Author's Notes–The notes for these took thirty minutes to write, I'm scared about how long this will take me. Passage is updated, this needed it as well. Mysteries shall be revealed! Only to have.. Even more questions to be answered? This fic is ongoing.. Is developing a plot and, I hope, becoming interesting. Review?

Disclaimer – I don't own this! Just screwing them up for my own entertainment. And yours, too, maybe..
-----------------------------------

The mid-day meal had already prepared and boxed, greeting its hungry consumers when they returned to the dojo at one. It was a simple meal, tempura and a bit of rice. Enough to sustain the field workers for an afternoon's worth of labor. Misao and Soujirou had both chosen to take their meals inside, Kenshin and Kaoru both found excuses to enjoy the sunshine (and each other's company) outdoors.

Kaoru sat on the edge of the porch, the same one on which she had fallen asleep the preceding night, eating animatedly and talking with the rurouni. "Memories affect people's lives."

"How so?" Kenshin asked, lifting his chopsticks to his chin and examining the rice on it as if it were a foreign object.

"Well, if I could reflect upon some of my past experiences, I'm sure I may feel differently about some things."

"I'm not following you. An example of this would be..?" Kenshin ate the rice, and left the question dangling.

"Swordsmen." Kaoru finished. "I'm sure that, if I were to remember exactly why it was that my father was one, I wouldn't dislike them as much as I do."

Kenshin took one smack in the ego there. He cleared his throat. Twice. Indicating, with his eyes, the sakabatou laying on his other side.

"Oh! I don't dislike all swordsmen, Kenshin." Kaoru quickly corrected herself, blushing. "Sorry. Are you finished?"

Kenshin, recovering from his own blush, nodded.

----------

Misao and Soujirou sat eating lunch, awkwardly. Misao attempted conversation. "Are you a swordsman?"

"Yes." Soujirou stammered back, his voice thankfully not cracking again. "Are you a ninja?"

"Yes." Misao responded. This was pointless. They could have deducted that from each other simply by reading ki.

"If you are a ninja, then what are you doing here?" Soujirou had re-attained his coy and smiling manner. Feeling mischievous, wasn't he? Well, it's danger to be mischievous with an Oniwabonshuu ninja..

"I can't reveal that just yet, Soujirou." Misao smirked, idly taking an inventory of her kodachi in front of him, having finished her meal. "What are you here for, then, Mr. Swordsman?"

"For answers."

"Finished you two?" Kaoru's voice, returning from outside, interrupted from the kitchen.

"Hai!" The two called in unison, collecting their boxes and returning to help wash their dishes.

----------

The four returned to the fields after an hour. Rice had been collected, their grains were stacked and ready to be stored from two of the four fields. Everyone seemed excited that their daily allotment of the four fields was at least half-way finished with. Kenshin and Kaoru, as now per usual, tackled the leftward field together, Soujirou and Misao accepting the other.

They hammered on together, a few rows apart, carrying on conversations in couples. Kaoru commented to Kenshin, "Japanese men never help with the housework. It's not tradition."

Misao overheard this small sentence from the next field. There's something for Soujirou and herself to talk about. "Oi, Soujirou.. Why are you helping out with the farmwork?"

"It was part of my training." Kenshin and Soujirou called back simultaneously.

"Why?" Kaoru asked. Misao had seemed satisfied with her answer.

"My master thought that it taught discipline, humility, and respect. It also needed to be done around the dojo that I studied at, it was a small and my master didn't particularly like chores." Kenshin laughed at the memory. Just thinking of Hiko in an apron was enough to make him smile.

"So," Kaoru and Misao unknowingly calling out together, "What type of blade did you study?"

"Hiten Mitsurugi." Kenshin and Soujirou answered. They then looked at each other.

He learned Kenshin's style? Kenshin's head screamed. Soujirou smiled wider than previously thought possible and continued working. He learned Kenshin's style?

"Did you two study together?" Kaoru asked bubbily, grabbing another stalk from beneath her and adding it to a small woven basket on her back.

"No." Kenshin replied curtly. "I finished training early and left the dojo. Soujirou-dono probably studied it after I left."

"Oh." Kaoru answered shortly. The two continued their talk more quietly, only discussing the weather and if they thought that thirty acres of rice would logically ever get harvested at the rate the they were going.

"So.. you never completed training?" Misao asked.

"No."

"Why not? Hiten blade is very prestigious."

"Neh. I ran into another interesting character, Shishio Makoto, that explain his philosophy on life to me. The strong always survive over the weaker. It clashed miserably with Hiten Mitsurugi. I removed myself. Not before I ended up fatally wounding a classmate of mine." Soujirou expressed sadly. "He was six. I had a wakizashi for the first time.. he got in my way and was quite weak. Yukishiro had in coming."

"Wow." Misao quipped.

Kenshin sneezed.

"Somone is either thinking of you, or you're allergic to all of this rice!" Kaoru laughed.

"I'm not allergic to rice." Kenshin stated with stunning forcefulness.

"No one said that you were." Kaoru laughed. She thought out loud. "I wonder who would be thinking of you?"

"Many people have things to think about of me. I caused a lot of pain."

"Your past.."

"Some things are better left unsaid, Kaoru-dono. There are times whenever I wish I were like you, amnesiac and forgotten of all these tragic things."

Kaoru's heart almost split in two at that sentence. Regaining her composure, she sharply reproached him. "Kenshin, really. Kami... it's terrible. I feel that I don't know who I really am."

"With the deeds I've done, it would be convenient to forget who I was."

"I am sorrowful for you then, Kenshin."

She was sad for him? This wasn't the first time someone had said that to him.. but it seemed so much more meaningful coming form her lips. Kenshin smiled softly, emotionlessly though.

"Oi, you talkative farmers! We're finished with our field!" Misao laughed, walking over to the edge of Kenshin and Kaoru's field, where the latter was picking up her last stalk.

"And so are we." Kaoru returned.

"Kenshin and I will take these baskets and hang them on the wooden dryers over there. It should take a few weeks for them to dry out now. You two can.. go sit somewhere and relax for a bit." Soujirou smiled, wider than his current rurouni counterpart. This was strange, consider that both of them had just gotten a handful of more work.

"So.. Kaoru.. What did you and Kenshin talk about?" Misao sat beside Kaoru to watch the men before them work.

"The past." Kaoru was blank. "You and Soujirou?"

"The same. He never finished his Hiten Mitsurugi training."

"Kenshin did. Why didn't he?"

"Something about killing a young boy by the name of Yukishiro, obtaining a new philosophy on life, and then just letting himself out." Misao tried to recant the tale as Soujirou had told it, but it didn't exactly work out so well.

"Strange. Kenshin won't reveal any of his past."

"That's strange. Face it Kaoru, all of us here are strange." Misao commented blandly.

They laughed together for a few more minutes, bonding as the men did the heavy labor of moving the rice grains and stacking them. It was a fun afternoon, they decided.

----------

It took only a few minutes, and they were ready to return to the dojo for the evening meal. Kenshin and Kaoru dropped behind, discussing Kami-knows-what as Soujirou and Misao continued on ahead. Kaoru then called something about not being hungry, and them taking a walk.

Soujirou smirked, facing Misao. "Not hungry, my foot. They're just trying to be alone."

"I think it's romantic." Misao was in dream-sequence.

"Want some dinner?"

"Hai. Let's see what we have." Misao suggested.

"Miso." Soujirou answered, looking into a cabinet.

"I could handle Miso."

"Very nice. Miso for Misao. Weird alliteration, there. Let's make some then!" Soujirou smiled. Yet again, he felt juvenile.. at least his voice had stopped that annoying high-pitched thing around her. That was plain embarrassing.

----------

After they were a short distance away from the dojo, walking along the paths tracing the outlines of the rice fields, Kaoru reached out for Kenshin's hand. And held it here, in hers. The amazing thing was, neither Kenshin nor Kaoru blushed.

"Tell me about your past, Kenshin."

"Damn curiousity." Kenshin muttered.

"It might be part of my nature. Or my genetics. I wouldn't know really." Kaoru laughed. Kenshin damned her hearing, too.. but he laughed. "I like it when you laugh. You scar goes upwards. Your scar. Tell me how you got an interesting one like that, at least."

"Not right now. It's a horrible memory. I don't really want to share it with anyone."

"But I'm not anyone." Kaoru replied quickly. "'Anyone' has memories. I don't."

"So? That doesn't make you any less of a person." Kenshin said, facing her as they stopped walking.

"It does."

"It doesn't."

"It does!"

"Kaoru!" Kenshin forcefully said, grabbing her face with his hands. He calmed, but his hands didn't move. "It.. doesn't."

They leaned in closer, and the cool night air enveloped them as their lips met, for the first time. A pale moon shined, wind blew, stars twinkled, and a hitokiri's heart melted all in that one instant.

----------

Kenshin and Kaoru returned to the dojo after about an hour or so, hand-in-hand. They bid each other good night and parted, going their separate ways for the night.

Misao and Soujirou knew that something was up. Misao spoke first after seeing them leave each other's presence. "Do you think they..?"

"No. Someone like her has better sense than to fall in love with someone like him." Soujirou answered the dangling sentence quickly. Almost too quickly, he felt. "Himura-san's actions in the past were horrible."

"Yours weren't?" Misao struck a nerve with that one.

"Have you ever killed anyone, Misao?"

"I've seen a man killed before. Never done so myself, though. I don't wish to." Misao replied coldly.

"Himura-san and I have seen so many massacres, it's become routine."

"Do you feel that your actions were horrible?"

"My actions had reason."

"Reason?! For murder?" Misao was outraged. She icily left. "Konban wa, Soujirou."

Left to tend to the dishes himself, Soujirou washed them, and wandered into a room that had been given to him earlier in the day. He fell asleep at precisely the same time Misao did, in her own room.

-----------

Kaoru took her time changing from her working clothes into a sleeping yukata. However, whenever she finally did crawl into her futon, her hand rested on her lips, where his hand lingered not a half-hour before. She had fallen for him as quickly as she fell asleep that night.

----------

Kenshin wearily entered his room. He had never been that close to anyone other than Tomoe. And he had seen how that ended. He didn't want this to happen to Kaoru. Kami-sama, he really didn't.

This was different now, though. Times had changed now. Hadn't they? Questions weighing on him, his eyelids fluttered closed for his forty winks.

-------------------------

eep WAFFy, I know. Very, very WAFFy. Did you like the K/K or S/M going on here? Aren't alternate pairings fun? But, wait.. didn't Misao mention something about Aoshi earlier? evil author laugh. Plot twist! It's coming up very, very soon. As in, the next chapter. So you'll have that to look foward to. More questions will be answered, memories will be recovered.. more K/K WAFFyness.. More S/M juvenile crushes.

See ya in Chapter six! I don't really have a name for it yet.

Review, please.. .-

Thanks for reading!