Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
by Akai Kitsune
15: Mijikai
~*~
"Life is too short," Kioku told
her once, as she cleaned the kitchen after dinner one night,
another night of waiting for her husband to come home late and
leave soon after for work. Kaoru insisted on waiting with her,
but her mother had warned her that rest would someday be quite
scarce. The younger girl had no concept of the idea; she thought
that staying up half the night was so wonderful, so elegant, so
grown-up.
"Life is too short," Kioku said
again, with a forced smile, "And you'll likely spend half of
it waiting for a man, whether you've married him or not. Don't
let it waste. Go to bed, or help me clean up. You can't just sit
around waiting for things to happen."
Kaoru promptly went to bed.
Life may or may not have been short, Kaoru
later considered, after she had been living alone for a year and
then suddenly found herself surrounded by a new and inseparable
family, but it was terribly easy to waste. Her mother died young,
as did her father - relatively; with a sixteen year-old daughter,
he was certainly not new to the world - and for quire a while
afterwards, she was terrified of an early death. Life was
short, and she intended to live quite a bit longer than that,
thank you very much.
Kenshin obviously felt the same way, even when those after his
blood disagreed with him. He fought hard to survive, and he
always managed to escape death, as well as prevent her own
untimely death, though it was often followed by profuse apologies
for placing her in danger in the first place. She promptly waved
those off; it wasn't as if he had placed a giant sign atop the
Kamiya dojo roof that screamed for them to be attacked.
Attention All Prospective Assassins/Old
Opponents/Random Thugs:
Hitokiri Battousai residing here, as of March, 1878. Drop by
for a duel resulting in severe bodily harm and/or death
(self-inflicted), free of charge. Tea or sake to follow,
depending on preference.
No, certainly not, but he wasn't very good at keeping his
identity a secret - or rather, picking friends that could keep
that secret. Or enemies. She couldn't count the times she had
heard someone they knew - most often a future ally - had shouted
the name, whether alone or in a public street,
"Battousai", addressing her embarrassed and rather
displeased rurouni. Some, such as Aoshi or Saitou, simply refused
to acknowledge his true name, following old traditions and
nicknames, despite the fact that Aoshi had never even met him as
the Battousai, and Saitou had no real right to speak to him, all
things considered.
All things considered?
He had tried to kill Kenshin; might have succeeded if the
fight had continued, with the injuries already dealt out by the
police spy. Aoshi, too, was guilty of several battles focused on
Kenshin's demise.
But one also had to consider that Sanosuke, Kenshin's closest
and most trusted friend, had made an attempt on Kenshin's life
not a week after their first meeting.
'What a way to start a friendship,' Kaoru mused
with a brief smile. Kenshin had an interesting gift for getting
rid of enemies. Either they joined his side - more or less - or
got rid of themselves and never appeared in their lives again.
Convenient.
Sometimes she wondered about the meaning of
life. It was one of those pointless, repetitive questions, but
inevitable nonetheless, and when she had asked Kenshin, he
blinked in feigned ignorance and muttered a soft,
"Oro?" - his typical tactic for escaping questions he
didn't feel like answering. Kenji had overheard, and had spent
the rest of the day running around the engawa shouting,
"Chi! Chi!" which pleased them both greatly, since it
was close enough to "father". Kenshin had earned
himself a distraction, though, so she was left to ponder the
question alone.
Life meaning 1. A late, elegant dinner at the
local sukiyaki restaurant, where the waitresses are familiar and
friendly, the food is wonderful and untouched by greedy,
snatching fingers of kendo students or street fighters, the sake
sweet and untainted, and there are no children to wail or cry or
say they want tousan's food, tousan's food which is the only
thing they love about tousan, if it is love at all.
Life meaning 2. A breezy cruise to Hokkaido on a
beautiful Western steamship, where handsome, flawlessly polite
waiters serve wine and chocolates all day long, and no children
under 15 are permitted on board (also, according to the signs
left around town, any death-crazed swordsman hunting down the
blood of a single man in all Japan).
Life meaning 3. A pleasant summer afternoon
spent on the engawa drinking tea, eating perfectly formed
riceballs, dozing without feeling obligated to weed the garden,
do the laundry, clean the bathhouse, wash the dojo floor, or fix
the hole in the fence again.
Life NOT meaning: 1. A long, hot, and
exceedingly dull afternoon spent trying to practice in the dojo
with a stubborn, insulting brat of a pupil who insists upon
arguing endlessly about nothing, while your silly husband is
doing laundry or cooking or cleaning yet again, as he watches
your curious, temperamental son try to kill himself with
discarded kitchen knives, hammers, high falls, and dozens of
other things he knows will send his parents - although, mostly
his mother - into a flailing panic of overprotective anger.
Life NOT meaning: 2. Another battle taking place
in the dojo - her father's dojo, that precious, frequently
destroyed dojo - where the man she loves is cut, and bruised, and
thrown around until he finally goes berserk and sends the
opponent through the floor, or the wall, again and again until
you feel as if you're going to go insane, until after your
wedding, when finally the battles stop, and then your son is
wailing and wondering why his father is such a wimp, even when
you ask him if he even knows what kind of man his father
is, and he replies, "Sure, he's a grouch and an idiot. He
sits around doing women's jobs and acts like the world is all
happy, even when he's scowling or wearing that miserable,
brooding look on his face."
Life NOT meaning: 3. Another weekend spent
teaching while your husband does the laundry, weeding the garden,
washing the dishes, cleaning the bathhouse, dusting the shoji,
cleaning out the pantry and discarding any failed cooking
attempts, and so on and so on and so on and so, on and on and on,
until you fall asleep just watching him, and then you
dream of a perfect family where you can do your own chores and
your husband works and your son loves him, no matter what he
does.
Life NOT meaning: 4. Watching your husband get
nailed to the dojo ceiling.
Although he wasn't her husband at the time, she had to admit, she
still didn't find the idea very appealing. No one likes to see
the man they love with all their heart and soul dying at the end
of another man's sword. No one likes to see his fresh blood
spilling across the floor and staining the dojo - her father's
dojo - that had been so clean, so clean and pure and beautiful
that morning and why on earth was she thinking about the floor
when he was bleeding all over it?
Eventually, he was no longer bleeding, and instead disappeared
from the household entirely. During his absence, the blood on the
floor was the furthest thing from her mind. When they finally
returned, the blood was no longer there, having been cleaned up -
kindly - by Megumi, but it remained imprinted on her mind; a
memory, recollection, of how short life really is, when balanced
by the end of a sword.
y
~*~
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