I'll stay a while...

I do not know where to begin. How to disassemble everything that has fallen in my lap. I feel like I will go mad all over again, though now it is because I cannot reconcile my memory with my very existence. I should not be here writing this and yet I am. I breathe, my heart beats, I can feel my limbs…

Kenshin arrived here. I knew something wasn’t right from the moment I saw him—he was taller, unkept, fine lines in his face—but it was the sight of his scar that brought everything flooding back. A cross now instead of the long vertical mark, the new—“new”—slash from my own blade.

I remember now. How Enishi arrived on our doorstep. How he revealed himself to be the contact sent to me by the Yaminobu. That little fool… he had no idea what they would do to him when it was over… I at least had entertained no hopes of living past the end of their plot… but my little brother… I can’t even think straight enough to get my thoughts coordinated onto paper. There’s just too much. I can see what I should have done now… but it is too late. I should have kept Enishi by my side and I should have told Kenshin everything. Maybe could have run. Maybe we could have gotten away. Maybe I could have convinced him to break with the Ishin Shishi, to cease letting them use him they way they had… But what does it matter now? I did none of those things. I sent Enishi back to Edo. I told Kenshin as much as I dared. And I decided to go to the Yaminobu to protect Enishi.

I’m such a fool. I never once questioned what they wanted me to do. What they really wanted… but then again, at the beginning would I have cared? Back then perhaps I would have laughed. Hitokiri Battousai was a monster. He wouldn’t be capable of affection or love. But he wasn’t a monster, he was just a boy. A misguided, lost boy… But they knew that, didn’t they? They counted on that. Counted on his isolation, his youth and our proximity for something to grow between us so that they could use that connection against him… I can’t believe I never saw it… but I became so focused on saving him from himself… I almost completely forgot why I was really there…

They used me as bait to draw him into their territory where they would have the advantage. Tatsumi struck me when I tried to turn against them after he revealed the truth. I remember nothing until I woke to the sounds of he and Kenshin fighting. When I saw them… Kenshin had been injured so badly… He was nothing but blood from almost head to toe… barely keeping himself upright… barely keeping hold of his sword… He’d fought his way past Nakajou, Sumita and the Yatsume… and Tatsumi was fresh and strong… if I did nothing he would die right there in front of me… I did nothing to stop Kiyosatto-sama from going to Kyoto. I couldn’t bare the thought of another man dying because of my inaction so I…

…

I didn’t know what else to do… I wanted to give him an opening… I thought he would see me…

…

But he didn’t…

…

I can recall it now, even though I don’t want to… the bite of the sword slicing through me… it’s surreal… I felt it and yet I didn’t, as though there was so much pain that my mind couldn’t even register it all.

…

The rest is hazy… Cold… I was lying in the snow. His face was bleeding from where I cut him as I fell back against him… I touched his face and then nothing.

…

There is no mark, no scar on my body to prove the memories true. Were it not for Kenshin’s presence and confirmation I would not believe them.

The dead are supposed to remain dead... And yet I am here...