Takeshi considered this. Children have a way of cutting through the poetry of sorrow. “If you’re fallen,” he said, “you can stand up again.”
His master, Lord Akira of the Crane clan, had perished at the Battle of Kasagi Ridge fifteen summers ago. The clan scattered like dry leaves. Samurai without a master are called rōnin , but an ochimusha is something worse: a warrior who watched his world burn and did not follow it into the flame. ochimusha
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. Takeshi considered this
For the first time in fifteen years, the ghost in his chest stirred—not with shame, but with something smaller. Something that might, if he were very careful and very brave, grow into a reason to live. The clan scattered like dry leaves
He reached for his sake gourd. It was empty. He crushed it in his palm.
The boy looked up. His eyes were large and dark, like a deer’s. “Bandits,” he whispered. “They came to our village. They killed my father. My mother told me to run. I ran.” His lip trembled. “I ran away.”
“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.”