Our little obsession is an action Manga, but Watsuki-san indulged in the most angst riddled, character torturing declaration of love that I have ever seen with the Jinchuu arc.
They've all just come through the forge and Kaoru has found out that Kenshin loves her with inarguable devotion. What is it like for her to be the recipient of that kind of love, from that kind of man?
*Note: "Sekihara-san" refers to Tae's father.
Her hair looked...respectable, pinned and coiled like a proper woman. She smoothed the lines of her kimono, checked her obi, and nodded. Today she must negotiate with the workmen to begin the dojo's skilled carpentry repairs, and she must look authoritative. Her taxes were due next month, her men were all injured, her income was paltry and the dojo was it was would not shelter them through the coming winter. She must secure the foreman's agreement to do the job at her price; there was no alternative.
She looked into her own eyes in her mother's mirror. "I am Kamiya Kaoru, I am the successor of Kamiya Kasshn Ryu, and Kenshin loves me. I will not fail."
She firmed her jaw, straightened her shoulders, and left for battle, such as it was.
.
.
.
She kept one sharp eye on the workmen, ensuring they did the job they'd agreed to do, and her other eye on her task. She did not balk at the blood in the washtub, on her hands and arms, scrubbing the stained linen bandages clean. A boiling water rinse after, to sanitize them for re-use. She must ensure the construction dust didn't touch them, didn't contaminate them, didn't bring infection to her recuperating family.
She plunged her hands in the pink water, into the blood of her injured men, and did not balk.
Kenshin loves me.
.
.
.
She portioned the meal onto three separate trays, ensuring that she had remembered to include all the warm, strengthening foods that Megumi had prescribed. A carefully measured portion of powdered medicine into each of three teacups, and they were complete. She did not shy away from acknowledging the cost of these foods, did not scrimp on those things that her men needed. She did not acknowledge her own dinner of leftover soup and her paltry portion of rice. There would be time for that later, alone in her room.
There was steel in her eyes, she knew, so she closed them briefly. Alone in the quiet kitchen, she put on a sparkling smile and lifted the first tray. Her men would only see her smiling, she vowed.
Kenshin loves me.
.
.
.
She learned from Megumi how to change the bandages. She helped her men to the outhouse with strong arms and a straight back. She barely blushed as she bathed them. She changed sheets and wiped brows and smiled all the while. She kept them all in separate rooms so that none of them realized how much time she spent caring for them and how little time she spent sleeping. Just a little bit of beauty cream banished the dark circles and they need never know.
As Sekihara-san sat drinking her tea and demanded compensation for the ruined Akabeko, as townspeople recoiled from her in superstitious fear, as she pretended not to here the gossip that followed her like a wave, she lifted her chin and chanted silently:
Kenshin loves me...
I am a woman worthy of devotion.