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

Before they could go anywhere though, the boy needed a sandal. His master fumbled with the ones strewn around them, trying to make one fit his—'Kenshin,' he reminded himself, tasting the name on his tongue,—trying to fit Kenshin's small foot. The straw tickled as the man twisted and tied; but the more he tried, the more it frayed, until there was no more loops to hold the weave together. Kenshin learned lots of curses that day. Groaning, the man finally threw his hands up in defeat.

"This is ridiculous," his master grumbled, hands now planted on his huge thighs. "Come, hop on."

The redhead didn't move. Even crouching, the man's eyes were level with his. If the night before he had looked as big as an ogre, with his white cape eating away at the darkness around him, up close he was even larger. His nostrils flared like a bear's as he grew impatient. And with hands twice the size of Kenshin's, he could easily knock the boy out with a single slap.

"I said hop: you're no good to me if your feet succumb to frost," the tower of a man insisted, jerking his head towards his own back, "What are you waiting for, boy?"

Swallowing hard, Kenshin did as his master told: he hooked his arms around the man's neck and climbed onto his back. As soon as the man stood up, he held on for dear life. For a moment he remembered the same fear, brightened by laughter, when he rode on his dad's back; but he pushed the memory away as fast as he could. There was no dad any more, not for a while already. And as one of the people who bought him said: It was dumb of him to forget that.

Suddenly, he felt his eyes get hot and prickly: There was no dad any more, no mum. No sisters, no brothers. No Sakura-nēsan. And now, no Kemushi. He buried his face in the thick black mane of the man's ponytail. No, he thought. From then on, it would only be his master and him—Kenshin.

• • •

When he woke up—when had he fallen asleep?—the sun was peeking out from the mountains to his left. His back felt icy-cold, and he could barely feel his fingers and toes. And yet, his chest was warm, almost uncomfortably so: He was still riding on his master's back, shielded against the chilly morning breeze by the man's broad shoulders. Moreover, just as he couldn't remember dozing off, he didn't remember ever stopping to rest during the night. And yet the man's steps were as strong and steady as when he had set off with the boy on his back.

The redhead may have moved too much upon waking up, as his master's coarse voice greeted him, "Finally awake, boy?" Kenshin rubbed the drool from the corner of his mouth, nodding drowsily. "Hope you didn't drool over my cape."

The boy's eyes widened. He shook his head frantically.

"Good, this cape is older than you, me and a couple of gramps put together. I'd hate to see it drooled all over by a snotty boy."

Shrinking into himself, Kenshin held on quietly for the rest of the trip down to the next village. That would be the last time his master, or anyone else for that matter, gave him a back ride. He would have to walk the rest of the of the twenty-day trip on his own—and from that point on his master made sure sandals wouldn't be a problem.

The one good thing he took out of it though, was learning his master's name. He shouted it so loudly, the boy would never forget it.

The other thing he didn't have to worry about was food. He did not ask for it, not a single time, and for the first few days, only his tummy betrayed his need to eat. But after taking the long way around to skip Fukushima, the boy started lagging behind ever so slightly. By the time Hiko noticed, he was trying to pry open a horse-chestnut with his teeth. Since then, is master made sure to stock on something for the road whenever they wouldn't be able to reach the next village in a single day.

But the best day was, without a doubt, the first time he ate dango. It was about 18 or 19 days after Hiko 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. Kenshin, red faced and feet aching, made a bee-line to a plain wooden bench by the entrance. He let his legs dangle from the edge, hands tucked under his thighs for warmth. He kept his head down to avoid the glaring looks of the passersby. 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?

Just as he was picturing how a giant's town would look like, Hiko himself sat down next to him with a plate of pale skewered balls dipped in sauce and a curt 'eat'. Kenshin stared. It smelled good, but it did not look like it. He peeked at his master, quietly sipping his tea, and lowered his gaze back to the mysterious plate: The memory of the sour rice ball was still too fresh, but then again, unlike the rice ball, these did look not edible. With a wary finger, the redhead poked one of the gummy balls and grimaced at the thick, sticky sauce. There was no way he would eat that…

It was the tower of a man'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 tingled 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.

A few days after, 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, whenever they would stop for the day, Hiko would make hit trees until his palms bled. Other times, the man would take the place of the tree and spar—or how Kenshin liked to call it: a good beating. It was probably to test the boy, or more likely for Hiko to test himself on how to teach him. But up there, his master would soon become ruthless, 'for the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu demands it all from its wielder' and Kenshin was too small. Too thin. Too soft. Too weak. So, no matter how much it stung, he nodded and pushed on.

What did make him pause some days 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 gazillion things he had to do or couldn't do was worse than any scrape or bruise—of which he had so, so many. It made his head pound. But every single time, he kept pushing 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 blow 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. The boy doesn't get the basics? Crack a branch on his head, 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…? True: taking a child in with zero knowledge of how to teach him, not to mention how to teach in general, was a bad idea at best. Doing so without the faintest idea how to actually care for a boy? That was the most idiotic thing he did, ever. However, somehow he had managed to figure out how to at least appear knowledgeable about both things. Moreover, he liked to remind himself every time he fucked up: he did it with just as many bad days as any other prick out there.

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 the redhead awake only for the boy to just sit there, unnaturally still, head hanging low like a rag doll and nothing but a few tears clinging to his hollow eyes. Being left with the shell of a boy in the middle of the night… Left with only the shell of a boy in the middle of the night, Hiko found himself wishing for simpler troubles, like a wet bed, or even more drool over his heirloom cape.

Reeling himself in, the man let himself rest against the wall when he saw the boy's breath dimly drawn against the dark. He sighed. Picking up a log from below the floorboards, he fed the hearth. "There, better?" Hiko offered, but there was no response other than the sharp hum of the wind rattling the shutters. Snow was falling outside, as white and cold as the boy's skin, and just as silent. It was giving him the creeps. Good thing he didn't believe in snow children.

But damn. It would be one of those days… Just like all the times before that, those days the boy would would 'wake up' just in a sense: enough to go through the motions of the day and not much more. He would eat, dress, follow and train without a word, not a whiff of fear, doubt or his usual 'buts' to dull his movement. 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, his master did have a superb control over his own force and speed. However, one-sided control wasn't enough during one of those fucking 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.