After a restless night in which he slept a total of two hours Kenshin woke shortly before dawn. He made his usual rounds. Yahiko, Kaoru-dono, the dojo, the bathhouse, the kitchen, the well, and lastly the gate.

He gathered the water, set the fire, started breakfast. Kaoru-dono awoke, and the usual sounds of her morning routine began. Today he heard additional, unfamiliar noises emanating from her room that piqued his curiosity. He couldn't place them though he listened intently, his attention so singularly focused that he scalded the fish.

There was a light clatter of a small object dropped onto the floor and then a whispered curse in her familiar voice. Then the sound of several drawers sliding open in rapid succession and then the rattle and clang of rummaging through wooden and metal objects.

"Where is it?" He heard her ask, not loud enough that she would be addressing him outside. Talking to herself. "There it is!" She exclaimed triumphantly. After that it was mostly silent. Minutes passed. Fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, forty-two. Kenshin grew ever more agitated as he waited for her to appear from her room. And waited.

And waited.

She had never taken this long to ready herself in the morning. Kenshin's concern quickly escalated into terror. He jumped to his feet and raced to her shoji, his hand gripping the sakobatô at his hip tightly and readying himself to strike. He very nearly crashed through her shoji but at the last second thought better of it.

"Kaoru-dono?" He called from just outside the door, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.

"Uh... Yeah?" She answered through the shoji. Why did she sound so nervous?

"Kaoru-dono, are you...well?"

"Hai! Out in a minute!"

Kenshin was not entirely satisfied, nevertheless he didn't think it would be a good idea to force entry into her room. She said she was fine, but--

"Shit", he heard her swear under her breath. Something was definitely wrong. Unfortunately he reached out to slide the shoji open (social niceties be damned) at the exact same time she exited her room, resulting in her forehead smacking painfully into his nose.

"Ow!" They cried in unison.

She sucked in her breath and held her face tightly. Kenshin was less theatrical, though his nose throbbed. He was mostly exasperated with himself. He had overreacted. Was she badly hurt?

"Kaoru-dono, this one is so sorry! Are you all right? Let this one see, please." Without thinking he reached for her hands, intending to pry them away from her face as gently as possible so he could assess the damage. She stiffened at his touch.

Devestated, he immediately let his hands fall to his sides.

"Oi! What's all that racket? I'm trying to sleep!" Yahiko shouted from his room. His whipped his shoji open. Kenshin saw only his head as he poked it out the door and then turned to glare at them.

Kaoru-dono had seemingly recovered enough to shout at Yahiko in return.

"Oh, are we bothering you? Then maybe you shouldn't be sleeping so late, lazy!"

Yahiko stomped back in to his room, muttering "bossy old hag" and "not lazy" as he slid the shoji shut.

With her hands now balled into fists at her side, Kenshin could study her face for injury. There was an angry red welt on her forehead but that was minor. Something else concerned him deeply.

Kaoru-dono's cheeks were unnaturally pink. Was she ill? Feverish? No, on closer inspection Kenshin noted with some astonishment that she'd inexpertly applied rouge with one side a bit more hued than the other. Her lips were colored a deep crimson. She had been more proficient with the lipstick and Kenshin found himself staring for a bit too long at her mouth.

Though he had spent many a night exquisitely tortured by fantasies of her lips on his and...other places, he had never really imagined them looking like that. Kenshin felt an all too familiar stirring and his cheeks flamed. He forced his eyes away from her mouth. As if he feared that she would somehow read his mind and see the wayward thoughts that lingered there he pushed them away, filled with shame.

His eyes moved to the top her head, assuming that that at least would be a relatively safe place for his gaze to go. But no. Instead of her habitual ponytail her raven hair was gathered into a thick bun (slightly crooked) at her crown, held in place by an ornately carved ivory comb that he had never seen before. Three vibrant magenta cosmos* blossoms were strategically placed at either side. He could see that she had made a brave, if futile, attempt at gathering her bangs away from her forehead and smoothing them back with wax, however some of the more stubborn pieces were already loose and sticking out.

As amateurish as her hairdressing skills were, the results were strangely alluring. He realized that the charm was in the dishevelment, it appealed to his baser instincts. He thought of more interesting ways in which her hair could be further tousled.

He was back at square one. With all of the discipline he could muster he shifted his gaze away from her entirely, and with another absent-minded apology he returned to his scalded fish and now overcooked rice. When he chanced a very quick side glance he saw that she was gazing down at her feet. Unable to see her expression (through sheer strength of will he resisted going back, taking both sides of her face in his sword calloused hands and lifting it up so he could further examine her beauty) he had no way to surmise what she was thinking. So he was left to his own hypotheses and assumptions.

She had stiffened at his touch earlier, though it had been unmistakably innocent. She hadn't reacted that way before, in fact he had held her hand in his before more than once and she hadn't objected to it.

Much had changed between them since their return to Tokyo, since Enishi.

Author's note:

What is Kaoru doing to our poor Kenshin?

Coming up, we begin to unravel the circumstances that led from the seemingly happy ending of the manga to this dumpster fire of will-they-or-won't-they.

The cosmos flower (or kosumosu) was introduced to Japan during the Edo period. It blooms in late summer and fall. In Japan it symbolizes "maiden Japanese heart", "cleanliness" and "love". Source: