***
*Disclaimer* don't own it, never gonna own it, will mourn it for the rest of my life.
***
AU-
The heart has it's reasons--
of which reason knows nothing.
-Blaise Pascal
***
The futon was already too familiar, Kaoru thought in annoyance as she rose the next morning. It attempted the same lover's embrace her own futon at home -in Tokyo- employed every morning.
Somehow the affrontry of this new futon's familiarity made it easier for Kaoru to get up. It was harder to force herself to rise for Yahiko's morning exercises (especially when all she did was supervise).
Kaoru poked around the house, looking for something vaguely resmbling a chore.
Hiko was snoring away on a bamboo mat in the weak morning sunshine that came in through the windows. He resembled nothing so much as a giant cat that had spent the night before terrorizing the local mouse population... or sake population in this case.
"At least I know where Kenshin learned to hold his liqour." Kaoru mused to herself as she stepped over the slumbering swordsmaster to clear away the discarded sake jars from the night before.
She found a wooden tub to stack them in and promised herself she'd wash them with the breakfast dishes.
Breakfast... this was the part she'd been dreading. Breakfast foods were her weakest spot in her already pathetic cooking skills. "Still." she thought out loud. "I wouldn't feel right if I wasn't doing -something-."
Luckily, the rice from the night before hadn't dried out so it became rice-balls. There was red-miso stored behind the racks displaying Hiko's pots and Kaoru appropriated some of it to become miso soup... one of her weakest weak points.
Hiko came to life just as Kaoru began heating the oil in a wok. He rolled to his feet with an agility not often found in fifty-seven year olds.
"Good morning, Seijuro-san." Kaoru said to him when he padded across the floor and sat down beside her.
He'd discarded his everpresent white mantle and foreign boots. Without them he looked both more and less japanese than before. More because he was shoeless inside the house and less because the mantle no longer disguised the heavy, powerful build that was so uncommon for aisan men.
"Are you making miso soup?" he asked as he watched her carefully chopping ginger and garlic.
"Uh... yes." Kaoru swallowed and looked away. "Just to warn you, I'm not a very good cook."
Hiko gave one of his eloquent snorts. "I'm used to poor cooking, there were a few times in his youth when I swore Kenshin was trying to kill me." he chuckled. "If you want my advice... you've got enough ginger."
Kaoru looked down to where she was chopping. There was enough diced ginger to fill the hollow of her cupped hands. "Is that enough?" she usually added twice that.
Hiko nodded. "Plenty. Less is more when cooking... try and think of the person eating your food as an opponent. He's twice your size and you can't lay a finger on him, but he's stupid and easily influenced.
Kaoru cocked her head. "Okay..." she visualized Sanosuke.
"Do you want to jump at his, sword raised, shouting your intent or do you want to lull him into a false sense of security and take him by surprise?" he prodded.
"I'd sneak up on him." Kaoru confessed.
"Good." Hiko applauded her. "Think of seasoning like that. Subtle influence is better than outright attack. More is less. For now, use about a quarter of the seasonings you usually do and taste each one of them before you put it into the soup."
"Why?" Kaoru asked in confusion.
"If you do that before every meal you prepare, soon your tongue will learn to recognize the different tastes so when you mess something up you'll be able to identify what you used too much or too less of." Hiko explained patiently. "Go ahead."
Kaoru put a tiny bit of the ginger on her tongue and savored the spicy sweet flavor, half a dozen dishes that she'd made had an overwhelming shadow of this flavor she realized. "I use too much ginger..." she said out loud. "That's bad, ginger is expensive."
Hiko nodded sagely. "Keep it up, I'll be watching you while I take care of the tea."
"Thank you." Kaoru said gratefully.
The older man shrugged it off. "You're here to heal and learn, this is as good a place to begin as any. There is more to life than sword-play."
Hiko turned away before Kaoru could ask him what he had meant by that.
So, under Hiko's casual observation, Kaoru sauteed the ginger and garlic then added 'one tall tea galss full to the top' of water and dissolved 'two lumps the size of your knuckle' of katsuobushi and kombu to make the dashi broth base for the soup. While that simmered together he set her to chopping up 'one carrot as long as your hand' and 'enough broccoli bits to fit loosely in your hand'. She added them 'once the broth starts to smell like the ocean'.
"Now let it cook for sixty heartbeats." Hiko instructed. "It will give you something to do. I'll set out the bowls."
Sixty heart beats later, Kaoru and Hiko both downed two bowls of completely normal, if uninspired, miso soup and one rice ball each.
"We'll work on onigiri tonight." Hiko decided as he wrapped up the rest of inedible rice balls. "As for these... hehehe." he chuckled evilly. "I have some dead-beat friends I can pawn these off on. This out to teach them not to look for handouts..."
Kaoru flushed and cleared away the dishes. "That's a good idea." at least her uneducated cooking could bring about some good. Although, it didn't work on the dead-beats back home.
"Tell me what you noticed about your soup."
"Huh?" Kaoru looked up from stacking bowls and trays. "What I noticed?"
Hiko nodded and put the rice-balls into a bento box. "Yes, what you noticed." he prodded.
"Well..." Kaoru paused to recall the flavors she consumed. "It was a little dull, not that miso soup can be the most exciting dish, but it could have used another clove of garlic just for flavor... maybe even less ginger."
Hiko nodded. "Try it tomorrow and see what happens. What do you think was wrong with the onigiri?"
Kaoru wrinkled her nose. "Besides everything? Well, it was bitter and left a weird after-taste in the mouth. I can't quite put my finger on just one problem."
Hiko frowned. "Wake me up when you plan to cook tomorrow morning and show me what you did."
Kaoru nodded and took the dishes outside to the water tap behind the building. Hiko followed her but went instead to a large bin that, when he opened it, Kaoru saw to be full of clay.
Kaoru filled the wash bin with water and laid two mats down on the grass, one to kneel on while she washed and another to put the clean dishes on.
Hiko came to the water pump with two large handfuls of clay in a wooden tub similar to the ones Kaoru used to wash dishes. "The clay dries out." he explained. "The bin I keep it in is in the shade, but the moisture still escapes so I have to work more into before I work." he poured just enough water into the tub to cover the bottom and then began to knead the clay the same way an english housewife kneaded bread dough.
They both worked in companionable silence for a while until Hiko broke the hush by asking Kaoru. "What exactly do you see in my baka-deshi, anyway? I've been wanting to ask you that ever since he came crawling back here to learn the sucession techinques."
Kaoru flushed and bowed her head so her bangs would hide it. "I... don't really know myself." were Hiko anyone else she would have extolled on Kenshin's many virtues; kindess, patience, humor, etc., etc., etc. but Hiko was Hiko and she knew he'd see through any attempts to divert him.
"Well, I can't really help loving him." she said after a while. "It wasn't because he rescued me, or because he is strong and protects me... I don't really know -why- I feel the way I do, I just started to one day and never found a good enough reason to stop. The first time I met Kenshin, it was rather ironic, I mistook him for himself."
"You mean that incident in Tokyo where a fake Battousai was killing police officers?" Hiko prodded.
"That's the one." Kaoru laughed. "I was on the streets looking for the man who was maligning the name of my school. I knew he wasn't the -real- Battousai because Battoursai was an assassin directly under the leaders of the chosuu faction. I assumed that the real Battousai was either dead, settled down somewhere, or working for the new government. No one would send an expert killer to hack down some inept cops on the street, that's the sort of thing thugs are for. Thugs are something I have experience with, so I thought I had a chance." she made a face. "I was out of my depth, luckily Kenshin pulled me out of Gohei's attack before I was hurt."
"Didn't you think it was odd that the real Battousai was in town where the fake one was making a ruckus?"
Kaoru shook her head. "No, Kenshin probably heard the rumors of a false hitokiri in Tokyo and came to get rid of him. It's the sort of thing he'd do. Of course it could be a cooicedance, but too many cooincedances happen around Kenshin." she frowned and shook herself. "It doesn't matter, as long as Kenshin breathes air and not graveyard soil he'll be a trouble magnet. Some people are just that way..."
Hiko nodded. "He certainly is. After you put the dishes away, come out back and talk to me while I shape these pots."
"Of course." Kaoru took the clean dshes inside and Hiko went to his work bench and potter's wheel.
Inside the hut, Kaoru wasted no time stacking the bowls in the corner with the others and putting away the individual trays. When she was done she stood up to dust off her Kimono just as a shadow crossed the threshold of the hut.
"Excuse me?" A youngish woman, about Kaoru's age, stood awkwardly outside the door with a baby strapped to her back and a toddler grasping the hem of her kimono.
Kaoru pushed her bangs back and went to greet her. "Can I help you?" she offered.
The young woman gasped a little as she caught sight of Kaoru. "Oh! Is the Potter not well?" she asked in concern.
Kaoru shook her head. "No, he is just working in the back."
The woman blinked. "Oh... OH!" she flushed. "Forgive me, I hadn't heard that he'd taken a wife." she bowed. "My apologies."
Kaoru opened her mouth to tell the woman that she wasn't Hiko's wife... but then it occured to her what gossip that might produce. "I'm his sister." she lied. There, a nice non-intimate relationship that wouldn't produce slanderous gossip. "My husband has business overseas and I came to spend a few weeks with my brother rather than stay at home alone." There, not only was she not a cause for a sword-point wedding but exempt from possible suitors from the town looking to ally themselves with a profitable business.
Understanding lit in the other woman's eyes. "Oh, I see. I wasn't aware that Seijuro-san had a sister." she cocked her head. "Not that anyone knows terribly much about him, actually, you look a bit like him... it's the way you hold yourself." she shook herself. "I need another pickle urn." she explained with a not-so-veiled look at the toddler at her ankles happily covering himself with dust.
Kaoru nodded. "I see." she looked over the shelves. "What did you have in mind?"
The woman's eyes followed hers. "Nothing too showy, it's just for the kitchen. I don't let Shinnosuke in the receiving rooms where we must keep some vaulable and fragile things for guests to look on." she made a face. "I despair of every being able to take my mother's rosewood jewelry box down from the high shelves again."
Kaoru cast an eye on a plain pot with a medium sized neck of the sort her mother had made pickles in. 'the hole is high enough that if the pot is carried the vinegar isdie won't slosh over but big enough that it is easy to get the pickles out again.'
Suddenly she paused and smacked herself. "Vinegar!"
The lady looked at her in surprise. "Have you just recalled something?"
Kaoru blushed. "No, I just finally realized what was wrong with some onigiri I made. I probably used too much vinegar and not enough sugar."
The customer laughed. "Oh! I remember making the same mistake for ages until my mother stood over my shoulder while I cooked!"
They shared a moment of laughter and Kaoru retrieved the crock she'd mentally selected for the lady. "Will this do?"
The customer eyed the jar critically. "Yes, I believe it will." she smiled at Kaoru. "Actually, I think it might be better for it's purpose than my old one."
"My mother used one like it." Kaoru agreed. "I remember being dragged all over the market looking for a new one when I accidentally broke it."
"How much do you want for it?"
Kaoru frowned down at the pot... and thought about how much she paid for crockery. She knew how much the materials cost, living hand to mouth at the dojo had made her a shrewd customer. "10 sen." she decided. That was a tidy profit for Hiko and a more than fair price for the lady, who looked to be well off in life.
"That is reasonable." she agreed and counted out the coins.
Kaoru caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye and heard Shinnosuke's squeal of intent. Wiothout thinking, she snagged the bodken she brought with her from Tokyo and picked Shinnosuke up by the collar of his gi with the tip of it before he reached his target... a low shelf of delicate porcelain statuette's.
With the same gesture she used when she plucked Yahiko (a great big ten year old) off the roof, she set Shinnosuke down on the tatami before his shoked mother and fixed him with a glare. "Are those yours?" she asked him.
To his mother's mortification, Shinnosuke nodded happily but his face fell when Kaoru shook her head. "No."
Shinnosuke bowed his head and scuffed his sandals. "Gomen." he muttered. Kaoru was surprised he knew the word, children his age usually communicated with their parents in a code of their own devising.
"Shinnosuke!" His miothjer cried. "Bow when you apologize, do not shame your family."
Shinnosuke's chin wobbled and he bowed awkwardly. "Gomen." he repeated, louder this time.
Kaoru smiled and patted his head. "No harm done, but porcelain is expensive and breaks easily." she knelt down and took his arm. "There are many tiny fragments that could cut you and the dust in your blood would make you sick."
Shinnosuke ducked behind his mother's legs, much to the woman's amusement.
"That was amazing." she told Kaoru. "Not only did you move so quickly, you managed to make Shinnosuke mind!" she smiled. "I am Midori Kanzaka. I would love to make your friendship."
"Kaoru Kamiya." Kaoru smiled at Midori. "I would like that."
Midori sighed. "I'm afraid I must be going now and take that crock home so we can have pickles in time for dinner, but if it isn't too much trouble I would like to call on you tomorrow. When would be most conveinent?"
Kaoru thought quickly. "Come before noon, so you won't have to travel when it is the hottest and Shinnosuke and your baby will be napping."
Midori nodded. "That would be best, my neighbor closes her shop then and she will watch them for me." she bowed, careful of the baby on her back. "Until tomorrow, Kamiya-san?"
"Goodbye!" Kaoru walked Midori to the bend of the road and watched until she was out of sight.
Hiko emerged from the trees to her left. "You handled that nicely." he approved. "She's always afraid of me."
Kaoru looked up at him... and up... and up. "I can't imagine why she would be intimidated by you." she said sarcastically.
Hiko shrugged. "Maybe she is just in awe of my obvious perfection." he shrugged. "The clay needs to rest before I work it. Go get your bodken and change into your hakama and we will have a work out."
***
Author's Note
***
I was so surprised when I got so many reviews! Normally I'm lucky if I get as many as eight in an entire storoy, but 18 over night! *grins*
*bows* you have all inspired me to do great things.
*Disclaimer* don't own it, never gonna own it, will mourn it for the rest of my life.
***
AU-
The heart has it's reasons--
of which reason knows nothing.
-Blaise Pascal
***
The futon was already too familiar, Kaoru thought in annoyance as she rose the next morning. It attempted the same lover's embrace her own futon at home -in Tokyo- employed every morning.
Somehow the affrontry of this new futon's familiarity made it easier for Kaoru to get up. It was harder to force herself to rise for Yahiko's morning exercises (especially when all she did was supervise).
Kaoru poked around the house, looking for something vaguely resmbling a chore.
Hiko was snoring away on a bamboo mat in the weak morning sunshine that came in through the windows. He resembled nothing so much as a giant cat that had spent the night before terrorizing the local mouse population... or sake population in this case.
"At least I know where Kenshin learned to hold his liqour." Kaoru mused to herself as she stepped over the slumbering swordsmaster to clear away the discarded sake jars from the night before.
She found a wooden tub to stack them in and promised herself she'd wash them with the breakfast dishes.
Breakfast... this was the part she'd been dreading. Breakfast foods were her weakest spot in her already pathetic cooking skills. "Still." she thought out loud. "I wouldn't feel right if I wasn't doing -something-."
Luckily, the rice from the night before hadn't dried out so it became rice-balls. There was red-miso stored behind the racks displaying Hiko's pots and Kaoru appropriated some of it to become miso soup... one of her weakest weak points.
Hiko came to life just as Kaoru began heating the oil in a wok. He rolled to his feet with an agility not often found in fifty-seven year olds.
"Good morning, Seijuro-san." Kaoru said to him when he padded across the floor and sat down beside her.
He'd discarded his everpresent white mantle and foreign boots. Without them he looked both more and less japanese than before. More because he was shoeless inside the house and less because the mantle no longer disguised the heavy, powerful build that was so uncommon for aisan men.
"Are you making miso soup?" he asked as he watched her carefully chopping ginger and garlic.
"Uh... yes." Kaoru swallowed and looked away. "Just to warn you, I'm not a very good cook."
Hiko gave one of his eloquent snorts. "I'm used to poor cooking, there were a few times in his youth when I swore Kenshin was trying to kill me." he chuckled. "If you want my advice... you've got enough ginger."
Kaoru looked down to where she was chopping. There was enough diced ginger to fill the hollow of her cupped hands. "Is that enough?" she usually added twice that.
Hiko nodded. "Plenty. Less is more when cooking... try and think of the person eating your food as an opponent. He's twice your size and you can't lay a finger on him, but he's stupid and easily influenced.
Kaoru cocked her head. "Okay..." she visualized Sanosuke.
"Do you want to jump at his, sword raised, shouting your intent or do you want to lull him into a false sense of security and take him by surprise?" he prodded.
"I'd sneak up on him." Kaoru confessed.
"Good." Hiko applauded her. "Think of seasoning like that. Subtle influence is better than outright attack. More is less. For now, use about a quarter of the seasonings you usually do and taste each one of them before you put it into the soup."
"Why?" Kaoru asked in confusion.
"If you do that before every meal you prepare, soon your tongue will learn to recognize the different tastes so when you mess something up you'll be able to identify what you used too much or too less of." Hiko explained patiently. "Go ahead."
Kaoru put a tiny bit of the ginger on her tongue and savored the spicy sweet flavor, half a dozen dishes that she'd made had an overwhelming shadow of this flavor she realized. "I use too much ginger..." she said out loud. "That's bad, ginger is expensive."
Hiko nodded sagely. "Keep it up, I'll be watching you while I take care of the tea."
"Thank you." Kaoru said gratefully.
The older man shrugged it off. "You're here to heal and learn, this is as good a place to begin as any. There is more to life than sword-play."
Hiko turned away before Kaoru could ask him what he had meant by that.
So, under Hiko's casual observation, Kaoru sauteed the ginger and garlic then added 'one tall tea galss full to the top' of water and dissolved 'two lumps the size of your knuckle' of katsuobushi and kombu to make the dashi broth base for the soup. While that simmered together he set her to chopping up 'one carrot as long as your hand' and 'enough broccoli bits to fit loosely in your hand'. She added them 'once the broth starts to smell like the ocean'.
"Now let it cook for sixty heartbeats." Hiko instructed. "It will give you something to do. I'll set out the bowls."
Sixty heart beats later, Kaoru and Hiko both downed two bowls of completely normal, if uninspired, miso soup and one rice ball each.
"We'll work on onigiri tonight." Hiko decided as he wrapped up the rest of inedible rice balls. "As for these... hehehe." he chuckled evilly. "I have some dead-beat friends I can pawn these off on. This out to teach them not to look for handouts..."
Kaoru flushed and cleared away the dishes. "That's a good idea." at least her uneducated cooking could bring about some good. Although, it didn't work on the dead-beats back home.
"Tell me what you noticed about your soup."
"Huh?" Kaoru looked up from stacking bowls and trays. "What I noticed?"
Hiko nodded and put the rice-balls into a bento box. "Yes, what you noticed." he prodded.
"Well..." Kaoru paused to recall the flavors she consumed. "It was a little dull, not that miso soup can be the most exciting dish, but it could have used another clove of garlic just for flavor... maybe even less ginger."
Hiko nodded. "Try it tomorrow and see what happens. What do you think was wrong with the onigiri?"
Kaoru wrinkled her nose. "Besides everything? Well, it was bitter and left a weird after-taste in the mouth. I can't quite put my finger on just one problem."
Hiko frowned. "Wake me up when you plan to cook tomorrow morning and show me what you did."
Kaoru nodded and took the dishes outside to the water tap behind the building. Hiko followed her but went instead to a large bin that, when he opened it, Kaoru saw to be full of clay.
Kaoru filled the wash bin with water and laid two mats down on the grass, one to kneel on while she washed and another to put the clean dishes on.
Hiko came to the water pump with two large handfuls of clay in a wooden tub similar to the ones Kaoru used to wash dishes. "The clay dries out." he explained. "The bin I keep it in is in the shade, but the moisture still escapes so I have to work more into before I work." he poured just enough water into the tub to cover the bottom and then began to knead the clay the same way an english housewife kneaded bread dough.
They both worked in companionable silence for a while until Hiko broke the hush by asking Kaoru. "What exactly do you see in my baka-deshi, anyway? I've been wanting to ask you that ever since he came crawling back here to learn the sucession techinques."
Kaoru flushed and bowed her head so her bangs would hide it. "I... don't really know myself." were Hiko anyone else she would have extolled on Kenshin's many virtues; kindess, patience, humor, etc., etc., etc. but Hiko was Hiko and she knew he'd see through any attempts to divert him.
"Well, I can't really help loving him." she said after a while. "It wasn't because he rescued me, or because he is strong and protects me... I don't really know -why- I feel the way I do, I just started to one day and never found a good enough reason to stop. The first time I met Kenshin, it was rather ironic, I mistook him for himself."
"You mean that incident in Tokyo where a fake Battousai was killing police officers?" Hiko prodded.
"That's the one." Kaoru laughed. "I was on the streets looking for the man who was maligning the name of my school. I knew he wasn't the -real- Battousai because Battoursai was an assassin directly under the leaders of the chosuu faction. I assumed that the real Battousai was either dead, settled down somewhere, or working for the new government. No one would send an expert killer to hack down some inept cops on the street, that's the sort of thing thugs are for. Thugs are something I have experience with, so I thought I had a chance." she made a face. "I was out of my depth, luckily Kenshin pulled me out of Gohei's attack before I was hurt."
"Didn't you think it was odd that the real Battousai was in town where the fake one was making a ruckus?"
Kaoru shook her head. "No, Kenshin probably heard the rumors of a false hitokiri in Tokyo and came to get rid of him. It's the sort of thing he'd do. Of course it could be a cooicedance, but too many cooincedances happen around Kenshin." she frowned and shook herself. "It doesn't matter, as long as Kenshin breathes air and not graveyard soil he'll be a trouble magnet. Some people are just that way..."
Hiko nodded. "He certainly is. After you put the dishes away, come out back and talk to me while I shape these pots."
"Of course." Kaoru took the clean dshes inside and Hiko went to his work bench and potter's wheel.
Inside the hut, Kaoru wasted no time stacking the bowls in the corner with the others and putting away the individual trays. When she was done she stood up to dust off her Kimono just as a shadow crossed the threshold of the hut.
"Excuse me?" A youngish woman, about Kaoru's age, stood awkwardly outside the door with a baby strapped to her back and a toddler grasping the hem of her kimono.
Kaoru pushed her bangs back and went to greet her. "Can I help you?" she offered.
The young woman gasped a little as she caught sight of Kaoru. "Oh! Is the Potter not well?" she asked in concern.
Kaoru shook her head. "No, he is just working in the back."
The woman blinked. "Oh... OH!" she flushed. "Forgive me, I hadn't heard that he'd taken a wife." she bowed. "My apologies."
Kaoru opened her mouth to tell the woman that she wasn't Hiko's wife... but then it occured to her what gossip that might produce. "I'm his sister." she lied. There, a nice non-intimate relationship that wouldn't produce slanderous gossip. "My husband has business overseas and I came to spend a few weeks with my brother rather than stay at home alone." There, not only was she not a cause for a sword-point wedding but exempt from possible suitors from the town looking to ally themselves with a profitable business.
Understanding lit in the other woman's eyes. "Oh, I see. I wasn't aware that Seijuro-san had a sister." she cocked her head. "Not that anyone knows terribly much about him, actually, you look a bit like him... it's the way you hold yourself." she shook herself. "I need another pickle urn." she explained with a not-so-veiled look at the toddler at her ankles happily covering himself with dust.
Kaoru nodded. "I see." she looked over the shelves. "What did you have in mind?"
The woman's eyes followed hers. "Nothing too showy, it's just for the kitchen. I don't let Shinnosuke in the receiving rooms where we must keep some vaulable and fragile things for guests to look on." she made a face. "I despair of every being able to take my mother's rosewood jewelry box down from the high shelves again."
Kaoru cast an eye on a plain pot with a medium sized neck of the sort her mother had made pickles in. 'the hole is high enough that if the pot is carried the vinegar isdie won't slosh over but big enough that it is easy to get the pickles out again.'
Suddenly she paused and smacked herself. "Vinegar!"
The lady looked at her in surprise. "Have you just recalled something?"
Kaoru blushed. "No, I just finally realized what was wrong with some onigiri I made. I probably used too much vinegar and not enough sugar."
The customer laughed. "Oh! I remember making the same mistake for ages until my mother stood over my shoulder while I cooked!"
They shared a moment of laughter and Kaoru retrieved the crock she'd mentally selected for the lady. "Will this do?"
The customer eyed the jar critically. "Yes, I believe it will." she smiled at Kaoru. "Actually, I think it might be better for it's purpose than my old one."
"My mother used one like it." Kaoru agreed. "I remember being dragged all over the market looking for a new one when I accidentally broke it."
"How much do you want for it?"
Kaoru frowned down at the pot... and thought about how much she paid for crockery. She knew how much the materials cost, living hand to mouth at the dojo had made her a shrewd customer. "10 sen." she decided. That was a tidy profit for Hiko and a more than fair price for the lady, who looked to be well off in life.
"That is reasonable." she agreed and counted out the coins.
Kaoru caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye and heard Shinnosuke's squeal of intent. Wiothout thinking, she snagged the bodken she brought with her from Tokyo and picked Shinnosuke up by the collar of his gi with the tip of it before he reached his target... a low shelf of delicate porcelain statuette's.
With the same gesture she used when she plucked Yahiko (a great big ten year old) off the roof, she set Shinnosuke down on the tatami before his shoked mother and fixed him with a glare. "Are those yours?" she asked him.
To his mother's mortification, Shinnosuke nodded happily but his face fell when Kaoru shook her head. "No."
Shinnosuke bowed his head and scuffed his sandals. "Gomen." he muttered. Kaoru was surprised he knew the word, children his age usually communicated with their parents in a code of their own devising.
"Shinnosuke!" His miothjer cried. "Bow when you apologize, do not shame your family."
Shinnosuke's chin wobbled and he bowed awkwardly. "Gomen." he repeated, louder this time.
Kaoru smiled and patted his head. "No harm done, but porcelain is expensive and breaks easily." she knelt down and took his arm. "There are many tiny fragments that could cut you and the dust in your blood would make you sick."
Shinnosuke ducked behind his mother's legs, much to the woman's amusement.
"That was amazing." she told Kaoru. "Not only did you move so quickly, you managed to make Shinnosuke mind!" she smiled. "I am Midori Kanzaka. I would love to make your friendship."
"Kaoru Kamiya." Kaoru smiled at Midori. "I would like that."
Midori sighed. "I'm afraid I must be going now and take that crock home so we can have pickles in time for dinner, but if it isn't too much trouble I would like to call on you tomorrow. When would be most conveinent?"
Kaoru thought quickly. "Come before noon, so you won't have to travel when it is the hottest and Shinnosuke and your baby will be napping."
Midori nodded. "That would be best, my neighbor closes her shop then and she will watch them for me." she bowed, careful of the baby on her back. "Until tomorrow, Kamiya-san?"
"Goodbye!" Kaoru walked Midori to the bend of the road and watched until she was out of sight.
Hiko emerged from the trees to her left. "You handled that nicely." he approved. "She's always afraid of me."
Kaoru looked up at him... and up... and up. "I can't imagine why she would be intimidated by you." she said sarcastically.
Hiko shrugged. "Maybe she is just in awe of my obvious perfection." he shrugged. "The clay needs to rest before I work it. Go get your bodken and change into your hakama and we will have a work out."
***
Author's Note
***
I was so surprised when I got so many reviews! Normally I'm lucky if I get as many as eight in an entire storoy, but 18 over night! *grins*
*bows* you have all inspired me to do great things.
