Chapter 2
They felt so fragile in his arms. So light in his arms were they, he was afraid he'd forget they were there and drop them. Only their tender nuzzles and compassionate whines now and again reminded him to be gentle, but it was enough. He could feel himself hold them tighter, protectively. As they made themselves comfortable in his arms, he walked out of the backdoor, where everyone sat, still listening to the woman.
Her voice was light, almost shallow of emotion. But whatever emotion she spoke with was singular and not clashing with any other feelings and had a certain appeal to it that did, perhaps, seem shallow and hindered, but also open and genuine.
He felt a ping of guilt for having been rude to her, but said nothing as he let Ayame and Suzume down and scurry for plates and ingredients for rice-balls, which really wasn't very much to retrieve, so he usually let them get the things.
"Kenshin, are you all right?" Kaoru said, watching him as usual. He responded with a smile and a quick nod.
"Yes, Miss Kaoru. I got you some tofu, like I said I would," he told her.
"Thank you," she responded politely.
A brief period of silence was clashed with Kaoru's intervention.
"Meet Imura Saoshin," Kaoru introduced and bowed slightly as she gestured toward her with gracious hands. {Pay attention to the spelling of Saoshin's surname here. It's kind of important.}
He raised an eyebrow. Her name sounded similar to his name. But, he contained his questions and doubts and finally introduced himself, pleasantly for once.
"I am Himura Kenshin," he replied, solemnly.
Kaoru clapped her hands together and smiled cheerily. "You may stay for dinner, the only payment I can give you for your stories, Miss Imura."
The stranger nodded gratefully and accepted her offer.
"Miss Kaoru, the food isn't ready yet," Kenshin told her, politely enough.
She gave Kenshin a dull look and said, "I know, Kenshin. I'm the one that's cooking it."
"Aw man, Kenshin, why did you let her cook?" Yahiko interrupted.
"She needs to practice and I will try to teach her, okay?"
Yahiko laughed teasingly. "You couldn't get her to cook decently even if her life depended on it!"
"Yahiko!" she roared.
The two little girls came back with supplies in their arms, marching like a little platoon as Yahiko and Kaoru ran off with Kaoru trailing close behind with a prepared fist.
Kenshin smiled as he padded down the stairs and met up with them. The woman was watching him, carefully. His smile slipped away and fell into a straight line across his face.
"Ready, Brother Ken?" Suzume asked, grinning proudly because she and her sister had brought everything.
"Yes, let's go, shall we?"
He bent down to take the things out of their arms, but showed him he was proud of them in the process so as not to make them tart about him carrying the things.
After this, they walked back to the porch and Kenshin let the stuff spill out of his arms haphazardly. He immediately started to sort through them as did Suzume and Ayame.
"Minder Battousai?"
He turned slightly toward the small voice behind him. He heard a slight rustling of her clothes as she scooted closer, dragging her kimono across the rough outdoor wood.
"Yes, Miss Imura?"
"I want to say that I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" he asked and turned to the pile of rice material ready to be kneaded. He took some up and watched as Suzume and the little Ayame took some into their hands and tried with great effort to please him with a perfect rice-ball.
"I am sorry for intruding on your quaint.home, shall I say?"
He froze at the word, having not once thought of this place as his home.
"Are you planning to stay long?"
He continued kneading the bit of white stickiness in his palms while he ignored her for another moment. He sighed and turned around to her, grasping the little white ball in a hand gently.
"Why? Why is that so important?"
She sighed and smoothed down her sleeves one by one. Then, looked at him in the noonday sun with liquid red eyes. His eyes narrowed on their eerie hue.
"I have a story for everyone, Minder Battousai. I am a collector of stories. But I've been missing one incredible story from my collection."
"And it's mine?"
She nodded frankly and smiled cheerily at him. "Yes."
"I'm not in any mood to tell you my stories, wanderer," he replied gruffly. He blinked with amazement at himself as he turned away. He had done it again. He had been rude to her for no apparent reason.
"And your story starts with me," she said.
"I can't see how or why," he countered, setting down a perfectly round white rice-ball.
"Brother Ken, how's this?" Ayame asked and held it up right in front of his nose, his eyes narrowed surprisingly at it.
"It's good, Ayame," he said and smiled. "Here, let's set it down gently on the tray."
"Gently," she reiterated sternly with a determined nod.
He took her hands gently in his and guided her hands to the tray, then slid her hands out slowly from underneath the rice-ball with one crumbled corner.
"Kenshin! It's beautiful," she cried and leapt into his lap.
"Must be one of your best yet, that it is."
"Rurouni Kenshin?"
He stopped when he heard Saoshin address him in such a way. He turned, with Ayame hanging around his neck.
"Tell me then, how our fates are tied together?"
"Picture a sunny day, Rurouni Kenshin, because that's the kind of day on which I came to you. A day when you had found out you had lost your love," she said, speaking in a sorrowful tone, it washed over him like a devastating sea.
He clenched his teeth and looked to Suzume and Ayame before his features contorted any more.
"Suzume, Ayame, I think it may delight Kaoru if you went to help her in some way, being wonderful little helpers that you are."
Suzume had another contemplative look upon her face and got up.
"Let's go, Ayame!"
Ayame bounded out of Kenshin's lap and took off after her sister to find their Kaoru.
Saoshin slid away and hung her legs over the rim of the little porch, with parasol in hand, twirling it into the dirt at the base of the porch as she gazed out into the yard, the sky, at everything but him.
"That was not a beautiful day!" he protested finally. "It wasn't!"
"O, it had been. But I don't think you were aware of it. The only thing that I could remember of you was your coldness. You were cold, Rurouni Kenshin," she stated vaguely.
"What the hell is your problem? First, somebody or other tries to bring me harm physically, for the most stupidest reasons of all and now, YOU, this!" he hissed. His right hand was trembling and he finally clenched it tightly, trying to hold back the reflex of drawing his blade. "I haven't spoken a nasty word to anyone since it all ended, Miss Imura! Not until you. After everything, something of my past still manages to find me, to bring me harm, to bring those around me harm. . ."
He calmed then, he was standing, towering above her, but she didn't seem to be listening. She didn't seem to hear, until he was finished that is.
"My timing has always been terrible," her eyes were downcast, full of past follies.
His guilt started to work back to the surface, his frown deepened at his behavior.
"It seems as though trouble follows me wherever I roam to," he said distractedly, and softly.
"Are you sure you don't go looking for trouble, Rurouni Kenshin?"
He looked down at her, her eyes were still lowered and she didn't even attempt to glance at him nor did she blush or go further until he spoke.
"No, I've worked toward a peaceful life, a peaceful era, I deserve this much.don't I?"
Even as he spoke these words, he knew they were not honestly spoken, though with a lot of heart they were.
"You do deserve so much, Kenshin," she agreed quietly and lifted her eyes to the yard beyond. "I cannot tell you much, but that I was sent by a person from the past to watch over you when time permitted me to. And I've had a lot of time. And I can see that you do not wish to leave this place."
"I hope not to," he said, soberly.
"But you're afraid. You're afraid that you won't be able to protect them," she said, hesitantly.
He stayed silent.
"I am part of your past. I cannot change that, though I wish I could. And I wish I could change our first meeting. I had been trying to confront you head-on, though she had warned me not to. I wasn't afraid of you; she knew I was one of the few people who admired you, Rurouni Kenshin. We ended up battling each other and near the end of it, I had injured myself, clumsy as I was with a sword back then, you see."
She stifled a chuckle as she went on.
"I still have a limp from the wound I inflicted on myself when I had first met you. I'm not quite sure what I had done, but I knew that it had been partly your fault too. I knew that you had somehow turned my perception upside down in such a way that made me feel. . .cosmically dizzy in a manner of speaking. Suddenly, I saw only bits and pieces of the world around me, felt only you everywhere. And I had brought my own blade down on myself from your technique, whatever it had been."
She looked up at him and he stared down at her with wide eyes.
"How are you still alive? I should have killed you when I had the chance."
She winced at his words, but knew that he meant that she should have been dead now, because of the way he had been.back then.
"You couldn't take my life, Rurouni Kenshin," she said simply. "Even then, you had some humane bit inside yourself that stayed your hand when I had struck myself down because of your baffling technique."
She lifted the point of her parasol off the dirt and tapped it on clean ground to make another hole from her ever-twirling fingers.
"Besides," she added, "you didn't even know me then, just as you don't know me now."
"But you-I don't remember that! I'd remember something like that."
"Kenshin, is everything all right?" Kaoru said, stepping onto the deck with a tight little frown on her young, concerned face. "Kenshin?"
Kenshin kept Saoshin's eyes locked with his own.
"I'd remember failing," he said quietly. But it was more than just quietly. There was something else about him.his stature, his. . .his eyes!
Suddenly in the blink of Kaoru's eyes, Saoshin gasped as she rapidly wielded her parasol in front of her face. There was a great ringing and before the ringing could end the reverse blade sword was crashing into the middle of the poor sun umbrella with Saoshin underneath, barely keeping her own against his tremendous power. She did this with great effort and tried her hardest to lock her arms. The umbrella had practically exploded on contact, the find wood design was ruined but at little cost; she was still alive under the heavy weight being born by him.
He growled hideously at her display of resistance, which caught her attention. She looked away from the blade and up at him, suddenly her stomach clenched, she felt fear as she had all those years ago. His voice was drained of all emotion, like running water gone abruptly dry. And the eyes, no longer of a violet, but a thirsty gold that was ready to obliterate her at the first sign of weakness. She, the one kill he had failed to go through. Her eyes widened for she knew that if he had attacked her when she stood, she wouldn't have been able to hold his heavy pressure, because of the weakness in her right leg from the one other battle she had had with him.
She noticed that he was staring intently at her parasol. She cried out when she saw a glint in the sunlight within the mess of splintered wood. She had forgotten about her hidden blade.
"Rurouni Kenshin," she pleaded through gritted teeth.
"Kenshin! Kenshin, stop!" Kaoru yelled at him. She looked on helplessly, her eyes wide with terror.
"Whoa, Kenshin! What are you doing?" Yahiko exclaimed as he came around the bend of the dojo to investigate the noise.
All he could think about was the woman before him, who was all he could see or feel.
"Why must you bother me? Why can't you just leave me alone? Leave us alone!"
"You can't kill me, with that, sword, Kenshin!" Saoshin pointed out desperately, heaving these words between breaths.
His eyes glazed over heatedly at the obvious statement.
"No, you're right in that. But I can still hurt you rather badly with it," he proclaimed in a threateningly tranquil tone. His shoulders hunched through his robe as he bore down still more on her.
Still, his strength had not diminished, if anything it was becoming more, becoming unrelenting. She was about to give; she couldn't hold it any longer.
"Kenshin, what are you doing?" Kaoru whispered.
"I didn't come to hurt you! If I had, it would've already been done!"
"It's dishonorable to have a hidden weapon! Tell me, then, what you were doing? With this weapon, hidden right under our noses?" he yelled back, furious with her somehow.
He could not hide his anger and he didn't know why. He couldn't compose himself in her presence. Why? If what she said was true, why threaten her with his reverse blade? Why threaten her at all? But for the growing warning in his heart, he felt completely in favor of backing down.
To his bewilderment, she collapsed, sweat glistening in the sunlight and flashing as his sword flung forward at the pressure he had sustained throughout. He abruptly stood straight, drawing the blade back some, but still it caught her cheek, moving across it as she turned her head away. He knew why she turned her head with the blade, to minimize the wound and now, instead of a gash, which should have lain across her cheek and nose, she had one about the size of his horizontal scar across her pale left cheek. Blood spilled and seeped from the corners of the fresh cut.
She started shouting at him; he blinked as he gazed at the tip of his blade. He heard her, but barely through his own calling, his own scolding.
"It isn't dishonorable any longer! An age where swords are forbidden, an age where honor is something else, something more than how good you are with a sword, with any sort of weapon. . .your kind is going extinct! Swordsmanship is nothing more than an art, at best defense, only defense, Kenshin," she trailed off here. Her own face gone sour. Her voice was full of emotion, mixed emotions, whirling in her eyes, clouding them, blinding them, threatening to spill over.
He looked down at Saoshin and saw she was on the verge of tears. She sniffled and held a delicate finger to her shut, left eye.
"Why can't you remember, Minder Battousai?"
"Kenshin," he gently corrected.
He knelt in front of her, hilt still in hand, gazing at the tip of the blade. There was a tiny sliver of ugly, dark, powdery red on the end, Saoshin's dried blood. He sheathed his weapon, shaking his head while doing so, trying to collect himself.
"My past is better left buried," he told her, them. He knew, realized, now that Miss Kaoru and Yahiko had witnessed the whole thing. "I'm certain that what I had done to my memory was not an accident. So, you want to know about my past.I cannot give it to you, I'm afraid."
He gathered himself off the tips of his toes and looked to Kaoru.
"I am sorry again," he announced, looking straight into her eyes peacefully, sincerely.
Kaoru's eyebrows crashed down in the next moment.
"You jerk! Why did you have to scare me like that? Scaring Yahiko too, you jerk! You jerk! You broke her umbrella, Kenshin! Look at that! You better pay for that!"
"Oro?" he whimpered in a confused voice while she continued to yell and scold at him. Yahiko butted into the argument too when she had said that he was scared on his behalf as he claimed that he hadn't been.
Even Kenshin wasn't immune to Kaoru's lecturing and he smiled inwardly at this normal episode. . .normal.
They felt so fragile in his arms. So light in his arms were they, he was afraid he'd forget they were there and drop them. Only their tender nuzzles and compassionate whines now and again reminded him to be gentle, but it was enough. He could feel himself hold them tighter, protectively. As they made themselves comfortable in his arms, he walked out of the backdoor, where everyone sat, still listening to the woman.
Her voice was light, almost shallow of emotion. But whatever emotion she spoke with was singular and not clashing with any other feelings and had a certain appeal to it that did, perhaps, seem shallow and hindered, but also open and genuine.
He felt a ping of guilt for having been rude to her, but said nothing as he let Ayame and Suzume down and scurry for plates and ingredients for rice-balls, which really wasn't very much to retrieve, so he usually let them get the things.
"Kenshin, are you all right?" Kaoru said, watching him as usual. He responded with a smile and a quick nod.
"Yes, Miss Kaoru. I got you some tofu, like I said I would," he told her.
"Thank you," she responded politely.
A brief period of silence was clashed with Kaoru's intervention.
"Meet Imura Saoshin," Kaoru introduced and bowed slightly as she gestured toward her with gracious hands. {Pay attention to the spelling of Saoshin's surname here. It's kind of important.}
He raised an eyebrow. Her name sounded similar to his name. But, he contained his questions and doubts and finally introduced himself, pleasantly for once.
"I am Himura Kenshin," he replied, solemnly.
Kaoru clapped her hands together and smiled cheerily. "You may stay for dinner, the only payment I can give you for your stories, Miss Imura."
The stranger nodded gratefully and accepted her offer.
"Miss Kaoru, the food isn't ready yet," Kenshin told her, politely enough.
She gave Kenshin a dull look and said, "I know, Kenshin. I'm the one that's cooking it."
"Aw man, Kenshin, why did you let her cook?" Yahiko interrupted.
"She needs to practice and I will try to teach her, okay?"
Yahiko laughed teasingly. "You couldn't get her to cook decently even if her life depended on it!"
"Yahiko!" she roared.
The two little girls came back with supplies in their arms, marching like a little platoon as Yahiko and Kaoru ran off with Kaoru trailing close behind with a prepared fist.
Kenshin smiled as he padded down the stairs and met up with them. The woman was watching him, carefully. His smile slipped away and fell into a straight line across his face.
"Ready, Brother Ken?" Suzume asked, grinning proudly because she and her sister had brought everything.
"Yes, let's go, shall we?"
He bent down to take the things out of their arms, but showed him he was proud of them in the process so as not to make them tart about him carrying the things.
After this, they walked back to the porch and Kenshin let the stuff spill out of his arms haphazardly. He immediately started to sort through them as did Suzume and Ayame.
"Minder Battousai?"
He turned slightly toward the small voice behind him. He heard a slight rustling of her clothes as she scooted closer, dragging her kimono across the rough outdoor wood.
"Yes, Miss Imura?"
"I want to say that I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" he asked and turned to the pile of rice material ready to be kneaded. He took some up and watched as Suzume and the little Ayame took some into their hands and tried with great effort to please him with a perfect rice-ball.
"I am sorry for intruding on your quaint.home, shall I say?"
He froze at the word, having not once thought of this place as his home.
"Are you planning to stay long?"
He continued kneading the bit of white stickiness in his palms while he ignored her for another moment. He sighed and turned around to her, grasping the little white ball in a hand gently.
"Why? Why is that so important?"
She sighed and smoothed down her sleeves one by one. Then, looked at him in the noonday sun with liquid red eyes. His eyes narrowed on their eerie hue.
"I have a story for everyone, Minder Battousai. I am a collector of stories. But I've been missing one incredible story from my collection."
"And it's mine?"
She nodded frankly and smiled cheerily at him. "Yes."
"I'm not in any mood to tell you my stories, wanderer," he replied gruffly. He blinked with amazement at himself as he turned away. He had done it again. He had been rude to her for no apparent reason.
"And your story starts with me," she said.
"I can't see how or why," he countered, setting down a perfectly round white rice-ball.
"Brother Ken, how's this?" Ayame asked and held it up right in front of his nose, his eyes narrowed surprisingly at it.
"It's good, Ayame," he said and smiled. "Here, let's set it down gently on the tray."
"Gently," she reiterated sternly with a determined nod.
He took her hands gently in his and guided her hands to the tray, then slid her hands out slowly from underneath the rice-ball with one crumbled corner.
"Kenshin! It's beautiful," she cried and leapt into his lap.
"Must be one of your best yet, that it is."
"Rurouni Kenshin?"
He stopped when he heard Saoshin address him in such a way. He turned, with Ayame hanging around his neck.
"Tell me then, how our fates are tied together?"
"Picture a sunny day, Rurouni Kenshin, because that's the kind of day on which I came to you. A day when you had found out you had lost your love," she said, speaking in a sorrowful tone, it washed over him like a devastating sea.
He clenched his teeth and looked to Suzume and Ayame before his features contorted any more.
"Suzume, Ayame, I think it may delight Kaoru if you went to help her in some way, being wonderful little helpers that you are."
Suzume had another contemplative look upon her face and got up.
"Let's go, Ayame!"
Ayame bounded out of Kenshin's lap and took off after her sister to find their Kaoru.
Saoshin slid away and hung her legs over the rim of the little porch, with parasol in hand, twirling it into the dirt at the base of the porch as she gazed out into the yard, the sky, at everything but him.
"That was not a beautiful day!" he protested finally. "It wasn't!"
"O, it had been. But I don't think you were aware of it. The only thing that I could remember of you was your coldness. You were cold, Rurouni Kenshin," she stated vaguely.
"What the hell is your problem? First, somebody or other tries to bring me harm physically, for the most stupidest reasons of all and now, YOU, this!" he hissed. His right hand was trembling and he finally clenched it tightly, trying to hold back the reflex of drawing his blade. "I haven't spoken a nasty word to anyone since it all ended, Miss Imura! Not until you. After everything, something of my past still manages to find me, to bring me harm, to bring those around me harm. . ."
He calmed then, he was standing, towering above her, but she didn't seem to be listening. She didn't seem to hear, until he was finished that is.
"My timing has always been terrible," her eyes were downcast, full of past follies.
His guilt started to work back to the surface, his frown deepened at his behavior.
"It seems as though trouble follows me wherever I roam to," he said distractedly, and softly.
"Are you sure you don't go looking for trouble, Rurouni Kenshin?"
He looked down at her, her eyes were still lowered and she didn't even attempt to glance at him nor did she blush or go further until he spoke.
"No, I've worked toward a peaceful life, a peaceful era, I deserve this much.don't I?"
Even as he spoke these words, he knew they were not honestly spoken, though with a lot of heart they were.
"You do deserve so much, Kenshin," she agreed quietly and lifted her eyes to the yard beyond. "I cannot tell you much, but that I was sent by a person from the past to watch over you when time permitted me to. And I've had a lot of time. And I can see that you do not wish to leave this place."
"I hope not to," he said, soberly.
"But you're afraid. You're afraid that you won't be able to protect them," she said, hesitantly.
He stayed silent.
"I am part of your past. I cannot change that, though I wish I could. And I wish I could change our first meeting. I had been trying to confront you head-on, though she had warned me not to. I wasn't afraid of you; she knew I was one of the few people who admired you, Rurouni Kenshin. We ended up battling each other and near the end of it, I had injured myself, clumsy as I was with a sword back then, you see."
She stifled a chuckle as she went on.
"I still have a limp from the wound I inflicted on myself when I had first met you. I'm not quite sure what I had done, but I knew that it had been partly your fault too. I knew that you had somehow turned my perception upside down in such a way that made me feel. . .cosmically dizzy in a manner of speaking. Suddenly, I saw only bits and pieces of the world around me, felt only you everywhere. And I had brought my own blade down on myself from your technique, whatever it had been."
She looked up at him and he stared down at her with wide eyes.
"How are you still alive? I should have killed you when I had the chance."
She winced at his words, but knew that he meant that she should have been dead now, because of the way he had been.back then.
"You couldn't take my life, Rurouni Kenshin," she said simply. "Even then, you had some humane bit inside yourself that stayed your hand when I had struck myself down because of your baffling technique."
She lifted the point of her parasol off the dirt and tapped it on clean ground to make another hole from her ever-twirling fingers.
"Besides," she added, "you didn't even know me then, just as you don't know me now."
"But you-I don't remember that! I'd remember something like that."
"Kenshin, is everything all right?" Kaoru said, stepping onto the deck with a tight little frown on her young, concerned face. "Kenshin?"
Kenshin kept Saoshin's eyes locked with his own.
"I'd remember failing," he said quietly. But it was more than just quietly. There was something else about him.his stature, his. . .his eyes!
Suddenly in the blink of Kaoru's eyes, Saoshin gasped as she rapidly wielded her parasol in front of her face. There was a great ringing and before the ringing could end the reverse blade sword was crashing into the middle of the poor sun umbrella with Saoshin underneath, barely keeping her own against his tremendous power. She did this with great effort and tried her hardest to lock her arms. The umbrella had practically exploded on contact, the find wood design was ruined but at little cost; she was still alive under the heavy weight being born by him.
He growled hideously at her display of resistance, which caught her attention. She looked away from the blade and up at him, suddenly her stomach clenched, she felt fear as she had all those years ago. His voice was drained of all emotion, like running water gone abruptly dry. And the eyes, no longer of a violet, but a thirsty gold that was ready to obliterate her at the first sign of weakness. She, the one kill he had failed to go through. Her eyes widened for she knew that if he had attacked her when she stood, she wouldn't have been able to hold his heavy pressure, because of the weakness in her right leg from the one other battle she had had with him.
She noticed that he was staring intently at her parasol. She cried out when she saw a glint in the sunlight within the mess of splintered wood. She had forgotten about her hidden blade.
"Rurouni Kenshin," she pleaded through gritted teeth.
"Kenshin! Kenshin, stop!" Kaoru yelled at him. She looked on helplessly, her eyes wide with terror.
"Whoa, Kenshin! What are you doing?" Yahiko exclaimed as he came around the bend of the dojo to investigate the noise.
All he could think about was the woman before him, who was all he could see or feel.
"Why must you bother me? Why can't you just leave me alone? Leave us alone!"
"You can't kill me, with that, sword, Kenshin!" Saoshin pointed out desperately, heaving these words between breaths.
His eyes glazed over heatedly at the obvious statement.
"No, you're right in that. But I can still hurt you rather badly with it," he proclaimed in a threateningly tranquil tone. His shoulders hunched through his robe as he bore down still more on her.
Still, his strength had not diminished, if anything it was becoming more, becoming unrelenting. She was about to give; she couldn't hold it any longer.
"Kenshin, what are you doing?" Kaoru whispered.
"I didn't come to hurt you! If I had, it would've already been done!"
"It's dishonorable to have a hidden weapon! Tell me, then, what you were doing? With this weapon, hidden right under our noses?" he yelled back, furious with her somehow.
He could not hide his anger and he didn't know why. He couldn't compose himself in her presence. Why? If what she said was true, why threaten her with his reverse blade? Why threaten her at all? But for the growing warning in his heart, he felt completely in favor of backing down.
To his bewilderment, she collapsed, sweat glistening in the sunlight and flashing as his sword flung forward at the pressure he had sustained throughout. He abruptly stood straight, drawing the blade back some, but still it caught her cheek, moving across it as she turned her head away. He knew why she turned her head with the blade, to minimize the wound and now, instead of a gash, which should have lain across her cheek and nose, she had one about the size of his horizontal scar across her pale left cheek. Blood spilled and seeped from the corners of the fresh cut.
She started shouting at him; he blinked as he gazed at the tip of his blade. He heard her, but barely through his own calling, his own scolding.
"It isn't dishonorable any longer! An age where swords are forbidden, an age where honor is something else, something more than how good you are with a sword, with any sort of weapon. . .your kind is going extinct! Swordsmanship is nothing more than an art, at best defense, only defense, Kenshin," she trailed off here. Her own face gone sour. Her voice was full of emotion, mixed emotions, whirling in her eyes, clouding them, blinding them, threatening to spill over.
He looked down at Saoshin and saw she was on the verge of tears. She sniffled and held a delicate finger to her shut, left eye.
"Why can't you remember, Minder Battousai?"
"Kenshin," he gently corrected.
He knelt in front of her, hilt still in hand, gazing at the tip of the blade. There was a tiny sliver of ugly, dark, powdery red on the end, Saoshin's dried blood. He sheathed his weapon, shaking his head while doing so, trying to collect himself.
"My past is better left buried," he told her, them. He knew, realized, now that Miss Kaoru and Yahiko had witnessed the whole thing. "I'm certain that what I had done to my memory was not an accident. So, you want to know about my past.I cannot give it to you, I'm afraid."
He gathered himself off the tips of his toes and looked to Kaoru.
"I am sorry again," he announced, looking straight into her eyes peacefully, sincerely.
Kaoru's eyebrows crashed down in the next moment.
"You jerk! Why did you have to scare me like that? Scaring Yahiko too, you jerk! You jerk! You broke her umbrella, Kenshin! Look at that! You better pay for that!"
"Oro?" he whimpered in a confused voice while she continued to yell and scold at him. Yahiko butted into the argument too when she had said that he was scared on his behalf as he claimed that he hadn't been.
Even Kenshin wasn't immune to Kaoru's lecturing and he smiled inwardly at this normal episode. . .normal.