I hope you enjoy the second installment! Comments and reviews always appreciated. On a side note, I'm bilingual English/French, so feel free to use whichever is best for you. I've noticed quite a few French stories under Hakuōki, so I'm hoping there are a few fans out there who don't mind reading in English even if they write in French. :)

Thank you for giving this story a try. Arigatou!

Chapter 2 – Does Shinsengumi Mean Unusual Eye Colour?

Her arms were really starting to ache and the gag made breathing uncomfortable. She rather thought that she had regained consciousness shortly after being left in this room, and she judged that she had been there about an hour since. There was no light in the room and it was cold. At least she was lying on a futon and not directly on the tatami mat. She could dimly make out the door and a window. A shadow in one corner was likely a folding screen. If there was a guard outside the room then he was very quiet.

"I was an idiot."

She tried very hard not to cry.

A moment later, the door slid open and the Vice Commander entered, no longer wearing his uniform but still carrying his swords. His grey hakama were clean, in contrast to her own, which were stained stiff with blood. Their eyes met for the second time, and she suddenly had the irrelevant thought that maybe strange, light-coloured eyes were a prerequisite for joining the Shinsengumi. Or I guess red is OK too… She blinked away hysteria. With an effort of protesting muscles, she got herself into a kneeling position, her bound ankles uncomfortable under her.

The Vice Commander stared impassively down at her for several seconds and then sat down and crossed his legs. He set a lantern down beside him, and the flickering light made his face somehow inhuman, all planes and shadows.

"I'm here to take you before the leaders and division captains of the Shinsengumi. We need to decide what to do with you. I decided to come myself because, frankly, I'm the person I trust most around here."

He paused, and added, almost inaudibly, "… most of the time."

"I'll take off the gag. Don't scream, don't cry, and don't talk unless I ask you a question. Do you understand?"

She nodded, and he deftly removed the gag and took the piece of damp cotton from her mouth, setting both aside. It was an incredible relief to breathe freely.

"I want to be very clear about this: your life hangs by a thread. You've seen things you shouldn't have, and even if we were inclined to be friendly, which," his mouth twisted wryly, "… we seldom are, you will die if you're a threat. Are you frightened?"

She nodded again.

"Good. You should be. I will also repeat what I said earlier: if you run then I will kill you. You are in our main compound and there will be no second chances."

He paused and she remained dutifully silent.

"I will unbind your ankles so that you can walk. Do you need to relieve yourself?"

He gestured to the screen across the far corner of the room and she flushed painfully. There wasn't even a flicker of expression on the face of the man across from her.

"Y-yes. Sir."

Her voice was hoarse and barely above a whisper.

Without further words, he unbound her ankles and hands, though his eyes seemed to assess the deep red marks of the cord on her wrists. She thought she heard him mutter "Sōji…"

Rising, he pulled her to her feet, and she was surprised to see him inspect her palms and fingers before nodding briefly to the screened corner. She staggered slightly but managed to use the necessities behind the screen. There was even a small basin of cold water in which to scrub her hands; it was hard to resist drinking the water instead, but innate fastidiousness made her hesitate. Apparently they didn't think she was likely to overpower anybody with a ceramic basin or, ah, other receptacle. She was very thankful and a bit surprised to have been given her privacy behind the screen.

Hurrying, she returned to the centre of the room. The Vice Commander rebound her wrists, and although she winced a little as the white cord rubbed the existing abrasions, this time her hands were in front of her, which was a lot more comfortable. With a sudden jolt, it occurred to her to worry about the fact that just five minutes earlier the abrasions had been more like gouges; she hoped that Hijikata-san hadn't noticed.

She also wondered why the man had examined her hands so closely. He had actually rubbed his thumb over her finger tips and palms. It had been an odd experience, and she realized that for as long as she could remember, no man other than her father had ever touched her, certainly not like that. Such a minor thing, though, given her current predicament. Probably her mind trying to avoid thinking of the immediate past and what was to come.

"Do you promise not to run? Not that it would help you, but I've already had to change once this evening."

"I promise."

The implied violence didn't really impinge. Maybe she was too frightened already to be more afraid.

"Walk ahead of me and follow my directions."

"Hai."

She preceded him down a slightly elevated wooden walkway surrounding an inner courtyard. It was very dark now, and the moon was much higher in the sky. It was no longer snowing.

After passing several of the usual sliding doors and turning away from the courtyard toward the inside of the house, her dour companion halted her with a hand on her shoulder, opened a door, and directed her into a large, square room. Silently, he gestured her to a spot in the centre of the floor and took a seat on a cushion almost directly across from her. There had been the rumble of male voices when they had entered, but the room was now quiet, as the assembled leaders of the Shinsengumi studied their problematic witness.

Chizuru knelt, her eyes wide with apprehension as she took in the men examining her. Most of them were carrying weapons, which had been set down beside them on the tatami. Her first impression was that the Shinsengumi leadership was made up primarily of young thugs, and her hands trembled a little. She found that she was actually relieved to see the impassive man in the black kimono – Saitō-san? The emerald-eyed man was also there, but she found his slight smile more alarming than reassuring. She could now see that his hair was an unusually light reddish-brown.

"This is our witness?!" blurted out a very young man with a long brown pony-tail wearing a bright yellow, sleeveless shirt and slim black pants.

She saw that his eyes were a shining aquamarine, clearly visible in the well-lit room. He was noticeably slighter than the others, especially his two immediate companions, a tall red-haired man with amber eyes that were almost gold, like a hawk's, and a heavily-muscled man with a green head-band and bright blue eyes. They were all so strange… perhaps there was foreign blood in their families?

"He's so small – just a kid!" continued the boy in the yellow shirt.

"Well, so are you squirt!" laughed the red-head, ruffling the boy's hair.

"Yeah, really," agreed the man with the green head-band, yanking on the long brown pony-tail.

"Ouch! Baka! Quit it! Am not! And besides, that's better than being an old man like you guys!" yellow-shirt retaliated.

"Who are you calling old?" protested the red-head, still laughing.

"You three! Shut it!" snapped the Vice Commander.

There was immediate silence. Chizuru bowed her head and lowered her eyes to the floor. In her brief moment of study, she saw that the Vice Commander was sitting to the left of a man with dark hair and kind, light brown eyes. To that man's right sat a man with brown, shoulder-length hair and glasses. This man was smiling pleasantly, but she found that she couldn't read him. Well, presumably that made the central man the Commander and the two on either side his seconds. Among the others present she had also taken in a quiet, middle-aged man with black hair – what there was of it – and gentle, hazel eyes. It was reassuring to see somebody so normal-looking. She immediately warmed to the Commander and the older man.

The silence went on for half a minute or so, and then the Commander spoke.

"Well, perhaps we could first have a summary of what happened? Saitō-kun?"

"Sir. We were out with three of the failed ones. They saw three ronin with drawn weapons running down a side-street and went in pursuit. The failed ones arrived before we did and killed the ronin. We had to despatch the failed ones."

"I didn't see anything!" Chizuru protested, hearing a whimper in her voice.

"Really?" said the one with the head-band and muscles.

"Well, if he didn't see anything then I don't see why we have to kill him," muttered yellow-shirt.

"But I thought Sōji said that this kid was actually helping the ronin?" said muscles.

"I wasn't! I didn't! I didn't see anything!"

The second-in-command with glasses said gently, "We assembled here to question the witness; shouldn't we proceed?"

"Good idea," said the Commander. He smiled in a friendly way at Chizuru, who had finally looked up again.

"I'm Commander Kondō Isami," the Commander continued. "And this is Deputy Commander Sannan Keisuke and Vice Commander Hijikata Toshizō…"

"Commander," interrupted Hijikata, "we're here to interrogate this kid, not invite him out to dinner."

"Oh," said Kondō, looking disappointed. "Yes, yes, I suppose that is so."

"So, what did you see?" asked muscles, returning to the main point.

Chizuru once again became the object of all eyes.

"I, I… was running away from the ronin and then those, um, creatures came along and killed them and then the other warriors came along and saved me from the creatures."

She glanced briefly at Saitō-san, whose face remained uncommunicative.

"So, basically, you saw everything," commented the red-haired man, apparently voicing the conclusion of all the leaders. "Look, I can tell you're an honest kid – despite that bit about not seeing anything – and that's not a bad thing, but if you saw what you obviously saw then we have a problem."

All of the men were eyeing her warily, eyes narrowed, except for Kondō-san, who seemed rather distressed.

"But we're here to protect civilians, not to kill them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

"Well, y'know," drawled Chizuru's emerald-eyed bane. "… He could still be a spy. I don't really see how we can take the chance, Kondou-san."

Hijikata-san closed his eyes and sighed, looking momentarily tired. Then his eyes snapped open and he glared at Chizuru.

"Enough of this. I want to know what is so important that it brings a young woman, apparently alone, to one of the most dangerous cities in the country. You are not from the peasant class or a poor family. You carry an old and very valuable sword. I doubt you stole it; I don't think you have the ability or the guts. Also, even if your hands aren't totally soft, you haven't used a sword much. So I don't think you're some kind of female warrior-wannabe."

He paused, and raised his voice over the growing murmurs of consternation and speculation from his colleagues.

"In short, girl, who are you and what the hell are you doing here?"

"He's a girl?!" protested Kondō.

"Are you sure?" demanded muscles.

"Oh dear," murmured the middle-aged man with the hazel eyes, "we left a young lady tied up like that for so long?" He seemed genuinely concerned.

"Well, I suppose the kid does look kind of, you know, girly," yellow-shirt said, nodding, although he still seemed a bit shocked.

"If Hijikata-san isn't sure," the red-head tossed in, "then we can get the kid to strip."

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" cried Kondō, scandalized, much to Chizuru's relief.

The red-head's expression fell.

"Well, I just thought it was the simplest solution," he muttered, although Chizuru thought she detected a gleam of mischief in his bright amber eyes.

"Ah, but yeah…" he continued, shrugging and looking a little sheepish, "… I did actually kinda wonder, y'know."

"You would," said his burly friend, punching him on the shoulder.

"Please answer the Vice Commander's questions," Sannan cut in, not loudly but with authority. "Who are you and what are you doing in Kyoto?"

The noise died down again abruptly, confirming Chizuru's impression that the Deputy Commander was just as… respected… by the captains as Hijikata-san.

Chizuru hesitated for a moment, but she had already realized that she had nothing left to hide. In fact, there was one thing, but absolute silence on that topic was so deeply ingrained in her that she tended to forget about it herself.

"I am Yukimura Chizuru. I came here from Edo looking for my father. He came here on business about five months ago…"

She almost stopped, because the attitude of the men in the room had shifted suddenly, although she was too nervous to sift the reaction. Only Hijikata-san seemed unaffected, as if there were something that he had already known or guessed. She swallowed.

"My father is a doctor, trained in Western medicine. He always wrote to me regularly and then… the letters just stopped coming… I have to find him! He is my only family and, oh, please don't kill me, please – I have to find him! I'm not a spy or, or anything like that…"

This time she trailed off completely, clasping her bound hands imploringly in front of her.

"Is your father Yukimura Kōdō-sensei?" asked Sannan, and Chizuru heard a kind of odd eagerness in his tone.

"Yes! Do you know my father? Where is he? I beg you, Sannan-san, please – please tell me where he is!"

She saw many surprised stares, and voices rose all around her.

"Yukimura-sensei's daughter?!"

"He had a daughter?!"

"Well, this changes things!"

"Does it?"

Hijikata-san raised an imperative hand for silence. Sannan-san took up the questioning again.

"When was the last time you heard from your father?" he asked, ignoring her pleas for information.

"Um… it has been almost four months now, sir. It took time to organize the trip here, and then Matsumoto-sensei – my father's colleague – well, my father said I should go to him if, if there was a problem... But then I didn't hear back from Matsumoto-sensei either and, and I just couldn't wait any longer… And, oh please, what do you know of my father?"

There was a pause, and then Saitō-san responded. Hearing his low, quiet voice, Chizuru suddenly realized that he had been the only person in the room to sit in complete silence throughout, apart from his succinct report to Kondou-san. Otherwise he had neither reacted nor offered comment.

"We too have been looking for Yukimura-sensei, Yukimura-san. He has disappeared."

Focussing on Saitō-san was like finding a place of stillness in a storm. Chizuru had always been very sensitive to the presence of others. Her father had encouraged this awareness, but often chided her for not guarding her own reactions better. Willing herself to concentrate for a moment, the girl realized that almost all of the men in this room had a tangible, forceful presence. It was oppressive to have their suspicious attention focussed on her. Her father would have said that they had strong ki, and projected both positive and negative emotions more fiercely than others; the trick, though, was control.

She let the thought go, as Kondō-san, the Commander, was addressing her.

"Indeed, finding Yukimura-sensei is one of our top priorities, Yukimura-kun," he was saying. His voice was still warm and reassuring. "Perhaps you could help us? He was working with us until just a few months ago."

"Working with… y-you, sir?" Chizuru stammered, taken completely aback. Why would her father be working with the vicious Shinsengumi?

"Kondou-san," Hijikata interrupted, "perhaps the girl can be returned to her room while we discuss what to do next?"

Hijikata-san seemed anxious for the Commander not to make their captive too comfortable.

"I agree with Hijikata-kun," said the Deputy Commander, nodding. "However, I have one more question for Yukimura-kun."

Kondō-san was looking quizzically at the Vice Commander; he seemed to want to extend their immediate assistance to the girl. But Hijikata-san just nodded to Sannan-san, indicating he should ask his question.

"Yukimura-kun," said the Deputy Commander, "did your father ever discuss his work with you? Were you aware of anything unusual that he was working on before he came to Kyoto?"

"That was actually two questions, Sannan-san," murmured the man with the green eyes, smirking.

"Sōji!" reproved the Commander.

Everyone else ignored the one called Sōji, or tried to. The tall red-head coughed unconvincingly.

"Yukimura-kun?" Sannan pressed.

"Ah… no, Sannan-san," replied Chizuru. "I mean, he did let me assist with female patients, and sometimes discussed interesting cases with me, but he told me nothing about his important business in Kyoto. My father was a scientist as well as a doctor, but he never asked me to help him with his research or discussed it with me. Um… he seemed quite normal when he left, quite calm."

She could tell that there was something they weren't telling her, but she was reluctant to push things further, and she was starting to shake again. Fatigue and shock, as well as hunger and thirst, she thought. In the same detached part of her mind, she speculated that the Vice Commander probably considered that privation was the best state for a captive during an interrogation. Hijikata-san's next words seemed to confirm this – and indicated that the questioning was over for now.

"Saitō, take Yukimura to her room and make sure that she has water and something to eat. Harada, you're heading out on patrol right? Take the water and food to Saitō on your way out. The room is the empty one on the inner courtyard."

"Sure, no problem, Vice Commander. I was going by the kitchen now anyway. Don't worry, Yukimura-san, I'll bring something good."

He left with a nod to Hijikata and a wink at Chizuru, who coloured slightly. She felt a presence to her left and looked up to see Saitō-san waiting for her. Before she could rise, though, the older man she had noticed earlier spoke.

"Isami-san," he said quietly, "we must surely have a change of clothing for Yukimura-kun?"

Chizuru's eyes widened at his thoughtfulness, and Kondō-san nodded his firm agreement. Chizuru wondered if Hijikata-san would be as happy with the older man's proposal, which would allow her to remove and hopefully wash her blood-stained clothes. She had a plain yukata to sleep in, if they would return her bag, but she did not have extra clothing to wear in the morning. She felt a pang for the loss of her sword, but if they were offering to loan her clothing surely they were less likely to kill her?

"That is a very good idea, Gen-san," Kondō-san was saying. "Will you see what we have in our stores? She is very small, but there must be something that somebody has outgrown that will do for now."

He smiled, and Chizuru didn't dare look at Hijikata-san. She just knew that he was scowling. Maybe that was why the other leaders weren't offering further comments. Even the boy in the yellow shirt was sitting still, just watching thoughtfully. He grinned at her when he caught her eyes on him though.

"Arigatou gozaimasu, Kondou-san," she murmured, bowing deeply to the Commander. She also bowed to the older man, Gen-san, who nodded pleasantly and stood up.

"Saitō," snapped Hijikata, clearly annoyed.

"Hai," Saitō responded immediately, understanding that the Vice Commander wanted the girl out of the room before she was spoiled any further. "Yukimura-san, we must go."

Saitō-san watched her for a moment, then reached down and lifted her onto her feet by her elbows, apparently without effort. When she stumbled, almost numb now with fatigue, he set her right with the barest touch, bowed gravely to his superior officers, and led her out of the room. She heard somebody snicker loudly behind her.

"But we might still have to kill her tomorrow, right, Hijikata-san? I mean, she could cause us a lot of trouble, Kondō-san, we have to be careful."

There was a muffled "Sōji!" from the Commander, barely audible behind the closed door.

"It is usually better to ignore Okita when he is like this," Saitō said unexpectedly, as he led her back to her room. "However, I must caution you to be prepared for the worst."

He opened the door to her room and nodded for her to enter. Discouraged, she stood quietly in the middle of the room beside the futon while he set down his lantern and closed the door. It was cold and she shivered; the meeting room had been heated with braziers.

"I will untie your hands now."

She raised her head, surprised, but he merely said, "It would be inefficient to leave them bound."

"Oh… Saitō-san?"

He looked up from loosening the cord binding her wrists, waiting for her question. His dark blue eyes studied her patiently. She drew a breath, gathering her courage.

"Did something happen to my father?"

Chapter 3 coming soon!

Is anyone out there playing the new game OZMAFIA? Just curious... I guess I should say "new to Steam", though.