Gomen, minna-san!!! (bows deeply). I took ages with this!! If you wanna know why, its in my notes below ... ^_^. I hope you'll still continue reading!!!!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own RK!
*Chapter 11*
He ran towards the sound and skidded around the corner just in time to catch a glimpse of a flapping aku shirt dash out the main gates of the dojo and into modern day Tokyo...
Kenshin blinked. The gates were standing empty. Did I just imagine....?
Kazuo came barrelling into the yard, waving a bokken in the air. Get out! Get out! he wheezed. He leaned onto the bokken to catch his breath.
Myojin-san, are you all right? What happened? Kenshin came forward in concern.
Oh, Himura... the older man said between pants, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. I don't even know myself, it happened so fast... I was opening up the the practise hall for the lesson this afternoon as I always do, when I heard a strange noise coming from within. I thought it was rats or maybe a stray cat... Anyway, when I pulled open the side door, I found a person inside, bound from the waist up...I tell you, I nearly had a heart attack right there and then. I looked at him and he looked at me - and we both screamed our lungs out -quite frankly, I don't know what he had to be so frightened of, he's the one intruding- Kazuo's voice faded into a resentful mumble as he glared at the gates. He jumped up and ran right through the shoji screens and out the main gate, good riddance...
Kenshin turned back to look at the practise hall. The shoji screens facing the main gates had been obliterated. A dusty cloud hung over the area.
Kazuo wandered to the gaping hole, looking around him. The screens have disappeared completely! Did he carry them off with him when he left..?
Kenshin looked at the dust cloud silently. It looked so familiar. He was beginning to get a strange and foreboding feeling...
Come and have a look, Himura, Kazuo led him to the centre of the practise hall. I don't know if I'll report this to the police - I doubt he managed to steal anything. I just don't understand... he looked confoundedly at a length of rope lying on the ground.
Kenshin bent to examine it - someone had gnawed his way through it. He lifted it up and looked at Kazuo questioningly.
He was still tied from the waist up when he left! Kazuo shrugged his shoulders. How on earth did he get in here anyway, tied up like that? None of my doors were forced, and I closed up the hall myself last night... Kazuo sounded pitifully confused. He began to replay his actions from the previous evening, checking the doors and locking up...
Kazuo had stumbled over something in the back of the hall. Oh, yccch. He lifted up a mangled fish skeleton for Kenshin to see, I forgot - he spat this out of his mouth first before he began screaming at me. He screwed up his face in disgust, Excuse me while I get rid of this.
Kenshin was putting everything together - aku shirt, futae kiwami on the shoji screens, fish bone... but his mind refused to accept the answer. That's crazy! How on earth could Sano be here??!!
He made his way to the gate, and peeked out. The street outside was deserted, peaceful. He looked both ways. He couldn't tell which way Sano had gone... if it is Sano. He looked dubiously in the direction of the shed and thought about Kaoru's journal and that one entry he had accidentally seen...
*****
Kaoru's journal was once again lying on his lap.
That's great! You found an excuse to read her journal! His inner voice exalted. He grimaced and mentally strangled his inner voice. Be rational! That couldn't have been Sano... and that journal entry probably referred to the Kyoto incident...He would prove it. Gomen nasai, Kaoru-dono - you can execute sessha when sessha gets back to the Meiji....(sweatdrop).
He proceeded to find the entry he had last seen...the journal opened easily to that page. It's spine had cracked when he had dropped it earlier.
[Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!!!!! First Kenshin and now Sano is missing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
No date.
He debated whether to flip forwards or backwards, and decided to move backwards, and look for a reference to ShiShio Makoto or Kyoto...
[Everyone has been tiptoeing around me since Chief Uramura came, and Kenshin went missing. I know they're expecting me to cry or to lock myself in my room and stare into space. I suppose they have reason to - I've done it often enough in the past. And this time, there's more reason to worry then before...but enough is enough.
It disgusts me - it really does! Everytime in the past when I have felt myself going weepy or mopey because Kenshin had gone somewhere and I'd fear he had left to go back to being a rurouni- a part of me hated my weakness. This isn't what my father brought me up to be! And it doesn't do anyone any good. It certainly hasn't made Kenshin stay. And it certainly hasn't made him say anything about how he feels....oh dear - it's one thing to say I will be grown up - inside I'm still just as afraid and insecure as ...
MOU!!!! Enough!!!!! Megumi made me a bet, and I'm going to win it!!!! I WILL NOT MOPE. I WILL FOCUS ON FACTS:ONE, Kenshin is missing at the moment - but he has always come back in the past. TWO, Kenshin cares for me...I think...
After the Enishi thing - I was so sure he cared. He came, didn't he? And all those things he said, at the beach... But everything between us just went back to the normal routine, as if it had never happened. Maybe nothing happened, and I was just reading too much into things...?
I couldn't bring myself to ask him. I suppose it was because I'd rather live with a faint hope that he cares, then to risk having him tell me that he doesn't. Sometimes I get a sense ... that he's just not ready. That gives me hope... and then I remember Megumi saying that I'm no replacement for...
ENOUGH. I know how I feel for Kenshin, and that is all I can control. It's pointless agonising over how he feels for me. I can only do my best, support him, believe in him...and hope.]
Kenshin paused. He noticed he was gripping the journal harder than he needed to. He would definitely go back. How could he even have thought of breaking that trust?
Something was nagging at him though. He scanned the page again and his eyes locked in on the disturbing phrase - After the Enishi thing. His heart gave a weird flop. So Kaoru hadn't been referring to Sano's disappearance for Kyoto. He flipped the pages forward.
[Megumi noticed that Ohgami-san was missing and came to the dojo in search of her... so I had to tell her about Ohgami-san's strange ritual and Sano disappearing...
Megumi thinks its all rubbish and that Sano is probably just hiding somewhere. I left out mentioning that we had had to tie Sano from head to foot - I don't know how she would take it.
I tried asking Ohgami-san where she'd sent Sano, and she insists he has gone where Kenshin has gone. Although she doesn't like it when you say , she keeps insisting that it's . When?? That doesn't make sense.
I suppose its kind of comforting to know that Sano is with Kenshin, wherever, or whenever that is... actually, what am I saying, it's Sano. Oh dear. I hope he doesn't get into too much trouble...]
Kenshin shut the journal in consternation.
*****
Sano tore blindly down the street. Waitaminute, what am I doing? He stopped and turned round as if to go back. Uh-oh. Ok, I ran, I turned left, ran some more, turned right....arrgggghh!!!! He couldn't remember!
He turned and found a convenient lamp post to begin bashing his head against. That old woman said he would end up where Kenshin was, and the first thing he had done was to run away!!! He cursed a few times. Well, it was that stupid old man's fault for screaming at him like that.
His head begin to clear after a few good whacks. Like a person waking from a dream, he blinked and started to look around him, taking in his surroundings properly for the first time. First thing - what had he been bashing his head against? He peered up confusedly. It was not a tree, as he had first thought. It looked a bit like a lamp post, but it was so tall - how on earth does the guy get up to light the gas?
aCK!!!! He was drawing strange looks from every direction - he realised he was still tied from waist up. Chikusho!!! I'm going to roll jou-chan into a ball and throw her all the way to Mongolia...Megumi too, for having such a weird patient... He threw himself cross legged on the ground and began to gnaw through the remaining rope around him. That absorbed his attention for about ten minutes.
At last! He jumped up and shrugged himself out of the ropes triumphantly... to a round of warm applause.
Huh? He hadn't realised he had gathered a small crowd of spectators. They were beginning to disperse, but some were throwing coins at him! Oh well - he wasn't going to complain. He gathered up the coins and stuffed them in his pocket, thinking that this wasn't such a bad place to be after all. Sure, the people dressed strange, and the buildings looked strange and there were carriages moving about without horses...... Sano steadied himself against the lamp post.
Carriages moving about without horses? He felt the cold grip of fear around his neck.
A sleek black limo pulled up by his side...
Notes:
Ok, here's why I took so long (a part from general busyness, and a great fic in the Macross section (Legend of Megaroad I & II, by Newtype Alpha - sometimes I need a break from the Meiji era ^_^) that made me want to watch Macross again from start to finish) : -
I didn't know whether to let Kenshin read Kaoru's journal or not, and I wasn't even sure how Kaoru would sound' in her writing... But I really wanted to explain why Kaoru's not falling to pieces. I think she learnt her lesson after Megumi's talking-to', although for the purporses of this fic, I've made her not learn it til now... : P On the other hand, I don't think Kenshin is the kind of person to read anyone's diary, unless there's a really good reason (like, you know, my wife could be a traitor or, my wife said some weird things to me just after she'd sacrificed herself for me and I will go nuts unless I find out what she meant). Is a suspicion that Sano is in modern day Tokyo good reason enough? I hope so ^_^
Dierdra and USS Kenji (I like your pen-name ^_^ ): Thank you! I hope this wasn't too long a wait for both of you!
jay : Hi! Long time no hear ^_^ ... glad you're still reading!
Ryulabird: CAlM DoWn!!! @_@ !!! I can't keep up ....!!!
NightRain: ^_^ OK, I made Kenshin read Kaoru's diary because you asked for it. Kaoru, it's not my fault!! (points at NightRain)
MON: Keep reading ^_^ !
