.: Author's notes :. Hmmmm... I guess no previous explanations are demanded to this chapter. Maybe it'd be more interesting if I chewed the fat after it; thus, back to the story!
IV-
Clouds covered the sky and made the day darker than it usually was. Black smoke was still hanging over the city by the time the first rooster crew.
"Love is the shadow that ripens the wine... Set the controls of the heart of the sun... the heart of the sun, the heart of the-- ITAI!"
"Shut up, rooster-head! I wanna sleep!" Megumi flung a shoe over the singing Sanosuke, and it struck him smack on the head.
By the motorcycle rider's side, right on the center of the glade, Kenshin was sitting, his head worriedly down, his violet eyes covered with dark mist. Sanosuke didn't seem to notice his friend's concernment, while just nagging and brushing his head. "-t's not enough notta be able to play the guitar properly. Noooooo! Now, I gotta shut up too. Wha' comes next? Will I have to starve?"
"Megumi-dono's sleepy, Sano-kun... She stayed up all the night, trying to light out the fire..." Kenshin's flat voice came to bring Sanosuke afloat to reality. The rurouni didn't move his eyes or his head while talking, as if involved by another aura but his own. The motorcycle rider blinked twice.
"Hey, Kenshin. We all did. And we've done all we could..." Sanosuke ran his eyes around. Desolation could be seen from there, concrete as the soot that floated with the wind and the smell of burnt leaves that melted with their clothes. Looking behind, the man saw a wide empty spot among the trees, where once there had been lofty oaks. But then, only ashes laid, blackening what had once been bright green. "And yet, all we could was not enough."
Kenshin still didn't move. "It could have been worse. We must thank Kami-sama for the untouched trees."
"And also for nobody having got hurt, isn't it?"
"Everybody got hurt, Sano. It's our home. It's the place we have chosen to build a new life, to raise our children. Burning the trees feels the same as burning our lives." Kenshin closed his eyes and looked to himself. Sanosuke felt a lump on his throat. Never had he imagined a place could mean that much to people, but seeing the sad expression on Kenshin's face he could even figure out his friend crying upon his own grave.
"The trees'll grow again, man. Nothing else'll spoil yoah lives. Don't be that down... "
"This wasn't the first, neither will it be the last."
"Wha'?" Sanosuke frowned. "Whaddaya mean?
Kenshin finally opened his eyes again. "Two weeks ago another spot of fire showed up, to the east." Sanosuke turned his head to the direction his friend talked about, while the later went on gravely. "Sessha imagined it to be an isolated situation, such as that ones that happens in every forest. But sessha started to get concerned when he heard a couple of lines about fire down to other cities. Sessha said nothing to the others though. The day before yesterday, sessha could light a fire spot out, near the riverside. Sessha meant to tell everybody about it, but he didn't even had time to do it, before last night's events."
"Wha' do ya have in mind, Kenshin?" Sanosuke cocked his head and looked aside to the hippie.
"Sessha's sure this fire's not a mere coincidence."
^_^x
When Kaoru left to school, his father was getting ready to go to the dojo. Her suspects were confirmed gladly by Kamiya-sensei the previous night: he finally had a new student. The Kamiya Kasshin master was so enthusiastic that the girl didn't have the courage to tell him she was often dropping by the hippie community after school and decided to delay the news a bit more.
The girl walked calmly, finding quaint the thickness of the air. When she got to the school, everybody was speaking soft and sneakily. She silently went up to her classroom, where she heard a classmate whisper to another one. "Did you know yet? The forest burned! They say the hippies set it on fire!"
As the spoken girl hid her mouth with her flat hands, Kaoru pushed back a shriek from the depths of her throat. She felt her heart being squeezed, as she willed to get out and rush to the community. "Kenshin..."
^_^x
"Shinomori speaking."
"Get out of my heels." A metallic voice trembled from the other side. And before Aoshi could ask who it was, he heard the abandoning doo-doo-dooing.
"Hello? Hello?" The lawyer tried to get an answer, but it was too late. He hung the phone back and replaced his head on his pillow, processing data about the fast and disturbing phone call. "What a nice way to wake up..." He thought, while getting undressed to take a shower.
Aoshi sank naked in the hot water, feeling his stiffened muscles get more and more relaxed at each second. "Damn." He said aloud, from inside his controlled and superb self. The scent of his own body came with the vapor trails to his nose, making him curse: throughout himself, the smell of failure, a smell he had never exhaled before. "I must draw into this case: now this turned to a matter of honor. I will solve this, otherwise I shall not call myself an onmitsu anymore."
^_^x
By noon, Kaoru rushed out of school and got home: nobody was there, what meant that her father was at the dojo again. Worriedly, she didn't care for leaving Kamiya-sensei any explanation about her going out, for she meant to be back before him. Whizzing as an arrow, she ran towards the community, her heart pulling west. "I hope Kenshin and the others are alright..."
The glade was still. After the tragic events on the forest people didn't speak much and walked slowly, but little by little routine was being re-established. Yet from the pathway, Kaoru ran her eyes around, but saw no trace of Kenshin's.
"Hey Kaoru!" The girl turned her head around to meet Megumi's look. She smiled happily for the doctor's being OK.
"Hello, Megumi. I heard the news... What on earth really happened?"
The doctor told her the events, getting the girl concerned and surprised. She was glad nobody got hurt, but her thoughts were mainly over the rurouni, about his health and his spirits.
"And... where's Kenshin?"
Megumi pointed to the direction where the fire once licked the trees. "He must be there now. In situations like this one, he usually sulks. But I bet he'd love to talk to you. Go ahead, girl."
Kaoru trembled. She held her breath and looked far ahead to the shown spot, maybe envisaging Kenshin's standing there. All alone. A smile formed unsteadily on her face while she thanked Megumi with a short nod and took the first steps towards the place where the fire had once been set.
The girl didn't have to walk too much to get to the destruction spot. Another glade, little shorter than the one where the community settled down, seemed to have been created out of nothing; this new one had a mournful look though, nothing there that reminded the cooperating hippies stood. There was no grass and no green, no flower grown. Half a dozen huge tree's carcasses laid down to the ground, a couple of them irreversibly burnt. A scene that reminded her a black-and-white Charlie's tape on the drive-in: the monochromatic and desolated place contrasting with the green and the distant gurgling of the stream. Her heart ached face the thought that this tape wouldn't end.
Sitting on a branch, Kenshin. He seemed to be asleep.
Her heart dumping the blood awkwardly on her head, Kaoru approached to the man and raised her hand. She hesitated for a while, then finally touched gently Kenshin's shoulder. "It's nice to have you here, Kaoru-dono." The rurouni said without opening his eyes. Kaoru faltered, then smiled and sat by his side, not saying a word.
They stood like that for some minutes then on, the both of them staring nowhere ahead, their look seeming to pass through the soot and mud. Kenshin was the one to break the silence, drawing themselves closer to each other each time he filled his lungs. "Sessha's seen many sweat and cries over the dead forest last night. Thus sessha promised to himself and to all his companions that the trees will not be violated again. Not a ounce of disappointment will hang over our heads anymore."
Kaoru nodded. "If I could ever help you..." She lowered her head and discretely retreated, but little later she felt the rurouni's warm heavy hand over her own.
"Kaoru-dono's a very strong girl, sessha's sure he can count on you. And sessha's a lucky man, for having a friend such as Kaoru-dono. Thank you very much."
Startled, the girl widened her eyes, but their contact didn't linger: it got wider when the girl rested her head on the rurouni's shoulder, still their hands clenched to each other's. Like that, they stood for a long while.
^_^x
High afternoon, the movement on the community seemed almost normal again. Kaoru was teaching Yahiko as settled the day before, and many heads stopped their affairs to watch it. Their training was a comical spectacle, for the boy and the Kamiya Kasshin mistress didn't get along that well. Whether working and carrying any chore out or having a funny time while taking a look on the training, everyone on the community seemed to be back to the normal activities.
The only one who was still curled up in a tent was Misao. She had a persistent thought about the lawyer's strange showing up the previous night. Somehow -and she didn't know exactly why- he got her let down. She had nothing to do with that strange non-smiling man, that was a fact. But from the first -and only- time they met, Misao knew that, inside that frozen aura, there stood a righteous person: it was just a matter of melting that crust of ice that covered him just like a coat.
"Filthy crook..." The girl laid her head down to the ground.
^_^x
Inside an ill-lighted room, the man in a chalk-striped suit sat on a spinning chair, his back to the one standing, in traditional japanese clothes. A cigar between the index and the middle fingers, he spited emotionlessly, while facing the half-closed blinds. "Failed. They shouldn't have lighted it out so quickly."
"It's all I can do." the man in japanese clothes lowered his head, but didn't humble the tune of his voice. "For us to clear up that spot, it will take quite a long time. At least more than we first expected."
The man on the chair didn't move. "I have no time to lose. We have no time to lose. And, as far as my knowledge goes, you have both regards on it."
"She's one of the reasons..." The man in japanese clothes faltered. "While she-- While the community is there, the fire will be lighted out quickly."
The man in chalk-striped suit spun around, his heavy sunglasses protecting his eyes from being revealed. His voice was still flat, but peaks of anger could be noticed every now and then. "An'ya, it's not my business on how you will clear the area up. If I wanted to have anything to do with it, I wouldn't have hired you and your stupid men. Just do what we settled on our deal, even if you have to get rid of the crap of that community. Just do it." He spun the chair around once again, turning his back to the other man once again. "You may go now."
The man in japanese clothes bowed silently and left. Inside his mind, a pictured face he didn't dare to remove from the back of his head, not even after the events on the past three years. "My dear Megumi..."
^_^x
.:It's Me Again:. Gotta apologize -again. First, for the time it took me to post this chapter. Then, for a slight change on what I told you to be the contents of it. I have a good excuse to it! ^_^x
As you might have realized, each chapter tells about the one day in this story. This chapter wasn't meant to be different, but it'd develop tooooooo long if all this day's events were down here! So, I split it in two. Better, isn't it? I might post both of them together; maximum, one week from forth to fifth.
=)
Thanks for reading, hope you are enjoying it!