I am making some effort to be historically accurate as possible. However, I'm not going to be too bothered by the occasional bit of historical inaccuracy. I'm also foregoing historical accuracy on a few things simply for the sake of being honest about certain ways and patterns of thought whose age is something of a matter of opinion. I personally have chosen to take the theory that they merely have become more easily noticed in more recent times, and the only truly new thing about them is that it no longer so hard to notice.
Which reminds me, some people might find parts of this disturbing and the rating is almost certain to go up. Thou hast been warned.
Rurouni Kenshin is the creation of Watsuki Nobuhiro. I don't own it; he and several others do. I'm not making any profit off of this story, even though I certainly could use some money.
Innocent Blood ~~~ By Ryo Hoshi
00 ~~~ Prologue
It was a beautiful night. The slight chill of autumn in the air was pleasant, and the slight breeze felt wonderful on his skin. The best part, really, was that the moon was new, so the night was dark.
He didn't particularly care where he was, though he had to admit that it was quite pretty. The city was surprisingly beautiful, and so empty at night. That made life such a delight, since he did enjoy taking regular lonely walks at night.
Anybody who knew him would say as much without a second thought. Of course, very few knew the true reason why, but that was fine with him. None of them would understand anyway.
Tonight's walk was promising. The woman was oblivious to him, seeming to be more concerned about getting somewhere quickly than anything else. He didn't particularly care where she was going, though. Even if she was missed, he was confident that he'd not be caught. After all, he'd already done this so many times.
Saitou Hajime knew that there had to be a better way to start a morning than to walk in and discover that there was a vicious murder awaiting his attention. It was a messy one, too. Whomever had killed the woman had certainly made sure she was dead.
It was a disturbing murder, too. He could sense that whomever did this enjoyed the feel of piercing flesh and cutting bone with a blade. It was quite unlikely that the mutilated woman would be the last one, and his instincts told him that she couldn't have been the first.
The woman had already been identified by the time Saitou had arrived at the police station. In life, her name had been Suzuki Nami. Her husband, Higashi, had gone looking for her soon after dawn, wondering why she had not returned yet with medicine for their son. Suzuki-san had been quite vocal about his desire to find and kill whomever had killed his wife.
It was hard to blame the man, though. The murderer had quite obviously played with her, and to leave a corpse that way was obscene. Even back in Kyoto, during the Meiji Revolution, he hadn't quite seen anything like this.
There was the start of a panic already, too. The variety of what he was hearing the onlookers whispering about was quite interesting, and given the proximity of the shops nearby to a certain dojo...
A certain rurouni was not going to be happy. This should prove interesting, indeed.
Normally, there will be notes here, along with definitions of whatever Japanese words need defining. (Words I will define later on will be underlined within the text; if it is common enough in English, I will not bother.) Since there are none in this chapter of either...
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