A/N: Again, Thank you so much for everyone who reviewed. I thrive on your encouragement. Sorry that it took a while to get this chapter up, I've been busy working on my website and collecting all those screencaps of Soujiro & Okita and thumbnailing them. And working on that damn quiz. But here's the next chapter. It's not really action-packed, but I had to get it out of the way. As promised, it's a Soujiro POV...too bad I still have no idea where I'm going with this fanfic. I'm...gasp PLOTLESS! Ah, but hopefully that will change soon. Hopefully.... And I hope this isn't too long. Again, I tried to shorten it, but it just kept going.
The Flow of Bloodchapter four: growing tensions
Okita Souji, the man of legend.
Soujiro glanced at the man from the corner of his eye, careful not to garner his attention. The sun was high up in the sky, it was about five o'clock. The older man's hair shone a luscious reddish-brown color, and for a moment, the young man wondered what it would feel like to feel those shiny strands of brown between his fingers.
He quickly shook his head and brought his eyes to focus in front of him. Iie, he thought to himself. Don't think like that. That's wrong.
"What's the matter, Soujiro-san?"
Soujiro blinked and brought himself out of his mindset, turning to the older man with a bright grin on his face. "Nothing's the matter, Okita-sama, I was just thinking."
"Honto ni?" Okita answered, his mouth curved upward into a grin. To Soujiro, the man looked no older than he himself was. By this time, he must be at least thirty, the boy thought to himself. But the way he grinned and the way he carried himself somehow seemed to take away those years and make him seem like nothing more than a young man.
"Hai," Soujiro grinned. He felt himself tingle slightly at the older man's voice, and his captivating smile. His cheeks were the faintest shade of pink.
And then he recalled that kiss from the previous night. He had never been kissed before that, and he certainly had no idea that men could kiss other men. He had seen Shishio-san and Yumi-san kiss on plenty of occasions, but never two men. What did it mean? What was it supposed to mean when two people kissed eachother? Was the meaning any different if two men kissed eachother? He was so puzzled about it that he had completely frozen up, and he had noticed that he had made Okita quite uncomfortable by doing so. So much, that he felt rather guilty about it afterwards, and offered to take the older man with him on his journey out of Yamagata, for a while. Which probably was not one of his brightest ideas.
"So, Okita-sama," Soujiro tried to strike up a conversation. "I presume that those rumors you mentioned earlier refer to you?"
"Hai, Soujiro-san." Okita said bringing his voice down a little bit. "That man who came into my dojo last night..." He trailed off a little bit. "He...he seemed to hate me with some sort of a fierce passion. I don't understand why."
"Have you ever met him previously?" Soujiro asked, a smile still painted onto his face. "Have you ever done anything to offend him?"
"I don't think so, Soujiro-san." The older man said slowly. His smile slowly began to fade away into a look of deep thought. "I didn't see his face. But he seemed to be targeting me because I was a member of the Shinsengumi."
"Honto ni?" Soujiro cocked his head to the side, peering at Okita. "That was quite a long time ago, for him to still hold a grudge of some sort." He laughed.
Okita turned to look at him, his eyes shimmering a warm chocolate color. Soujiro found himself grinning for lack of better response. "That's what I thought. I hope that this man is just targetting me, and none of the other Shinsengumi members still alive." He fell into a deep frown. "I certainly do hope that is not the case."
Soujiro nodded. "What if there's more like him, Okita-sama? People holding a grudge against the Shinsengumi?" It sounded quite silly, as the Shinsengumi met their end a good many years ago, but the idea that people out there still hated them with a fervor was a possibility.
Okita's frown deepened, and he did not answer.
Soujiro quickly bowed, a smile still sticking to his face. "Gomen nasai! Gomen nasai! I didn't mean to burden you with my silly thoughts. Sumimasen!"
Okita turned to the boy, a small smile on his own face. "It's quite alright, Soujiro-san, for all we know, you could be right." His smile faded by an increment. "But I certainly hope not."
Soujiro fell silent. Well, his purpose certainly wasn't to get under the man's skin. He felt unnervingly small all of a sudden. Shifting uncomfortably, he turned to Okita, opening his mouth to make a comment on the weather. At the same time, he noticed that Okita had turned to him, his mouth open, about to say something as well. Soujiro quickly closed his own mouth, finding his face unusually hot. "Hai, Okita-sama, is there something you wanted to say?"
"Oh, what were you going to say?" The older man said, a smile dancing on his face.
"Onegai, Okita-sama, please grace me with what you had on your mind." Soujiro replied with his usual politeness.
"Oh. I was just going to comment on the weather." He grinned. "It's lovely today, isn't it?"
Soujiro simply stared at the man. The weather. That was exactly what he was going to talk about, and possibly the exact words he would have used. This shook the boy a bit. The similarities between himself and the man named Okita Souji were rather...frustrating, almost. "Hai, it is lovely," He stated. "Yamagata is very beautiful."
Okita nodded, his hair catching sunlight on different angles. "Speaking of which, Soujiro-san..." Okita said, his voice trailing off again. He looked ahead of him, and then back to Soujiro. "Did you have any place in mind to go to, exactly?"
"No, not really." Soujiro replied, with his everlasting grin. "Did you, Okita-sama?"
"Well, actually, I wanted to go to Kyoto."
Kyoto. Kyoto. Soujiro's mind froze up at the mention of that city. Kyoto. It held everything he had left behind, and everything he did not want to come back to. Not Kyoto.
"Is something the matter, Soujiro-san?"
Soujiro quickly snapped out of his state of mind, for the second time, and turned to the older man. "Is there a reason you want to go to Kyoto, Okita-sama?" He said, slowly.
"I wanted to meet with Saitou Hajime-san. Do you know him? He was the captain of the Third Unit..." Okita said, his voice, solemn.
"Hai, Okita-sama, I know him. I met him once, in Kyoto."
"You used to live in Kyoto?"
K'so. He had let it slip. "Well...for a time, hai." He replied evasively.
"I see." Okita gave Soujiro a penetrating look, one that seemed to read all of his thoughts in an instant. It made the boy very uncomfortable.
A silence passed between them for a long time.
"You know, Soujiro-san," Okita said, quietly, his voice still calm, "I heard of some interesting events that took place in Kyoto two years ago."
Soujiro grinned. "Honto ni?" He felt something cold inside of him.
"Hai. There seemed to be a group named the...what was it now?...the Juppongatana, that was it. They were led by a previously Imperialist man named Shishio Makoto, plotting against the government. It was said that he wanted to burn down the city of Kyoto. Do you know anything about this?"
Soujiro smiled, incredibly annoyed with this situation. Okita apparently was getting a hint on who exactly he was, which was something he did not like. He was trying to run away from that life. He was someone else now. He was just Seta Soujiro, not the Tenken.
"What was really interesting," Okita continued at Soujiro's silence. "Was that there was a young boy of eighteen, about, who was said to be the strongest of these ten swords. His name was supposed to be..." Okita paused for a moment, pretending to think. "Tenken no Soujiro."
Soujiro immediately dropped his smile.
"It was said that he always smiled, even when he murdered. It was said that he has no emotions--"
"That's not true." Soujiro said, quietly.
Okita turned to the younger boy, with a mixture of surprise and a cold indifference on his face. "Honto ni?"
"There's no need to pretend that you don't know who I am. Demo, Okita-sama, I am not the Tenken anymore. I am just Seta Soujiro, a humble wanderer. I have thrown away that life--"
"So you are Seta Soujiro." Okita said. He was not smiling. "My first assumption was correct."
"I told you, Okita-sama, I am not that person anymore." He felt his heart sting for a reason that he did not understand. "I do not have any negative intentions with you."
"If so, why didn't you tell me who you were before?"
"Why didn't you tell me who you were, before?"
A frigid silence passed between the two men. Soujiro felt incredibly uncomfortable, and he felt like smiling, but that would just rub in the fact that he was once the emotionless Tenken. He felt his heart hurting, but again, the reason was unknown to him.
"Okita-sama. I ask of you to look kindly upon me. I have sincerely changed my ways; I am no longer Tenken no Soujiro." The urge to smile overwhelmed him, but he clamped it down, and pulled on the most sincere look he could muster.
Okita simply grinned, but Soujiro could tell tell that it was not a true smile. "I believe you, Soujiro-san." Okita said, simply. But he didn't. It was too obvious to Soujiro that he didn't believe one word of it. He knew that from now on, the older man would keep an extremely close watch on him. He had lost his trust. And somehow, he felt that it put him down lower than if the older man would have just beaten him silly.