|
What a Fool |
| I was always known
as Battousai the Man Slayer. Ever since I was I child I was raised to kill... My master had always told me to accept death as there was no way to bring back the dead. It was much to common during the days of the Bakumatsu. Everytime one died, I felt it. It was a horrible feeling, one as if everything was drain from my body. A small boy suffering from the loss of everyone else... He was the one that spared me from death. His name was Hiko Seijiro. I was an apprentice to the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu school and there I was renamed Kenshin. I was trained, killing only a few people and then what seemed to be countless others. I use to walk the streets alone. Nobody was out then. I was the fear of all people. Nothing else mattered. But then one night, as I killed someone that was already weak, they cut open the flesh on my cheek. I thought it was nothing at first. But everytime I killed, it bleed. Soon, once again I had that feeling. But it was different. This one was the future of the people that I had destroyed. This was the feeling of the happiness I had torn from families. This was the feeling of the dead haunting me. I never could over come it. I tried to put all this behind me but it didn't work. Never in my life did I feel so sick. Never in my life did I feel so strongly that taking my own life was the right answer... Was killing really protecting other from harm? Or was it just creating more chaos? I never knew that answer. Soon I left my master and the mountain were my skills first came to me. The parting was simple yet confusing. All the memories of becoming a hitokiri confused me. Why did I do it in the first place? The mountain was at first my home of comfort. Then it was a home of confusion and thoughts. It brought back the words my master once told me: that the art of the sword is the art of murder. So, all this time I was just killing others. Once I was far away, I looked back at the trail where I once lived. Then it came back to me. As a younger child I was approached by a man of the name Katsura. His theory of a new era was a dead and disgusting one. He said that in order to bring in a new era, one must first destroy the old; and to do that, one may therefore need to kill others. I decided to join Katsura as a hitokiri to try and serve the greater good as he saw it. I had thought I was doing good. I was bringing change. What a fool young boys can be. |
