DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Soujiro, ShiShiO, Kenshin, Senkaku, Udo Jin-e, or any of the other characters that are making Watsuki Nobuhiro and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, I wouldn't be sitting, steaming, and biting my nails hoping that the university won't raise tuition too much for next year. Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. If not ... chikushou, aku baka!
That reminds me ... my Japanese is next to nonexistent. Don't fault me for it. At least I'm trying.
Happy reading!
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting; the town of Ichibou, Kim Young-eun, Karachi Hoebu, Yamashina Ito, Genji Taku, and several other minor characters are my own ideas. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: To Kenshin TV ep 61, "Remaining Ju Pon Gattana, Choice of Life."
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CHAPTER 15:
THE SHOOTING STAR
There was a long moment as Soujiro, Yamashina, and Young-eun all stood perfectly still in a triangle on the lawn in front of the Yakuza lord's garden palace. It was impossible to tell who held any advantage. Soujiro was still struggling to find his footing after the beating Yamashina had given him, and spots danced across his vision, but fortunately, he had not lost as much blood as he had feared at first. Yamashina was less hurt, but one of his blades was now in the hands of his little Korean captive. Young-eun was fresher than either of them, but she was the least experienced of the three of them and had never been in a situation like this until now.
Yamashina broke the silence. "Well well well, Young-eun-chan, you learn even faster than I dreamed. However, I'm still the teacher here, and I think it's time you remembered that." He began to walk toward Young-eun as he spoke, not rushing into action, just creeping as inexorably forward as an incoming tide. Young-eun backed away before his advance.
"I admire your courage," Yamashina said as he lowered himself into an attacking stance, "but you should learn to wait your turn!" With that, he blurred forward, and Young-eun instinctively threw up her short swords in defense. Her instincts and her speed saved her from being impaled, but she didn't have the skill to solve Yamashina's continuous, flowing attack. Soujiro remembered how much difficulty he had found finding openings in Yamashina's style; he was more technically perfect than ShiShiO, though he didn't have ShiShiO's raw power. All the little Korean girl could do was defend herself.
Abruptly, Young-eun managed to break away, and quickly ducked sideways to avoid Yamashina's pursuing thrust. Soujiro's eyes widened again. She had developed one fairly advanced technique, at least. By speeding up and slowing down, she was able to create the impression of several phantasmal images of herself in the air. It was much more primitive than Shinomori Aoshi's waterflow technique, but for someone with little to no formal training, it was unbelievable.
Yamashina was unfazed, however. "A word of advice, little one," he shouted as he turned to keep up with her. "If you can't do something right, don't try it!" He darted in against one of the images of her, and by the ring of steel on steel, Soujiro knew that Yamashina had solved the pattern of her attack. The other images of her winked out as their blades caught and held.
Suddenly, Yamashina jumped back with a cry of surprise and pain. Young-eun had managed to slip part of her right-hand wakizashi free and grind the blade across the top of the knuckles on Yamashina's left hand. Yamashina flexed the hand gingerly; Young-eun had not been able to make a true stroke of it, and the cut was not deep, but a new and deadly seriousness entered Yamashina's eyes. It was a minor injury, but the fact remained that Young-eun had just penetrated his defenses, if only barely.
Yamashina stole a glance with the corner of one eye at Soujiro. The blue-clad assassin was almost completely ready for battle again, and the pain in his leg was beginning to subside. Turning back to Young-eun, the Yakuza leader levelled his katana and set himself in an even more aggressive attacking stance than before. "I'm sorry, little one," he intoned icily, "but I can't afford to worry about two foes faster than me at once. It's a shame. You could have been great someday."
Soujiro's eyes widened again, as he realized that Yamashina intended to kill her, but Young-eun's expression didn't even flicker. She simply set herself in a defensive stance and silently dared Yamashina to attack her. Soujiro was impressed; for someone so raw, she had a remarkable grasp of the Ma-ai (1). It was far from perfect, however, and Yamashina darted in and forced her to abandon it in a matter of moments. It had certainly made him hesitate, however; Soujiro took note, and thanked Young-eun in the bottom of his heart for those few extra breaths.
Suddenly, Yamashina caught Young-eun's blades at an awkward angle, forcing her to bend one of her wrists in a way that it was not meant to go to get the cross block up in time, to one side of her head. Yamashina dealt two swift kicks with his powerful legs, and got his free hand on Young-eun's left wrist. Too late, Soujiro and Young-eun both saw what he was planning.
With the king of all back roundhouses, one step short of the Shuku-chi, Yamashina sent Young-eun flying through the air so hard that she did a three-quarter somersault and landed on her stomach. The crunches as his foot connected with her temple and as she hit the ground were almost equally loud. Only one wakizashi came with her; the other remained in Yamashina's hand, jarred loose by the impact. Yamashina gave the prostrate girl a devilish grin.
"I hope it was fun while it lasted," he mocked. He moved in, fully armed again, for the finishing blow.
"Iie!!" Soujiro shouted, unable to spare time for another lone breath. He repaid the favor Young-eun had granted him, blocking Yamashina's swing on its way down and turning it aside into the earth. Fortunately, he had an instant before Yamashina could react with his wakizashi, and made use of it. *People who stand still in fights deserve to lie still after them,* he remembered thinking once, when he first began to develop his Budo. He took advantage of Yamashina's momentary defensive hesitation to drive himself skyward at point blank range, his left fist coming crushing up under Yamashina's jaw. It was an instinctive move, but it actually turned into one of the most spectacular he had connected with so far. It helped that Yamashina's attention had been partially diverted, of course. The Yakuza boss went stumbling backward, though he didn't go flying through the air and regained his balance before Soujiro even landed.
With a small corner of his mind, Soujiro was aware that Young-eun was still moving, though only barely. Yamashina had powerful legs, and her arm had been tangled so she couldn't balance herself properly to prepare for either the kick or the fall. She wouldn't be jumping in to save him again; she probably wouldn't even be regaining her feet anytime soon, but at least she was still breathing.
Soujiro had his sakaba back in its sheath before he even landed, and he landed already in the Battou stance. Taking a defensive stance against the Shuku-chi was usually a bad idea, but Soujiro had the speed to match it, and he was beginning to suspect something about Yamashina's Shuku-chi. Both Soujiro and Young-eun had upped the ante to the full thing more than once now, and he had not matched them. There was still the possibility that Yamashina was not taking Soujiro seriously in a corner of his mind, but Soujiro was beginning to seriously doubt that. He decided to put the matter to rest once and for all, and quickly switched the position of his two blades so that his hand rested by the hilt of the Oh-waza-mono, Heart of the Hungry Wolf.
Yamashina smiled. "So you're ShiShiO's student after all. Let's end this here." He sheathed his own swords as well, and matched Soujiro's Battou stance with his own. Soujiro's expression did not waver, but he smiled inwardly. However arrogant Yamashina's words might be, the fact that he took a defensive stance against Soujiro meant that he was worried about the Tenken's attack. It also meant that he was counting on the extra speed of a Battou Jutsu. Soujiro had no intention of going for a killing stroke, however. He simply hoped that Yamashina didn't realize that.
They lunged for each other at the same instant. Their blades blurred from their scabbards at the same time ... and Soujiro's covered more distance than Yamashina's before they met. Soujiro's eyes widened. That was no lack of effort on Yamashina's part. He really hadn't matched him. They traded several more blows before Soujiro disengaged, wary of getting careless and allowing Yamashina to slip in with the wakizashi.
"You can't do it, can you?" Soujiro asked wonderingly. "You can't do the full thing anymore."
Yamashina straightened, and appeared to relax his blades in front of him, though anyone who thought he was lowering his guard was an idiot. "I haven't been able to since the end of the Bakumatsu. At one point, I could barely manage three steps short of it. I've been getting better again since I started making this place a little more wild, a little more of a place I could lose myself in," he added with a gesture toward the green valley behind him, "but I could never abandon myself the way I could when I was just another rebel with a cause. And this place means too much to me to give it up now. Once things start meaning too much to you, the mindset you need simply won't come anymore. The Shuku-chi is too self-destructive for anyone who cares too much about themself. Enjoy it while you can, Seta Soujiro. It looks like things have started to get through to you, too. Even if you beat me, I may be the last person you get to use it against."
"I don't care," Soujiro replied flatly.
"Really?" Yamashina readied himself to attack again. "Well then, you might have been able to use it once or twice again ... but we'll never know!" He vanished into the blur of the near-Shuku-chi an instant later.
Soujiro followed suit, and several quick slashes and parries followed. Yamashina was clearly putting more thought into each blow now that Soujiro had switched to the Garou-no-Kokoro, and the Oh-waza-mono blade was definitely faster and more dangerous than the sakaba, but despite this, no more blood flowed. Neither one of them connected, though they were fighting more fiercely than before. They were starting to adapt to each others' attacks, and they were also both running out of tricks and trying to wait for the best possible opportunity. Furthermore, they were both getting a little more defensive, since the match was beginning to take its toll on both of them and neither one of them wanted to risk leaving a fatal opening.
Yamashina had one advantage that Soujiro could not match, however; he had the vulnerable, prostrate form of Young-eun on the ground not far away. Thus, as soon as he got the chance, he turned and lunged for the prone Korean girl, intent on eliminating her as a threat once and for all.
*Iie!* Soujiro shouted to himself, though he did not shout it aloud, as he lunged to get his sword between Yamashina's katana and Young-eun's body. He was not the kind to talk and fight at the same time; the previous one had been ripped from his lips, but he had regained control of himself somewhat. He was glad that he had, too, because otherwise he might have forgotten that Yamashina was too smart to actually turn his back on an enemy. Yamashina had fallen for a similar trick minutes earlier. Soujiro was not about to do the same.
Yamashina was ready for his intervention; he was not about to give up another crushing uppercut to the jaw. As soon as Soujiro came within range, Yamashina reversed his swing and brought his wakizashi into play. Soujiro simply smiled. He had not put as much of his energy behind his rush as Yamashina thought. If Yamashina had truly gone for Young-eun's life, it would have cost him his own, and they both knew it. Yamashina had been counting on Soujiro forgetting. It didn't work. Soujiro caught Yamashina's crossed blades on his own, throwing himself skyward an instant before the impact so that the force of the blow helped catapult him up and over Yamashina's head. Yamashina spun around too quickly for Soujiro to get an attack from above and behind him, but it was too late to stop Soujiro from landing in between the Yakuza lord and the fallen Korean teenager.
The Yakuza lord gave a snarl of rage and came at Soujiro again immediately, knowing that the blue-clad assassin could not afford to give any ground because Young-eun was lying only two yards behind him. Soujiro knew this as well, and knew that he had to force Yamashina backward quickly or he was going to end up fighting from on top of Young-eun's back. Driving forward like an angry wind, he met Yamashina halfway rather than waiting for the attack, and Yamashina had to use both of his blades to parry Soujiro's savage sideways attack from the right. At the same instant, Soujiro turned and delivered a savage side kick straight into Yamashina's chest. Soujiro's legs were not weak, either, and Yamashina went skidding backward, though he kept his balance.
The crystalline chime of cleanly-breaking metal was the first warning he had that he had made a mistake. Yamashina had locked the Oh-waza-mono blade with his own pair, and Soujiro's wrenching movement as he turned into his kick combined with the force of Yamashina flying away was too much for the legendary blade. Soujiro looked dejectedly at the shattered sword in his hands. The blade now ended in a jagged stump of metal about six inches below the hilt. The rest was lodged in the earth on the far side of Yamashina, almost at the edge of the terrace where the palace lawn fell away into the tiered water garden below.
Fortunately, the impact had also been too much for Yamashina's wakizashi; though it was not broken, it had been bent visibly to one side, and there was a nasty crack running the length of the blade from the bend to the tip. Yamashina gave it a single wry grimace before sending it flying over his shoulder and over the side of the terrace; there was a faint splash as it reached the surface of the pond at the base of the wall.
"Well well," Yamashina chuckled mirthlessly. "At least you did better with it than that last would-be hero." Soujiro cocked his head in puzzlement, and Yamashina continued.
"This is twice in less than three days now that I've faced the Garou-no-Kokoro, did you know that? The last kid wasn't nearly as good as you, though."
Soujiro's mind leaped back to the dying man that had borne the Oh-waza-mono when Soujiro had found him. Yamashina had fought him?
"You killed him?" Soujiro asked.
Yamashina laughed. "I roughed him up pretty badly, but I let him get away. Death would have been too easy on him. His shame would have cut deeper than my sword ever could, especially because I think he REALLY wanted to kill me. I think Genji went after him later, though."
"It was personal?" Soujiro guessed.
Yamashina's smile broadened, though it took nothing away from the feral gleam in his eyes. "It always is with family," he replied. The way he said the word 'family' put all kinds of emotion into it.
"Family?!" Soujiro gasped, though he gave little outward sign of surprise; his mind was still in the battle, and all visible signs of emotion, other than a faint edge in his voice, were locked away. "He was your brother?!"
"Pah!" Yamashina spat, the smile fading for a moment. "Not a chance. My mother had him before she married my father, with the head of another family."
"So your stepbrother, then?" Saying it made a faint corner of Soujiro's mind uncomfortable. Most people would be horrified, but Soujiro remembered that the first person he had ever killed had been one of his stepbrothers.
"Only in name," Yamashina grated. "He was never one of us. Being my stepbrother, not my blood brother, put him last in line for the inheritance of our family, even though he was older than everyone but my oldest brother, and he was as greedy and full of himself as ShiShiO, just without anything to back it up with. So he started tipping off the cops all over Japan on us. The Shinsen Gumi got my oldest brother six years before the end of the dynasty, and my oldest sister a year later. My other two brothers are locked away in Satsuma or Hokkaido somewhere; the government destroyed all traces of their identity just in case I became a cabinet member and wanted to try and push for their release, or if I returned here and wanted to get them out myself. When my father finally found out who was behind everything, the police were already onto him. So he fled to Korea, leaving orders that Sato was never to be allowed near this place again. I've never heard from my father since then, and I was away fighting in Kyoto at the time, so I never even got to say goodbye to him. I think he moved on to Los Angeles a few years later, and I have no idea where he is even now. That man could hide a river of blood in the middle of a snowfield. My stepmother stayed here, thinking that her son would be satisfied with my father gone and me in Kyoto. Sato let her keep thinking that until the night the dynasty's police kicked down the door. I didn't even hear about it until after the Bakumatsu; the Ishin ShiShi kept it quiet because they knew I'd leave and come back here if I knew." Yamashina's eyes had begun to fill with cold fire as he spoke, and there was an icy inferno behind them now.
"Why didn't you just go get her out of jail after everything was over, then?" Soujiro asked. "Did they send her off to Satsuma, too?"
Soujiro knew that he had struck a tender note when the icy light in Yamashina's eyes flared, and his battle aura almost seemed to sparkle and crackle with energy. "Oh, I tried," Yamashina snarled bitterly. "But Sato promised the Ishin a share of my family fortune if they would keep me away from her, since she and I were the only two people with more legitimate claims to it than his. Even the Ishin balked at that one ... they were releasing almost everyone else that the dynasty had wrongfully imprisoned ... but one Ishin cut a deal with Sato on the side."
Soujiro's eyes widened even further. It was not hard to see where Yamashina was going. After a brief pause to absorb what he had just heard, the Tenken replied slowly, "No wonder you hated him so much."
"You haven't heard the end of it!" Yamashina snapped. "When I got to the jail in Osaka where they were keeping her, ShiShiO was waiting for me. No guards, no officials, just him. I had never really liked him--he reminded me too much of Sato, so full of himself--but I never thought he would do anything like that, or I would never have stood aside when the Ishin leadership chose him to replace Himura-san. He didn't even try to mince words; he just told me straight out, 'your brother sent me here to stop you.'" Yamashina's knuckles whitened a shade on the hilt of his sword. "There hasn't been a shred of Ishin left in me since that instant. I was twenty feet from my stepmother, who was as unlike Sato as anyone could ask, and the only thing between me and the door to her was ..." he trailed off.
"You fought him?" Soujiro surmised.
"Of course!" Yamashina flared. "He was going to fight me anyway. Sato and ShiShiO both knew that I wouldn't give until she was free." Yamashina's eyes grew a touch fainter. "That was the most ferocious battle of my life," he continued. "There were no witnesses, other than the poor inmates looking and reaching out through their cell doors. My stepmother's arms were the last I ever saw of her." The faintness faded from his eyes, and the fiery gleam returned. "I was better than ShiShiO that night. ShiShiO had not been betrayed by the Ishin yet, and was nowhere near as powerful as the ShiShiO you knew. That night ... that night I was almost faster than the Shuku-chi. One of the reasons ShiShiO dreamed of the Shuku-chi so much was that I think I was the last person to ever beat him until Kenshin came along ten years later. It wasn't enough, though. ShiShiO knocked over a lantern while we fought. He wasn't like Sato--he wouldn't back down until it was clear that the fire would kill us both if we stayed another minute. By that time, it was already too late for my stepmother, or anyone else in those cells. Most of their screams had already been choked off. I even made it to her door, crossing the floor quickly enough that the flames never touched me, but I couldn't do anything when I got to her door. As soon as I stopped, the fire started to burn my legs, and the building was beginning to fall down around me. Her hands were already blackened, hanging out the bars of the tiny window in her cell door. So I escaped, and came back here, and became the Yakuza lord you see today. I was hoping to find Sato here then, but someone tipped him off that I had survived, and he was long gone when I got here." Almost as an afterthought, as he was tensing for battle again, Yamashina added, "I haven't been able to do the Shuku-chi since that night in Osaka."
The Yakuza lord's eyes burned with frozen fire as he advanced on Soujiro. "It's a shame you have to use that lame excuse for a sword now," he said. "You were a more fitting wielder for the Garou-no-Kokoro than that backstabbing little schemer could ever dream of being." With that, he darted forward to join battle once again.
Soujiro had been itching for a chance to switch back to the sakaba for some time now, anyway; attacking with the Oh-waza-mono had only been intended to feel out whether Yamashina actually possessed the full Shuku-chi or not. The Tenken had been taking an even firmer hold in his mind again when the Oh-waza-mono was in his hands; in fact, a part of his mind felt a pang of vexed regret at having to switch back to the reversed blade.
He swung the sword free of its scabbard just in time to meet Yamashina's thrust, spinning sideways to the right at the same time so he could twist and bring the sakaba around against the left side of Yamashina's neck. The Yakuza lord parried it, but he had to twist backward with the left half of his body to do it, and Soujiro had already made his point. Without his wakizashi, Yamashina was forced to block with his katana; he could no longer block with one hand and attack with the other, at least, not with a blade.
Yamashina had also made a point, too, though a lesser one. Soujiro had winced at the second impact of their blades, the pain in his shoulder revealing that he had not managed to completely wrench it back into place during the respite Young-eun had given him. Soujiro would very likely have been unable to withstand another Arashi Kenbu, had Yamashina been able to execute it. The dirt-caked cut on his right thigh was forcing him to put more weight on his left leg than he would have liked, as well, and prevented him from being able to follow up his second strike with a clean third stroke. Soujiro's hands were still steady on the hilt of his sword, however. He had fought while hurt before, and he had a higher tolerance for pain than people realized. After all, pain had been as regular a part of his life as a child as rice.
"I think we're almost done," Soujiro said. His tone was completely conversational, as though they were finishing breakfast, not a duel. His blade was alert in his hands, however.
Yamashina nodded his wordless agreement, and crouched forward with his sword low in front of him. There were no more words of contempt for the sakaba sword, or ridicule about Soujiro not fighting like ShiShiO's student.
They blurred into the blinding rush of the Shuku-chi at the same instant. The pain in Soujiro's leg slowed him down a step, but no more. The mindset of the Shuku-chi actually helped Soujiro block out the pain, because the focus required was so intense. Yamashina was no more than a step slower than before, either. Mentally, they both had plenty of will to fight left in them.
Soujiro's movement was still hampered, however, by the fact that he did not dare allow Yamashina an opening to get between himself and the prone figure of Young-eun. Yamashina quickly realized this, and timed all his movements perfectly to prevent Soujiro from getting a decent angle at the Yakuza lord. Soujiro had to react instantly and perfectly to every slash and thrust, and could not allow himself the space necessary for his usual blinding flank and rear attacks because doing so would leave the path between Yamashina and Young-eun wide open. The pain in his shoulder, while largely shut out by the mental state of the Shuku-chi, was still there, and growing with every impact of steel upon steel.
Suddenly, Soujiro lost track of Yamashina for a fraction of a second. The Yakuza lord had put almost no force behind a swing to Soujiro's left, then then spun away to Soujiro's right while the little blue-clad assassin was focused on the first attack. Soujiro instinctively reversed the angle of his blade to parry the attack from his right ... and parried nothing but air. It was another second before Soujiro's eyes locked on the Yakuza lord again, and his eyes widened in fear and frustration. Yamashina had driven himself into the air as he spun, and was descending rapidly on the fallen form of Young-eun several yards behind Soujiro. She was trying to scream and roll out of the way, but lacked the breath and the energy to do much of either. Yamashina's sword was coiled over his left shoulder and ready to strike, and he was laughing evilly as he fell.
"Tensui Ryu, Mizubashira!" (2) he shouted mockingly.
Soujiro instantly blazed into action, covering the distance between himself and Young-eun at almost the speed of thought, but Yamashina was already there. Soujiro had to lunge and stretch out with both his arm and the sakaba blade, reversing the blade so that the sharp side pointed skyward. Soujiro was still moving, and had no control over his balance when their blades met. He could not hold his blade still. The force of Yamashina's blade crushed down on his own, ramming the blunt side of the sakaba into the back of Young-eun's shoulders, only inches from her neck. She collapsed in a heap, completely unconscious.
Yamashina used the force of the impact, and Soujiro's sword on Young-eun's shoulders, for leverage to spring himself backward and avoid Soujiro's counterattack. Soujiro quickly stepped over Young-eun's body, putting himself between the Korean girl and the Yakuza lord again, but he was rapidly running out of options. Yamashina knew it, too, and was beginning to smile maliciously.
"Charming," Yamashina mocked. "And how ironic. ShiShiO Makoto's highest protege putting his life on the line to protect someone so helpless."
It was not a particularly vicious taunt, but light began to burn in Soujiro's eyes as the words sunk in, and memories of his battle with Himura-san flooded back into his awareness. They were memories of the final moments before his emotions broke out completely, of the things he had said to Kenshin, of the pain that had been bottled up inside him for so many years with ShiShiO that he had finally gotten to let out against the Battousai. They were memories of the helplessness and fear that had ultimately driven him to become one of the most heartless and lethal killers in history. He had not become an assassin out of hate, spite, or thirst for wealth. He had become a killer because he had had no one ... no one ...
"You don't know a thing about me," Soujiro rasped as he slid his sword slowly back into its sheath. He had already used his strongest technique on Yamashina and had it brushed aside, but the resurgent memories of his fight with the Battousai had brought back memories of more than his childhood pain. The memories of the final seconds of his fight against Kenshin also held the key to beating Yamashina.
*Back then you didn't ...* Soujiro's words rang in the hollows of his mind.
Soujiro set himself in the Battou stance, crouching low and forward. The pain in his leg dwindled into the remotest corner of his mind. His eyes burned with concentration. There was one last thing the Battousai had shown him that he could do. It was a terrible risk, but Soujiro was prepared to take it. *It's impossible to master that technique and have a negative mindset, like wanting to die or being afraid,* he had told Yumi-san after Kenshin had levelled him. Soujiro realized that he had finally crossed that line as well. Whenever he had fought before, he had fought with the kind of abandon that comes from not caring if you live or die. Now, however, he had found something stronger. Yamashina's taunt of his uncharacteristic protectiveness had made him realize it. For the first time in his life, he truly wanted to live.
*You didn't protect me before.*
Yamashina saw the deadly seriousness in Soujiro's eyes, and realized that the Tenken was preparing for a final blow. Quickly, the Yakuza lord set himself in a stance similar to that of the Gatotsu, only this time with his right hand on the hilt. The blade was pointed straight at Soujiro's heart. "So it's time to end this at last," he murmured, his nerves clearly held in an icy calm. "Tensui Ryu Ougi," (3) he hissed, "Anya-no-Uzumaki." (4)
*If you really believe what you say ...*
Soujiro and Yamashina blazed into action at the same moment, directly at each other. Soujiro knew as soon as his first foot left the ground that he had achieved the full Shuku-chi again, but the moment Yamashina's feet drove forward, he realized that Yamashina had transcended himself at last. It was Shuku-chi against Shuku-chi.
*Why didn't you protect me ...?!*
At the last fraction of an instant before the two of them met, Soujiro lunged forward with his left leg, sweeping the sakaba from its sheath in the same fluid motion. Yamashina's eyes did not even have time to widen before the impact. The Shun Ten Satsu, amplified by the same last fatal step that Kenshin had used against Soujiro, crushed a horizontal swath across Yamashina's chest with a sickening crunch. The momentum of the Shun Ten Satsu was in a different direction than the Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki, so the effect was not quite as dramatic ... but it was close. Yamashina went flying backward at least ten yards, spinning as he flew. His sword broke free and tumbled from his grasp, and the point sank into the turf several feet to Soujiro's right. The Yakuza lord himself landed with a vicious thud even louder than the one Young-eun had made as she fell, and lay unmoving on the lawn.
"Aoi Denkou Ryu Ougi," Soujiro breathed. "Kitakaze no Kokoro." (5) The name simply seemed appropriate, though his voice did not have the quiet steel behind it that it usually did. There was a sharp tingling sensation on Soujiro's upper back, and it took him a moment to realize that Yamashina's blade had actually connected--it had gone far enough to get through Soujiro's clothing and touch the surface of Soujiro's skin, but the Kitakaze no Kokoro had struck and demolished his attack before the Yakuza mastermind's blade could pierce far enough to draw any blood. *He walks the line between life and death in that moment,* he thought to himself, remembering the words he had said to Yumi the last time he had seen her, explaining the power behind the Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki. Explaining it was one thing, but living it was something else entirely. Soujiro realized with cold certainty that he had been a hair away from having his spinal cord severed.
Slowly, Soujiro slid his sakaba's scabbard free of his belt and slid the reversed blade back into it. Then, the moment the blade fell into place, his knees folded over, and he collapsed. He did not fall completely onto his face, but the only thing that kept him from doing so was his sword. He ground the tip of the scabbard into the turf and used it for support, and even so, he could not manage any more than a sitting position.
Eventually, Soujiro managed to leverage himself to his feet again. The sun had fully crested the rim of the mountains to the east, and Soujiro turned to soak in the morning light for a few moments. This was something he had done for years now, almost ever since he had walked away into the storm with ShiShiO on that fateful night. He was always up before dawn, usually training outdoors, and the sunrise was the first time he allowed himself to rest his sword and grab something to eat. When he had lived with his adoptive parents, he had always been up before dawn as well, but he had never gotten to appreciate a sunrise; the sun came and went, but Soujiro had always been hard at work long before the sun showed herself, and he had usually been bent over by the weight of immense rice bushels on his shoulders. He had never been allowed to take a rest or eat then. ShiShiO's practice schedule had almost been a welcome relief, though ShiShiO often put a greater strain on the Tenken's body than Soujiro's adoptive parents ever had. Eventually, over the course of his life with ShiShiO, the habit of recharging at sunrise had set in so deeply that the sunrise itself had begun to have a rejuvenating effect on the Tenken. "You're getting stronger," ShiShiO would always say during those pre-dawn exercises, "but you've got to keep pushing yourself! See if you can last until sunrise!"
*See if you can last until sunrise,* Soujiro repeated to himself. He turned away from the sun, opened his eyes, and looked over at the unconscious form of Yamashina again. *It was a little harder today than usual, though,* he thought wryly.
Finally, he made himself turn and look at Young-eun. She was still sprawled face down on the earth, and was as still as Yamashina. He approached her nervously, unsure of what to do. ShiShiO had never taught him how to revive someone unconscious; the occasion had never come up, but Soujiro imagined he would have simply said that if the person was strong enough, they'd wake up eventually on their own. Soujiro had every confidence that Young-eun was strong enough, but nonetheless, he couldn't shake the feeling that there had to be something he could do to speed up the process.
Suddenly, a movement caught his eye, and he breathed a small inward sigh of relief. Her right hand was opening and closing weakly, as though she were still fumbling for the hilt of her wakizashi. It was a miniscule sign of life ... but at least it was a sign. At least it looked like she would be waking up well before Yamashina did, and Soujiro could always knock Yamashina out again if the Yakuza lord showed any signs of coming around. Nonetheless, it was probably a better idea to get out of the area before that became necessary.
A growl in his stomach reminded him that those rests at dawn with ShiShiO had often come with rice and mixed vegetables, and often a few broiled shrimp. He had not eaten since late yesterday, and he had gone through three battles since then. Rice and mixed vegetables would never even come close. He was in the mood to down a triple helping of Yumi-san's Kagoshima-style tonkotsu; the woman had been the best cook he had ever met.
Soujiro began to wonder where all of Yamashina's followers and retainers were hiding. Obviously, there was a palace nearby, and even though most of the battle would have been invisible from within because of the courtyard wall, he had to believe that some of Yamashina's servants and guards had found some way to watch from somewhere. He found it hard to believe that Yamashina's order to keep out of the fight would hold now that their master had fallen, though Soujiro admitted to himself that had ShiShiO given him that order, he probably would have simply walked off and found something else to do. ShiShiO would probably have taken needing to be rescued as an insult and skewered whoever tried to save him. Soujiro could not sense any presences in the vicinity, but of course, the valley was large, and the Hitokiri battle sense was generally best at sensing the presence of other highly tuned awarenesses--other sword masters. At the moment, he didn't feel like he could fend off an irate sushi chef, if one had sprung at him from somewhere.
Eventually, the desire to be gone quickly overcame his urge to let Young-eun revive on her own undisturbed. He knelt down beside her, slid his arms under hers, and lifted her awkwardly to her feet. He was fumbling completely in the dark; he had seen ShiShiO carry Yumi around effortlessly, but he had never tried it himself. He had always been extremely uncomfortable with anything that involved touching other people, except fighting. It was showing now. He tried several times to get Young-eun's feet beneath her, and she did as best she could, but it was as if the bones in her legs had been misplaced somewhere. The first time he tried to relax his grip on her, she simply fell back against him. The second time, she began to fall away from him, and Soujiro was forced to wrap his arms tightly about her torso and shoulders and brace his legs to keep from falling down with her onto the grass. The third time, she began to fall back against him again, and this time, Soujiro simply leaned back, put one arm beneath her legs and another behind her back, and allowed her to fall into being cradled in his arms. He let out a sharp, involuntary hiss as the weight of an extra person landed on his wounded leg, but he quickly suppressed it.
Soujiro carried Young-eun out of Yamashina's palace grounds, walking as steadily as he could manage back through the lush, terraced water gardens. It was amazing how everything looked the same. The world had looked so different to him after his battle with the Battousai. Of course, he was not really paying complete attention to the scenery. Behind him, Yamashina's palace was beginning to show signs of life. The water gardens remained tranquil, but the woods ahead of him did not have the feel of being vacant, and he was not making good time. He was wounded and trying to do the work of two.
When he reached the base of the terraced gardens, he stopped. He had reached the fork in the road where Nagata had left him on his journey into the valley. One road led out of the valley, and he was very tempted to take it, but the other road probably led to Yamashina's stables. He was not in the mood for riding, but he was even less in the mood for walking, so after a moment of indecision, he took the rightward path and began strolling along the base of the water gardens of Yamashina's palace.
He had only gone a few minutes, however, when the sound of a horse approaching from behind him reached his ears. As quickly as he could manage, he got off the trail and slowly lowered Young-eun to the ground, resting her against the bole of a tree. Then he returned to the edge of the road. His eyebrows perked up slightly; the sixth sense in the back of his mind was telling him that whoever was approaching was more than just a scout or courier.
Then the horse and rider came into view, and a smile of pure relief lit up Soujiro's face. He had seen them both before, though he had all but forgotten about them moments after leaving them in the gorge on the far side of Ichibou.
Ukita Shimiro reined in his horse when Soujiro half-stepped, half-stumbled into the road. Surprise and relief were painted on his face, but it did not hide the reenergized light burning in his eyes. Soujiro smiled inwardly. Ukita had not gotten here without fighting; the warrior spirit that he must have had to be an Ishin was much more awake than it had been when Soujiro had left the older man.
"Soujiro-kun!" he exclaimed once he had gotten his horse to a halt. "What the hell happened to you?"
Soujiro didn't even have the energy to answer. He simply turned around and headed back into the trees, motioning Ukita not to go anywhere. He returned moments later with Young-eun cradled in his arms. The little Korean teenager was still apparently struggling to regain consciousness, her hands opening and closing weakly and her legs twitching slowly, but her eyes were still closed and her body was still completely limp.
"Holy shit!" Ukita exclaimed, leaping down from the horse. "How on Earth ..."
"Never mind," Soujiro interrupted. "Just get her out of here."
Ukita hesitated.
"What?" Soujiro asked. He was tempted to explode, "What the hell are you doing?! Move!!" He was too tired, though, and the ice of the Tenken was still cold around his mind.
"You go," Ukita said suddenly.
"What?" Soujiro exploded incredulously.
"That horse will never get the three of us out of here, especially not me," he said, tapping his fist on his girth. "He's tired enough as it is. He'll move a lot faster if it's only you two featherweights on him. And even hurt, you'd probably do better protecting her than me, if it comes to that."
"But you're ..."
"How many times do I have to keep telling you to move?!" Ukita snapped. "Get her out of here before that hornet's nest up there wakes up, or I'll skin you myself."
"Anou ..."
"Move!!" Ukita snarled.
*Move because we'd never get out of here with the horse. Move because we need the horse to get out of here. Move here. Move there. Why don't I ever get to tell anyone what to do?* Soujiro thought to himself. Of course, he was already on the horse by the time he finished thinking it, and there was no heat behind the thought. It was just something to distract him from the pains all over her body. He set Young-eun in front of him, reached around underneath her arms so he could both grasp the reins and hold her steady at the same time, and prepared to head back to Ichibou. He was glad that his horse was the calmest one he had ever met, and recalling the incident in the gorge to the west, he remembered that it didn't panic when fighting erupted nearby either. He was even less experienced with horses than he was with women.
"Soujiro!" Ukita called out behind him.
The Tenken turned around, barely managing to cut himself short from setting the horse in motion; he wasn't sure he would be able to stop the animal once he got it started.
"She can't stay here anymore."
Soujiro knew that Ukita was right, but the aged samurai seemed to be trying to imply something more than that. He turned a puzzled expression on the blacksmith, hoping to get a better explanation.
"I trust you." The former Ishin somehow made it sound even more loaded.
For another moment, Soujiro was still completely lost. Then it suddenly hit him what Young-eun's father was saying, and his eyes widened in shock. "You can't be serious," he said faintly, though it was obvious that the man was not joking, and the man clenched his teeth at Soujiro's incredulous hesitation.
"Don't even tell me where you're going. If they find me, I don't even want to be able to tell them anything even if they break me."
"Are you crazy?" Soujiro asked. "She'll kill me when she wakes up if she doesn't know you're safe!"
"I can take care of myself, boy!" Ukita retorted. "And she knows it! She'll understand, trust me!"
"And if she doesn't?"
"That's your problem, then! GO!!"
Soujiro turned and was about to heel the horse into motion again when he stopped for a second time. An idea had surfaced in his mind, thoughts of his days wandering abroad gathering intelligence on ShiShiO's enemies returning to his consciousness. He had thought about those journeys often since he left Kyoto, until he got drawn into the web of Ichibou. He turned once more to Ukita and said, "If you change your mind, I'll let someone know where to find me. If you were Ishin ShiShi, you'll know him when you see him. He's staying at the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu dojo in Tokyo."
Ukita nodded wordlessly. Soujiro was surprised that the blacksmith didn't ask any further questions, though he didn't press the issue. He was eager to get going; the valley could not possibly stay quiet much longer.
For the third time, Soujiro was just about to wheel the horse around when Ukita called out one last time "Soujiro-san!"
Soujiro stopped; he had not missed the change in the form of address, but he ignored it.
"Take care of her."
Soujiro nodded slowly, and the most genuine smile since the night on Ukita's roof appeared on Soujiro's lips. He took care to arrange Young-eun as comfortably as he could manage; all the false starts had shifted her into an awkward position. Then, with a quick toss of his head to Ukita in farewell, he whicked the reins, and set off back up the valley at a brisk canter. Ukita was already stealing off the path into the forest. Neither one of them ever looked back.
* * * * *
EPILOGUE:
THE WANDERING WIND
Young-eun opened her eyes. She had no idea where she was, though the air was cool and she could tell that there was something soft underneath her. She was in the middle of a forest, though it did not have the same cultivated feel as the forest in Yamashina's valley. The last thing she remembered was reaching for her sword after Yamashina had knocked her down. Even that memory was faint and dreamlike. Of course, she reasoned, that could be because her head was pounding so much that everything felt faint and dreamlike, but everything after Genji's dart had struck her got fainter and fainter in her mind. Everything after she had gotten outside onto the palace walls and seen Soujiro fighting Yamashina in the outer courtyard was even more blurry. It was giving her a headache just thinking about it.
She tried to sit up and failed. All she managed to do was progress from soft painful breathing to loud painful breathing. She tried to roll over onto her stomach and push herself up with her arms. That didn't work either, though it did let her know that she had been lying on a comfortable outdoor bedroll. She got a good look at it, because for some reason her head wouldn't obey her orders to lift itself, and thus the side of her face was pressed into the cushioning. *This is getting nowhere,* she told herself. Even her voice in her mind sounded strained.
She managed to roll over to a thick tree nearby. Using its trunk for leverage, she managed to work herself into a sitting position, though the effort made spots dance in front of her eyes for a few moments, and she thought she might pass out again. When her vision cleared, though, it brought no more answers.
She could see a stream several yards off through the trees, and a horse was tethered to one of the trees along the bank. She also realized that her bedroll was the only one in the clearing, though it looked like there had been someone else here. A pile of soft leaves and moss had been gathered a few feet away from her own bedroll, and it looked like someone had probably spent an uncomfortable night there. Then again, she couldn't exactly be sure what time it was. A little before sunset or a little after dawn, one of the two; she had no idea which way was east or west at the moment. The remains of a small fire stood lifelessly nearby as well. Aside from the bedroll and a small pot lying by the remains of the fire, there was nothing manmade in sight.
Looking down at herself, she realized that she should probably also count her clothes as not being manmade at this point. They were horribly torn and dirty beyond recognition; skin was showing in almost half a dozen places where it shouldn't have been, though she realized with disgust that those patches were so plastered with dirt that there really wasn't much skin actually showing after all. Her hair was tangled and matted as well, though she didn't dare think how bad it might have been if she hadn't cut off a lot of it. With a start, though, she realized that her face had been rinsed off, at least. At least, she could feel her skin when she managed to touch her face, and no dirt came away when she did; of course, her hands were dirty enough that she would probably never have known.
She finally got around to wondering who on Earth she was traveling with. She ruled out Yamashina quickly; she would still be bound hand and foot if he had somehow gotten hold of her again. The same would apply to any of Yamashina's retainers. Ukita-san could certainly ride a horse, would want to get her away from Ichibou as soon as possible; she guessed that it was probably him, even though the last she had seen of him, he had been set to hard labor in Yamashina's iron mines. The old coot would never have remained there long, she was sure of that. Then again, there was still even a remote chance that it was ...
Suddenly, without any noise or warning whatsoever, Soujiro stepped into the clearing, appearing from behind one of the trees just behind the fire pit. His sword was still girded at his waist. In one hand he held what looked to be a fat duck, already cleaned and ready for cooking; in the other hand he held what looked to be an oversized satchel. Young-eun's breath caught at the sight of him, and she breathed a sigh of relief that he was alive. The only thing that made her almost as happy as the sight of him was the sight of that dead duck. She was starving.
The moment he noticed that Young-eun was awake, he dropped the satchel, and it looked like he was almost about to drop the duck, too, though he managed to stop himself at the last instant. Slowly, he set the duck down in the pot next to the fire, though he didn't come any closer once he had stood up again. Young-eun noticed the same awkwardness and uncertainty in his eyes that she had seen that first night she had met him, at the Red House. She bit her lip in anxiety. *Is the only time he's sure of himself when he's fighting?* she thought. Her thoughts were somewhat disordered, though; the hitch in her breath when he had appeared had made spots dance in front of her eyes again.
"You ... you're awake," he said.
Young-eun smiled, and laughed weakly. "They say nothing evades the eye of a Hitokiri," she joked, though her strained breathing robbed it of its humor.
Soujiro relaxed a little bit, and finally came over to where she sat, though he sat himself down across from her, several feet away, and did not come any closer. Young-eun wanted to motion him to come sit by her, but her hands were too weak to make the effort, and she needed both of them, as well as the tree, to hold herself upright.
"Where'd you go?" she asked, just to break the silence.
Soujiro smile took on a wry tinge. "A couple of ducks landed in a pond a little way downstream, right by the road, and then a merchant's wagon passed while I was there, too."
"Looking for a job?"
Soujiro smiled, and for the first time, Young-eun might have said it was almost warm. "Women's clothes, actually," he answered, with a shy glance at her kimono. "And a couple of other things."
Young-eun colored slightly when Soujiro mentioned clothes, though she realized that she was partly embarrassed simply because she hadn't felt embarrassed earlier when Soujiro had walked into the clearing with her clothes in that state. It hadn't even occurred to her that she should have been.
"How're you feeling?" Soujiro asked when Young-eun fell silent.
"Like I got run over by a cavalry division," Young-eun replied truthfully.
"Think you'd be OK for a bath?" he asked.
Young-eun perked up almost immediately. "You have soap?"
Soujiro actually looked offended when she said that. Young-eun looked at him, trying to figure out what she might have said wrong, but Soujiro smiled again a moment later, and an almost bemused look entered his eyes. "Yes, I have soap," he answered. "I use it myself, you know."
"Wha ... ? Oh ... crap, I didn't mean it like that," she answered lamely. *Damn you, Young-eun, did you have all the sense knocked out of you sometime?* she cursed herself. *If he didn't have soap, he wouldn't look like ...* she broke herself out of that line of thought, concentrating instead on leveraging herself to her feet. At least her limbs were beginning to respond to her commands again, though she still felt like she had cloth scraps instead of muscles.
Soujiro had already headed over to the bag he had brought back from the merchant's wagon. When he came back, he held a sturdy brown peasant's kimono folded over to look like a small cushion, with a bar of soap prominently displayed on top. He didn't say anything, but the look in his eyes was all too obvious. Young-eun couldn't hide a wan smile as she snatched the items from him and headed out towards the stream.
After one of the longest baths she had ever taken, she took a look at herself in her reflection on the water. The kimono was certainly not as ornate as the one that had been destroyed, but at least it was whole. She was barefoot now, but she didn't mind; at least her feet would be clean for a few minutes, which is more than she could say if she put on the sandals she had been wearing again. Her hair definitely looked and felt a lot better, though now she was beginning to wish she hadn't gotten rid of so much of it; it looked as though it had been cut with a sword. Of course, it actually had been, but that was beside the point; the point was that it looked like it. The bath had been good for her head, too; the clear, cold mountain water helped drive away some of the lagging haziness in her mind, though she would have preferred something warmer for her muscles.
An absolutely delicious aroma greeted her as she headed back to the camp, and she almost forgot about the stiffness in her legs. Soujiro greeted her with a smile, but Young-eun's attention was more on the pot than on Soujiro at the moment. "What is that?" she asked wonderingly.
Soujiro grinned. "Duck breast, pecans, cashews, and a few mixed vegetables, sauteed with honey garlic sauce and sesame seeds. Only stream water to drink, though."
Young-eun's eyes were growing wider and wider with every word. They were as big as saucers by the time he finished. "Where ... where did you learn to cook like that?" she asked.
Soujiro's grin twisted nonchalantly. "I was ShiShiO's messenger, so I had to travel a lot. It was either learn to cook or live on steamed rice and trail rations. I've had enough rice for a lifetime." Young-eun felt like there was more in that last statement that she understood, but she decided not to press the matter. She had gotten the point.
Dinner was as good as it smelled, though technically it was breakfast time; the sun had been rising since Young-eun awoke. As they ate, they traded stories as to what had happened to them since they separated the previous night, though Young-eun shifted past several points that she didn't feel like talking about. Young-eun learned that she was in the woods to the south of the plain south of Ichibou, and she had been unconscious--or at least almost unconscious--for almost twenty-four hours. She accepted that Ukita-san had told Soujiro to take Young-eun away; Soujiro seemed surprised by that, but Young-eun realized that he didn't know the two of them that well. She was surprised to learn that Soujiro had only left her side once during those entire twenty-four hours, which just happened to be the exact time she woke up.
The conversation almost seemed to steer itself around anything that could touch on anything emotional, however, which, while she didn't let it show, frustrated a small corner of Young-eun's mind. She had kind of been expecting it, but she was secretly hoping that somehow it would come into the conversation; she just didn't want to be the one to bring it up. He still insisted on sitting across from her, not next to her, and he seemed as unable to say anything about his emotions as her. She remembered that they had both managed to get past that on the roof of Ukita-san's house, but that had been different, somehow. It still hadn't come out in the real world anytime.
"So where do we go from here?" she asked.
Soujiro looked at her awkwardly. After a moment's hesitation and an encouraging look from Young-eun, he answered, "You don't ... have to come with me, if you don't want to, you know."
She shrugged. "Where would I go if I don't?" she asked.
"Iie, iie, it's not that, I just don't ..." he trailed off, searching for words.
"You don't want me to feel like I'm trapped?" she asked. She understood what he was saying, though he couldn't be further from the mark.
Soujiro nodded.
Young-eun made herself get up and sit down next to the little wanderer. He gave no outward reaction, and wouldn't meet her eyes, but at least he didn't move away. "I don't feel trapped," she said. "I've never felt more free in my life. Three days ago, I didn't think I'd ever get out of Ichibou. Two days ago, I didn't think I'd ever get out of that bastard's house. Yesterday, I couldn't even move. Why would I feel trapped now?" she asked.
Soujiro didn't say anything as he absorbed this; he barely even moved. Young-eun kept waiting for him to say something, watching for any kind of reaction, but he was unreadable, and she hadn't had the training in reading other people that he had. She dearly wanted to reach out her hand to his like she had three nights ago, but something kept holding her back.
Eventually, the tension got to be too much for her. She slipped her right hand out slowly and rested it on his left shoulder. He again when she did, and she almost drew it back, but instead she just let it lie there. "Do you ... do you really want me to leave?" she asked.
He finally turned to meet her eyes then, and her breath caught again. There was no mistaking what she saw there, but she reached her hand up to them just to be certain anyway. She brushed her fingers just under his eye, spreading away the glistening trickle of moisture that had formed there. His hand suddenly came up to her wrist, gently holding it where it was, her hand still resting just below his eye.
"Ii ... iie ..." he managed shakily.
Young-eun suddenly realized that she was crying herself, and couldn't stop herself until she suddenly burst out laughing. Soujiro's tears dried before hers did, the tension had faded from him and he was smiling again, though he still did not share in her laughter. She made a point that she was going to get him to laugh someday. With one last laugh and a broad smile, she reclined back on her elbows and sighed lightly into the sky. He was not the only one who had managed to shake the tension out of themselves, she realized. She had not felt this relaxed anywhere except her roof in years. "So where to now?"
Soujiro lay down on his back next to her. "I guess I'd kind of planned on heading east to Nagoya, and see if we can catch a ship there to Tokyo," he answered. "There are some people there I think you'd like to meet."
"Sounds great," Young-eun replied. Something occurred to her then. "Wouldn't walking be cheaper, though? I'm kind of broke,"
Soujiro smiled mysteriously. "Don't worry. Someone I knew died unexpectedly recently, and I think they left a lot of money unclaimed."
Young-eun arched an eyebrow at him. "In Nagoya?" she asked.
"Enough to get by for a while on," Soujiro answered nonchalantly. "There's a lot more in Tokyo, though, and even more in Kyoto and Osaka if we ever go back there."
If anyone else started saying things like this, Young-eun would probably have thought they were exaggerating, but Soujiro wasn't that type, and he didn't even really seemed to know what he was implying, if that was possible. "Anou ... if I might ask ... how much is a lot more?"
"Oh ... I'm not sure," Soujiro answered. There was a maddeningly secretive smile on his face. "It should be enough, though."
Young-eun gave up. She didn't feel like talking about money right now. It was a boring conversation anyway. Looking over at Soujiro, she realized that it must have been boring to him, too. His eyes were closed, and he looked like he was quickly falling asleep.
"Are you falling asleep?" she asked.
He nodded. "I've slept for three hours in two days," he reminded her. "We're a ways from town now, and I really don't feel like moving for a while."
Young-eun smiled. "That's fine with me," she answered. Without another word, she leaned across and kissed the Tenken softly on the cheek. A minute later, she was asleep as well, coiled up against Soujiro's side with her head resting on his chest.
* * *
Soujiro lay motionless for a full fifteen minutes after Young-eun's breathing relaxed into slumber, but he was not asleep. His eyes were wide open and staring into the treetops. The events of the last three days were still spinning through his mind, and he had never had a chance to sit down and sort them out during any of that time, which only made it worse. He could never remember life being so complicated.
On the other hand, somehow, in the midst of all that, things were finally starting to come into focus again for him. He was starting to understand why Himura Kenshin had forsaken killing and risked his life to protect people. He was starting to understand why people deserved the chance to live.
Emotions were spinning around inside his head as well, and those were harder to deal with for him than events. 'Complicated' did not even begin to describe it. No matter how hard he tried, he could not bring his thoughts into focus; his emotions were a kaleidoscope inside his mind. It had been hard enough before Young-eun had ...
He wasn't even going to think about that. Of course, the more he thought about not thinking about it, the more he thought about it. The fact that she was so close didn't help, either. Eventually, he simply gave up. There was only one thing he could say to express everything he was feeling.
"Orooooooooo ...."
* * * * *
!!THE END!!
(1) warrior's timing (see Kenshin ep 53, Fuji vs. Hiko, for an example)
(2) waterspout
(3) secret; succession technique
(4) Whirlpool of Night
(5) Spirit of the North Wind
IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!! Six months and change in the making, and voila! This is now the longest story I've ever produced (though I've had some long ones before, just not fanfictions). I seriously hope you've enjoyed all this, and my special thanks to everyone who's been a fan since the prelude went up back in December 2000! And once again, I'm really sorry that this is so late in coming (the second-to-last chapter was uploaded in April). College finals always get in the way of the important things in life.
I'm itching to write a sequel, but I'll have to seriously think about it before I start. Too often, I think sequels not only are worse than the original, but they make the original look worse, too.
I intend to keep updating this, but any of you who have me on AuthorAlert may as well ignore it; I'm a revision addict, so I'm going to go back and re-read everything I've written and correct all the little mistakes that I've made here and there along the way. I don't think I'll add any more substantive content.
As always, I love reviews! Let me know what you think, who/what you liked, etc.! I'm especially fond of my battle scenes and the characters that I actually created (Yamashina and Young-eun particularly), so especially let me know what you thought of them, and anything else that jumped out at you! I look forward to hearing from everyone ... if you made it this far, something has to have struck you by now, or I didn't do my job. :-)
Viva Soujiro!
That reminds me ... my Japanese is next to nonexistent. Don't fault me for it. At least I'm trying.
Happy reading!
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting; the town of Ichibou, Kim Young-eun, Karachi Hoebu, Yamashina Ito, Genji Taku, and several other minor characters are my own ideas. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: To Kenshin TV ep 61, "Remaining Ju Pon Gattana, Choice of Life."
* * * * *
CHAPTER 15:
THE SHOOTING STAR
There was a long moment as Soujiro, Yamashina, and Young-eun all stood perfectly still in a triangle on the lawn in front of the Yakuza lord's garden palace. It was impossible to tell who held any advantage. Soujiro was still struggling to find his footing after the beating Yamashina had given him, and spots danced across his vision, but fortunately, he had not lost as much blood as he had feared at first. Yamashina was less hurt, but one of his blades was now in the hands of his little Korean captive. Young-eun was fresher than either of them, but she was the least experienced of the three of them and had never been in a situation like this until now.
Yamashina broke the silence. "Well well well, Young-eun-chan, you learn even faster than I dreamed. However, I'm still the teacher here, and I think it's time you remembered that." He began to walk toward Young-eun as he spoke, not rushing into action, just creeping as inexorably forward as an incoming tide. Young-eun backed away before his advance.
"I admire your courage," Yamashina said as he lowered himself into an attacking stance, "but you should learn to wait your turn!" With that, he blurred forward, and Young-eun instinctively threw up her short swords in defense. Her instincts and her speed saved her from being impaled, but she didn't have the skill to solve Yamashina's continuous, flowing attack. Soujiro remembered how much difficulty he had found finding openings in Yamashina's style; he was more technically perfect than ShiShiO, though he didn't have ShiShiO's raw power. All the little Korean girl could do was defend herself.
Abruptly, Young-eun managed to break away, and quickly ducked sideways to avoid Yamashina's pursuing thrust. Soujiro's eyes widened again. She had developed one fairly advanced technique, at least. By speeding up and slowing down, she was able to create the impression of several phantasmal images of herself in the air. It was much more primitive than Shinomori Aoshi's waterflow technique, but for someone with little to no formal training, it was unbelievable.
Yamashina was unfazed, however. "A word of advice, little one," he shouted as he turned to keep up with her. "If you can't do something right, don't try it!" He darted in against one of the images of her, and by the ring of steel on steel, Soujiro knew that Yamashina had solved the pattern of her attack. The other images of her winked out as their blades caught and held.
Suddenly, Yamashina jumped back with a cry of surprise and pain. Young-eun had managed to slip part of her right-hand wakizashi free and grind the blade across the top of the knuckles on Yamashina's left hand. Yamashina flexed the hand gingerly; Young-eun had not been able to make a true stroke of it, and the cut was not deep, but a new and deadly seriousness entered Yamashina's eyes. It was a minor injury, but the fact remained that Young-eun had just penetrated his defenses, if only barely.
Yamashina stole a glance with the corner of one eye at Soujiro. The blue-clad assassin was almost completely ready for battle again, and the pain in his leg was beginning to subside. Turning back to Young-eun, the Yakuza leader levelled his katana and set himself in an even more aggressive attacking stance than before. "I'm sorry, little one," he intoned icily, "but I can't afford to worry about two foes faster than me at once. It's a shame. You could have been great someday."
Soujiro's eyes widened again, as he realized that Yamashina intended to kill her, but Young-eun's expression didn't even flicker. She simply set herself in a defensive stance and silently dared Yamashina to attack her. Soujiro was impressed; for someone so raw, she had a remarkable grasp of the Ma-ai (1). It was far from perfect, however, and Yamashina darted in and forced her to abandon it in a matter of moments. It had certainly made him hesitate, however; Soujiro took note, and thanked Young-eun in the bottom of his heart for those few extra breaths.
Suddenly, Yamashina caught Young-eun's blades at an awkward angle, forcing her to bend one of her wrists in a way that it was not meant to go to get the cross block up in time, to one side of her head. Yamashina dealt two swift kicks with his powerful legs, and got his free hand on Young-eun's left wrist. Too late, Soujiro and Young-eun both saw what he was planning.
With the king of all back roundhouses, one step short of the Shuku-chi, Yamashina sent Young-eun flying through the air so hard that she did a three-quarter somersault and landed on her stomach. The crunches as his foot connected with her temple and as she hit the ground were almost equally loud. Only one wakizashi came with her; the other remained in Yamashina's hand, jarred loose by the impact. Yamashina gave the prostrate girl a devilish grin.
"I hope it was fun while it lasted," he mocked. He moved in, fully armed again, for the finishing blow.
"Iie!!" Soujiro shouted, unable to spare time for another lone breath. He repaid the favor Young-eun had granted him, blocking Yamashina's swing on its way down and turning it aside into the earth. Fortunately, he had an instant before Yamashina could react with his wakizashi, and made use of it. *People who stand still in fights deserve to lie still after them,* he remembered thinking once, when he first began to develop his Budo. He took advantage of Yamashina's momentary defensive hesitation to drive himself skyward at point blank range, his left fist coming crushing up under Yamashina's jaw. It was an instinctive move, but it actually turned into one of the most spectacular he had connected with so far. It helped that Yamashina's attention had been partially diverted, of course. The Yakuza boss went stumbling backward, though he didn't go flying through the air and regained his balance before Soujiro even landed.
With a small corner of his mind, Soujiro was aware that Young-eun was still moving, though only barely. Yamashina had powerful legs, and her arm had been tangled so she couldn't balance herself properly to prepare for either the kick or the fall. She wouldn't be jumping in to save him again; she probably wouldn't even be regaining her feet anytime soon, but at least she was still breathing.
Soujiro had his sakaba back in its sheath before he even landed, and he landed already in the Battou stance. Taking a defensive stance against the Shuku-chi was usually a bad idea, but Soujiro had the speed to match it, and he was beginning to suspect something about Yamashina's Shuku-chi. Both Soujiro and Young-eun had upped the ante to the full thing more than once now, and he had not matched them. There was still the possibility that Yamashina was not taking Soujiro seriously in a corner of his mind, but Soujiro was beginning to seriously doubt that. He decided to put the matter to rest once and for all, and quickly switched the position of his two blades so that his hand rested by the hilt of the Oh-waza-mono, Heart of the Hungry Wolf.
Yamashina smiled. "So you're ShiShiO's student after all. Let's end this here." He sheathed his own swords as well, and matched Soujiro's Battou stance with his own. Soujiro's expression did not waver, but he smiled inwardly. However arrogant Yamashina's words might be, the fact that he took a defensive stance against Soujiro meant that he was worried about the Tenken's attack. It also meant that he was counting on the extra speed of a Battou Jutsu. Soujiro had no intention of going for a killing stroke, however. He simply hoped that Yamashina didn't realize that.
They lunged for each other at the same instant. Their blades blurred from their scabbards at the same time ... and Soujiro's covered more distance than Yamashina's before they met. Soujiro's eyes widened. That was no lack of effort on Yamashina's part. He really hadn't matched him. They traded several more blows before Soujiro disengaged, wary of getting careless and allowing Yamashina to slip in with the wakizashi.
"You can't do it, can you?" Soujiro asked wonderingly. "You can't do the full thing anymore."
Yamashina straightened, and appeared to relax his blades in front of him, though anyone who thought he was lowering his guard was an idiot. "I haven't been able to since the end of the Bakumatsu. At one point, I could barely manage three steps short of it. I've been getting better again since I started making this place a little more wild, a little more of a place I could lose myself in," he added with a gesture toward the green valley behind him, "but I could never abandon myself the way I could when I was just another rebel with a cause. And this place means too much to me to give it up now. Once things start meaning too much to you, the mindset you need simply won't come anymore. The Shuku-chi is too self-destructive for anyone who cares too much about themself. Enjoy it while you can, Seta Soujiro. It looks like things have started to get through to you, too. Even if you beat me, I may be the last person you get to use it against."
"I don't care," Soujiro replied flatly.
"Really?" Yamashina readied himself to attack again. "Well then, you might have been able to use it once or twice again ... but we'll never know!" He vanished into the blur of the near-Shuku-chi an instant later.
Soujiro followed suit, and several quick slashes and parries followed. Yamashina was clearly putting more thought into each blow now that Soujiro had switched to the Garou-no-Kokoro, and the Oh-waza-mono blade was definitely faster and more dangerous than the sakaba, but despite this, no more blood flowed. Neither one of them connected, though they were fighting more fiercely than before. They were starting to adapt to each others' attacks, and they were also both running out of tricks and trying to wait for the best possible opportunity. Furthermore, they were both getting a little more defensive, since the match was beginning to take its toll on both of them and neither one of them wanted to risk leaving a fatal opening.
Yamashina had one advantage that Soujiro could not match, however; he had the vulnerable, prostrate form of Young-eun on the ground not far away. Thus, as soon as he got the chance, he turned and lunged for the prone Korean girl, intent on eliminating her as a threat once and for all.
*Iie!* Soujiro shouted to himself, though he did not shout it aloud, as he lunged to get his sword between Yamashina's katana and Young-eun's body. He was not the kind to talk and fight at the same time; the previous one had been ripped from his lips, but he had regained control of himself somewhat. He was glad that he had, too, because otherwise he might have forgotten that Yamashina was too smart to actually turn his back on an enemy. Yamashina had fallen for a similar trick minutes earlier. Soujiro was not about to do the same.
Yamashina was ready for his intervention; he was not about to give up another crushing uppercut to the jaw. As soon as Soujiro came within range, Yamashina reversed his swing and brought his wakizashi into play. Soujiro simply smiled. He had not put as much of his energy behind his rush as Yamashina thought. If Yamashina had truly gone for Young-eun's life, it would have cost him his own, and they both knew it. Yamashina had been counting on Soujiro forgetting. It didn't work. Soujiro caught Yamashina's crossed blades on his own, throwing himself skyward an instant before the impact so that the force of the blow helped catapult him up and over Yamashina's head. Yamashina spun around too quickly for Soujiro to get an attack from above and behind him, but it was too late to stop Soujiro from landing in between the Yakuza lord and the fallen Korean teenager.
The Yakuza lord gave a snarl of rage and came at Soujiro again immediately, knowing that the blue-clad assassin could not afford to give any ground because Young-eun was lying only two yards behind him. Soujiro knew this as well, and knew that he had to force Yamashina backward quickly or he was going to end up fighting from on top of Young-eun's back. Driving forward like an angry wind, he met Yamashina halfway rather than waiting for the attack, and Yamashina had to use both of his blades to parry Soujiro's savage sideways attack from the right. At the same instant, Soujiro turned and delivered a savage side kick straight into Yamashina's chest. Soujiro's legs were not weak, either, and Yamashina went skidding backward, though he kept his balance.
The crystalline chime of cleanly-breaking metal was the first warning he had that he had made a mistake. Yamashina had locked the Oh-waza-mono blade with his own pair, and Soujiro's wrenching movement as he turned into his kick combined with the force of Yamashina flying away was too much for the legendary blade. Soujiro looked dejectedly at the shattered sword in his hands. The blade now ended in a jagged stump of metal about six inches below the hilt. The rest was lodged in the earth on the far side of Yamashina, almost at the edge of the terrace where the palace lawn fell away into the tiered water garden below.
Fortunately, the impact had also been too much for Yamashina's wakizashi; though it was not broken, it had been bent visibly to one side, and there was a nasty crack running the length of the blade from the bend to the tip. Yamashina gave it a single wry grimace before sending it flying over his shoulder and over the side of the terrace; there was a faint splash as it reached the surface of the pond at the base of the wall.
"Well well," Yamashina chuckled mirthlessly. "At least you did better with it than that last would-be hero." Soujiro cocked his head in puzzlement, and Yamashina continued.
"This is twice in less than three days now that I've faced the Garou-no-Kokoro, did you know that? The last kid wasn't nearly as good as you, though."
Soujiro's mind leaped back to the dying man that had borne the Oh-waza-mono when Soujiro had found him. Yamashina had fought him?
"You killed him?" Soujiro asked.
Yamashina laughed. "I roughed him up pretty badly, but I let him get away. Death would have been too easy on him. His shame would have cut deeper than my sword ever could, especially because I think he REALLY wanted to kill me. I think Genji went after him later, though."
"It was personal?" Soujiro guessed.
Yamashina's smile broadened, though it took nothing away from the feral gleam in his eyes. "It always is with family," he replied. The way he said the word 'family' put all kinds of emotion into it.
"Family?!" Soujiro gasped, though he gave little outward sign of surprise; his mind was still in the battle, and all visible signs of emotion, other than a faint edge in his voice, were locked away. "He was your brother?!"
"Pah!" Yamashina spat, the smile fading for a moment. "Not a chance. My mother had him before she married my father, with the head of another family."
"So your stepbrother, then?" Saying it made a faint corner of Soujiro's mind uncomfortable. Most people would be horrified, but Soujiro remembered that the first person he had ever killed had been one of his stepbrothers.
"Only in name," Yamashina grated. "He was never one of us. Being my stepbrother, not my blood brother, put him last in line for the inheritance of our family, even though he was older than everyone but my oldest brother, and he was as greedy and full of himself as ShiShiO, just without anything to back it up with. So he started tipping off the cops all over Japan on us. The Shinsen Gumi got my oldest brother six years before the end of the dynasty, and my oldest sister a year later. My other two brothers are locked away in Satsuma or Hokkaido somewhere; the government destroyed all traces of their identity just in case I became a cabinet member and wanted to try and push for their release, or if I returned here and wanted to get them out myself. When my father finally found out who was behind everything, the police were already onto him. So he fled to Korea, leaving orders that Sato was never to be allowed near this place again. I've never heard from my father since then, and I was away fighting in Kyoto at the time, so I never even got to say goodbye to him. I think he moved on to Los Angeles a few years later, and I have no idea where he is even now. That man could hide a river of blood in the middle of a snowfield. My stepmother stayed here, thinking that her son would be satisfied with my father gone and me in Kyoto. Sato let her keep thinking that until the night the dynasty's police kicked down the door. I didn't even hear about it until after the Bakumatsu; the Ishin ShiShi kept it quiet because they knew I'd leave and come back here if I knew." Yamashina's eyes had begun to fill with cold fire as he spoke, and there was an icy inferno behind them now.
"Why didn't you just go get her out of jail after everything was over, then?" Soujiro asked. "Did they send her off to Satsuma, too?"
Soujiro knew that he had struck a tender note when the icy light in Yamashina's eyes flared, and his battle aura almost seemed to sparkle and crackle with energy. "Oh, I tried," Yamashina snarled bitterly. "But Sato promised the Ishin a share of my family fortune if they would keep me away from her, since she and I were the only two people with more legitimate claims to it than his. Even the Ishin balked at that one ... they were releasing almost everyone else that the dynasty had wrongfully imprisoned ... but one Ishin cut a deal with Sato on the side."
Soujiro's eyes widened even further. It was not hard to see where Yamashina was going. After a brief pause to absorb what he had just heard, the Tenken replied slowly, "No wonder you hated him so much."
"You haven't heard the end of it!" Yamashina snapped. "When I got to the jail in Osaka where they were keeping her, ShiShiO was waiting for me. No guards, no officials, just him. I had never really liked him--he reminded me too much of Sato, so full of himself--but I never thought he would do anything like that, or I would never have stood aside when the Ishin leadership chose him to replace Himura-san. He didn't even try to mince words; he just told me straight out, 'your brother sent me here to stop you.'" Yamashina's knuckles whitened a shade on the hilt of his sword. "There hasn't been a shred of Ishin left in me since that instant. I was twenty feet from my stepmother, who was as unlike Sato as anyone could ask, and the only thing between me and the door to her was ..." he trailed off.
"You fought him?" Soujiro surmised.
"Of course!" Yamashina flared. "He was going to fight me anyway. Sato and ShiShiO both knew that I wouldn't give until she was free." Yamashina's eyes grew a touch fainter. "That was the most ferocious battle of my life," he continued. "There were no witnesses, other than the poor inmates looking and reaching out through their cell doors. My stepmother's arms were the last I ever saw of her." The faintness faded from his eyes, and the fiery gleam returned. "I was better than ShiShiO that night. ShiShiO had not been betrayed by the Ishin yet, and was nowhere near as powerful as the ShiShiO you knew. That night ... that night I was almost faster than the Shuku-chi. One of the reasons ShiShiO dreamed of the Shuku-chi so much was that I think I was the last person to ever beat him until Kenshin came along ten years later. It wasn't enough, though. ShiShiO knocked over a lantern while we fought. He wasn't like Sato--he wouldn't back down until it was clear that the fire would kill us both if we stayed another minute. By that time, it was already too late for my stepmother, or anyone else in those cells. Most of their screams had already been choked off. I even made it to her door, crossing the floor quickly enough that the flames never touched me, but I couldn't do anything when I got to her door. As soon as I stopped, the fire started to burn my legs, and the building was beginning to fall down around me. Her hands were already blackened, hanging out the bars of the tiny window in her cell door. So I escaped, and came back here, and became the Yakuza lord you see today. I was hoping to find Sato here then, but someone tipped him off that I had survived, and he was long gone when I got here." Almost as an afterthought, as he was tensing for battle again, Yamashina added, "I haven't been able to do the Shuku-chi since that night in Osaka."
The Yakuza lord's eyes burned with frozen fire as he advanced on Soujiro. "It's a shame you have to use that lame excuse for a sword now," he said. "You were a more fitting wielder for the Garou-no-Kokoro than that backstabbing little schemer could ever dream of being." With that, he darted forward to join battle once again.
Soujiro had been itching for a chance to switch back to the sakaba for some time now, anyway; attacking with the Oh-waza-mono had only been intended to feel out whether Yamashina actually possessed the full Shuku-chi or not. The Tenken had been taking an even firmer hold in his mind again when the Oh-waza-mono was in his hands; in fact, a part of his mind felt a pang of vexed regret at having to switch back to the reversed blade.
He swung the sword free of its scabbard just in time to meet Yamashina's thrust, spinning sideways to the right at the same time so he could twist and bring the sakaba around against the left side of Yamashina's neck. The Yakuza lord parried it, but he had to twist backward with the left half of his body to do it, and Soujiro had already made his point. Without his wakizashi, Yamashina was forced to block with his katana; he could no longer block with one hand and attack with the other, at least, not with a blade.
Yamashina had also made a point, too, though a lesser one. Soujiro had winced at the second impact of their blades, the pain in his shoulder revealing that he had not managed to completely wrench it back into place during the respite Young-eun had given him. Soujiro would very likely have been unable to withstand another Arashi Kenbu, had Yamashina been able to execute it. The dirt-caked cut on his right thigh was forcing him to put more weight on his left leg than he would have liked, as well, and prevented him from being able to follow up his second strike with a clean third stroke. Soujiro's hands were still steady on the hilt of his sword, however. He had fought while hurt before, and he had a higher tolerance for pain than people realized. After all, pain had been as regular a part of his life as a child as rice.
"I think we're almost done," Soujiro said. His tone was completely conversational, as though they were finishing breakfast, not a duel. His blade was alert in his hands, however.
Yamashina nodded his wordless agreement, and crouched forward with his sword low in front of him. There were no more words of contempt for the sakaba sword, or ridicule about Soujiro not fighting like ShiShiO's student.
They blurred into the blinding rush of the Shuku-chi at the same instant. The pain in Soujiro's leg slowed him down a step, but no more. The mindset of the Shuku-chi actually helped Soujiro block out the pain, because the focus required was so intense. Yamashina was no more than a step slower than before, either. Mentally, they both had plenty of will to fight left in them.
Soujiro's movement was still hampered, however, by the fact that he did not dare allow Yamashina an opening to get between himself and the prone figure of Young-eun. Yamashina quickly realized this, and timed all his movements perfectly to prevent Soujiro from getting a decent angle at the Yakuza lord. Soujiro had to react instantly and perfectly to every slash and thrust, and could not allow himself the space necessary for his usual blinding flank and rear attacks because doing so would leave the path between Yamashina and Young-eun wide open. The pain in his shoulder, while largely shut out by the mental state of the Shuku-chi, was still there, and growing with every impact of steel upon steel.
Suddenly, Soujiro lost track of Yamashina for a fraction of a second. The Yakuza lord had put almost no force behind a swing to Soujiro's left, then then spun away to Soujiro's right while the little blue-clad assassin was focused on the first attack. Soujiro instinctively reversed the angle of his blade to parry the attack from his right ... and parried nothing but air. It was another second before Soujiro's eyes locked on the Yakuza lord again, and his eyes widened in fear and frustration. Yamashina had driven himself into the air as he spun, and was descending rapidly on the fallen form of Young-eun several yards behind Soujiro. She was trying to scream and roll out of the way, but lacked the breath and the energy to do much of either. Yamashina's sword was coiled over his left shoulder and ready to strike, and he was laughing evilly as he fell.
"Tensui Ryu, Mizubashira!" (2) he shouted mockingly.
Soujiro instantly blazed into action, covering the distance between himself and Young-eun at almost the speed of thought, but Yamashina was already there. Soujiro had to lunge and stretch out with both his arm and the sakaba blade, reversing the blade so that the sharp side pointed skyward. Soujiro was still moving, and had no control over his balance when their blades met. He could not hold his blade still. The force of Yamashina's blade crushed down on his own, ramming the blunt side of the sakaba into the back of Young-eun's shoulders, only inches from her neck. She collapsed in a heap, completely unconscious.
Yamashina used the force of the impact, and Soujiro's sword on Young-eun's shoulders, for leverage to spring himself backward and avoid Soujiro's counterattack. Soujiro quickly stepped over Young-eun's body, putting himself between the Korean girl and the Yakuza lord again, but he was rapidly running out of options. Yamashina knew it, too, and was beginning to smile maliciously.
"Charming," Yamashina mocked. "And how ironic. ShiShiO Makoto's highest protege putting his life on the line to protect someone so helpless."
It was not a particularly vicious taunt, but light began to burn in Soujiro's eyes as the words sunk in, and memories of his battle with Himura-san flooded back into his awareness. They were memories of the final moments before his emotions broke out completely, of the things he had said to Kenshin, of the pain that had been bottled up inside him for so many years with ShiShiO that he had finally gotten to let out against the Battousai. They were memories of the helplessness and fear that had ultimately driven him to become one of the most heartless and lethal killers in history. He had not become an assassin out of hate, spite, or thirst for wealth. He had become a killer because he had had no one ... no one ...
"You don't know a thing about me," Soujiro rasped as he slid his sword slowly back into its sheath. He had already used his strongest technique on Yamashina and had it brushed aside, but the resurgent memories of his fight with the Battousai had brought back memories of more than his childhood pain. The memories of the final seconds of his fight against Kenshin also held the key to beating Yamashina.
*Back then you didn't ...* Soujiro's words rang in the hollows of his mind.
Soujiro set himself in the Battou stance, crouching low and forward. The pain in his leg dwindled into the remotest corner of his mind. His eyes burned with concentration. There was one last thing the Battousai had shown him that he could do. It was a terrible risk, but Soujiro was prepared to take it. *It's impossible to master that technique and have a negative mindset, like wanting to die or being afraid,* he had told Yumi-san after Kenshin had levelled him. Soujiro realized that he had finally crossed that line as well. Whenever he had fought before, he had fought with the kind of abandon that comes from not caring if you live or die. Now, however, he had found something stronger. Yamashina's taunt of his uncharacteristic protectiveness had made him realize it. For the first time in his life, he truly wanted to live.
*You didn't protect me before.*
Yamashina saw the deadly seriousness in Soujiro's eyes, and realized that the Tenken was preparing for a final blow. Quickly, the Yakuza lord set himself in a stance similar to that of the Gatotsu, only this time with his right hand on the hilt. The blade was pointed straight at Soujiro's heart. "So it's time to end this at last," he murmured, his nerves clearly held in an icy calm. "Tensui Ryu Ougi," (3) he hissed, "Anya-no-Uzumaki." (4)
*If you really believe what you say ...*
Soujiro and Yamashina blazed into action at the same moment, directly at each other. Soujiro knew as soon as his first foot left the ground that he had achieved the full Shuku-chi again, but the moment Yamashina's feet drove forward, he realized that Yamashina had transcended himself at last. It was Shuku-chi against Shuku-chi.
*Why didn't you protect me ...?!*
At the last fraction of an instant before the two of them met, Soujiro lunged forward with his left leg, sweeping the sakaba from its sheath in the same fluid motion. Yamashina's eyes did not even have time to widen before the impact. The Shun Ten Satsu, amplified by the same last fatal step that Kenshin had used against Soujiro, crushed a horizontal swath across Yamashina's chest with a sickening crunch. The momentum of the Shun Ten Satsu was in a different direction than the Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki, so the effect was not quite as dramatic ... but it was close. Yamashina went flying backward at least ten yards, spinning as he flew. His sword broke free and tumbled from his grasp, and the point sank into the turf several feet to Soujiro's right. The Yakuza lord himself landed with a vicious thud even louder than the one Young-eun had made as she fell, and lay unmoving on the lawn.
"Aoi Denkou Ryu Ougi," Soujiro breathed. "Kitakaze no Kokoro." (5) The name simply seemed appropriate, though his voice did not have the quiet steel behind it that it usually did. There was a sharp tingling sensation on Soujiro's upper back, and it took him a moment to realize that Yamashina's blade had actually connected--it had gone far enough to get through Soujiro's clothing and touch the surface of Soujiro's skin, but the Kitakaze no Kokoro had struck and demolished his attack before the Yakuza mastermind's blade could pierce far enough to draw any blood. *He walks the line between life and death in that moment,* he thought to himself, remembering the words he had said to Yumi the last time he had seen her, explaining the power behind the Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki. Explaining it was one thing, but living it was something else entirely. Soujiro realized with cold certainty that he had been a hair away from having his spinal cord severed.
Slowly, Soujiro slid his sakaba's scabbard free of his belt and slid the reversed blade back into it. Then, the moment the blade fell into place, his knees folded over, and he collapsed. He did not fall completely onto his face, but the only thing that kept him from doing so was his sword. He ground the tip of the scabbard into the turf and used it for support, and even so, he could not manage any more than a sitting position.
Eventually, Soujiro managed to leverage himself to his feet again. The sun had fully crested the rim of the mountains to the east, and Soujiro turned to soak in the morning light for a few moments. This was something he had done for years now, almost ever since he had walked away into the storm with ShiShiO on that fateful night. He was always up before dawn, usually training outdoors, and the sunrise was the first time he allowed himself to rest his sword and grab something to eat. When he had lived with his adoptive parents, he had always been up before dawn as well, but he had never gotten to appreciate a sunrise; the sun came and went, but Soujiro had always been hard at work long before the sun showed herself, and he had usually been bent over by the weight of immense rice bushels on his shoulders. He had never been allowed to take a rest or eat then. ShiShiO's practice schedule had almost been a welcome relief, though ShiShiO often put a greater strain on the Tenken's body than Soujiro's adoptive parents ever had. Eventually, over the course of his life with ShiShiO, the habit of recharging at sunrise had set in so deeply that the sunrise itself had begun to have a rejuvenating effect on the Tenken. "You're getting stronger," ShiShiO would always say during those pre-dawn exercises, "but you've got to keep pushing yourself! See if you can last until sunrise!"
*See if you can last until sunrise,* Soujiro repeated to himself. He turned away from the sun, opened his eyes, and looked over at the unconscious form of Yamashina again. *It was a little harder today than usual, though,* he thought wryly.
Finally, he made himself turn and look at Young-eun. She was still sprawled face down on the earth, and was as still as Yamashina. He approached her nervously, unsure of what to do. ShiShiO had never taught him how to revive someone unconscious; the occasion had never come up, but Soujiro imagined he would have simply said that if the person was strong enough, they'd wake up eventually on their own. Soujiro had every confidence that Young-eun was strong enough, but nonetheless, he couldn't shake the feeling that there had to be something he could do to speed up the process.
Suddenly, a movement caught his eye, and he breathed a small inward sigh of relief. Her right hand was opening and closing weakly, as though she were still fumbling for the hilt of her wakizashi. It was a miniscule sign of life ... but at least it was a sign. At least it looked like she would be waking up well before Yamashina did, and Soujiro could always knock Yamashina out again if the Yakuza lord showed any signs of coming around. Nonetheless, it was probably a better idea to get out of the area before that became necessary.
A growl in his stomach reminded him that those rests at dawn with ShiShiO had often come with rice and mixed vegetables, and often a few broiled shrimp. He had not eaten since late yesterday, and he had gone through three battles since then. Rice and mixed vegetables would never even come close. He was in the mood to down a triple helping of Yumi-san's Kagoshima-style tonkotsu; the woman had been the best cook he had ever met.
Soujiro began to wonder where all of Yamashina's followers and retainers were hiding. Obviously, there was a palace nearby, and even though most of the battle would have been invisible from within because of the courtyard wall, he had to believe that some of Yamashina's servants and guards had found some way to watch from somewhere. He found it hard to believe that Yamashina's order to keep out of the fight would hold now that their master had fallen, though Soujiro admitted to himself that had ShiShiO given him that order, he probably would have simply walked off and found something else to do. ShiShiO would probably have taken needing to be rescued as an insult and skewered whoever tried to save him. Soujiro could not sense any presences in the vicinity, but of course, the valley was large, and the Hitokiri battle sense was generally best at sensing the presence of other highly tuned awarenesses--other sword masters. At the moment, he didn't feel like he could fend off an irate sushi chef, if one had sprung at him from somewhere.
Eventually, the desire to be gone quickly overcame his urge to let Young-eun revive on her own undisturbed. He knelt down beside her, slid his arms under hers, and lifted her awkwardly to her feet. He was fumbling completely in the dark; he had seen ShiShiO carry Yumi around effortlessly, but he had never tried it himself. He had always been extremely uncomfortable with anything that involved touching other people, except fighting. It was showing now. He tried several times to get Young-eun's feet beneath her, and she did as best she could, but it was as if the bones in her legs had been misplaced somewhere. The first time he tried to relax his grip on her, she simply fell back against him. The second time, she began to fall away from him, and Soujiro was forced to wrap his arms tightly about her torso and shoulders and brace his legs to keep from falling down with her onto the grass. The third time, she began to fall back against him again, and this time, Soujiro simply leaned back, put one arm beneath her legs and another behind her back, and allowed her to fall into being cradled in his arms. He let out a sharp, involuntary hiss as the weight of an extra person landed on his wounded leg, but he quickly suppressed it.
Soujiro carried Young-eun out of Yamashina's palace grounds, walking as steadily as he could manage back through the lush, terraced water gardens. It was amazing how everything looked the same. The world had looked so different to him after his battle with the Battousai. Of course, he was not really paying complete attention to the scenery. Behind him, Yamashina's palace was beginning to show signs of life. The water gardens remained tranquil, but the woods ahead of him did not have the feel of being vacant, and he was not making good time. He was wounded and trying to do the work of two.
When he reached the base of the terraced gardens, he stopped. He had reached the fork in the road where Nagata had left him on his journey into the valley. One road led out of the valley, and he was very tempted to take it, but the other road probably led to Yamashina's stables. He was not in the mood for riding, but he was even less in the mood for walking, so after a moment of indecision, he took the rightward path and began strolling along the base of the water gardens of Yamashina's palace.
He had only gone a few minutes, however, when the sound of a horse approaching from behind him reached his ears. As quickly as he could manage, he got off the trail and slowly lowered Young-eun to the ground, resting her against the bole of a tree. Then he returned to the edge of the road. His eyebrows perked up slightly; the sixth sense in the back of his mind was telling him that whoever was approaching was more than just a scout or courier.
Then the horse and rider came into view, and a smile of pure relief lit up Soujiro's face. He had seen them both before, though he had all but forgotten about them moments after leaving them in the gorge on the far side of Ichibou.
Ukita Shimiro reined in his horse when Soujiro half-stepped, half-stumbled into the road. Surprise and relief were painted on his face, but it did not hide the reenergized light burning in his eyes. Soujiro smiled inwardly. Ukita had not gotten here without fighting; the warrior spirit that he must have had to be an Ishin was much more awake than it had been when Soujiro had left the older man.
"Soujiro-kun!" he exclaimed once he had gotten his horse to a halt. "What the hell happened to you?"
Soujiro didn't even have the energy to answer. He simply turned around and headed back into the trees, motioning Ukita not to go anywhere. He returned moments later with Young-eun cradled in his arms. The little Korean teenager was still apparently struggling to regain consciousness, her hands opening and closing weakly and her legs twitching slowly, but her eyes were still closed and her body was still completely limp.
"Holy shit!" Ukita exclaimed, leaping down from the horse. "How on Earth ..."
"Never mind," Soujiro interrupted. "Just get her out of here."
Ukita hesitated.
"What?" Soujiro asked. He was tempted to explode, "What the hell are you doing?! Move!!" He was too tired, though, and the ice of the Tenken was still cold around his mind.
"You go," Ukita said suddenly.
"What?" Soujiro exploded incredulously.
"That horse will never get the three of us out of here, especially not me," he said, tapping his fist on his girth. "He's tired enough as it is. He'll move a lot faster if it's only you two featherweights on him. And even hurt, you'd probably do better protecting her than me, if it comes to that."
"But you're ..."
"How many times do I have to keep telling you to move?!" Ukita snapped. "Get her out of here before that hornet's nest up there wakes up, or I'll skin you myself."
"Anou ..."
"Move!!" Ukita snarled.
*Move because we'd never get out of here with the horse. Move because we need the horse to get out of here. Move here. Move there. Why don't I ever get to tell anyone what to do?* Soujiro thought to himself. Of course, he was already on the horse by the time he finished thinking it, and there was no heat behind the thought. It was just something to distract him from the pains all over her body. He set Young-eun in front of him, reached around underneath her arms so he could both grasp the reins and hold her steady at the same time, and prepared to head back to Ichibou. He was glad that his horse was the calmest one he had ever met, and recalling the incident in the gorge to the west, he remembered that it didn't panic when fighting erupted nearby either. He was even less experienced with horses than he was with women.
"Soujiro!" Ukita called out behind him.
The Tenken turned around, barely managing to cut himself short from setting the horse in motion; he wasn't sure he would be able to stop the animal once he got it started.
"She can't stay here anymore."
Soujiro knew that Ukita was right, but the aged samurai seemed to be trying to imply something more than that. He turned a puzzled expression on the blacksmith, hoping to get a better explanation.
"I trust you." The former Ishin somehow made it sound even more loaded.
For another moment, Soujiro was still completely lost. Then it suddenly hit him what Young-eun's father was saying, and his eyes widened in shock. "You can't be serious," he said faintly, though it was obvious that the man was not joking, and the man clenched his teeth at Soujiro's incredulous hesitation.
"Don't even tell me where you're going. If they find me, I don't even want to be able to tell them anything even if they break me."
"Are you crazy?" Soujiro asked. "She'll kill me when she wakes up if she doesn't know you're safe!"
"I can take care of myself, boy!" Ukita retorted. "And she knows it! She'll understand, trust me!"
"And if she doesn't?"
"That's your problem, then! GO!!"
Soujiro turned and was about to heel the horse into motion again when he stopped for a second time. An idea had surfaced in his mind, thoughts of his days wandering abroad gathering intelligence on ShiShiO's enemies returning to his consciousness. He had thought about those journeys often since he left Kyoto, until he got drawn into the web of Ichibou. He turned once more to Ukita and said, "If you change your mind, I'll let someone know where to find me. If you were Ishin ShiShi, you'll know him when you see him. He's staying at the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu dojo in Tokyo."
Ukita nodded wordlessly. Soujiro was surprised that the blacksmith didn't ask any further questions, though he didn't press the issue. He was eager to get going; the valley could not possibly stay quiet much longer.
For the third time, Soujiro was just about to wheel the horse around when Ukita called out one last time "Soujiro-san!"
Soujiro stopped; he had not missed the change in the form of address, but he ignored it.
"Take care of her."
Soujiro nodded slowly, and the most genuine smile since the night on Ukita's roof appeared on Soujiro's lips. He took care to arrange Young-eun as comfortably as he could manage; all the false starts had shifted her into an awkward position. Then, with a quick toss of his head to Ukita in farewell, he whicked the reins, and set off back up the valley at a brisk canter. Ukita was already stealing off the path into the forest. Neither one of them ever looked back.
* * * * *
EPILOGUE:
THE WANDERING WIND
Young-eun opened her eyes. She had no idea where she was, though the air was cool and she could tell that there was something soft underneath her. She was in the middle of a forest, though it did not have the same cultivated feel as the forest in Yamashina's valley. The last thing she remembered was reaching for her sword after Yamashina had knocked her down. Even that memory was faint and dreamlike. Of course, she reasoned, that could be because her head was pounding so much that everything felt faint and dreamlike, but everything after Genji's dart had struck her got fainter and fainter in her mind. Everything after she had gotten outside onto the palace walls and seen Soujiro fighting Yamashina in the outer courtyard was even more blurry. It was giving her a headache just thinking about it.
She tried to sit up and failed. All she managed to do was progress from soft painful breathing to loud painful breathing. She tried to roll over onto her stomach and push herself up with her arms. That didn't work either, though it did let her know that she had been lying on a comfortable outdoor bedroll. She got a good look at it, because for some reason her head wouldn't obey her orders to lift itself, and thus the side of her face was pressed into the cushioning. *This is getting nowhere,* she told herself. Even her voice in her mind sounded strained.
She managed to roll over to a thick tree nearby. Using its trunk for leverage, she managed to work herself into a sitting position, though the effort made spots dance in front of her eyes for a few moments, and she thought she might pass out again. When her vision cleared, though, it brought no more answers.
She could see a stream several yards off through the trees, and a horse was tethered to one of the trees along the bank. She also realized that her bedroll was the only one in the clearing, though it looked like there had been someone else here. A pile of soft leaves and moss had been gathered a few feet away from her own bedroll, and it looked like someone had probably spent an uncomfortable night there. Then again, she couldn't exactly be sure what time it was. A little before sunset or a little after dawn, one of the two; she had no idea which way was east or west at the moment. The remains of a small fire stood lifelessly nearby as well. Aside from the bedroll and a small pot lying by the remains of the fire, there was nothing manmade in sight.
Looking down at herself, she realized that she should probably also count her clothes as not being manmade at this point. They were horribly torn and dirty beyond recognition; skin was showing in almost half a dozen places where it shouldn't have been, though she realized with disgust that those patches were so plastered with dirt that there really wasn't much skin actually showing after all. Her hair was tangled and matted as well, though she didn't dare think how bad it might have been if she hadn't cut off a lot of it. With a start, though, she realized that her face had been rinsed off, at least. At least, she could feel her skin when she managed to touch her face, and no dirt came away when she did; of course, her hands were dirty enough that she would probably never have known.
She finally got around to wondering who on Earth she was traveling with. She ruled out Yamashina quickly; she would still be bound hand and foot if he had somehow gotten hold of her again. The same would apply to any of Yamashina's retainers. Ukita-san could certainly ride a horse, would want to get her away from Ichibou as soon as possible; she guessed that it was probably him, even though the last she had seen of him, he had been set to hard labor in Yamashina's iron mines. The old coot would never have remained there long, she was sure of that. Then again, there was still even a remote chance that it was ...
Suddenly, without any noise or warning whatsoever, Soujiro stepped into the clearing, appearing from behind one of the trees just behind the fire pit. His sword was still girded at his waist. In one hand he held what looked to be a fat duck, already cleaned and ready for cooking; in the other hand he held what looked to be an oversized satchel. Young-eun's breath caught at the sight of him, and she breathed a sigh of relief that he was alive. The only thing that made her almost as happy as the sight of him was the sight of that dead duck. She was starving.
The moment he noticed that Young-eun was awake, he dropped the satchel, and it looked like he was almost about to drop the duck, too, though he managed to stop himself at the last instant. Slowly, he set the duck down in the pot next to the fire, though he didn't come any closer once he had stood up again. Young-eun noticed the same awkwardness and uncertainty in his eyes that she had seen that first night she had met him, at the Red House. She bit her lip in anxiety. *Is the only time he's sure of himself when he's fighting?* she thought. Her thoughts were somewhat disordered, though; the hitch in her breath when he had appeared had made spots dance in front of her eyes again.
"You ... you're awake," he said.
Young-eun smiled, and laughed weakly. "They say nothing evades the eye of a Hitokiri," she joked, though her strained breathing robbed it of its humor.
Soujiro relaxed a little bit, and finally came over to where she sat, though he sat himself down across from her, several feet away, and did not come any closer. Young-eun wanted to motion him to come sit by her, but her hands were too weak to make the effort, and she needed both of them, as well as the tree, to hold herself upright.
"Where'd you go?" she asked, just to break the silence.
Soujiro smile took on a wry tinge. "A couple of ducks landed in a pond a little way downstream, right by the road, and then a merchant's wagon passed while I was there, too."
"Looking for a job?"
Soujiro smiled, and for the first time, Young-eun might have said it was almost warm. "Women's clothes, actually," he answered, with a shy glance at her kimono. "And a couple of other things."
Young-eun colored slightly when Soujiro mentioned clothes, though she realized that she was partly embarrassed simply because she hadn't felt embarrassed earlier when Soujiro had walked into the clearing with her clothes in that state. It hadn't even occurred to her that she should have been.
"How're you feeling?" Soujiro asked when Young-eun fell silent.
"Like I got run over by a cavalry division," Young-eun replied truthfully.
"Think you'd be OK for a bath?" he asked.
Young-eun perked up almost immediately. "You have soap?"
Soujiro actually looked offended when she said that. Young-eun looked at him, trying to figure out what she might have said wrong, but Soujiro smiled again a moment later, and an almost bemused look entered his eyes. "Yes, I have soap," he answered. "I use it myself, you know."
"Wha ... ? Oh ... crap, I didn't mean it like that," she answered lamely. *Damn you, Young-eun, did you have all the sense knocked out of you sometime?* she cursed herself. *If he didn't have soap, he wouldn't look like ...* she broke herself out of that line of thought, concentrating instead on leveraging herself to her feet. At least her limbs were beginning to respond to her commands again, though she still felt like she had cloth scraps instead of muscles.
Soujiro had already headed over to the bag he had brought back from the merchant's wagon. When he came back, he held a sturdy brown peasant's kimono folded over to look like a small cushion, with a bar of soap prominently displayed on top. He didn't say anything, but the look in his eyes was all too obvious. Young-eun couldn't hide a wan smile as she snatched the items from him and headed out towards the stream.
After one of the longest baths she had ever taken, she took a look at herself in her reflection on the water. The kimono was certainly not as ornate as the one that had been destroyed, but at least it was whole. She was barefoot now, but she didn't mind; at least her feet would be clean for a few minutes, which is more than she could say if she put on the sandals she had been wearing again. Her hair definitely looked and felt a lot better, though now she was beginning to wish she hadn't gotten rid of so much of it; it looked as though it had been cut with a sword. Of course, it actually had been, but that was beside the point; the point was that it looked like it. The bath had been good for her head, too; the clear, cold mountain water helped drive away some of the lagging haziness in her mind, though she would have preferred something warmer for her muscles.
An absolutely delicious aroma greeted her as she headed back to the camp, and she almost forgot about the stiffness in her legs. Soujiro greeted her with a smile, but Young-eun's attention was more on the pot than on Soujiro at the moment. "What is that?" she asked wonderingly.
Soujiro grinned. "Duck breast, pecans, cashews, and a few mixed vegetables, sauteed with honey garlic sauce and sesame seeds. Only stream water to drink, though."
Young-eun's eyes were growing wider and wider with every word. They were as big as saucers by the time he finished. "Where ... where did you learn to cook like that?" she asked.
Soujiro's grin twisted nonchalantly. "I was ShiShiO's messenger, so I had to travel a lot. It was either learn to cook or live on steamed rice and trail rations. I've had enough rice for a lifetime." Young-eun felt like there was more in that last statement that she understood, but she decided not to press the matter. She had gotten the point.
Dinner was as good as it smelled, though technically it was breakfast time; the sun had been rising since Young-eun awoke. As they ate, they traded stories as to what had happened to them since they separated the previous night, though Young-eun shifted past several points that she didn't feel like talking about. Young-eun learned that she was in the woods to the south of the plain south of Ichibou, and she had been unconscious--or at least almost unconscious--for almost twenty-four hours. She accepted that Ukita-san had told Soujiro to take Young-eun away; Soujiro seemed surprised by that, but Young-eun realized that he didn't know the two of them that well. She was surprised to learn that Soujiro had only left her side once during those entire twenty-four hours, which just happened to be the exact time she woke up.
The conversation almost seemed to steer itself around anything that could touch on anything emotional, however, which, while she didn't let it show, frustrated a small corner of Young-eun's mind. She had kind of been expecting it, but she was secretly hoping that somehow it would come into the conversation; she just didn't want to be the one to bring it up. He still insisted on sitting across from her, not next to her, and he seemed as unable to say anything about his emotions as her. She remembered that they had both managed to get past that on the roof of Ukita-san's house, but that had been different, somehow. It still hadn't come out in the real world anytime.
"So where do we go from here?" she asked.
Soujiro looked at her awkwardly. After a moment's hesitation and an encouraging look from Young-eun, he answered, "You don't ... have to come with me, if you don't want to, you know."
She shrugged. "Where would I go if I don't?" she asked.
"Iie, iie, it's not that, I just don't ..." he trailed off, searching for words.
"You don't want me to feel like I'm trapped?" she asked. She understood what he was saying, though he couldn't be further from the mark.
Soujiro nodded.
Young-eun made herself get up and sit down next to the little wanderer. He gave no outward reaction, and wouldn't meet her eyes, but at least he didn't move away. "I don't feel trapped," she said. "I've never felt more free in my life. Three days ago, I didn't think I'd ever get out of Ichibou. Two days ago, I didn't think I'd ever get out of that bastard's house. Yesterday, I couldn't even move. Why would I feel trapped now?" she asked.
Soujiro didn't say anything as he absorbed this; he barely even moved. Young-eun kept waiting for him to say something, watching for any kind of reaction, but he was unreadable, and she hadn't had the training in reading other people that he had. She dearly wanted to reach out her hand to his like she had three nights ago, but something kept holding her back.
Eventually, the tension got to be too much for her. She slipped her right hand out slowly and rested it on his left shoulder. He again when she did, and she almost drew it back, but instead she just let it lie there. "Do you ... do you really want me to leave?" she asked.
He finally turned to meet her eyes then, and her breath caught again. There was no mistaking what she saw there, but she reached her hand up to them just to be certain anyway. She brushed her fingers just under his eye, spreading away the glistening trickle of moisture that had formed there. His hand suddenly came up to her wrist, gently holding it where it was, her hand still resting just below his eye.
"Ii ... iie ..." he managed shakily.
Young-eun suddenly realized that she was crying herself, and couldn't stop herself until she suddenly burst out laughing. Soujiro's tears dried before hers did, the tension had faded from him and he was smiling again, though he still did not share in her laughter. She made a point that she was going to get him to laugh someday. With one last laugh and a broad smile, she reclined back on her elbows and sighed lightly into the sky. He was not the only one who had managed to shake the tension out of themselves, she realized. She had not felt this relaxed anywhere except her roof in years. "So where to now?"
Soujiro lay down on his back next to her. "I guess I'd kind of planned on heading east to Nagoya, and see if we can catch a ship there to Tokyo," he answered. "There are some people there I think you'd like to meet."
"Sounds great," Young-eun replied. Something occurred to her then. "Wouldn't walking be cheaper, though? I'm kind of broke,"
Soujiro smiled mysteriously. "Don't worry. Someone I knew died unexpectedly recently, and I think they left a lot of money unclaimed."
Young-eun arched an eyebrow at him. "In Nagoya?" she asked.
"Enough to get by for a while on," Soujiro answered nonchalantly. "There's a lot more in Tokyo, though, and even more in Kyoto and Osaka if we ever go back there."
If anyone else started saying things like this, Young-eun would probably have thought they were exaggerating, but Soujiro wasn't that type, and he didn't even really seemed to know what he was implying, if that was possible. "Anou ... if I might ask ... how much is a lot more?"
"Oh ... I'm not sure," Soujiro answered. There was a maddeningly secretive smile on his face. "It should be enough, though."
Young-eun gave up. She didn't feel like talking about money right now. It was a boring conversation anyway. Looking over at Soujiro, she realized that it must have been boring to him, too. His eyes were closed, and he looked like he was quickly falling asleep.
"Are you falling asleep?" she asked.
He nodded. "I've slept for three hours in two days," he reminded her. "We're a ways from town now, and I really don't feel like moving for a while."
Young-eun smiled. "That's fine with me," she answered. Without another word, she leaned across and kissed the Tenken softly on the cheek. A minute later, she was asleep as well, coiled up against Soujiro's side with her head resting on his chest.
* * *
Soujiro lay motionless for a full fifteen minutes after Young-eun's breathing relaxed into slumber, but he was not asleep. His eyes were wide open and staring into the treetops. The events of the last three days were still spinning through his mind, and he had never had a chance to sit down and sort them out during any of that time, which only made it worse. He could never remember life being so complicated.
On the other hand, somehow, in the midst of all that, things were finally starting to come into focus again for him. He was starting to understand why Himura Kenshin had forsaken killing and risked his life to protect people. He was starting to understand why people deserved the chance to live.
Emotions were spinning around inside his head as well, and those were harder to deal with for him than events. 'Complicated' did not even begin to describe it. No matter how hard he tried, he could not bring his thoughts into focus; his emotions were a kaleidoscope inside his mind. It had been hard enough before Young-eun had ...
He wasn't even going to think about that. Of course, the more he thought about not thinking about it, the more he thought about it. The fact that she was so close didn't help, either. Eventually, he simply gave up. There was only one thing he could say to express everything he was feeling.
"Orooooooooo ...."
* * * * *
!!THE END!!
(1) warrior's timing (see Kenshin ep 53, Fuji vs. Hiko, for an example)
(2) waterspout
(3) secret; succession technique
(4) Whirlpool of Night
(5) Spirit of the North Wind
IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!! Six months and change in the making, and voila! This is now the longest story I've ever produced (though I've had some long ones before, just not fanfictions). I seriously hope you've enjoyed all this, and my special thanks to everyone who's been a fan since the prelude went up back in December 2000! And once again, I'm really sorry that this is so late in coming (the second-to-last chapter was uploaded in April). College finals always get in the way of the important things in life.
I'm itching to write a sequel, but I'll have to seriously think about it before I start. Too often, I think sequels not only are worse than the original, but they make the original look worse, too.
I intend to keep updating this, but any of you who have me on AuthorAlert may as well ignore it; I'm a revision addict, so I'm going to go back and re-read everything I've written and correct all the little mistakes that I've made here and there along the way. I don't think I'll add any more substantive content.
As always, I love reviews! Let me know what you think, who/what you liked, etc.! I'm especially fond of my battle scenes and the characters that I actually created (Yamashina and Young-eun particularly), so especially let me know what you thought of them, and anything else that jumped out at you! I look forward to hearing from everyone ... if you made it this far, something has to have struck you by now, or I didn't do my job. :-)
Viva Soujiro!