♥ · Yamazaki · Ayunee · · ♥

The waters of Osaka were vibrant as our ship finally landed on shore, and yet I was too ill to notice any of it, as I was wont to. I was seasick for one thing, and desperately sad in another sense.

Shinsaku was no longer in this world, and without him, I became more acutely aware that I was really an outsider in his home province. I had neither the deep sense of loyalty to it, nor the ability to remain as passionate about the cause of revolution to which the men committed themselves to wholeheartedly. I had followed Shinsaku out of some sense of loyalty to him, love for his kindness and his fierceness, and a deep love for the passionate way in which he lived despite his consumption.

There was no one to see me off as I rode that small cart with some of his things. His books. That kimono. A pipe. These ordinary things were of no value, except in the memories they wrought.

...

It was rather silly to keep it all these years, and yet I had. There were so many memories associated with that day we had left Kyoto, and the kimono held many.

After the previous night, I remember him coming out of the washroom in a ridiculously short kimono that I had foolishly provided for him while I washed his other clothing. I remember giggling at him for how valiantly he tried to make that kimono fit his tall frame and at his attempts at flirting with me. He was an exceptionally funny man when he tried to be, and perhaps that was the first inkling I had that the poet was also a man who knew how to laugh, and laugh at himself.

It was a quality I found endearing in the years that came.... his utter lack of regard for convention, and the way he often broke down my shyness with his sense of humor.

But I could not have him wandering about, his legs sticking out of that short kimono, and so I remember hurrying upstairs and then back down with another kimono, black, formal and long -- the one I would keep long after he died.

He looked so handsome and less ill and thin once he put it on. And somehow it transformed him from drunk poet, to something more. I knew then he was someone far greater than I -- a samurai perhaps, and therefore, beyond my reach.

But reach I did... Sitting there, petting the dog that had come in from outside, I remember telling him that I wished he would never leave that little house in Kyoto, and that he would stay with me. It was such a foolish thing to express. With so much unrest in Kyoto and in Japan, how utterly naive and selfish it was to say that, to wish I could keep him and that dog with me, and make Kyoto over into a place for the both of us to be together without recrimination from those who would abhor what both of us were.

He was a man who had so much more to do, he was by his own admission a Choshu samurai, and I had nothing to offer him except myself. But I reached across to kiss him in that kitchen, anyways, offering myself to him -- lowly shinobi to a samurai, woman to man.

...

For some time after he died and in the time I spent journeying to Kyoto, I often wondered if he remembered me on his deathbed. They did not tell me much, his men. Only that he had been so ill, and that he had worked up until the moment he died. And I did not ask that messenger for anything more; I knew it was not my place to ask. Instead, I had to satisfy myself with my memories from those few years; to ask for anything more would have been far beyond what I was entitled to.

Out of his kindness, he took me with him from Kyoto, as useless as I turned out to be. I never lifted a weapon to aide his cause -- only to help him if I thought he was in trouble. Instead, I was always mindful to keep out of the way of his work and his duties -- the only help to his cause I really offered was simply to keep him happy as much as I could, and keep him alive for as long as the Heavens would permit.

How fitting that of his legacies, the only things I took back to Kyoto were the things I had given him -- that kimono, assorted books, and the occassional pipe, as well as the memories of our time together. Those simple things in the bags I carried on my back, on to that ship back to Osaka, and then on to the carriage that would take me to Kyoto.

That is all I thought I took with me, the memories and the few objects of his... until that woman apothecary of Shimabara-past told me that I carried far more.

"You must hide some more, I think," her face had turned oddly stern. "Your child's life depends on it."

He was a quiet young boy when I first glanced him standing near Makimachi-okashira. What made him remarkable was the intelligence in his blue eyes, and that ever present sense of watchfulness.

Our dealings with the Tokyo Oniwabanshu were minimal, although at least they were not amongst those shinobi we had ever been openly at war with in our long history. And our history as a clan was indeed long. From the Iga clans we came, and with the rise of Tokugawa Hideyoshi so many years ago, we were all enfolded into employ for the government (although from time to time, many smaller factions in our clan as well as others did disappear and go renegade).

But amongst these many clans that were enfolded into the 'government' it was clear that the Oniwabanshu were the most highly favored.

Strange though, that Shinomori Aoshi. In time, I heard he became the captain of the guard of the Edo Castle. It was a position that as a shinobi, I found to be somewhat unusual. Yes -- I suppose his talents as a shinobi were one reason -- but I wondered at the fact that he carried a sword openly, almost as if he had wanted to somehow to present himself as swordsman rather than shinobi.

Was it a tactic meant to confuse the silly men who would try to advance on the castle? Perhaps they would mistake him as a swordsman, and err in their strategy of attack.

Or was Shinomori looking to eliminate that stigma that often came with being a shinobi?

After all, shinobi were thought to be worthless dogs by many of the shogunates vassals and lackeys. It was simply that way, unless one could prove oneself worthy of notice. And so I wondered then and now if Shinomori Aoshi had (on some deeper level) also wanted to be a samurai.

...

As for this sudden interest in my brother on part of those who are Shinomori's clan members, I am not troubled really. Perhaps annoyed is the appropriate term to describe my feelings -- for those young ones do not know who they are dealing with.

I do not know what kind of philosophy of training exists amongst that group of Oniwabanshu, but I do not think they understand the depth of training my brother and I experienced once we were taken away from Kyoto and placed back in the clan. Shinobi are not all alike; and to foolishly declare one's interest in another shinobi's affairs without knowing the full range of their strengths and weaknesses... ah, that is a mistake of youth.

Perhaps if Kashiwazaki-san was here, I could make my case carefully and openly. But as he is not, perhaps I shall find this Shinomori and, in my own way, protect the younger ones from what they do not know.

---

May edit later or include somehow in game.

Had I had my clan's sense of duty, I would have stabbed him in his sleep. Or perhaps poisoned him with something ironic like a poisonous kiss. Takasugi Shinsaku would be dead, and my earlier impetuousness in quitting Kyoto with him, would have been forgiven. To the Shinsengumi, I suppose my reputation as a master ninja would have been restored.

But to my clan, I doubt they would have been forgiving. The forming of attachments they found beneath them -- nuisances, really. There are the temporary attachments -- the kind called for when trying to manipulate someone into revealing some important piece of information. For a time, I spied in Edo that way -- weaving my way through the teahouses and listening and asking. There were the kinds of 'attachments' that often consisted of sharing sake and a futon, and that ended up with the men being disemboweled by fellow shinobi or being quietly put to sleep with undetectable poisons.

It was beneath us to form attachments of any significance, except to duty and to serving our masters.

And yet I failed miserably, not just once, but twice. The second with Shinsaku, and the first with the man who had been temporarily deigned master.

That master is dead now, along with many of those who served him. And as it is not in my nature to speak ill of the dead, I can only reflect that there was another reason to avoid attachments. And that was to spare oneself the hurt that comes upon finding the person you 'love' can not abandon that very idea of what you were and, in the end, is unable to trust you and the feelings that you express.

In that sense, I am still confounded by Shinsaku's indifference to what I was. Perhaps he was simply too aware of his own limited time, his own disease, to really care much. Or perhaps he was simply far more trusting than most people of that time.

While he 'lived', I worried little about the clan and the thought they would come and seek me out. We were always on the move and his friends were powerful. But when he died, there were so many things that were unresolved and uncertain. Denied the title of his widow and his protection, I left Choshu and attempted to return once more to Kyoto, to that apothecary shop in Shimabara and to a place where mother and father once both trespassed.

To be continued, I think...either here or in game...

I remember the first time he realized how he differed from the other children in the small village we had moved to. He was barely four -- but always tagging after the others at this point -- trying to imitate everything that they did, trying to fit into their way of life.

One morning, he found me in the small village garden picking vegetables, and proudly showed me the stick he said would catch our dinner.

He didn't even blink when I started to laugh -- just followed me solemnly as I led him to the riverbank. He kept up as we climbed over roots and grasses and found an unoccupied spot. He watched quietly and seriously as I took some sturdy thread and a small metal hook and hooked an earthworm that he had found for me onto the line.

And when I handed him the stick and hook, he ran off to the river's edge and tried so diligently to cast that line into the water.

For a while, I sat there under the shade of a tree, hulling vegetables, and occasionally glancing up at his stiff and determined form at the river's edge, catching nothing but the leaves and grass that floated past on his hook.

After one hour passed, and yet another - I called him back to eat.

For a time and a half, he didn't answer. Puzzled, I put aside my basket and went to him at that river's edge, and gently touched him on the shoulders. "Shinichi?"

"I didn't catch fish," he said finally as I turned him around to face me.

It didn't matter to me. I smiled at him... there were plenty of vegetables to eat from what I had gathered that morning. That and the kindnesses of our neighbors kept us going when the medicines didn't sell. "It's alright, we have what grandmother brought us. "

In a way, he didn't hear me -- instead looking in the direction of other persons along the water. And finally he managed to say something. "The other kids catch fish."

"The other kids are older than you," I remember telling him, trying to make the tears of disappointment that started to come, simply stop.

"No," he sobbed as he dropped the handmade pole to the ground. "Not older."

"Then what?" I remember pulling him into my arms, trying hard to still those shaking shoulders, wondering why it was that he thought he couldn't fish?

"It's because they have fathers."

He was somewhere between boyhood and manhood when I met him in a little shop in Shimabara, Kyoto. With his hat over his head, and the clothes that spoke of humble origins -- and so close in age to my brother -- I couldn't help but note him with curioisity.

I suppose to ever hear of Kenshin Himura spoken of as simply a mere boy -- might seem terribly odd to those who knew him as the Battousai, but there are probably others who knew him simply as Shin-san, Kenshin or even Shinta. Had I known what he was -- would I have feared him?

But I never knew the truth about him during that brief time our paths intersected. All I knew was that he could be terribly kind, Shin-san. And yet I sensed he was deprived of many things. His questions, his appearance, his face -- spoke of so much suffering -- a suffering that went beyond what I myself had ever known.

I wonder now, in the many years that have passed -- if he has found that kindness. If he has found someone to care for him and love him despite whatever burdens and guilt he silently carries. I wonder if Kamiya-sensei is that person for him, and I hope that she is.

All the things I had wanted to do for him -- I hope she will do them from now. Need... everyone needs him ... to 'need' him won't ease the weight he carries around his shoulders still. It will keep him with her for a time -- but if a greater need arises -- then he, because of his very nature, will follow that need.

Love, an unselfish, understanding love -- that, is, something she alone can give him now. Love and a family is what will keep him with her, keep him alive.

I am still waiting now, for some way to help him, my little Shin-san. I don't know yet what that help may take form of, nor do I really think he would come and ask me as such. So I hope that the people he now has in life around him, will tell me what I can do for him.

But there is still one thing I want to give him. Shinsaku... I am not certain if even he remembers what I found amongst his things so long ago in Kyoto. I still carry it, waiting for the right moment -- to give it back either to Shinsaku or to give it to Ken-san.

---

note that Ayunee refers to both Kenshin and Shinsaku as Shin-san. Confusing, eh?