Having never experienced such an emotion, Rin was unsure of how to tell if she was really in love. Were the feelings she felt towards Hatsuharu the same ones that Tohru and Hatori felt towards each other, or were they like the ones Kyou felt towards his mystery lady? Whomever that person was, she envied them just a little bit being the object of Kyou's affection. A man like Haru was only able to express his affections physically, and she guessed, due to the lifestyle she had chosen, she shouldn't expect anything more.
Her benefactor Ayame had recognized her beauty long before she had, while she, Tohru and Momiji had still been in school. She had taken his admiration of her as a compliment, considering that the well known tailor was renowned for his talent for picking the most beautiful women for his dance troupe. When he had asked her to join, she had not hesitated, desperately wanting to feel as glamorous and gorgeous as his other beauties.
She could still remember how exciting it had been and still was whenever he would design a dress especially for her and how it felt being the center of Ayame's attentions. The handsome tailor doted on his girls as much as he did Tohru, basking in their affections at the same time.
Yet somehow he could not give her what she most wanted, and had been searching for through all the men she had spent time with over the years. At one time, she'd considered accepting Ayame's proposals of marriage, but she was far too young to marry him and did not see herself as worthy to be a stepparent to Tohru since they were the same age.
She would admit to caring very much for the charismatic older man, but she needed someone whose personality was closer to hers, someone who lived a little on the edge and wasn't afraid of what anybody thought of them, just like Hatsuharu...
She had to admit the two of them together sounded ideal, even if it wasn't realistic. The only time he really showed interest in her was when she was on the dance floor or when they were alone together. Even as embarrassed as she would get sometimes when he would make his risqué requests in the saloon, he was a thoughtful and patient lover behind closed doors.
She always made it worth his while to be the man she chose to spend time with, his sinfully hot body always enflaming hers whenever they would touch or kiss.
She often found herself wondering too if Tohru and her fiancée experienced such feelings themselves. Having been one of Tohru's closest friends all through school, it seemed unlikely that this was so, considering how much she herself had been changed by the experience.
Tohru was still very innocent and naive about many things and she rarely ever saw the two of them together. It was hard for her and Tohru to talk nowadays due to their busy schedules, but once Tohru had matured, her attentions had been pretty much captured by her male admirers in town. They were both very popular in town for their own very different reasons, and Rin sighed as she sat back in her dressing room chair backstage at the saloon in the dark.
Rin only jumped slightly as she felt a pair of hands slide across the back of her shoulders, not having to turn her head back to know exactly who it was touching her.
"Haru...this is an unexpected surprise." she said.
She knew that he had smiled even without having to see his face.
"You feel tense. You have something on your mind?" he asked her.
She sighed, hoping he would keep going with his impromptu massage. "Nothing of any importance." she replied.
He chuckled, coming around from behind her chair to kneel before her. She smiled upon seeing his face, looking as handsome as he always did. She reached out to brush her fingers across the soft hair at the nape of his neck tentively, inhaling softly when he nuzzled her wrist affectionately.
"I think I know what you were thinking about, and if I'm right, then it was definitely important, at least to me it was." he told her.
Before she could respond, he raised up on his knees to cup her face in his hands before pressing his lips firmly against hers.
This kiss somehow felt different from the others they had shared in the past, as if he were trying to convey his unspoken feelings for her in the slow, passionate kiss they shared. As much as she had bemoaned the lack of an emotional connection between them, her womanly desires for him sparked when he stroked his tongue inside her mouth, realizing now that her thoughts of him had indeed been just as important as the ones he was expressing to her now through his steamy, erotic passionate kiss...
"Excuse me, what did you say your name was again?" the receptionist asked the slightly ailing orange haired man waiting in the waiting room.
"My name is Kyou." he told her.
The receptionist blushed. "I'm sorry. It's my first day here. The doctor will see you now if you're ready. Do you need some help coming back?" she asked.
Kyou winced as he used the arms of the office chair to ease himself up onto his feet, his damned injury picking the worse times to act up on him.
"No. I can make it on my own." he told her defiantly.
Kyou gritted his teeth angrily as he slowly made his way back where the doctor was waiting to see him, cursing the fates that had kept him from seeing Tohru that afternoon at the saloon.
He wanted to apologize for his behavior, even though he was sure she wouldn't accept his words. He knew now he had crossed a line with her, and he respected the young teen too much to be disrespectful. For ten years, he had been trying to mend his ways after the near disaster he had almost made of his life as a wanted outlaw.
Thanks to the ridiculous nickname he had been given back then, it was easy for him to keep a low profile just in case. There were few besides his victims and his former partners that knew him as the Crimson Haired Bandit and he aimed to keep it that way.
He knew his telltale limp was one of the things his enemies would zero in on in their search for him, and he tried his best whenever it would get really bad to stay in hiding.
Fortunately for him, he only committed one heinous crime in this small town, one that wasn't even his own fault, and it seemed the only townspeople that remembered him was their sheriff Yuki.
Kyou had always despised Yuki, the sullen, weak cousin of his greatest rival. The quiet teen with the remorseful violet eyes and pretty boy looks had always been more of a burden to them than anything, only really useful as a lookout or to distract the law as he and Hatsuharu made their getaways.
He almost snickered when he remembered how they wouldn't fairly split the money between them, him and Hatsuharu telling Yuki that he was less deserving than they were, even if he had come out worse for the wear from a heist.
He knew that Haru had secretly resented him for cruelly teasing his weak cousin and Haru would always treat Yuki's wounds with extra care out of gratitude to him. How Yuki had managed to become a law officer was baffling, but it did seem like the boy he had known was a much stronger person now, even if he was sure he wouldn't be able to hold his own against Kyou.
It seemed like it was taking forever to make his way into the doctor's office, and it gave Kyou too much time to think about unplesantries, like his past as an outlaw.
Remembering Yuki's warnings about Hatsuharu showing up in town to get his revenge, he knew that this mild inconvience was probably for the best. Yet at times like this, the nightmares that sometimes plagued him at night would make themselves known during the day.
He cried out loud as his injured leg roared in disagreement at his movements, reminding him of when that fiery pain had first inflicted itself upon him. When he had fallen to the ground that day with the gun in his hand, his first and only concern had been the horrified eyes of the young girl whose parents Hatsuharu had killed.
It was the last time in his life that anyone had ever looked at him with such confusion that he had almost taken his own life just to avoid her eyes. The only thing that had saved him was his desire not to blamed for the crime, and to take the life of their true murderer.
Neither one had happened within the ten years since then, his outlaw name tarnished with six years of victimless crime until he had become infamous for his one and only double murder, and his search for Hatsuharu...well, he had avoided the man just as much as he had tried to find him to even the score.
He wondered what had happened to the young girl he had almost befriended that day. He could still remember her wide, innocent eyes and wavy black hair that brushed against her shoulders. Even then she had been a very pretty little girl...he imagined that she was probably devastingly beautiful by now, even if she was a little emotionally scarred.
He knew all about the heartache of an absent parent, and an innocent soul torn from her parents at such a young age...she couldn't have possibly survived such a thing without a few scars.
Did she still live here in town, he wondered, or had she moved away a long time ago? Maybe he had already met her during his time there, and neither of them had known whom the other was...but that couldn't be possible.
The only person in town that even bore a faint resemblance to that girl he had known was the syrupy sweet barmaid of the Rose Saloon with the soulful, wide eyes and long, wavy black hair that rested gracefully against her back...no, it couldn't be, he thought with a barely muffled gasp.
Before he could contemplate this thought further, his attention was brought back to the present by the doctor assisting him onto a nearby exam table.
"Good afternoon. My name is Hatori. I'll be your doctor today. Just try to relax and we'll see what we can do about this injury of yours, alright?" Hatori told him in a calming voice.
"So, he did go to see Hatori after all?" Tohru asked Momiji.
The blonde teen nodded as Shigure prepared them both a drink as they took a break from decorating the saloon.
"Yes. Hatori is the best doctor in town, after all. I'm sure that whatever is causing his limp will be much better after their visit." he reassured her.
Tohru nodded, understanding completely. This did not keep her from worrying about the mysterious drifter with orange hair though. As angry as she was at him and at herself for allowing him to kiss her the other night, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him.
He had nearly fallen into her arms this morning when he had come down from his room, trying to act as though the pain he felt was a normal occurrence. He didn't fool her though. She had seen him barely limping about since he had arrived, and she supposed that it was only once in a blue moon that it really bothered him like it had today.
When she had caught him by the shoulders when he had nearly tumbled down the stairs, their eyes had met and she had seen a look of regret there that she couldn't understand the reason for. It probably could have been many things, like their kiss, his almost ploughing into her, regret for being thought of as weak because of his injury...the reasons baffled her.
The only other person she had met in her life that had a reason to have such a terrible limp had been the Crimson Haired Bandit. Her memory was a little fuzzy about what happened that day, but it had been easy to figure out that the bullet that had taken her parents' lives had also managed to pierce the outlaw's knee, his red blood staining the pants he wore to cover the wound. She had been too young to do anything more than weep helplessly, and she still remembered the Bandit's last words to her in a voice that still echoed familiar...I'm sorry...
"Tohru, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?" Momiji asked her.
She hadn't even realized that she had gotten woozy from remembering that day until she saw Ayame and Shigure run to her side when she had lurched forward.
Momiji draped his arms around her shoulders with one arm tightly around her waist. "I'll take her upstairs so she can get some rest before tomorrow night's festivities. I'm sure Hatori would worry otherwise." he told the others.
Ayame nodded in agreement.
"You do that, and I'll call Hatori at the clinic. He should do his duty to watching over her well being anyway. Thank you, Momiji. Tohru and I appreciate your friendship." Ayame told him.
Momiji smiled. "I love her, Ayame. That's what you do for someone you love." he replied.
Shigure and Ayame watched in concern as Tohru let out a squeak from Momiji picking her up into his arms to take her upstairs easier. The two men trusted her best friend completely, even if they were worried about her.
Once upstairs, Momiji pulled back the blankets on her bed, easing her between them and covering her with them. She opened her eyes to look at him as he knelt beside her bed, brushing her hair away from her face soothingly.
"Thank you, Momiji. I hope you know I love you too." she told him.
He smiled as he kissed her forehead tenderly. "I know. You're everything to me, Tohru...just promise me the first dace tomorrow night and we can call it even." he said.
She smiled back. "That's a promise." she said.
While he considered her a worthwhile distraction, Hatsuharu's involvement with the ever charming Rin was still a distraction. The good part about his dalliance with her, however, was that it gave him plenty of time to formulate scenarios in which he would enact his revenge.
He gained almost sadistic pleasure from these thoughts, wondering if it would be better to take revenge on Kyou by his own hand or by allowing him to be exposed to the town for who he was.
Both concepts held about the same appeal. If he were to do it himself, he had several methods he could employ, including taking Kyou prisoner and torturing him to death slowly or ending it quickly with some sort of weapon.
Those methods would be much kinder than anything the townspeople would inflict upon him once they found out who he was. Haru snickered when he considered the public's outrage, gunning the outlaw down in a shower of bullets, or being arrested and executed for his crimes.
It would be too easy to reveal all of Kyou's secrets since he was aware of things that only a choice few knew in this town. Kyou was the Crimson Haired Bandit and that no one connected to the orange haired drifter to his outlaw past.
He also knew that the young barmaid Tohru was the grown daughter of the couple he had taken the lives of ten years before. It was the incident that had caused her to be the one the town favored, the orphaned victim of the Crimson Haired Bandit.
He knew for a fact that Kyou was in town, thanks to Rin tipping him off about taking a job as the saloon's bouncer and that he had actually seen his enemy that morning as he had stumbled down the saloon stairs into Tohru's arms.
It did not surprise him in the least to see the connection the pair had with each other, considering the circumstances that would eventually make them enemies. Even a sweet, trusting girl like Tohru would be left reeling when she found out who the disabled orange haired drifter really was.
Haru knew he could bide his time and consider scenarios to his heart's content until the time came to strike, depending on the choices that Kyou made during his stay, his own preoccupation with the dancer Rin, or however his emotions happened to lie at any given moment about the wretched shared past that he couldn't manage to forget...
"Well, I'm going to tell you this, which I'm sure you've heard a million times, it looks like a very old bullet wound that you seem to have taken very good care of over the years. Judging by the extent of the injury, I'd say that you're lucky to be able to walk at all." Hatori commented.
Kyou sighed. "Yes. It's only when it really flares up that it reminds me of a past I can't forget." he told him.
"I hear that a lot from my patients, so you can trust me not to talk to anyone about your condition. It's hard enough to survive out there even without a disability." Hatori told him.
Kyou nodded, understanding completely. He and the doctor Hatori, a young man with a calm, serious voice and short dark hair, had only talked for a short time, yet seemed to understand each other completely.
He guessed that maybe Hatori had once had a troubled past before getting involved in medicine, but he did not press him for information. Hatori had granted him the same honor, concerned slightly about the severity of the injury, but respecting his need for privacy. This alone made Kyou respect the man, making him an easy choice to the continuing care of his limp.
"You're free to leave whenever you desire..." Hatori began to say to Kyou.
Both of their heads turned as there was a knock on the clinic door. "Excuse me, doctor. There's a phone call for you." she told him.
Hatori smiled. "Thank you. I'll take that in here." he replied.
"Good afternoon, Hatori. I'm sorry if I interrupted you during a visit with one of your patients." Ayame told him.
"Not at all. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. What might I do for you?" he asked him.
"I was just calling to inform you that my lovely Tohru has taken ill this afternoon. Momiji told me it was because of her remembrances of that terrible day, poor thing. I'm sure it won't affect her attendance at tomorrow night's dance, but you may want to pay her a visit as soon as you can." Ayame said.
"Yes, of course! I'll be there as soon as I close up shop for the day...thank you for calling me, Ayame." he said, hanging up.
Kyou winced as he moved down off the examination table, studying Hatori more than he was the prescription he had handed him. "I'll take it that wasn't good news?" he asked.
Hatori sighed. "I guess it's your business as well since I took the call before I ended our visit...no, my fiancée Tohru has taken ill this afternoon. It doesn't happen very often, thank goodness, only when she remembers about ten years ago." Hatori told him.
Kyou winced again as his knee jerked involuntarily. "Ten years ago?" he asked.
"I'm surprised you haven't heard. I wasn't here at the time myself, but when Tohru was eight years old, her parents were killed by the Crimson Haired Bandit. It was very traumatic for her and she still has problems dealing with it to this day...oh Kyou, I'm afraid your knee has started bleeding." Hatori told him.
Kyou looked down at his blood soaked knee, obviously his body's reaction to the news he had just received. Gods, he shouted internally, she was the one! The adopted daughter of the man that had given him a chance as a bouncer at his saloon, the adorable little girl he had wanted to avenge for ten years...beautiful, sweet Tohru was the victim of his rival Haru's brutal attack!
Bloodlust and anger coursed through his veins even as it felt as though the pain would never cease in the wound that he had been inflicted with at the same time.
Her barely heard Hatori's instructions to accompany his nurse to clean up his bleeding knee, so she could bandage him up and send him on his way with a pair of borrowed crutches. The last thing on his mind as he passed out from overexerhition was concern for Tohru...