CHAPTER TWO
It was late when Yahiko finally found himself at the main gate of the Nishihonganji Temple. The late afternoon sun bathed the wooden support logs in a golden glow, the gate’s broad lintel beam arching over the supports like a drawn bow. Yahiko couldn’t help but notice he was the only one entering. Everyone else seemed to be leaving. Well, he hadn’t come this far to be dissuaded by that! Straightening his spine, Yahiko crossed the threshold of the gate and entered the temple precincts.
It was huge, far bigger than the small Shinto temple he’d gone to by mistake. There was a tall, imposing two-storey drum tower, and several large tile roofed buildings were scattered around the spacious compound.
Yahiko felt his eyes grow big. How many shinsengumi were there, to fill a place this large? He tried to imagine fifty, no, a hundred Saitohs roaming around and felt a little sick. Kenshin had gone up against a veritable army. How had he done it?
Yahiko swallowed. Kenshin had done it because he was a hero. He’d fought hundreds of samurai because that’s what his sense of honor demanded, back in the days when honor, when the samurai code, bushido, mattered. No wonder Tomoe had fallen for him.
But who would fall for Yahiko?
He thought of Tsubame, her warm brown eyes, soft brown hair and gentle face. What had he ever done to deserve her adoration? What chance did he have of ever showing her what he was made of? Sure, he’d fought Otowa Hyoko, one of Enishi’s minions, but he’d promptly lost consciousness right after defeating him. It was humiliating! Otowa, for all his hidden shadow weapons, was still just one man. Kenshin had fought off an army of enemies.
Discouraged, Yahiko let his head hang low and kept his eyes fixed on the flagstone path under his feet as he followed it around one of the temple buildings.
Suddenly, he noticed a pair of shiny black western style shoes at the end of navy blue pant clad legs standing squarely on the path before him.
“What are you doing here, kid?” a voice asked gruffly.
Yahiko bristled. “Looking around, what’s it to you? It ain’t against the law,” he answered truculently, fed up with being reminded yet again that everyone in his life saw him as a kid.
He raised his head to glare at the man and found himself staring at a broad chest covered in navy blue wool with gold buttons. Yahiko realized that the top of his head only came up to the man’s sternum. He noted, as he wrenched his gaze further upwards, that the man had a gun on his belt and a brimmed cap on his head. He was a security guard and he had to be over six feet tall and so solidly built that Yahiko guessed he probably weighed about 300 pounds. His legs and arms were like tree trunks.
Compared to this guy, Yahiko looked like a flea. He gulped, clenched his fists and refused to be intimidated, standing his ground the way a samurai should, chin lifted and eyes narrowed, meeting the guard’s gaze implacably.
The security guard stared back at him for a minute, then answered Yahiko’s question.
“No, it’s not against the law, but we’re closing.”
Yahiko felt the tension leaving his body as he deflated. He’d come all this way just to reach the temple as it closed. He’d never get another chance to see it again. It was a miracle he’d been able to slip away as it was. By the time he got back to the Aioya he’d be in for it for not telling anyone where he’d gone. Kaoru acted like a big sister, fussing over him even if he was just a little bit late.
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “I didn’t know.”
The guard was silent for a moment, then his mouth quirked. “We aren’t closed quite yet. Come on, I’ll show you around if you’re interested.”
Without waiting to see Yahiko’s reaction, he pivoted and began to walk away, his large strides taking him down the path quickly.
Yahiko shook himself out of his stupor and followed, running until he came abreast of the man then slowing to a walk.
The guard grinned and shortened his stride a little bit. “The priests are gone on a retreat, so it’s pretty quiet around here today,” he said conversationally.
Yahiko made a noncommittal noise and concentrated on keeping up.
“So what do you want to see first?” the guard asked. “The drum tower? The main temple?”
“I want to see where the shinsengumi used to hang out.” Yahiko told him.
The guard’s steps slowed. “The shinsengumi?” he repeated slowly. “Why do you want to know about them?”
Yahiko shrugged. “I know someone who knew them, back in the Bakumatsu.”
Yahiko felt the guard’s gaze sharpen on him, but when he looked up at the man, he’d already looked away, and was gazing down the path with a faraway look in his eye, as if he wasn’t really seeing the red and gold leaves of the small grove of maple trees at the end of the path.
For a minute, Yahiko thought the guard was going to refuse his request, but then the man said ruminatively, “Well then, you’ll probably want to see the main meeting hall, that’s where they lived when they were here. They partitioned it into barracks back then. It was the only building large enough to hold all of them.”
For the next hour, the guard showed Yahiko around the temple grounds, answering his questions and leading him through the buildings the shinsengumi constructed, the bathhouse, the building they’d used for a jail, and even the gravel zen garden that covered what had once been their execution ground. The guard spent an extra minute at that one, staring at the peaceful designs raked into the gravel.
“A lot of men died here, enemies and shinsengumi both.”
“Shinsengumi too?” asked Yahiko.
“Yes,” the guard said gravely. “Seppuku.”
Yahiko nodded. He’d heard of seppuku, a method of ritual suicide for samurai which was their last chance to die with honor. The ritual involved self-disembowelment. Samurai had to cut open their own stomachs before someone called a ‘second’, a friend usually, cut their head off to end their suffering.
“The shinsengumi had a set of strict rules, and the penalty for violating any of them was death. A lot of good men died here.”
The guard’s voice went soft, and Yahiko wasn’t certain whether he meant that the good men who’d died were the men the shinsengumi captured, the shinsengumi forced to commit seppuku, or both. He supposed the guard had to be careful not to come down too strongly on one side or the other. Lots of people fought in the Bakumatsu, and it wasn’t always easy to tell who had fought on which side.
Then the guard led him away to the other buildings and the moment passed. The man showed that he had a humorous streak too, and told stories that had Yahiko laughing helplessly, like the one about the time when the shinsengumi brought out their two canons to fire and the head priest was so startled by the noise that he fell face forward into his miso soup, and came tearing outside dripping wet to chastise the captain who’d ordered the canon fired. Yahiko listened, entranced, not caring that he was hanging on every word like a little kid being told a bedtime story. At last they ended up back near the front gate. Afternoon was merging into evening and the light was fading.
As they came to a stop by the temple gate, Yahiko stared back into the compound, now shadowy as the sun poured out its last golden rays of the day over the rooftops of the temple buildings.
While he stared, he seemed to see in his mind’s eye the blue-coated shinsengumi crossing the temple precincts or sitting on the broad wooden engawas (the porches surrounding the buildings), cleaning their swords in preparation for going out on patrol to try to make the streets safe for the people of Kyoto. The guard’s words made that time come alive for Yahiko, and he realized that even though they’d been fighting on the opposite side of Kenshin, the shinsengumi had done their best to live by their own code of honor, and to protect people their own way.
“I wish…” he began longingly, then stopped.
“What is it, kid?” the guard asked gruffly, but not unkindly. “What do you wish?”
“I wish I’d been able to see it, back when there were real samurai and bushido.”
The guard laughed softly. “Bushido, huh?”
“Yeah, back when honor mattered.” Yahiko muttered bitterly. Why had he been born too late to fight? To do something to prove what he believed in?
The guard stared at him, and the way he stared made Yahiko uncomfortable, as if he should be ashamed of something.
“Let me tell you something about bushido and the samurai ways. It’s a good thing they’re gone.” The guard said abruptly, his voice going harsh all of a sudden.
Yahiko scrunched his face up in objection and bristled. His father was a samurai! There’s no way he was going to let that remark pass unchallenged, but while he was trying to think up something to say, the guard sighed heavily.
“Come, sit over here with me. It’s the best spot to watch the sunset,” the older man said.
He led Yahiko to the engawa of a side building with a remarkable view of the sun sinking over the hills, and sat, legs trailing off the porch. Yahiko hesitated a moment, then sat beside him. He’d realized halfway through the tour that the guard had let him stay long past the time the temple was due to close. He supposed he owed him for that, and he had to admit, this was the best sunset he’d seen since coming to Kyoto.
From his seat on the polished wooden planks, Yahiko could see the pinks, oranges and yellows of the setting sun painting the clouds and bathing everything below in a warm glow. The dirty buildings and dark tiled roofs of Kyoto were softened and tinged with pink.
As the day faded, the guard’s raspy voice went low, and his words became almost hypnotic. Yahiko listened without speaking, lulled by the words and the beauty of the scenery before him.
“It was after the Ikeda-ya incident where the shinsengumi massacred a whole bunch of the Choshu rebels at Ikeda-ya Inn for plotting to set fire to Kyoto and kidnap the emperor. Tempers were short at that time. The shinsengumi knew they hadn’t caught all the loyalist rebels and they were keen to get their hands on the rest of them, including their leader, Katsura Kogoro. They heard a rumor that the Choshu rebels were meeting at a restaurant called the Akebono-tei up in the hills, so they gathered a squad and some samurai from Aizu and went after them.
When they got there they found the place was deserted except for one man. The guy took one look at the squad entering the restaurant and he took off like a rabbit. He jumped out a window and headed for the hills. You’ve got to remember, the shinsengumi had quite a reputation. Sometimes I think they themselves forgot how feared they were. Anyway, one of the Aizu samurai, a guy named Shiba Tsukasa, took off after the man, went right out the window and caught up with him. He stabbed the guy in the side.
Well, when the guy fell down, he started yelling, asking what was the big idea stabbing him? It was obvious from the guy’s accent that he wasn’t from Choshu at all. It turns out he was Asada Tokitaro, an official from Tosa, not Choshu. Now there were a few Tosa rebels, but the Lord who ruled over Tosa was loyal to the shogun, who the shinsengumi and the men of Aizu served. Tosa was an ally, not an enemy at all, and wounding a man from Tosa…well, let’s just say it wasn’t a very good idea.
Shiba, of course, was horrified at what he’d done. He apologized to Asada Tokitaro over and over. Shiba even ripped a piece off his own kimono to bind up the guy’s wounds, but the damage was done.
As soon as they heard what happened to Asada, men from Tosa gathered in Kyoto to attack the shinsengumi and Aizu headquarters in revenge for Asada’s wound. In order to stop that from happening, Shiba’s best friend, Chiba Jiro, marched up to Tosa headquarters, kneeled down and committed seppuku right in front of them. Chiba thought that his death would satisfy Tosa’s need for revenge, and save his friend and his comrades from Aizu from having to do battle with the men from Tosa.
When Shiba found out what his friend had done, and that his Lord, the Lord of Aizu, was still worried that the incident with Asada had ruined his alliance with Tosa, he decided that honor demanded his death as well. He had a last drink with his buddies, then cut his own belly. His two brothers were present. One of them delivered the coup-de-grace and decapitated him so he wouldn’t suffer very long. Poor kid was only twenty-one when he died.
The Lord of Aizu had no idea Shiba meant to do that. When he found out, he immediately sent a message to Tosa, hoping that news of Shiba’s suicide would placate them, but when the messenger got to the Tosa compound, he found that they were all in mourning. Asada Tokitaro, the guy who was wounded, had died by seppuku that same day.”
The guard turned to Yahiko, his face shadowed so Yahiko couldn’t really read his expression, he could only see the glistening white of the man’s eyes. “So there you have it, three people dead, and for what? A stupid mistake. That’s your bushido. I may not like the current government, but at least they got rid of stupid waste like that.”
“But I don’t get it. Why did Asada kill himself too?”
The guard sighed. “Bushido demands that you never run away, even if you’re scared or completely outnumbered, you have to stand your ground. If someone wounds you, even accidentally and they apologize for it, you’re supposed to fight them until they are dead. That’s bushido.”
“I thought bushido was about honor,” Yahiko whispered softly, horrified at what he’d learned.
The guard let Yahiko process the information for a minute, then asked softly, “Why are you so interested in honor?”
Yahiko should have been insulted, and ordinarily he would have interpreted the question to mean ‘why is a little kid like you concerned with honor? You’re too young to know about such things,’ but something about the way the guard asked the question lowered his defenses.
“My father was a samurai,” he told him.
The guard nodded, as if that were a given. “I figured as much. Why else?”
“What do you mean, ‘why else’?”
“Your father was a samurai who lived by bushido, so naturally you’d want to know more about it, but your interest seems a bit more personal. Usually if a man wants to know how he can become more honorable, it’s because there’s someone he wants to impress.”
Yahiko colored. How did he…? Something about the warm night and the guard’s gruff, kindly voice encouraged confidences. He found himself opening his mouth and saying things he’d never be able to say to the others. For a long time he’d wanted to become stronger just for the sake of being strong, but the guard was right. Yahiko had someone he wanted to be stronger for, someone he wanted to protect.
“There’s this girl. Her name’s Tsubame, and she works at a restaurant where I work part time. I’m a kendo instructor most of the time. Well, assistant instructor. I want to be worthy of her, but there’s no way to prove it now that the war’s over and bushido is dead.” Yahiko heard the frustration in his voice, and it irritated him.
Yahiko couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a flash of teeth as the guard smiled. “Just be yourself. If she doesn’t like you the way you are, no feats of bravery will change that. My wife didn’t marry me back when I was important, she married me after the war when I had nothing. That’s true love. You want a girl like that, not one who needs you to prove something to her. What kind of a girl would she be if she were always demanding that you do things for her? What does she want, a man or a show-off?”
Yahiko frowned. Tsubame wasn’t the sort of girl who made demands. She was shy and sweet. By trying to find a way to prove himself, was he implying that she was a demanding sort of girl?
“I never thought of it that way before,” he said slowly.
The way the guard put it, it almost seemed like he was insulting Tsubame’s character by wanting to prove himself.
Lost in his thoughts, he almost missed the guard’s next question. “Do you like this girl?”
“Huh? Yes!’ Yahiko answered adamantly, once the question registered.
“And does she like you?”
Images of Tsubame’s gently rounded face came to Yahiko, and he was glad the guard couldn’t see his expression because he knew he was grinning like a sentimental idiot as he recalled the way her eyes shone whenever he walked through the door of the Akebeko, and the way she’d fixed his sandal strap the first time they’d met, frowning over her work then smiling shyly at him when it was done.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “She likes me too.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” said the guard bracingly. “Just tell her how you feel about her. Women like hearing that more than they like hearing about what you’ve done for them. It took me years to figure that one out. Learn from my example, you’ll have an easier time of it,” he ended ruefully.
“Just tell her how I feel?”
“Yep.”
Resolve hardened in Yahiko’s chest. “I’ll do it!” he announced, and jumped to his feet. Remembering his manners, he bowed quickly to the guard. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
White teeth flashed again in the night as the guard smiled and waved a breezy salute as Yahiko gripped the strap of his shinai and rushed out the temple gate.
The guard continued to sit on the engawa. The sun was now completely gone, but the moon and stars were taking its place, illuminating the temple in a pale white light.
A shadow detached itself from a tree near the temple gate.
The guard looked up, his mouth hardening and muscles tense, but he remained seated.
“I wondered when you were planning to come out,” he said gruffly, eyes going flat and emotionless as he caught sight of the red hair and cross shaped scar on the man’s cheek.
“Have you come to settle old scores, Battousai?”
The shadow’s voice rang out across the courtyard, calm and steady.
“As you’ve said, the days of bushido and samurai are dead. I have no wish to resurrect the past, that I do not,” Kenshin said, keeping his arms crossed over his chest, and his hand away from the hilt of his sakabatou sword. He smiled, violet eyes warming slightly.
“Thank you, for saying what you said to Yahiko.”
The guard nodded. “You’re welcome.”
Kenshin held his gaze a moment longer, feeling the guard’s fighting ki relax. “Farewell, Shimada Kai of the shinsengumi.”
“And you, Battousai.”
For a moment it seemed as if the moonlight caught the fire in Kenshin’s hair, and the guard’s shorn locks were pulled up once again into a bushy topknot, a blue and white haori coat flowing off his shoulders, the ends pooling by his side on the engawa, then the moon passed behind a cloud and the moment faded.
With a last nod, the two old enemies bid one another goodbye, and Kenshin left the temple, making his way back to the Aioya through streets no longer haunted by wolves or rebels, going home to a wife who loved him and a bright teenaged boy who would never know the horror and uncertain times of the Bakumatsu. Like Kenshin, the shinsengumi spearman turned security guard knew of it firsthand, and had watched its dying embers burn out.
Shimada Kai had surrendered during the remnant of the Shinsengumi’s last desperate days of fighting in Aizu. When it was clear that the Imperial side had won, Kenshin heard that the wounded Shimada had left his cover and stood up, facing his enemies. He’d been a sitting duck for the Imperial sharpshooters, but somehow his brave gesture impressed them. There he’d stood, sword sheathed, the shinsengumi contingent’s banner wrapped around his waist like a sash, waiting for death.
No one could bear to shoot the solitary figure standing tall on the field of battle, and he’d been captured instead and later released after the war ground to its slow halt. He’d survived the war, and learned that there was more to life than battle. Kenshin let a slight smile appear on his lips as he thought back to Shimada’s no-nonsense advice to Yahiko.
As Kenshin walked the familiar streets of Kyoto, his thoughts were filled, not with memories of the past, but thoughts of the future, a future both he and Shimada took part in making. The past was gone, and the future was what you made of it.
END CHAPTER TWO
A/N: I considered ending this story right here as a one-shot. The story started out as simply a way of introducing Yahiko to Shimada Kai so that he could hear the story of Shiba and Asada. However, as stories sometimes do, this one got away from me, so it will be continued in chapter three.
