CHAPTER TWELVE
Kyoto’s street of the stonecutters was exactly the same, untouched by the fire that had destroyed so much of the city over a year before. It lay at the end of a busy commercial street near the outskirts of town. As Kenshin walked through, he marveled that the sandalmaker, seated on the wooden platform extending part way into the street from his stall, could work in the cold. Ignoring the passersby and the weather, he held a pokkuri, a red high heeled sandal, and adjusted the strap, his fingers dexterous. Behind him shelves full of geta and zori sandals showed the variety of his workmanship.
Motion came from the stall next to the sandalmaker’s and Kenshin glanced sharply around, only to find that a child had released his mother’s hand and reached up to set the paper lantern fastened to the overhang of a dry goods stall dancing by batting at it. The child’s mother turned from surveying the row of dried salmon hanging from the roof, and stepped around a barrel of dried seaweed to scold him.
It was December, but the snows were late that year in Kyoto. The streets were damp with rainwater, not snow. It was nearly a year to the day that Tomoe had died and he’d consigned her body to the flames along with the cottage they’d lived in for so many months.
He wondered if Katsura remembered that.
The stonecutter he chose was a simple man. His work with stone had made him very literal, and he made Kenshin describe exactly what he wanted. They decided on a simple monument for Tomoe. Simple as her life hadn’t been. The stonecutter told him it would take several weeks to finish. Kenshin probably could have found someone to do the work faster, but he liked the man, and trusted that he would do a good job.
Because he didn’t know if he’d still be there when the monument was finished, he asked the stone cutter to place it for him in a nearby cemetery.
By the time Kenshin paid the man and set off back toward Komatsu’s house, it was dark. He kept his head down and left the street of the stonecutters.
As he crossed the main thoroughfare, he heard Shunme’s voice.
“Kenshin!”
Glancing up, Kenshin saw Shunme and a small group of men. He recognized one of them from the old days in Kyoto. They were fellow Choshu loyalists.
From habit, he glanced up and down the street as he crossed. A man in a flat, slightly conical straw hat ducked, turned the opposite direction and strode down the street.
“You’re being watched.” He muttered at Shunme when he came near.
“I know.” Shunme’s face was alive with curiosity, but his eyes were also scanning the street in a businesslike fashion. “I’m taking these guys to a safer place. The Shinsengumi police squads have been after them for days. Just being from Choshu is a death sentence in Kyoto now. What are you doing here?”
From the corner of his eye, Kenshin saw the man in the straw hat stop someone further down the street, slip him a note and push him away. The man with the note took off running.
“Come on.” Kenshin ignored Shunme’s question and brushed past him and the others to an alleyway. He ran down it quickly, hearing them follow.
This was an area of Kyoto he was familiar with. He led them up and down alleys in a serpentine pattern that was nearly impossible to trace, but the problem with Kyoto’s old streets was the way they twisted back and forth, criss-crossing each other. It was at one of those crossings that he saw the man with the straw hat, talking to a member of the Shinsengumi, clearly identifiable in the distinctive sky blue coat with the triangular white sawtooth pattern on the sleeves.
Kenshin’s eyes swept the area. Behind the one Shinsengumi swordsmen were more, waiting patiently for the conversation to end. As Kenshin stepped back, avoiding the crossroads, one of the Choshu loyalists stepped forward, not noticing that Kenshin was moving back. The man in the straw hat spotted the loyalist, shouted, and pointed.
“Go back the other way.” Kenshin hissed, and shoved the hapless loyalist down the alley. “Shunme, take the street to the end and turn right. You’ll be by the Imperial Palace. Can you find your way from there?”
Shunme nodded.
“Go.”
Face set and grim, Shunme took off running after the others.
More running footsteps came from the opposite direction. Kenshin stepped out into the middle of the cobblestoned alleyway, blocking them.
“Go back.”
The Shinsengumi squad paused. “Who’s that?”
“Leave now, and live.” An eerie calm descended on Kenshin. This was what he’d trained for. The cold, dispassionate manner of a true hitokiri came upon him. It was like shrugging one’s shoulders into an old familiar coat.
One of them raised a circular paper lantern. “He’s got red hair.”
“Look at that scar!” said another.
“I’ve found him at last.” This voice was younger, almost child like. A boy still in his teens like Kenshin pushed his way through the group. He had bangs, and his hair was drawn back in a ponytail, a white headband wrapped around his forehead and tied in the back. He was shorter than the others, and his face was perfectly smooth.
He drew his sword and came forward, smiling.
The boy’s walk became a run. Kenshin’s sword was in his hand without having to think about it. He blocked the teenager’s thrust easily, allowing the sword to slide down his own blade until the tsuba stopped it. Kenshin twisted away and counter slashed.
The kid continued to thrust over and over. Kenshin jumped back and came at him with a downward stroke. His opponent got his blade up just in time, steadying it by placing the heel of his palm against his blade’s muni, the flat, dull edge opposite the cutting edge, to keep from caving in under the force of Kenshin’s blow.
The young Shinsengumi tried a running thrust, striking sparks from Kenshin’s blade, and continued his run past the ex-battousai. After he passed Kenshin, he faltered, and coughed, his hand coming to his mouth.
When the boy turned around, Kenshin saw that he was breathing hard and his mouth was smeared with blood.
This was puzzling. So far Kenshin hadn’t cut the teenager, he hadn’t been thrust through the lung or sliced near his mouth. So why was he bleeding?
Kenshin paused and waited for his opponent to recover.
“Enough, Okita!” A low, commanding voice sounded from the darkness beyond the rest of the Shinsengumi squad who were standing in pools of light cast from their lanterns, transfixed by the duel in front of them.
So. His opponent’s name was Okita.
A tall, thin Shinsengumi swordsman strode through the group, which parted for him automatically. His eyes were narrow, but somehow reminded Kenshin of a Wolf’s. His face was narrow as well, and several long strands of hair had escaped from his ponytail and stood in front of his face, giving the impression of a caged beast, magnificently ignoring the bars of its prison.
“But master Saito!” Okita’s voice cracked in protest.
Saito continued past. “It’s no use. In your condition you wouldn’t have the ghost of a chance against one who smells of so much blood.”
Okita followed the man with his eyes, stepping back as Saito confronted Kenshin. The tall warrior dropped deliberately into a lunge-like stance, his left hand gripping his sword’s hilt, his right arm out stretched along the length of his blade, as if helping to guide its tip to its target.
“Let’s go.” The dark voice purred, then Saito leapt forward, and it was all Kenshin could do to block and turn for a counterthrust.
Now it was Kenshin’s turn to recourse to steadying his blade by holding it with the hilt and the muni edge. Saito was strong, and fast. His lefthanded thrust was difficult to counter.
At one point as Kenshin dodged a slash he heard wood splinter as Saito’s blade scoured deeply through a plaster wall and the wooden shutter slats of a building lining the alley. Saito’s thrust was inhumanly strong, and it took all of Kenshin’s concentration to avoid it.
The fight went on and on. Kenshin lost track of time, and became a mass of instincts. Life narrowed to attack, retreat, being forced back, feet sliding along the damp cobblestones, gaining purchase and using a kick against a wall to thrust his body forward. And the swords kept dancing, downward slash as Saito’s parallel thrust came, knocking the blade off course. Next came an upward parry, and his own attacks over and over until Kenshin began to realize how much time had passed.
The Choshu loyalists were long gone. The duel had become self-indulgent.
On the next running pass at each other, Kenshin kept going, dodging down an alleyway and lightening his footsteps as he schooled his legs to run faster, stealthily, like a hitokiri of the shadows should.
If the Shinsengumi attempted to run after him, he didn’t hear it. Kenshin slowed his pace as he saw a crowded street up ahead at the end of the alley. He supposed Saito had come to his senses as well by then and remembered his own obligations to his teammates. ‘In your condition’ he’d said to Okita, the younger boy.
Of course. Okita was ill. He fought valiantly considering, Kenshin thought to himself dispassionately. He sheathed his sword, stuck his hands in his kimono sleeves, ducked his head down and walked sedately back to Komatsu’s house.
No one followed.
In the common room of Komatsu’s house Oshio and Hojo sat and ate the rice and fish Komatsu’s staff provided for them, leaving their swords stacked against the wall with the Satsuma warriors’ swords. The two young Choshu warriors had adapted quickly to living in a Satsuma household. Kurata, the Tosa swordsman sent by Ryoma to help guard Katsura, came and sat near them.
Shunme, they’d told Kenshin, was with Katsura.
Kenshin sat against the wall, sword cradled against his shoulder, and thought. Shunme was with Katsura, which meant he’d probably already told him about being found by the Shinsengumi, so Kenshin wouldn’t have to. The fact that he’d been seen though, and identified by his scar and red hair meant that Kenshin wouldn’t be going back to the stonecutters’ street any time soon. It was just as well that he’d paid the stonecutter in full.
Oshio and Hojo finished gulping down their dinner and went to go relieve Shunme. Kurata smiled and announced that he was off to bed, since his duty period was now over.
“So,” A short time later Shunme dropped onto the tatami mat next to Kenshin. “What happened with the Shinsengumi after I left?”
“We fought. I survived.”
“I can see that,” Shunme said reproachfully. “I meant how was it, fighting the dreaded Shinsengumi?”
“A fight, like any other.” But not like before. Before Kenshin murdered without mercy, the moment there’d been any sign of weakness. Okita was a trained swordsman and was as old as Kenshin, or close enough, so he hadn’t deserved mercy because of his age. Yet when he’d seen the blood on Okita’s mouth, saw the way he was breathing hard, he hadn’t attacked while the boy was off guard.
He’d had a chance to, a window of opportunity even before the older man, Saito, had shown up to continue the fight in Okita’s stead. Kenshin didn’t know how to feel about that supposed moment of weakness or mercy.
Shunme threw himself on his back. “You’re absolutely no fun to talk to, Kenshin. Why can’t you be more descriptive like me? I bet even the Shinsengumi tell better stories than you.”
He rolled over onto his side. “You know, those big blue coats of theirs? They remind me of cabbages the way they bell out all round. And those white edges are like the curly leaf tips on a cabbage too. Fighting them is like fighting a field of cabbages!” Shunme gave his trademark laugh, evidently amusing himself greatly, and causing Oshio, Hojo, and Kurata to glance over and smile indulgently before going back to their conversation.
Kenshin shot Shunme an irritated look. “Why do you laugh so much?”
“To make up for you not laughing at all!” Shunme smiled up at him, his smile gradually fading as Kenshin stared down at him seriously.
Eventually the smile disappeared completely, and was replaced by a grave look.
“Honestly, I make myself laugh, so I won’t forget how to seem.” he told Kenshin.
“How to seem?” asked Kenshin quietly.
Shunme nodded. “So I’ll seem normal to my family when I go home to them after all this is over and Choshu is safe again. If I forget how to laugh, how will I be able to make my daughter laugh, or cheer up my wife?”
He lay back down on the mat and closed his eyes. “I wasn’t at the Forbidden Gates Battle when Nakamura’s brother was killed by the Satsuma clan, but I fought alongside Takasugi when he took back Choshu from the conservatives. He only had eighty men with him during the first attack. I was one of those eighty. I saw things, did things to win that I’d only heard about. I found I could be more savage than I ever thought possible.” His voice grew soft with remembered horror.
“Kurata lived through it too. He doesn’t talk about it, but we both fought like animals to survive. When I go home, that savage part of me has to go away. The only thing I’ve found that helps, is remembering how to laugh. Laughing helps me to seem.”
Shunme’s voice softened still more and became reflective, as though he were talking to himself more than to Kenshin. “I have to seem normal again.”
He opened his eyes and looked at Kenshin. “What happened with the fight tonight?”
Kenshin stared back. How to explain his momentary lapse? He hadn’t even killed anyone this time around.
“Mercy.” He told Shunme at last, not caring how it sounded. “Mercy.”
Breaking the gaze, he got to his feet, grabbed his sheathed sword in his hand, and left the room.
‘How to seem.’ He repeated to himself, closing the door partition behind him. ‘Shunme knows how to seem.’
And then, from out of the blue, as he continued down the hall, a realization hit.
‘I envy him.’
