Notes
The rest of this arc is going to change briefly into a Jane Austen novel, where characters visit each other's houses, go into various rooms, lounge in the parlour, join the drawing room, and talk to each other, in multiple combinations. There are six major characters and their issues that we need to sort and cross-pollinate plot points before we can progress the story. Hiko 12 is not one of them. The last time we saw her was ch 15, and she'll return in few chapters time.
(Do expect this chapter and the next 3 to be monstrous 8-9k words each. May need to take breaks.) Age refresher: Eiji - 17. Misao - 23. Kenshin - 35. Hiko XII - 35. Saito - 41. Hiko XIII - 50.
Trigger warning update: there is suicide ideation behind these characters' thought processes. I started this fic focusing on one character idealising it initially, but realised...multiple characters think like this. Because in the previous eras, even in Meiji, suicide ideation was very much ingrained in the culture. And death was so normalised such a short while ago in war. No one is outright suicidal, but there may be social capital in the right kind of death.
Glossary: Chazuke - simple meal of green tea and toppings over. Chō-han - gambling game using an upturned cup and dice. Geta - wooden clog shoes. Hatamoto - highest ranking samurai during feudal times. Kaiseki - a traditional, colourful multi-course meal. Kasuri - woven, patterened fabric, classically navy coloured. Kenpoist - martial artist using kenpo. Ryokan - traditional-style inn or resort. Seiza - formal sitting style, kneeling. Tōkaidō - famous main road connecting Kyoto to Tokyo. Yakiniku - grilled meat over wood charcoals.
1868
Aizu, Fukushima
"Come in, Captain."
Saito slid open the door, shutting it snugly behind him before removing his swords.
A man sat on a small stool, backlit by the setting sun that filtered through the paper shoji. One of the screen doors was open, letting the shadows of the persimmon tree out in the courtyard dapple into the room. The floor was full of strips of linens, lining the tatami or otherwise strewn around in bloodied rags. A physician strenuously wrung out a cloth over a pail.
"Vice-Commander." Saito bowed. "You summoned me?"
The Vice-Commander, Hijikata Toshizo, said nothing. The title was a misnomer: he was in all respects Commander of the Shinsengumi, holding the official seal and office, but the man could be strict about formalities and fidelity. He did not answer to 'Commander' out of respect for the deceased Kondo.
Hijikata threw another spent bandage on the floor and turned towards the physician. "Doctor, please leave us."
Saito waited for the physician to leave before he knelt seiza style before Hijikata. "Is it Shimodate? I see no reason to hesitate. The domain is small, but their daimyō has fled. In terms of funds and supplies—"
"Shimodate?" Hijikata echoed, almost vacantly. He shook his head. "No. We can take Shimodate with or without the secondary support forces. That's no issue."
Saito sat back, a brow arching. The inkwell on the table rippled from the breeze, crunch of a map pinned under it going flighty — Hijikata was only half reading it.
"Captain. Don't you have family in Harima? A woman in Tonami?" Hijikata went on. "Brothers. Sisters?"
Saito met his inquiring gaze, very calm, his own eyes clear. "I am banished."
Hijikata laughed.
"For killing a hatamoto?"
He laughed some more.
"…You've killed a hundred hatamoto since. You are one yourself."
Saito pulled his clenched teeth apart by sheer force. "If you are telling me to flee, then you had better shoot me first, because I'd rather take your bullet than your foul-mouthed perversions of a command."
The line of Hijikata's shoulders went rigid. Saito had never spoken to him in such a manner before. His laugh had sounded like a roll of dice, of chō-han hitting the sides of the cup, a gamble, always with a cavalier tone even when he was anything but. It was so unexpected. It was so hard to read him. Saito had come in here with his swords, because he believed there was a real chance Hijikata was going to sit there and witness him make use of them. Hijikata stared down at Saito with narrow, acidic eyes.
"…Yes," he agreed, with an almost deferent ease, and Saito clenched his teeth again. "You will not take any further command from me."
Hijikata took a document from the table, handed it gingerly to Saito. Saito crawled forward on his knees and received the paper with both hands. He skimmed over the kanji, brows pulling harder and harder, frown growing tighter and tighter.
"I abdicate my position. Effective immediately. I formally hand over command of the Shinsengumi to you."
"Nonsense!"
Saito threw the papers onto the floor, into the stain of Hijikata's blood.
Hijikata considered him. "You think I can lead the Shinsengumi like this? You think I can do anything like this? Face the truth, Saito. You have been the true Commander of the Shinsengumi since the Battle at Utsunomiya Castle. I am only making the proper bureaucratic arrangements."
"I refuse," Saito bit out. "I…"
Hijikata gave Saito a look of warning. "You will lead the Shinsengumi. Into whatever future we have. Into whatever victory you see."
"You don't hear what you are saying," Saito sneered.
But Hijikata was not so inane as to argue with him. "What did I say, at the end of the scuffle with Serizawa's lot?" He stroked a lock of hair behind his ear, his courteous voice rising, groping. "We were still in Mibu. The Mibu Roshigumi. I said something to you…something rather…"
"You're in no condition to go back on the field."
Saito recited it. With no emotion at all, the words leapt to mind with immediacy.
"Fight. You're a liability like this." Saito swallowed down, the point getting across. "Control yourself in front of me. Yamaguchi."
Hijikata nodded once, satisfied. "I am not going into battle to win. With the Tokugawa Shogunate about to collapse, it would be a disgrace if no one is willing to go down with it." He said gently, "That is why I must go. I will fight the best battle of my life to die for the country. But I cannot do that, if no one I trust and respect will helm the Shinsengumi."
He leaned forward, earnest. "I need you to do this, Captain. Will you accept this on my behalf?"
Saito looked dryly to the transference papers seeping up Hijikata's blood. The ink had already run everywhere, into a great dark scrawl. All the anger, the indignance, seemed to just evaporate from within him, leaving him empty, and that shrouding terrible weight that he'd carried ever since Toba-Fushimi lifted, just as simply.
"…I am a follower. Not a commander."
Hijikata smiled. "I know."
He took Kondo's Commander's seal from the folds of his hakama. He bent and placed it in front of Saito's resting swords. "Yet you are the only one I trust."
Saito did not touch the seal.
"Do you accept, Saito?"
1885
The Aoiya, Kyoto
The stitch work was superior: elegant interlocking sutures, orderly like machine craft, that wouldn't leave an unsightly mark. Takani Megumi had done her trade well. She'd operated on Saito, let out the bad blood, before closing him up like a silk purse. The Kamiya girl and her disciple had played assistant. Once the women had left the room, Saito opened his eyes to inspect the work. He clenched his fists, rolled his shoulders, testing usage of his legs. It was still to be seen if Gatotsu remained his or was now forever the boy's sleeping at his side. But suppose he would find out once he either got back to his office and engaged Yamagato, or went home and faced his consort — whichever came first.
"Deshi."
Eiji jerked awake, eyes going wide. "Shishou!" He swallowed thickly. "You're…I…"
Eiji was wearing his uniform jacket open over his bare chest. Apart from a reflective brow of sweat the deshi appeared unharmed. Saito shifted, propping his body up on his elbows. Eiji watched him struggle to be seated for half a minute, not daring to put his hands on him. He knew he'd hate the help.
Finally, Saito got up and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. "Status report, Officer."
"It—it's 5:46am," Eiji answered immediately. "We're in the Aoiya, Downtown District. Your wounds have been dressed by the doctor from Tokyo. She surmises rib fracture, contusions. The laceration on your hip has been treated. As has the puncture at your chest. The ninja of the Aoiya escorted you, as well as the Kamiya dojo. No one in the force knows you're here. They have a radio in the Aoiya. They're monitoring. Right now, Lieutenant Kagehisa is doing incident management."
Kagehisa in control? Acceptable. Saito nodded, satisfied.
"What happened last night? You didn't go home."
Saito pulled a face. His voice had come out a sunken croak. But he fought past it, pretending nothing was amiss and that he was not feeling a world of ache and wooziness so as to appease the deshi. He felt as if he might in the next five minutes either fall asleep or empty his stomach contents over his futon; no doubt the doctor woman had him loaded up with potions and painkillers. He could barely feel his fingertips.
Trying to keep his external workings appear normal made him unaware of Eiji's mounting distress, as he spilled out all of a sudden, "Your perimeter was breached last night. It was me. All me. The Lieutenant, Sou and Takano and the others had no idea. I led a strike team to the Akako Area."
From there the report came rattling out, long and rather composed like a monotonous warning come out of a cone amplifier. It was a still a novelty to Saito that the deshi had been blessed with a deep voice from a young age. He listened to that man's voice come out of a swain's face, admiring surreptitiously...
Eiji reported on his movements that night, the events inside the warehouse, the missing children, as well as the identification of one Isaku Rin — all up until the moment Eiji burst onto the scene at the harbour.
"The false Battousai got away," Eiji submitted. As if saying anything else wouldn't sound thoroughly deluded. "I fired three rounds. He still got away. I'm sorry."
He looked up with those inflamed eyes. Eiji bowed his head with the gravity of a man confessing some cardinal sin, leaned forward neck to the blade, ready to submit. Ready to have his hands cut off.
Saito took a moment to drink it all in. "The imposter. He fled. Do you have a lead?"
"No." Eiji shook his head rapidly. "No, he used Hiten Mitsurugi ryu's speed. I couldn't pinpoint an exit route."
Saito moved on. "Makimachi. How are her injuries?"
"What you saw at the harbour…Makimachi was already injured. That's why she was bleeding. The false Battousai — he opened up an old wound. She's ok."
Already injured? Saito darkened. He hadn't an inkling. "Hm. What of Kamoda's body?"
"Alive! He's alive."
Saito's mouth parted. That, he did not anticipate.
"No serious injuries. The false Battousai knocked him out with blunt force to the head. He's shaken up, but ok. He woke up before, said some incoherent things…almost like he was defending the false Battousai…but he stopped 'soon as he heard what happened to you. He's asleep now in the other room."
Saito had once enjoyed unquestioned command and trust in his subordinates. He had handpicked those in his closest circle. Reliable men. Men who could die in the heat of battle: they knew what was being asked of them, knew the risks as they obeyed. Kamoda was not untested. He was a veteran of the Satsuma Rebellion. But Saito had always felt…that he could only have come to accept Kamoda's modus operandi because of Himura. That perhaps it was unfair of him to have pulled Kamoda into the fold over someone who shot worse but knew death. Someone who, if sacked, couldn't happily let go of the badge and open up a yakiniku stall, retire a law-abiding citizen, and die a star in the doe-hunting scene. Kamoda was different in that he was a model pawn, and if he died, that would entirely be the fault of Saito.
Just as it was that Hiko Seijuro sparing his life on the count of a young lady, begging for his life, and a young man, rushing to die in his place, was his wholesale fault.
…What a mess he had wrought.
What positions he had put his subordinates and allies in.
I know.
"Himura," Saito latched onto another thought. "Is he here?"
Eiji shook his head. "Himura Kaoru confirmed he left to answer the flare, 'bout past midnight. Nothing else is known about his whereabouts."
Saito pondered upon that. "By now he knows there's a warrant on his head…"
A sudden wave of dizziness overtook him. It was violent enough that when Saito came to, it was Eiji that was holding his weight instead of the wall. Saito readjusted himself, allowing Eiji to back away. He sighed, hand halfway to resting on his face, before he abandoned the urge to gesture loosely in the air. Soothing his temple and covering his face wouldn't appear to look very…balanced at the moment.
"…My uniform jacket. Was it salvaged?"
Eiji quickly got up, stripping off his jacket to hand it over.
"No — my jacket."
Changing course, Eiji tossed aside various inn items to produce the bloodied thing.
"In the pocket of my jacket. Bullets. Nine millimetre standard."
Eiji dug around, finding the extra cartridges. He splayed the bullets in his hand to present to Saito.
Slowly, his expression changed. It took a few moments for him to understand.
"But you said I only get one round." Eiji's brow scrunched. He turned to Saito, challenging. "You said if I fire it, I fire it. You said I'm not getting any more."
"Forget what I said!" Saito said with annoyance. "…You said you fired three times. Take the bullets you need. Store the next rounds. Ensure the Type 26 is with your person at all times."
Eiji continued to hold the bullets, cupped in one floating hand.
"That's an order," Saito added, "Deshi."
Warmth trickled down his face. Saito sniffled, smudged his hand across his jaw. His nose was bleeding. The gesture quite irritated his cheek — the scratches from the civilian back at the station were inflamed. He was in the middle of holding the bridge of his nose and snorting back gunk, trying at the very least not to soil the inn bedding beyond salvation, after all the hospitality shown, that the sound of Eiji's knees hitting the floor with a heavy clunk actually made him jump.
Saito flickered blood all over the place. "What?! What are you doing?"
But Eiji only stared at the floor, in a posture of supplication towards Saito's shadow rather than him, with the words lodged in his throat. Only sobs escaped him, deep scraping rasps, before it came choking out, loud and pathetic and guilt-ridden. "IT'S MY FAULT! MY fault! I'm sorry! I'm sorry —I'm sorryI'm sorryI'msorryI'msorry—"
Saito's eyes narrowed, nose blood free-flowing down his chin. He watched, inanely, as Eiji bowed his head, over and over in some concerted, violent effort to sink into the floor — battering himself.
"Mishima. I don't care you used my seal. I don't care about the strike force."
An understatement. Eiji had found Isaku Rin. The boy had led a fucking strike team to find — eight…nine or so children, was it? Missing children Saito had been losing sleep over for months, and his deshi goes out one night and pulls nearly a dozen of them out of his back pocket like a rabbit out of a top hat. Saito should demote Sou and give Eiji his fucking job.
But what Saito said seemed only to upset the deshi further. Eiji rocketed back up. He went from holding back sobs to lambasting Saito. "NO! No, it's— you don't get it, you DON'T get it," he kept saying, "—I did this! I did this to you! I got you nearly dead!"
He went on, concealing full sentences about the harbour, the Yakuza, and the imposter Battousai with half-nonsense about…the police phone line, the work timetable, copied meeting minutes, and — and the Aoiya…
…How did Eiji know to strike the warehouse?
How did he organise ahead of the Yakuza's signal flare?
How could the Aoiya girl be on location before Saito?
"You," Saito said shortly. "You are a mole."
Eiji bowed again. Finally silent.
Saito covered his face, stopping the blood. His words came out muffled, Eiji strained to hear him.
"For how long?"
"…Six months."
"What did you leak?"
"…When I turned seventeen, you gave me access to every major incident management meeting, communications plan, inter-jurisdiction diplomacy and working group briefing outside of executive meetings," Eiji said.
"I reported on it all."
Saito shut his eyes. The anger was there, risen already, entered into the bay and sinking in while he figured out the logistics of how he could be…managed by Mishima Eiji of all people. Forget Sou. The deshi had done what Yamagata Arimoto could not effectively do.
"Your contact." A sneer made its way into his voice now. "It's the Oniwabanshu's Okashira, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"How did Okina recruit you?"
"No, Shishou," Eiji lifted his head, showing reddened, but sharp eyes. "You're not aware, Shishou. That's what the ninja want the underground to believe. He's a decoy. A figurehead. The Oniwabanshu — and the Aoiya — have been led for years by Makimachi Misao."
Saito finally understood the term. What it was like to reel.
"It's…it's not on her! I approached her," Eiji's voice raised. "Misao and I have been working together to combat the Yakuza."
The deshi told him everything: the girl was the one who telegrammed the anonymous tip integral to catching the Ginza lot in the act. The girl was the one who sabotaged Asaya's play in the National Police, so he couldn't be appointed tyrant and replace Saito with cronies. The girl was already injured, because one of Saito's men shot her with nine millimetres standard issue. The list went on.
"I…I g-gave her whatever she needed to hit the Yakuza."
Eiji breathed in. It was the very sound of fear.
"I gave her the tip about the signal flare. About the Akako Area. And I-I…" he confessed, "I told her to bring her strongest. And we didn't know — we both — didn't know…but because of me…she brought Hiko Seijuro to the harbour last night."
Saito sat blankly on the wall. For the first time, rendered speechless.
"Shishou…" Eiji murmured. "Shishou, I tried to help you. I tried to tell you. But you just couldn't hear me. I couldn't watch you—"
Saito lifted a hand.
Eiji silenced.
"Get out of my room."
"Shishou— Shishou, please." He shuffled forward on his knees.
"I'm not finished, Deshi." Saito wiped his hand down his face. "Get out of my room. And get me the Aoiya girl."
"Shishou—"
"Get me Makimachi!" Saito snapped. Eiji had not understood him.
"…If she brought Hiko Seijuro to the harbour last night," Saito explained, "Then Hiko Seijuro has an alibi."
Mount Atago
Kenshin scarfed down his first bowl of chazuke and went onto his second. In the meantime, Hiko bought out the natto, the salted plum, pickled turnip and lotus root, as well as local cured hams, dried jerkies, marinated egg, and then rounded it out with fresh grilled vegetables painted with a sticky-sweet soy glaze that he mixed on hand. Each appetiser was laid out on a different painted ceramic plate, shaped as leaves or fish or in otherwise interesting fashions. Not one bowl or plate was repeated.
Kenshin felt as if he were engaged in some…randomly refined kaiseki breakfast in a ryokan somewhere; instead of inhaling food on the floor while shirtless, in the ramshackle hut that had somehow stood the test of time, but whose roof was on its last legs and tatami floors looked about ready to curdle. Hiko sat with his bowl topped to the brim with simple natto, taking small polite bites in between a salted plum. The tea mixed into Kenshin's chazuke was houjicha. His favourite. He poured some more into the intricately designed teacup at his side, made more fragrant and appetising in the shape of a bell flower.
After the meal, Kenshin almost lay down for a rest, forgetting the state of his back. He jerked upright before hitting the floor, earning a suffering sigh from Hiko.
"This is not a damned ryokan."
"No," Kenshin agreed immediately, "a ryokan has tenable conditions."
The slight came out before he could think. A vein popped in Hiko's temple.
"What?" Kenshin tested him. "Do you want this one to pay for the food, Shishou?"
"No. I want you to pay for a hair barber." Hiko scowled, not taking his eyes off him. "You are a vision of your wanted posters. I don't want to be seen hiding a fugitive, baka."
Hiko snorted. But the line of Kenshin's lips downturned.
"Why do you not call me deshi?"
The query, an honest one, took Hiko aback. He did not expect Kenshin to be so direct.
"Is this one…" Kenshin hesitated. "Is this one excommunicated?"
Hiko outright pulled a face. "Excommunicated?" His voice dripped with incredulity, like he'd never heard such a thing. "What am I? —A temple?"
Kenshin frowned. "Then this lowly one is disowned."
Hiko's chazuke bowl went crack on the floor. "What am I?! Your father?"
At this, both of them blanched. That, they both knew, was a mistake. But it had hit a collective nerve, and now they scrambled to recalibrate their eyesights, looking anywhere but at each other. The hurt and resentment, the letter and the night before: it was all still there, fresh and red. But after a while, Kenshin dug his heels in. His eyes flickered up, ready to gauge his opponent. Hiko saw this and straightened up, anticipating Kenshin's remarks.
"When this lowly one did something wrong — you always…corrected me," Kenshin told him. "If this one kept doing it wrong you'd punish me."
He unclenched his hands, bent his head. He didn't want to appear petulant or defiant. "When did you get so avoidant? You've never been like that. You accepted this one back fifteen years after he abandoned his training, that you did. Even after he killed as Battousai." Kenshin faced him. "Just tell me what this one did so wrong that he doesn't deserve to be your deshi anymore. It would help me, Hiko! Tell me so this lowly one can know."
Hiko's shoulders stiffened. He angled his head, peering at Kenshin with a strange, almost cowed, expression. "You are a master of Hiten Mitsurugi ryu," he said calmly. But his voice was taut. "Whether you take on the role of heir or not is not my concern. I have nothing more to teach you. You are a free sword. Just as I am."
Kenshin swallowed. "That's all. Hiko?"
"That's all."
Hiko turned away. "Are you going to explain that second Winter Moon you were armed with or not?"
Kenshin shuddered. The meaning of his words: who did this to you?
Kenshin reached for the blade, unsheathed it half-way to examine the carved moon at the hilt. Hiko did the same with his own Winter Moon, popping the blade opposite Kenshin's with a deft click.
"I've already compared them. Both Tamahagane steel. Same make. Same model. They are identical. Two perfect Winter Moons."
"What does it mean?" Kenshin breathed.
Hiko looked indignant. "I'm asking you, baka."
Kenshin frowned, a fern of frustration going up his spine. But the tension dispersed as soon as he saw Hiko's inquisitive stare. There was not a trace of anger in him.
"…You do not believe I am 'Battousai.'"
Hiko's brow raised. "I did, initially. What else is a keeper of Hiten Mitsurugi ryu supposed to think?"
He cracked Winter Moon closed. Even though the blades were near identical, the shirasaya sheaths were not. Shirasaya was common wood, plainly carved, designed to be shed and replaced every ten or so years. Hiko's sheath showed ravages of time, whereas Kenshin's appeared more recently fitted.
"The existence of this Winter Moon you've brought me proves it." Hiko folded his arms in his lap, going relaxed. "I'm not killing them. You're not killing them. Thus the solve: a third user of Hiten Mitsurugi ryu."
Hiko peered at him expectantly. Kenshin only peered back in confusion. Why was he interrogating him about it? When was Kenshin supposed to find the time to train a — a poor bastard — in the art of killing? During Bakumatsu when he was working as a political assassin? During his wanderer years where he barely spent two nights in the same place? Or at his home in the Kamiya dojo, raising his son full-time while his wife worked?
"This one doesn't mean any disrespect," Kenshin said, a little impatiently, "But he must ask. Did you ever…take another disciple after this one left?"
A look of annoyance crossed Hiko's face. Something noxious up his nose.
"If I took another disciple, what use have I for you, exactly?" He popped a salted plum in his mouth. "You think I teach Amakakeru ryu no Hirameki for entertainment?"
Kenshin grabbed his tea, chugged it down.
Half went down his throat, the other half, right onto his chest.
"This lowly one isn't joking." An edge came into Kenshin's voice. "You need to tell me, that you do." Frustration collected in his muscles, keeping him tense, wound-up — like the moment leading up to the strike, the free-fall after Ryūsuisen. How could he persuade Hiko to stop dismissing him? "Right now, all Kyoto believes this one to be this…Battousai serial killer. The police force and government do not have the ability to differentiate this lowly one from an imposter."
Hiko seemed confounded by the statements, for a moment, lost; as if being peddled nonsense and expected to play along. He took some time to answer.
"Do not question me."
His voice was low, offended.
"Do not question my devotion to Hiten Mitsurugi ryu," he warned. "One heir. One disciple. Isshi Sōden. I thought I taught you this."
Kenshin's body tensed. All over, the ki in the room changed, as if the temperature had risen and the air shifted. It wasn't quite…fear. But anxiety, apprehension, and the fight or flight response stirred at the back of his head; old muscle memory turning.
"If I wanted another disciple, I would have gotten one as I pleased. At any time I fancied. With any candidate I wished. I don't need to hide and avert one from the likes of you." Hiko's voice was the sound of spite. "I took oaths, same as you. But my oath is to Hiten Mitsurugi ryu. So what do you think would happen to you if I had wanted another disciple?"
Kenshin set his jaw. He didn't avert his eyes, staring back with defiance.
"This lowly one thought he wasn't your disciple," he said. He arched his head. "Either way, you can still find a replacement. That, you can."
Hiko's mouth worked, quirking into something inscrutable. "Perhaps the line was split at some moment in history." His annoyance turned away from Kenshin, redirected inwardly as he crossed his arms. "Five hundred years since the time of the First of his name. It was an oral tradition relayed down to me. I wasn't handed a lineage tree." But he sighed, tapping a hand to his chin. "There's a lot of time to account for."
"Then, what about your master?"
Kenshin watched as Hiko pulled back a bit, as if he hadn't ever considered it. He gave him another trying look. But Kenshin merely pushed his offence aside, probing further.
"Can you say certainly that your master taught only one disciple?"
"Yes," Hiko relented. "I'm sure."
But as soon as the words left him, his eyes went wandering, going from the pillaged plates on the floor to the flickering flames, back to landing on Kenshin, his bandaged shoulder. They stayed arrantly on Kenshin in some daydream-like manner. For someone usually so decisive, so effortlessly confident, his hesitancy set Kenshin's suspicions in stone.
"…Or perhaps not. I — I don't…I…"
Kenshin leaned in. "Shishou?"
"Well, Baka-deshi," he slipped up, force of habit fumbling back out, "I killed them before I ever cared to ask, didn't I?"
Hiko's blunt admission was felt keenly by Kenshin. Hiko went quiet again, withdrawing from the conversation. It was uncanny, seeing Hiko sink back, face going shadowed as doubts simmered within him. Kenshin withdrew as well. Kenshin had never quite…considered the fact that Hiko was once in the position he was: a disciple who knew nothing, and had no one. Kenshin knew distinctly Hiko was without kin, but he didn't remember how this conclusion had formed. He'd always just known. At some point Hiko let slip he was born in Kyoto, right? He'd told him once at the fireplace before it was a kiln, long before that, that he'd travelled Japan as a wandering ronin, and he'd settled down at the Mount Atago hut to train him. Was he samurai? Kenshin was shocked to think he didn't know. All throughout Kenshin's youth, he'd never heard Hiko mention a relative, anything about a family. Out of all of Hiko's stories, he'd never mentioned a master.
It was as if…as if Hiko was some man born from a peach. Already formed day one out of the peach pit. As if Hiko had just — appeared, one day, in the shape of a Hiten Mitsurugi master, a hermit built for living alone on a mountain, born ready with one hundred famed haikus. But of course that was ludicrous. Kenshin scanned around the hut. The realisation that life wasn't always like this for Hiko — whatever this was — made Kenshin feel as if he didn't know a single thing about Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth.
"Hiko…" Kenshin voiced.
Hiko tapped his fingertips against his teacup, answering with his attention.
"When I faced down the other Hiten Mitsurugi practitioner, she told me her namesake." Kenshin watched Hiko's face intently. "She told me she was 'Hiko Seijuro the Twelfth.'"
Hiko stood up. He picked up his Winter Moon, the true Winter Moon, and unsheathed it. The morning light filtered from the flax curtains, bathing the hut quickly in dawn, hiding the blade of its ghostly blue. He seemed to see something in it that Kenshin couldn't. Perhaps it being clasped in the hand of another. Belonging, even if just in memory, to someone else.
Kenshin noticed Hiko had not startled at the use of she.
Suddenly, Hiko tensed. With three strokes of his arm, he executed a blinding, precise kata, flickering the candles immediately out, moving every plate an inch to the east.
Hiko tipped his head. "Come with me."
The Aoiya
With a soft shutter of the door, the girl entered the room.
Saito greeted her with a nod of his head. "Okashira."
"Commish."
Makimachi Misao welcomed him with a short, over-familiar bow. The way she walked made it easy to overlook, but now Saito was alert he could hardly be lulled by the lively inn yukata to distract from the packed lateral muscle of a kenpoist. Her footfalls were deathly silent, even in the three inch geta shoes. She was in fact taller than the image of her in the back of his mind, not that he lacked the perception; he simply had not been looking.
Her hair was done still in the style of the southern country, braided in thick alternating knots, however was wound up in an atypical, elegant updo. The inn yukata was a work of kasuri with smudges of deep lavender, previously associated with high class status; but these days were closer seen as the colour of progress; yet still a favoured motif of the new affluent. His consort had always impressed on him the importance of appearances. Appearances were truly…deceiving. She arrived like she was concluding an evening of entertaining guests.
"You called for me? I'm honoured."
"Your audience is appreciated."
"And yours. I trust you find my rooms comfortable?"
A muscle worked in Saito's lip.
It was quite the proposition. He was too proud to have to play the game with Makimachi, but also agonisingly aware he was guarded by her ninja, hidden in her armoured rooms, wearing her guest garments, and ailing here at her complete mercy.
"The hospitality of the Aoiya is renowned across Kyoto."
Makimachi perked. She looked as if she wanted either to laugh out loud, or gag. "And the services?"
"Acceptable."
"Then why'd you call for the manager?" Makimachi flaunted. "But fine." She didn't give him a chance to reply. "Give me your grievances. I'm at your service."
A bemused expression crept onto Saito's face, accepting the irony of the situation, before he settled back into contempt. He'd do as she pleased to serve her ego. "My grievance is with—"
"—Why did you attack?!"
Makimachi couldn't keep it up. She abandoned the courtesies, the pretence, throwing up her hands. But in the place of insults, something Saito was used to weaponising, countering, was a point of admonishment that…stung instead.
"Himura's master. Himura's swordsmanship master." There was no laughter to Makimachi at all. Just pure disbelief at something she deemed so roaringly stupid, in her world no one in their right mind would try it. "You thought it was a good idea for a frontal attack?"
"Why did you bring a second you could not control?" Saito said.
That got her quiet. Small. But the contempt left Saito suddenly. It was hard to think of her as that pinprick of a girl, just another ninja in the spying business, or even a comrade in law enforcement. He had seen her leap on Hiko Seijuro to avert his demise. He had heard her beg for him. She, proud and brash and young.
Not so young. Not anymore.
"Your injuries. Hiko Seijuro did not wound you?"
"If Hiko wanted to wound me, do you think we'd be having this conversation right now?" Makimachi rolled her eyes. "Drop it. Eiji already told you."
"I want to hear it from you."
"Hooray!" Makimachi mocked, "I was shot! —That a first in your line of work?"
Saito did not rise to her jeers. She did not double-down either. She only looked at him with those embittered eyes, raised like a sore loser, the resent in them rolling like storm clouds in the distance: ever-present, but strategically stowed. Very much a feat, from her.
"You were shot by my people."
The frankness of his tone seemed to pierce Makimachi's outrage. "Be specific. By a mole in your people."
Saito laughed. It quickly devolved into the sound of wet hacks. She kindly waited for him to finish.
"…You mean a second mole in my people." He coughed. "Other than yours."
"I'm not here to argue about Eiji."
"Neither am I."
Saito slicked back his loose hairs, which only fell right back into a straggled fringe. He felt, out of the blue, inanely self-conscious.
Appearances.
"How did you know about the mole?"
Makimachi shrugged. "I just know. Why does it matter how."
Saito felt his teeth clench. He wanted to know, desperately, this woman had somehow divined it before Eiji's turn, because the deshi had confessed — Makimachi had told him. But Saito piped down. He had no choice but to let her keep her secrets.
"What else do you know? About the mole?"
"Someone in your office. Or at least someone in the senior officer role. Someone who…" Makimachi pursed her lips, shutting her eyes. She bought her hands to her head, bowed as if in trance. "They have access to Tokugawa records. Meiji Government records. It's the only way Himura's identity could have been leaked. They have access to your patrols. To your taskforce. That's the only way they could have escaped your anti-corruption crackdown. If not someone in your office…then in your wider division."
Saito couldn't help it. The smile disgorged from its depths. He smiled at her naïveté. Makimachi kept her face blank, but he could see her spirits lowered. She knew that he knew: she didn't have very much. They were digging in the same sandbox, with nothing but sand sieving between the fingers. What she chose to give and guard was backwards. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut, and she'd have had him. She'd have leverage over Saito.
He'd have done anything to get that information.
Saito raised his chin. "Who do you think…?"
"Who do I know," Makimachi corrected. "Yakuza."
"And for how long?"
"A year."
Saito huffed. "About the same time I began to suspect my office."
"I knew you couldn't be that slow." Makimachi's head dipped, her face sly. "You only told Eiji recently."
The implication: telling Eiji was telling Makimachi. Saito's eyes narrowed.
"There is nothing to be said." He remarked, "Out of all your subterfuge. Your schemes. The one that impresses me is that you turned Mishima against me."
He wasn't there to argue about Eiji. What a bold-faced lie. The girl — the Aoiya girl — the kunoichi — the kenpoist — the Okashira — she had done this. The murders and Hiko Seijuro and his destroyed right arm only clouded the true source of Saito's pain and anger right now: she turned his deshi against him.
Makimachi's hands dropped listlessly to her side.
How?
How did she do it?!
She turned slowly, cataloging the humourless, congratulatory smile Saito put on his face; as if this reveal was merely a pleasant surprise to him, and he didn't care to see it coming. Saito was quite a good liar, and still now he could fool her.
"Eiji? Turn on you?"
Makimachi must have an inkling of what he was doing. Provoking her to start volunteering information. Show your opponent your hand twice, thrice in a row, even a moron could come up with a theory. But what Saito miscalculated was that Makimachi hadn't a reason to hold a thing back anymore.
"No, Saito. Eiji didn't turn on you. You turned on him."
Her words were drivel. But Saito stared daggers at her.
"You asked me how I know about your mole problem," Makimachi gestured. "I'll tell you." She slapped her hands down. "All of Kyoto Prefecture is your jurisdiction. You barely get across the marked-urgent caseload. You have vast oversight of the force's work. But it's birds-eye view. But you only deal with the worst, most violent, high-profile cases personally." Makimachi paused. "But the Yakuza don't start by littering calling cards and trafficking children. They need funds. They need bases. They need people to look the other way and they need staff on payroll and they need desperate, vulnerable people to pave their way to the Class A crimes."
Makimachi got up abruptly, the tension driving her up with jittery energy; the same it did Saito, infecting him, but he could only lay infirm against the wall, eyes following her like a moving target. She strutted once around the room, trying to let the silence stew. But she could barely put a stopper on it — it was a miracle the girl could keep a single secret — after only thirty seconds she broke, and sat on the floor in front of Saito's sickbed.
"So they start smashing windows, breaking pots. Then start bringing in security services. Hey — if you pay a small stipend, our bodyguards will protect your stuff, right? No worries if its the same guy breaking your stuff that you're hiring now to not break your stuff, right? If it works, it works! They start forcing people to empty their pockets, or expect trouble. Soon, it's not just smashing things and spilling trash. It's forcing people to sell their laundry houses, onsens, geisha houses. It's harassing old wives on the street. It's killing their dogs. It's taking the husband and beating him up within an inch of his life." Makimachi stopped, barely taking a breath. "But hey — he's not dead, right? So the Commissioner doesn't need to hear about it."
Saito's jaw was a hard, clenched line. "I set up a taskforce on the Yakuza's racketeering. The concept is not—"
"—How do you know that taskforce isn't part of the Yakuza's racket?!"
Makimachi didn't let him talk.
"How do I know there's a mole? Because I don't only look at the worst and most violent cases. The police are overrun with those. So people have no choice but to come to the Aoiya for protection. People are filing into the Aoiya for a roof over their head if they've been fleeced to hell by the Yakuza. People are coming to the Aoiya for community protection if their shops have been smashed up. People have been coming to the Aoiya for a bowl of hot soup and vouchers to the onsen, because the Yakuza have taken the deed to their business, or their kid hostage. And you and I know they're never getting their kid back. Their kid is six hundred miles outside Kyoto for ninety seven thousand yen. People are terrified! Haven't you heard — anyone could be working for the Yakuza. Battousai works for the Yakuza. Last time someone went to the cops, their eight year old boy got missing real fast."
Saito knocked his head against the wall, leaning back in leisurely fashion. But his attention remained: he was listening. Intently.
Makimachi was no subordinate of his. She did not answer to him. Meaning she did not soften her blows.
What she told him was her unfiltered truth.
"You used to cover this — cover all of this. Or at least delegate. You used to have officers you trusted heading your anti-corruption force and taskforce. You used to get officers out in the remote and regional areas, just to check-up on their welfare and get their petty crimes down, since they didn't have the ability to travel to make a report. You cleaned up white-collar crimes just as you did the felony crimes. And you used Eiji to do these things." Makimachi paused, met Saito's eyes. "You taught Eiji your efficiency. You taught him your competence. You showed him what a Commissioner does. You taught him that…and then you threw it out the window."
The sound of Makimachi's disappointment filled the room.
"You think it's easy for him?" she asked, genuinely this time, searching his face for answers. "Think it's easy — watching his shishou flush his brain down the gutter? Watching him — not eat? Not sleep? Smoke shitty Tengu's. Watching you work yourself to the bone until you end up in my inn, black and blue and all colours of the rainbow?"
She laughed, mockingly, at her own quip. She said to Saito, "You don't know what it's like. You don't know what it's like to watch someone you look up to, someone you trusted, respected — self-destruct."
Saito sat with the same heightened, riled reaction when he saw Hiko Seijuro toss Makimachi aside like a rag doll. The moment was as uncanny as it was unexpected. Saito hadn't known she was Okashira then. He hadn't known what uses she had. He would have charged for any civilian, any girl, any random Kyoto bystander in her place.
"So why did you attack Himura's master?" Makimachi circled back, the query sharpened into accusation.
Why?
…Because Aku, Soku, Zan?
He wasn't clear. It wasn't a smart play. It wasn't even a reasonable play.
"You're a pragmatist." Makimachi crouched, right beside him, arms on her knees, and he could see her knuckles were split, red and raw like buds flowered, pussing. "A realist, too. Taking down a single serial killer at your expense isn't a fair trade. Killing 'Battousai' in exchange with your life is not a fair trade. Your life is more important than a passing girl's on the street."
Makimachi looked him dead in the eye. "Stop betraying what you taught Eiji to do." She straightened up. "Are you a foot soldier? Or are you Commissioner?"
The words went straight for his throat.
"Because Eiji knows, as I know, as you should," she said.
"If you got dead, the Yakuza run the police."
His eyes fluttered shut. Dragged by the girl into sobering clarity. The most jarring part was that there was absolutely no malice in it. None at all. Makimachi had delivered that sermon with the same dogged concern as she did setting off the bombs around Enishi's island, or sabotaging Hiko's battou-jutsu. It was simply business. Pure logic.
He was not well. He was not in control. He was not the Commissioner the prefecture required him to be and he had not been that man since they pulled the first eight year old from the alcohol fermentation vat off the Tōkaidō. He'd…regressed. Become emotional. Like that stupid, angry eighteen year old who ruined his family's reputation, who destroyed his brother's sponsorship, who ruined his sister's marriage prospects, all because he followed his own instincts instead of instructions and killed the wrong person. Like the Third Unit Captain, when handed over the Shinsengumi, who then proceeded to get the rest of them all killed and captured, instead of surrendering like a wise man would. Like all of a sudden, a chapter of his life that had duly closed, had lured him back into some neverending loop, and he'd unhinged his jaw to swallow the bait: Battousai stalking the streets. Killing his men. Forfeiting. Like the war never ended.
Now the world really was upside down. The girl talked logic, whereas Saito was ruled by emotion.
She was still staring at him. She'd asked him a question. She was waiting for an answer.
Saito yielded. He opened his mouth, ready to talk—
When the doors of the room burst open. "Okashira! I'm sorry — she was going to push her way in—"
"—SAITO!"
The Kamiya girl.
She bashed into the room, found him in his reverie, and made a face so hateful, Makimachi actually stepped in front of Saito.
"An arrest warrant? An arrest warrant?! What does this mean?!"
Mount Atago
Lying in all directions outside the ramshackle hut was a thick wood forest.
Within the forest there was a little creek, just thin snaking runoff from the waterfall, and as they followed the creek, Hiko pushed away long reeds, conifer branches, thriving greenery, to reveal the stone head of a grave. Kenshin wandered a few steps behind Hiko, walking in the flattened part of the grass and reeds as he showed the way, deep into the spreading wilds. It wasn't a clearing per se: the grave was tightly bordered by conifers, half-hidden by fern and foliage. Moss covered the stonework, stretched onto the scraggly ground.
Hiko had left his white mantle behind, adorned only in his blue gi as he approached. Kenshin walked in just his bandages without a gi, holding his sakabatou. In his youth, he'd occassionally wandered in this direction away from the falls. The ground was not good for training and the packed woodland difficult to traverse, not to mention the danger of wild animals. If he'd been here before, he'd never noticed the stone marker.
Kenshin stood side by side with Hiko. Both of them staring down at the stone.
The only marking it held was a cryptic number. Twelve.
They said nothing for a long time, just staring like that.
"…You didn't carve a name." Kenshin darted a look at Hiko.
"I couldn't," Hiko said. "I had to take it from her."
He'd said it like he had no choice in the matter.
Kenshin turned back. An iridescent beetle flew onto the stone, circling a little before it flew away again. It seemed disrespectful, even cruel to Kenshin, that the Twelfth couldn't even have the honour of her name on her grave. There was nothing to remember her by.
"So it's true. Your master…my…grandmaster," Kenshin's brows furrowed, making the connection, "she was a woman?"
Hiko said nothing.
The realisation was startling to Kenshin, somehow — a new innovative concept that his mind was now shaping, incorporating into the fibre of his being, regardless of whether he liked it or not — that the grave at his feet right now had some relation to him. At thirty five years he had a grandmaster, the same way normal people, blood-related people, had such as thing as a grandparent.
Entire temples from Hakodate to Choshu commemorated the fallen revolutionaries. His first beloved's resting place in the iris-filled Otsu was lovingly tended to by temple maidens. Kenshin shifted uncomfortably. In just a few lonely years, this gravestone would be entirely overrun by moss and greenery, disappearing from the forest floor. The world would truly forget there ever was a Hiko Seijuro, Twelfth of her name.
Kenshin chewed the inside of his lip. It was dark when he met the imposter Battousai the night before. He recalled the grace in her step, the power of her strikes…she wielded Hiten Mitsurugi ryu with more eloquence and force than him; but Kenshin was adaptable, more inventive. She couldn't have been much older than Kenshin himself.
Her strength for murder was undoubted. Her capacity for vendettas, limitless.
Who was she to Kenshin? By succession norms, a martial sister?
No. That couldn't be possible. She couldn't be thirty-something and trained by the Twelfth if Hiko was fifty this year.
" 'Was fifteen," Hiko said all of a sudden.
Kenshin turned to him, then back to the grave. "What?"
"I was fifteen," he said, "when I struck her with Amakakeru ryu no Hirameki. And then she handed me this sword." Hiko hoisted Winter Moon, as if Kenshin hadn't seen it before. "It was a clean cut. Very clean. I don't know why. But she was still breathing after the fact. Though we both knew she wasn't meant to survive. So she gave me this sword," he said again, "and told me to put her out of her misery."
Kenshin was heightened beside him.
"Again. I don't know why, because she would be dead in minutes. But she wanted it then. She wanted it…done right," Hiko supposed. "It was her last command." Hiko's eyes appeared faraway, almost in trance, suddenly, as if reliving the moment.
"So I obeyed."
Then his mouth spread into a thin, pained grin, as his eyes settled on Kenshin. "That would put her death at…thirty five years ago," Hiko said conversationally. His lip quirked, the half-smile going up in its usual jeer, but it didn't have the same taunt to it. "There. That puts that to rest, don't you agree? Whoever you met last night was not my predecessor. I killed her the year you were born."
The wind changed, cutting against Kenshin's face and slapping the material of his hakama against his legs, the grass nearly to his knees. He registered the warmth of the sun on his back and the changing patterns of the wind. Kenshin wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to that.
"You've never told this one a thing about her, that you did not." Kenshin's brow creased. "And she rested here all along? —Why did you never tell me this?"
Hiko's blue gi hung loosely in the shifting breeze. The scar across his chest was visible up to his collarbone. It was a large, gouged trench. Just a hole in his chest where flesh was meant to be.
Hiko breathed in deeply, and the scar pulled. "It's got nothing to do with you."
Hiko turned and went.
But Kenshin kept staring at the moss-covered grave, at the weeds growing between the once carefully laid cobblestones, and the shaky, uneven lines of the carved number. Kenshin turned, and the woods changed slowly around him, making small of Hiko's back, in an almost dreamlike haze, a thick palpable silence. The faint rotting smell of undergrowth came in a rush, and in his mind he recalled every introduction he'd ever made of himself — Battousai, wanderer, husband — he was master of battou-jutsu, he who uses Hiten Mitsurugi ryu — with total unthinking conviction. When he divulged himself to Saito, he'd said he'd come from nothing. As the trees firmed back into solidity, branches locked in an overgrown canopy shaded in part and laden down with changing ki, Kenshin turned right back around.
Kenshin marched back to the grave, went to his knees. He placed his sakabatou down at his side, disarming.
"What are you doing?" came Hiko's voice behind him.
Kenshin didn't reply. He clapped his hands together in prayer. Then he bowed deeply, three times.
Down and up. Down and up.
When he arose, Hiko was at his side again. He peered expressionlessly down on him.
Then Hiko knelt too, laying Winter Moon aside.
He bowed once, deeply, to the ground.
Hiko got up, his hair brushing the dirt. "Whoever attacked you attacked the successor to Hiten Mitsurugi ryu. I do not condone it."
"What do you mean?" Kenshin lingered. "What do you plan to do, Sh—" He swallowed down. "—Hiko? This one has defeated the imposter, that he has."
"But you have an oath," Hiko said. "You cannot kill."
Kenshin's brow furrowed. "Hiko, you don't mean—"
But Hiko faced him, pulling Kenshin to his feet with only the look in his eyes, a tip of his chin. Something came over him, a great affinity for command; the coy and smug glances turned entirely into something else; a regal, expectant stare, harbouring that peculiar but deliberate belief he had always had in Kenshin. Kenshin met his gaze, with naked and honest reverence, forgetting all the ways he was too afraid to show it before, knowing all of a sudden that this was important. Beyond the reading of ki — something he couldn't help but be poised to do — he could not quite explain why he knew: a conceding curl to his mouth, an eyebrow arching in reception, his open, scarred chest filled with — with a kind of pride that instantly overturned Kenshin, capitulated him, made Kenshin believe that this man had never gotten it wrong, ever — when he put his Hiten Mitsurugi ryu into Kenshin's hands. He'd hated it then, but not all of it: what was a few calls of baka to being his disciple? What even was a few games of counting to the gift of his life? Hiko had never been one to observe formalities, old rites and traditions didn't interest him; he'd never even made Kenshin bow to him before teaching the art; there was no initiation. But Kenshin resisted the urge, the crushing urge to kneel, because Hiko had raised him up: they were equals in name, equals in the art, one master to another, as immutable as the Buddha's mercy, and Kenshin could not insult him by falling. There was one legitimate successor to Hiten Mitsurugi ryu, one heir apparent, and basked in sun before the grave, with his own master as witness, Hiko Seijuro told him right then who it was.
"…If I were your shishou, then you would safeguard my secrets."
Kenshin's eyes widened a fraction. "Yes."
Hiko nodded.
"If you were my deshi, then you would safeguard Hiten Mitsurugi ryu," he said. "From any rogue. From any wrongdoing. For as long as you live."
"If this lowly one were your deshi," Kenshin said, "he will."
Hiko smirked.
Notes
On Saito:
I think it's very interesting…and very telling of RK Saito that he remembers, thinks of himself and introduces himself as the former 'Third Unit Captain.' But public records of this man's historical counterpart is accessible via Wikipedia, which makes this interior vision all the more fascinating. Because this man was one of the final leaders of the Shinsengumi. He led the Shinsengumi in several battles. Yet in his deepest most private sense of self, he's lackey #3 leading a 15-20 man cell.
On Eiji:
Wish I introduced this earlier, I might go back and add a line - but I had trouble imagining Eiji at the right age. It just kept slipping back to being 12 in Shinegsu Village. So I added his deep voice. The inspiration is the rapper Rich Brian. He started rapping at 17 - couldn't believe his age when I heard him rap - such an incredibly deep, fulsome, matured voice in his teens.
On Misao: Similar reasons to add a visual for adult Misao - she's taller but I'm not sure how tall, so I'll let you imagine it. I do however have a clear vision that she has the build of an olympic gynmast.
On the Hiten Mitsurugi masters:
I'm delighted that readers are quite accepting of Hiko 12 as a character. I thought that might have been the hardest sell of this fic, that Hiko 12 could be a woman and that a woman trained Hiko 13. There were a few reasons for this, one of them just being a 'Cool' factor. There is plenty historical evidence of women fighting alongside samurai (called onna-musha or onna-bugeisha). Even if they were not considered the norm or controversial.
But it makes me feel like…Hiten Mitsurugi ryu, not only its sword art but its principles and values too, really was so ahead of its time. Being a free sword? Using the skills for the people? Fighting autonomously, without political or lordly affiliations? Making 12 a woman set in her time period in that part of history, in that patriarchal culture, in that patrilineal feudal system, really solidified that Hiten Mitsurugi ryu must be based on meritocracy. And not a meritocracy about physical skill either. It's something about...a person's character. It passes by the compassion and choice of its heir. So it doesn't matter what you were born as — girl, boy, runt, slave — if the previous master sees the good in you — Hiten Mitsurugi is unequivocally yours. And that's very radical.
I think Kenshin's epiphany in that final scene is that he realises he does have a heritage. He does have people before him, a history, even if not blood-related. For an orphan, being claimed that way is...something.
This chapter was so long because there is SO much to discuss. Please discuss! Which argument was your favourite of the chapter?
- an-earl