DISCLAIMER: All copyrighted characters belong to their respective
owners. No money is being made out of this fanwork. Please do not
distribute without permission.
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.
------------------------------------------
Yesterday's Shadow is Tomorrow's Twilight
------------------------------------------
Chapter 30: Heart To Heart
Kenji had always had an affinity with rooftops - he mused silently to himself as he stared wordlessly into the inky-black skies, dotted with clear, sparkling stars. Or at least, that was what Yahiko kept telling him. It seems like when Kenji was still a toddler, he would climb rooftops of houses and stayed there for hours until someone finally noticed either that he was missing or that there was a strange crying sound coming from above their ceilings. It was not a kind of childhood he thought he should be proud of having, or thinking about, but somehow it warmed his heart slightly to imagine the reactions of the people who saw a little toddler sitting atop a roof. Unconsciously, he chuckled to himself.
"Himura-san..." the soft, ghostly voice of Soujirou shook him from his train of thought. He turned around to stare questioningly at the furtive wanderer, who was visible only by the head and a few fingers on the roof tiles.
"What?" Kenji snapped, still sore over the events of the previous few days. Soujirou, however, remained undaunted.
"Have you seen Yukishiro-san?" His question was serious and taut, and he was not wearing a smile on his face. Kenji shrank backwards slightly, wondering if Soujirou had missed his medication and whether if that was life-threatening to innocent passers-by like himself. He shook his head as a negative indication, and the slight sparkle of hope in Soujirou's eyes were snuffed out. "Oh," he muttered. "Thank you."
And with a slight whooshing sound, he slipped away from sight.
Before Kenji could even wonder what in the world had just happened, a dark shadow loomed over him from behind. He tensed, then felt a hand clasp over his mouth tightly. Too shocked to respond for the first few seconds, he eventually blinked and started to struggle. If any spy or crook thought he could cross Himura Kenji's path and get away with it, then he was in for some kickass biting!
"Shut up and stop struggling you little nimwit!" The harsh, whispering voice that belonged to the 'crook,' however, was anything but unfamiliar. "And stop trying to bite me! Just keep quiet!"
Kenji quietened down and stayed still as commanded, wondering what Enishi was up to. Before long, the white-haired man gave a low sigh of relief and released the boy from captivity, standing up and looking all over the area beneath him. Satisfied with his conclusion - whatever it had been, he settled down quietly beside Kenji.
"Stop staring at me like that," Enishi frowned and warned the boy. "I'm just sitting on the roof. I'm not doing anything illegal, all right?"
"What did you do to Soujirou?" Kenji shot back, not wanting to hear excuses. "He looked seriously... serious. When he asked for you just now."
"Don't worry about the Tenken," Enishi waved it off. "He's just angry I took the shinai your mother gave him and gave it to the weasel girl."
The redhead's eyes widened with disbelief. "Why did you do that for?! That stick of bamboo is his /life/! You shouldn't have-... ... wait. My mother. My mother gave him that shinai." The boy deadpanned the last few sentences the way Enishi had, narrowing his eyes at the older person. "... really?"
Instead of being offended, Enishi just stared at the boy. "The weasel said she knew someone who could fix that useless piece of junk, so I thought I'd be nice and do the Tenken a favour. I didn't think he'd take it /that/ seriously. As for what went on between your parents and that over-sensitive baby, you'd best be asking either one of them. /I/ sure as anything don't have the full details." He snorted.
An uncomfortable silence followed.
Kenji continued staring at the night skies, his unreadable facade betrayed only by the grim line he held his lips in, as if he was having a serious internal debate. Enishi, on the other hand, donned a completely oblivious expression. In truth, he was dying to get away. But he feared the wrath he had to face if Soujirou managed to get his hands on him. Between waiting out the dawn with a moody teenager and having to constantly escape from one of the most dangerous man in Japan, he gladly settled for the former...
"You knew him, didn't you."
... and suddenly the former didn't seem quite so much better than the latter anymore. Enishi sighed.
"If I were a smartass I'd ask you who the hell you're talking about," the ex-mafia boss rolled his eyes. "But I'll leave the tomfoolery for the Tenken. You're right. I did know him. Himura Kenshin." The white-haired man stretched, then laid down on his back against the tiles of the roof. "The feared Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu - a master of his art, disappeared after Meiji was founded." He paused. "And a pathetic man with a pathetic personality to boot. Pah."
Kenji's interest was peaked. He had never heard anyone badmouthing his father before. "What do you mean?" He asked innocently.
The older person gave him a scrutinizing glare. "I'm warning you," he began, slowly, "that whatever I'm going to say about your stupid father is not going to be pleasant. Nor is it going to be sugarcoated. I speak my mind and I'm not afraid of telling you things the way I see it. Do you really need my opinion of that man when you have a lot of other better choices out there?"
The muscles in Kenji's face tightened, and he felt a roaring flame of challenge raise up within his heart. "I don't care what you say about him," Kenji rebutted stubbornly. "It's not going to change /my/ opinion anyway."
The silence was brief, but urgent. After a while, with slight impatience, Kenji turned to stare unhappily at Enishi.
"Well?" He prompted.
"Well what?" Enishi snorted. "What's there to talk about? That man was a jerk of the highest order! He took my sister away from me and made my life a living hell! I've been plotting for decades what's the best way to skin him alive. Too bad he died before getting to try them out, hah!"
Kenji's mind, however, was focused on something else Enishi had said. "Your... your sister?! My mother was... was your sister??!" There was a look of pure disbelief and agony on the little Himura's face. He had something else to say in continuation, but no noise came out of his moving lips. Enishi then whipped around and pinned at the younger person with a scorching glare.
"Watch your words, bumbling idiot! And my sister died a long time before your father even met your mother." There was a hidden spark buried beneath Enishi's eyes as he continued quietly, "He killed her." Kenji did not fail to notice the wistful tone behind his words. "She was the only thing that mattered to me... the only person I was living for..."
Unsure of what he should say in reply, the young boy blabbered the first thing that came to his mind.
"That's /some/ sister complex."
It was only a second later that Kenji realised what he had just uttered, and he clapped one hand over his mouth in belated dismayal. Fearing for the worse, he turned around and sneaked a glance at Enishi from the corner of his eyes, noticing with consolation that the white-haired man had no apparent interest in strangling the life out of him there and then. Instead, his eyes were glossed over with thought and he was staring out at nothing in particular. The boy lowered his hand and blinked. Enishi brooded on an hourly basis, but it was hardly every day he saw him this pensive. Concluding that it was probably fine to push the issue, he added, "So you admit to having a sister complex?"
This time, Enishi did turn around to narrow his eyes at the young boy, although there was no malicious intent in his stare. "I heard you the first time, boy. I do /not/ have a sister complex. I just don't bother to react anymore because Soujirou's been taunting me with it everyday for the past few years of my life." He harrumphed and glanced back up at the stars. "Not like he had very healthy hobbies in the past himself."
A pause.
"... so, you knew my father through your sister..."
"I knew your father through a lot of people, boy," Enishi shook his head. "The legendary hitokiri who spilled more blood than he saved - a self-righteous little man who disappeared into the shadows of the new era after his dirty job was done. Your father wasn't always very popular, mind you. To me, even now, he's still the worst kind of jerk to have ever walked Japan." He sighed. "So stop beating around the bush already. What do you really want to know? You're not expecting me to tell you my personal opinion of a man you've already condemned just so that you can condemn him further, are you?"
There was something in the sharp, straightforward way Enishi had spoken those words that struck a real chord in Kenji's heart. All his life he had tried to be spiteful and bitter, just so that the people around him could hate him, be angry with him, and give him a reason to run away from his problems.
But the more he was bitter, the more they got careful with his words. Besides Yahiko, who was angry all the time anyway, Kenji found himself more and more disgusted with how the others in the family tried to act like they were concerned. The way he saw it, they were never concerned. They merely saw his father in him. And the more he thought about it, the more callous and inosolent he became.
Nobody understood how he felt
And looking at it in a certain manner, it was true.
It had been a long time since someone asked him bluntly to 'get to the point.'
"I just wanted to hear..." Kenji began uneasily, unsure of what to say to this man that would convey his real thoughts without sounding too contrived. "... about him. That man they call my father. Hear an opinion about him that isn't sugar-coated with with romantic details for once. I want to hear something objective for once - and not about someone who sounds so grand, so noble, and so good that he cannto be the same father I've known all my life."
"Well he was a downright jerk anyway I see it," Enishi offered as an immediate response, sitting straight and crossing his arms. "I'm not surprised he had problems with his family. He always had high and mighty goals - goals that one man alone cannot achieve by himself. And he knew that. But still he had this 'i must at least try!' concept embedded deep into his psyche. He thought it was ideal. I thought it was stupid. And the worst part about it was," Enishi breathed, "that he actually /expected/ his family to understand."
Beside him, Kenji's muscles tensed involuntarily, but he cocked his ears and listened on, fully fascinated.
"Himura Kenshin was a very private, secretive man," Enishi mumbled. "If he had something to keep from you, you wouldn't find out until you threatened to kill someone in front of him. Even then he would just only reveal partial information. He's the worst kind of targets you can have to spy on." His shoulders shrugged slightly, as if in remembrance of something from a time long ago. "He brought that secretivity into his marriage, I'm assuming. Because old habits just die hard."
"What has that got to do with his marriage life anyway?" Kenji frowned.
Shaking his head, Enishi looked semi-accusingly at the boy. "Can't you see? You can't commit yourself to someone else if you're going to keep your life shrouded in secrecy. That person has to at least know something about you. That was essentially what was wrong with that man. It was a good thing your mother understood him without having to ask too many questions. I doubt if you would have even been born at the rate he was going."
"..." Kenji blinked into the starry distance. "... you know pretty much about my family, don't you..."
"Let's just say that at one certain part of my life I seriously had nothing better to do," Enishi admitted without fanfare. "Don't get me wrong. I hated your father and I still do. And the more I watched him the more I felt sorry for anyone related to him. Feh. What are grand ideals of saving the world when you can't even deal with the chaos that resides in your family? He was an idealistic fool, all the way until his death. I have no condolences for anyone who chose to willingly suffer for that idiot-"
Before either had a chance to pause after Enishi's explanation, a lithe, dark shadow burst into the scene with a long row of rattling roof tiles. It landed just in front of Enishi and pointed a finger at him. "YOU!!"
Gulping at the murderous aura, Kenji barely managed to squeak, "Oba-..."
The evil glare Misao shot in his direction promptly shut him up.
Turning back to her target, she stepped slightly back and screeched again, "What the hell are you doing here, hiding away from plain sight? Do you /know/ how scary it is to have a /lunatic/ like the Tenken slink into the dojo in the ungodly hours of midnight /demanding/ to know where you are?! And he wasn't even smiling!"
Enishi raised an eyebrow at the girl's exaggerated motions. "You were the one who volunteered to fix his shinai. So I stole it from him and handed it to you. He's just in slight shock about his loss. He'll get over it soon."
A pause.
"It was /HIS/ shinai?!"
"Will you stop shouting?!" Enishi raised his voice in tensed anger. "And did you really think /I/ would prance around the streets of Japan with nothing but a piece of broken bamboo for protection? Who do you think I am? A retired Himura Kenshin preaching his own version of post-war ideals?"
The girl's eyes narrowed. "Listen up, Yukishiro," she struck a pose against the midnight breeze, "what Himura preached were never his ideals!" And Kenji sighed, waiting to hear another long winded defence from Misao about his father. "He was talking nonsense half the time!" The boy facefaulted and almost rolled off the roof. Oblivious, Misao continued, "I /really/ wouldn't call them ideals, since they didn't really work most of the time and were mainly just life philosophies that seemed to work for him and him alone." She breathed. "Still, you gotta hand it to him for being able to live a life based on principles normal people like me don't even understand! Hey! Stop diverting the topic! Why was the Tenken looking for you anyway? Because of the shinai?"
Enishi breathed out to the atmosphere. "I hate repeating myself," he mumbled, much to Misao's annoyance.
"And I hate dealing with stuck-ups like you!" She screeched, before hopping off the roof and dashing down the corridors into another part of the temple.
Kenji gaped after her disappearing form.
"Don't worry 'bout it," the older person said while shrugging, "she'll be all right after screaming a bit at the old man and the ice block."
Pausing for a while, Kenji eventually replied, "I don't think that was the issue at hand, though..."
Footsteps slowly began to get louder, and another shadow began to progressively loomed over the duo, through the empty space between where they sat. It was moving with slack, dangerously like a predator upon its prey, and Kenji could hear himself gulp. He was too young to die! Too young! But Soujirou wouldn't kill him for something he hadn't done, would he? Would he?!
"I'm here to inform you to be present for the meeting tomorrow morning," the dull intonation of Aoshi made sudden relief flood through Kenji's body. For a moment he really thought Soujirou was going to pounce on them and lop both their heads off for taking his shinai away from him! "And Soujirou is looking for you," Aoshi continued, eyeing Enishi as he spoke.
"It has yet to occur to his little brain that I do not wish to be found by him, has it?" The white-haired man mused to himself.
"Probably not," was the reply, after a brief spat of silence.
"Well, as long as you guys don't give me away, I'm sure he'll just keep looking until tomorrow morning."
"Yes, he probably will be," the clear, tenor voice continued.
"Do you have a cold or something, Shinomori?" Enishi snickered. "You're beginning to sound like..." He stopped, eyes slightly widened in surprise. Turning around hesitantly to look behind him, Enishi had expected to see the tall figure of the Oniwabanshuu leader, but found only the small form of his travelling partner looking at him in the eye with not so much as a twitch of the lips.
"Shinomori-san has left," Soujirou was saying, and a cold wind blew from the north. "I followed him here because Kashiwazaki-san asked him to inform you about tomorrow- AH!! Yukishiro-san! Stop right there!!" Soujirou had yet to even finish his sentence when Enishi leapt off the roof and fled into the shadows beneath. The former right-hand-man of Shishio immediately gave chase. "Stop there!!" He shouted into the night.
After a short racket of stomps and rustles, the temple returned to its former state.
Absolute silence.
Itching to give chase after his two fellow travellers, Kenji decided that he would find out what had happened the next day anyway. He chose instead, to sit down at on the roof and stare up at the mesmerizing Kyoto night skies.
He wondered if this was the same sky his father saw, on the night he had perished.
... to be continued
--------------
19/6/04
tougenkyou . net / xd
a/n
wow, this took me 3 months! :O
i've been wondering about ff:net's new policy about no keyboard style entries even in the author's notes. eeh... does that mean we're not allowed to reply to reviews in stories anymore? :O if anyone knows, please tell me! otherwise, please allow me to say a big thank you to all readers and reviewers for sticking with me thus far! THANK YOU!! OOx
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.
------------------------------------------
Yesterday's Shadow is Tomorrow's Twilight
------------------------------------------
Chapter 30: Heart To Heart
Kenji had always had an affinity with rooftops - he mused silently to himself as he stared wordlessly into the inky-black skies, dotted with clear, sparkling stars. Or at least, that was what Yahiko kept telling him. It seems like when Kenji was still a toddler, he would climb rooftops of houses and stayed there for hours until someone finally noticed either that he was missing or that there was a strange crying sound coming from above their ceilings. It was not a kind of childhood he thought he should be proud of having, or thinking about, but somehow it warmed his heart slightly to imagine the reactions of the people who saw a little toddler sitting atop a roof. Unconsciously, he chuckled to himself.
"Himura-san..." the soft, ghostly voice of Soujirou shook him from his train of thought. He turned around to stare questioningly at the furtive wanderer, who was visible only by the head and a few fingers on the roof tiles.
"What?" Kenji snapped, still sore over the events of the previous few days. Soujirou, however, remained undaunted.
"Have you seen Yukishiro-san?" His question was serious and taut, and he was not wearing a smile on his face. Kenji shrank backwards slightly, wondering if Soujirou had missed his medication and whether if that was life-threatening to innocent passers-by like himself. He shook his head as a negative indication, and the slight sparkle of hope in Soujirou's eyes were snuffed out. "Oh," he muttered. "Thank you."
And with a slight whooshing sound, he slipped away from sight.
Before Kenji could even wonder what in the world had just happened, a dark shadow loomed over him from behind. He tensed, then felt a hand clasp over his mouth tightly. Too shocked to respond for the first few seconds, he eventually blinked and started to struggle. If any spy or crook thought he could cross Himura Kenji's path and get away with it, then he was in for some kickass biting!
"Shut up and stop struggling you little nimwit!" The harsh, whispering voice that belonged to the 'crook,' however, was anything but unfamiliar. "And stop trying to bite me! Just keep quiet!"
Kenji quietened down and stayed still as commanded, wondering what Enishi was up to. Before long, the white-haired man gave a low sigh of relief and released the boy from captivity, standing up and looking all over the area beneath him. Satisfied with his conclusion - whatever it had been, he settled down quietly beside Kenji.
"Stop staring at me like that," Enishi frowned and warned the boy. "I'm just sitting on the roof. I'm not doing anything illegal, all right?"
"What did you do to Soujirou?" Kenji shot back, not wanting to hear excuses. "He looked seriously... serious. When he asked for you just now."
"Don't worry about the Tenken," Enishi waved it off. "He's just angry I took the shinai your mother gave him and gave it to the weasel girl."
The redhead's eyes widened with disbelief. "Why did you do that for?! That stick of bamboo is his /life/! You shouldn't have-... ... wait. My mother. My mother gave him that shinai." The boy deadpanned the last few sentences the way Enishi had, narrowing his eyes at the older person. "... really?"
Instead of being offended, Enishi just stared at the boy. "The weasel said she knew someone who could fix that useless piece of junk, so I thought I'd be nice and do the Tenken a favour. I didn't think he'd take it /that/ seriously. As for what went on between your parents and that over-sensitive baby, you'd best be asking either one of them. /I/ sure as anything don't have the full details." He snorted.
An uncomfortable silence followed.
Kenji continued staring at the night skies, his unreadable facade betrayed only by the grim line he held his lips in, as if he was having a serious internal debate. Enishi, on the other hand, donned a completely oblivious expression. In truth, he was dying to get away. But he feared the wrath he had to face if Soujirou managed to get his hands on him. Between waiting out the dawn with a moody teenager and having to constantly escape from one of the most dangerous man in Japan, he gladly settled for the former...
"You knew him, didn't you."
... and suddenly the former didn't seem quite so much better than the latter anymore. Enishi sighed.
"If I were a smartass I'd ask you who the hell you're talking about," the ex-mafia boss rolled his eyes. "But I'll leave the tomfoolery for the Tenken. You're right. I did know him. Himura Kenshin." The white-haired man stretched, then laid down on his back against the tiles of the roof. "The feared Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu - a master of his art, disappeared after Meiji was founded." He paused. "And a pathetic man with a pathetic personality to boot. Pah."
Kenji's interest was peaked. He had never heard anyone badmouthing his father before. "What do you mean?" He asked innocently.
The older person gave him a scrutinizing glare. "I'm warning you," he began, slowly, "that whatever I'm going to say about your stupid father is not going to be pleasant. Nor is it going to be sugarcoated. I speak my mind and I'm not afraid of telling you things the way I see it. Do you really need my opinion of that man when you have a lot of other better choices out there?"
The muscles in Kenji's face tightened, and he felt a roaring flame of challenge raise up within his heart. "I don't care what you say about him," Kenji rebutted stubbornly. "It's not going to change /my/ opinion anyway."
The silence was brief, but urgent. After a while, with slight impatience, Kenji turned to stare unhappily at Enishi.
"Well?" He prompted.
"Well what?" Enishi snorted. "What's there to talk about? That man was a jerk of the highest order! He took my sister away from me and made my life a living hell! I've been plotting for decades what's the best way to skin him alive. Too bad he died before getting to try them out, hah!"
Kenji's mind, however, was focused on something else Enishi had said. "Your... your sister?! My mother was... was your sister??!" There was a look of pure disbelief and agony on the little Himura's face. He had something else to say in continuation, but no noise came out of his moving lips. Enishi then whipped around and pinned at the younger person with a scorching glare.
"Watch your words, bumbling idiot! And my sister died a long time before your father even met your mother." There was a hidden spark buried beneath Enishi's eyes as he continued quietly, "He killed her." Kenji did not fail to notice the wistful tone behind his words. "She was the only thing that mattered to me... the only person I was living for..."
Unsure of what he should say in reply, the young boy blabbered the first thing that came to his mind.
"That's /some/ sister complex."
It was only a second later that Kenji realised what he had just uttered, and he clapped one hand over his mouth in belated dismayal. Fearing for the worse, he turned around and sneaked a glance at Enishi from the corner of his eyes, noticing with consolation that the white-haired man had no apparent interest in strangling the life out of him there and then. Instead, his eyes were glossed over with thought and he was staring out at nothing in particular. The boy lowered his hand and blinked. Enishi brooded on an hourly basis, but it was hardly every day he saw him this pensive. Concluding that it was probably fine to push the issue, he added, "So you admit to having a sister complex?"
This time, Enishi did turn around to narrow his eyes at the young boy, although there was no malicious intent in his stare. "I heard you the first time, boy. I do /not/ have a sister complex. I just don't bother to react anymore because Soujirou's been taunting me with it everyday for the past few years of my life." He harrumphed and glanced back up at the stars. "Not like he had very healthy hobbies in the past himself."
A pause.
"... so, you knew my father through your sister..."
"I knew your father through a lot of people, boy," Enishi shook his head. "The legendary hitokiri who spilled more blood than he saved - a self-righteous little man who disappeared into the shadows of the new era after his dirty job was done. Your father wasn't always very popular, mind you. To me, even now, he's still the worst kind of jerk to have ever walked Japan." He sighed. "So stop beating around the bush already. What do you really want to know? You're not expecting me to tell you my personal opinion of a man you've already condemned just so that you can condemn him further, are you?"
There was something in the sharp, straightforward way Enishi had spoken those words that struck a real chord in Kenji's heart. All his life he had tried to be spiteful and bitter, just so that the people around him could hate him, be angry with him, and give him a reason to run away from his problems.
But the more he was bitter, the more they got careful with his words. Besides Yahiko, who was angry all the time anyway, Kenji found himself more and more disgusted with how the others in the family tried to act like they were concerned. The way he saw it, they were never concerned. They merely saw his father in him. And the more he thought about it, the more callous and inosolent he became.
Nobody understood how he felt
And looking at it in a certain manner, it was true.
It had been a long time since someone asked him bluntly to 'get to the point.'
"I just wanted to hear..." Kenji began uneasily, unsure of what to say to this man that would convey his real thoughts without sounding too contrived. "... about him. That man they call my father. Hear an opinion about him that isn't sugar-coated with with romantic details for once. I want to hear something objective for once - and not about someone who sounds so grand, so noble, and so good that he cannto be the same father I've known all my life."
"Well he was a downright jerk anyway I see it," Enishi offered as an immediate response, sitting straight and crossing his arms. "I'm not surprised he had problems with his family. He always had high and mighty goals - goals that one man alone cannot achieve by himself. And he knew that. But still he had this 'i must at least try!' concept embedded deep into his psyche. He thought it was ideal. I thought it was stupid. And the worst part about it was," Enishi breathed, "that he actually /expected/ his family to understand."
Beside him, Kenji's muscles tensed involuntarily, but he cocked his ears and listened on, fully fascinated.
"Himura Kenshin was a very private, secretive man," Enishi mumbled. "If he had something to keep from you, you wouldn't find out until you threatened to kill someone in front of him. Even then he would just only reveal partial information. He's the worst kind of targets you can have to spy on." His shoulders shrugged slightly, as if in remembrance of something from a time long ago. "He brought that secretivity into his marriage, I'm assuming. Because old habits just die hard."
"What has that got to do with his marriage life anyway?" Kenji frowned.
Shaking his head, Enishi looked semi-accusingly at the boy. "Can't you see? You can't commit yourself to someone else if you're going to keep your life shrouded in secrecy. That person has to at least know something about you. That was essentially what was wrong with that man. It was a good thing your mother understood him without having to ask too many questions. I doubt if you would have even been born at the rate he was going."
"..." Kenji blinked into the starry distance. "... you know pretty much about my family, don't you..."
"Let's just say that at one certain part of my life I seriously had nothing better to do," Enishi admitted without fanfare. "Don't get me wrong. I hated your father and I still do. And the more I watched him the more I felt sorry for anyone related to him. Feh. What are grand ideals of saving the world when you can't even deal with the chaos that resides in your family? He was an idealistic fool, all the way until his death. I have no condolences for anyone who chose to willingly suffer for that idiot-"
Before either had a chance to pause after Enishi's explanation, a lithe, dark shadow burst into the scene with a long row of rattling roof tiles. It landed just in front of Enishi and pointed a finger at him. "YOU!!"
Gulping at the murderous aura, Kenji barely managed to squeak, "Oba-..."
The evil glare Misao shot in his direction promptly shut him up.
Turning back to her target, she stepped slightly back and screeched again, "What the hell are you doing here, hiding away from plain sight? Do you /know/ how scary it is to have a /lunatic/ like the Tenken slink into the dojo in the ungodly hours of midnight /demanding/ to know where you are?! And he wasn't even smiling!"
Enishi raised an eyebrow at the girl's exaggerated motions. "You were the one who volunteered to fix his shinai. So I stole it from him and handed it to you. He's just in slight shock about his loss. He'll get over it soon."
A pause.
"It was /HIS/ shinai?!"
"Will you stop shouting?!" Enishi raised his voice in tensed anger. "And did you really think /I/ would prance around the streets of Japan with nothing but a piece of broken bamboo for protection? Who do you think I am? A retired Himura Kenshin preaching his own version of post-war ideals?"
The girl's eyes narrowed. "Listen up, Yukishiro," she struck a pose against the midnight breeze, "what Himura preached were never his ideals!" And Kenji sighed, waiting to hear another long winded defence from Misao about his father. "He was talking nonsense half the time!" The boy facefaulted and almost rolled off the roof. Oblivious, Misao continued, "I /really/ wouldn't call them ideals, since they didn't really work most of the time and were mainly just life philosophies that seemed to work for him and him alone." She breathed. "Still, you gotta hand it to him for being able to live a life based on principles normal people like me don't even understand! Hey! Stop diverting the topic! Why was the Tenken looking for you anyway? Because of the shinai?"
Enishi breathed out to the atmosphere. "I hate repeating myself," he mumbled, much to Misao's annoyance.
"And I hate dealing with stuck-ups like you!" She screeched, before hopping off the roof and dashing down the corridors into another part of the temple.
Kenji gaped after her disappearing form.
"Don't worry 'bout it," the older person said while shrugging, "she'll be all right after screaming a bit at the old man and the ice block."
Pausing for a while, Kenji eventually replied, "I don't think that was the issue at hand, though..."
Footsteps slowly began to get louder, and another shadow began to progressively loomed over the duo, through the empty space between where they sat. It was moving with slack, dangerously like a predator upon its prey, and Kenji could hear himself gulp. He was too young to die! Too young! But Soujirou wouldn't kill him for something he hadn't done, would he? Would he?!
"I'm here to inform you to be present for the meeting tomorrow morning," the dull intonation of Aoshi made sudden relief flood through Kenji's body. For a moment he really thought Soujirou was going to pounce on them and lop both their heads off for taking his shinai away from him! "And Soujirou is looking for you," Aoshi continued, eyeing Enishi as he spoke.
"It has yet to occur to his little brain that I do not wish to be found by him, has it?" The white-haired man mused to himself.
"Probably not," was the reply, after a brief spat of silence.
"Well, as long as you guys don't give me away, I'm sure he'll just keep looking until tomorrow morning."
"Yes, he probably will be," the clear, tenor voice continued.
"Do you have a cold or something, Shinomori?" Enishi snickered. "You're beginning to sound like..." He stopped, eyes slightly widened in surprise. Turning around hesitantly to look behind him, Enishi had expected to see the tall figure of the Oniwabanshuu leader, but found only the small form of his travelling partner looking at him in the eye with not so much as a twitch of the lips.
"Shinomori-san has left," Soujirou was saying, and a cold wind blew from the north. "I followed him here because Kashiwazaki-san asked him to inform you about tomorrow- AH!! Yukishiro-san! Stop right there!!" Soujirou had yet to even finish his sentence when Enishi leapt off the roof and fled into the shadows beneath. The former right-hand-man of Shishio immediately gave chase. "Stop there!!" He shouted into the night.
After a short racket of stomps and rustles, the temple returned to its former state.
Absolute silence.
Itching to give chase after his two fellow travellers, Kenji decided that he would find out what had happened the next day anyway. He chose instead, to sit down at on the roof and stare up at the mesmerizing Kyoto night skies.
He wondered if this was the same sky his father saw, on the night he had perished.
... to be continued
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19/6/04
tougenkyou . net / xd
a/n
wow, this took me 3 months! :O
i've been wondering about ff:net's new policy about no keyboard style entries even in the author's notes. eeh... does that mean we're not allowed to reply to reviews in stories anymore? :O if anyone knows, please tell me! otherwise, please allow me to say a big thank you to all readers and reviewers for sticking with me thus far! THANK YOU!! OOx