Fuyumatsu
"The End of Winter"

Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction
by Laura Gilkey

Author's Note:
While it's fairly loosely-stitched at present, my Soujiro fanfics do form a continuity. They can be read and enjoyed as stand-alones, but for optimum effect, I recommend reading them in chronological order, as follows:
Life's Battles
Ikura desu ka
Okaerinasai
Owaranakatta
Fuyu no Hiakari
Fuyumatsu (you are here)

*

Soujiro walked on the limp yellow grass, beside and above the ruts of the road. His tabi were already wet and muddy; the winter snow had begun to melt into any low place the water could find, and it pooled and softened the ground where so many human feet had worn channels into it. The wet cloth seemed to magnify the still-cold air rather than resist it; he would have to find somewhere to dry them off soon.

But even the muddy road made him happy. A merchant passing in a horsecart had been kind enough to tell him that it was the nineteenth of March; that was about the right time of year for the snow to be melting. Spring was coming, and already Soujiro was looking forward to warmer weather and green landscapes.

It hadn't been so long ago that he'd rather liked winter, as much as he really liked anything. It was the laziest time of year; Shishio had avoided campaigns then. He had said occasionally that a one-to-one fight was the way to know who was truly the strongest. There was no reason to fight on two fronts, against goverment troops and harsh weather at once. So Soujiro had mainly stayed at home, training and watching the days go by. It had been a restful time of year.

This winter, however, was like the Yuki-Onna* of the old stories: deadly and merciless for all its beauty. In moments throughout the long winter months, he could look around him and be awed by the beauty of tree branches bejewelled with ice, of the blanket of snow so thick and soft that it looked like it should be warm, laying over fields and trees, bridges and temple-roofs. But those were only moments. The day-to-day reality of winter was walking on legs stiff with cold for days or weeks and then looking back on that time and scarcely remembering being warm at all, a misery that the worst heat of summer couldn't match. The reality of that breathtaking picture of landscape was walking for hours with no color, no sound except the whistling of wind, no rustling leaves, no birds singing, and eventually coming to know true loneliness in a world that cared nothing for one person, outside in the sea of whiteness, all alone. The season wasn't truly cruel, but posessed a lack of care for life or remorse at death that could be every bit as terrible. Perhaps it was so painful because it reminded him of himself, not so long ago.

But now the snow was melting away, showing bald, boggy patches of mud and dead grass left over from before the winter, and Soujiro thought he would trade a hundred years of all that austere white beauty for one day of mud and dead grass. And here and there, miraculously, small, white-green spears of plants poked out of the soggy earth, as if testing the air before venturing out into it. Once, on a whim, he crouched down and stroked one with his finger, very gently, just to be sure that it felt welcome.

He'd been too slow in turning around, but he was travelling south again, chasing after the warmth of the sun. The further south he went, the more signs of spring he saw: more pale new grass, and tree branches lined with tiny buds. Soon there'll be leaves again. I'll have to just listen to them for awhile, sometime when they're out and the wind is blowing.

The road he was walking beside grew clearer and more well-worn as he followed it; probably it meant there was a town coming up. Winter wasn't gone yet. A warm bed and a hot meal in town would be well worth the cost, even if it took the last of his money. He was just beginning to think that he could see smoke from chimneys in the town when he started to hear its sounds, beckoning him closer and closer, and he was content to follow, as if enthralled.

But as he listened, he realized that what he heard were not town noises, and in fact were not human sounds at all. Can it be...!? He quickened his pace, hurrying toward the sound. He wanted to run, but he couldn't for fear of scaring it off... But he had to know! The smoke from the chimneys in the town came closer, and he did begin to hear town noises---clatterings on stone streets, people shouting, children laughing, but among it all there was still the sound that he was following. It seemed like so long, he didn't even let himself believe it until it sounded right on top of him, and then, slowly, gently, he came to a stop in a stand of trees, with tiny pale leaves being born along their branches. Sunlight angled in through the leaves in gold-white shafts as magnificent in their purity and beauty as anything he had seen in wintertime, but in that moment he loved this place whole-heartedly because it was alive---alive with birds singing among the new-born leaves.

Soujiro's heart was so light it felt ready to stop if he didn't do something. He wanted to sing, too, or dance, or call out "Oh, I missed you so much!" but he stood very still, afraid that if he moved he might startle the birds away. His body shivered, not from the cold, but from so much pent-up energy of joy; it took even his smile out of his own hands so that he couldn't control it, couldn't help but smile radiantly. And still the birds sang in a chaotic chorus, with unintended harmonies and odd pauses, but in that moment he couldn't imagine anything more beautiful.

As if falling from heaven, Soujiro came back to himself as a harsh sound cut through the trees. It was a quiet sound, deriving its force from suddenness rather than volume, but it was powerful enough to turn the birds' song into a flurry of feathered wings, flying away. Having trained his eyes for years to notice every detail of motion, he immediately saw the one bird moving against the upward flow, falling suddenly and quietly into the mud.

He stood there for a long moment, stunned and sick. He had just begun to move numbly toward where the bird had fallen when the sounds of laughter and rapid footsteps closed in on him. He spun around as two boys came running into the clearing, neither of them looking much more than ten years old. The taller of them dared to come right up to him, with a slingshot still dangling in his hand. "Hey, mister, did you see a bird fall around here?"

Soujiro couldn't find his voice immediately, but stared at him for a long moment, so intensely that the boy took a step back.

"Why did you do this!?"

"Huh? What're you talking about!?"

"Why did you kill that bird??"

"I got a new slingshot, and this was the first time I got a chance to try it out. It's just a bird."

"This was my first chance to hear them sing!" Soujiro was almost screaming, with tears in his eyes. "I was alone all winter with nothing to listen to but the wind; it was like the world had died! But today... today I heard birds sing again, and it made me so happy...! How could you do this!?"

"I..."

"It's back here," the younger boy said, from somewhere off to the side.

The boy with the slingshot started off in that direction, but Soujiro caught his arm---the hand with the slingshot---and threw him back. "Stay away from her!!!" With an easy, nimble motion, he kept hold of the slingshot as its owner fell back, and he snapped it in his hand and flung it aside. The boy sat in the mud for a moment, staring wide-eyed now that he'd felt the strength concealed in that scrawny body standing furiously over him.

The smaller boy ran back to his companion and turned on Soujiro. "What are you doing!?"

"Forget it! Let's get out of here!" The taller one scrambled to his feet and the two of them ran off.

Soujiro stood there among the trees long after they were gone, alone again, trembling again, but now with rage and grief and horrible rending feelings he couldn't even name. He still cried because that one bird had been killed. He was still furious about it. She shouldn't have died; if only for one moment, she had opened his heart to true joy, and for that he loved her. But almost instantly, he regretted what he'd done. To hurt a little boy... He knew that kind of pain; he recoiled from the thought that he had done such a thing himself. I didn't have any right to act like that. Not me of all people; it's ridiculous for me to do such a thing. He forced a smile, and a laugh aloud. "Ha ha! Just think of me, Tenken no Soujiro the famous killer, shouting at little boys for shooting birds!"

Those words rang in the morning air, and the moment he heard them, he knew it wasn't funny at all. In fact it was so upsetting that he felt it physically, as if his entire body had been hollowed out. "What is this!?" There's no reason for me to feel this way... I was the strongest besides Shishio-san; I should be proud! And he was proud of that fact, but what he'd done... He was suddenly repulsed by the thought of being proud of it, proving again and again how skillfully he could kill---fifty people in an hour or two, once. Finding ways to do it quickly, surely, to make it as tidy as possible, as if it were a game, as if it were slicing vegetables not people, as if it weren't anything. But if so much happiness could come from one little bird, how much more from a father, a mother, a child, a lover---a person? How much more terrible a thing had he done than the boys he'd raged at? If what he'd done was nothing, then surely what they'd done was nothing at all.

Either he was guilty, or it was all right that that little bird was dead; one or the other, although he hardly felt able to choose. The one confession felt like throwing himself into the jaws of a beast, into the hands of so many angry ghosts, but the other... To say that a bird was nothing, to say that life and song and pure joy were nothing...

He stumbled back against a tree, tears running freely down his face. The pain ran through him as joy had so shortly before, so much that he couldn't even control his body; he gasped and sobbed, and he couldn't smile---his anguished face must look so ugly, but it only trembled and twisted up more if he tried to do anything with it. It's so quiet... I don't want to be alone with this feeling. Please don't leave me alone! He looked at where the bird had fallen, although his eyes were so full of tears he could hardly see. "Kotori-san*! Sing to me again! Please!!" But he knew that bird would never sing again.

People who die never sing again... Oh, how many was it...? An oppressive barrage of images came back to his eyes: the sword, the sight, the smell, the sticky feel of blood---people's faces, some of them without even names, in the last moments... How many did I...? Fifty? A hundred...? Please don't ask me... I don't even know......

His heart plunged, just when it felt like it had nowhere left to fall. The strength bled out of his body and he slid down against the tree until he collapsed in the mud, among the patches of dead grass. His body felt like nothing more than a heap of lifeless weight, convulsed with sobs more powerful than he could possibly have strength for. His voice, like his face, was twisted and ugly with pain; he didn't know how he could say such horrible words, but they filled his mind, demanding to be let out. "I feel this way just because a boy killed a little bird... Who will forgive what I've done!?"

With that let out, his mind was empty; the pressure lifted as if all the ghosts had been closing in on him to kill him, and now they walked away, deciding to leave him alone---or perhaps that the work was done. He cried for a very long time, a loud, screaming cry like a little child. But as the sun slipped lower and lower in the sky, he became more and more quiet, until those wracking cries shrank into quiet whimpers, and then nothing. He lay there barely even breathing, as silent and still, his mind as empty as if he were dead, too full of pain to fall asleep, too empty of strength to lift a finger or a thought, or even to close his blankly-staring eyes, wrung dry of tears.

And still, it was quiet. The wind whispered through the budding tree branches and washed over his back like waves over a dead stone, chilling him through his wet clothes, but it didn't matter if he was cold. He could lay there until he died and not a protest would cross his mind. He should be dead, after all, wasn't that right? A person who had done such things, wouldn't anyone say such a person deserved to die...?

Then, there was one more sound that landed on Soujiro's ears and changed everything, like ripples on the water: one little voice, one little song. Kotori-san!? Without even thinking of the weakness and pain, he shot upright, blinking to focus his eyes again. A bird fluttered back from him with one wing, but it couldn't fly away.

"You're alive!" Soujiro cried, lifting up with relief and happiness. "Oh, I'm so glad you're alive!" The bird was frightened by the noise and kept flapping away, but her left wing could hardly move. "It broke your wing didn't it? Come on, I'll help you. Don't run away, please! Please let me help you!"

Finally he chased after the bird and picked her up, holding her thin legs between his fingers. She chirped angrily, flapped her wings, and pecked at him, but she couldn't cause enough pain to deter someone who'd been through the things he had. "Don't flap like that, you'll make it worse!" he said. He snatched up his things and ran toward the town. "Just sit tight until we get to town. I'll take you to a doctor!"

**********

'Kotori-san' hadn't liked being smuggled into the inn, but she was beginning to calm down, sitting on Soujiro's hand as he fed her bits of rice and vegetables out of his dinner. "It'll be okay," he said, petting her gently while carefully avoiding the now-bandaged left wing. The doctor had been so amused at being so urgently presented with the injured songbird that he hadn't charged anything.

"I promise I'll take care of you," Soujiro said. He paused, then laughed and smiled at her. "Shishio-san would laugh at me if he saw us like this. I know I must be crazy... But I guess someone who goes to so much trouble to help even a little bird can't be totally bad. Don't you think so?"

Kotori-san chirped and bobbed her head.

He laughed again, even more freely. "Thank you! I'm really happy that you'd say that."

Owari

Footnotes:

Yuki-Onna: A spirit in Japanese folklore, the Woman of the Snow. Yuki-Onna are normally malignant spirits; as Myths and Legends of Japan by F. Hadland Davis (published by Dover Publications, Inc.) puts it, "She represents Death, with attributes not unlike that of a vampire. ... Her ice-cold lips draw forth the life-blood of her unfortunate victims."

Kotori-san: "Kotori" means "Little bird."

Owari: "The End"