The front wheel of the bike bumped up over the lip of the curb-cut and Yuriko squeezed the handbrakes, coasting to a halt alongside the iron railing that bounded the left edge of the path. She'd been riding for twenty minutes already, coming down the main street past Ueno and through the northern end of Asakusa, but it was here that this morning's search began in earnest. Here, on the west bank of the Sumidagawa.
Yuriko took a determined breath and stood for a moment, straddling the bike and casting a critical eye up and down the concrete banks of the river, tugging down the brim of her floppy pastel hat to block the glare of the early-morning sun. "Right," she said aloud, planted her right foot on its pedal, and pushed off again.
It had been just over an hour since she'd finished the kata, and her head was still buzzing, her mind still on fire with the wonder of it all.
Because it had worked. She had taken the bokken in her hands and somehow, impossibly, it had worked.
It had been the strangest thing she had ever felt. As she'd stood there in the park under the dawn-pink sky there had been two histories, two personalities, two lives within her single body, side by side and yet separate. Kaoru was her. She was Kaoru. And she was also Yuriko.
Her awareness had been swinging back and forth erratically, her sense of identity shifting in a way that now she had trouble even conceptualizing. She hadn't known how long it would last, that strange dual state, and so she'd clamped down on her wonder and forced her mind onto the question.
She hadn't even had to ask it. She hadn't had to explain the situation to herself or anything. The moment her thoughts had turned to Kenshin, the awareness had been there, as if the thoughts were coming from her own mind. And they were -- weren't they? -- even though they had that strange flavor of otherness to them, even though the knowledge hadn't been in Yuriko's head before. But there'd been no time to worry about that, and so she'd put aside the confused sense of wrongness and let the question be answered.
Where would Kenshin go?
Somewhere quiet, of course. Somewhere secluded. Somewhere away from people, where he could take the time to think things through. And where did Kenshin go when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, when he wanted just to sit and gaze out into the distance?
The knowledge had dropped full-formed into her head as if it had always been there. The roof of the dojo. The bamboo forest out on the edge of town. Or the riverbank.
The dojo was no longer hers, of course, and Tokyo had long since consumed the forests around its old boundaries. But the riverbank...
Another picture had appeared then, right behind her eyes, this time a memory of her own: a picture of Kenshin standing beside her in the darkness beneath the ornamental plums, looking out onto the glimmering surface of the Sumidagawa. Looking out at the water flowing steadily by, an unreadable emptiness in his eyes.
What are you thinking about?
Nothing. The river. Time.
Time. She hadn't understood then. She'd misread his carefully blank expression.
It does seem timeless, doesn't it.
She understood it now, though. She understood it, because now she knew who Kaoru was.
Grandmother and grandfather before they were married--
Somehow, Yuriko had wound up with Kaoru's memories. And somehow, Kenshin had wound up alone in this city.
--Meiji 11.
She understood it, because now she could remember the day he'd disappeared.
Yuriko took a careful breath, concentrating on scanning the concrete riverbanks off to her left as she pedaled on. Along with Kaoru's memories she'd inherited the emotional reactions as well, and there was a lot there that she wasn't yet ready to deal with. But she'd also inherited a kind of strength, an unbreakable determination, an iron will that let her put aside those things, when before today they would have turned Yuriko into a puddle of grief.
She had something more important to do right now, something she needed to do right. And she could also remember how it had felt the first time she'd told him out loud.
But I want to stay with you forever.
Nothing in Yuriko's own past would have allowed her to walk calmly to the convenience store and buy a map of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area from the night clerk; to walk back home to the apartment house and eat breakfast -- eat breakfast! -- before collecting her hat for the ride and leaving an apologetic note telling her housemate Mei that she'd be taking the bicycle for the day. Before today, she almost certainly would've jumped on the bike and rode off straight away, only to wind up lost and hungry by midmorning. Now, though, she knew she'd need a map to make her search methodical, and she knew she had to eat or else she'd get fatigued too quickly.
She'd been a little worried about the bike at first. It was an old clunker, a cheap steel-framed three-speed that she'd bought secondhand when she'd first moved up to Tokyo. She'd ridden it a little during the first few months, mostly just around Yanaka, but the apartment house was close enough to the shops that it was just as easy to walk, and even with the chain guard and internal hub gears she didn't like riding in her work clothes. And so the bike had sat in the shed gathering rust, the tires slowly going flat. It would've been a disaster if it hadn't been for Mei. A year ago Yuriko had heard the younger woman talking about looking for a cheap bike for her commute to the conservatory down on the back side of Ueno Park and had offered the use of her own. Clearly, Mei's talents extended beyond the violin. The bike rode like a breeze.
She'd stuffed her shoulder-bag into the bike's battered metal basket, but the bokken had been another matter. She hadn't dared to leave it behind, not when she didn't know how long her strange dual awareness would last. She needed Kaoru's insights, and indeed after a few minutes on the bike she was feeling almost normal again. The bokken was her magic wand.
Normally she would've slid it through the ties of her hakama and been done with it, but her strange modern costume was unsuited to the wearing of a sword. She'd almost laughed a little then, standing in the shed beside her bike, remembering Kenshin's long-suffering sigh when she'd put him into the exact same situation a week ago.
She'd had no suitcase this time to stuff the bokken into; it was too long to stick into her bike basket and she couldn't wear it at her waist. But she could always sling it across her back. And that was how Yuriko now rode alongside the Sumidagawa, with a floppy hat on her head and a bokken slung across her back, tied end to end with an indigo silk ribbon. It had seemed appropriate. And it was that or spend at least half an hour searching the apartment house for a ball of twine.
Indeed, the strange duality had faded as she'd pedaled along, as she'd navigated her way down through Ueno, as she'd stopped at a corner vending machine to buy a bottle of iced green tea. As she'd done ordinary things, modern things. It was the same as it had been on the subway on Thursday morning, when thoughts of the upcoming workday had turned her mind away from the memories of her abortive fight against Gohei. This time, though, she knew what was happening, and the comforting curve of the bokken across her back was all the reassurance she needed.
Yuriko braked to a halt and hopped off the bike to carry it down the short flight of steps, then swung her leg back over the frame and pedaled on, tires purring on the pebble-studded concrete. She'd reached the very heart of Asakusa, the romantic plum-lined walkway where she'd taken Kenshin after their dinner out four nights ago. She was probably violating all sorts of city codes by biking along here -- the bike path had swung away from the river here to make space for the trees and benches -- but at six in the morning it scarcely mattered.
She swayed right to swing the bike around one of the ornamental lamp-posts and pedaled on, eyes flicking back and forth between the walkway ahead and the riverbank beyond the concrete barrier. She didn't actually expect to find Kenshin along the Sumidagawa, not here, not where the banks were made of concrete and the bustle of the city was mere yards away. No; he would want somewhere quiet, somewhere secluded. He would want grass and open water under a broad blue sky. Much more likely that she'd find him along the Arakawa to the east.
But she was being methodical; she would start at the Arakawa's southern end and work her way upriver, and to do that she needed to ride south anyway. It might as well be along the Sumidagawa. Her plan was to continue down towards the docklands and then cut over along one of the canals. And if she didn't find him along the Arakawa... Well, there was still the Tamagawa to the south, and the Nakagawa, and the Edogawa, and all the dozens of smaller tributaries and canals that laced the city.
It was going to be a long day, wasn't it.
And her worst fear was that he wouldn't be on the riverbank at all, that he would have gone wandering again. It was the third day already; there might have been enough time by now for him to think things through. Or he might have just pointed his feet in a random direction and walked, too numb still to even be able to sit down and think. If he'd gone wandering, her search would take much longer. And every day it took, he'd be out there, alone.
I thought, it looked like he was watching someone die.
Those two months alone in Tokyo had not been easy for him. He'd been too thin, too tired, too shell-shocked, in far worse shape than he'd been the first time she'd met him, and that time he'd been wandering for ten years.
Maybe it got better with time. Or maybe it just became more bearable.
Still, amazingly, she was no longer afraid for him. Concerned, yes, but not afraid. Because she knew now that Kenshin had been through worse than this, and had come out with his life and his sanity intact -- though sometimes by a slimmer margin than she would have liked. He would survive until she could find him.
And this time, she thought wryly as she braked again to a halt, at least there was no one out there who wanted to kill him. Yuriko hopped down off the bike and hefted it up the steps at the southern end of the pedestrian walkway, straining under the combined weight of its steel frame and her shoulder-bag in its basket. She leaned a forearm on its seat and stood for a little while, catching her breath, then pulled the bottle of iced green tea out of her bag and took a swig. It had hardly cooled off at all overnight, and the sun was getting higher -- all the more reason to find Kenshin as soon as she could. She tucked the plastic bottle back in her bag and remounted the bike, pushing off down the path and onwards.
Her worst fear was that he would have gone wandering again. But somehow, she just didn't think he would. Somehow, she couldn't picture him doing anything right now but sitting on the riverbank. Before, he had pulled himself together enough to reconstruct Kenji's entire family tree, enough to systematically track down all those descendants, one by one. And now, even though she'd screamed at him that she wasn't Kaoru, even though she'd panicked and run away from him, would he really have gone wandering again, knowing that she was alive in this world? Because all this time, all these past two months, he had been doing just one thing.
Looking for you. But I didn't know it until I found you, that I didn't.
o-o-o
Ozaki Motoko was really beginning to wish that the community center would install air conditioning. It was fine if she sweated in her gi -- that's what it was for, and after an hour's hard workout she expected nothing less -- but to have her street clothes go all sweaty mere minutes after changing back into them was a bit much.
Showers would be nice, too, she thought as she walked back through the center of Yanaka under the midmorning sun. Air conditioning and showers. And some nice cold drinks. There was the vending machine just outside the center's door, but the milky iced coffee it sold wasn't particularly healthy and Motoko found it hard to justify the expense. A nice cold bottle of orange juice from the convenience store, on the other hand... Even on a student's budget, she could spare a hundred and fifty yen once in a while for a nutritious treat like that. Motoko hitched her gym bag up higher on her shoulder and turned, reaching out to pull open the glass door. That was when she saw the flyer.
HAVE YOU SEEN HIMURA KENSHIN?
For a long moment she just stood there, staring, one arm outstretched half way to the door handle.
She remembered yesterday afternoon, watching Yuriko rush out the door.
She remembered Friday night, meeting Yuriko's fashion-conscious coworker on the steps of the apartment house.
I think she just broke up with her boyfriend.
Ozaki Motoko's eyes narrowed. Then she reached up and carefully untaped the flyer from the convenience store window.
o-o-o
There were two routes that Takizawa Sae could take from her favorite bakery back to her apartment. There was the direct route, down Wakamiya-dori and past the train station, but even on a lazy Sunday afternoon that main street was a bit too busy for her liking. Much more pleasant was the back route, just a couple of blocks west toward the river but far more peaceful. It was only an added bonus that the back route took her past the yard of her aunt and uncle's garden shop.
When Sae had been younger she would stop into the shop practically every afternoon to hang out with Yuriko. Her older cousin had always spent most of her time there after school, doing her homework at a small potting bench in the back when the weather was nice or sitting inside next to the orchids when it rained. Even after Yuriko had gotten her current job and moved away to Tokyo the habit had stuck with Sae, and now she would linger a little near the back gate, glancing in at the pretty green of the ferns or stopping to smell the white roses that her uncle kept up against the wrought-iron fence.
The shop was closed on Sundays, but Sae knew that her uncle would usually come in anyway when the weather was hot, just for a little while to make sure the plants had enough water. And indeed, as she strolled down the familiar street this afternoon with a fresh loaf of bread under one arm, she spotted him there under the shade-netting with a hose in his hands, watering the maple saplings.
"Uncle Takeshi! How're the plants?" She waved as he looked round and he returned her smile, shutting off the valve in the hose's sprayer-head and starting over toward the gate.
"Hi, Sae-chan." He came over past the ferns and unlatched the gate as she drew level. "You're up early for a weekend."
Sae bristled. "No I'm not!" she retorted. "It's three already!" She'd acquired a reputation for sleeping in late during her high-school and college years, but she'd never been this bad, and her uncle should know that. He did know it, too; there was a distinctly mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he nodded pleasantly in reply.
"Actually I was wondering," Sae continued, "did you ever hear from Yuriko last night? She was going to call me back but she must've forgotten."
Takeshi blinked, and something in his face changed.
"From Yuriko?" he said. "No. Why? What was she...?"
"Well, she'd finally gotten Himura-san's address and she was going to go see him. You know about all that, right?" He must know about it, Sae thought; Yuriko always told her parents everything. "They'd had some kind of, I don't know, misunderstanding or something and she was trying to track him down again. I mean, I'm sure it'll turn out all right, but I wanted to hear..."
Sae trailed off. Takeshi was staring at her.
"What?" Sae said.
"Sae-chan..." His face had gone pale, almost gray.
"What? What is it?"
Takeshi hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide how much he should tell her. "You'd better come over to the house for a little while," he said at last.