Disclaimer: I do NOT own PMK or its characters.
An Assassin's Tale
Chapter 3
Why do I still find a need to hang about children? I just like playing with them, playing those games. Trying to regain something I had lost a long time ago.
Maybe this playing with children thing was simply a harmless peculiarity on Souji's part, much like why Nagakura goes about life with a plaster on his nose or why Saitou insists on washing his own fudoshi. And Okita's pet pigs! They started off as a potential ration source for the group but somehow, no one's got the heart, or nerve, to reduce them to pork chops after Okita showed affection for them.
Why do I pull childish tricks on Hijikata-san? It was Akira who was the mischief, forever hiding Kino-nee's hair ribbons and making her scream. When did I start liking pigs? I got my first pig, a little stumpy one made of wood, from him that winter when I got a cold and had to stay in during the Snow Festival. Papa took it away… Soujirou was always hiding behind his sister's skirts or in the nursery back then. We plotted to run away and become master swordsmen, just like the samurai heroes of the puppet theatre…
Okita Souji patted Saizou and looked at the moon. They were both so hopelessly innocent back then. What would little Akira think of his brother if he could see him clad in the bloodied Shinsengumi uniform, slashing down his foes in the heat of battle like the demon he has become? At least he was beyond all that now, if he was truly dead.
No one can change the past.
"Kichi?" Osu peered in to check on him after his last customer left. Kichi nodded wearily. That customer was a little brutal, but nothing he couldn't deal with. "Good. You better call it a night. It'll be dawn soon." She'd come in to help clean him up, the same way she did since he was eight. A sobbing sound came from the next room.
"New boy. His first time…" Osu explained. Kichi shrugged. "I was eight then."
"Yes and everyone's favourite futon-toy. Even old Fatso had a couple of goes at you, didn't he? When you tried to run away, he let his lackeys enjoy you as well. After a couple of times, you just gave up." Osu rolled up the stained futon and took out a fresh one. "I know you, boy. After I leave you, you probably go over and give the new boy a good talking-to. Just be nice, okay?" The sobbing had muted.
"Do you want me to tell him some fairy-tale about how someone will come rescue him one day? You know the only way most of us are leaving this hellhole is wrapped in a grass mat."
"True, true… but you do know the all tricks to make it easier for him next time…" Osu started wiping his naked body with a damp towel.
"Old hag, why did you teach me to use a katana?" Kichi murmured and winced as she dabbed a particularly tender spot.
"Easy, I can't have you giving it free to everyone outside. Besides, you'll never get my marketing done if every street lout keeps trying to hump you. I need to take care of the goods, you know." Finally satisfied that he was reasonable clean, she passed him a clean kimono before leaving.
It's amazing how utterly screwed up his life had become after he lost his way home, wandered about a strange and very rough Edo neighbourhood, got picked up by slave traders, brought to Kyoto and sold into the gay quarter's Yogotoya. When you are a slave, you don't have a right to anything, not even your own body. Sometimes, he would wonder what if, what if he had found his way home that fateful night. After all, he had followed the directions to the almost to the letter, until that couple snogging in the alley.
Would he be like Soujirou now, happy and without a care in the whole wide world? It was too late for him. Akira's never going home.
"Argh! Tetsu! You're bleeding! Mother! Father! Forgive me!" Tatsu groaned in the throes of another stress-induced gastric attack. Tetsu had tripped while staggering under the load of sweaty clothes from the morning training.
"Jeez, Tatsu-nii, it's just a scraped knee," Tetsu frowned as he watched his sibling's fit of self-berating.
"You better go put some ointment on it, Tetsu-kun," Okita called out. "Hai!" After rubbing some spit on his wound, Tetsu ran for the ointment. Okita hugged his piglet and called out to Tatsu.
"Ichimura-san, you can stop rolling in the dirt now. Tetsu's gone to take care of that little scratch of his."
"I am a failure as a brother…" Tatsu whined. Okita frowned. "Ichimura, that is quite enough." Sensing the menace in the normally cheerful voice, Tatsu stopped, looked at Okita and quietly straightened up with a puzzled look on his face. Remembering the captain's nickname of demon's child, he let out a scared yip and hot-footed to the accounts room.
A failure as a brother… Maybe he should have kicked up a fuss and held his breath till he turned blue when they came to take Akira. Maybe he should have hidden his twin in the closet, anything that would keep him from the fire.
Better, they should have run away together to the mountains and find some legendary master swordman to train under.
What if Akira had survived the flames somehow and is here in Kyoto? This would be the heaven-sent opportunity for him to find his twin and make amends for all those years apart… Where should he start? Maybe near Umeya, where he thought he caught a glimpse of his look-alike. There would be a banquet in a fashionable teahouse downtown in a few nights, the best opportunity for him to make enquiries in the neighbourhood.
Author's notes:
The little bit abour Saitou's attention to the cleanliless of his underwear's taken from another Shinsengumi-based manga series titled Burai. It is also inspired by that scene between Okita and Saitou during their duel. That remark about underwear...