bit fam'liar—"
"From Kyoto. My housekeeper."
"Right!" Reiji shot upright in his seat, beaming. "Wow, Hajime— she's got quite a bit'ta talent!"
"Yes, she has," said Saito absently. "She's in town, in Kobe. Seen her?"
Reiji gave a dismissive click of his tongue. "Nah — but I might've — not sure — see, I'm sorry to be the spanner in the cogs, Hajime, but I don' rem'ber much of her. Bit of a long time ago, see..."
And it was then at once that the spear thrust through the fish. Saito knew. Reiji was hiding something.
He watched the man opposite him with narrowed eyes, as he carefully resumed dinner, and Reiji's demeanour and bearing did not change. Complete innocence ... ignorance ... obliviousness...
But Reiji worked as a bodyguard; he was neither innocent, not ignorant, nor oblivious. He was sharp like the sandpaper-grazed edge of a katana; he remembered the faces of his enemies and never forgot them; it was his job not to. And Saito was sure his own eyes betrayed him each time he flicked his gaze at Tokio in Reiji's presence.
Reiji was not the kind of man to forget a sight such as that.
Then that morning, he bid his farewell to Reiji. He was going to leave at last.
With sudden generosity, Saito had let the subject drop at breakfast about Tokio. Undoubtedly Reiji Housho might know where Tokio was now, but he was withholding that for a reason, for a promise maybe? Saito chose to respect that. He knew he still owed Reiji something. Even someone like him could see something like that.
The Takagis were a funny family, influential in the old days, daughters brought up liberally, powerfully. The old man was eccentric, too, they said, and there were rumours they had long since moved out of Aizu, where they had lived while the Shogunate crumbled.
It took all the strength he could muster for Saito to leave Kobe, to go back home, knowing Tokio wasn't so far away that he could stretch his arm and not brush against her with his fingertips. Parting was final, inevitable, and he did not have a place beside that girl. But there was a wolf, keening forlornly deeper inside him than his heart, baying at the silver moon that seemed so far away, but probably was so close...
He moved with the determination of a predator, the hands shoved into his pockets had the gentleness of a lion toying with prey. People glanced back at him as they passed, and his glowering eyes returned their gazes, and instantly they withdrew. Suddenly the alien city of Kobe, and its smell of apprehension, seemed all too familiar. It bolstered Saito inside, gave him courage for the first time.
The house was before him, small clumps flowers pushing up prettily all around it. The afternoon seemed quiet, peaceful. Like an invisible circle of slumber had been drawn around this residence.
There was a girl standing on the front porch, hair razed short, formal kimono with the hem trailing on the wooden planks. Then he realized it wasn't that— the girl was posing as a mannequin, and another figure kneeling beside her with tape measure and threaded needle stood up and went inside the house.
Saito knew then that if he hesitated anymore, he would be soon to lose himself to self-doubt.
He crossed the street like a ghost, and climbed the steps of the house, soundless to his own ears, his eyes fixed on the back of the girl's head.
He was this close to her— when she was rushed into sudden awareness of his presence, of his identity. Something swooping like fear flooded her, and she whirled around to face him, tripping on the hem, stumbling back over the edge of the porch.
Afraid to see her fall, his arm shot out to grasp her by the wrist, but she caught hold of a beam and balanced herself on a step. She was shaking, and her throat moved, but the words would not come. He too was trembling somewhere inside where he would let no one see, and all he could say was her name. "Tokio— it's all right. It's all right."