Notes: Well, this is definitely running towards its end. ;) Sorry for this chapter, I think it´s the worst I have written in this story yet, but I´m in the middle of exams. They can do really horrible things to the writing style of a person.
Answer to reviewers: Franziska is my original character, and was added to the mix with the sole purpose of having some fun. I apologise to German people, but what I´m parodying in her is mostly the behaviour of a certain social class, not of a certain country…. country to which my beta reader belongs, so I have to be careful nevertheless. ;) But Yutaro isn´t an original character. He is Yahiko´s friend/ antagonist in volumes 5 and 6 of the manga. In volume 28, at the final epilogue, we get to know that he has returned from Germany and that he´s an assistant master in the Kamiya dojo, and in the sidestory "Yahiko´s Reversed Blade", which Watsuki wrote after RK, he´s flirting with Tsubame. In my story, he has already inherited his father´s money and has opened a dojo by himself, and is betrothed with a certain charming German lady he met in his "second country".
Also: For everyone who wants to archive or link this story or any other to a webpage, they can do it if they send me a notice before and after they do it. Thanks.
As always, many thanks to the reviewers and also to my beta reader Margit Ritzka.
Chapter Six: Voices From Far Away
Maybe you'll be surprised at the sudden change of tone of this letter. Or maybe not, since you're certainly the person to read between lines. Still, whatever way, I'm glad to be able to write facts and realities as they are for once; it helps very much to unburden my spirit from things that are eating my strength, my will and my sanity at a quick rate. A person who owes me much is heading back for Japan this week, and he has sworn he will take those letters with him, so this time there won't be anyone opening them before they reach their destination.
I know that you think I'm an idiot for getting into this mess at all. As far as I am concerned, you're right without discussion about my decision of coming here as a diplomatic representative, as you will have guessed from much less direct bits of information on my part and the impartial judgement of the results. I seethe just to think that most people in Japan have been made to believe that those conversations really took place, at least in a decent meaning of the word. Nothing is more excruciatingly far from the truth! I did not come with much hope, from what I had learnt about the government's preparations and Yamagata-san's words, but even so, they managed to surprise me. It was not that the die had been cast since the very beginning; it was that they did not take even the slightest precautions to appear as if they were leaving any way open at all, so that if I was able to get as far as I did, be sure that it was just because they considered me a rather ridiculously-dressed and bandaged pointless eccentric, and could not believe I was seriously tryingtodosomething about it. My companions were all bought, the interpreters, and, to my astonishment, even part of the diplomats of the other side were. Oh, I could picture Takeda Kanryuu laughing at me…
Still, as you know from other letters, instead of allowing myself to be won over by weariness and despair in the face of that scenario, I gathered myself and did what I could. Against wind and storm, I tried many times to create something that at least could be called a true conversation, while they spent their time making outrageous requests, rejecting other's requests with outrage, and making my attempts impossible overall.The interpreter changed everything I said and I had to learn their language… at my age and state! They tried to send me back, to kill me and even to convince me, but somehow I evaded all three. I won't ever forget, however, the words that the chief of our commission spoke to me once we were having a private talk, and that made me leave that pointless approach in the end. I was getting tired of his honeyed attempts to explain the "situation" to me, and told him that I had come to make peace, and that this was what I was trying to do. He seemed flustered at this, and, getting up, he gave me a smouldering glance and said that "my problem was that I was the only one among them who didn't know I was a puppet." The army was going to come whatever I said or did because the war was "a great opportunity for our country".
But what that man didn't know when he said that was the full story of my inner conditioning, and that was his error. He only saw an eccentric idealist whose sword had played a key role in an old fashioned war of the kind that had been fought between factions who had really believed they were right, but he had no idea about what drove me forward. (Cease smirking!) I was a man whose deep guilt for everything that his past idealism had helped to create was reaching its highest peaks as we were talking. Who had been brought into the middle of such a situation at the end of his life by some invisible force who wanted him to redeem himself by making the correct decision this time for once. And on top of this, he failed to see even something that people who are close to me have told me many times: that I'm disturbingly good at playing the fool. (Because I am one, you'll surely say). So I leaned back and bade him farewell politely, and soon afterwards the conversations came to an end. War was declared, as it was meant to be, and it was time for the puppets to go home and enjoy what they had earned. But not for me. I can't deny it was harder to decide than what I had thought it would be; not because of me, but because I wasn't able to cease thinking of Kaoru, ill and alone, and Kenji, who would surely never forgive me now. In the end, I was able to make the decision…whether it was the correct one or not, I suppose I will never know for sure. I hope my family will at least forgive me after I'm dead.
I'll obviate the accounts of brilliant military campaigns for various reasons. First, because I'm sure that they have reached even your mountain already, second because I did not take part in them, and third, because my brain isn't what it used to be. You already know about my main official occupation and the reason why they allowed me to stay here, which is to take care of the sick and the injured. And maybe you'll even guess which can be my others, but I apologise for not including them either: though I know this letter won't be opened it's still too great of a risk to publish it here. Remember the will of living for others that I learned from you after fourteen years of confusion? That's what still drives me here, in spite of the circumstances. My sick, slow, eccentric and outdated life (none of the names are mine, but I gracefully accept them) can't have too much worth, and I'm not afraid of dying a year sooner, but, on the one hand, the people who depend on my help and, on the other, the people who are waiting for my return are both my strength and my weakness in this situation.
I still don't know what will be the end of this, or when it will be. I don't know how much more I'll be able to resist, either, not for lack of will or good intentions, but rather because I'm starting to forget even where I was heading to in the middle of errands, and in spoken speech I'm getting to awkward dead points a little too often. I know you didn't ever consider me too bright, but if you could see me now you would consider my previous self a genius. If my state starts to be a danger for those who are allied with me, which will happen one day too soon, I know I will have to leave. On the meantime, rest assured that I'll try to stand on my two feet as long as I can; at least as much time as my countrymen keep destroying other peoples, and even with this disheartening voice inside me that keeps on shouting that I will die years before anyone sees the end of this. Maybe it's like a chain, and it will never stop, while the strong keep forever preying on the weak. Shishio Makoto´s predictions came true…but I feel, I know I could still defeat him in Mount Hiei even now. I said that the day that such a thing happened it would be a deep, deep heresy, and that's what it is. And therefore, I'm fighting it up to my last breath, as I did back then.
(Only that, I have to admit it, History is decidedly not helping me at present... if it ever really did.)
As for my other symptoms…Apart from my brain, my health has also deteriorated overall since I arrived here. The doctor says that the disease is spreading at an unusual speed (which, paradoxically, can be one reason why I'm still alive, if you know what I mean), and my whole body is full of those rashes now. They're annoying to clean, but I have to be impeccable if I want to care for the wounded - and if I don't want people to run away from the stench, of course. Imagine for a moment, I, who have always been so exasperatingly clean…
As for inner pains, I suffer from them on a frequent basis as a result from the disease affecting my organs, especially in the lungs and the head. Still, (if you will forgive me this shocking remark), I would say that I had expected it to be more painful. It becomes rather bearable after a while, when you get used, and I've got worse wounds. Physical pain can be controlled when your mind is in full power, as we used to say… so I will leave my worries for the time when I lose my mind definitely. Then again, I won't probably have to worry then either, since being freed from the suffering of the mind would be a gift to which no physical pain can be compared. Right now, as I'm sitting here at night, writing to the light of a half-extinguished candle, I'm feeling it acutely. Only a little more despair, and I will start again to see everything around me covered and wrapped in a hideous disease. It's not my disease anymore, but the disease of the whole world, against which no sword can do anything - as we believed once they could -, except making the wound deeper. Once more and irrevocably, the Hiten Mitsurugi is dead... and I am sick.
But what…? I've just been able to reread everything I wrote in several nights up to this point, - since tomorrow is the day in which the letter and me will have to part ways -, and I'm deeply sorry. I didn't know I had lost so many faculties yet, and, even more, that I had reached a point in which the person I'm talking to gets blurred in my mind, and all I can do is talk and talk until I get things out that do not concern him. Unfortunately, I don't have time to rewrite it again, so I'll just fold it carefully and cease making a fool of myself. Then I'll also have to finish the letter I wrote to Kaoru, with care not to wake up my exhausted errand-boy, who somehow is able to sleep through all the ruckus of the off-duty soldiers outside but wakes up with eyes wide open if he chances to hear the slightest breath next to him. (I think he's frightened, because he too has endured rather traumatic experiences, but he never lets anything out. Like me, I suppose.) Once I have finished both, I will get to the hospital to have a last look at the patients for today, and will keep my eyes fixed in the distance without saying anything while the people outside mumble excuses about going out for the night with "prostitutes". I'd wish that the moral authority I supposedly have among them would stop the inhumanity at all, but it looks as if it only works when they think I might get to know about it. Now I think about it… maybe it's better if I don't go out at all. I don't know if I'm ready to stand certain things right now.
And yes, I'm aware of what you are thinking. Please, trust me…we will be able to talk about this one day, I promise. Just not here.
I send my best wishes for your health and your business, and thank you once more for training Kenji. I hope he's at home now with his mother; with him and Yahiko around I don't think she could be in need of protection. I'm sorry for all the other things that she needs and that she can't have right now; but I swear that, short of my death in foreign lands, there's nothing that could prevent me from returning. Which, by the way, brings a last plea to my mind: if by some reason you get to know (through Kenji if he visits you) that she hasn't got my letter while you have, please tell her what I say here. It's all I can do to reach her now.
So, well…farewell again at last. Time is getting short, the poor kid is mumbling something in his sleep (He reminds me disturbingly of myself when I was young… I'll tell you his story one day), and I have to sign the letter before going to visit the patients one last time. How could I say above that I would not go? Again, sorry for my blabbering, and best wishes from the continent. I hope summer isn't being too devastating for the plants in the mountain.
Regards
Kenji's eyes stayed fixed for a moment on the signature of the letter, then folded it neatly to put it in the box once more, together with his scarce belongings. Morning was radiant outside, and he could hear Kaoru and Megumi's voices in the yard. He should join them now…and his father as well.
The day after his arrival a month ago, he remembered, he had almost despaired of being ever able to argue anything with him, or ask him things that had been spinning in circles in his mind for long. Before this, he hadn't ever thought he would be so grateful to Hiko for giving him that letter he had almost memorised, and that he never forgot to read at least once a day. Though not addressed to him, it was his treasure. In it, Kenji had found all the things that his father should have told him long before, and that might have made him understand a little better. He had recognised his voice, filled now of despair, and now of a quiet resolution as he coped with the horror, and this he couldn't deny…the shock had been great the first time, and the second, and the third, but it had slowly turned into an incommodious feeling of foolishness that ended with the amazing inner confession that he felt almost proud of his father. Now, as he sat down and thought about the whole story of their differences and misunderstandings, the realisation that maybe they had been living in different worlds all along did not hit him with bitterness anymore, just with a somewhat disquieting sadness.
Well, at least, he thought once again, since his father had declared with such conviction that he was going to die, there had not been any moves into that direction. A consolation was a consolation. If all, he had entered a new phase of his disease that to Kenji's eyes was infinitely better, in which his mind, clouded to the last degree in that ghastly morning in which he had met him again, had regained much of its sharpness and agility. Yes, the pain attacks in which he fell clutching his chest, his head or some other body part with an agonising face had augmented proportionally… but the young man could not forget what his father had said in the letter.
"Kenji!"
The laughs and shouts of children who played among them reached his ears, helping him return to reality.
"Coming!" he shouted back, making a face and sliding the shoji shut behind his back. Definitely, his mother was feeling much better, too!
As he stepped into the clear light of the sun, Kenji was forced to shield his eyes to prevent them from getting blinded. Kenshin was sitting on the porch, and Megumi was kneeling next to him to give him something that looked like tea or a medicine. The young boys were arriving now in groups, filling the yard and unaware of the red-haired man's soft smile while he watched them argue and play.
"Well, about time!"
Kaoru was there too, dressed in an old hakama, with her long dark hair held in a ponytail and her blue eyes twinkling in a smile. Feeling a jolt cross his body, the young man thought for a second that she had never looked more like in his remembrances of the past, until his eyes fell upon the bandages in her arms, and he had to suppress a sigh.
Time was moving too quickly for him.
"Kenji, dear, we're going to the dojo, and Megumi has things to do. Could you sit with your father here?" she asked. Kenji furrowed his brow a little at the endearment, but nodded.
"You're so grown up now…" she mused aloud. Before her son could do anything to prevent it, she turned to his father and widened her smile dangerously. "Who would think now that he's our baby Kenji, so tall and handsome? I'm sure that all the girls in the city love him!"
"Oh, yess. Even gaijin women love your baby Kenji," a voice joined the conversation in a teasing tone. As red as his hair, the young man turned back, and shot a murderous glare at Yahiko. Some of the boys were already laughing and whispering things - about him- into each other's ears.
"Mind your business!" he almost shouted. "And, by the way, you're late!"
But the ordeal was far from over from him yet. Not while there were more hyenas around him to take the cue.
"Ohohoho!" Megumi laughed. "May I know who those gaijin women are? Maybe a certain noble, beautiful and blonde foreign lady?"
"Of course not!" Kenji grumbled, walking past them at a brisk pace to sit beside his father. The man was smiling, but at least he didn't say anything at all, which was a very important point in his favour at that moment. Damn him if he understood that weird Prussian woman who hugged him and gave him sweets whenever they metin Yutaro's house or in his own.
"Well… time to start the class," Kaoru muttered, maybe a bit ashamed at the outcome of her too passionate words. Considering that she had spent a lot of time away from him, and that she surely felt she had to make up for the long lack of motherly nuisance, Kenji decided he was even ready to forgive her. Even in front of so many people… "Let's get into the dojo!"
The young man watched the caravan of boys disappear behind his mother and Yahiko, and kept silent for a while, staring at the floor of the yard that had suddenly fallen quiet and empty. Megumi got up, and flashed him an enigmatic smile before she walked back into the house.
What was it with them people today?
"Don't you… don't you want some more tea, Father?" he asked, as he noticed the half-filled cup abandoned at his side. The man seemed to snap away from some musing at the sound of his voice, and turned towards him with an alert look in his eyes.
"Sorry," he apologised. "What?"
"Do you want some more tea?" his son repeated patiently. Kenshin nodded, and the young man put the cup on his hands with care not to spill a single drop. The sound of Kaoru's voice rising over a pandemonium of other voices could already reach their ears at that moment, and, soon after, certain noises that made Kenji guess that the boys had taken their swords. Remembrances of the different stages of his own training could not help but come to his mind, and for a moment he wondered whether his father did not ever have similar thoughts.
"They're training," he said. Kenshin nodded again, and continued intently sipping his tea.
"They're playing," he smiled. When he saw Kenji's expression of disbelief, his smile widened.
"Are you good at… Hiten Mitsurugi?" he asked after a pause. He had asked that question several times already, but Kenji had learned from his mother that what he had to do in those circumstances was to answer always with as similar words as possible, to avoid confusing him. Even if he didn't particularly like the words…
"I didn't learn the superior techniques," he confessed for the umpteenth time. "Hiko-shishou should judge for the rest."
"I didn't know them either, when… when…," the older man mumbled, probably to himself. "Oh, how I'd wish to see you…"
Surprised, Kenji turned towards him.
"I can show you, if you want," he said, getting up. Kenshin lifted his eyes at those words, but also extended a hand to hold him in place.
"Not now… Not like this… Stay with me, please."
The red-haired youngster sat down again, a bit puzzled at his father's sudden change of attitude. Well, after all, it was his choice…
"Father," he tried instead, decided to use the opportunity to return once more to his arduous efforts to clarify the dark points of his China information. "I was thinking… Could you tell me what did you do in China in secret?"
Kenshin set his empty cup on the wooden planks of the porch, and leaned back in silence with a satisfied smile. Kenji could not help but remember again that remark in the letter about playing the fool disturbingly well, and grumbled.
"Now you're back, and there's no risk anymore. It's over," he insisted. To his astonishment, Kenshin shook his head in denial. Well, well... it looked as if his abilities were failing in spite of all. That was something, at last.
"No, it isn't. Not yet."
"Then, it was something that did not consist solely on you?" he pressed. Kenshin looked somewhat uncomfortable now, but continued to fix his glance on the floor obstinately. His son felt a surge of frustration rise through him, which, as usual, he was not able to disguise very well.
"I see," he replied, forgetting his mother's strong recommendations about not saying anything that could upset him with the indignation of the moment. "You don't trust me. You surely think I'm a spy or something… that's why you didn't send letters to me!"
The remark got to its target with lightning speed, and Kenji could see his father cower in shame. A bit uncomfortable all of a sudden, he bit his tongue.
"Well, you know… I didn't quite mean that," he muttered, starting to feel more stupid than ever. "I…"
"I'm so absurd…" Kenshin sighed, as he began to regain his composure. "Sorry, my son. You're right. I… suppose I never got anything right about you."
Kenji would have fled if he had been able to, once more helpless at the sight of his father's distress. Whenever he recalled that once he had thought even of making him the target of a thousand darting reproaches he could not help but wonder what had he exactly been thinking of at that time. His old attitude was beginning to bother him more and more..and now, even more than ever.
"It's me who is sorry," he sighed. "Really."
Kenshin lifted his face. Slowly, his eyes met his once more, and his mouth curved in a tentative smile.
"Thank you," he exclaimed, with a look of deep gratitude shining through them. "You're kind."
It was only some minutes after that, after the conversation had already turned to more trivial matters, when Kenji recalled the detail that he hadn't really got an answer in the end.
"Well…and there was that other time… It was two years ago, if I remember correctly. I hid the sake jar so well that he wasn't able to find it!"
"The… sake jar?" Kenshin's eyes widened with delighted astonishment. "You did?"
Kenji leaned back, trying not to look too proud of himself.
"Yeah. His face was so funny! You can't imagine how much I had to use self-contention not to laugh. He was fuming!"
"Ah..."
The older man's gaze turned back slowly to the distance, and his smile dimmed a bit. To his son's attentive glance, it looked as if he was muttering something to himself, and Kenji had to suppress a sigh. He hated it when his father suddenly ignored him. He knew it wasn't really his fault…but he hated it.
"Are you tired?" he asked with some hesitation. "I… can shut up, if you want."
To his surprise, Kenshin turned back towards him immediately, in a real show of good or at least decent reflexes.
"No! Continue. I was just thinking…" His voice became a whisper and he smiled, blushing a little. "I also… hid Shishou's sake away one time."
"Really?" Kenji could not help but laugh at this. "Wow, it seems we have the same ideas!"
Still, as the meaning of those words started to sink into his brain, it was he who grew serious and broody. The same indeed…Both had left his mother alone, for one… and one with better reasons than the other.
And he hadn't told him yet.
"I... am going to get some food.", he muttered, getting up and wondering for a moment if his father would still be able to perceive his uneasiness as he used to perceive it before. "I'll be back in a minute. Is there… anything that you want?"
Kenshin lowered his glance in silence. When Kenji was just about to turn his back on him, he took the empty tea cup and handed it to him, flashing an apologetic smile. The boy took it, and walked away to the house.
"Is there anything that you want?" a female voice asked him as soon as he got in. Kenji's body stiffened in surprise.
"Me… Megumi-san! I didn't…uh? What are you doing this for?"
The whole kitchen was filled with food and articles in such quantities that the boy had maybe never seen in his life before, to the point that some had even been scattered on the floor for lack of space. Deliciously sweet smells floated in the air, and Megumi was kneeling in front of a table, giving shape to balls of ohagi paste. As soon as she saw Kenji and heard his exclamation, she smirked in a way that he found distressingly similar to Hiko's.
"The baby Kenji is going to be sixteen tomorrow," she said, without lifting an eye from her ohagi. "So we will have to do something to celebrate his birthday, especially since he wasn't here in his last one."
The young man stopped in his tracks, and felt the colour coming to his cheeks.
"My… birthday?" he hesitated. "I…"
"You didn't remember," she finished for him. "Not even through all our hints. Well! Better late than never, isn't it?"
Kenji was plainly overwhelmed. Not only had he forgotten everything about his birthday, but he had also almost forgotten too about the devastation of the previous one, and even about the year in-between. In fact, plenty of things had just been erased from his mind by the strange routine of his life of the previous thirty days.
"You had planned a celebration? And you... are making the food?"
Megumi left another ball on top of the already well-grown ohagi mountain, and smiled. Now that Kenji looked closer at her, already used to the shadows of the kitchen, he could notice a few wrinkles on her finely sculptured face, and some grey hairs in the thick black cascade that fell over her shoulders. It was curious… when he had been a child, and even when he grew up, it had been impossible for him to think that she could grow old, or that she could hide anything behind her self-sufficient smile, her sarcasms and her beauty. Now, however, it seemed to him as if she was suddenly… tired.
"We will go to see the fall of the cherry-tree petals," she informed him. "It will be us, though Yahiko invited Yutaro and Outa as well. Outa was very surprised when he knew you had returned… he says that you haven't gone to visit him even once."
"True…" Kenji muttered in a guilty tone, trying to pace around the kitchen. Sooner even that what he had expected, though, he found his foot inside a pot of sweet confiture, and cursed. "Ouch! What the…? Oh, sorry, Megumi-san. I… just came to leave this tea cup here."
"Then leave it wherever you can and leave before you smash everything to pieces," the woman grumbled. "Sheesh, who would have thought that you would be like your mother! And don't forget to clean your tabi; I'm not planning on cleaning the house again anytime soon."
"Sorry, Megumi-san," he muttered once more. As he was already about to leave, he stopped on the threshold, and turned back again for a fleeting moment. "And thank you."
The woman raised a pair of puzzled eyes from her work.
"Thank me?"
"Because of… well, I was thinking the other day…" Surprisingly enough, to get those words out of his system was more difficult than what Kenji had expected, maybe because he wasn't used to speak like that. "You have your work in Aizu… and it should have been a great inconvenience for you to leave it all behind for so long. Thank you for coming here and helping us, and for taking care of my parents."
The woman looked somewhat pensive for a moment. Only once she had picked some more paste to do another ohagi she started to relax, and then her mouth curled into an approving smile.
"It looks as if even the most unwanted delays had a purpose in the end," she commented. "Even if it's for turning baby Kenji into something else, don't you think?"
The young man suppressed a grumble, and left the kitchen at a quick pace.
When the gates of the dojo opened at last, Kenji had been trying for a while to discover if his father had been told about tomorrow's party before he had been. This, as always, was no easy thing, since the man, when he was at his best brain capacity, presented a persistent obsession with not letting anyone know anything. Probably a side-effect of the times he had spent in China (doing what Kenji hadn't still guessed), or maybe even an excess of precaution triggered by the intermittent awareness of being in a state of disadvantage in what respected to secrets and inner information. If there was something that no one could deny, it was that Himura Kenshin - Himura Shinta now, as his mother called him - was still a very private person….or at least he tried.
"Hello! Have you had any problems?" Kaoru called from the gate. The younger boys were already running and pushing each other outside between laughs, while the older gathered around Yahiko to ask him some question. Kaoru had talked many times about splitting the classes in two groups, one by morning with her and one in the afternoon with Yahiko, but now, Kenji supposed that this was out of the question. She could still teach, but not alone.
Unless…
"No, we're just fine!" he answered. As she got closer to them, he crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. "Why didn't you tell me that tomorrow we'll have a party?"
"Oh…We wanted you to guess," she explained with a sheepish grin. There were large beads of sweat on her forehead, and her clothes were wet to the point of becoming almost a second skin. Kenji was suddenly aware of at least two of the older boys throwing long glances at her, and felt like getting up and punching them. When she got past him and kissed Kenshin's forehead, though, the guys retreated a bit to whisper something in their nearest companion's ears, and he relaxed.
What a waste, he thought, somewhat irately. I'm sure they're thinking that.
"Megumi started a revolution in the kitchen this morning," he commented when he saw them leave. "I don't know how we will be able to have lunch."
"Oh, it's easy," his mother replied. "Yahiko will invite us to a restaurant. Won't you, Yahiko?"
"What?" An outraged voice came out immediately from the group of people that were still at the gates of the dojo. "When exactly did I agree to such a thing?"
"You didn't," Kaoru told him with a smart grin. "That's why I was asking you now."
Mumbling an expletive, Yahiko walked out from the circle that started to disperse behind him.
"Oh, all right, all right… But don't get used! I'm not bathing in money, precisely. And remember I'm having a kid this year…"
The dojo master chuckled, and got past her family with a last brush to Kenshin's red hair.
"Thank you, Yahiko, you're my favourite student! And, now you're speaking about bathing… I should invite Megumi and get arranged! Oh, and you too, Kenji. What is this that you have on that right tabi of yours? Kenshin, please, stay with Yahiko… we're back in a minute!"
As Kaoru and a still somewhat stunned Kenji disappeared behind the shoji of the house, and the last students crossed the gate that lead to the street, Yahiko shrugged his shoulders, and sat down besides Kenshin.
"Kaoru can also be quite foxy, huh?" he commented in a confidential tone. The red-haired man turned towards him, his attention attracted by the sound of his voice.
"Now, we're going to have a meal in a restaurant," the samurai continued, after receiving an encouraging nod. "And tomorrow it's Kenji's birthday."
"Birthday…" Kenshin muttered in a strange tone. For a moment, Yahiko had a sensation, as if the older man was shaken by this information, and there was something akin to sadness… or was it relief in his tone?
Of course, Kenshin had known about it since days ago. Even if he forgot about it periodically.
"Then, do you still agree to what we decided?" he asked. "The reverse blade… remember?"
"Oh…" The light of recognition grew in the red-haired man's eyes. "Reversed blade…Yes. I agree."
Yahiko smiled, and crossed his arms over his knees to rest his head on his hands. It was beginning to be really warm under the sun in spring.
"Fine, then. Hiko told me that he was good, and I see it myself. I think… hmm… that he has become quite a man already, don't you think?"
The older man stretched his hand, and rested reflexively over Yahiko's shoulder. The samurai felt a shiver creep across his body as he was able to feel the bony touch, and the nauseatingly sweet smell of blood, but he did not pull back or flinch. Kenshin did not deserve less.
"A man…" he mused aloud with a smile. "Oh, I'm happy…"
The meal went gaily, if slowly, as Kenshin needed plenty of time to eat, plenty of time to reach the place and plenty of time to leave it. Fortunately, for once he didn't have a pain fit in all day, though Kaoru was not able to cease worrying about that aspect until he was safely tucked inside his bed for his afternoon nap. Then, Yahiko could return to his house at last, to have a short break before he went to teach in other dojos, and the day continued peacefully for the rest of the people at the Kamiya house.
"I'm going to read outside.," Megumi announced, when Kaoru, Kenji and Kenshin were already installed in the sitting room at sundown. "I can't believe I haven't been able to finish this book yet because of you noisy bunch."
"Bring the lamp with you, Megumi-san," Kaoru advised. She was sewing a yukata, that she now left for a moment on her lap. "The sun will set soon."
"Oh, I will return then," the doctor reassured her. The Himura family watched her leave, and close the shoji noiselessly behind her graceful figure.
"She's becoming almost like someone of our family," Kenji mused aloud. Kaoru turned her glance towards him, surprised at his words.
"Megumi-dono…" Kenshin intervened. "She is very kind."
"I talked with her this morning and…"
As Kenji was in the middle of his sentence, his eyes suddenly widened, and he left the rest in the air. Kaoru frowned, and let her labour rest on her lap once more.
"What's the matter, Kenji?" she asked. "Anyone coming?"
"It's… It's…" The boy looked excited. In a quick motion, he jumped to his feet, and rushed towards the shoji. "It's Shishou! And he's not alone!"
"Hiko-san?" Kaoru was more puzzled than ever. "He's here?"
"Shishou," Kenshin muttered, lifting his glance as if to underline his son's words.
"Kaoru-san!" Megumi's voice came from outside. "You have visitors!"
Unable to wait a single second more, now with his mother at his heels, Kenji slid the shoji open. The spectacle that awaited them was to leave them breathless, and for a while they could do nothing but gape.
"But who is here, my stupid student in person! Have you lost your tongue, boy?" Hiko's unmistakeable voice scolded him. The old man was standing in the centre of the yard, with his white mantle and his prized jug of sake in his right hand. On one of his flanks, Megumi was shaking her head, and fanning herself with her unfinished book. And, on the other…
"Kaoru-san! Kenji-chan! Did we arrive in time for the party?"
Kaoru spent some moments thunderstruck at the vision, and then rushed forwards with her arms extended to meet her dear ninja friends from Kyoto. Misao and Aoshi were there, looking weary from their long travel.
"What… you heard…?"
"He told us," Aoshi informed, pointing at Hiko with his head. "And so we have come."
"So now it's time for a mushy reunion at the gates of the house," Hiko grumbled, walking towards the place where Kenji stood. "About time… Well, stupid student, where is your older counterpart?"
Slowly, Kenji's lips started to curve into a smile, and he pointed inside.
"It's wonderful," he grinned. "I… I didn't think you would bring enough sake!"
(to be continued)