WARNING: Spoilers! If you don't know who Kenji is, please read at your own risk!
WITH DUE CREDIT: This fic was loosely spun off from two fics - "Over the Sting" by sasori and "Chronicles of a Rurouni", one of my earlier fics.
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Yesterday's Shadow is Tomorrow's Twilight
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Chapter 23: Revelation
"Okon, Omasu!" Misao shouted into the steam once she pushed the kitchen
door aside. While waiting for the sound of their sandles to get louder, she
grabbed two aprons off the table on one side and handed one to Kenji, who accepted
it with distraught fear. Her elders soon appeared from the misted up kitchen,
and gasped at what they saw.
"If it isn't little Kenji!" Okon laughed sweetly and pat the boy on his head. "When did you come? You could have sent word first! Is Kaoru-san here with you?" She peered around the area.
"Long story, Okon," Misao grumbled, while waving a few tendrils of smoke out of her eyes. "What's up in the kitchen so far?" She wrinkled her nose when she smelled something peculiarly bad. "Ewwww, what are you guys cooking for dinner tonight?"
"Actually, that's just the fish going into a particular degree of being overcooked," Okon had the courtesy to sweatdrop, before dashing back into the mist to settle the fish. Omasu wiped her hands and smiled at the younger girl and Kenji.
"Okina's asked us to prepare a bigger serving for dinner tonight before he went out to see what the noise was all about," Omasu explained, "so we've been busy. Everything is more or less ready, though. We just need to see that the food is cooked right."
Misao barged into the mist, breezing past the taller ninja. "Gotcha, Omasu. Leave the rest to us, won't you? You could heat up Okina's bath so he can stop complaining about his old creaking bones in the evening later," she turned around to wink playfully.
"Misao..." Omasu was unsure of what to reply. Okon returned from squaring off with the burnt fish and wondered briefly about the situation at hand.
"Don't worry, we won't blow this place up," Misao reassured her elders, pushing Kenji further into the kitchen. "I promise! Now just go along! I'm going to try to teach Kenji how NOT to cook like Kaoru-san, and I'll need a lot of concentration for that!"
There were giggles from both Okon and Omasu, before some shuffling occurred, and finally, the quiet shutting of the kitchen door. Kenji gulped, just as Misao heaved a sigh. She whipped around in record time to stare at the boy seriously in the face, before grabbing a ladle and shoving it in his hands.
"Move over and stir the miso," she muttered, pointing downwards. For herself, she chose an exquisitely crafted ginzu knife and hovered over a tall stack of uncut vegetables. Kenji chose this time to peer over, from the corner of his eyes, at his aunt. He was rewarded with a not too kind looking glare, and quickly he found his eyes snapping around back where it should be looking. Mechanically, he lowered the ladle into the pot of soup and stirred gingerly, almost as if he was afraid Misao would pounce at him from the sidelines any time.
Misao had been a frequent visitor to the dojo from since Kenji could remember. She was bright and had an almost overwhelming character - part of what made her endearing despite her loud voice. The boy remembered when Kaoru left him in Misao's care when she needed to make a trip to visit Megumi along with Kenshin, and Kenji had never, ever gotten over the terror. Himura Kenji was distant and lofty to all who knew him, but if there was one person in the whole world he did not want to be with alone in a misty kitchen stirring miso and chopping vegetables - it was Makimachi Misao.
And at that particular train of thought, a loud hacking sound of a sharp knife plowing its way through leafy greens, became very apparent.
Kenji attempted to swallow the lump in his throat away.
"Kenji." The voice was curt. The boy immediately jumped and turned around to face his aunt.
"I'm stirring it! Really, I am!" He held the one hand he had free in a surrendering pose, while his other hand stirred the miso with faithful integrity. He noticed that Misao hadn't seemed interested at all in whether he was stirring the pot. She was staring at him - not glaring anymore, just staring, with a queer expression on her face. "Obasan?" He asked, mildly concerned. Although he was confident that nothing in the world could faze his aunt, he also knew that women tended to veer between temperaments as quickly as the east winds. Always better to be safe than sorry.
Finally, Misao sighed, and gathered the cut-up vegetables into a basket. "Have you any idea how worried Kaoru-san was?"
At the mention of his mother's name, Kenji's heart skipped a beat. He momentarily paused in his stirring, and he could feel his face hardening. "She wouldn't be," he callously snorted.
For a reply, Misao wisely chose silence. She observed the boy's expression shift from a stubborn, rebellious look, to that of a pained youth simply trying to find escape. Kenji continued stirring the miso wordlessly, lost in his own thoughts. Despite what the nature of their relationship appeared to be to the general onlooker, Misao's concern for the boy was second to nobody but his parents. Sensing something not quite right with Kenji, however, she spoke, a little more carefully this time, "I've received a letter from her with bits and pieces of information, so I don't know the full story. You'll tell me, won't you, Kenji?" She was almost murmuring her question. Her attention was apt on the vegetables before her.
"There's nothing much to tell you about," Kenji replied after a stoney silence. "I ran away from the dojo because I couldn't stand it anymore," he shrugged, still stirring, "not going back there anytime soon."
"Kenji..." Misao set the basket of vegetables aside and walked slowly towards the boy. "Do you have any idea what you're talking about?"
"I know, dammit!" The boy threw his free hand up in exasperation. He jerked to a stop suddenly when he remembered who it was he was talking to, but when he turned to gaze at Misao, instead of seeing prospective violent streaks, he saw her serious visage of true concern. So he frowned and continued, "I just couldn't... take it anymore, Obasan," the boy wrenched his eyes shut and shook his head, "it felt like... everybody was expecting me to do something... but I think I must have been the only one who didn't know what I was /supposed/ to do! Every day," Kenji breathed, "I'm walking in the shadow of my father. Yahiko drills me everyday with the Kasshin Ryuu... he /expects/ me to inherit the dojo because I'm /my father's son/! I couldn't even touch him with my shinai if my life depended on it, so why should I be inheriting the dojo?" Sighing again, he continued, "And that's not all! He tells me everything he knows about the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu... like I actually care, you know? They never say anything, but I know! They want me to be like my father! Fill the void he left when he passed away! Well, unfortunately for them," Kenji's grip on the ladle was whitening his knuckles and making his fist tremble, "I'm not!"
The only sounds that were audible thereafter were the sounds of the cackling fire, and of liquids boiling in their pots.
"Are you," Misao finally asked, quietly, "thinking too much about this?"
"How else was I supposed to think?" Kenji snapped unhappily. Noticing Misao's slight frown, however, he fumbled and quickly returned to staring at the miso he was stirring. "Sorry Obasan. I know you're good friends with my mother and Yahiko. But I like what I'm doing now, and I like my new friends. Please don't tell my mother that I'm in Kyoto."
"All right," the ninja girl had gone back to handling vegetables, "I won't."
This evoked a remarkable reaction in Kenji. His head snapped up to stare at his aunt with breakneck speed. Misao did not just agree to shield him, did she?
"Only," she was back to ripping up leafy greens at warp speed nine, "if you still feel the same way about your friends after this."
Caught off guard, Kenji was unable to respond properly.
Misao moved into the mist and proceeded to do something with the basket of vegetables she had with her, returning into Kenji's sight with an empty basket. Sighing, she asked, "You don't know who they are, do you?"
Again, Kenji was thrown off by Misao's words. "Soujirou and Enishi... ?" When he saw that Misao remained unresponsive, he further offered, "Two clueless wanderers under the oppressive hand of a cold-blooded police officer who doesn't pay them nearly enough allowance to pay for a broken cup?"
That did cause the ninja girl to look up from her chores for a while, with a half-curious, half-amused look gracing her features. Shaking her head, though, she said, "I didn't mean that."
"Then what did you mean?" Kenji was beyond confused now. "They're just a couple of clueless wanderers, any way I see it..."
"Try to remember, Kenji," Misao walked into the mist again, with another basket of raw food, "their names. Have you ever heard their names before, anytime else before you met them?"
The boy bit his lower lip and knitted his eyebrows together in fierce concentration. Now that Misao mentioned it, he did vaguely recall having a sense of deja vu when he first heard their names - but because more than one person could have the same name, he had not put much thought into it. Now if he could just remember where it was he had heard...
"Himura had this conversation with Yahiko before," Misao further tried to spur the boy's memories on, as she returned from the misty area, "and it began with 'Tenken'."
Kenji recalled that Enishi always referred to Soujirou as 'Tenken', or 'the Tenken'. But other than that, he could not place his finger on the strange sense of familiarity the name otherwise provided.
"Remember that night some years back before Himura..." Misao hesitated slightly, "... went away? I was there with you too, and we were walking along the corridor to get back to our respective rooms when we heard Kenshin and Yahiko talking from within one of the rooms."
"'Tenken...'" Kenji could faintly remember that night - he was always curious about the things his father and Yahiko talked about in secrecy, since they seemed to be much more interesting than his life in the peaceful dojo. Still, he was unable to remember what exactly had transpired that night while he stood quietly outside the room, listening in on the conversation until Misao finally shooed him back to his own room proper. "... hmmmm..."
"'Tenken no Soujirou,'" Misao abruptly cut his thoughts short by iterating with a firm voice the beginning of the conversation that night, "'appears to be under the administrations of Saitou Hajime as an underground contact nowadays.'"
The boy started at the words. He had definitely heard those words before, in the same entirety. And, just as Misao had said, he had heard it that night, a long time ago, when his father was still around - before he went away.
And never came back again.
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"Tenken no Soujirou appears to be under the administrations of Saitou Hajime
as an underground contact nowadays."
Kenji stopped short of walking past the room where he heard Yahiko's brusque voice.
He heard a slight chuckle after that statement, which he recognised to be his father's. Curiosity getting the better of him, he retreated and hid his shadows from being seen by leaning close to the shouji of the empty room prior to it. He did not notice that he had bumped into Misao, who had been walking along behind him, but as it was, Misao blinked and followed along with the boy, wondering what he could possibly be up to.
"This isn't funny, Kenshin," Yahiko's tone, however, continued to be grave. "You know how powerful the Tenken is. What if that Saitou is up to no good?"
"Yahiko," Kenshin's soft, commanding voice was heard next, "You should know by now that Saitou's philosophy is very straight-forward. If he was truly up to no good, he would have stopped being a policeman, a long time ago."
"But still!"
"I know," the reply was quiet, "something else must be going on for him to require the assistance of such a powerful underground contact..."
Silence.
"What are you going to do about it, Kenshin?"
"..." Kenshin kept his peace to perhaps consider the possibilities. "There is nothing much we can do about it, Yahiko," his smile was evident in his tone, "don't forget - we have other duties and obligations. There is only this much you can do to help. Anymore than that, and you might not be able to be of help at all."
There was a sound of someone rising to his feet, and Kenji backed further into the wall behind him, as if believing that it would make him invisible. The sound of footsteps stopped immediately, however, when Yahiko spoke up again.
"Not even if Yukishiro Enishi is involved as well?"
An immediate hush took over. Misao took this pause to quickly grab Kenji by his shoulders and push him past the room as quietly as she could.
"Enishi... ?" Was the last thing Kenji heard his father say, before he and Misao took the turn around the corridor towards the sleeping rooms.
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"Remember I explained to you afterwards," Misao was saying while lifting
the lid of the rice pot to check if the rice was done, "that Tenken no
Soujirou and Yukishiro Enishi were both very, very dangerous outlaws?"
"Aa," Kenji mumbled something in agreement.
"They're not as clueless as they appear..." Misao glanced over at Kenji while she said this, "... but I'm sure you already know that."
"Yeah," the boy stopped stirring the miso and stared at the bubbles that began to form.
"So if you think you can continue hanging out with them without getting into any kind of serious trouble," the ninja girl continued, slightly confused that Kenji was not as taken aback as she thought he would be, "then you'd better think again."
"Umhm," his answer was non-commital.
"Are you listening to me at all, Kenji..."
"Obasan," Kenji cut his aunt short. There was a certain tone of determined staunchness in the quality of his voice as he continued, "do you remember what I said to you after that?"
Now, Misao was caught. Frankly, she could not really recall, because all her memories of that particular period were flooded with those of her trying to convince Kenji that those were bad people and should never be mentioned again - seeing how Kenji was a curious lad then. She stared at Kenji haplessly.
Kenji glanced at her from the corner of his eyes and smiled secretively.
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"But Obasan! How do you know if that Tenken guy and the other one... How
do you know if they're dangerous or not?" The young Kenji asked Misao as
they trudged along the corridor after accidentally eavesdropping on Kenshin
and Yahiko's conversation. "Have you met them before?"
They arrived at Kenji's room first, so Kenji stopped while Misao continued walking. She turned around quickly, however, and put her hands on his shoulders, shaking him slightly.
"I have, Kenji," the girl whispered, "and if I tell you they're powerful, dangerous people, will you believe me and promise me not to ask or think about this matter anymore?"
"If you say they're powerful," the adolescent's eyes were wide with unbridled curiosity, "then it must be true. Because you're powerful too!"
"But of course!" Misao straightened and swiped at her hair, striking a pose. "You're talking about Makimachi Misao here, ninja extraordinaire..."
"But I don't know if I can believe you if you say they're dangerous, since you're pretty dangerous yourself, and the equation just doesn't work the same way..." Immediately Kenji stopped, realizing that Misao was throwing him a glare. "Nothing! I didn't say anything at all!!"
"Kenji..." Misao's voice turned chiding, "I know you've always been interested about your father's past, but really. There are some things better left unknown."
The boy looked down on the floor and shifted his weight around unhappily. "Everybody says that, Obasan," he mumbled, "but really. Seriously," he looked up again and stared at Misao with doubtful, questioning eyes, "do you really believe in that?"
Stunned by the boy's question, Misao leant back slightly and blinked.
"I don't believe that, by deliberately not knowing something, problems can be solved," Kenji continued, sliding the door to his room open. "Good night, Obasan."
"Kenji!" Misao raised her voice slightly. "We're talking about people who were enemies of your father here! Those who killed without batting an eyelid!"
The boy had already stepped into his room, and stopped just one step short of closing the door entirely. His countenance failed to reveal what he was really thinking about, but he smiled thinly when he replied.
"Really? That's nice. Maybe I can be good friends with them."
"What are you talking about?!" Misao gasped, her hushed disbelief evident in her entire mannerism.
"Sometimes," the look in Kenji's eye became downcast, "I feel like I'm my father's enemy too."
The door slid quietly shut.
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The kitchen was silent; void of any sort of indication that there were humans
inside. It was not until Misao sighed softly that the tension began to ease,
slightly.
"I don't mean to say that they were wicked or anything," the ninja shook her head and got back to chopping vegetables. "But they /are/ dangerous. They /have/ killed a lot of people. And they /will/ do it again. That much you should know, from hanging out with them all this time..." She sneaked a glance at the stolid boy. "That's why..."
"Does it matter?"
"... you shouldn't be... what?" Misao blinked in confusion at the younger person.
"Does it matter," Kenji repeated, "what someone has done in his past? Is the past something we use to determine how someone should be treated now?"
He used the period of silence which instantaneously occurred, to take the lid of the pot from it's position on the floor, using it to cover the pot. "I think, Obasan," he continued, "that as much as the past can shape your character, nobody remains the same yesterday and tomorrow. That's also why," the boy found himself sighing, "my father... he had a second chance... to live a normal life again, even though he was an assassin, wasn't it? Why should anybody else be any different?"
Putting the ladle aside, Kenji turned to face his aunt fully. "People will always have something ugly they want to hide - a shady past, a blotched reputation, an unclean record... - but I think, these things shouldn't matter." He grinned. "Everybody should stand based on their own present merits, and not that of the past, don't you think so?"
"Kenji..." Misao found her voice after her long phase of muteness. She walked up to the boy, who instinctively took a step back but was stopped by her hand coming down suddenly on his head. "... don't think I can't tell you're trying to edge closer to the door so you can get out of here!" She pulled the half-whining boy deeper into the kitchen and pointed at a large basin of water, filled to the brim with plates and bowls of all sizes. "We're not done in the kitchen yet! Wash those up and dry them before dinner, you hear?"
"Yes, Obasan..." Kenji sat mournfully in front of the basin and stared at the mountainous task before him.
"And Kenji?" The boy jerked his head up when his aunt addressed him again, and caught sight of her throwing a furtive wink in his direction. "You've grown up."
The boy's grinned from ear to ear. "People change!"
Misao simply smiled in response, and before long, Kenji was slogging hard over the utensils. When she was certain that the boy wouldn't try to run away behind her back again, the ninja girl turned around and stared purposefully at a random direction.
/I know you feel the same way too, Aoshi-sama...
/That's why I believe, always, that you have a good reason for choosing to do what you're doing.../
... to be continued
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9/11/03
xd@tougenkyou.net
A/N
I noticed after a while that Aoshi seems to be filling out a bad guy's role
in the story. Rest assured that he is not! *_*x I personally think that, despite
his otherwise surprisingly strong emotions, Aoshi is actually a man of great
foresight, and of course, mystery. I hope to explain everything by the next
few chapters. Please stay with me! And remember, Aoshi is NOT the bad guy! :D
And... heeey! Espi, where're you going with the cookies?! XD
At least Zeromaru's still holding on to them... hey, everybody,
get yours from Zero! Remember, it's sasori and... oh, don't
forget Silver Nightingale! She's given a lot of support! :D
And hi Fyyrrose! Pleased to finally meet you! :D Heard from
EEevee that you're a riot. XD Welcome aboard. :D Don't
worry, April-san, Shahrezad1, I think Soujirou's
new clothes will not be OOC at all. :D It's not fuscia, though. XD XD XD Thanks
for reading, dawn! *shakes hand* For all of you worried
about Kenji / his corpse, don't! :D Misao's not /that/ mean, ya know!
XD Of course I remember you, Chibi-chan! :D Glad you got an
a/c already! :O But no fics! Publish soon, okay? :D Hee hee, well jbramx2,
Enishi and Misao are going to have quite a bit of spats since they /are/ awfully
stubborn people. Nothing romantic though. -_-x I can't write romance at all.
Glad you're still with us, EK! *glomp* and... *glomp* Yes April-san,
you get another cookie! *points to Zeromaru* Am happy you liked
Okina's portrayal took, leblephenix!