DISCLAIMER:  We all know that the Kenshin-gumi and all their creepy foes are the demented brainchildren of Nobuhiro Watsuki-sama.  I'm not writing this for any profit; in fact, if I weren't so obsessed with writing stuff like this, I could go out and get a job, so I'm actually losing money in the process.  :-)  I do this strictly for my own satisfaction, and hopefully, yours as well.  I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.  If not ... chikushou, aku baka!

      That reminds me ... my Japanese is next to nonexistent.  Don't fault me for it.  At least I'm trying.

      Happy reading!

      ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting.  Use your head.  If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine.  Not that anyone cares but me.

      SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: To Kenshin TV ep 62; also through "Rurouni Soujiro" by yours truly, posted in the prehistoric times when ff.net was young.

            *           *           *           *           *

      CHAPTER 2:

      CHANGES OF PLANS

      Young-eun's sullen mood had brightened somewhat by the time she reached the Seigyokukaze; it didn't appear that anyone was following her, and the restaurant was some distance from the area where the foiled robbery had taken place, so it was unlikely that too many people in the area who had actually seen her would straggle all the way to the restaurant by accident and recognize her.  She thought she caught a few people giving her odd looks as she passed, but they were not too common and it was just as likely that they were simply suspicious people and looked at all strangers that way, particularly if they perceived that she was a foreigner.  There weren't many Koreans on the Japanese mainland, after all.

      Soujiro was waiting for her just outside the door, and the last of her sourness dissipated at the sight of him.  He seemed to be in a good mood at least; of course, he always did, but for some reason it seemed to be a little more genuine than usual at the moment.  He took her arm with an air of mock formality, and she grinned as he guided her into the restaurant.

      Young-eun immediately approved of Soujiro's choice as she stepped into the foyer.  It was more than casual, but less than really formal, with somewhat soft lighting, good ventilation for getting rid of the smoke and smell of the place, and large, high-walled booths that offered a reasonable amount of privacy.  The server showed them to a private booth in the far corner of the dining room.  Young-eun slumped into one of the benches gratefully.  Soujiro was a little less unceremonious in seating himself across from her.

      "Who were you fighting?" Soujiro asked softly.

      "Wha…?" Young-eun couldn't hide her surprise for a moment, though she recovered quickly.  Nothing evades the eyes of a samurai, she reminded herself.  "That's a great way to begin table talk."

      Soujiro shrugged.  "Why?" he asked.  Most of the conversations in his life had been about fighting, at the table or otherwise.  Of course, it had been mostly with ShiShiO and the Juppon Gattana, and that was all they ever talked about.

      Young-eun couldn't stifle a laugh.  "Usually you start with 'how was your day' or something."

      "But I already know that," Soujiro pointed out.  "You've been fighting.  So that would have been my second question anyway."

      Young-eun wrinkled her nose at him.  She could never tell just how much he was being funny and how much he was being serious.  He could talk so lightly about the most serious things.  "Three men tried to rob the jewelry store where I was browsing."

      Soujiro nodded.  "Did you kill anyone?"

      "Nah."  Once you got into the swing of things and started expecting outlandish questions, they became a lot easier to answer, and she had had some time to grow accustomed to this on their trip from Ichibou to Nagoya to Tokyo.

      "Were you seen?"

      "Unfortunately.  There was a crowd."

      "Why didn't you just get out of the way?"

      "I met someone there, and she started fighting them.  I jumped in to help her.  I don't think she'd have gotten out of it very well if I hadn't."

      "Did the police see you?"

      "No, but it won't be too long before they know who to look for.  There aren't too many Korean girls with swords in Tokyo, I imagine."

      "Probably not," Soujiro agreed.  His face became pensive.  A moment later, he brightened up again.  "So did you buy any jewelry?"

      Young-eun smiled.  "I really didn't get much time for shopping."

      Soujiro didn't ask anything else about the incident for the rest of their dinner, allowing Young-eun to concentrate on her kaiseki-ryori (1).  It was easily the best meal she had eaten in a long time, though the duck dish that Soujiro had made for her still had a special place in her heart.  It had not left his thoughts, however, and he brought it up again after they were finished and letting their food settle.

      "I think we may want to change our plans a little," he said.

      "Eh?"

      "Instead of going to see the Kamiya dojo tomorrow, we may want to stay in hiding for a little while."

      Young-eun grimaced.  She had been afraid of that.  "How long?  It could be weeks or months before the talk of this dies down."

      "Maa, maa, not that long," Soujiro reassured her.  "Only a day or two.  Just long enough for me to find out what the police are up to.  If nothing's really going come of this, we can go on just the way we had planned.  If there's going to be trouble, though—well, we'll still go on the way we'd planned, we'll just be a little more careful."

      Young-eun smiled.  She should never have believed that Soujiro was going to let a little police attention scare him off.  Tokyo was huge and crowded, anyway.

      "So where do we go until then?"

      "An … associate … of mine in the Shibuya area has a few spare rooms, and he's agreed to lend us some space for a few days."

      "'Associate?'" Young-eun asked with a conspiratorial grin.  "What's this, someone owe you a favor or two?"

      "Something like that," Soujiro answered with an even broader grin.

                        *           *           *

      "This is the place?" Young-eun asked as they came in sight of the Kotaru residence.

      "Is something wrong?" her blue-clad traveling companion asked.

      "Hardly … I didn't know you had friends in such high places."

      "You thought I was a merchant's son when you first met me," Soujiro pointed out.

      "True, but this is a bit above a merchant's house, isn't it?"

      "Nope.  Just one that buys and sells companies … and people … instead of food and household goods."

      "I see."

      The watchman had been approaching and wordlessly threw back the gate.  "Shall we?" Soujiro asked.

      The watchman showed them up the front walk and through the main doors of the mansion.  Young-eun was even more impressed with the interior than the exterior, though Soujiro seemed to be taking everything in stride.  She had never asked him much about his past; she remembered that it was a difficult subject for him, but she wondered what his childhood had to have been like if he grew up associating with people like whoever it was that lived here.  She remembered him saying that he had had to defend himself from his own family, so it was probably with ShiShiO that he had visited places like this.

A heavyset man with a receding hairline met them a minute later, by the banister of the stairs leading to the second floor.  "Welcome back, Soujiro," the man said, though Young-eun detected a hint of irritation in the voice.

"Arigatou, Kotaru-san," Soujiro answered.  Young-eun noticed that he was wearing the same bright smile she had seen on him when she had met him outside the restaurant.  "Is everything ready?"

"Mostly," Kotaru answered.  "The staff are still touching the rooms up, but they're ready now if you're looking to retire already.  The housekeepers can finish up later."

"I think that would be a good idea," Soujiro answered.  Then, a moment later, "Oh yes!  I'm forgetting.  Young-eun-chan, this is Kotaru Takao-san; Kotaru-san, Kim Young-eun-chan."

"Nice to meet you," Young-eun said with a polite bow.

"And to you as well," Kotaru answered, returning the favor as well as his heavy stomach would allow, though making a respectable show of it nonetheless.  "I hope you find everything to your satisfaction."

"I certainly have so far," Young-eun answered honestly.  "You have a wonderful home."

"Well, thank you," Kotaru answered again, seeming genuinely pleased but giving her a very appraising look, and she wondered if she had said something amiss.  She made a note to ask Soujiro about it later, though she wasn't sure he would understand, either.  Sometimes he showed an amazing insight into people … at others, he was a doorknob.

      Kotaru left them at the foot of the stairs and a servant led them up to the second floor balcony that ran around the entrance hall.  The Blue Rooms were on the second floor, to the immediate right of and one floor above the main entrance.  A large double mahogany door on the left-hand side of the balcony formed the entrance to the suite.  The servant turned, bowed at the doors, and pushed one of them open with his near hand.  Soujiro and Young-eun walked inside.

      "Oh … my …" Young-eun breathed.

      "Don't get too comfortable," Soujiro said.  "Always remember that we may have to leave in a hurry.  Don't get too attached."  That was yet more advice that ShiShiO had given him long ago that was no less true now after his former mentor's demise than it had been before.

      "I know, I know, but … can I at least say 'wow'?"

      "OK, I think you can go that far," Soujiro assented.

      They were in the lounge of a complete and lavishly-furnished Western-style suite, fully carpeted in deep azure and with matching tapestries adorning the walls.  The master bedroom and the four-poster bed that dominated it were truly enormous, furnished in a darker shade of blue bordering on midnight, with a large log fireplace on the north side of the room.  Two large closets and an even larger bathroom with a tub that could comfortably hold four people opened off the bedroom, and a cozy study opened off the lounge.  Young-eun bounded quickly to the bed and started wriggling on it comfortably.  Soujiro guessed that she had probably never felt anything so comfortable in her life.  He himself had, but only on the occasion and ShiShiO had been careful to warn him not to get too attached to it, lest he grow soft.

      "Anyway," he said with a grin, "I think I'm going to go out and check … on that thing we mentioned earlier.  Think you can hold up here for a while?"

      "I'm not going anywhere," Young-eun sighed happily.

                        *           *           *

      The nearest police station was not far away, but Soujiro decided that the best place to find real information was probably at the precinct down by the harbor district, only a few blocks from the harbor market.  It was not a bad walk, though, and most of the crowd had thinned out by the time he reached the area, as most of the shops closed at sundown.  Soujiro stopped as soon as the crude, two-story wooden building came into sight, nearly a hundred yards away.

      There did not seem to be anything unusual going on from that distance, but Soujiro rather doubted that the stir would have been that bad, anyway.  Any notice was going to be counterproductive, however, which meant that he was going to have to find a way to get much closer, possibly even inside the building, or else was going to have to find some way to get a policeman to talk to him.  He grinned ruefully.  He would have loved to have had a few contacts on the inside of the department, but most of them had been rooted up after ShiShiO's fall, as the Kawaji, the police commissioner, had been in the know about ShiShiO's covert rise to power and had been a loyal follower of Okubo Toshimichi, and thus had been told about ShiShiO's fall.  None of the rest of the force would know, of course, but they would know that corruption was being taken very seriously at the moment and thus would probably not be at their most willing to talk to outsiders.

      He darted into the darkness of the alleys and approached the police station from the rear, but it was well guarded and there was deliberately a fairly wide open space left between the station and the other buildings on the street.  Even at this distance, there didn't appear to be anything going on.  He could see a light on in the second-floor window he knew to be the chief's, however, and it was late enough that on a normal night, the chief would probably have gone home.  Soujiro's eyes narrowed.

      Retreating a short distance into the alley, he sprang lightly onto the roof of the building nearest the station and crawled quietly to the edge.  There were figures moving around in the chief's office, at least three of them.  Two of them were standing and their postures betrayed mild signs of agitation, though the third, seated, might as well have been talking about yesterday's fish catch.  One of the standing pair was at least excited enough that his voice carried across the plaza to where Soujiro lay.

      A cloud drifted across the moon, and Soujiro made up his mind before he had even realized it.  He sprang back to the far edge of the roof, took a running start, and drove himself skyward into the night sky.  The police were good, and getting better, about watching their perimeter, but it seldom occurred to anyone to watch the skies above; after all, a hot-air balloon approaching would attract attention even from the most lackadaisical observers.  Soujiro had put on a little weight since Young-eun had entered his life, but was not quite that size yet.

      The cloud cover parted only a split-second before he touched the roof of the police station; he tensed as he landed but suppressed it well enough to roll quietly.  He listened for any hint of alarm in the voices of the guards down on the ground for a few moments, but after a moment, was content that no one had seen him.  He crawled slowly back down to the edge of the roof, just above the chief's window, and listened.

      "… still have no real evidence that they worked for him," one of the three was saying.

      "Not that would hold up in court, no," agreed the man who had been talking loudly the whole time, "but it's enough for me.  It has all his markings on it."

      "And what markings are those?"

      "The choice of target, the escape route of the leader, the fact that they broke into a jewelry store without their first goal being to steal jewels."  Soujiro tensed at this.  There would almost certainly not have been two jewelry store robberies in a single day in Tokyo.

      "Still sounds weak to me."

      "Even the choice of target?  That wasn't just a random pretty girl that got attacked, you know."

      The first speaker let out a long, slow breath.  "That is suspicious, all right.  I'll send word down to central precinct to have the Kamiya Dojo watched.  Or have you already done that, Sir?"

      Soujiro was so surprised to hear the name of the Kamiya Dojo spoken that he almost missed the soft but firm sound of someone getting to their feet.  His eyes narrowed.  Something was suddenly beginning to encroach on the edges of his awareness … it was a battle aura … he rolled quickly to a tiger-crouch position …

      "Sir?!" both of the men in the room below said, growing alarmed.  The sense of a nearby and powerful battle aura flared fully into Soujiro's consciousness.  He didn't wait.  He blasted away across the roof and leapt off the edge.  He landed once atop a streetlamp, but the alarmed calls of the guards below as they finally realized that their perimeter had been breached were drowned out by the ferocious crunching sound of the wooden roof where Soujiro had been standing splintering as the third man in the room came flying through it.  Soujiro completed his leap a moment later, to the roof of a single story building on the far side of the police station from the one Soujiro had used as a springboard to reach the station.  He didn't plan on sticking around for long, but he turned for one brief moment to glance back over his shoulder at his attacker.  He was just in time to see the descending form of a tall, well-chiseled man in a policeman's uniform falling out of sight past the angle of the police station roof from Soujiro's lowered vantage.

      Having seen enough, Soujiro turned and sped off through the dark.  The clouds over the moon had partially dissipated but he had made sure to jump into the most shadowy landing spot he could find and his instinctive caution had paid off; he had gotten a good running start before the man had come through the roof to meet him.  It was unlikely he had been recognized as anything more than a thin silhouette, but even that might have been a giveaway; that had been more than just a powerful fighter that had revealed himself, it was a perceptive sleuth, too.

      Soujiro actually found himself whistling once he was safely out of range of pursuit.  He had come to simply check up on whether Young-eun had been recognized.  He had learned a lot more.

      Someone wanted Kamiya Kaoru hurt.

      The Kamiya Dojo was being watched.

      And Saitoh Hajime was still alive.

                        *           *           *

      Kaoru's shoulders were down as she approached the Kamiya Dojo.  She wasn't physically tired, but emotionally so.  Had that Korean girl not come out to help her—and been pretty good with a shortsword, for that matter—it was unlikely she would have gotten out of that little encounter unhurt.  She might not have gotten out of it at all.  How had she been so blind?  They hadn't looked like anything special, but they had clearly had some training of some kind somewhere.  Once again, she had gotten herself in over her head and had to be bailed out.  Her mind flashed back to her first encounter with Hiruma Gohei, on the day she had met Kenshin, when the innocent-seeming red-haired wanderer had been the one doing the rescuing.  She could feel that she was stronger, but nowhere near enough so.  And Kenshin was almost better … it wouldn't be long now before …

      Her thoughts were cut off and her hand darted to her mouth.  She hoped she hadn't been accidentally thinking aloud.  He was waiting for her at the entrance of the dojo.

      "Anou … konnichiwa, Kenshin," she said meekly as she approached.

      "Konnichiwa, Kaoru-dono," Kenshin responded respectfully, but for some reason there was something different in his voice.  Tension?  Wariness?  Suspicion?  "Did anything interesting happen while you were out?"

      Her eyes narrowed.  How much did he know?  "Not too much.  The catch was pretty mediocre today."

      "Ah."  The inquisitive look had not left his eyes.

      "All right, well, I'm going to go put these in the kitchen."

      "Very well."

      Kaoru slipped away, sure that Kenshin could see right through her, especially because she had trouble holding her head steady and not looking at the floor in shame as she walked away.

                        *           *           *

      Kenshin's eyes narrowed as Kaoru walked away.  He did his best to stifle the small twinge in his heart as her back retreated into the shadows of the dojo.  She was hiding something.  Did it have something to do with her training sessions in the middle of the night?  Or was there something else?  The violet gleam in his eyes was dim and dull with the lingering pain of his battles in Kyoto and his thoughts about Kaoru.  What was happening to her?  She had never hidden anything from him before.  Never anything like this, anyway.

      He glanced out of the corner of his eye towards the second-floor window of a building across the street.  Did they have no idea he was here?  Perhaps with Saitoh gone, the last memories of what he was truly capable of had vanished as well, but he didn't really believe that.  There were still too many stories about him floating around, and many had grown rather than faded with the years.

      I wonder if people will still be telling stories about me in the next millennium? he mused.

      Nonetheless, the fact remained that the dojo was being watched. Kaoru had come back hours later than normal and had not wanted to tell him where she had been or why she was so late.  She was also practicing her Budo late at night when everyone else should have been asleep.  Also, since Cho's visit, he had been told nothing, and his long convalescence had prevented him from getting his own information, about what had happened to ShiShiO's forces or the other potent forces of the Japanese underworld since their battle at the Hiei shrine almost half a year ago.

      Clouds began to drift across the moon, and his shoulders sagged.  Leaning on his sakaba like a cane, he turned and walked back into the shadows.

            *           *           *           *           *

      (1) A traditional, and rather pricey, multi-part Japanese dish.

      COMING SOON: "Who's Watching Who?"  Kenshin thought he had left the intrigues of the Japanese underworld and politics behind after he was finished in Kyoto.  Soujiro thought the same after he was finished in Ichibou.  Both were wrong.

Neither are happy about it. 

Snoopage ensues.