Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
by Akai Kitsune
72: Ojiisan
~*~
Kenshin was older than he
looked.
It amused him, sometimes, to tell people his
true age, to watch the eyes widen in surprise and disbelief. It seemed uncanny
to them that someone so... so old would look so young.
What was so wrong with being twenty-nine?
He felt older, sometimes. He felt an ache in
his bones and in his heart, the familiar shivering that told him he knew too
much, had already seen far too much of the world for someone who looked like a
teenager.
The things he had learned as a teenager...
Whenever Yahiko went through a phase of wanting
to grow up faster, Kenshin felt an urge to take the boy aside and give him
several good reasons why he should remain a child. The likelihood of Yahiko
actually following this direction was, of course, slim, but it would make
Kenshin feel better, wouldn't it?
But he knew it was foolish to try and make the
boy slow his pace. He himself had been a teenager once upon a time, after all.
He knew those feelings of inadequacy, especially when compared with one so much
stronger and more mature.
'Well,' he corrected grimly,
thinking of his own master's playful insults, 'Stronger, anyway.'
He hoped, desperately, that Yahiko would never
understand why he thought growing up was not always a good thing.
He didn't like to admit it,
but Kenji was growing at a startling rate, and he wasn't sure if he liked that
idea. Kenji was at that strange, open-hearted age where he loved and forgave
everything, from stinging bees to scolding mothers. He hugged, clung to, and
cried over almost all that existed in his small, childlike world. It was both
amusing and enduring to his quiet, more carefully guarded father.
"He could teach you a few
things," Kaoru mused once, and he had puzzled over her statement for a long
time. He should have known, really; Kaoru never gave such odd remarks
without good reason, much like himself in some ways.
'I hope I'm not rubbing off on her,'
he thought grimly.
She was too young for him, he knew. Not
physically - in the day and age they lived in, age was not a great issue - but
rather in heart and mind. She was far more innocent than he, still able to see
injustice in the world and wonder how such things could happen, how people could
still hurt each other again and again.
He had resigned himself to accepting such
inevitable sorrows long ago.
Kenshin envied them a great deal, his family.
He watched Kaoru and Kenji - even Yahiko, dark-eyed boy as he was sometimes -
pass through the world with pure, untarnished souls, arms wide and welcoming to
anyone who came calling. Once Kenji overcame that silly, unusual shyness, that
is. He loved to see them revel in the joys of life, bask in the beauty of
nature, smile in blissful ignorance at the inherent evils of mankind.
'I wish... I wish I could learn to
think like that.'
But joy and innocence had not kept him alive
during the revolution; it had not protected him during his wandering years; it
did not spare him or any of his friends from death in all the battles he had
experienced since his arrival in Tokyo.
'It helped, though,' he was
forced to admit, half reluctant, half grateful. 'It helped.'
"Let's go have sukiyaki!"
"You're just getting beat up! That's
not like you!"
"What's mine is mine. What's yours is
also mine."
"I thought I'd come over and play."
It made him feel old, watching them... but in a
way, it brought him back to life, the life he would have liked to lead.
'Maybe someday... things will settle
down enough that I won't need these moods, this knowledge I have gained in time.
Someday, I'd like to watch them without feeling the familiar ache of envy, the
listless stirring of isolation.'
'... someday...'
~*~
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