The rain stopped. The fire dimmed. Kenshin stared at the boy for a long, strange moment. Then he did something he had not done in fifteen years: he smiled. It felt like breaking a rusted lock.
Kenshin picked up his sword. The chipped edge caught the firelight. “I have not used this blade in anger since the day I shamed it. Tomorrow, before we go, we will find your village. We will find the bandits.” He turned the blade so the edge faced him, then turned it away. “A fallen warrior cannot reclaim his lord. But he can protect one child. That is not redemption. It is simply… what is left.”
“No.”
“Tomorrow,” Kenshin said, “we will go to the nearest jizamurai’s estate. He owes my dead clan a debt. He will shelter you.”
Perhaps that was enough.
You should have died beside him , a voice whispered—his own, or the ghost of his past. A true samurai falls with his lord. You ran. You lived. You are nothing.
He crouched down. The fire crackled behind him, casting his shadow across the boy’s face. “What is your name?” ochimusha
“Takeshi,” Kenshin repeated. He sat back on his heels. For a long moment, the rain filled the silence. Then he said, “I ran too, once. I ran from a battlefield where my lord died. Every day since, I have carried that shame like a stone in my belly.”