Hey everyone! I'm currently writer-blocked on What They All Don't Know…but I'll update as soon as I can write a semi-decent second chapter! Anyway, this 500 word story/drabble is actually something I wrote for English class. The prompt? Write something in the style of Hemingway, using 500 words.

Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin is property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, who drew and wrote it. He drew and wrote it long into the nights and for years. For it is his idea and no one else's.

Finding

It was January. The sky was cold and the air was cold and the world was washed in a sad color and the trees were sad and bare. The road in front of the Aoiya was bare and sad and grey and the pavement was cracked, thousands of little cracks that were usually hidden by a flurry of feet. The Aoiya itself stood lonely and apart from its neighbors, looking bright and cheerful for that is what a restaurant like the Aoiya must do. It looked bright and happy and utterly out of place in the sad, cold, grey world.

The atmosphere inside the Aoiya was warm and festive and large colorful streamers hung from the ceilings and the streamers hung, twisting and swinging as Okon and Omasu danced past them for that is what streamers do when people brush past them. There was food. There was drink. There was music and there was joy, or so it seemed. In the corner, Misao polished off another cup of sake. She drank, her eyes bright and her cheeks tinged with pink. She drank with enthusiasm. She drank with gusto. She drank ceaselessly, for today, she would be allowed to drink. It was her birthday, the Okashira's birthday, a fine and festive day, with dancing and singing and general merrymaking. For it was not everyday the leader of the most renowned ninja clan, the Oniwabanshuu, turned eighteen.

In the back corner of the room, she was isolated from the cold world outside, the grey world outside, the sky the sucked all the color out of you and left you dizzy and the street that was chipping away, piece by piece. Alone in the corner, she watched. She watched the swirl of kimonos and hakamas. She watched silently, unobtrusively. She watched with wonder and with content, but most of all, she watched. Occasionally, she would drain another cup of the sweet sake.

Mind blurred with spirit, Misao frowned. There was one person missing, one very important person. Aoshi was missing. Stern, cold Aoshi. Aoshi who had no tolerance for alcohol. Aoshi who had been Okashira before her. Aoshi who left ten years ago, whom she had set out to search for when she turned sixteen. Aoshi whom she had found a broken man. Aoshi whom she had loved forever. She wanted him to be here today. He should be celebrating with the rest of the Aoiya, not locked away in the shrine, meditating and doing whatever it was that men seeking repentance and salvation do, for that is what he believes he must do.

She left her corner in search of him. Two years ago, she had left her home in search of him. And she had found him, as she would find him today, as she will find him tomorrow and forever after.

FIN