25. Remembrance
Kenshin woke at dawn, as was his habit. He stretched and rubbed a hand across his face, then got to his feet, taking a moment to gaze up at the bright blues and yellows of the sunrise sky.
He had slept fitfully, sitting upright in a corner of the park with his back propped against a fence. But the sun was rising now, and the warm bright light, the soft breeze wafting among the bushes, the pure and happy sounds of the birds singing in the trees were enough to dispel the stale taste of fragmented dreams from his mind.
For a little while he just stood and watched the light, letting his eyes drink in the brilliant yellow of the sky near the horizon, letting them play across the salmon-pink edges of the clouds. His eyes were calm, his face relaxed and expressionless. For this little while, there was just the sunrise.
It was a new day. The sun was rising and before too long Yuriko would be coming through this park, on her way to the subway station for another day of work. For now, though, this morning didn't have to mean anything yet. The emotions of the previous evening -- the despair, the fear, the desperate, panicky hope -- he knew they would return all too soon. But for now, for just this sunrise, Kenshin let himself be numb.
The molten rim of the sun appeared in a chink between two of the trees and Kenshin blinked, turning his eyes away from the eastern sky and stretching his arms up over his head. He shook out the wrinkles in his hakama, smoothed down the magenta fabric of his kimono, then picked up his sakabatou off the ground and slid the sheath through the ties of his hakama into its accustomed spot at his waist. He picked his way out from among the shrubs and into the open, absently working out the stiffness in his bruised right hip and untying his hair as he went.
The morning routine had become second nature over the past two months. He shoved the fingers of both hands through his hair, smoothing it back from his face before retying it at the nape of his neck. He'd developed an unconscious instinct for spotting the public water fountains that dotted the city; now he rinsed his hands, splashed a little water onto his face, and drank from a cupped palm.
He'd left his water bottle in the apartment house, along with his toothbrush and soap and the small plastic grocery sack he'd saved from a shopping trip to use as a traveling bag. It didn't really matter; such conveniences could be replaced easily enough. Of more concern was what he was going to do with himself for the next two and a half hours.
He ought to be cooking Yuriko's breakfast right now, assembling her bento lunch, even doing laundry or cleaning something. But after his encounter with Motoko yesterday, that was no longer an option.
Kenshin laid a palm absently on the end of his sakabatou's hilt and glanced around, then set off across the park, toward the street that ran along its western edge. It really was a lovely morning, he thought, and there was no point just standing around. At this early hour there was very little traffic on the roads, and a walk would be a pleasant way to pass the time.
He passed a few shops and a row of houses, wandered up a quiet avenue, meandered along the brow of a hill beside the tile-topped wall of a largish local shrine. He paused at the hill's crest, looking out over a wide expanse of parkland, dotted with the stone monuments and tall narrow name-boards of a cemetery. Peaceful, he thought, and started down the earthen track between the trees, covering a yawn with one hand.
Perhaps he ought to have gone to sleep a little earlier last night, Kenshin thought as he made his way down the tree-lined path. He'd been in a thoughtful mood after he and Yuriko had parted at the edge of the park, and he hadn't felt ready to turn in just yet. He'd wound up sitting on one of the swings in the children's playground, rocking himself idly back and forth, looking up into the night sky. Picking out the brighter stars from among the scattered clouds.
Yanaka was one of the better parts of Tokyo for that. Most of the city was so ablaze with light at all hours of the night that all but the brightest stars were invisible. Even in Yanaka, though, the situation wasn't very good. He remembered vividly the night sky above the Kamiya dojo, the velvet blackness filled with a thousand brilliant stars, the glittering wash of the Milky Way cutting across the sky like a river. It had been like that from the hills where he'd camped north of Kamakura, less than a week ago. From his swing in the park the previous night he'd been able to spot a good number of the brighter stars, but he hadn't been able to see the Milky Way at all.
Kenshin smiled a little. It was like a permanent Tanabata.
The first stars he'd spotted last night had been the two lovers, Orihime bright and blue directly overhead, Hikoboshi south and a little to the west. He'd thought immediately of the old tale of those ill-fated gods, separated by the river of the Milky Way for all but one night of the year, the night of Tanabata when the heavenly river disappeared. The seventh night of the seventh month.
Kenshin had reached the foot of the gentle hill he'd been descending. Here the long row of old cypresses came to an end, giving way to a dense jumble of buildings. He paused briefly to glance around, then crossed the street and continued down a narrow lane that threaded through the residential neighborhood beyond.
Tanabata was almost two weeks past now, by the new calendar. He'd seen the branches of bamboo, seen the huge and brightly colored paper ornaments with their long streamers hanging on display in the market streets all over Tokyo. By the old lunar calendar, though, Tanabata was still a few days away.
The tale of Tanabata was true in a sense, if you went by the old calendar. Kenshin had seen it; the whole world must have seen it, the old legend played out in metaphor on the night sky year after year. On the seventh night of the seventh month, it was the light of the half-moon that made the river of stars disappear.
He reached another crossroads and turned automatically south again. He was coming into Ueno, not far from the back edge of the grand old park. He liked this neighborhood. It had trees.
Kenshin had always thought that the old calendar was more straightforward -- certainly for a rurouni, when he could read the date to within a day with a simple glance at the moon. Not that it really mattered, of course. Time flowed on, however the people chose to measure it.
At this hour Ueno was quiet, but not deserted. There were a few early risers with time to spare strolling about in the morning sunshine, as well as the occasional young man or woman in a hurry pedaling vigorously past on a bicycle. Kenshin smiled softly at them as he entered the park, keeping to the left of the broad paved walkway and pausing or stepping aside as needed to let the others pass. Counted by either calendar, he had more than enough time to spare.
He paused to watch a small group of elderly Chinese on a sunny patch of lawn, moving in unison in a kind of strange slow dance. It was almost like a kata without swords, slowed to the edge of what was possible, as if they sought to freeze the moment and hold it in suspension, eternally. As if they sought to stop the flow of time.
Kenshin's lips thinned in what wasn't quite a smile. These people were old enough to have lived through the last war, to have seen first-hand the vastness of time. They should know that time would move on, no matter how they sought to catch hold of this brief moment.
Kenshin glanced up, checking the position of the sun. Not quite six yet.
It was strange how this one brief moment could seem so interminably long.
He sighed and walked on, stepping up his pace a little as he passed the large bronze statue of Saigo Takamori. For some reason he found that statue vaguely disconcerting. The first time he'd laid eyes on it he'd stood and stared, mouth agape, for a full minute. It wasn't odd that there should be a statue of Saigo here; it was just strange somehow to see the commander of the imperial forces from the battle of Toba-Fushimi clad in an informal bronze kimono with a sword at his hip, walking a small bronze dog. It made Kenshin want to duck his head and sidle away, as if he were afraid of being recognized.
He shook his head, smirking a little at the foolishness of his own reaction, and continued along the sunny pavement. The dawn chorus had given way to the buzz of the cicadas in the trees, but he still had almost an hour to kill before Yuriko would even be out of bed.
Together with the trek back up the long shallow hill to Yanaka, a lap or two around Ueno Park should do it. And it was a nice morning. This moment should be something to enjoy.
Kenshin straightened his shoulders, smiled softly to himself, and walked on.
o-o-o
Yuriko's first thought upon waking had been of Kenshin.
She had run downstairs and raced through her morning toilette, nipping into the kitchen to put a couple slices of bread into the toaster before skipping back up the stairs to get dressed.
Kenshin would be waiting for her in the park. The faster she could be ready, the more time they'd have together this morning before she had to catch her train to work.
Yuriko dragged her brush through her hair, simultaneously glancing around her room for the things she'd need to pack up for work. There wasn't much; she'd gotten back late enough last night that she hadn't had the occasion to take anything out of her shoulder-bag. She dropped her brush into the bag, snatched up her makeup and lipgloss, and trotted back down the stairs.
There hadn't been any coffee ready. Yuriko grumbled to herself as she fished a teabag out of the pantry and dropped it into a cup, following it with a stream of hot water from the electric kettle. She wasn't willing to take the extra time to set up the coffee machine and wait for it to percolate. Not this morning.
She plucked her cooling toast from the toaster and popped in another pair of slices. Kenshin had made a lovely breakfast for her two mornings running; the least she could do was to bring him some toast.
Yuriko scraped the worst of the charring off the surface of her toast and slathered on some marmalade, chomping down on a corner of it and chewing even as she carried her plate and teacup to the dining room table. She ate quickly, drinking down her tea as soon as it had cooled enough, then jumped up again and headed back into the kitchen for Kenshin's toast.
Like her own, it was charred. Yuriko scowled at the dial on the toaster. Someone was always changing the setting on her, turning it down so that she had to readjust it upward every morning. She liked her toast to be toasty, more than just warmed-over bread. Somehow she always wound up overshooting and burning it.
For herself it didn't matter; she just scraped off the charcoal and ate the rest. For Kenshin, she wanted better. But time was passing, and four minutes spent making another round of toast were four minutes she wouldn't be able to spend with him.
Yuriko sighed resignedly and scraped the charring off into the sink, then spread marmalade over the toast. She put the two slices face-to-face and wrapped them up in a paper towel, then hurriedly scrubbed off her dishes.
Finally. Done. Yuriko glanced at her watch, grabbed Kenshin's toast and her shoulder-bag, threw on her shoes, and hurried out into the bright morning sunshine.
o-o-o
Kenshin sat on the swing, rocking himself idly back and forth, looking up at the morning sky. He'd been sitting there since seven. He'd made it back to the park in Yanaka just a little too early.
He sighed, schooling his thoughts to patience. It was hard not to get worked up about Yuriko's impending arrival. He'd studiously avoided thinking about it in more than the most abstract terms all morning long, knowing that he'd only wind up torturing himself over it. He didn't want to hope too strongly.
Still, there was no denying it. Yuriko was remembering. That was the inescapable conclusion of the previous night.
The thought filled him with a wild, dangerous hope.
Her reaction to his age hadn't surprised him, hadn't surprised him in the least because it was exactly the same as it had been the first time around. Kenshin found himself smiling again at the memory. Her reaction had been the same, and somehow it had triggered a further recognition. Somehow Yuriko had remembered the rest of that old conversation.
Don't say 'would forty make you happier.'
It was exactly what he'd been about to say. He'd had to suppress an urge to hurl his arms around her and weep with relief.
And there'd been something else, too. Over dinner last night, over beef-pot at the Akabeko, she'd said 'what about them.' As if... as if she'd remembered...
Kenshin's breath caught in his throat and he closed his eyes briefly, fighting against the rush of emotion. That was the dangerous thing about hope. It left him open to everything else.
He opened his eyes and forced a deep breath, forced himself to relax. He just had to wait. He just had to wait and see what happened. Yuriko would--
She's here. Kenshin looked up with a gasp, throwing himself off the swing and breaking into a run toward the street that bounded the southeast corner of the park. It hadn't exactly been a sound, hadn't exactly been a feeling, but as soon as he'd looked he'd spotted her auburn hair through the bushes and the chinks in the fence.
He was there just as she came around the edge of the fence.
"Good morning, Kaoru," he said.
"Kenshin!" A delighted smile lit up her face, making her blue eyes shine. Kaoru's eyes. Kaoru's smile, brighter than the sun.
Kenshin's heart thudded and for a moment he couldn't move, couldn't even think, this one brief moment stretching out to eternity. She was here.
"I brought you some toast," she was saying, offering him something flat and square wrapped in soft brown paper. Steam had moistened the middle of the wrapping.
"Th- thank you," he managed, shaking himself out of the trance and smiling back up at her. She handed him the little parcel and he unwrapped it, revealing two singed slices of bread with some clear sticky citrus-smelling substance oozing out around the edges.
"Thank you, Kaoru," he repeated, and bit into it.
It was just another unfamiliar new food of this era, some derivative of bread with a kind of astringent citrus paste in between. The flavors were new and different. But they didn't matter. They didn't matter at all.
The toast had been burnt.
It was only a little charred, as if she'd scraped off the worst of it, but there was no hiding that flavor. That familiar flavor.
Kaoru...
And it wasn't even that flavor that was important, that singed taste that had seemed to accompany all of Kaoru's cooking. It was the memories that came along with it.
Kenshin's throat constricted, his vision blurring as a wave of emotion crashed over him.
o-o-o
"Come on!" Yuriko yelled defensively. "It's not that bad!"
Kenshin had taken a single bite of the toast and nearly choked, his eyes starting to water profusely.
Yuriko pouted. She knew her cooking wasn't the best, but he didn't have to rub it in like this. She'd brought him breakfast! At least he should give her credit for trying.
Kenshin swallowed with some difficulty and coughed, struggling to get his breath back.
"No," he said at last. "It's perfect." He looked back up at her and smiled a watery smile, blinking tears from his eyes. "It's perfect, Kaoru."
"Hn," she sniffed.
"Really; it's very good." Kenshin took another bite. "Thank you."
"You... really think so?"
"Yes, of course. I've always liked your cooking, that I have, Kaoru."
Yuriko looked at him suspiciously. He seemed sincere enough, and he was eating it with apparent enthusiasm.
Maybe she'd just missed a bit of charring in that first bite, Yuriko rationalized. She smiled a little, feeling better. It was starting to seem like every time she tried to do something nice for Kenshin it ended up backfiring terribly.
Last night's dinner in Asakusa had been lovely, but it had apparently stirred up some painful memories that Kenshin would have been happier to forget. The nice hot bath she'd fixed him the evening before that had ended with him sprawled on the veranda with a head injury and cornered by Motoko. On Sunday he'd sat through the communal dinner with her when he probably would have been happier just going to bed, and she didn't even want to think about how her crazy scheme of passing him off as female had wound up.
"Kenshin," she started hesitantly, "I'm sorry about all the screw-ups."
"Oro?" He looked at her cluelessly, and licked marmalade off a finger.
"I--" she started again, then broke off, dropping her eyes and smiling self-consciously. "It's nothing," she said. "I just... I don't want you to be unhappy because of me."
"No!" he exclaimed, eyes gone wide with alarm. "Kaoru, no, please don't ever think that."
"I just-- I just feel like I'm neglecting you, spending all this time at work." She hadn't thought about it that way until she'd said it, but it was true. "I feel like we've hardly had any time to talk. It's like, there's so much catching up to do, and no time to do it in."
"Kaoru," he said, surprise and sympathy mingled in his voice.
Yuriko took a breath and let it out. "Sorry," she said, looking away. "You shouldn't have to worry about that too."
He didn't reply for a moment. When he did, his words were spoken carefully. "Kaoru," he said, "It matters how you feel, that it does."
She looked up at him hesitantly. He was watching her, sympathy on his face and concern in his violet eyes.
"There's something you want to talk about, isn't there," he said softly. It wasn't a question.
Yuriko looked at him.
I've always liked your cooking, that I have.
Always...
They must have been together for a long time. They must have spent years together to have developed the kind of intimacy they were showing each other, instinctively, all the time. And yet she still couldn't remember more than the odd little flashes.
A hesitant tension had joined the concern on Kenshin's face, as if he thought he might have misjudged the situation. "O-of course, if there isn't, that's no problem either," he added hastily.
The odd little flashes, and Kyoto. The one clear and identifiable memory.
She'd never been to Kyoto.
"Kenshin..." she began.
"Yes?" He was watching her steadily, openly. There was no wall behind his eyes just now, no mask covering his emotions. He was waiting for her to go on, waiting for her to raise what it was she wanted to talk about. He didn't look eager, but neither did he look afraid.
What would happen would happen. Yuriko moistened her lips, and took the plunge.
"Remind me how we met?"
Kenshin's expression flickered. For a moment there was just silence.
"You don't remember?" he said.
"It's, ah, it's a little hazy," she lied.
There was a stillness in him that hadn't been there a moment before, a stillness that made Yuriko want to move. She nudged his arm slightly, indicating the path through the park, and they began to stroll, slowly.
"I mean, it was a long time ago," she continued, trying to justify her forgetfulness. It must have been a long time ago, in any case. She had that kinesthetic memory of an embrace, their heights almost identical, Kenshin maybe even an inch taller than her. She must have been young then, not yet done growing. Or Kenshin must have been standing on a curb.
"Yes," he said, and nodded, his smile gone a bit sad. "It was a long time ago." He was silent then, as they walked on under the trees.
Yuriko was beginning to think that he wouldn't tell her, when he continued.
"I had just arrived in Tokyo, that I had. It was early spring. Early morning, and foggy." His eyes were distant but his smile had deepened, the sadness going out of it. "You shouted at me in the street, accused me of being a murderer. Then you attacked me with your bokken." He'd met her eyes with a smile as he said it, turning it into a joke.
Yuriko stopped. She'd done what? But Kenshin was continuing, the words coming less hesitantly as he lost himself in the memory.
"It was no fault of yours. A man had been killing people, claiming your school and calling himself the hitokiri Battousai. It was natural that you suspected me. I was carrying a sword openly, in spite of the ban." He rested his left hand on top of the hilt of his sakabatou, and smiled back at her. "You certainly surprised me, that you did. I jumped to dodge your swing but landed on some rotten wood. It was a little embarrassing, that it was."
The image came suddenly into her mind: his comical look of shock as he lay among the splintered boards, flowerpots scattered around him. She stifled a giggle. "Yeah," she said softly. "I remember that."
Did she, though? Or had the image just been painted in her mind by his vivid words? She hurried forward to catch up with him as he strolled on.
"You weren't far off, though, that you weren't. Gohei was up the next street. As soon as you heard the police whistles, you were off." He looked up at the canopy of leaves, watching the light play through them. The dapples slid across his face and hair. "The police were holding back. He'd already attacked them; he was too strong for them. But you didn't hold back. You leapt right past the police and challenged him, right there." He looked back into her eyes again, a hint of admiration on his face. "It was an amazing thing." Then his eyes darkened, and he looked away down the path. "But he could have killed you. I couldn't let that happen. I... caught you and carried you out of the way."
She could taste the emotions; just a hint, but she could taste them. Fury, and terror, and the feel of smooth wood in her hands. "Yeah," she said again, but this time there was a quaver of uncertainty in her voice.
"You were injured. Here." He looked back up at her, and lifted a hand to gently touch her right arm. "I carried you home, that I did. Later, you asked me to stay." His eyes were soft, but full of emotion. "You said... You said you didn't care about my past." He said the words like they had amazed him. Like they had never stopped amazing him.
Yuriko swallowed. She'd seen it. Just for a moment, she'd actually seen it: the huge masked man towering over her, his sword gleaming dully in the uncertain light of dawn and murder in his eyes. She tried to fit it into the timeline of her life, and failed utterly. The bokken in her hands...
She could feel it, as if she were holding it at that very moment.
"I've never..." she whispered.
The familiar shape of the wood against her palms. The kinesthetic memory in her muscles, the familiar movements of the drills...
"I've never held a bokken in my life."
Kenshin had turned, had started to walk on. Her whisper stopped him. She could see the sudden tension in his posture. He hadn't turned back toward her.
"Kaoru..." he began.
This must be wrong. The bokken was the most familiar thing. She could remember it all, hours and days and months of training, teaching at the other dojos, the rare fights when she had to defend her own life and the lives of others. She could remember leaping through the air at Gohei, the bokken held ready in front of her, could remember the weightless thrill and terror of it, could remember the bone-jarring jolt as she swung at him hard only to be blocked by his massive strength. She could remember fighting for her life against a pretty girl -- girl? -- with a chain-hung scythe, scraped and bruised and breathless, could remember Misao yelling furiously behind her, a brace of kunai flying past on either side as she dove desperately inward past the whirling blade--
This must be wrong. She had done all these things.
Kenshin was still standing three paces ahead of her, facing away, tense and waiting. The air had settled heavily between them. Yuriko fumbled with her shoulder-bag and laughed nervously.
"I'll miss my train," she said, half to herself.
Kenshin glanced back sharply over his shoulder. There was a deep anxiety in his eyes, and something else that she couldn't quite identify.
Yuriko started forward briskly, slipping her arm through his as she came level with him. "Let's go," she said. "I'll miss my train if we don't hurry."
Author's notes:
kunai - a basic Japanese gardening tool, usually made of iron, with an unsharpened leaf-shaped blade and a handle with a ring on the pommel for attaching a rope. Adapted by ninja as a stabby-type weapon; not really designed to be thrown, but would obviously still cause some damage.
The stars Orihime and Hikoboshi are known in the West as Vega and Altair, respectively.