Changes, Chances
by waterways
Chapter 2
The area surrounding the Takani Clinic in Aizu was rife with fresh news of the stranger that had arrived three days prior. When the rains had momentarily ceased, more people were out in the streets to go about their daily business, which included (for the housewives), gossip. Given that the days were becoming far warmer in June in contrast to its humid nights, Megumi had an expected increase in visitors bearing health complaints. However, these complaints featured a greater number of pettier issues such as mosquito bites and even scraped knees, leading Megumi to the suspicion that the townsfolk came mostly to see for themselves the rumored tall, dark, and handsome stranger that had mysteriously come to stay with the respected Takani.
Megumi didn't usually mind this much activity in the clinic because it meant marginally increased earnings for her humble practice, but when she had started needing Sano to help her deal with the sheer number of (mostly female) 'patients', the derision started becoming ridiculous.
Sano was patiently and—Megumi was annoyed to note—charmingly attending to the females who had queued over to him while Megumi barked out instructions sharply, making her look like an uptight, unlikeable character next to the placid Sano who had the gall to look even more attention-grabbing in his western-style travel cloak.
The situation wasn't helped any by patients intermittently asking what Megumi was sparingly asked back in Tokyo: "Sensei, is he your lover?", and on Sano's side, "Nii-san, are you the reason Sensei turns down all her suitors?" questions that were fervently denied by Megumi, but was merely laughed off by Sanosuke.
When it was time to close the clinic, Megumi noticed that the patients from earlier were still hovering about Sano and asking him all sorts of questions. Megumi rolled her eyes and set to clearing out her workspace, and Sano finally apologized to the girls and told them that it would be best to head home before dark.
Still nonplussed by the day's flurry of unusual activity, Megumi rubbed the tiredness out of her eyes, trying to decide whether to scold Sano for entertaining gossip or to thank him for the novelty of his presence bringing in good business for the day.
"Well, someone sure enjoyed being popular!" Megumi remarked, making no move to hide the sarcasm in her tone.
"Jealous?" Sano quipped, then at the annoyed look on her face, he winked and light-heartedly said, "Don't look so glum, Kitsune. They'll get tired of me too, someday. The ladies only seemed to be concerned about the possibility of you having a secret love-affair, and the guys looked like they only wanted to know if it was true, or if they still had a chance."
Sano got up and stretched his legs, then proceeded to help Megumi clean up. "Of course, dunno why they'd want to marry a fox who's way past her marrying age, but—"
Sano didn't have the chance to complete his thought, because just as had been about to put bottled salves back in the shelves, Megumi chucked a small bottle of antiseptic in his direction. Sano caught it, then balked at the sight of Megumi burning in rage, although a smirk was evidently trying to escape his lips.
"Why you—I've told you before, I'll marry whenever I want to, you ungrateful Rooster—"
"Relax; I was only teasing you, you know I didn't mean that, Sensei," he assured her, raising his arms in a gesture of mock surrender. And while Megumi was still trying to work out why on earth she should believe him, he quickly added, "I'll draw you a bath if you want one, just to prove it!
"…I'll even join you, if you ask nicely."
Unfortunately for Megumi, there was nothing near enough to chuck at Sano, so she settled with rolling her eyes and stalking off as far away from him as possible.
But she learned later that Sano did come through with his offer, and now Megumi was soaking in the furo wondering tritely about which part of the world Sano had learned the concept of apologies from.
However, disliking that she found herself thinking about the Rooster again just as often when he wasn't there and when he was there, Megumi tried instead to think of what would be good to cook for dinner, when she heard the sound of wood being moved.
She listened for a while to the rhythmic thunking from outside, basking in the welcome warmth of her hot bath, before realizing incredulously that Sano had just added to and probably adjusted the heat of the bath. Before she had time to wonder how any Sano she knew would have the forethought to do something like that, she heard more thunking sounds of another nature coming from outside the bath.
Sano now seemed to be chopping more wood. Of his own accord.
While it was admittedly a nice kind of bewilderment, Megumi found herself so completely overthrown by this unexpected gesture that she was tempted to shake him and ask him what he'd done with the real Sano, the Sano she knew. She stayed in the bath for another half-hour, trying in vain to quiet her thoughts and to simply unwind from the day's stress, and finally gave up.
Perhaps travelling did something to a man, and this man had not just travelled but lived to travel. For seven years, her mind repeated to her, and was it so difficult to think that he could have changed?
Megumi stepped out of the bath feeling more subdued nonetheless, and was headed to the kitchen to start on dinner, when she passed by the tatami room to find Sano sitting calmly in the dining area.
And there, in the center of the table, laid what looked to be a hot, just-cooked dinner.
Megumi was beside herself with incredulity. She found herself stepping back slightly and placing the balls of her palm on her forehead, as if to withhold a forthcoming headache.
"No way—no way, no way—first, you apologize for teasing me, then you draw me a bath for it, keep it warm while I was sitting there thinking why you would do such a thing in the first place, and then, and then,Rooster… you actually cooked? Who are you!"
Sano merely uncrossed his arms, cocked his head to the side, then said, "Sit down before this gets too cold, I smell rain coming in and it might be a chilly night. Best get drinking our hot soup before that.
"And what—you don't think I survived the world for seven years without learning to pick up after myself, do ya? Don't worry about it too much; this stuff's nothing to me." Then, looking slightly offended but amused, he added, "You could stop looking so shocked, you know. You make me look like I used to be a barbarian or something."
Megumi didn't move from her place by the hallway for a few moments, merely stopped to stare at him like she didn't hear a word he had said. After a while, deciding there was no use stopping the inevitable, she rolled her eyes and said, "You're incorrigible," and proceeded to sit beside him on the table.
"So, out with it, Rooster. What do you want?"
Sano didn't take the bait, which seemed unusual to Megumi, but instead offered her the first pick of the foreign-looking dish that he had cooked. "Whatever that means," he said, "I'm sure you'll forget about it soon enough. Here, try these."
The first dish contained what looked to be a straightforward mix of scrambled egg and tomatoes, and the second one a vegetable dish. She looked at it and at him dubiously. "What is it?"
Sano seemed almost embarrassed that his cooking was being put under her scrutiny, and he presented some complicated-sounding Chinese names by way of explanation, which made no sense to her until he said that the eggs were meant to be eaten with the stir-fry vegetables, which were spicy, and along with rice. "I used to eat this a lot in Beijing. It's nothing special, but it's fast to make and well, I didn't know what else to make with what was in the kitchen already, so…"
Megumi tried it, and it wasn't as bad as she realized she was hoping it would be. She was more astounded that he, Sagara Sanosuke, ex-fighter-for-hire, gangster and gambler supreme, had cooked at all, and she remembered herself and thanked him for it.
The dinner generally passed without fuss once Sano seemed assured that his cooking wasn't being rejected, and they talked of small things, such as stories from the day's patients, peppered with trivia Megumi could provide about specific patients or Sano's encounters with similar people in his travels.
When they had done clearing up the table (Sano, of course, helped), Megumi finally received what she'd been secretly hoping for – a trace of the old Sano. He had declared nonchalantly that he was going out. At night.
Tired from the day's incessant activity and grateful for the sudden solitude, Megumi finally retired to bed a few moments after the Rooster's departure, comforted by this sudden predictability.
Megumi awoke near dawn from a dream that didn't allow her to slip back into sleep as she would have liked. The imagery of the dream was straightforward: she could make out the figure of Ken-san staring out into the horizon of some river, his back turned to her. She steadily approached him as if there were some grave purpose that would be achieved by doing so, but the red-haired figure of Kenshin ignored her completely. Just when she'd been about to nudge him, he turned around to face her, and suddenly Kenshin was Sano—that older, more somber-looking stranger that had come to her house a few days ago. And then she was awake.
She supposed the dream could have some implied meaning of sorts here and there, but she found that train of thought somewhat embarrassing to follow, even in the privacy of her own mind. What with her age, as the Rooster would so elegantly put it. So she got up from her futon on the pretense that she needed to relieve herself.
Sanosuke didn't seem to be home yet ('Why, the sun will be up in a few hours!', she thought incredulously), and since she was already up anyway, she thought she might as well make tea and rice cakes for the both of them in case he came back in time for it.
Megumi went about her usual morning routine pretending to herself that she wasn't anxious for the Rooster's whereabouts. She freshened up, changed into her hakama, combed her hair, watered her plants, and waited for the sun to start peeking through the clouds.
In his words, the Rooster had said that he wanted to 'check out' the nights of Aizu, and while Megumi immediately recognized the euphemism for what was undoubtedly a search for sake and dice and kami-know-what-else, she sincerely hoped (for her reputation's sake) that he hadn't gotten into any trouble overnight. Well, serious trouble, at least. Hoping for no trouble at all from the Chicken Head was like asking for a miracle, she supposed.
Finally, while beginning to relax into her morning tea and light medical reading, the aforementioned Chicken Head turned up.
"Good morning, sunshine," he greeted as he swung the gates open, ambling slightly as if dazed. The smell of sake instantly greeted Megumi as he approached her in the tatami room.
"I see you've found the nights of Aizu up to par," The dryness of Megumi's disapproving comment satisfied her to a degree she couldn't fully justify, but she nonetheless prepared a serving of tea for him.
Sano arranged a good-humored sour expression on his face as a reply to her comment, plopped down beside her, and let an exaggerated sigh escape his lips. "What a beautiful sight to come home to, your foxy face scowling at me. Wouldn't have it any other way," he said, taking the cup that was laid out for him.
He didn't drink immediately, only stared at her like there was something he wanted to unearth from her face just by looking at it. Naturally, Megumi pretended that she didn't notice this, her eyes firmly fixed on her medical texts.
Sano set his cup back down rather loudly after some time, startling her.
"Except… Come here," the ex-gangster stood abruptly, beckoning Megumi to do the same. Before she could protest and pretend to ignore him, though, he had taken a hold of her wrist and was tugging at it, like a father would a stubborn child. The shamelessness of this behavior annoyed her more than she could say; usually nobody got away with touching her in such a way that underscored a power relation that worked clearly against her, and anyway, usually nobody got away with touching her in the first place. But as soon as he had gotten her on her feet, he was quick to withdraw his hand and replace it at the small of her back (again, another presumptuous placement) to lead her towards the engawa.
Megumi swatted at his hand impatiently. "Rooster, what do you think—"
"You know, Megitsune, I've always wondered about what you've done with the last seven years," Sano wondered out loud, that sake-induced dazed look still in his eyes. He stared at her intently as if willing her to make sense, as if she didn't make sense, and it annoyed Megumi.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" she challenged defensively.
"Come sit with me here, and let's have tea," at this, he sat on the edge of the engawa and relaxed against the wooden column next to him, patting the spot on the other side of the column for her to sit on.
"—But we already were—that tea and those rice cakes, they didn't make themselves, you know—"
"—Yeah, I know, so let me show you how to eat them, Fox. Sit here already, why don't ya?"
Megumi was too baffled and too curious about what was going on through the Rooster's drunken mind to properly object further. She sat beside him, and he handed her the tea she'd been drinking a while ago. She sipped it gingerly, not having much else to do.
Nobody spoke for a while, and she turned to look at him only when she'd heard him release another sigh. "Look at that… I'd spend the rest of my life staring at that if it didn't always disappear so quickly."
Megumi turned to him to ask what on earth he was talking about, and following his wistful (wistful!) gaze, she found that he was staring at the line of the horizon. She looked at it resentfully, wondering if this everyday-occurring-scene had been worth him practically dragging her to her engawa so shamelessly.
Sano sighed again, and Megumi rolled her eyes to herself at it. "They don't look like this anywhere else I've been to," he began. "Sunrises, I mean. Those greens and blues, reds, and oranges, I guess they must've known what they were talking 'bout when they called this place the Land of the Rising Sun, or something." And he looked at her over the wood column that separated them, a disarmingly determined look in his gaze.
"Naa, tell me you often come out here to see this, in the mornings of those seven years. I always imagined that you do," he said, with a small smile on his lips, but Megumi had the impression that he was talking more to himself than to her.
Megumi found a scowl lining her face, and caught herself before Sano saw it. As a matter of fact, she didn't 'often come out here to see this' like he did, like a lunatic drunk with some wistful spiritual mist in his eyes, at least not anymore, and if she ever did in those early parts of the seven years, she found it more convenient to forget, and forget she did. What was there to see in those damned sunrises, except some combination of colors that never failed to lead anyone who looked at it to hope, to believe, to delude themselves of a future horizon where their every secret desire was fulfilled, when it never was? It was wasteful, and painful.
No, she had not needed the use of such pompous lies, not since she went here to find that her rumored brother had never been here, not since Kenshin and Kaoru passed away, and not since the friend who left hadn't come back after each year that they'd waited…
Megumi stood up, outraged at herself for willing such a trail of thought to linger, and at the Rooster who had some nerve to presume things he had no right to expect of her. What business did he have to think that she had been wasting her time on the things he liked to do, things he expected other people (her) ought to do as well, things that failed her while they delighted him? Who was he, after all, but a vagrant who had had seven years' luxury of running away from every little thing that she had to face?
Sanosuke seemed to sense the shift in mood from her, and stood up as well. She turned to walk out on the incredulity of his presumptuous words, words that angered and embittered her to a degree she could not fully make sense of. She then remembered herself and intended to just ask him to leave; it was her home after all, but as she was about to turn back to him to do just that, he had already reached out to her, thinking that she was intent on walking out.
The congruent force of her intent to go towards him and him pulling her to him, in the end, was greater than what her geta and the constricting girth of her skirts allowed her to maneuver with, and she started to stumble forward.
Things happened very fast. In the span of time that she tried to keep her footing, the Rooster had moved forward to support her in the assumption that she would fall, and this sudden movement indeed caused her to. She landed in a compromising embrace-like stance with him at the same moment that the sound of something dropping to the ground prompted them to look towards the direction of the sound, near the gates. A young woman Megumi recognized as a patient from yesterday was as red in the face as Megumi used to see Kaoru when they talked of Kenshin. She seemed to have dropped whatever she was carrying at having walked-in on what she thought was a romantic encounter between the famed doctor and the traveler, and promptly bolted the way she had probably come from, presumably to share the news with anyone who cared to listen. Megumi went ashen from the suspicion that that would be a sizeable number of gossip-hungry folk.
There was really only one reasonable thing to do.
"OUT!" Megumi barked at Sano when they had recovered from things. "OUT, ROOSTER, AND DON'T THINK OF COMING BACK, DO YOU HEAR ME?"
Sano looked like he very much wanted to try to defend himself, but smartly refrained from doing so. He let Megumi lead him out the gates by the ear, wincing as she put all her effort into slamming the gates in his face.
She didn't care what he did with his life from then on, she decided. If he even had money on his person, she didn't care, seeing as she would never fetch his belongings for him from his appointed room in her clinic, wondering pointedly if he had money at all, even there. He survived the wilderness for seven years, whichever mountain or cave he'd travelled to, so he'd be fine in the streets of Aizu. Gods bless his unbelievable, incorrigible, insensitive, drunk Rooster soul.
Try as she might, Megumi could not have kept the scowl off her face or the snap in her tone during the rest of the day in the clinic, only stopping to momentarily correct her demeanor when a patient would reluctantly ask her if she was 'quite feeling alright', never mind that they had already seemed to notice the lack of the Western-cloak-wielding traveler and put two and two together. That, or the girl who had mistakenly seen them locked in what Megumi assumed she would be describing as 'a passionate embrace' had gone about her predictable duty as a rumormonger.
In any case, late in the afternoon when the usual patients had resorted to pointedly avoiding her clinic for fear of her wrath, she found herself momentarily distracted by the arrival of a letter.
It was from Yahiko, dated two days ago. Megumi impatiently unfolded the letter and began to read, after closing the clinic for the rest of the day.
Dear Megumi,
First, I'm sorry about the timing of this letter. There's no way that this letter could have reached you before the Chicken Head reaches you first, and I can guess how annoyed you must be right now. The Idiot left very early in the morning before we got your last letter, and whether he ran to Aizu or took a carriage, I'm sure he got there before this letter did. So, I'm really sorry that you've had to deal with Sanosuke a day or two earlier and without warning.
I guess you know what I'm talking about; you've probably seen by now, the man is wilder and more determined than he used to be (and that's saying a lot). Tsubame and I have told him to await an invitation from you before disturbing you over there; said you liked your peace and isolation and all. But the night before he left, he said something about not being able 'to take it anymore', 'waited too long,' and 'I've got to see the Fox'. I asked if his hand was alright. It seemed okay. Whatever it was that he wanted so badly to see you about, I hope it's not what Tsubame and I suspect it is: if he—sorry if this isn't the case (…yet)—asks you to marry him, or anything like that, feel free to send him back here so I could beat him up good. Unless, of course you want to. Marry Sano, that is.
The fact that you haven't thrown this letter away yet means you might already have a sense of what I'm talking about. What I mean is this: Sano, though he can sometimes act surprisingly changed and mature, worries me a bit. He was pretty insistent, Megumi; kept asking stuff about you right after he'd had his first meal back with us. I say something's fishy, the way it's always been with him and you (don't give this letter that look), but it's weirder now, with him gone for seven years. I'm not sure he completely understands yet how much things have changed with us. Or with you, so I don't think he has any business asking for your hand in marriage or anything rash and stupid like that. I think he might still be thinking that things between the two of you would stay the same, the way he remembers them, when he saw how different things were here. I dunno. He made no secret of wondering out loud about you, until Tsubame wanted to come fetch you herself so he would stop being the lovesick dog that he was being all the time. I'm rolling my eyes, yes.
But I'm your friend, and even if I'm in no position to tell you what to do if he does crack after all and wants to whisk you away for whatever stupid idea he has about elopement, I've been your friend for longer now than him so try to think of this as friendly concern from me. I was planning on giving him a good long talking-to about this, before he snuck out of the dojo early today. I don't think he'll come back to Tokyo soon, as long as he hasn't accomplished what he probably returned to Japan for. But when you do or he does, or the both of you do, and I find out that he's hurt you or made you cry, I promise to beat him to within an inch of his life.
Write if you need help with that Rooster.
Yahiko
P.S. Ack, the thought of a grown, lovesick Sano sickens me. I can't believe I wrote this letter at all. Washing my hands and eyes. Take care of yourself.