Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin isn't mine. I'm tired of being creative about this.
----
Diary of a Manslayer
Chapter 12) Drink, and Be Merry
Akai Kitsune
----
His master had once told him that sake could cure just about anything.
It was true, he had to admit, there were certain healing properties about it. Alcohol - though, admittedly, it was more often a different kind - was used to clean and disinfect wounds (he thought it had something to do with the way it burned), or to sterilize certain items as Megumi had once told him. One could clean plenty of things with alcohol.
This brought to mind the question as to why, precisely, dirty and inebriated men on the streets outside of bars were so pungent, but that was where the different kind came in to play. One would not want to mop the floors with rice wine.
For example, sake could be used, he'd learned, to help give a person a decent night's sleep during flu season. Many a blocked throat and ragged cough had been mysteriously dissolved by a small cup of sake on the road during his wandering years - many years after he'd left, when he had been brave enough to try, when the pain and the chill of memory had numbed enough to remember what real sake tasted like without that dreaded, coppery additive. You learned things like that on the road, living on your own with nothing but a backwards sword and a smile hovering between you and deadly recognition.
This habit had remained after he arrived and began living at the dojo - just about the only time he drank anything but water and tea, aside from Sanosuke's parties. Kaoru was often puzzled by it, when he was sneezing and coughing and blowing his nose as he drank his nightly cup. He smiled at her questions, trying his best not to look miserable. If she wasn't such an easy drunk - the gods alone knew why that was - he would have urged her to do the same. He rather liked falling asleep with a clear throat, even if it went back to being hopelessly clogged in the morning. Even a small relief was enough sometimes.
Kaoru noticed, it seemed. She stopped asking questions, merely tucked him in like a child and kissed his cheek, whispered goodnight and tended to the children while he rested. He didn't get sick very often, but when he did, she really was too wonderful to him.
He missed her shouting through the walls, though - it was always too quiet when he was ill, when Kaoru whispered and tiptoed and lectured everyone to settle down, inside voices, Daddy is sick and Daddy needs his rest or Daddy can't come out to play right now. The silence was wonderful yet unbearable, and he couldn't help but feel relieved when Yahiko came to visit, with his loud voice and comments that set Kaoru into a shouting fit, that made the children giggle and shriek and stomp like an army was storming the house. It didn't feel like home when it was so quiet - it didn't feel like the Kamiya Dojo when all was dead.
He liked the noise, and when Kaoru quietly slid open the shoji to check on him after the kids had made their rounds, rolling around in the dirt of the yard, small stick-swords crashing together under Yahiko's grinning supervision, she always found him fast asleep, smiling secretly, his face towards the door as if waiting for her to come in.
----
It turned into another sick!Kenshin chapter. Huh. Go fig. This is kinda inspired by my current situation as well as my dad's suggestion - when he has a cold, he drinks a bit of wine before bed to help his throat. I came home from college this weekend with a cold, and he suggested I try it with sake. It tasted positively caustic, but you would not believe how quickly my throat cleared up. I do it every night now, and will continue to do so until my cold goes away. It's a great little home remedy.
The original chapter was about Prohibition. Anybody know anything about Japan and if they ever banned alcohol? I was going to do research but then this idea hit me... you know how it goes.
Again, sorry this sucker takes so long to update. I'm hoping to get more Kenshin inspiration over the holidays... but we'll have to see, I guess. Also, if there are mistakes in this, I apologize. It's hard to edit well when you're sick.
Till next time.