Chapter 7:
"Sanosuke's Instincts"
Sanosuke splashed the cold water of the well onto his perspiring face, closing his eyes as he felt the tiny droplets course down his cheeks, gathering at the strong point of his chin and slowly dripped back down into the water below. Past images entered his mind as he placed his hands on the stone walls of the well in the front yard of the Kamiya dojo. Even on the next day after having seen Megumi and Suzuki again the afternoon the day before, the impressions of Megumi's grievous look in her once fiery eyes still stayed implanted into his brain as if he had just Futae-No-Kiwami-ed it into his mind. Pictures of Megumi's contused face and the black and blue cuts and bruises all over her body made him shudder at how she had apprehended them.
Sanosuke knew an abused woman when he saw one and Megumi had somehow plundered her way into that description. He knew that Tetsu had exploited her, causing all the damages Sanosuke was able to see on her body, but Tetsu had more than just broken a few bones or blood vessels; he had broken Megumi's spirit. Sanosuke had seen how she had flinched at Kenshin's touch when he had placed his arm around her shoulders to help her inside the dojo and he saw how quick she was to back away whenever anyone had tried to touch her. Only when they were finally alone in front of the clinic did her emotional blockage falter and had she let him hold her.
He still couldn't forget the terrible shaking of her body and he hadn't failed to notice the single tear that fell from her eyes and washed itself onto his chest. He knew all these things for sure, but what he wasn't too clear on was why she was lying about it. She trusted him, didn't she? She trusted him enough to tell him when she was in trouble, right? Sanosuke shook his head, the drops of well water streaming down faster at the vital movement and plummeted down to the well below. He wasn't positive about what exactly Tetsu did to disable her both physically and mentally from telling him what happened, but he did know one thing. Tetsu was going to pay for what he had done to his Megumi; Sanosuke would make sure of that.
His eyes shot open, his pupils dancing with blazes of red and orange flames and his grip on the well's stone wall tightened so hard his knuckles turned white and the sharp edges of the rocks cut the rough texture of his skin. Sanosuke barely noticed. Out of his anger, he pounded his fist into the ground, leaving behind only dust as the result of his strongest attack. That is what he was going to do to Tetsu once he got the chance and that was what Sanosuke knew he deserved. No human being alive could have even thought about hurting someone like Megumi, who was the leading female doctor in all of Japan, not even capable of hurting a fly. She was as gentle as a lamb and as caring to every person that showed her the same respect, even those who to those who didn't. Whoever had the audacity to hurt Megumi Takani, couldn't have been human. No, the person had to be a monster.
Stomping away from the wide-ranging hole he had left in the middle of the yard, ignoring Kaoru's lectures that he would have to fix it later, Sanosuke left the dojo with heavy strides and a fury so great even the Devil himself would have cowered in fear. He slammed the dojo's door shut behind him with a loud bang and he kept his head lowered, but his determination soaring high as he headed towards the clinic, every intention to pummel Tetsu into the ground. With his mind so distracted with his repugnance, Sanosuke didn't even realize someone walking toward him heading in the opposite direction until they collided.
"Watch it!" Sanosuke snapped at the man, but immediately wiped the scowl off his face once he saw his recognized him. The man was the other half of the only two surviving members of the rebel group called the Sekihoutai, Sanosuke's best friend since childhood, and the most famous artist in all of Tokyo, mainly known for drawing pictures of the leading soldiers and hitokiris during the Revolution; Tsunan.Tsukioka. "Katsu? Is that you?"
"Sano, you big idiot! I heard from a couple of the guys that you were back, but I had to go see it for myself!" Katsu said, a huge grin on his face as he brushed the dirt off his jacket where they had bumped shoulders, "Where've you been all this time?"
"Look, Katsu, it's great seeing you again and all, but I gotta..." Sanosuke started, but Katsu's next statement stopped the rest of his sentence dead in it's tracks.
"Ryo's dead, Sano," Katsu said, interrupting Sanosuke's excuse to leave and he watched his jaw drop to the floor, "They killed him the day after you left... They said he aided in your escape and that he shot about ten police officers trying to help you..."
Sanosuke balled his hands into fists, gritting his teeth so tight together he was sure he heard them crack. His entire reason for even going to the magistrate's house that night six years ago was to protect Ryo from the Meiji government and their so-called ways of justice, but it had all turned out to be an entirely useless effort. What made him even more upset was that in his endeavor of helping Ryo out of trouble, Ryo had gotten right back into the line of danger on Sanosuke's behalf.
"How did they...?" Sanosuke asked, trailing off, not even able to finish his own sentence as his tongue struggled and tripped over the word 'kill.'
"Took him out into an open rice field and shot him. Just like that," Katsu replied with the same anger Sanosuke felt was about to burst from his body, "they didn't even give him the option of court... His family didn't stand a chance. Without Ryo there to care for them, the food for his baby never got there and the medicine for his wife never made it through. His newborn daughter died a few days later from starvation and his wife died from the grief."
"Those... bastards..." Sanosuke breathed, the flames in his eyes glowing brighter as his hate for the government increased with his rage, "they just.. they killed an innocent family..."
"I can see why you left. Any place'd be better than under their control. Come on, Sano, let's get you someplace where you can calm down," Katsu suggested, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder, "my place is just around the corner. You should sit down and I'll catch you up on what's happened here since you left."
Reluctantly, Sanosuke let his friend lead him away from the middle of the streets, his mind racing with memories of seeing Captain Sagara's head placed on a mount like a trophy and he imagined it right next to Ryo's and the severed heads of Ryo's family. Sanosuke shut his eyes, trying to shake away the horrible images, but the intense burning from his darkened pupils scorched his eyelids and they flew open once again.
This was his life. Whatever help he tried to offer always backfired, whipping back with the speed of lightning, taking out whatever got in it's way, and this time it was Ryo... Sanosuke still remembered how he had tried to help Captain Sagara, lugging the larger man on his back as he tried to lead him to safety, but his hero had been shot down by the soldiers of the government as he shielded Sanosuke from the power of their guns and tossed him over into the river. Captain Sagara had given up his life so Sanosuke's could be spared, taking the punishment with his all and giving Sanosuke nothing. The same fate had happened to Ryo and Sanosuke found himself fighting back the urge to destroy anything that dared to get in his path. He blinked back angry tears, letting only a few escape his proud penitentiary, but they evaporated into the air from the enraged heat from his chocolate brown eyes.
Everyone was always trying to help him, giving him only a few more years left to his life span, not accepting his help when he tried to return the favor. Sano wasn't afraid of death; he was willing to take on whatever anyone threw at him if it at all concerned his beliefs. He wasn't afraid of stepping over a few obstacles, he wasn't afraid of getting himself killed, or immensely hurt, but he was afraid of losing the ones dear to him. It had happened before and it had happened again, this time, without him even knowing it.
Katsu sat him down at the table of his apartment, studying his friend cautiously, waiting for him to say something. He knew Sanosuke since childhood, had always considered him his best friend, but now, sitting there in complete silence with unreadable blackened eyes, Katsu was starting to think he had invited a stranger into his house. Katsu cleared his throat, grabbing Sano's attention with the small sound and he handed him a beige colored envelope.
Sanosuke looked at the envelope in front of him, the edges practically bursting with it's contents as it was filled with about three trees worth of papers. He frowned slightly and looked up at his friend for an explanation, but Katsu only nodded his head toward the package, indicating that he was supposed to look at what was inside. Slowly, Sanosuke slipped out the bundle of papers, laying them out in front of him across the hard wood table, and he examined each and every one of the newspaper articles that lay before him.
"Ever since you left there were all these stories in the papers about you," Katsu told him as Sanosuke looked over the papers in front of him, "I saved them all. I got into a little mess when the police chief asked me to write about you in my newspapers, but I refused. I haven't written any articles since."
"Why didn't you write about me?" Sanosuke asked, pausing from his examining of the first newspaper and he looked up over it's heading, "Didn't have enough info?"
"No, it's because I don't believe you killed Hideki Kajima," Katsu stated, his arms folding across his chest to show Sano how serious he was, "and I didn't want to be the source telling other people that you did. People can think what they want, but I'm not gonna be the one encouraging anything."
"Thanks, Katsu," Sanosuke said, smiling up at his friend as he handed him a cup of tea, "I appreciate.... Whoa, hang on a second!" His smile dropped plainly off his face as Sanosuke fixated his eyes on an article in front of him on the table, grabbing at it with one quick swipe, and he brought it up to his face to get a better look at it. His chocolate brown eyes widened, no longer engulfed with angry flames, but now with an entirely new perceptive that Katsu could only say was complete and utter consternation.
"Sanosuke?" Katsu asked curiously as he stood up from his seat and walked over to where his friend sat on the other end of the table, "What is it? What's the matter?"
"Who is this?!" Sanosuke demanded, pressing his index finger hard into a picture of someone on the article, practically poking a hole right through the delicate paper, "This man! Who is this?!"
Katsu carefully took the paper from Sanosuke's shaking hands, holding it up to his face to take a better look at the person's profile and he gave Sanosuke a confused expression as if to say, 'What in the world is going on with you?' Sanosuke's eyes only continued to dart back and forth, searching over his friend's face for a response, and he held back from choking the answer out of him as sirens ran in frantic circles in his head.
"This is the magistrate's son," Katsu explained, still confused at Sanosuke's strange reaction to the photo, but he continued, "his name is Kurotara Kajima. He used to live here in Tokyo about six years ago, but he left after his father's death."
"Hideki Kajima's son... That's the guy the police thought I killed... What else does the article say?" Sanosuke asked, the bewildered look growing more intense and Katsu frowned again, still puzzled at his strange actions to seeing Hideki Kajima's son's picture. At Katsu's hesitant pause, Sanosuke slammed his fist down onto the table, startling the man out of his trance and making him jump up in surprise. Sanosuke looked up at him from his seat, all patience smoldered from the fright he secretly held in his heart. "Tell me what the hell the rest of the article says!!!"
"It says that Kurotara left Tokyo a few weeks after Hideki's death and you escaped from the city. After he inherited the money his father had left him, he ventured over to Aizu," Katsu continued, his confusion now replaced with concern as he watched Sanosuke's eyes widen enough to pop out of their sockets, but he continued on with the reading the paper, "Since leaving Tokyo for Aizu, Kurotara was never seen again... That's all the article says. Sano, what is the meaning of this? What's going on with you?"
"Katsu, don't ask questions, okay? If you want to help me, find all the articles on this Kurotara guy that you can find and give them to me," Sanosuke said, his voice less threatening as he pleaded with his friend with the cool brown color of his eyes, "Please, Katsu, just try and find all that you can on him as fast as possible. You've got to have some kind of information on him in some of these articles if he's the magistrate's son. I don't have time to explain now, just do as I say and I'll explain it all later. Right now, I don't have the time!"
Katsu nodded in agreement. This was obviously a very serious matter because if it was otherwise, he wouldn't have been so frantic. Katsu had never before been able to say no to any proposal Sano had ever requested him to do, whether it be lending him his whole wallet, giving him a place to stay, or asking him for information, either way Katsu had never refused. And he wasn't about to start now.
Hurriedly, he rushed over to his room, pulling out all the newspapers he had stashed in his closet beside his many boxes of explosives and he dragged them all back to where Sanosuke was now frantically looking over the other papers already laid out on the table. Looking up from the article he had been reading at Katsu's approach, Sanosuke muttered a small 'thank you' before lunging at the stash of newspapers. Katsu, of course, helped him with his search on Kurotara Kajima, running his index finger down the writing and scanning his eyes over the words until he spotted the man's name.
"Here's one!" Katsu exclaimed, pulling it out from underneath a pile of dust and he quickly blew it off. Silently, he read the first few lines to himself and Sanosuke watched him frown and his eyebrows creased together.
"What?!" Sanosuke demanded, slamming his fist down again onto the table, "What does it say?!"
"It's... part of the obituaries..." Katsu whispered and his eyes widened as he read the rest of it out loud, "It says here that Mr. Kurotara Kajima was once engaged to Miss Satomi Heihachi about seven years ago. His father, the magistrate, Hideki Kajima, didn't support his son's decision on a future wife however because she was the daughter of one of the leading members of the..." Katsu trailed off, his eyes scanning over the last word to make sure he was reading it right. While he did this, Sanosuke was dying from the anticipation.
"What, god damn it?!" Sanosuke demanded, rotating his hand in circles to indicate for him to go on, "He didn't support his son's choice for his future wife because she was the daughter of one of the leading members of the... what? Fill in the blank here, Katsu!"
"The Sekihoutai..." Katsu finished, his eyes still wide, but he quickly shook his head to clear up his thoughts so he could continue reading aloud the rest of the article, "Miss Satomi Heihachi's father was Tsukano Tanaka, Souzou Sagara's... heir... Uh... Miss Heihachi was very supportive of the Sekihoutai group because of her father's position in it's ardor and she was against the government for what they had done to end her father's group. Because of this and what the magistrate said that the girl offended him by, the magistrate sentenced the girl to death for defying his role as a government official and she was thrown into a jail cell to await her death on January 4th, only a few weeks before her marriage to Kurotara was going to take place. Kurotara tried to persuade his father that she was not defying the government or him, but Hideki Kajima would not accept her into the family name, saying that she would soil their reputation with her disobedient behavior. The night before Satomi was going to be hung, she killed herself. Kurotara found her body in the morning with her hands gripping a packet of the drug, opium, that she had taken the night before. He had tried to save her, but it was already too late... Sano, this was dated about a year before Kurotara disappeared to Aizu..."
Sanosuke stayed silent for a few moments, letting the new found knowledge soak into his brain as he formed it all into complete sentences in his mind. He had known Tsukano Takana, Miss Heihachi's father. 'Tsukano was that little nineteen year old boy that was always tagging along behind Captain Sagara all the time,' Sano thought, remembering the young man Souzou had named as his heir, the picture of his face appearing before Sanosuke's mind.
He remembered when he was little, following after his Captain along side Tsukano and Katsu, talking with them as they traveled all over Japan with the rest of the Sekihoutai. Sanosuke recalled the day he and Katsu found Tsukano huddled over a tiny picture of his family while he leaned against a tiny tree as he rested from the day's travel. Katsu and he hadn't really thought about Tsukano having a family, but Sano remembered all too well how desperately Tsukano had clung to the photo after being shot by one of the police the night the Sekihoutai were brutally murdered and betrayed.
He had run over to him, trying to help the dying man up, but Tsukano had only pushed Sanosuke away, telling him to leave him there. Sanosuke had only persisted in trying to help, but he left after Tsukano had died before him, his hands cradling the tiny photo of his wife and young daughter and with his last ounce of strength, Tsukano had kissed the picture softly with his lips before his entire body went limp. The photo had fluttered to the ground, floating away in the thin river of it's owner's blood.
"I just need to know one thing..." Sanosuke said silently, his heart still racing as it was the night the Sekihoutai came to meet it's end and he looked up to see that the same worried expression that he wore on his face, was plastered on Katsu's, "What is the color of Kurotara Kajima's eyes?"
"His eyes?" Katsu asked curiously, not knowing how the color of the magistrate's son's eyes had anything to do with the whole situation, but he leaned closer to the picture after seeing the serious look on Sanosuke's face that Katsu had only seen when he knew it mattered most. He peered closer at the photo in the middle of the article, scanning his eyes over the image of Kurotara and Satomi together in front of a cherry blossom tree and he squinted his eyes to focus on Kurotara's eye color. Pulling away, Katsu scratched his head in confusion and looked back at Sanosuke, who's face was overridden with immense expectation. "Well, it looks like they're two different colors. Like, one is black and one is white..." Katsu replied with a sheepish grin, "but I don't see how the guy's eye color has anything to do with.... Sano, where are you going?!"
"Thanks a lot, Katsu," Sanosuke said as he quickly stood up from his seat, grabbed the newspaper articles that held the important information he needed and ran out the door, "I owe you one! I appreciate all this! I'll just borrow these, okay? I'll explain everything later!"
"Sano, wait! Hang on a second!" Katsu called after him, but the echo of his voice never reached Sanosuke's quick retreating figure as he ran out into the crowds in the street, the kanji sign of 'wicked' slowly losing it's shape as he got farther and farther out into the distance, papers flying out behind him. Still in his doorway, Katsu shrugged. "That big turd stole my papers..."
Sanosuke gritted his teeth as he ran, images of the last night the Sekihoutai had ever lived embedded into his brain. The picture of Tsukano kissing the photo of his family hit every part of him like a powerful stone to delicate flesh as Sanosuke wished with all he had within him that that wouldn't be Megumi lying on the ground with the rivers of blood surrounding her fragile body in Tsukano's place. Sanosuke needed to make it in time to the dojo, where she had promised to meet them all for dinner at the Akabeko and he was going to help her once and for all, whether she accepted it willingly or not. Now, with knowledge of just who exactly Tetsu really was, he was not going to let Kurotara Kajima hurt her anymore than he already had. And Sanosuke swore this promise on Tsukano's, Ryo's, and Captain Sagara's graves.
A/N: Ooh! Plot twists! But that's not all, there's more surprises coming up so if you're confused now, you better e-mail me or leave a review with your e-mail and I'll fill you in. Thanx!