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Descent into Madness: Chapter 10

by Conspirator

Kenshin was missing. No one had been surprised not to see him at lunch, since he often missed that meal at the inn, but he didn’t show up for dinner, either. Katsura had spoken with him after breakfast, and Iizuka had walked with him briefly close to lunchtime, but no one had seen him since. There had been a rumor that Kenshin and Shinzu had another fight, but Shinzu wouldn’t say officially one way or the other; only his smugness gave a clue that something might have happened.

Even Yoshida hadn’t given much thought to Kenshin not being at dinner—he just assumed Kenshin was out on a mission. As for the rumor, he figured if Shinzu wasn’t bragging, then either the rumor wasn’t true or Kenshin had bested him again. But when Katagai, the inn’s new commander, came to ask about Kenshin’s whereabouts, Yoshida went to their shared room to look for clues; he found that Kenshin’s haori and blanket were missing. When he awoke in the morning, it was clear Kenshin had never come back for the night.

At breakfast, he reported Kenshin’s continued absence to Katagai, but everything was on hold as Shinzu and his sixteen men prepared to leave for Edo. Shinzu was clearly in his element, radiating so much self-confidence that it seemed to rub off on even the least among the men going with him. He probably would do a good job of starting things up in Edo, Yoshida mused, but he was glad to be rid of him.

About an hour later, Kenshin walked in the door to the inn. He looked neither to the right nor the left, and when one of the men approached to ask where he had been, he gave a look that would have frozen the flames of hell. He walked up the stairs to his room, where he found Yoshida getting ready to leave for his day’s assignment.

"Hey, Himura! Where’ve you….." Yoshida faltered as he greeted his temporary roommate. Never had he seen such coldness in a person’s eyes.

"Leave me alone," was all Kenshin said.

"Katagai’s been looking…."

"Leave me alone!" Kenshin repeated, fire now flashing from his eyes.

Yoshida knew when to back off. He finished gathering up his haori and swords and quickly left the room. He went to find Katagai to let him know Kenshin was back, but that something was wrong.

"He didn’t tell you where he was?" Katagai asked.

"He about bit my head off just from my saying hello," Yoshida answered. "It’s not like him. Something’s wrong, and I don’t have a clue as to what."

"Well, you know him better than anyone else here, right?" Katagai asked. Yoshida nodded. "Then find out what the hell is going on!"

Yoshida ‘yessir-ed,’ but he was in no hurry to go back to the room. Kenshin was normally a friendly sort, but Yoshida had also seen him at work and had seen the deadly, dangerous glint his eyes could take on. That was what he had just seen upstairs, and he was not anxious to confront it. An order was an order, however, so he steeled himself, took a deep breath, and then entered their shared room as quietly as he could. Kenshin was sitting on the floor, spinning his top with a vengeance.

"Sorry, I forgot something," Yoshida said lamely when Kenshin looked up angrily.

Something had happened to Kenshin. Yoshida could see it in his eyes, tell it from the way he acted. Never talkative to begin with, Kenshin was now downright silent, and his eyes looked wary and hard. He seemed to be more on edge, and the slightest noise or movement seemed to cause him to reach for his sword. After pretending to rummage around for something, Yoshida went over to the window and pretended to watch the passersby. After a moment or two, he said, "I heard the strangest rumor about you."

Kenshin didn’t respond.

"I heard you threatened to kill Shinzu right before he left."

Kenshin tensed up and grabbed his top, but said nothing.

"Is it true?"

"Yes," Kenshin said grimly.

"The bastard had it coming, but I didn’t expect it from you."

Now Kenshin turned to him, the fire glowing again in his eyes. He clenched his fists, as if trying to control himself. Then he said, "Shinzu did something I couldn’t forgive. I lost control. I was ready to kill him." Then he turned his eyes back to his fists.

Yoshida could feel the tension in the room, as if the air itself were ready to explode. "What did he do?" he asked, almost afraid to utter the words.

Kenshin gritted his teeth. Several moments passed, and Yoshida started to think that Kenshin would never answer. Then the floodgates opened, relatively speaking.

"I made two friends in Kyoto," Kenshin finally answered, "two people who didn’t care what my job was. They helped me feel alive again after…"—he stopped, searching for the right words— "…after my assignments. Shinzu found out who they were and had them sent away." He stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Then, in a barely audible voice, he added, "He said he had to save them from being with a killer."

"Kami-sama!" Yoshida gasped. "So you threatened to kill him?"

"I had my sword against his throat," Kenshin said. "Then it was like my mind went blank. All I could think of was that I would kill him right then and there."

He stopped and turned to Yoshida, his eyes now a troubled violet. "Yoshida, I don’t know what happened to me out there. I don’t know what came over me."

He turned away. Then his voice became cold once again. "Maybe he was right," he said. "Maybe I really am just a killer, and that’s all I’ll ever be."

A silence fell on the room as Yoshida digested what Kenshin said. Then it was Yoshida who had fire in his eyes.

"Is that what that bastard told you? Kami-sama, he’s worse than even I thought! He’s had it in for you ever since he saw you practice. It kills him that someone—anyone—might actually be as good as he is with a sword. And ever since Katsura brought him up here personally, Shinzu’s lorded it over everyone about how close their relationship supposedly is. He was probably jealous of Katsura’s interest in you! I’ll kill him myself if he ever shows his face here again!"

Yoshida noticed that the caricature he had made of Shinzu in the shape of a horse was still sitting in a corner of the room. He suddenly got up, whipped out his wakizashi, and stabbed it through the center of the drawing. "And good riddance," he growled as the sword wobbled from the force of the thrust. Then he left the room and came back with his drawing materials. He quickly made up some ink and wet his brush.

Kenshin pretended not to look, but he could see that Yoshida was drawing a carrot with arms. The greens of the carrot were taking on the form of a high ponytail, and two swords appeared in the carrot’s arms. With three dots, the carrot sprouted a face. Below it, he wrote a haiku:

A red-head with swords.

Darkness will not consume him!

Kindness will prevail!

He shoved the piece of paper in front of Kenshin and waited for a reaction. Kenshin stared at it for a long time. "You really believe kindness will prevail, don’t you," Kenshin said almost to himself.

"Yeah, I really believe that!" Yoshida answered angrily. "Listen, you’re a good kid who’s been given a terrible job that no one ought to have to do. Why the hell should you also have to put up with someone who’s got an ego the size of China? You know, Shinzu tried to assign me to that squad he was taking to Edo. Now I know why. But I went to Katagai—I wasn’t brave enough to ask Katsura himself—and I told him someone needed to stay here to look out for you."

"I can take care of myself," Kenshin said, his voice returning to its previous coldness. "After all, I’m a killer."

"If you’re such a killer, then tell me why you have such bad nightmares!" Yoshida practically shouted. "Tell me why it tears you up to have to kill anyone at all! Explain that to me!"

Kenshin stared at the top in his hands. "You know," Kenshin said quietly, "my father gave me this when I was five, right before he and the rest of my family died of cholera. All I saw after that was death—death from disease, death from bandits—and I swore I would learn to protect the weak." Suddenly, his voice became dangerously cold again. "Well, I’ve learned how, and now what do I do? I kill. I did a lot of thinking last night. That family I saved from the assassins? What makes those assassins any different from me?"

Yoshida just stared at him. His mouth opened and closed, but he couldn’t think of what to say; he was speechless. Finally, he threw his hands up in defeat and said simply, "Katagai’s looking for you. You’d better go find him." Then he grabbed his things and left, shaking his head.

Kenshin put his top away, then went downstairs to find Katagai, sparks still shooting from his eyes. Katagai was in Okami’s private room off the kitchen.

"Where the hell have you been?" the older man bellowed as soon as he saw Kenshin at the door.

Kenshin stopped dead in his tracks. "Out," he answered heatedly, although somewhat taken aback by the verbal assault.

"Out? That’s all you have to say?" Katagai bellowed again. "Do you know how worried we were? We didn’t know if you were alive or dead!" At Kenshin’s look of surprise, he said in a somewhat softer voice, "Well, we knew you probably weren’t dead, considering your skill with a sword, but… What am I saying! Goddammit, Himura, you’re a soldier now, and you can’t just go off like that without telling someone where you’re going!"

"G-gomen," Kenshin stuttered, "gomen nasai." Now he felt just like he did when Hiko would ream him out for some infraction. "I camped out last night, outside of town," he finally relented.

"You camped out?!" Katagai bellowed again, but then, seeing that Kenshin had calmed down some, he decided to tone things down himself. Instead, he calmly asked, "What’s going on?"

"I’d rather not talk about it," Kenshin answered stiffly.

"Well, if it has anything to do with Shinzu, I’ve heard some rumors," Katagai guessed. "I must say I find the man insufferable myself, but Katsura’s convinced me he has some value as a leader—but in Edo, not here!"

The corner of Kenshin’s mouth curled in a hint of a half-smile at the last comment.

"At any rate, you need to know what’s being said about you around town."

Kenshin’s eyes shot up.

"The chief prosecutor in Kyoto has sent out flyers offering a reward for the hitokiri battousai—that’s what they’re calling you—who killed Fujiwara Asahiro and Ito Shigetoki and his bodyguards, not to mention that munitions supplier. Seems he’s pissed as hell, especially because his own assassins couldn’t even manage to kill the Kaminaga woman and her children, let alone Kaminaga himself. And now he’s sending out his wolves to hunt you down."

"But no one’s seen me, I’m sure of it!" Kenshin interrupted.

"Well, that’s a problem for them, isn’t it," Katagai said sarcastically, "but that hasn’t stopped them from looking. What they’re doing now is stopping suspicious-looking men on the streets and asking for identification. If someone doesn’t give a fast enough answer, these thugs will just cut them down where they stand. You understand the danger you’re in?"

"I hide myself well…."

"When you’re doing your job, yes, but when you’re out and about during the day? And what if someone asks you what han you’re from?"

"I don’t have a han," Kenshin answered, perplexed.

"Precisely," Katagai said, "but you wear swords, and you look, for all intents and purposes, like a samurai, even if it’s an awfully young one. Do you understand now why we were worried when you didn’t come back last night?"

"Oh," was all he could say. "What do I do? I have no han."

"You’re to answer Tosa-han," Katagai responded. "Yamanouchi Yodo’s their daimyo, and he’s our ally right now. To say Chousu could be a death warrant around here, given the fact we’ve just been thrown out of the Imperial Court again." Kenshin shot a look of surprise. "Didn’t hear about that, huh? Just happened. Anyway, the daimyo of Tosa knows what to say if anyone goes so far as to check up on your answer. Got that?"

"Hai, Katagai-san," Kenshin answered, bowing contritely.

"And no more going off without telling us, right?"

"No more, Katagai-san," Kenshin answered again with another bow.

"Then you’re dismissed." He let out an exasperated sigh as he watched Kenshin walk away.

Kenshin left with great relief. He hadn’t expected such a tongue-lashing for staying out all night. He was a soldier now, he’d better remember that! But the thought of a reward being offered for his capture….the thought that men might be killed unjustly because of a hunt for him…. He remembered his promise to Katsura only two weeks ago—if he could help bring the new age of peace and justice sooner by use of his sword, he’d do it. Clearly, that new age needed to come quickly, and the sooner the better! It was just that when he had made that promise, he had no idea how hard it would be to deal with the reality of his work….

He had no desire to see or be near anyone at the moment. The murderous rage he had experienced during his encounter the day before with Shinzu had scared him to his core. Okami, however, saw him leave the office and pounced on him.

"Himura-chan?" she called out from the kitchen. "Are you busy? I hope not…." She stopped when she saw the hard set of his eyes.

"What do you want, Okami-san?" he asked in the most business-like voice she had ever heard him use. Where was the friendly boy she knew and enjoyed?

"Oh, well, if you’re busy…," she stammered. Should she ask him for help or not? She couldn’t decide—there was something about him that seemed, well, dangerous. She decided, however, that there was no harm in asking. "It’s just that it’s getting so cold out now, and we need more firewood than before, and you’ve been so helpful in the past with that…."

It was almost as if a spell had been broken. Kenshin’s eyes returned to their usual peaceful look, and a small smile came to his face. "Would you like me to chop some more and bring it in?" he asked in a gentle voice. "It would be no problem."

Okami unconsciously let out a relieved sigh as she watched Kenshin head out to the woodpile. She thought for a moment that she had lost him. Hadn’t she warned Katsura just yesterday that killing was no job for a 14-year-old? Katsura just laughed at her concern, but she pledged she would do everything in her power to keep the killing from ruining the boy. She wondered, though, just how much she could really do. She felt rather helpless, especially after running into Hideko at the stable yesterday. She was horrified by a letter he showed her that had ordered his nephew Shozo to go to Chousu to help train horses for Takasugi Shinsaku. The letter had included a line warning him about Shozo’s "deadly new friend." She had given poor Hideko an earful about that! Now he regretted having sent his nephew off so hastily because he really did like that red-haired boy. He even offered to teach him how to ride horses, to make up for everything.

Kenshin, meanwhile, found it a relief to chop the wood. It wasn’t something he actually enjoyed doing, but now it felt good to do something so regular, so… normal. When he came back to the kitchen with an armload of wood, Okami could sense that the boy she knew had returned.

Life for Kenshin now took on a kind of macabre rhythm. There would be whole days in which he could just indulge in the very normal activities of daily life—chopping wood, hauling water, doing his laundry. Some of those chores he used to consider merely back-breaking or boring in the past, but now he found them to be almost the glue that held him together. Then a black envelope would come, and the normality and peace he worked so hard to cobble together would crumble in an instant.

For when that black envelope came, everything else in his mind would disappear. It was just like his friend Kumiko had predicted— the only way to survive the horror of his job was to lock away his real self. The problem was, he was beginning to wonder which self was the real one. Was it the boy who helped in the kitchen and laughed at Yoshida’s drawings? Or was it the increasingly cold-blooded killer—the Hitokiri Battousai, as he was now called throughout Kyoto—who no longer gave a second thought to the carnage he left in his wake? He had always been blessed with an incredibly good memory, but now it was becoming more of a curse than a blessing. His assignments were becoming more and more numerous—too numerous to keep track of, in fact—but he remembered the face of each and every man he killed. It didn’t matter if the job entailed killing one man or a whole squad of bodyguards as well. Nearly every night, they all came back to haunt him. His friend Yoshida had remained true to his word and stuck by him all this time, but on those rare occasions when the men had to double up in their rooms, Yoshida had to resist the urge to ask for a different roommate, because he knew the night would be filled with Kenshin’s cries as he suffered through his nightmares.

Only once did Kenshin have a respite from his work. As winter came on, so did the snow, and although some snow could not stop the feared Hitokiri Battousai, a blizzard could. So when Kyoto was hit with a blizzard the likes of which the city hadn’t experienced in twenty years, even heaven’s justice had to take a vacation. Then the men were cooped up at the inn driving each other crazy when they weren’t gambling, drinking, or trying to bed Yuka and Kishi, for wont of other women. As the days wore on for Kenshin, though, he found that his nightmares lessened, that he smiled more, that he almost could enjoy the fact that he was alive. The truth was, however, that he no longer really cared if he lived or died. He had decided that the gods thought of him as a mere plaything, and they were having a jolly good time toying with him. Give him three or four days of normal life, why don’t they, then go send him out to slaughter a platoon. ‘It must give them great entertainment,’ he thought darkly.

Once the blizzard stopped, however, and the snow had melted somewhat, it was back to business, but the gods apparently weren’t satisfied enough with the torment they had already inflicted. It happened on a night that started with just a routine mission—find a man, deliver heaven’s justice, leave no witnesses, nothing special—while the rest of the men were sent to join with other Ishin Shishi forces to ambush a small convoy of army reinforcements on their way to Kyoto. When he came back from his mission, the inn was in turmoil, for of the nineteen men from this inn who had been part of the ambush, four had been killed and most of the others were wounded. The men, in general, were deathly afraid of Kenshin, but they had come to appreciate his skill at dealing with battle wounds. As soon as he had washed the gore from his own hands and face, he immediately started helping bandage the wounded until he had a chance to ask after his friend Yoshida. He hadn’t seen him anywhere. He finally found someone who had already been bandaged and seemed to be in a condition to talk.

"Matsuo, where’s Yoshida?" Kenshin asked the man. "Did he come back with you?"

The man didn’t answer, but his eyes betrayed a sense of panic. Kenshin asked again.

"Matsuo, where’s Yoshida!" Kenshin started to feel a kind of fear take over. He grabbed the man and started shaking him. "Yoshida! Where is he!"

The man sat down, staring at the floor. Then, in a barely audible voice, he said, "We had to leave him behind."

Kenshin just stared at him. "What do you mean, you had to leave him behind?"

The man was now shaking violently. Kenshin knew that this man, Matsuo, was one of Yoshida’s buddies, and he wouldn’t lie about something like this. Then Matsuo looked up and stared straight into Kenshin’s eyes.

"The bastards got him," he finally managed to say. "They practically took his arm off…. There was a doctor in the village… We couldn’t bring him back with us…. He lost so much blood…."

It was as if all the stuffing had been pulled from Kenshin’s body. He sank to the floor, his eyes vacant, as he digested this information. His friend—the man who had stuck with him all this time, the man who drew the funny pictures and made him laugh—had not come back, might even be dead. Matsuo had only thought of this boy as a hitokiri before. Now he looked at him and saw only a very vulnerable 14-year-old. He almost had the urge to reach out and comfort him until Kenshin looked up again. Kenshin’s eyes had suddenly become cold and dangerous, and when he stood up, it was not the vulnerable boy who stood before Matsuo, but an avenging demon. Kenshin turned and strode away, the air around him practically crackling with an explosive tension that promised death and destruction to anyone who got in his way. He went back out into the night and did not return until well past dawn.

Now Kenshin’s blade seemed to become even more deadly. Iizuka noticed it right away. He didn’t know why Yoshida’s absence should make such a difference, but he noted that now Kenshin had become so lethal, so deadly, that his victims didn’t even have time to scream anymore. The more dangerous the assignment, the more Kenshin seemed to want to do it. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought the boy was trying to get himself killed, but why would any 14-year-old want to die?

Iizuka also noticed that Kenshin was growing as well. His shoulders had broadened, he definitely needed to shave every now and then, and he had let out the hems of his gi and hakama so much that there was nothing left to hem, and still the kid was short. Oh, well, Iizuka mused, it kept the Bakufu confused—no one expected someone the size of a small woman to be the feared Hitokiri Battousai! Kenshin, however, couldn’t care less. With his one and only friend now gone—his last hold on a normal life—he felt nothing about anything. His clothes were too short? Who cared. Everyone was afraid of him? Well, it was like Iizuka had said last fall—take what life gives you, then use it to your advantage. The advantage to what life had given him now was that no one bothered him—they were all too afraid.

Finally, spring came. The flowering apples, plums, and cherries had started to get their buds, and the early flowers were poking their heads through the remnants of snow. Kenshin thought idly to himself that it had now been nearly six months since his fight with Shinzu. Shinzu had laughingly taunted him that he’d only last three months, and here he still was. He felt as numb as a block of ice on the inside, but he was still alive and, surprisingly, in one piece. Hiko had always told him how hopeless he was with a sword, but apparently that was good enough for Kyoto—he still didn’t have a scratch on him.

That, too, changed overnight. He had been assigned to kill Kyoto’s judicial representative to the Shogunate court, Shigekura Jubei. Truth be told, Kenshin was a bit tired that night and wanted to just get the job over with so he could go back to the inn and get some sleep. He had found the man as he walked with his two bodyguards. It hadn’t been difficult to kill old Shigekura, who had the nerve to try to lecture him before being killed. With just one sweeping arc of his katana, he had cut down not only the old man, but also the larger of his two bodyguards.

It was the other bodyguard who was the problem—he just refused to die. He had hit the man with a slash to the chest that at the least should have knocked him to the ground, but instead the man tried to attack again. Not that he was a very good swordsman, but he just seemed determined not to die, and that determination seemed to make up for the skill he lacked. Now Kenshin was getting annoyed—what was with this guy, couldn’t he sense that he was doomed and just get on with it? Instead, even after Kenshin cut him down again, the man kept clutching at his sword as he muttered a woman’s name and tried to grab at a cherry blossom. Finally, Kenshin took his sword and ground it into the man’s neck. However, in dealing with the man, the man’s sword had grazed his cheek, leaving a rather long gash. In six months, no swordsman, not even the most skilled, had ever been able to give him even a scratch. He was shocked.

Then he vaguely remembered overhearing the three men talking as he had snuck up behind them. What was it they were saying? He had been so focused on his mission… the younger man, the one who didn’t want to die… he was going to be married next month, that was it. Suddenly, a tiny corner of the veil that separated himself from the hitokiri seemed to lift. That man, the one he had been so annoyed at for not dying, was supposed to get married—he had just killed someone’s happiness… No! No witnesses! It was just the man’s bad luck to be with Shigekura on this day, that’s all! The veil descended again.

Now Iizuka and his crew came up. "Oi, Himura, your cheek!" he cried.

Kenshin felt his cheek. It was burning, and blood was dripping from the gash. "It’s nothing," he said.

"But he reached you with his sword," Iizuka pressed. "He must have been very good."

"No," Kenshin replied. "His skill itself was nothing, but his will to live was incredible."

He turned to leave, but as he looked back at the man, he felt an unexpected twinge of regret. "May you at least find happiness in the next life," he murmured softly.