Blurbs: In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.
Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die
Timeline: Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)
Beta: Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs
03: Tentative Soul-Searching
"He hears."
He turned to face her, his face drawn. "A harsh gift. I had hoped—"
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. "So I had hoped."
"There's nothing we can do, short of killing the growth of his magic. How is he taking it?" The tiger-eyes were glum, dark murky earth so deep it was nearly black.
She shrugged listlessly. "He knows he could talk to us."
"When he decides to divulge to us that his vocabulary does indeed extend beyond 'Okaa-sama', 'Otou-sama', and 'Mou!'" She swatted at him lightly, and he chuckled, catching her hand and hugging her. "Himeccha, at least he has us."
"Aa,"
They weren't so lucky early in their lives. The undertone murmuring of spirits ever present around them, swirling low in the stories of their woes and worries. The dawn approached like a thief, the night birds sang their goodbyes.
The wind chime tinkled lightly, the scent of spring wafted out of season in the breeze.
"He's fine." Being sealed away, it seems, had not changed that tendency to quietly worry over everything, though he admitted the situation might call for it.
"How can we be sure?"
Hisui tossed her a slight glare. "There's no such thing as surety in this world, you know that. But he will make his way to you, and I expect it won't be long. Have patience."
Her face was calm, and her poise still. But the white clenching fingers belied her turmoil, as did the storm brewing in her eyes. She had the look of someone who had spent her night awake, as well.
He frowned disapprovingly.
"Worry all you want," Hisui grasped her hands and firmly unclenched them, gentle to contradict his cold words, but gave no pretence of a choice, "but if you're going to compromise your health, I'm going to have a bone to pick. Just so we're clear on that."
"I know." Her voice was tremulous and he bit the inside of his cheek. The mind can decide whatever it wants, but…
But the heart was never theirs to rule.
Soujirou watched, intrigued, as Keiji-kun promptly woke in the dead of the morning and started swinging his shinai. The boy made very little sound, and he had tactfully retreated a distance away so that his practice would not bother Soujirou.
He had watched as playful innocence melted away from that young sweet face to be replaced by incredible focus, watched as the boy planted himself into a stance and worked on his basics, and admired the intense concentration such a young child could dedicate into a very boring practice.
Keeping count, he found that the boy switched position every three hundred strokes, but worked up only to one thousand swings, most of which were perfect. When he was finished with his one thousand swings, the boy did a number of simple combinations to cool off, slowing down accordingly until the last set of movements was done at snail pace.
Whoever taught this boy was very, very thorough.
"Did Keiji wake you up, Sou-nii?"
Surprised, Soujirou lost his footing on the tree-branch he had been perched on and it was only quick reflex that saved him from landing headfirst on the ground. "K-Keiji-kun, did you hear me?"
"Keiji knew Sou-nii was watching," the boy had slung his shinai onto his back and was retrieving his wide bamboo hat. "But not for how long." The wide-eyed cheer was back on his face, honest and open. "Did Keiji wake Sou-nii?"
"No, Keiji-kun. I was already awake when you left. How did you know I was watching?" He had carefully toned down his ki to mask his presence, so just how had Keiji-kun managed to find him out?
"Un, Keiji usually knows when somebody is watching; Orgulla-ba-sama(1) taught Keiji how to. And Sou-nii is troubled, so it's easy to know."
This boy hid enough surprises to give a man a heart attack. Soujirou leaned back against the tree he was perched on and slowly slid to the ground, the strength in his knees gone. It took him years. Years of practice before he could reliably sense ki, and this child managed it in half a year? Just what kind of genius was hiding behind that innocent cheerfulness? "H-how?"
Keiji-kun dropped to kneeling on his toes. "Sou-nii is troubled, and it brought a cloud of black doubt. What is Sou-nii searching for?"
What was he searching for?
"Truth." He croaked. "I am searching for truth. I thought I had it, but I didn't. Who was right? Shishio-san or Himura-san?" He was babbling, and to a child, no less. "Shishio-san said the world only cares about strength, that the strong eat the weak. Himura-san said the strong must protect the weak, but…"
"No one protected you. Is that it?"
Slowly, he nodded.
Keiji-kun sighed. "Human truth. That is not something that is easy to understand. What this Shishio-san and Himura-san said is each their truth. Who is Seta Soujirou?"
Soujirou blinked in surprise. "Me?"
"Who is Shishio-san?"
"Shishio-san? Shishio-san is… Shishio-san." How does one explain to a child anyway?
"And who is Himura-san?"
Blink. "Himura-san is… an… uh..."
Keiji-kun laughed. "Let Keiji make this simpler. Are either of them you, Sou-nii."
"Um, no?" Where was this going? Of course he was neither Shishio-san nor Himura-san.
"Then what is true for either of them does not necessarily apply to you, Sou-nii."
… Huh?
"Otou-sama said that there is always more than one truth. That the strong has the strength to take advantage of the weak is truth. However, that does not necessarily mean that the strong has to take advantage of the weak; the strong always have the choice to protect the weak instead. This is also truth. Do you understand it yet, Sou-nii?"
"… No?"
Keiji-kun laughed; a glass-bell chime in the wind. "That's alright. We have time."
Keiji pondered, briefly, what his father would have done to 'knock some sense into clueless, confused people'. His parents were the patient, subtle, laidback sort. Most of the time, that was; some people could not help but try their patience immediately.
And as forgiving as otou-sama usually was involving slights toward himself, he would always pull a one-eighty every time anyone as much as insinuated an insult toward okaa-sama and get extremely vindictive—so Heaven help those fools—so Grandpa Hisui proclaimed.
Seta Soujirou's world had been built on a castle on the sand called faith, until the tide called Himura Kenshin had come in and swept it clean. It was almost cruel, though he was certain Himura-san didn't meant to do anything remotely cruel. It wasn't even really a bad thing; it seemed that a part of Seta Soujirou had always doubted his own truth, and it was the weak link of the sand castle.
The stumbling search for truth was never easy. It was all too tempting to become lost in someone else's road, easier to do so, when the path one really should walk was overgrown with the unknown—a trodden path was always the easiest choice.
All too easy to forget that no one can live someone else's life. Especially to someone who had lost his sense of self like Seta Soujirou; drifting on the wild sea without anchor, tossed about by uncaring waves. At the very least, he was not angry that the pillar of his existence had been swept out from under him. Angry people always had a problem listening.
Keiji wanted to help, and for that, this lost puppy must first follow him home.
Humming happily under his breath, he skipped over a couple of puddles. Soujirou was looking amused at his antics, his smile gentle and real. That was encouraging.
They had made good time, considering, and if they did not meet any delay, another three days would bring them to the general area of Tokyo; from there it was simple matter of locating the dojo.
"Otou-sama once said, Sou-nii, that the beaten path is the easiest to travel, but it doesn't necessarily take you to where you need to go." Keiji commented, reflectively. "It is the same thing, with life. It is easy to become lost in other roads when we cannot see our own."
He was greeted with silence, but Keiji was not really waiting for a response anyway. He skipped over a few more puddles.
Keiji-kun gave him an answer.
Now it left him to ponder just what that answer was.
His decision to wander had been heavily influenced by the fact that Himura-san had wandered ten years to find his answer, but he wondered, deep down, was it really necessary to wander for five years, if even at all?
In the past two years, he had met a lot of people, some nice, some not, some nastier than his so-called-family. Regardless, he still was no closer to the answer he was searching for since the day he had taken up wandering.
Did he regret killing the family that had treated him like a slave? He told Shishio he didn't, but maybe he did. But he hadn't been thinking when he did what he did, and he had carefully avoided thinking about it whenever his mind wandered in that direction.
Himura-san said that being the stronger didn't meant being right. It had confused Soujirou until he met an old man by the sea, white as cotton cloud and brittle as glass. The old man had given him a question that answered him.
If a strong man said that the sun sets in the east, does that mean he was right?
Soujirou had said that it was absurd, that such common knowledge cannot possibly be challenged. Besides, how does common knowledge rate against questions of life?
The old man had countered him by showing him that a person can say anything; anything that they believed and anything they didn't. It was the same thing. That a person says it was right does not mean it was. The same thing answered his question, whether it was about life, or everyday facts.
That Shishio-san wasn't right does not mean Himura-san was. But Soujirou liked Himura-san's answer a little better. However, Soujirou was not Himura-san, and Himura-san's answer does not necessarily mean Soujirou's.
That was what Keiji-kun was telling him, he realized. Another in the same message was that he as a person must search for his own answer, for while others might guide him, ultimately his answers must be his own.
Keiji-kun turned and smiled at him, and Soujirou was startled to realize that he had been staring down at the child walking alongside him, and that the sky had turned from cerulean to warm reddish orange.
"It's a nice sunset, Sou-nii." Keiji-kun chirped, but there was a subdued relaxation in the young voice. "Why don't we find a place to sit and watch it go down?"
"Aa… let's." In the warmly coloured evening, Keiji-kun's smile was interposed by the smile of the old man by the sea; calm, delicate, impenetrable, gentle, perhaps gracious, perhaps mocking, or a thin line between the two.
So they sat and watched the sun set, turning the sky into an instant of bloody sea, then darkening into the soft purple of Himura-san's eyes before settling into the solid blue-black dusk of the night. All the while the smile stayed on Keiji-kun's face, at odds with itself; an old man's smile in an infant's face, the meaning that was everything and nothing.
Knowledge can be taught, wisdom can't. Yet, wisdom was an illusion. The very wise were most often the very foolish, so Keiji learned.
He would never call himself wise.
He would love to always be foolish.
There was nothing wrong in what Soujirou had done, because right and wrong were also illusions of the world, the distinction humankind drew in their need to explain everything they see around them. Truth was never a definite thing.
But humankind needed to believe otherwise, and so they would never admit it.
Keiji regarded his fellow human with more affection, perhaps, than his attitude admitted. So his parents had done. But more often than not he never ceased to be astonished by them, the way they could be so fragile and so strong, so kind and so cruel, casually, indifferently so.
There was an agreed stereotype of what makes a good man. But what was a good man? A kind man? A generous man? A man who does not kill?
A man was a man; they were born neither wholly good nor evil, as potential for each side of the coin was always present. They could always be one or another or both, and turnaround was always possible.
But good and evil, just as right or wrong, was an illusion.
Truth can always be challenged, for the world offers nothing definite but evanescence. But the Wheel of Life turns, and deaths were not final. Prevalence of choices were always overlooked, but they were the dominant force within this world, where every man can affect the world and in turn was affected by it—though there were never surety that this relationship ever made a difference.
A stone that is thrown into a pond may make only a ripple, but when that ripple disappeared, the stone is within the pond, not where it was before it was thrown.
So it was with the world.
If Soujirou were looking for an unshakable set of principles that defined the great question of life and the world, he was fresh out of luck, because there were none.
Here, he was divided.
Was it mercy to let him believe that there was an answer and letting him continue his merry way, or was it mercy to sit him down and take a sledgehammer to everything he had ever believed in?
His guardians had spoken to him about this dilemma; he had not believed it. Shows how much he knows.
As they sat before the fire in a brooding quiet, crickets chirping in the distance, he drummed his fingers into the earth in a beat of three-in-four and a Chopin's Waltz. Soujirou's face was pensive, his smile absent, and for once he was too caught up in his own thoughts to watch what Keiji was doing.
Truth for truth; nothing in the world was absolute. What someone needs wasn't necessarily the facts of life, and truth was always a double-edged sword—it cuts you as it cuts your enemy. But was the world not a paradox?
There were things that people need to be unaware of in order to stay sane. That was why the search for truth always was perilous ground.
Lie by omission still means a lie.
Nevertheless, perhaps, Soujirou didn't have to know everything. That would probably be the best, even. It was not like Keiji had any plan to be teaching his personal belief to the world or something; there were enough religions to confuse people. Besides, it didn't really matter; the difference in opinions was what made them human.
And not dolls on strings.
With that thought lingering on his mind, Keiji settled down to sleep; he had an early day tomorrow.
Soujirou blinked, wondering just who had he managed to offend to fall into this kind of situation, and if Keiji-kun's low grumbles were any indicator, so did the boy.
"Of all things," the boy muttered under his breath, so low it was almost a hum. "This is… not good."
"It isn't." Soujirou agreed.
They were carefully backing away from a large sow bear only to find out that they had backed right into another one. Right then they were cornered, back-to-back with a steep cliff, surrounded by a semi-circle of bears.
Most would think that bears were easier to run from than humans, but that wasn't really the case. Animals had sharper, more defined reflexes compared to humans. And there was also the fact that these particular bears just… had… cubs.
Recipe for disaster, undoubtedly.
"Hey, Sou-nii… Why do these bears nest so near to the road? Don't they usually prefer quieter grounds?"
They do, which meant something was disturbing them enough to drive them down close to the road. "They do, Keiji-kun."
A slight exasperated hiss, "Keiji doesn't like the sound of that."
"Sou-nii doesn't either."
Nervous eyes darted around for possible escape routes. They could not jump up the cliff, that meant the only other way was to jump over the bears—but they were tall, big bears, and god-speed or not, Soujirou wasn't sure he could pass safely. He had abandoned his spare katana in his early wandering days, figuring that bringing it around while it was prohibited would call attention to him faster than Kamatari in his most dramatic mode, besides which, he could always run.
Now he sincerely wished he had taken the pain of concealing the thing and keeping it with him.
Keiji-kun nudged him. "The second on the left is on the verge of moving, and when it does the rest will follow. That will create a gap for us to run through, but wait until the foremost make a move to get us. I'll hit it, you grab me and start running."
Soujirou nodded; a little disconcerted by the way the little boy had taken command of the situation, as well as the complete change in attitude. The boy's childish way of referring to himself in third person had disappeared with the appearance of the hard, calculating look in those tiger-hued eyes—now particularly dark greyish brown—and the tightly controlled power in the set of his shoulder and the hand ready at the hilt of his shinai.
So they waited.
A bead of sweat trickled down Soujirou's face, the tensely coiling spring of anticipation giving his muscles the beginning of a mild burn. He blinked when he realized that Keiji-kun had drawn the shinai and held it in front of him in a two-handed grip—he didn't see it happening, and apparently, neither did the bears, considering that they would have attacked if they had noticed the bamboo sword being drawn.
As he marvelled at this show of skill, Keiji-kun's prediction came to fruition with agonizing slowness.
The second bear from the left lumbered forward, and the other followed; it created the gap Keiji-kun had predicted, but it was small, and the bears were cautious. So they kept waiting.
When the bear finally lunged forward, Soujirou had to keep himself from lunging forward too soon, waiting until the boy delivered a dazzling, powerful smack that threw the bear to the ground before snatching up the child and started running for their lives, missing bear-claws by a close few inches.
Too close for his liking, that was. And when they tumbled down a hill to rest under an early blossoming wild yamazakura(2), they lay there, Soujirou gasping with fairly throbbing feet, and Keiji-kun flat on his back with swirling eyes—apparently, speed made the boy dizzy.
"Let's not do that again in a hurry, Sou-nii." The child mumbled, still dazed and dizzy.
Soujirou gasped for breath a few more moments before grumbling back, "Let's not do that again ever, Keiji-kun, if we can help it." His legs agreed with him, muscles protesting much abuse. He had had to run away quickly during his wandering time, occasionally, but never like this. Groaning, he let himself go boneless. If he never had to get on his feet again, it would be too soon.
He must have fallen asleep where he fell, because next thing he was aware of was wet cloth against his aching feet, and somebody laughing like tinkling glass bells as he sighed in blissful pleasure. Mumbling incoherently, he wondered who was it that was being so very kind. Yumi-san usually didn't spend much time looking after him, much less going through the trouble of giving him compresses for sore feet, and Yumi-san didn't laugh like glass bells, her laughs were velvet.
Anji might take the trouble, but Anji didn't laugh like that either, if he even laughed.
Who might it be? Perhaps he could find out tomorrow…
Mumbling a sleepy gratitude, he was rewarded by another peal of glass bells, underlined by dark silk; a contradiction that fit together like Shishio-san and Yumi-san.
He wondered, briefly, what a normal family was like, and what would it have felt like to have one. His mother had died very early, and all Soujirou remembered of her was the scent of aged oak and sake. His so-called benefactors weren't family, he knew that much. What was a real family like?
He wanted one.
Keiji sighed and wiped at the sweat beading his brow, surreptitiously juggling the nuts and fruits he gathered in one arm as he collected firewood. Soujirou would be hungry when he woke; and since it was partly Keiji's responsibility they had needed to run like hell's hounds were nipping at their ankles, he felt it was his duty to see to dinner today.
It was a setback, and they might need a week to reach Tokyo, after all. But it was a valuable lesson to him—one should never be lulled into complacence by the illusion of things working, as they should, smoothly, until the goal was achieved.
He had run down to a signpost tree(3), and had written a message for the nearest Exorcist Household about the bears. Somebody had to see that the disturbance that drove the bears away from their natural habitat be dealt with before other people fell afoul of the bears and their cubs—that could be natural disaster in the making; bears were rare as they were, if the villagers and townsfolk got it into their head that they need to wage war against the bears…
Keiji hoped, sincerely, that it would never come to that.
When the young man awoke, he would doubtless have questions. Keiji knew he had been careless; four-year olds do not have enough logic not to panic while being attacked by bears, nor do they have enough logic to reason out a good way to run off without getting mauled. Four year olds do not know how to properly smack around things bigger than they were without getting hit first either, not most of the time.
In fact, even having the memories of three lifetimes didn't tell him these things; he learned them from his one very capable aunt and one sarcastically humorous, extremely knowledgeable god-grandfather.
Could he please have a nice boulder to hit his head against?
Somebody up there must be laughing at him, he knew it.
Depressed, he made his way back into their camping spot along with the setting sun, started a fire and roasted the nuts. There was a river along the way, and he had wished sincerely that he had brought a sharpened stick with him to spear fishes with—that is, if he remembered how Aunt Orgulla did it.
Soujirou stirred as the nuts were done. "Keiji… kun?"
"Were you expecting someone else, Sou-nii?"
The Tenken sat up slowly, looking left and right. "It's dark already," he commented almost inanely.
"Indeed." Keiji tossed him some of the fruits, then offered the roasted nuts as well. "Keiji can't fish, or trap animals, so tonight we have to do without. Keiji hopes Sou-nii doesn't mind."
"I don't."
Warily, the boy watched the quiet man from across the fire, waiting to face the music.
Keiji-kun's eyes changed with his mood, Soujirou observed inanely as he nibbled on spring fruit. This night, in the light of the fire they were the brown of autumn leaves, dark and cloudy.
While happy, those eyes turned very green, almost the green of summer forest; when serious, like the time facing the bears, they were the sharply coloured dark eyes of a predator, like a bird-of-prey. In the same line of thought, Soujirou wondered what colour would those eyes be like in mischief, contemplation, anger, or sadness?
"How?" How did you know which bears were going to attack? How did you know how to react? How did you keep your wits? How did you hit that bear like that? How did you change so completely?
He did not know how to say his questions out loud, but it seemed the child before him understood.
"We were a very old family."
Soujirou blinked in confusion, but the boy continued.
"While we walk alongside the people, we also walk along with the land and all in nature. Naturally, we learned from the earliest we could understand to love and fear nature. The worst thing you can do against a wild animal is panic; that my mother taught me. The worst thing you can do while you are outnumbered and outmatched is to attack them wildly; that my father told me. When you hit something bigger than you, take advantage of your opponent's weight against them; that my teacher showed me. If you don't see an opportunity, create it; that my grandfather mandated. I listened, and that I listened served me well."
The disappearance of the third person way of talking made Soujirou listen, and listen intently. "You have good teachers."
"Among the best," Keiji-kun agreed softly. "I am blessed, and I never forget to be thankful. But you wonder, I do suppose, why do I talk differently at different times."
"That I do," Soujirou affirmed softly, gingerly cracking the roasted nuts.
For a while, the child was silent, but when Soujirou was wondering if he was going to answer, he did. "Among the very first things we learned was the danger of drawing attention to ourselves. Children my age do refer to themselves as third person most of the time, so I followed the habit. Obscurity served my family well, and will continue to do so for a very long while. Do you understand now?"
"Ah," there was a deeper story Soujirou could sense lying behind the explanation. But what the boy had said was enough for him. Keiji-kun had not asked for his past, had not dug with that children's curiosity, almost like he didn't care about Soujirou's past. And he could never decide whether it was simply children's naïve trust or that Keiji-kun really did not care about Soujirou's past and sins.
He would have liked it to be the later one.
"Let's go to sleep." Keiji-kun suggested, "We have a way still to go—and we never know just who might be listening, so Keiji shall go first."
He nodded amiably, and was happy to see a smile and hear a tinkling glass bell giggle before the boy lay down on the ground and promptly fell asleep.
Keiji-kun had been as honest with him as the boy had dared to, and even that took an extreme amount of trust Soujirou sensed was not easily bestowed—Keiji-kun was not so innocent, after all. But Soujirou could not bring himself to be angry against that early deception, especially if it had been done against just about everyone, and not just him alone—as he sensed was the case.
Smiling gently, he cast a fond glance at the sleeping child. He would miss the boy when they parted ways, and Soujirou was thinking that he might settle down in Tokyo, if he could.
It sounded like a nice dream.
Not warm but not cold,
this changing weather
of spring.
Author Note:
-Sou is too cute for his own good. While I never kick puppies, it does make me want to pick on him. Keiji, while he does act cute, is really not so cute in actuality. When one considers that all his innocence is carefully contrived he quickly falls out of favour.
-I have only one thing to say about this chapter; credit goes to Herman Hesse "Siddharta" and other random philosophers
-It might sounds terribly careless for Sou to be passing out in the open, but an experienced fighter like the Tenken should be able to manage a constant sensor on their surroundings even when they're napping. Keiji slipped under the radar because he made sure he was as non-threatening as possible.
1 Orgulla-ba-sama -- really means "Aunt Orgulla", if the "a" of the "ba" is stretched, then it became granny.
2Wild yamazakura -- Wild cherry blossom, the cultivars of yamazakura came from this species.
3 Signpost Tree – no, this is nothing with Japanese culture. The idea of a signpost tree is a commonly-found type where directions and messages were left, and whichever family is responsible for the area will routinely check on the trees. It's like the message board we can find in stations, and a mailbox.