HEY-HO, A GLOSSARY-ING WE GO!
Tokaido : walking route connecting Tokyo to Kyoto
Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building
Burakumin : the "untouchables" of society, who worked as undertakers and jobs requiring animal slaughter
Genpuku : boy's coming of age ceremony, occurring between the ages of 11-21
Obousan : Buddhist monk. Also the proper term of address for a monk
Shakujou: pewter staff topped with metal rings traditionally carried by Buddhist monks
Onigiri : rice triangles stuffed with fish, pickles, or salted plums
Geta : wooden sandals with elevated 'teeth' on the bottom
Samue : monk's work clothes, consisting of a gi-style top and loose pants
Meiji 3
March 1870
"I can't for the life of me understand why you don't find this food absolutely heavenly."
Hiko shook his head at Yukishiro, who sat placidly in their shared space at the Akabeko. They had all gathered at the restaurant for their last night in Tokyo - including Kamiya and his daughter - and even Tomoe seemed to be warming somewhat to the taste of the beef. Yet Yukishiro was perfectly content with the bowl of tofu and vegetables he had plucked from the pot.
"If I'd had this sort of food while I was training, I might have been able to put on a substantial amount of muscle." Hiko picked another ribbon of stewed beef from his bowl, chewing it as his eyes turned to Kenshin. "And if you'd had it during your training, you might not have ended up only as tall standing as I am sitting."
Kenshin did not rise to the bait, which was mildly irritating, but the meal fortunately occupied enough of Hiko's attention to make up for it.
He had enjoyed the past few months. Admittedly, the conversation he'd had with Kamiya and Yukishiro at the beginning of the winter had rattled him badly, but at least it had caused something approaching the elements of a plan of action to coalesce in his mind. Now, rather than the vague feeling of dread that had constantly dogged him for years, he had the beginnings of a solution.
Of course, there was still a great deal to be done…
They had finished the meal and filed out of the restaurant, the girls Sae and Tae cheerfully urging them to "Come again!" in their matching voices, when an entirely different voice broke in.
"Battousai!"
A group of half a dozen men stood in the street outside the restaurant, their faces hard and sneering. Each of them carried swords. Hiko watched as Kenshin's eyes narrowed and his smile subsided. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tomoe scoop up Kenichi and back away.
The men did not wait for Kenshin to reply. Their leader barked out "For your crimes!" and charged, and the rest drew their swords and swarmed after him, yelling incoherently.
What followed was dreadfully clumsy, and Hiko watched in growing disgust as his idiot apprentice dispatched the would-be vigilantes with far too much fuss and wasted effort. During the time when he had still been training regularly, Kenshin would have dealt with them in half the time, and with far greater precision. As it was, one of them actually managed a wild swing with his sword before Kenshin knocked him off his feet. The swing had not been aimed anywhere in his idiot apprentice's general direction, but still, it was the principle of the thing.
"That was difficult to watch," he grumbled to Kamiya as Kenshin resheathed his sword and muttered something to the crumpled leader. "He's gotten embarrassingly sloppy."
Kamiya raised an eyebrow. "By what reasonable metric was any of that sloppy?"
Yukishiro, standing on Hiko's other side, added, "Embarrassingly sloppy, mind you."
Hiko scowled. "There was a time when he would have cut every one of them into seven pieces before any of them would have even had the chance to swing their sword."
"Then this stands as a marked improvement," Kamiya said evenly.
"Only if you consider dillydallying and clumsiness an improvement." Hiko's expression turned sour. "Even with his vow not to kill, he should have had them all on the ground in the space of three heartbeats." He turned to Kamiya and gestured. "Did you see how he had an opportunity to let two of them strike each other, and instead he wasted time and energy knocking them out individually?"
"I barely saw him at all," Yukishiro murmured. "He moves with astonishing speed."
Hiko shook his head in disappointed frustration.
Clearly, he had been remiss in not insisting upon Kenshin renewing his training. His idiot apprentice had asked for more time, and because Hiko had not yet understood how to solve the problem of the succession, he had granted it. And this was the result.
"Sorry about that," Kenshin said as he approached the group. He reached out a hand to Tomoe, who had retreated into the doorway of the Akabeko with Kenichi. "Shall we go home then?"
"Is this sort of thing likely to keep happening?" she asked in a cautious voice, lowering Kenichi to the ground. He immediately scampered over to his father and buried his face in Kenshin's hakama.
"I would hope not," Kenshin said, right as Enishi added:
"But even if it does, he handled it fine. Nothing to worry about, Neechan."
Clearly, his former second apprentice had not spent long enough under his tutelage to understand what speed and efficiency truly were. What may have passed for fine in the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy, or even in the eyes of a master swordsman like Kamiya, was unacceptable to Hiko.
That thought chewed at him all the way to the outskirts of Kyoto.
"Not too much longer now," Kenshin said to Kenichi, who was slumped atop his father's shoulders in an exhausted stupor. "Pretty soon you'll even be able to take a bath."
"No bath, Touchan." Kenichi didn't bother raising his head. "I don't want bath."
"I do," Tomoe muttered. "There are never enough baths along the Tokaido for my taste."
"We're only a day's walk from home now." Kenshin offered his wife a small smile. "I'll heat the bath as soon as we get up there. You can go first."
Kenichi blew out a half-hearted sigh.
"You can enjoy the bath and your own futon," Hiko said in a voice that sounded slightly too loud in his own ears. "I'm not going back up the mountain yet. I have some personal business to attend to."
Kenshin's smile quickly turned into a frown. "Right now?"
"Where is Jiji going?" Kenichi raised his head ever-so-slightly to look at him with tired, yet curious eyes.
"Yes, where is Jiji going?" Tomoe added, a mixture of suspicion and concern in her voice.
"Into Kyoto first," Hiko said. "And then elsewhere."
He felt a twinge of… something... tugging at his heart as he looked at the faces of his family and realized that they would miss his presence. That, perhaps, they would worry about him while he was gone. That his life had become so deeply entwined with theirs that he could not simply go off on his own without providing them some sort of explanation.
"I should be back in a handful of weeks." He smirked. "You should be pleased. You'll have the house to yourselves for a while."
"Kyoto..." Kenshin echoed. He didn't bother following up on or even raising an eyebrow at the rest of Hiko's comment, though Tomoe's cheeks flushed slightly.
Hiko had counted on his idiot apprentice's antipathy toward Kyoto to keep him from pressing too hard to tag along. The lure of intimate evenings would likely be enough for Tomoe, and though Kenichi would still complain - and he had to admit that he would miss his grandson nearly as much as Kenichi would miss him - he would have to remain with his parents.
"As I said, I have some personal business to attend to."
"All right," Kenshin finally said. "We'll see you in a few weeks then."
Despite the suspicion in his voice and the clear frown on his face, he didn't push the matter further. He never really did when it came to anything in Hiko's life, and Hiko wondered for a moment if that were due to a flaw in their relationship.
He hadn't told Kenshin that Jiyu was his brother, after all, and had it not been for Jiyu finally disclosing that himself, Hiko didn't know when he ever would have.
Perhaps he could begin to repair that flaw once he had resolved the issue of the succession.
The walk to his intended destination went rather quickly. Or at least it seemed to, but that might have been due to how little Hiko was concentrating on his surroundings and how much of his attention was being taken up by the plan slowly coagulating in his mind. Either way, it seemed that hardly any time at all had gone by before he found himself standing outside of a small house beside which stood a long, low building with a prominent chimney. However, no smoke rose from the forge, which was clearly dormant.
A pair of people sat on the engawa, nursing cups of tea and taking advantage of the warm, early spring weather. One was a boy about the same age as Enishi. The other, to Hiko's surprise, was Arai Shakku.
The man had grown frail and sickly in the years since Hiko had seen him last. He had never been a large man, but now his leathery skin seemed to hang off of his frame. The muscles of his arms were visible, but in a way which seemed to denote anything but strength. His hair had turned from steely gray to a yellowish-white, and the skin stretched taut over his face clearly revealed the skull beneath.
But worst of all was the noise of the man's breathing. A gasping, rattling wheeze, it sounded as though he were shaking a bucket full of pebbles every time he worked his lungs.
Father and son both glanced up as Hiko approached, and though Shakku raised an eyebrow, it was the boy who spoke first.
"Can we help you?" His tone suggested anything but helpfulness.
"Seiku…" Shakku murmured in a rasping voice, but anything else he might have said was cut off by a series of gasping, chest-deep coughs.
The burakumin shoemaker Old Kutsuya had looked healthier, Hiko thought with dismay, and he was past eighty. Shakku had to have been at least twenty years younger, and yet he looked as though he were about to drop dead at any second.
"You won't remember me." Hiko spoke softly, as if the very volume of his voice might be too much for the sick man to bear. "But you're likely to remember my apprentice."
"Himura Battousai," Shakku said immediately, and his son frowned at that. "You brought him here for his genpuku sword some time ago, and he came back on his own a few times since." He took a shuddering breath, but the gaze he pierced Hiko with was sharp. "Tell me, has he gotten himself killed with that fool sword I gave him?"
"Far from it." Hiko regarded Shakku with an equally sharp gaze. "In fact, that was what I came to speak with you about."
He paused, knowing that his original goal was laughable now. The swordsmith was too ill, his lungs too poisoned from a lifetime of breathing in the smoke and embers of his forge, to be up to the task Hiko had in mind. But perhaps there was still a way? Perhaps he himself could work the bellows and swing the hammer under the old man's direction? Perhaps the son could assist?
Or perhaps it had been a foolish idea all along.
"Well?" Shakku said abruptly.
"He's managed to use it a handful of times already." Hiko spoke to Shakku, but watched the boy Seiku as well. It was clear that he disliked Hiko's presence strongly, and Hiko wondered why. "And in doing so, I think he's unwittingly discovered a path forward. Not just for himself, but for me as well. And every future practitioner of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu."
Shakku coughed in response, a painful series of chest-rattling heaves that left him shuddering and had the boy rubbing his back and murmuring something too quiet for Hiko to hear.
"My father is very sick." Seiku glowered at Hiko with absolutely no pretense of friendliness. "Come back some other time."
"Seiku…" Shakku held up a hand, took a rattling breath. "I want to hear this first."
Hiko knew at that moment that he had come here in vain. Shakku could not do what he wanted, and Seiku would not. The only decent thing for him to do now was to leave them be, and perhaps return in a month to pay his respects to the swordsmith's grave.
"I don't know what your intention was when you gave my apprentice that sword." Hiko spoke as plainly as he ever had. No pretense had ever come naturally to him, and Shakku would not have appreciated any. "It's likely you imagined it would be a joke, or that you would disillusion him of his vow by giving him a sword that would force him to keep it. But it worked."
Hiko looked at Seiku for an instant, but the boy's face was still clouded with suspicion, as well as a resentment that surprised Hiko with its depth.
"It worked," he repeated. "And I hoped that another one might be able to do still more." He sighed. "But I didn't know how ill you were, and so I won't ask you to craft it for me." He bowed, an unfamiliar motion but one the moment and the man both deserved. "I'll take my leave now."
"How did it work?" Shakku said loudly to Hiko's back. "And what are your intentions?"
Hiko paused, squashing the hope that threatened to rise in his chest, and turned back to face Shakku and his son.
"He's able to use Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu - the deadliest style of kenjutsu ever created - without taking a life." Hiko looked into the dying man's dull eyes. "It worked better than I think you could ever know."
"Himura Battousai used the weapons I crafted to pave a road of corpses right into our glorious new era." Another wheezing series of coughs racked Shakku's frail body, though this time he seemed to wave them off impatiently. "By the time he came to see me, he could hardly stand to hold those swords anymore, so heavy were they with the blood of so many. But you?" His eyes narrowed. "You don't strike me as a man who is burdened by such things. So I ask again: what are your intentions?"
And Hiko, hardly believing that he was doing so, found himself telling Shakku the whole thing. The succession technique, his own shishou's death, the way he had planned to die himself, and everything that had led him here.
"...and so I thought that a sakabatou of my own might change things." He felt drained, but forced himself to go on. "I thought I might be able to teach him what he needs to know and still live through it."
Hiko shook his head, his imagination plaguing him with the awful images it had shown him so often - of Kenshin staring numbly at his corpse, Kenichi disintegrating into incoherent screams, Enishi's bitter hatred of Kenshin returning stronger than ever, of Tomoe drawing apart from everyone out of grief, of Jiyu growing cold and withdrawn towards them, of blame and recriminations flung in every direction by every one of them, and of the family - his family - falling apart forever.
"I know that I can't do what my own shishou did," he said with a conviction that no longer surprised him. "It would destroy them all."
"And so you'll never take another life?" Shakku studied him for a moment. "No, I don't think you're there yet, are you? Not right now."
For a brief moment, Hiko wondered if this were some sort of test. But he supposed it didn't matter; Shakku was perceptive enough to tell whether or not he was lying, and if he'd wanted to hear that Hiko would never slay another man - no matter how thoroughly he might have deserved it - then he would be disappointed.
"Not ever," Hiko growled. "I've seen too much of the world and far too much of mankind to even consider making that sort of vow." He paused for a moment, then sighed. "But I have to do something."
"Don't we all?" Shakku murmured, and next to him Seiku muttered something under his breath that Hiko didn't catch.
He wondered what was the matter with the boy. He'd seen that same sort of behavior from Enishi during the first few weeks he had lived with them, and it had come from a deep-seated rift between Enishi and his father. So what had Shakku done - or what did the boy think he had done - to warrant such reactions?
"I'm not long for this world," Shakku said abruptly. "I know I'll be joining my ancestors very soon. But this…" He shook his head. "This will be the last sword I'll ever make. So that you can do something..."
Seiku opened his mouth, closed it just as fast, and turned his head away, but not before Hiko caught the furious expression on the boy's face.
"So that you can keep your own family from fracturing irreparably." Shakku's gaze lingered on his son for a moment, before shifting back to Hiko. "Come back in two weeks. It will be ready then."
Hiko nodded once, turned to go, and hesitated.
"You were right about the burden my apprentice carries with him. But you've helped him to ease that burden."
He bowed to the dying swordsmith - the greatest master of his art since the legendary Muramasa - whose final work he would soon wield.
"You have my thanks."
…
It took several days to make the walk to Asukaderaji.
Hiko had no illusions about Shakku being done with the sword in two weeks' time; he was old and sick enough that Hiko would allot him easily twice that time to produce results that would satisfy the man's exacting eye. And so there would be time to make the other pilgrimage that Hiko had finally decided it was time to make. The one he had put off for fifteen years.
The temple had been nicely rebuilt. Hiko allowed himself to appreciate the sight, as well as his own role in it, as his boots crunched on the dry dirt of the pathway. The monks who endlessly swept the stone walkway beyond the gate offered nods of recognition as he passed, and a handful of children paused in their playing to gawk at him as he strode towards the kitchen.
To his mingled astonishment, discomfort, and horror, several of the boys broke away from the group and trotted along next to him, cheerful grins plastered on their faces.
"Lift the bonsho bell again, Ojisan!"
"Yeah, lift the bell again!"
"Where's my brother?" Hiko grumbled uncomfortably. "He'll have something to say about me lifting the bell down from where it's supposed to be."
Several (probably sticky) little hands reached out and wrapped around the edges of his cloak, and if those boys were dragged along in Hiko's wake, well, that wasn't his fault.
"Lift the bell again!"
"And then put it back!"
"Pleeeease, Ojisan!"
Hiko did his best to focus on the kitchen doorway, hoping mightily that his brother would be able to detach the contingent of boys from him.
"Jiyu?" he called out. "Either assign these children some chores or distract them with food."
"Get him!" one of the boys shouted, and before Hiko could fully understand how he had been put in such a profound situation, he was swarming with children. One of them wrapped himself around his right boot, another around his left, one hung onto each wrist, and several had either attached themselves to the hem of his cloak or begun to climb up it like the rigging of a ship. He plodded forward, unsure of what else to do, and where in the name of all the gods was his brother to make sense out of any of this?
Over the eager cries for Hiko to "Lift the bell, Ojisan! Lift the bell!" one voice cut through the cacophony.
"You seem busy, Seijuro." Jiyu stood in the kitchen doorway, several boys peering out in amusement on either side of him. "Should I come back later?"
"Oh, are there any children left in there with you?" Hiko scowled. "I was under the impression I was carrying them all."
Jiyu looked at him for a moment, then stepped aside and allowed an entire gaggle of children to stream out of the kitchen and surround Hiko.
"Are you back to beat up farmers, Ojisan? Or samurai?"
"Or anyone else who comes here?"
"Anyone bad anyway?"
"When Kenshin-oniisan was here last time, he didn't beat up anyone!"
"I already apologized for not telling you I was alive all those years ago." Hiko glowered at his brother from under a growing blanket of children. "This is just petty."
"I've orchestrated nothing," Jiyu said calmly. "The children are just as excited to see you as they were to see Kenshin-kun last year."
"And how long did it take to dig him out from under the pile of them?" Hiko shuffled his feet, each of which had three children weighing it down. "Is it just me, or are there more than there were last time?"
"It took Kenshin-oniisan just as long, Ojisan!"
"But he was less grouchy about it!"
A smile twitched at the corners of Jiyu's lips, but apparently he remembered some of that monkly compassion he was meant to have.
"All right, children, make yourselves scarce." He gestured toward the kitchen. "Those who were helping with lunch, please finish up inside. Yoshi, go ring the bell."
Some scattered grumbling drifted throughout the group, but the boys did as they were told, detaching themselves from Hiko and shuffling off in various directions. One could be heard very loudly proclaiming, "You ever notice Obousan's brother always shows up right in time for lunch?"
Thankfully the children refrained from swarming him again during the meal - though that might have had something to do with the rows of monks also in attendance - which was as filling as a meal at the Akabeko but far less hearty. Hiko gave a mental chuckle at the thought of explaining to his brother that he'd developed a taste for cow's meat, and decided that he would spring it on him sometime during their journey as repayment for Jiyu's lackadaisical approach to the children's climbing on him.
"There are several more children here," Jiyu said, as one of the boys refilled Hiko's bowl with a hearty helping of tofu and mustard greens. "Due to the Kami and Buddhas Separation Order, though…" He hesitated over his rice. "I understand it's been rescinded."
Hiko grunted in acknowledgement through a mouthful of vegetables and rice. "Kenshin paid a visit to Saigo Takamori after what happened here last time," he elaborated once he'd chewed and swallowed. "Which was all well and good, but unfortunately the damage had already been done."
"Kenshin-kun did not mention that when he came to check on us last year," Jiyu murmured. "And he stayed the night and spent a good deal of time entertaining the children."
Hiko sighed and drank half his cup of tea. "Of course he didn't mention it. He's an idiot." He scowled at his brother. "A well-intentioned idiot, but still."
"And how is your grandson?" Jiyu said over his rice bowl. He didn't spare Hiko a glance.
"Growing like one of his father's eggplants," Hiko replied with what felt surprisingly like pride. "And hopefully ready to help me with my shibori when I get back home."
"Shibori?" Jiyu set his rice bowl down. "Have you grown tired of a life of swordsmanship and decided to turn your attention to the fine arts?"
A boy sitting on the other side of Jiyu snorted into his mustard greens.
"I'm capable of doing both." Hiko glowered at the boy long enough to let him know he'd been heard, and then turned his scowl on his brother. "And of excelling at both into the bargain, thank you very much."
"And will Kenshin-kun follow you in this endeavor?" Jiyu sipped his tea. "Along with his son? Perhaps a family business, of sorts?"
A couple of the boys snickered behind their rice bowls.
"I'm nowhere near ready to sell any of my work." This time Hiko chose to magnanimously ignore the nonverbal commentary. The boys would never know the extent of their good fortune. "But Kenichi has been quite happy to assist me so far."
"You've become an artisan and a family man." Jiyu glanced at him. "It suits you, Seijuro, though I know you'll never admit to such a thing."
"I freely admit to always having been an artisan," Hiko shot back. "My genius makes itself evident through any medium, be it swordsmanship or shibori. Of course it suits me."
A boy sitting across from Hiko rolled his eyes, then shoveled a heaping of tofu into his mouth. The better to give him plausible deniability.
Hiko hesitated, then blustered. "As for the family, I suppose I've brought that trouble on myself. It's what comes of taking in every scruffy vagabond that crosses my path." He frowned. "And then they attract more."
"And you're all the better for it," Jiyu said calmly.
The meal proceeded along those lines for some time, until finally it seemed as though the boys had eaten their fill and the monks were ready to return to their duties. Hiko saw his opportunity and seized it.
"I'm headed to Morioka," he said to Jiyu as one of the boys collected their bowls for washing. "I have something to do there that I've been neglecting for a long time, and I'd like you to come with me."
"Morioka? In the north?"
Hiko nodded, and shortly after that, Jiyu took him to a study lined with enough books to make a man like Yukishiro envious. Jiyu found a large map, rolled it out onto the floor, and examined it for a moment, finally placing a finger on Morioka Domain.
It was much further to the north than Hiko had remembered. A little further would have nearly placed it in Hokkaido.
"That's quite a journey, Seijuro." Jiyu looked at him. "At least a fortnight by the looks of it."
Hiko nodded, blowing out a heavy sigh as he did so. "I wasn't planning to go there for the pleasure of it. It doesn't matter how long it takes; I need to go there." He paused, looking back over at his brother. "And I need you there as well."
Jiyu seemed to study him carefully. "Why?"
Hiko sighed once more, fighting the urge to let his shoulders sag. He had no reason to keep any of this from Jiyu, but it was still difficult to discuss.
"There's something I need to do up there," he muttered. "Something very important and long overdue."
…
In spite of Hiko's desire to set out for Morioka at once, he was forced to linger at Asukaderaji for another three days. For one thing, it would take Jiyu some time to arrange for a leave of absence and delegate his tasks to others while he was away. For another, there were preparations which needed to be made.
The boys managed to insinuate themselves so thoroughly into his space that the very concept of space became laughable. He finally gave up brushing off their constant demands for him to do something impressive and evoked loud cheers and applause by picking up the bonsho bell once more. Of course, he set it back on its hook a moment later and gruffly told them that there would be no further entertainment, but that only seemed to make them more eager.
He refrained from blocking them out with sake, but only because he wanted to save what he had with him for the journey. (That, and Jiyu had stowed it away somewhere and neglected to tell him where it could be found.)
Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, they set out from Asukaderaji. Jiyu wore the same traveling outfit he'd worn when he'd made the journey up to Mount Atago, and his shakujou clanked rhythmically as they walked. He also wore a sling bag, containing the few things he'd brought along for the journey. Hiko carried only the small traveling bag he'd had with him in Tokyo, as well as the sake jug his brother had seen fit to return to him that morning.
The bag was slung on his back under his cloak. The jug dangled from the fingers of his left hand, leaving his right free to reach his sword if necessary.
Several of the boys waved goodbye from the gate of the temple, and a few of them even broke off from the group and trotted with them down the path before they were forced to turn back.
"Is this the first time you've left the temple since you came to visit me?" Hiko asked, turning his head to regard his brother. A ray from the rising sun made him squint, and he tilted his head so that Jiyu's wide traveling hat of woven rushes blocked it out.
"It's the first time I've left for an extended period since my visit," Jiyu replied. "I travel into the surrounding villages as necessary." He glanced up at Hiko. "Of course, you do realize this will be the most time we've spent together since we were six and eight years old."
"Yes, and without the company of our useless parents and our peacock of an older brother." Hiko had never been able to muster anything more generous than dismissive thoughts for the rest of his family, and today was no exception. He snorted. "You were always the only one worth spending any time with anyway."
To his annoyance, Jiyu neither agreed nor disagreed, merely hummed and continued along the path with every jingling clink of his shakujou.
They stopped to eat after a few hours, Jiyu unwrapping several onigiri, though Hiko knew they would be stuffed with pickled vegetables rather than fish. Not a bad midday meal, though he did wonder if he'd be able to go the entire journey without eating any fish. (Cow's meat was certainly out of the question, and who knew if such a thing was even available outside of Tokyo anyway.)
"See how you feel in a few weeks," Jiyu said over bites of onigiri. (Stuffed with pickled radishes, as it turned out.)
"I wouldn't worry about that," Hiko retorted between mouthfuls of his own onigiri. "A few weeks one way or the other won't make you anywhere near as impossible to stomach as Kazushige." Hiko scowled. "You're the one who can tolerate him enough to exchange letters with him, not me."
Jiyu raised an eyebrow. "You don't actually know that, Seijuro."
Hiko's scowl intensified. "I know I don't want to discuss or even think about any of them any further today." He stuffed the last bite of onigiri into his mouth and looked over at his brother. "That should tell you all you need to know: I'm willing to travel with you for a month, but I can't stomach even the idea of them for more than a minute."
Jiyu didn't bring it up for the rest of the day.
In fact, they walked in companionable silence for several hours. It was pleasant to be out walking in the fresh spring air, the scents of thawing earth and newly-flowing water carried on the breeze, the sounds of birds and squirrels in his ears. He was reminded again of the power nature possessed to calm his mind and coax him into a meditative state.
That evening, Jiyu found a small Shinto shrine that was happy to take them in and even feed them (miso soup and rice, but a free meal was a free meal). Once they had bathed and settled into the pilgrims' quarters for the evening, andon lamp lit between their sparse, but clean futon, Jiyu turned to him, questioning look on his face.
"Why don't you want to discuss or even think about them?"
Hiko scowled, settling into his futon. "This is nothing new. They gave you away to the temple when you were six years old, Kazushige was only ever concerned with how he would be in charge of the family and the area, and I left as soon as the opportunity presented itself." He turned his head to properly look at his brother. "Why would I ever want anything to do with them again?"
Jiyu sighed and seemed to study the ceiling for a moment. Finally he said, "You've seen how poverty and hunger have wracked this country, Seijuro. I see it every day with the children who are brought to Asukaderaji." He glanced over at him. "They were poor, rural samurai. They had nothing to give us, nothing for any of us to inherit."
"My idiot apprentice's parents had even less to give him." Hiko's eyes narrowed. "There was nothing for him to inherit - no land, no possessions, not even a family name - and still they cared for him as long as they lived."
He clenched his teeth, felt torn between laughter and rage at the utter absurdity of it. He'd been born into a samurai family, while Kenshin had been born into a family of dirt-poor peasant farmers. And yet for all their poverty, Kenshin's family had died before abandoning him.
"And your anger towards Kazushige?" Jiyu asked simply.
Hiko rolled his eyes. "He was always a self-serving, self-obsessed strutting peacock who didn't seem to care how paltry his inheritance was going to be, so long as he could inherit something." He glared back in his brother's direction. "I don't remember him being particularly upset when they gave you away. Not anywhere near as upset as I was, at any rate."
He remembered being shocked and horrified at the thought that his brother would never live at home again. He remembered being outraged and furious that such a thing could happen and not drag everything around him to a screeching halt with its pure injustice and unfairness and sheer wrongness. And he remembered cold hatred settling in once he realized that nothing he felt would change what had been done, nor affect the people who had done it.
He'd left with his shishou not long afterward.
"He was ten when our parents brought me to Asukaderaji. I'm not sure he fully understood the situation." Abruptly Jiyu sat up, drawing his legs toward him and draping hands on knees. "He wrote to me a year or so later to tell me you had left with a swordsman."
"I was eight," Hiko scoffed. "And I understood it perfectly. Don't try to excuse him."
The light from the andon lantern cast strange shadows across Jiyu's face, making his expression unreadable.
"I was still learning to read and write," he murmured. "One of the monks had to read the letter to me."
Hiko had wanted to make the journey to the temple to see his brother, but he hadn't been able to as an eight-year-old child. When he'd left with his shishou at the age of ten, he'd entertained fantasies of trekking to the temple and rescuing his brother, but he'd known enough by that point in his training to know how little he knew of kenjutsu. He would have been easy prey for bandits along the road, and so he'd ground his teeth and waited until he could ask his shishou to make the journey with him.
By that time, he'd been twelve years of age. It had been four years since he'd seen his brother. He'd hated how much time had been stolen from him - from them both - by their uncaring family, but what else could he have done?
"I remember seeing you when my shishou and I finally came to Asukaderaji," he mused. "I remember thinking, 'How can he be so calm about it all?' when I saw you." He shook his head. "I still wonder that sometimes."
Jiyu shifted slightly to look at him. "Would you prefer I rage?"
Hiko returned Jiyu's look. "I'd prefer to keep to my original plan of not speaking or thinking about them. They had little use for either of us, and I have equally little use for them."
A beat of silence passed between them.
"This is only day one of our journey." Jiyu settled back into the futon, folding hands across his chest. "Sleep well."
…
"I'm not tired of spending time with you, you know," Hiko blurted out hours after they'd left the shrine the following morning and were well on their way. "I'm tired of talking about our worthless family."
A few travelers walking in the opposite direction passed them on the road. They nodded to Jiyu, but eyed Hiko warily and gave him a wide berth.
Jiyu's shakujou clanked rhythmically against the ground. "Then why are you still bringing them up?"
Hiko glared balefully at him, but Jiyu continued to walk placidly on.
"Fine." A deep, calming breath. "I'm not tired of you after only one day's worth of walking. And I don't foresee becoming tired of you either."
…
…
...
Fifteen-year-old Kakunoshin had been mulling over the idea for some time - years, possibly - and now the time had come.
Rather than try to convince his shishou that rescuing Kadenokoji from the temple was a good plan (because Kakunoshin knew that would only provoke a maddening cackle from the man, followed by a lengthy treatise on just how foolish a plan it truly was) he had simply suggested that it had been some time since he'd seen his brother, and wouldn't a long walk to Asukaderaji be just the thing to get their muscles moving?
If his shishou had rolled his eyes at the suggestion, well, at least he agreed to go along with it.
Kadenokoji had already seen thirteen summers, which meant he had been trapped at Asukaderaji for seven years. And in those seven years, Kakunoshin had only seen him a handful of times.
Well, that would not stand.
Kakunoshin wasted little time dwelling on his parents; they'd seen fit to deposit Kadenokoji at the temple and continue on as though nothing had happened. He wasted even less time and effort on his elder brother Kazushige. But Kadenokoji had been a victim, and Kakunoshin would not allow him to continue to be so.
Especially now that he had learned so much of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu as to be a force to be reckoned with.
He would simply take his brother with him when he departed Asukaderaji. And if anyone was foolish enough to object, well, he was strong enough by now to overcome such objections. (He was certain his shishou would have questions, but Kakunoshin was equally certain he'd come around somehow. Either way, he'd worry about that part later.)
Kadenokoji had gotten taller and willowier since Kakunoshin had last seen him and his hair was as closely cropped as it always was.
"What have they been feeding you?" Kakunoshin snorted upon seeing his brother. "You're as thin as a bamboo stalk."
He clapped Kadenokoji on the shoulder nonetheless, grateful for the fish and occasional small animals that formed the bulk of his diet with his shishou. And for the continuous training that had added layers of muscle to his rapidly-lengthening frame.
"Mostly bamboo stalks," Kadenokoji replied, and when Kakunoshin pulled a face at that, he grinned and added, "And lots and lots of tofu."
They walked through the temple grounds as they spoke, the years falling away as Kakunoshin recalled the times he'd spent walking through the muddy expanses of Yoshino with his brother. Sometimes they would be lucky, and a lengthy dry spell would make the land merely dusty instead, but he mainly recalled constant squelching noises as the two of them pulled their wooden geta free of the endless quagmire.
"If they're feeding you that poorly, you'll never catch up with me." Kakunoshin looked slyly at his brother. "You ought to catch a few fish and have a proper meal."
"I hardly remember the taste of fish." They walked under a copse of aggressively-manicured trees. "So surely I'm not missing out on much."
"There's an entire world out there you're missing out on," Kakunoshin shot back. "I've walked all over the country with my shishou in the past few years, and there's still more out there." He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "You could see it, too."
Kadenokoji glanced at him. "There's so much going on in the surrounding villages, and they've started letting me go tend to the people there."
"That sounds exciting." Kakunoshin rolled his eyes, then seized his brother by the arm.
"Come with me," he said, looking his brother in the eyes. "We can travel the country together. We're the only two members of our family that were ever worth anything. Why should we be split apart?"
"Come with you?" Gently Kadenokoji detached himself from Kakunoshin's grip and stepped back.
For the first time, Kakunoshin noticed that Kadenokoji was clad in the same blue samue that all the monks wore, instead of the clean, but shabby clothing the orphans were usually dressed in.
Had he grown so tall that nothing else fit him…?
"What about your shishou?" Kadenokoji was saying. "And your training? I know how seriously you take it."
"You're not going to get in the way of my training." Kakunoshin waved off his brother's concerns impatiently. "Besides, you deserve the choice of where to go and what to do with your life."
"Kakunoshin…"
"Our parents never gave you that." Kakunoshin's eyes narrowed, his face twisting into a glower. "They just dumped you here and washed their hands of you."
"Kakunoshin," his brother said again. "You're needed with your shishou, and I'm needed here."
"Needed here?" Kakunoshin snorted again. "For what? Sweeping walkways and pruning trees?
Eating scanty meals of tofu and bamboo?" He was beginning to lose his composure. "I came back to get you out of here! I couldn't do it before, but I can do it now!"
"Kakunoshin," Kadenokoji said for the third time, and Kakunoshin was about to snap that he knew his own damn name, thank you very much, when his brother followed with, "I took my preliminary vows a few months ago."
That sentence stole the words from Kakunoshin's tongue, and he simply gaped in astonishment.
"You what?" he finally exploded. "Why?"
Kadenokoji looked back at him. "Because I wanted to," he said simply. "Because it felt right." He sank down onto a bench under another copse of overly-manicured trees. "It will be years before I'm allowed to take my final vows, but… it felt right."
"Right?" Kakunoshin would have sat down as well - his brother's revelation had left him feeling somewhat nerveless - but remaining upright would lend a sense of strength to his words, and he needed that now. "Was it right when they just left you here? Was it right for them to just carry on as if everything was perfectly fine?"
"Whether our parents were right or not doesn't change my own choice, Kakunoshin." Kadenoji gazed back at him with somber eyes. "I'm not doing this for them."
"Nor for me, either," Kakunoshin muttered. "Even though I came here for you."
"Everyone has got to choose their own path in life," his brother said quietly. "Even those of us who are given very limited choices."
With a jolt of bitterness, along with a feeling he couldn't quite find the words for, he realized right then that there was nothing he could do or say that would sway Kadenokoji from this path.
His mind in turmoil and his heart sinking, he left with his shishou the following morning.
…
…
…
A week into their travels, they sat on the beach of a small fishing village that Hiko would forget the name of the moment they had resumed their travels.
He worked his way through another skewer of freshly grilled fish that he had procured directly from a beachfront fishmonger. His brother contented himself with several sticks of dango and studied the carefully-marked map he had brought along for the journey. There was no official walking route from Nara to Morioka Domain, which meant they had to keep deliberate track of their progress and rely on the knowledge of helpful locals.
Sometimes they relied on the kindness and charity of local Buddhist temples, but the first time they had come across one that had been burned to the ground and abandoned, Jiyu had nearly lost his footing and might have sunk down into the dirt had Hiko not reached out to steady him.
They camped that night in the woods, and Jiyu largely directed them toward Shinto shrines after that.
"No one will dare come for Asukaderaji." Hiko hadn't been sure whether he was trying to reassure his brother or himself, but he continued nonetheless. "Not now that word's spread that the legendary Battousai has the place under his personal protection."
Not that it would do other temples any good. And not that the safety of Asukaderaji and the people there could bring back the dead elsewhere. But such was the way of the world and the limitations of even a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman.
Eventually, apparently satisfied with what he saw, Jiyu carefully folded the map and tucked it into his traveling bag. He polished off the dango, then looked over at Hiko, something very near like mischief in his eyes.
"Have you ever taken a dip in the ocean?" He gestured toward the waves, calm and gentle with the low tide. "Because I haven't."
Spluttering and coughing, Kakunoshin spat salt water out of his mouth and shook it from his hair. The waves buffeting him, he slogged his way back into the shallows using his bokutou as a walking stick.
"Are you ever going to learn to dodge that?" his shishou cackled as he stood there ankle-deep in the water, waiting to resume their lesson.
"Not voluntarily," Hiko muttered.
"Well." Jiyu set his straw hat aside, stood, and brushed the sand from his traveling clothes. "No time like the present, and this will almost count as a bath too."
They spent the afternoon in the water, alternately lounging and soaking up the coolness of the ocean and splashing each other as vigorously as they might have done twenty years earlier.
…
A little over a week later, Jiyu's carefully marked map led them to the shadow of Morioka Castle in the very heart of Morioka Domain.
Like any castle town, the area bustled with activity: journeyman apprentices rushing to and fro on their errands, hawkers and vendors calling out their wares from carts and stalls, farmers and laborers plodding along under the weight of sagging poles hung with all manner of things, and pedestrians of all sorts simply walking about.
"Come, Seijuro!" Jiyu called from where he stood by one of the food vendors. "I've found tempura."
Tempura that the vendor insisted they didn't have to pay for, and Hiko wasn't about to insist otherwise. There were benefits, after all, to traveling with a monk.
"According to the locals, there are two mountains," Jiyu said over mouthfuls of heavily-fried yams. He gestured in one direction and then the other. "Himekami in the north and Iwate in the west."
Hiko crunched away at his own tempura with a heavy frown. He hadn't bothered with the name of the mountain, and he'd fled from the place headlong soon after arriving there. All he remembered was -
"It's the bigger one." He took another bite, his frown deepening.
"Iwate," the vendor said, adding several pieces of eggplant tempura into both of their bowls. "Himekami is the scenic mountain. Iwate is only for those who wish to see the crater, or maybe for those who like getting completely lost in the vegetation."
Jiyu looked questioningly at the vendor.
"Don't go in the morning, Obousan," the vendor added. "Unless you liked being completely soaked in forest dew."
"That's the one," Hiko supplied past another mouthful of tempura. "I remember the dew."
"If you insist on going, there's one temple on Iwate," the vendor said. "Chusonji."
Jiyu frowned. Hesitated. "Is it…?"
"It's still standing, Obousan." There was a glint in the vendor's eyes. "The people of Morioka are no friends to Saigo Takamori."
"I remember a temple," Hiko muttered.
He was beginning to remember other things as well, and they appeared before his eyes as he and Jiyu made the arduous climb. There was thick, almost impassable vegetation which had to be pushed aside - and, more often, hacked through - in order to ascend, a process which took most of the first day. There were streams of water so hot that they steamed, for the mountain had been volcanic at one point (and presumably still was, though it had not erupted for more than a hundred years.) There were holes in the ground from which blasts of scalding air and foul-smelling vapors occasionally gushed.
To Jiyu's credit, he made the ascent without complaint or comment.
As the day drew to a close, they reached the path to Chusonji. (Of course, there had been a more straightforward path, but they had not thought to ask where to find it.) The weathered stone Buddhas they had intermittently encountered beforehand grew more frequent and more numerous. Dimly, Hiko recalled the last time he had stayed at the temple, and that the climb had continued the following day.
"We'll need to spend the night here," he said in a voice which did not feel quite as steady as he would have liked.
Jiyu made the arrangements.
The monks invited them both to dinner and to evening meditation. Hiko declined the second offer and spent the evening before Jiyu's return sitting on a log far outside the temple boundaries and taking furtive swigs from his sake jug in an attempt to quiet the ghosts of the mountain which whispered in his memory. He quickly abandoned the sake, however, when it began to taste of decay.
Eventually, he made the slow walk back into the temple grounds and settled exhaustedly into his futon.
The cloak dropped to the ground.
A flash of cold fear tore through Kakunoshin's heart.
The dragon opened its nine fanged mouths wide, streaking towards him to tear him apart, and nothing could be fast enough to stop it, nothing could be strong enough to kill it before it killed him, and it would kill him his shishou would kill him he was going to die and he only
wanted
to live…!
He looked down at the sword in his hand, saw its gleaming silver length streaked with dark red. He'd done the most reckless thing imaginable, done what no battoujutsu master in his right mind would do. He'd stepped into the swing with his left foot, even though doing so should have meant he would cut his own leg off.
A noise intruded.
He looked down at his own leg, saw that it was still there, saw both of his legs trembling from what he had just done. What he had just narrowly survived.
A noise intruded.
He looked down at his shishou's body, saw the horrific wound that split him open from his right hip to his left shoulder, saw the blood pouring out of him like water from a burst skin, and finally recognized the noise which had intruded.
"This is the fate of the master when the apprentice is ready."
Kakunoshin stared in mute horror at what he had done, shook his head, tried to force the word NO into being, but could only make the shape of the word with his mouth.
"The true final lesson of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu."
He tried to move, found himself paralyzed. He might as well have been one of the ancient trees that lined the mountainside, his feet rooted so deeply in the soil that the volcano could have erupted and he would be forced to stand there as molten rock poured over him.
"That your own life means everything…"
His shishou smiled, and Kakunoshin felt something inside his mind shatter.
"...and nothing."
Hiko sat up with a silent scream, his eyes and mouth wide, the ghost of his long-dead shishou still haunting him.
But the room was quiet.
…
The following morning saw Hiko rise blearily from his futon with lidded eyes and a heavy head, for sleep had not come back to him easily and had been fraught with more awful visions.
"We're not far from where we need to be," he called back over his shoulder to Jiyu as they scaled a steep patch of bare rock.
He remembered it well; he'd tried to leap its distance the last time he'd been here. His spirits had been higher then, for he'd thought the trip was simply another one of many.
The higher they climbed, the more familiar sights leapt out at Hiko.
There was an old and remarkably ugly tree whose warty, knobbed surface had reminded him of a leprous beggar's skin. There was a spire of basalt which thrust up from the surface of the mountain like a massive finger pointing accusingly at the sky. There was a thin stream which gurgled over the edge of a high cliff simply to disappear into iridescent spray where a larger stream would have formed an impressive waterfall.
And finally, an all-too-familiar flat stretch of mossy ground.
The trees and undergrowth had encroached more and more over the intervening fifteen years, but Hiko's sharp eyes at once made out the outline of something not made by the chaotic hands of nature. Vines had wrapped themselves around it, as though the forest and the mountain and the earth itself had reached up to claim it, to drag it down into the ground, but the old sword still remained proudly erect where Hiko had thrust it into the earth.
He swallowed hard, and in a voice that sounded dry and disused to his own ears, forced the words out.
"Hello, Shishou."
NOTE THE FIRST:
HEY FAM, I'M BACK! It's been a WILD two months (positive, but wild!), but here I am, alive and posting. My aim is to return to posting a chapter every other week, but it will likely be on Tuesdays or Wednesdays now (instead of Sundays). Not entirely sure yet as I get a better feel for my new schedule and routines, but that's what I'm aiming for. I've missed posting this story and interacting with y'all SO MUCH THOUGH, so I'm glad to finally get this pivotal chapter up!
Did I call it pivotal? I DID! But first, some cultural notes.
NOTE THE SECOND:
"My idiot apprentice's parents had even less to give him… There was nothing for him to inherit - no land, no possessions, not even a family name…"
So yeah, up until the Meiji Restoration, the common people didn't have family names. (Much like medieval Europe, but we're talking up into the 1860s in Japan, which… damn.) So you'd be known as "Keichi, son of Reichi" or "Iwako the Midwife." Or possibly "Shinta of Red Village."
Which would be "Himura no Shinta." Which could easily become "Himura Kenshin" if you were the kind of person who might decide, fuck it, the government can't tell me what to do or what to call myself, and in fact, I'm going to help take down the government by any means necessary, so fuck those guys, let them come take my name if they don't want me to have it.
Now, do I think Watsuki was going for this? Nah, I think he was a mangaka in the 90s who had to create brand-recognizable characters with marketable, Shounen Jump-approved names and didn't really want to deal with the social and cultural implications around family names/lack thereof (though he kiiiiinda approaches the topic through Sano, who asks Captain Sagara if he can use his family name one day because he doesn't have his own).
But WHATEVER, the actual history within this story's context needed to make sense to me. (In other words, how does the son of peasant farmers end up with a swaggy family name that can later be used to STRIKE FEAR INTO THE HEARTS of... pretty much everybody?)
NOTE THE THIRD
I got a BUNCH of new readers in my two months absence - welcome! Except SOME OF Y'ALL (you know who you are) are dragging Shishio's carcass out for examination once again. My dudes, let his dead ass rest in barbecued peace, will you? That bitch is DEAD.
Also, some of you have said you kinda, sorta want Kenshin/Tomoe/Yumi to be a thing. If that were to happen, then I suppose it's extra good that Shishio is super dead, because that would just be awkward.
Anyway, did I say this is a pivotal chapter? Welcome to the mini-arc that's leading up to the conclusion of the Edo Arc! (Not the entire story, calm down, just the Edo Arc.) Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Oh, and as always, leave me those sweet, sweet comments that keep me going!