Chiisuta: Thank you! I'm partially using this as an excuse to research Meiji-era Japan, so hopefully there will be few inaccuracies outside of those facts I choose to alter on purpose... As for repetitive writing styles, I try to avoid it as I think it looks ugly when it's not done carefully and for good reason. (Try reading "The Hunting of the Snark," a poem by Lewis Carrol, for an example of repetitive writing coming off well.)
Sunoko: Wow, I wasn't expecting this, quite. I'm sorry it's taken so long -- life has been chaotic, and I am expecting to be gone this weekend to boot... The dark chocolate's quite encouraging, though. I hope this satisfies; it's the only one of my stories cooperating with me right now.
airmed: Thank you for your interest and further confirmation that I'm managing to write Saitou in character so far. He's so hard to write!
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
01 ~~~ Ordinary Day
The morning was beautiful. The sky was that blue color unique to early autumn, with only a few clouds marring its blue. The air was crisp, with just enough moisture in it and only a slight hint of the possibility of rain in its scent.
Himura Kenshin was busy doing laundry, after deciding that he liked Kaoru's miso soup well enough to tolerate others' lack of appreciation of her unique version of the dish. It tasted so much like what he had grown up eating -- whatever else his shishou might be, a good cook was not one of them, and his first lesson had been that it was unhealthy to say as much. At least Kaoru only used a bokken...
He sighed as he felt how thin the fabric beneath his hands was, and wondered if there was any way to prevent the impending rip in his gi. He liked how the worn fabric felt, even though he had already had to replace almost all of the original fabric with darns and carefully matched patches. Besides, he wasn't sure how he would pay for a replacement, since he'd already spent all the money he had earned the last time he'd taken a paying job.
Perhaps it was time to find another one; he could think of a few other things that it would be nice to be able to buy. The roof needed some tiles replaced, his carefully-hidden sewing kit needed to be restocked, and Kaoru could certainly use some new clothes as well. Maybe a new bokken for her, too, since she'd managed to break one on him when she'd caught him working on repairing certain items of her own clothing...
The marketplace's mood was unusually excited. He could only make out bits and pieces of what was being said, and was glad that Kaoru didn't seem to be aware of the fact that he were attracting abnormal amounts of attention and that people seemed to not want him to notice it. Whatever was going on, it didn't seem like it would be something he'd want Kaoru involved in.
Fate, in its usual capricious way, saw fit to interfere. Kenshin was too busy trying to overhear something more than a fragment from a particularly loud middle-aged woman who was oblivious to the fact that he might hear her as she gossiped with her companion to be more than vaugely aware of Kaoru's location. He did, however, recognize whom she accidentally bumped into as soon as he turned around.
"I was wondering when you'd show up...Himura-san."
Kenshin stared, not sure how to react to being called something other than Battousai by Saitou aside from the old standby: "Oro?"
The first thing he noticed as he came to stand beside Saitou, the policemen doing their best to keep the crowd from getting a clear view having let him slip past them, was that the scent of blood was stronger. He had smelled it in the market, but there it wasn't strong enough to rule out more natural causes. A part of his mind idly noted that was likely due to the wind's direction. It was certainly not due to a lack of the substance. He was glad that he had managed to convince Kaoru to stay back.
The woman lay on her back, her kimono spread open and her blood-soaked juban cut to shreds. Her wrists had been tied together with her obi-jime, much more tightly than necessary. Her date-jime had been used to gag her, and her koshi-himo had been tied tightly around her neck.
If it had been only that, however, it would not have been as bad. However, whomever had killed her had also carefully cut her stomach open, spreading the top layers of skin, fat, and muscle to reveal things that had never been intended to be seen, no less pulled out. The effect was enough to distract most observers' eyes from the fact that the killer had cut the victim up a bit elsewhere.
Kenshin was glad that Saitou had insisted that Kaoru leave without giving any reason for it. This was not the sort of thing he wanted her to see. This was not the sort of thing he wanted to see.
The soft hiss of a match being lit drew his attention to the former Shinsengumi member. "There was only one witness, a nearby shopkeeper's grandmother. She isn't very good as a witness, half-blind and her mind's a decade off and in the wrong city. She's quite insistant that the murderer had red hair, and..."
Kenshin winced, comprehending why Saitou had acted so strangely. "This unworthy one understands, that he does."
"I suppose you couldn't have been far away for this entire mess? It would have been helpful to be able to rule you out completely...though we both know that the Battousai never did this sort of thing, even back then."
Kenshin winced, but nodded. Saitou was completely right. Even during the worst of the battles, he had never even came close to anything like what lay in the alley, never killing for the 'pleasure' of the act as the murderer had obviously done.
Whomever had killed the woman needed to be found, and quickly...
Saitou found it amusing how Battousai seemed to find the corpse morbidly fascinating. Under other circumstances, it might have been quite tempting to say something sarcastic about that, but currently he felt rather sympathetic towards the shorter man. It was a disturbing sight, one that made him miss alcohol.
He knew that this was only going to get worse. He had seen something with the same sort of feel to it before just after becoming Fujita Gorou, though whomever had committed those crimes had not been as sophisticated and would never have killed a woman except by mistake. It also had been before he had quite gotten used to the new rules he would be operating under, though he'd never admit that to anybody...
It had been quite regrettable that he had to leave the murders unsolved just as he was close to the murderer. The only real comfort was that not that long afterwards, the man he had thought was the killer vanished. Of course, the disappearance of an important official's effeminate son was covered up along with the deaths of young men he'd cut to pieces.
Someday, he might even ask the smaller man if he might possibly be the red-headed young man who had been seen with the missing fop before he had vanished. The murderer had tended to go after travelers... But it never did seem quite right, or safe, to ask.
Besides, it wasn't that important.
From the edge of the crowd, a figure fumed as he watched one of the policemen talk to a young man who wore a sword. It isn't fair! he thought to himself. He had suffered his entire childhood because he had been born with red hair, had been condemned to a life of misery just because his whore of a mother had gotten herself knocked up by some gaijin sailor, yet some weak-looking boy who looked even less Japanese than he did got to be happy and accepted.
Something had to be done. He would make things fair.
Not, of course, that he'd let that keep him from his regular hunt for new victims. The latest one was such a success, and he'd soon know the area well enough to do so much better a job of posing future ones.
This is something of a rough chapter, as I don't quite have a prereader for this and I'm finding Saitou strange to write. He's not really somebody I'm comfortable with writing, and I'm likely to spend this entire story praying that I'm managing to write him IC. (Please, if you'd like to help -- and get to see chapters sooner than you would otherwise -- say as much in your review and contact me via ICQ [ 29187608 ] or AIM [ underf4331 ]. Be warned, I'm always invisible on ICQ...)
For the record: Yes, it is possible to smell rain ahead of time. It has its limits, such as the fact that the scent more properly is attributed to the rainclouds and thus you can sometimes smell rain that'll fall elsewhere. It also doesn't help that each time of year has a different 'rain scent.' I'm still learning how to tell if it'll be raining soon in the winter.
Shishou is what Kenshin calls Hiko. It means 'teacher' or 'master.'
Bokken and shinai are used in kendo. Bokken were, according to what I have been taught, originally intended as form of waster, a wooden weapon that is suitable for using when learning how to handle a blade. However, it is quite possible to cause permanent (and even fatal) injuries with a bokken, so the shinai, which is much safer, was developed.
On the whole, one has to be quite determined to kill somebody with a shinai. (Bokken, on the other hand, do just fine as one particularly legendary samurai proved.) However, people are known to keel over from simple blows to the chest. The human body is surprisingly fragile.
A gi is a shorted version of a kimono. It may be worn under hakama, a sort of pleated pants (sometimes), instead of a kimono, as a full-length kimono can be quite awkward under hakama. The general agreement seems to be that Kenshin wears a gi instead of a kimono, though I've not noticed any confirmation of this in what I've read/seen of either the manga or anime. It makes some sense, if for no other reason than the fact that even if it started out its existence as a full-length kimono, Kenshin has almost certainly shortened it for the sake of matching-color patches.
Juban are the two-piece full slip worn under kimono, whose collar peaks out slightly from underneath the kimono. Actually, my references are quite strange about this subject; I have chosen 'juban' on the basis that of all the terms given in them, it is the only one that seems to apply to both garments. (All are Japanese ones, too, so it was rather awkward to decide on which to give the greatest weight to; should I someday manage to obtain a copy of The Book of the Kimono, I may revise this...)
Koshi-himo, date-jime, and obi-jime all are involved in the process of tying a woman's obi. Koshi-himo and date-jime go beneath the obi itself, and are used to adjust the length of the kimono. The obi-jime is a decorative cord that goes on top of the obi.
Gaijin is Japanese for 'foreigner,' and isn't exactly a polite thing to call a person. Japan has a long history of xenophobia and racism, and has yet to get completely over either.
Once again, reviews, and particularly ones accompanied by dark chocolate, will be found encouraging.