"Kenshin..." The sound of her own voice woke her up. Yuukiko
opened her eyes. Her face was wet with tears. Again. She didn't know if
they were tears of joy or of sadness. Maybe both.
She sighed as she got up to face the day. The sun wasn't up yet, but
she couldn't bear to go back to sleep. The images from her dreams, her
memories, still haunted her.
Kamiya Kaoru. She was Kamiya Kaoru. She had died and left the
man she loved more than life behind. Kenshin.
At the cemetery, Kenshin's eyes looked like they had seen too much,
suffered too much. This was a man who had loved her. You will be together
again, the voice insisted. She said that much to him. It was to give
him hope, to give herself hope. She loved him.
The look in his eyes, when she made that promise, the flash of hope....
Yuukiko ached for him. But their love was strong enough to break the barrier
of time. If Kaoru was reincarnated, then Kenshin must be, too. All of this
wasn't just a dream. It had to be real. I love him.
Yuukiko sighed in frustration. What was she thinking? She had to get
ready for school. Whatever was going to happen was in the hands of fate.
Philosophizing about past lives was not going to change that.
The time has come. The promise will be fulfilled....
******
Myoujin Kakushin sat in the school library, staring out the window.
The day totally reflected his mood. The sky was overcast, ominous. It was
as if the sky was going to bust. A storm was coming.
Kakushin sighed, trying to keep his frustration in check. He kept thinking
about the dream he had last night. Those dreams seemed so real. The smell
of jasmine. That voice.... The love.
Kaoru. In the dreams, Kamiya Kaoru was the one person that he
could not live without. But she had been taken from him without any warning.
No-not him. Himura Kenshin.
He had been Himura Kenshin in the dreams. He had been an assassin, a
peacemaker, a rurouni. He had loved and lost the woman who completed him.
I
promise you that we will meet again, she whispered that to him last
night in his dreams.
Kaoru....
Was he going crazy? They were just dreams. Weren't they? He sighed again.
Maybe he should see his grandfather and talk about this. He had hoped to
keep the dreams all to himself, they seemed so private. He was reluctant
to share them with anyone else, but this was getting way too weird.
******
Kakushin went home right after school. His grandparent's dojo was in
the older part of Tokyo. It looked out of place, but oddly tranquil, so
near to the hustle and bustle of the city.
Just the year before, he had been happy and whole. He and his parents
had lived in Nagasaki. The year before, he had left to go to America, to
study abroad. The year before.... everything seemed so different. Then
his parents died in a fiery crash when the pilot lost control of the plane
going to Tokyo. That night, everything changed. His whole world changed.
Moving into the dojo had been his decision. His parents had left him
with enough to be self-sufficient, but he wanted to stay with his grandparents.
Kakushin was their last blood relative. And he needed them to be close.
After the plane crash took his parents, he needed someone to hold on to.
His grandparents accepted him as he was, supporting him in his pain. It
was their pain, too. They stepped back, waiting for him to make the move
to come back to the world, to start living again.
His parents had been so in love. They glowed when they were together.
He was glad that if they had to die, they went together. But he had been
hurt and alone. The world he had always known was destroyed. He had needed
to work through all of that, to build himself up again from it.
The night his parents died, he began to dream. He dreamt he had been
a child, an orphan. Shinta. The images shifted, and they faded as if they
were really memories. They became vague flashes, images he could never
really grasp. He witnessed a massacre, but he was saved by a tall man.
His master. Through the nights after that, he continued to dream out the
life of a man named Himura Kenshin. The dreams were vague, blurred memories.
He dreamt of war and death. Of a woman and the scent of white plums. There
was love and loss in these dreams, but when he woke, the images were disjointed.
They
are just dreams, he reasoned, but they did not just go away.
For the past year, the dreams continued. In them, years passed. They
didn't really disturb him until.... Kamiya Kaoru. Her name stuck
out in his mind. All the people, all the images, hers was the one that
truly haunted him. He loved her. How could he be in love with a person
from the past? How could he be in love with a dream?
"Ojiisan? Are you in here?" Kakushin entered the practice room of the
dojo, closing the wooden door behind him. His grandfather sat in the center
of the room meditating.
"Kakushin. Okaeri."
"Sumimasen, Ojiisan." Kakushin sat down in front of his grandfather,
moving smoothly and silently into the lotus position. His mother had trained
him in kendo since he was a child. He was very comfortable in this world.
"What's wrong?" He smiled at his grandson. He had been looking troubled
lately. He was hoping that the boy would confide in him about whatever
was troubling him.
"I..." He could not say it.
"Something is definitely bothering you. Is it a girl?" he asked, wiggling
his eyebrows.
"Ojiisan...," Kakushin muttered to himself. His grandfather was a romantic.
He wanted his grandson happy. And apparently, to him, girls would be the
best path to happiness.
"Come on. You can tell me."
No I can't. You'll think I'm going crazy.
"Ojiisan. Do you know of a Himura Kenshin?"
"Himura Kenshin...." His grandfather smiled at that name. "He was my
grandfather's foster father. Yes. I know of Himura Kenshin."
******
"Sagara Yuukiko, what's wrong?" Aya asked playfully. When Yuukiko looked
guiltily at her, she frowned. Guilt was not her usual response to her teasing.
Her best friend was acting very strangely.
They took shelter from the storm at Aya's family's restaurant. The old
fashioned style of it was oddly comforting, reminding Yuukiko of her dreams.
"Aya-chan... Nothing. I- I...."
"Hmmmm. You won't tell me...," she frowned at her best friend. "Yuuki-chan,
I'm really hurt."
"Okay. You may think this is weird," she took a breath to fortify herself.
Aya was going to think she was crazy. "I've been having weird dreams about
a man named Himura Kenshin, set in the Meiji era...."
"Himura Kenshin?" Aya looked shocked.
"Yeah. What's wrong, Aya-chan?" Shock was not the reaction she expected.
"Ano... I had dreams about the Meiji era, too."
"You did? Why didn't you tell me?" Yuukiko demanded.
"Well, they seemed so private. And I didn't know if you'd think I was
going mad. I thought I was going mad...." Makimachi Aya explained, her
voice hushed. "Then I met Rui."
"Rui? Our Rui? Rui, your boyfriend?" Yuukiko asked, confused.
Rui and Aya became close very quickly after he came to school. He often
seemed distant and cold. He was handsome, but aloof, which turned most
people off. But once you were a friend, he was there for you. He made Aya
so happy.
"Yeah. I was dreaming I was Makimachi Misao." Yuukiko stared at her
best friend. "I was in love with Shinomori Aoshi."
"Misao. Then Rui is...."
"Yeah. Weird, huh? But if you're dreaming about Himura Kenshin, then
you must be-"
"Kamiya Kaoru," Yuukiko said hoarsely.
"Oh, Yuukiko...." Aya hugged her close. "You aren't going crazy. I know
how it feels.... But it's real. I guess we're all coming together again.
All of us. The circle of time...."
"The promise will be fulfilled," Yuukiko murmured. "Aya, all of this
is real, then. All of this really happened in the past? I can't believe
it...."
"Yeah." Aya was laughing and crying at the same time. "I guess true
love never dies."
"No. Maybe soulmates always find each other," Yuukiko smiled. "Aya.
It's almost time, then. I will find him."
"Yuukiko...."
******
Kakushin stood in front of the dojo in the rain, his hair was getting
soaked, but he didn't seem to feel it.
He couldn't believe it. All of it was true. The dreams were really flashes
of the past. His grandfather sat and told him all about the man who helped
raise his grandfather after he was left an orphan, confirming his memories
of the past. His grandfather didn't really remember Himura Kenshin. He
had been a very young child when he had died. The legendary swordsman had
lived a long life. But he had grown up on the stories of him.
The dojo was renamed the Myoujin Dojo in the early 1900's. The kenjitsu
that was taught, his grandfather explained, was a hybrid of the Kamiya
Kasshin Ruu and the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu.
Kakushin's mother had been a student. It was at the dojo, she met his
father.... His grandfather went on and on about the history of the dojo
and their family, but Kakushin wasn't paying attention anymore. The tangled
web of the past and the present shook him to the core.
Himura Kenshin really lived. He was really Himura Kenshin, then.
I promise you that we will meet again, a soft voice whispered
on the wind. He would find her. It was time.
