Same disclaimers apply as before: if I owned Rurouni Kenshin,do you think I'd be writing fan fiction?
Two hours. He'd stood in the office for two hours at attention and allowed the chief of police to rebuke him for what was in no way his fault.
He lit a cigarette.
Two hours. He'd allowed the other man to berate him, had said nothing, not even to defend himself. He knew the chief wasn't a big fan of politicians either, but he had to play the game in order to protect his men. It was one of the reasons Saito respected him. The chief was no samurai, but he still understood what it meant to live and die by the sword.
But a week's suspension? It grated on Saito.
The chief had been almost apologetic when he'd told Saito he was being taken off the Yoronda case.
"You're one of my best men," the chief said. "But there haven't been any real results. When you do manage to get some answers, I have to listen to hours of complaints about how you got them."
The chief sighed. "This isn't the revolution. You can't just threaten and bully people and not expect consequences. If you can't adapt to this new era, you aren't going to survive. And it'll be a longer, slower death than death by the sword.
"Ordinarily, I would say the answer is more work, not less, but I've never seen you take a break, not even a sick day. You need some time off. Get your head together. Get focused on what's important. When you get back, then I'll decide whether to put you back on the case.
"You have a week. Until then, if I see you darken this door for anything other than an emergency, I'll have your job. Understood?"
Saito was ashamed.
He'd been ordered off cases before, especially cases which required a more…delicate touch. But to be completely suspended from duty?
It was humiliating.
What was worse, the case itself should have been simple, easy to crack. He still didn't understand why he was having such a difficult time with it. It would have been easier if he'd had free reign to get his answers, as he'd had only a few years ago.
Yoronda, another idiot politician, had been acting as a spy for at least three separate foreign governments, accepting huge payoffs from each of them for information on everything from Japan's foreign investments to their internal security. When he'd been killed in a brothel during a drunken brawl with another high-ranking patron over a woman, all sorts of information about Yoronda's extracurricular activities had surfaced, and now, the police were struggling to expose all the man's contacts before they had a chance to do any more damage.
Damned politicians. They were all untrustworthy, unworthy of having his blade stand between them and the death they all richly deserved. They had no honor, no comprehension of the code of a samurai. They were petty. There were days when Saito wished he could kill them all, or at least a few of them.
It should have been a case just like any of the others he'd had over the years. Still, after almost a week, Saito had barely made any headway into the investigation. With every passing day, Yoronda's contacts were more and more likely to get away, leaving Japan vulnerable.
Why couldn't he catch them? What was wrong with him that he couldn't find a few corrupt politicians and spies?
Was he losing his touch? Was that it?
Saito had never failed before, not even when the odds were stacked against him.
Especially when the odds were against him, actually.
What was different now?
He wandered the streets for a few hours, smoking, thinking. He let his feet carry him where they would, unwilling to go home to his wife and children, not wanting to explain why he was home early.
There was only so much shame a man could bear, after all.
There was no one he could talk to about this, no one who would understand his concerns, his self-doubt. If he told anyone about his uncertainties, they would only see them as a weakness to be exploited.
He could afford no weaknesses. The world was not so safe that he could let his guard down, even for a second.
So he wandered.
I'm getting to be like that damned rurouni.
Hmm. Battousai.
The chief had said he needed to get his head together, and few things gave Saito clarity like time spent around his old enemy. Perhaps a visit to Himura would do him some good. At the very least, he could needle that hodge-podge family the battousai had surrounded himself with.
In slightly better spirits, Saito set off for the Kamiya Kasshin-ryu dojo.