Glossary:
Dango (or in this case, Mitarashi Dango): Traditional steamed rice dumplings. This one is covered in sweet soy sauce glaze.
Karatake: The basic move (?) in japanese martial arts, a vertical, downward slash.
Snow kids (Yukinko): Part of the Yuki-onna's japanese folk tale, it's the spirit of a child that, if you hug them, will become heavier until you die covered on snow. Yikes.
Bokutō: How the japanese refer to bokken, wooden swords.


THE PUPIL

The first time the redhead ate dango, the look on his face must have been priceless. It was about a week or so after Hiko—'his master', the man corrected with a stern face—took him in. They had reached a roadside teahouse, barely three walls, a roof and a couple of long, thin banners hanging at its entrance. The boy, red faced and feet aching, sighed in relief when his master finally stopped there: It wasn't so much that he wasn't used to walking, as that for every step the man took, he had to take two or three. For hours. Every day...

He– 'Kenshin,' he reminded himself, sat on a plain wooden bench by the entrance, happy to just let his legs dangle from the edge and warm his hands under his thighs. He kept his head down to avoid the glaring looks of the passersby. Everyone did it, but he couldn't put a finger on what exactly it was they couldn't peel their eyes from. Maybe the dirt in his clothes? His hair? It couldn't be the blood—his master had him scrub himself and his clothes clean until his knuckles ached. So, what was it? Uncomfortable, he looked away from the road, instead taking in the trees, the tallest he'd ever seen, and how their branches and leaves seemed to disappear in the hazy sky. The boy wondered what the woods down south would look like: Would the trees there be so big that only giants like his master could live there? He frowned at himself—now he was being stupid: There was no way anyone could be taller than him… could it?

The boy had no more time to ponder, though: in that moment, the man himself sat beside him with a plate of small skewered balls dipped in sauce and a curt 'eat'. The redhead stared. It smelled good, but still… He peeked at his master, quietly sipping his tea, and lowered his gaze back to the mysterious plate. With a wary finger, he poked one of the gummy balls and grimaced at the thick, sticky sauce. Yeah, he wasn't so sure about their eat-ability…

It was his master's turn to stare. At him.

The boy grabbed one of the gummy balls between two fingers and, gingerly, took a bite.

Salty and sweet and pure goodness, the taste danced in his tongue making him glow—so much so that Hiko himself couldn't help but half-smirk in turn: "Now that wasn't so bad, right?" Kenshin smiled back at him, cheeks full of dango and specks of sauce. And that was the last time his master responded in kind.

The next day, they arrived at a small hut in the woods (east of Otsu, as he would later find out out,) just big enough for them to sleep in huddled around the hearth, and barely strong enough to hold itself upright. It was in that lost corner of the mountains that his real training would begin: While they were on the way, it was just hitting trees and what he'd get to know as 'light' sparring with whatever sticks and rods they could find—probably to test him, or more likely for the man to test himself on how to teach him. But up there, his master was ruthless, 'for the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu demands it all from its wielder' and Kenshin was too small. Too thin. Too soft. Too weak. He trained every day until his hands bled, the flesh itself aching all the time from the wooden sword's recoil after sparring. But what really made his head pound at the end of the day was all the tactical stuff: Smack! "Don't grip so hard." Smack! "Now I've got your sword. Grip tighter!" Smack! He hit the floor. "Watch your feet!". No matter how hard he tried, there was always a what, a how and a when that had him biting the dust again and again. Finding out what it was that time, and then remembering the other twenty things he had to do or couldn't do was worse than any scrape or bruise—of which he had oh so many. But still, he pushed on. He had to. Every day his eyes got a little bit better at catching the turn of his master's sword, ever more watchful of which way the hit was going to come from. Giving up was not an option: He wouldn't, couldn't let anyone else be hurt. Ever. Again.

The nightmares had to be the worst part for Hiko. True, taking a child in with zero knowledge of how to teach him, not to mention how to teach in general, was one thing—doing so without the faintest idea how to actually care for a boy was even worse. But both of those he figured out how to at least appear to know what he was doing, with just as many bad days as anyone else. The kid doesn't get the basics? Crack a branch on his head and he'll understand what a Karatake is. You don't have enough for two bowls of rice? Drink tea with your best poker face and give the child the one you could actually afford. Find a roof. Patch the walls. Feed a cold, starve a fever, or was it the other way around…? But what Hiko Seijūrō the Thirteenth was not even remotely prepared for, was waking up to the painful whimpers of a boy still trapped in dreams of blood—to jerk him awake for the redhead to just lay there, seating still with his head hanging low like a rag doll, nothing but a few tears clinging to hollow eyes. Being left with the shell of a boy in the middle of the night… He'd rather deal with a wet bed than with whatever sucked the life out of that boy whenever it snowed.

Hiko let himself rest against the wall with a sigh when he saw Kenshin's breath dimly drawn against the dark by the cold air of the hut. The wood creaked under his weight as he fed the hearth. "There, better?" he offered, but there was no response other than the sharp hum of the wind rattling the shutters. The boy remained so still, skin so white it glowed. It was giving him the creeps—good thing he didn't believe in snow kids…

The man rubbed his eyes, frustration and fatigue threatening to take him down in advance of what the day was yet to bring: When the boy was like this, when he couldn't snap out of it, he would 'wake up' just in a sense, enough to go through the motions of the day. He would eat, dress, follow and train without a word, not a whiff of fear, doubt or his usual 'buts' to dull his movements. It made him almost terrifyingly good for a boy his age, but so very reckless. Hiko hated it. Whatever his pupil thought of him after a specially hard whacking, he had to admit that his master did have a superb control over his own force and speed. However, it just wasn't enough during one of those damned days.

"For gods-sake, DODGE!" He cried as the wood made an awful sound agains the boy's head. In that same instant, he felt a blinding pain in his shin—the little bastard having managed to hit him as he went down. Hiko bit his anger hard as he jumped back: had it been anyone else… But it wasn't. It was a small, red-haired boy the one that, wobbly but surely, stood up in the snow. And he was bleeding.

"Shit."

Shaking the pain off, Hiko closed the distance in two steps. He lifted the boy's chin, his hair—so much blood, why so much blood?,—searching for the tiny gash in his hairline where the bokutō hit him. "I'm ok," Kenshin dismissed with a wince, pushing his master's hands away to rub some of the blood out of his eye. Finally, a word. The man sighed: "Come on…"

Half guiding, half pushing the redhead back to the hut, Hiko took a vase, filled it with snow and left it on the few embers still alive in the hearth. Then, ripping the closest piece of cloth he could reach without taking his eyes off the boy, he started patting and scrapping the blood from his face. "'Said I'm ok" Kenshin scowled, barely mumbling his words under the returned weight of his hurt pride. Now that was more like his stupid pupil.

Hiko gave both the vase and the rag to him, stepping back and on the floor of the hut to kick the snow out before taking a seat. He looked on as the redhead washed his face, taking special care around the bump in which the gash must have surely turned by now, and was about to zone out when the mumbled words finally reached him:

"You think I can do it?"

Three winters. Three winters since that day, and it was now that he had doubts? Uncorking a jug of sake, the man took his time pouring himself a drink. The boy stood there in silence, unable to meet his gaze, trembling as he held onto his bokutō so tightly that his knuckles went blue. He stood corrected: it seemed it wasn't the snow but the cold that brought back the memories of that terrible night. He sipped from his cup, swished the drink around his mouth and, finally, declared: "No."

The shock drained all blood from Kenshin's face. "M– Master!" he stuttered, taking a sharp step forward just before Hiko interrupted him, "I told you Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu demands it all from its wielder, remember?" His stern voice resonated in spite of the snow muffling every sound around them. "No matter how hard you try, you won't be able to master it and it still will take its toll on your body; you're not built for it." Despite Hiko's best efforts to get him up to par, Kenshin remained too ill fitted for it, too goddamn soft. Even now, especially now, wide-eyed and frozen on the spot by the shock of the truest words he'd ever said out loud.

"Do you quit?"

Silence. Then…

"No."

A genuine smile drew itself in the man's lips. That resolute response, those gleaming eyes… Those were the reasons he took in his stupid, simpleton pupil.

"Then, it's time we meet an old friend of mine."


Oof, this one was hard to write. I'm not sure if I nailed the feelz-plot balance here, but I always wondered if Kenshin ever was a kid, with kid's fears and kid's wants. And I REALLY wanted to add the reference to the wet bed incidents dear Hiko reminded Kenshin about in the Kyoto arc. Please let me know what you think of it!

[Dec 14] Made some small adjustments and will be adding glossaries and historical notes to the chapters. I try to limit foreign words, but sometimes there's just no good alternative.

Historical notes:

• Apparently, a bowl of rice was ±10 mon (copper coins), so yeah, a wandering, masterless and jobless martial artist was poor... Hence why the sword came so late for Kenshin.

• 'Feed a cold, starve a fever' is not a japanese phrase, but welp, couldn't find something familiar enough to picture Hiko screaming on the inside as he tried to keep his pupil alive. TL;DR: Single daddy issues, the struggle is real.