Himura-san's a nice guy. He doesn't deserve to suffer like that.
Yuriko lay on her futon, eyes open, gazing up into the darkness of her room. She knew she must have slept at some point but it felt like she'd done nothing more than doze a little all night long, tossing and turning in spite of the bone-weariness with which she'd dragged herself into bed several hours ago.
I think there was something really wrong, and I don't know what it was.
The trip back from Shinjuku on the subway last night had been the longest she'd ever taken. She'd gotten off the train at every single stop, walking briskly up the corridors and out through the gates to post one of her flyers in the entrance of each station, then retracing her steps back down to the platform to catch the next train onward. Two stops before Ohtemachi she was down to her last sheet, the taped-up, marker-scrawled original, so she'd strode out into the noise and bright lights of Ginza to find a convenience store and run off another couple dozen copies.
It had taken her hours to work her way back to Yanaka. But there'd been nothing else she could think to do.
Ken-nii's family will know how to find him.
That idea she'd tried already. She'd looked at Kenshin's list and she'd found the Himuras, she'd even gotten the address Kenshin had given them. The address of the noodle shop in Shinjuku. It had been a dead end.
The Himuras were family, but that didn't mean they knew where Kenshin was. That didn't mean he wasn't still alone.
He's kinfolk, yeah, but he's still a stranger.
Coming out of the station and walking back through the dark streets of Yanaka she'd looked for him, hoping against hope that he'd be there, that he'd be waiting for her as he'd done before, that he'd be strolling through the neighborhood or just sitting in the park looking up at the stars.
He hadn't been, of course. Not after what had happened.
I'm not her--
She'd known that he wouldn't be there. Kenshin would never have imposed upon her, not after that. And that meant he was alone.
I don't think he was handling it very well. Not alone like that.
He was alone. Again.
I'm a rurouni, that I am. It's time for me to go wandering again.
Yuriko rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her hands against her face as if she could push the memory of last night's dream out of her head. But it wasn't just the dream. It had been more than forty-eight hours now, and he could be anywhere. Anywhere in the world. And no matter where he went, he would be alone.
Everyone's gone. Everyone.
What had happened to them all? What could have happened that everyone would be gone, all those familiar faces in that snapshot memory from Kyoto?
Kyoto, where she'd never been in her life?
Except you. Kaoru love.
Yuriko had never been to Kyoto. But Kaoru had.
She thought again of the photograph in its manila envelope in her shoulder-bag, the souvenir from that train trip they'd taken to Yokohama, way back when. That picture of Kaoru.
That's me. That's Kaoru.
It was one of those things that she felt she understood only when she didn't think about it directly. Because Kaoru was her. She was Kaoru. And yet, Kaoru was another person.
Kaoru love--
A person Kenshin loved. She remembered the feeling of intimacy, the sense of being so close to him that at times the gap between them had seemed almost to dissolve away.
They had been sweethearts, Yuriko realized. More than that: they had been lovers; they had been a couple. And then... something had happened. Somehow, Kenshin had wound up alone in this city. And somehow, Yuriko had wound up with Kaoru's memories.
With Kaoru's memories, and something more. Kenshin had recognized her, last week in Sae's apartment.
She hadn't understood then. She had assumed that the snippets of memory were her own, that Kaoru was just some half-forgotten alter ego. She had tried to piece it all in to the fabric of her own past and had become increasingly disturbed as it failed utterly to fit. And when Kenshin had laid the bokken in her hands, when her head had opened up and the memories had finally started to pour in, she had panicked.
I'm not her--
He had never intended to hurt her. He had given her that bokken because she had asked him.
Remind me how we met?
It hadn't been Kenshin's fault. None of this had been Kenshin's fault. But it was Kenshin who was now suffering for it.
I have to find him.
He could be anywhere by now.
Ken-nii's family will know how to find him.
Except his family was gone. Everyone was gone.
Except you.
Kaoru would know how to find him, Yuriko thought. Kaoru had loved him.
Yuriko loved him too. Loving him wasn't enough.
Kaoru had known him.
Ken-nii's family will know...
And Yuriko had wound up with Kaoru's memories. She blinked, sitting up on the futon. Kaoru was a part of her. If Kaoru could find him...
I've never held a bokken in my life.
That was what had done it, Yuriko thought, leaning forward and gazing intently into the darkness of her room as if she could read the answers out of the air. The memories had been coming already that day, had been seeping into her consciousness with increasing speed all day long, but it had been the bokken that had turned her head inside out. If she could recapture that...
Yuriko flung aside the quilt and got to her feet, glancing at the face of her alarm clock as she reached for the light switch. It was half past three. An insane time to be awake. But she had a new lead now, and she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep further until she'd played it out.
Not while Kenshin was out there alone in this night.
o-o-o
The length of pale wood lay there, silent, illuminated by the beam from the red emergency flashlight in Yuriko's hand. It hadn't been hard to find, back here among the bushes near the fence on the west side of the park; she remembered where she'd been standing when she'd thrown it away, remembered the sound of it crashing against the chain-link.
Yuriko reached down towards it and then hesitated, her fingers curling.
It had been the bokken that had turned her head inside out. The memories had flooded in and she'd panicked. She'd felt like she'd been losing herself. Like if she'd let Kaoru's memories fill up her soul, there would be no room left for Yuriko. Like she would cease to be herself.
Was she willing to risk that?
She looked down at the bokken, lying there abandoned, a slim pale shape among the dark leaves.
Her life was stable. Her life was safe. She had the administrative job at Meiji University, the room in the women's apartment house. She had her work friends, and her parents and Sae every second or third weekend. She had the marriage meetings that her mother had arranged.
What she didn't have was Kenshin. What she didn't have was the magic.
Yuriko reached out and laid her fingertips on the pale wood, half-flinching at the contact as if she expected an electric shock. There might have been a slight tingle; it might have been her imagination.
Carefully, carefully, she grasped the hilt of the bokken in her right hand and lifted it out of the leaves. Only now did it register to her that it had been hand-carved. She could see the marks on the wooden blade, could feel the slight irregularities in the handle under her fingers.
Kenshin had made this for her.
Yuriko stepped out of the bushes and onto the starlit lawn, switching off her flashlight and tucking it into her shoulder-bag lying on the grass beside her. She set her feet shoulder's-width apart, took a deep breath to fight down the nervous excitement, and brandished the bokken in front of her, bringing up her left hand to join the right on its hilt.
She waited. Nothing happened.
She was starting to feel faintly ridiculous, standing here posed with the bokken in her hands as if she were waiting for fairies to appear in the starlight. This was technically impossible, after all.
She readjusted her grip, twitching the tip of the bokken right into the line of her gaze.
Nothing was happening. Yuriko bit her lip, fighting anxiety. Was she trying too hard? It had worked before; all she'd had to do was touch the thing and it had turned her head inside out. Had it been something Kenshin had done? Had there been some extra magic that afternoon that had brought Kaoru's memories out? Or had it been her own state of mind?
She'd been trying to remember all week, to remember her time with Kenshin, to remember how they'd met. But it hadn't been her trying that had brought on the memories. They had just come. They had come, seemingly at random, triggered by little things. Little reminders, little resonances.
She raised the bokken, brought it down in a gentle arc.
Resonances. And Kenshin.
She couldn't make it happen, she realized. She had to let it happen. If you wished too hard, the fairies wouldn't come.
Yuriko closed her eyes and thought about Kenshin. She thought about the way he'd looked waiting for her on the front steps Monday afternoon. She thought about his eyes, and his smile, and the thoughtful look that had been on his face as he'd sat and watched a bird fly across the roof at Sensouji Temple. She thought about the way he'd frowned at the subway ticket machine as if he hadn't the first clue what to do with it.
Her arms raised the bokken up above her head and swung it down in a precise arc, bringing it to a halt in front of her with the faintest hint of a jerk.
She thought about his face when he'd given her that ribbon. She thought about his face when she'd given the ribbon to him.
Don't you forget and wander off, after you defeat Jin'e. I'd never forgive you for that.
The bokken swished down, another precise swing.
She thought about the time he'd said goodbye to her, the first time he'd really embraced her and the lights of the fireflies had gone all blurry through her tears. She thought about what Megumi had said to her, about what she'd said to Misao. And she thought about Kyoto.
Let's go back to Tokyo together.
It was no longer just a snapshot. She could see it all now: Misao and the Oniwabanshuu; Yahiko and Hiko Seijuurou; Sanosuke carrying Kenshin back toward the ruined Aoi-ya and Shinomori Aoshi following grimly behind them. She could feel the emotions. And she could remember her own fight, Misao beside her and the bokken in her hands like an extension of her own body.
Yuriko slid her right foot forward and brought the bokken up over her head, slipping seamlessly into the first kata of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu.
o-o-o
It had been on her fifteenth birthday that her father had challenged her to a match. It had been brief; only to the first touch. It had been almost ceremonial.
It had been a draw.
On that day her father had given her two great honors. He had made her shihondai: assistant master of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu. And he had started calling her Kaoru, instead of Kaoru-chan.
Like an equal.
Of those two great honors, it was the second that she had treasured the most.
o-o-o
The tip of the bokken cut a final graceful arc through the air and came to rest, poised, as if its wielder would need only the slightest motion to restart the sequence of kata.
For a time she just stood there, eyes closed and her body as poised as the wood in her hands, feeling the blood rushing through her veins, feeling the sweat damp on her skin. It was a good sweat.
The kata, too, had been good. Not perfect, not all of them, not the first time through; and so she'd repeated them until they were right. Until they were the very best she could do.
She took another deep, controlled breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth. Her muscles felt weak and undeveloped, like they'd felt when she'd returned to training after the five-month hiatus during which she'd given birth to Kenji. She would be sore tomorrow. But that was all right.
She lowered the bokken and opened her eyes. All was stillness for a long moment. And then a sparrow gave voice to the dawn.