Collateral Damage

Chapter 4: Days

Tokio 1879

Tokio decided that there was a great difference between the art that Saitou performed so casually and the exercises that lead to that art. Saitou and Okita had made swordsmanship look like a delicate, deadly dance that one could perform at a half second notice with grace and precision. As much as she liked Karou, she was coming to the unavoidable conclusion that she was no where near the skill level or ability of even the most inept of the Shinsengumi, much less masters like Saitou or Okita. She was however enthusiastic.

"Yes, like that." Karou clapped as Tsutomo placed his little hands on the small piece of bamboo that had to be unearthed from a storehouse. It seemed that Karou had never had such a tiny student and wasn't entirely prepared. That the tiny student was also cute, vicious, and cunning still hadn't fully sunk into Karou's mind yet. "Very good."

Eiji, who had received at least a few basics, probably from his brother, was already roving around getting used to his new bokkon by whacking small flowers, tall stems of grass, and other dangerous botanical enemies. She had already made a point of telling both boys that all practicing would have to be done at the dojo. While she felt that the overgrown jungle that passed as a garden could do with quite a bit of whacking, she had a distinct feeling that Tsutomo would not keep his sword activities out of the house and she didn't feel like being whacked by her little wolf cub was the preferred way of greeting the day.

"You should not worry. Karou-dono is a fine teacher, that she is." Kenshin had come and sat down with her brining a pot of tea. She was taking note that he was staying far away from both anything to do with teaching and her children, which showed he had good sense. "She will do a good job teaching them the basics."

Tokio nodded, not missing the little flicks of the red haired man's eyes towards the gate, obviously waiting for Saitou to come and assert his rights to teach his own children. Once, years ago, he would have been right, but Kenshin had not really been around Saitou. He didn't know that it was far more likely that Saitou was purposefully on the other side of town.

"Oh, I'm not worried about that. I'm worried that my house might not survive." She waved one hand towards the boys. "They have so much energy and a house is such a fragile thing."

He gave her a gentle smile that showed no true understanding of what she had just said so she lowered her opinion just a notch. "They are good boys. I'm sure it will be fine, that I am."

Tokio sighed and leaned a bit closer to the man, pointing covertly to her wolf pup. "See him?"

Kenshin nodded, watching Tsutomo finally get the idea of how to hold a sword.

"That's Saitou in miniature. In a couple of months, he'll probably be gatotsuing everything in sight." She shook her head. "My house is already in ruins. By the end of the year, we'll be living in the garden."

Kenshin gave a few half hearted chuckles until he noticed she was serous. "I'm sure that Saitou will keep him in check."

Tokio turned away. "Don't count on that. Saitou is very busy."

Kenshin eyed the little wolf more carefully. "I'll talk to Karou-dono."

"Hey, you really live in a ruin?" Sanosuke came lazing around the corner of the dojo. "Thought that creepy cop could do better than that."

"Sano!" Kenshin frowned slightly at his friend. "Tokio-dono does not need to hear you speak like that about Saitou, that she does not."

The younger man rubbed the back of his head and nodded. "Yeah, sorry. I kinda don't like him. He put a sword through my shoulder and well…"

Tokio nodded. She had heard the story from Karou and while she disapproved of Saitou wandering about casually attacking people with a sword, she could also tell there was more to the story than either of them were telling or perhaps even knew. There were hundreds of ways Saitou could have forced Kenshin to fight, but he chose to attack an opponent that was hardly even a threat. That he drew a sword when he could have put the young man down with his bare hands was even more suspicious. Something else had happened in that brief encounter. Tokio considered a second then sighed. "Yes, the house is in very poor condition. Saitou didn't have time to find a house when he was assigned here, so we took what was available."

Out in the practice yard, Karou had the boys swinging their swords up and down. "Hold the tip up a bit more, Eiji. That's it, good."

"I am going to hire a man to help with repairs." Tokio nodded to the boys. "We will try to help, but I am not sure how we will do."

"When does…" Sano looked uneasily around. "Well, when does Saitou get home?"

Tokio keeping her eyes on the boys and a fond smile on her face gave a seemingly careless shrug. "Late. He often misses dinner."

Sano shuffled near her. She could practically feel him radiate impatience and hesitation. Keeping her focus on the boys, she tumbled what little she knew about him around in her head. He was young and she could tell he was also unfocused. The man had problems with self discipline, didn't like to conform, and often acted before thinking. From the way Kenshin acted around him, the young man was also friends with the former hitikori. He also was attacked by Saitou, which considering his other personality traits, could have been instigated by Sano trying to attack first. However, she also didn't believe the young man was in anyway a threat to her or the boys. He reminded her of someone...

"…just what kind of work do you want done?" Sano asked hesitantly.

She turned and smiled up at him, then blinked…Harrada. The boy looked like Harrada. They had the same hair, the same shape to the eyes, the same lanky build, and even the same face. The two could have been father and son. She hadn't been as close to Harrada as she had been with Okita, but the few times she had met him, she had found him to be rather nice. He'd been a good man.

She tipped her head thoughtfully then with a mental nod found a nice niche in her plan for him. "I was planning on hiring someone to fix the roof."

Sanosuke shuffled. "I could do that."

Kenshin made an odd sound and nearly toppled over. "Sano, are you feeling well. Perhaps you should sit down."

There was more shuffling and Sano made an embarrassed sound. "Look, I own Tae some money and if I don't pay my tab, I don't get to eat."

"But you don't want Saitou to find out." Tokio gave him a reassuring smile. "I doubt he would care as long as the work was done."

She didn't think he'd even notice that the work was done. She could probably have the house razed to the ground and build a geisha house in its spot and Saitou would never notice unless one of the geisha's got into legal trouble or politicians started visiting. He'd probably come to investigate, mumble a greeting to her, then flee the premises. She could grow rich and famous if she just let the criminals that Saitou hounded know that all they had to do was rent a room in her home and they'd be safe to pursue their nefarious deeds.

Sano huffed a bit, still having doubts, but the lure of money kept him tethered. "When do you want to start?"

Tokio smiled, "How about tonight after the boy's lesson. You could come with us to the market and help pick up the materials."

Saitou 1870

They were on the road outside of the prison doing maintenance. In reality, the road was fine, but the freezing weather and melting slush was too perfect an opportunity for the guards to pass up to watch the inmates to labor in the most miserable conditions possible while not having to travel more than a few paces from warmth and hot tea.

"My wife," One overly thin man that Saitou knew but didn't know was talking in almost a daze, "she had the most beautiful hair, long, silky…it looked like nightfall. She'd comb it before bed. She'd sit on the edge of the futon and comb and comb. I loved watching her."

Saitou had stopped learning people's names months ago. It made things easier to not know. Nearly everyone died here, and if he didn't know their names, then they were just bodies, nameless bodies, frozen in death, dressed in rags, hauled out of their cells by other nameless people, and incinerated with the rest of the garbage. When they had names, then it was someone, a person.

His present companion wouldn't last much longer. He was showing all the signs that Saitou had learned to be wary of: the aimless mumbling of happier times, the unfocused stare, the clumsy movement of his arms and legs, the sunken eyes, the pinched lips. The man would drift to sleep and not wake up, if one of the guards didn't smash his skull in for not working fast enough.

"A blue kimono…she liked blue, even out of season." The man continued mumbling. "She would look so pretty in it with her hair down like a girl's."

Saitou continued to shovel wet, icy sludge from the road as other's patched nonexistent holes. His cell mates were down the line racking gravel and trimming small bushes that were no threat to even the laziest of pedestrians who might amble over to the prison for a visit. The guards holding steaming tea cups from their recent visit to the guard booth, stood eyeing them with grins on their faces. Saitou hoped that their present level of misery was enough to entertain them, otherwise the likelihood of one of them being chosen to make an example of was high.

He kept his head down and his shovel moving in quick neat movements. If he didn't look threatening, if he didn't look interesting, if he just kept working in a steady pace, someone else would become the target. A beating in summer was bad, but one in winter was deadly. The road they were working on had more than a few bones from winter time examples who had just been rolled to the side where the animals could dispose of them.

"We'd walk along the river and she'd smile." The man wasn't really talking to him. He was weaving his memories around himself as a shelter from the reality of what now was.

Saitou didn't blame him. He did it himself at times reliving his time with his friends, how Tokio looked as she did some task or another, what it had been like to sit by a stream watching the water flow past, how he'd felt as he walked the streets of Kyoto dressed in warm, soft clothes. He'd also lost himself in the dark parts of his memory, replaying each scene, trying to find some magical formula to undo what had obviously gone wrong. It was pointless, useless. Reality always came back to face him.

"You. Hurry up!" One of the guards had noticed the mumbling and slow work of the other man, but they didn't seem inclined to come over and do much about it.

Saitou moved away a bit, getting out of the man's area. Others were doing the same. No one wanted to be near possible trouble. The man could easily take down one or two more with him if the guards stirred themselves into action. The man didn't notice and Saitou busied himself scraping a nonexistent bump out of the road.

"Move yourself, old man!" The guard yelled again looking a bit perkier.

Saitou scanned quickly around noticing that one of the wardens was coming up the road. He made himself look busier, knowing that the guards would try to impress their superior either with a hard working crew or with a quick example of discipline. He preferred to be on the side of the hard working crew, so he industriously started digging a rock out of the road that he'd managed to uncover. As the warden drew closer, the guards surreptitiously dumped their tea and wadded into the prisoners.

"Get working! We aren't on a holiday." One cuffed him harshly, making him stumble, but he wasn't the main target.

"You, we've warned you before." Another guard grabbed the mumbler by one too skinny arm pulling him out of line and towards the center of the road where the warden would have the best view of the disciplinary measures the guards were going to undertake.

Saitou and the others stepped farther away keeping their heads down, not needing to see the sight that was being played out before them. They'd all seen it before, the cries for mercy, the arc a whip curved into as it flashed through the air, the way flesh seemed to magically part, the gloating grins on the faces of the guards, the broken person falling to the road in a jumble of limbs.

The warden, having paused to watch, nodded, "Good work, men. Keep it up."

Saitou

Saitou walked down the street with Chou lazing at his side. He'd received a tip that some of the local magistrates were letting a select few criminals out to work for them, probably to advance their political careers. Normally, Saitou would have let some of the others deal with such a nuisance problem, but the addition of a few rather questionable deaths of judges and police officers had perked his interest. The latest questionable death had been of a patrol officer who had been discovered with his throat cut in an alley behind a less then reputable tea house. Seeing that the man had been assigned to the other side of Tokyo and he had normally patrolled the area adjoining the magistrate's neighborhood, Saitou was curious.

"Hey, look fried tofu." Chou sauntered over to the small street vendor. "Looks good."

Saitou kept walking. If things got interesting, he didn't want a belly of bad tofu weighing him down. That didn't stop Chou from grabbing some to chomp as they walked. Citizens were bustling through the street in a small rush. It was starting to get dark and most were probably thinking thoughts of home, family, and warm meals. Tired women were rushing with bundles under their arms anxious to get dinner cooked. Children whined in shrill complaints as harried parents herded them past food stalls that had been erected to tempt evening crowds.

Saitou ignored all of it winding through the passersby only noting those he deemed to be possible threats. The crowds got scruffier as the approached the tea house. People's faces became a bit more lean, their clothes lacked the latest patterns, hems were more worn, and their movements less confident. The tea house itself was rundown with poorly patched shoji screens and a battered sign. The alley behind showed more use than a normal alley would with a defined path from the tea house's back door to the street. Garbage had been pushed in piles to the side with the officer's body laying half buried under a fall of rotting vegetables.

"You'd think they'd have cleared things up." Chou stood behind him still chomping on the tofu.

Satiou ignored him looking around the scene. It was obvious that the body had been moved. The people that had done it hadn't been particularly careful leaving scuff marks on the stained pavement from having dragged the corpse from the street. Saitou followed the path back to the street looking for clues.

From the few marks next to the path, he guessed that at least two men had moved the body. One had worn western style boots and the other more common geta. He couldn't entirely rule out a third, but from the careless way they had handled the body, he doubted a third had been present. The body had probably been moved last night and hidden under the vegetables. Workers had found it and in typical fashion had ignored it, not wanting to get involved. Only the screaming of a hysterical child had finally drawn the attention of the authorities.

"Do you know him?" Saitou called back to where Chou was standing still cramming tofu into his face.

"How should I know?" Chou shrugged.

"Why don't you go look at him." Saitou estimated that the boot wearer was nearly as tall as he was and the geta wearer was only slightly less.

"I gotta look at a dead cop?" Chou grumbled gulping down the last of his meal. "What for?"

"So you can see if he looks familiar." Saitou traced the two foot trails back to the street where they stopped. A cart or some kind of wheeled vehicle had been used to transport the body, unless the two had been lugging it through the streets on their shoulders and never got noticed.

There was a rustling sound behind him as he contemplated the likelihood of various vehicles being used in this neighborhood without causing comment. A large coach would cause a stir, but a small on, or even a rickshaw could pass through the streets easily.

"Nah, doesn't look like anyone I know." Chou called back.

Saitou glanced over his shoulder and with one last measuring look at the street turned walking back to the body. Cho had flipped the man over, but otherwise hadn't touched anything. Neither apparently had the killers. The man was still dressed neatly in his uniform with only a small wound at the temple to show what had killed him.

"Low caliber bullet. Close range." Saitou muttered looking at the wound. "No exit. No burning of the skin."

The man's uniform was stained from the vegetables and other refuse, but Saitou still noted a few things before turning away. The uniform didn't have much in the way of handy mud or suspicious plant material lingering on it, but the officer's gloves had been missing. He also had a stain covering the front of his uniform from his neck down his chest and spreading across his right side. While it might be no more than spillage from the garbage, it was something to investigate farther. He looked around at the things that had been used to cover the man: boxes, some old rotten radishes, tea grounds, a few broken sake bottles, some rotten tofu, and the remnants of a shoji screen. He searched around for anything else, but beyond rat droppings and a broken tea cup, he failed to find anything else.

Standing, he glanced at the basic layout of the alley way and then walked back to the street. "Chou, go back to headquarters and have them remove the man. I need to go check a few things."

He didn't have to watch Chou to know the man was standing weighing the benefits of heading back to the station against the bother of walking all that way.

After a few seconds of deliberation, Chou made a small put-upon sound. "Okay, okay. Fine."

Saitou took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it as he exited the alley and turned towards the more affluent sector of town. It was a good day. He could probably be busy for weeks because of this. He'd have to remember to say a proper thank you to the dead officer, maybe donate money to his widow of funeral expenses. Yes, this was a lovely day.

~*~*~*~*

Notes:

Corpses: Bodies are and were generally burned because of religious beliefs (mainly Buddhist) and lack of space for graves. I found a few articles about bodies needing to be whole so that the spirit of the person will be whole in the afterlife, and the belief that the dead will haunt the living at times. The concept of dying without repaying on is big and if on is not paid, the spirit of the person may well linger behind. A son's duty is to repay the unrepayable on that he has to his parents, family, friends, and loved ones in general. This involves being there to bury them in a fit manner. If one dies early, they cannot repay on so are dying in debt. I know it doesn't help the story directly, but it is an interesting concept.

Kimonos: Kimonos often have different colors for different seasons. Much like our grandparents not wanting to wear white in winter, so the Japanese had colors to wear or not wear according to what time of year it was. Some of the color combinations were quite intricate. In The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, it describes how the many, many layers of kimonos had to each had a specific color that had to be worn in a certain way so that the under-layers of the kimono would show through the upper layers to produce the required color effect.

Hair: Women in the Tokagawa age tended to have their hair elaborately coifed, coiled, and styled when their finances permitted. When the Meji took power, women started to actually cut their hair like western men and to wear men's clothing. This caused a bit of an outrage, but as it generally does, it passed.