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Chapter 2 |
"Hawatari, get your lazy, wolf-like self out of that bed this instant!" Evangelina hollered into the slumbering girl's ear, making her jump up and reach for her sword. With much knowledge of the situation she faded only to reappear in front of the katana on the floor.
"Your father's Jissen Kenbu technique," Hawatari noticed, smirking. "You do it well."
"You're father's 'I'm pissed' look, you do it well," the blonde replied, same smirk in play. After a few moments of staring they burst out laughing.
"You know, my mother gave me that whole speech about getting attacked when we're alone again," Evangelina finally spoke up, still holding on a bit to her stomach.
Hawatari fixed her yukata and and her futon. "Yeah, and it'll be me if you ever wake me up like that again."
"Sorry, Hawatari, but it was hard to get you up this morning. Were you dreaming about some secret lover?" she wondered, poking her friend's arm.
The brunette simply rolled her eyes and sighed. "Lina, you're hopeless. What in the world would make you think I'd be dreaming about that?"
"Well you kept mumbling, 'Oh, Duil, my one and only true love. Come to me! Kiss me!' It was rather sickening."
Hawatari turned bright red. "I WAS?!"
"No," Evangelina blurted out, cracking up again. "But it was funny to see your face do that!"
"Sometimes I wish your were a person of few words like your father is," the golden-eyed girl snapped furiously, steam practically coming out of her ears.
"Oh no, my father talks a lot around my mother. I guess they're just in love like that," she replied, smiling sweetly.
Hawatari snorted at the idea.
"Hawatari!" Hoshiko called from behind the screen door. "You need to go into town and get some things for me."
"She doesn't seem mad anymore," Evangelina pointed out.
"Who cares?" her friend replied, shrugging. "Let's just go. I wanna take a walk anyways."
***
Twitch.
"He WHAT?!" Kitai screamed, waving a piece of splintered wood above her head as if she were ready to kill something.
"Woah, hold it, Kit," Sano stated, holding the collar of her kimono and stopping her with ease. "Let's not cause any more damage."
"What happened here?" Hawatari asked, bending over to inspect the pile of rubble with Evangelina in toe.
"Back, Devil Spawn, this is YOUR fault!" the raving woman scrieched, pointing the wood at the girl now. "You got my baby mad. I'll kill yo-"
"She's just a little pissed right now, I'm sure she'll forget all about this la- FUCK!" Sano began before his wife promtly bit a chunk out of the hand he's clasped over her mouth.
"What's going on?" Yozakura broke in, fresh flowers in hand, stopping Kitai from charging blindly at Hawatari.
"Duil got drunk cause he was mad at Hawatari and trashed the Akebako. Jeez, as if our tab wasn't already bad enough..." Sano trailed of, rubbing the back of his head. "Think your old man would mind if I asked for-"
The look Hawatari gave him said something along the lines of 'Finish that question and face a painful death, Rooster-man' so he decided to shut his mouth.
"Yozakura!" Sukiko was calling from the flower shop, "You have the money, sweetheart."
The girl blushed and smiled embarrassingly before tossing her mother the coin purse she had in her hand. "Ah, I'm so forgetful," she laughed.
"You're just like your father," Sano observed, nursing his poor, bitten hand. "Hey, he's got a nice job working for the government, think maybe he could help pay for thi-"
Yozakura's look was more like 'Finish that request and I'll have my daddy beat you up!' Again, Sano shut his mouth.
"Oh, come on, Sano," Kitai called, pushing her husband to walk away. "You run a damn dojo for crying outloud. Work your ass off and make Duil get a job or go to AA or something."
"AA?" everyone asked in unison.
Kitai rolled her eyes. "Nothing, just stay away from my son if you know what's good for you," she threatened, pointing an accusing, motherly finger at Hawatari.
"Don't worry," she replied, turning to the rubble. "I wouldn't be caught dead near your moronic trash of a son."
***
"Oi, my fucking head," Duil moaned as he rolled over in his futon, cringing at the light pooling around him. "What did I do last night? Fuck, I didn't even know they made that much sake..."
"And I didn't know so much destruction could fit in one person," a cynical female voice retorted from somewhere in the room. Duil didn't even bother to open his bloodshot eyes...he knew who it was.
"Hawa-chan, get a life," he mumbled, face buried in his pillow.
"At least I could probably afford to buy one. You, on the other hand, blow every coin you have on sake and now you have to pay to fix the Akebako since you smashed out a support beam, you dolt."
"Well maybe I wouldn't need to get pissed and drink if you weren't such a pain in my ass."
Duil had the breath knocked out of him when he was swiftly knocked to the ground. When he opened his eyes he found Hawatari was pinning him to his futon, glaring daggers into him. "You DARE blame ME for this?! You're the freeloading, immature halfwit who lacks any and all self control!"
Duil was left speechless, and whether is was a result of the force of the hit or the unusually stinging words he did not know. Hawatari didn't move and the two were left to simply stare at each other.
Finally the girl's eyes stopped burning with anger. 'Why did I just say that? I didn't mean it... entirely...'
'Crap, I guess I deserved that, huh?"
"Hawa-il" it came out when they both went to speak at the same time. Both couldn't help but laugh at that but when the laughter died down they were throw into a different kind of tense silence.
'I...I...I can't move,' Hawatari was screaming in her mind. She should have moved, but she found herself drawn to this... that...those eyes.
Of its own accord her head inched down a little and Duil showed no signs of intended movement himself.
"DuIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL!"
Hawatari snapped her head up and scrambled rather ungracefully to her feet. As the sound of stomping came closer and closer she made the split second decision and climbed out the boy's bedroom window without so much as a goodbye. Before he could call out to her Kitai stormed in and hit him with the same piece of debris from earlier, leading Duil to a keen observation...
...the world REALLY hated him today.
***
Soujirou sat quietly in his empty home, a leather-bound book on his lap, and sighed. Meditation may have worked for Aoshi, but every time Soujirou tried to focus on what he'd become he'd find his mind wandering to what he was. Then it would move to how everything that had come to be was so unlike what should have. The next night he'd be having dinner with Aoshi Shinomori, the man who once was so Hell-bent on killing the Battousai that he betrayed his own people, Hajime Saitou, once the leader of the 3rd division of the Shinsen Gumi who still lived by the words "Sin, Swift, Slay", Sanosuke Sagara, the man who fought by Himura's side while he was fighting for everything Soujirou hated then, and then...
...he'd be there with Kenshin Himura himself.
How did everything come to such peaceful living for him? He'd killed so many people with a smile on his face, so should he be allowed to exist in such a world? He closed his eyes and shook his head at the thought. 'Sukiko and Yozakura are my life now. I should stop being so selfish for their sake. This is why I took the government's offer to be an undercover officer when needed. I must make sure I never become what I once was.'
He looked down at his clothing. That was new too. He was well-off now and could dress in more western clothing. His hakama was now black, tailored pants and his gi was now a light brown shirt covered by a black jacket. Whether or not he'd taken notice of these changes was unimportant now. What held true importance now what that they HAD occurred, and they were for the better.
"Soujirou," Sukiko's sweet voice rang faintly in his ears, making him smile to himself. "Where are you, sweetheart?"
"In here," he called back, placing a bookmark in his book.
"Oh, there you are," she realized, fresh flowers in hand as she entered the study. Her eyes changed, however, when they met his. They began to show concern. "Soujirou, is something wrong?"
"Ah, I can't hide anything from you, now can I?" he concluded, his smile fading. "I was thinking. I feel like something from my past is going to come back to me."
"They we'll face it together," she answered, wrapping her arms around his waist. "That's how it'll always be..."
***
Kenshin looked to the sky and studied the clouds above him. Usually when he got these ominous feelings, it was accompanied by dark rain clouds and roaring thunder. However, the sky was bright and blue, a few whispy white clouds sprinkled across the horizon. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.
"Daddy," a small, red-headed little girl with violet eyes called, tugging on his white hakama. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Hanaru. Everything is just fine, that it is. But you have to go play while I finish the laundry."
With a smile and an enthusiastic nod the girl trotted off to bother one of her two brothers instead. Kenshin had been having similar thoughts himself, about how everything had become what it was. No one had really changed on the outside. Aoshi still rarely spoke more than four words to anyone when they were together and rarely cracked the slightly smile, except maybe a slight one to his wife or daughter or a government officer he had to impress as to not risk his job. Soujirou was still bouncy and happy, making him the perfect undercover agent for missions where the operative needed to seem harmless. He worked under the condition that he would never be required to kill, which would have gotten him ignored if it weren't for his amazing swordsman abilities. Saitou was still a chain-smoking asshole who cared about nothing but his own ideals and ideas of justice, which were being pounded into his daughter's skull. Sano was still a sake-chugging, financially irresponsible party-goer.
"Kenshin," Kaoru sighed. "You seem like your worried. Hanaru thinks your sick."
"Kaoru, may I ask you a question and request that you think long and hard about it?" he asked unexpectedly, catching his wife off-guard.
"Of course, Kenshin. What is it?"
"How much has truly stayed the same?"
Kaoru's initial answer was going to be everything but Kenshin had asked her to think more deeply into it. She began trying to think of just one of these 'everythings' and found herself unable to name one. "Nothing. We've all changed."
"And I feel more changes coming," he added, looking back to that oxymoron of a bright, foreboding sky. "Though I don't know what to make of them, that I do not."