***WARNING***

Mention of un-living oneself.

Glossary:
Kemus: Ainu for "covered in blood". Japanese would pronounce it 'Kemushi', which, funnily enough, means "Caterpillar".
-san: Honorific to refer politely to anyone who is not a close friend nor someone above your station.

THE MASTER

With the setting sun in his eyes, a tower of a man in a white traveling cape walked up the east bank of the Omono river. He followed in the footsteps of Matsuo Bashō, seeking the sharp kiss of a blade on a lonely road north from the Shirakawa barrier. Death's perfume lingered in his hands, his lips. It was what he wanted. What he deserved. But that night he had found no comfort in the thought of its company: that night he had left before dusk, a few coins on the mess of his bed, and undid his steps from Yuzawa at a brisk pace. He was Hiko Seijūrō, the thirteenth to hold that name. Stuff of legends. But the thought of a boy lost in the mountains seemed more than he could bear.

By the time he reached the village of Hatchō, the sun was well past its peak. The villagers were returning from the fields with heavy feet, but at least Hiko wouldn't have to go door to door asking around for the boy. However, while half didn't seem to know anything, the rest simply ignored him, returning to their homes and hearths before the chill of night settled over the valley. They, like the warbling birds returning home, too occupied to worry about yet another mouth to feed.

White-knuckled, the man had pushed on.

It wasn't like he wanted to be there either, knocking doors and wasting his time—he just wanted to know the boy was being taken care of. Uneasy, he rustled against the cold mail beneath his clothes. All he was asking for was to find out the little imp had a roof over his head and he'd be out of everyone's lives before the next full moon, well on his way to enjoy the first snow up north with a warm bottle of sake by his side. But there he was still, on a silent procession of sorts, along with the few souls trodding the gravel path with him. And he had run out of places to ask.

Right then, a glint caught the man's gaze. It was a pair of beady eyes, peeking out from a hut just at the bend of the road. Hiko smirked: If anyone knew anything about the boy, it would be a nosy old geezer like that one. And yet…

"He's not here?!" he blurted, startling the otherwise nonchalant old man.

"Uh— Nope," the geezer repeated with toothless insistence, scratching the back of his balding head to gather his bearings before the imposing stranger. It was a reflex more than anything else, but it was enough for his voice to sound as hoarsely brittle as it did before. "No kid, no stray cat, nobody's come this way f'r a while. Ain't no sane man gonna make his way here with winter settlin' in—'cept f'r you, sir."

Like a dear old friend, a gnawing despair hooked its bony arm firmly around Hiko's neck.

Taking his leave, he headed south towards the desecrated glade. His steps became heaver as a somber thought took form in his head: Could he have…? No, he frowned. The boy's young age made suicide seem unlikely, no matter how dire the situation. However, the fact did little to raise his hopes: the cold would have certainly taken him during the night anyway. The spindly shadows of trees creep further across the road as his thoughts spiraled into darkness: Even when I wield my sword, I haven't been able to save a soul too many times more than I'd like. It was another failure. Oh, how would his predecessors look down on him, how ashamed of seeing their mighty name muddled by the blood of so many souls he could not help. That he would never be able to help. I kill. And kill. And kill. And still they are like maggots; evil just springs back from the decomposing corpse of this country.

The pungent stench of day-old blood hit him before he even saw the black patch of dirt, which marked the grim entrance to the glade. By that point the last traces of gold had faded from the sky: the forest was now a realm of shadows, only cut by thin slivers of deep-red light. These thin lines drew the edges of a scramble of footprints marring the humid dirt. It told the silent tale of the chaotic panic that had taken place the night before. Scattered towards the edge of the road, empty purses were forgotten next to torn brooches, some of them still with a clump of hair from their previous owners. There will be more acts like this, he lamented over the remains of a ragged strip of pink cloth hanging from a tiny straw sandal. All I can do is bury the innocents, he concluded as he stepped through the veil of trees into the clearing. He gasped.

Under the agonizing light of dusk, the grass had transformed into a thorny, rugged graveyard. Dotted by dozens of mounds, makeshift graves pierced by stakes—some round, some pointy—crudely made out of twigs and the carcass of a cart, of which only the wooden wheels remained. And in the midst of it, the small figure of a boy struggled with a rock.

Taking a deep, iron-laden breath, the man started towards him.

"You buried not just your family, but the bandits too…?" he asked as he reached the tuft of deep-red hair, almost lost in the waning light.

The boy turned around, wide-eyed. A glint of fear grew in his glassy eyes as he took the towering man in, the memories of that night fresh in the dried trail of tears on his cheeks. But just as quickly as the fear rose, it faded. The boy turned his back to Hiko: rolling the rock in place apparently held more importance to him than acknowledging the giant man with a sword behind him, eh? Even if it was one who had saved his life the night before. The audacity of that brat…

"Slavers."

"Huh?" Hiko snapped out of it at the sound of that.

"Mom and dad died last year, 'said 't was cholera," the boy explained, his voice soft but flat, as he held the rock in both hands one last time 'rightful spot'. It was the tone with which you spoke of a painful memory many, many years after. It was lucky for the man that he was still at the boy's back; pity was not something he was keen on sharing, even if the recipient was not a day over six summers at most, seeming to had lived in a year what many don't live in their whole life.

"And you still made graves for them…?" The man insisted, struggling to wrap his mind around the image that skinny, waist-high boy dragging the ones that turned his life into a living hell towards holes carved with his own hands.

"… Bandits and slavers, they don't look no different when they're dead, so…" The boy shrugged, wiping his nose.

Silence.

A thousand children enduring the same night would not have come up with such logic. Hell, they would not have come up with any logic. But then again, not a single thing about that boy was ordinary: The unruly deep-red hair, the strange garbs that he was wearing—he'd never seen something like it. He'd been wandering around for some time now, but he never crossed path with the winding lines that adorned the boy's collar and hems, let alone someone with hair the color of blood. He was all… foreign. But what he truly could not help but stare was the boy's serene gaze—it was as if he had already accepted what fate had dropped on him. True strength of comes not from muscle and brawl, but from stillness and wisdom, his master's words echoed from a not-so-distant past; one to accept what cannot be changed, and the other to know when it is time to make a difference. Hiko scoffed. As if he needed those words to know how much the old geezer resented taking him under his wing…

Oblivious to his musings, the redhead remained silent, almost contemplative of the three small stones carefully placed before him. It was that eery stillness—again with that, how could a boy that age be so quiet?—that brought the man back from the depths of time. Unable to stand the silence anymore, the man finally asked: "What are those?"

"Kasumi-san, Akane-san, Sakura-san," the boy looked at each of them in turn as if presenting them to him. "They got sold too. I only knew 'em for a few days, but since I was the only boy and there were no parents around, I had to protect 'em. But I—" the words got stuck in his small throat. Head tucked in, shoulders up, stiff, and tiny hands now balled-up in white-knuckled fists on his knees, he went back to being so terribly young. "That's why I wanted to find them good stones, so that nobody forgets. But these are all I found, and there weren't any flowers neither…"

The boy's voice cracked. Hiko closed his eyes and slowly, almost affectionately, opened the clay jug he had been carrying around in hopes of enjoying at least one good thing since the start of fall. "Man or woman, to die without knowing the taste of good sake is a crime," he started solemnly, pouring a good half of it over the three stones. The redhead looked on. "This offering is the least I can do."

A slight nod: Thank you.

And then, a tiny stomach rumbled.

Hiko's brows knit tightly as he looked down at the boy, hunched over, hugging himself. The man rummaged through one of the strapped bundles he packed with food when leaving the inn up in Yuzawa. He picked one of the rice balls in it—the smallest-ish of the three,— and gave it to the redhead as he asked:

"What is your name, boy?"

"Kemushi."

As soon as the boy bit down hard on the rice ball, he puckered—it had to be the saltiest, most sour thing he had possibly tasted in his short life by the looks of it. Hiko couldn't help but snort. That was more like it: A boy should not have a foot in enlightenment so early in life, no matter what his master used to wish for the future. Such a world would be so very boring… The boy turned, confused and disgusted, but still decidedly gobbling up the rice ball in his hands.

Barely waist-high, soft in the arms and his voice, and with that ridiculously flamboyant tuft of red hair to top it off—he was, indeed, like a caterpillar holding on to a leaf in the summer rain. A pitiful sight. But more pitiful would be to let those sharp eyes of his go to waste: They followed Hiko's every move like a hawk's, even through the sourness of the rice ball's pickled plum filling.

Placing one hand balled against his hip, the man pinched his nose with the other and sighed. What he was about to do was stupid. Irresponsible. The worst idea he had since he took to the sword—and that was saying something. And still: "That's not a name for a swordsman," Hiko declared, defeated, as he placed a heavy hand on the boy's head. "From now on, your name will be 'Kenshin'.."

Big eyes gazed at him from below the wild tuff of hair.

"I shall teach you… My most precious knowledge." Or make your life miserable if I ever get bored.

Little did he know how right, how wrong he'd turn out to be.

This will be the end of the canon-ish chapters for a while. So buckle up: from now on, "here be dragons."

Feedback is more than welcome. This is my first serious attempt at writing, English is *not* my mother tongue, and it's only me, chat gpt and a bottle of wine to proofread this baby. Just be gentle with me, senpai 3

Almost forgot: Why Ainu-Kenshin? It seemed the truest-to-source-material way to actually write a redhead in 1800's Japan. Plus, points for story shenanigans in the near future.

Thank you for reading!

[Dec 14] Made some small adjustments and will be adding glossaries and historical (or in this case contextual) notes to the chapters. I try to limit foreign words, but sometimes there's just no good alternative.
[Mar 24] Yess, more edits, I know, but bear with me! I'm still learning.

Contextual notes notes:
• Matsuo Basho famous haiku poet who thought he was best at renga poems than haiku ones. Gosh I love that old geezer. He lived at the end of the 1600's when a unified Japan was still a very new, very WIP thing, and, because he either truly understood the mutability of life or he just grew bored of people, he headed north. North-north. With a schedule to visit places associated to the artists he was inspired by (like, the earliest account I've heard of a frigging roadtrip). Sources vary, of course, but the idea in one of them struck me like, oh so very true for Hiko: To actively seek to die in a lonely road at the hands of bandits. Say what you may, but to me, this sounded like a new headcanon.
• Red hair is not something that happened (at least that I could find) among the japanese during the Edo period. Ainu people, however, could actually have red-haired children during that period. People from Korea too, but I didn't want to open yet another can of worms.
• Based on what I could gather, Ainu people don't name their children for the first years of their life; instead, they basically give them a nickname. I tried to find a sweeter one (as Ainu parents love their children as much as anyone else), but I couldn't find something that matched the wordplay that the author intended.
• Unlike the christian crosses from the manga and anime, Kenshin has made some sticks with round & pointy ends. I tried to imagine what a child would understand and be able to do based on Ainu tombs markers, which have pointy ends for men and round ends for women. Tombs have no names nor anything because they are meant to be kind of forgotten (pleaaaase forgive me if I understood incorrectly). For Akane, Kasumi and Sakura however, Kenshin DID want people to remember them, so he used stones.
• As for what Kenshin is wearing, I think it's called Attus (it's the name of the fabric, but also of clothes made with it): It's a robe made of fabric weaved from tree bark. Traditionally, women would decorate them with intricate patterns on each opening (hems & neck) to confuse bad spirits and prevent them from entering the body of the wearer. Please do correct me if I got anything wrong!
• Finally, the pickled plums. They are a thing. The saltiest, most sour thing possibly ever. But people loved them, they were a good preserve for the winter months, and damn: who would miss the opportunity to prank someone with one of those?