A leaf. Round and pointed on one side, it spiraled off into the warm autumn night, quickly followed by its florid brethren. It had been the night that changed her life around. She felt her heart beating like a wild horse as the fight continued. She saw the sword, as expected, blaze out of his chest. It was all because of her, she realized; she could have saved them all. She had failed. She fell to her knees, helpless and quivering. No… she had sobbed upon deaf ears. It was too late for her, as she saw the leaf's troubled face split with the crimson blade he now thrust toward her own. No…
It had begun so long before that, during the chaos of the Bakumatsu. She had known him as a child in the same village as she lived. Kyoto. The very city where she had seen her father arrested and shot for alcoholism before she was even old enough to realize it. The place she lived, the people she knew, when she had nothing left. Niwamoto Yuki. Misune Kesai. Seta Soujiro.
Five years since the first Kyoto fire. Another five without her parents, and ten years of her life to the day. She had lived up to her name ever since. Kumori. A shadow. Nothing more. It was that day she had met him. Strange. He hadn't seemed to mind her company. She had seen him struggle with a bale of rice as it had rolled off the path. He had hastily run to grab it back before his adoptive family noticed, and saw a solitary figure in tattered clothes sitting by the river, gazing into the water, messy clumps of dark brown hair strewn about an unseen face. A face hidden by a shadow.
He called to her. "Hello? Um, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to bother you…" She turned her head, and Soujiro saw the biggest pair of hazelgreen eyes he had ever seen, framed by disheveled, uncut bangs that her eyes seemed to shine right through. "Huh?" she said, and cleared her throat. Her voice was almost hoarse from lack of use. "Who are you?"
"Well… my name is Seta Soujiro. I live in the rice farm over there," He pointed with one hand, while running over to where the rice bale had fallen. "Well," he said, a smile spreading across his face for seemingly no reason, something Kumori would learn to expect in the days to come. "I told you my name. So… what's yours?"
"My name…" she said slowly, as if struggling to remember. "Kumori… Sumikaze Kumori," She blushed slightly, quickly realizing her mistake, but the boy only smiled; she took courage, and smiled back, though faintly.
"Sumikaze Kumori… Kumori-san, a shadow… funny, I don't see anything dark about you at all, Kumori-san."