Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Sakuras on White Snow ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

No, Rurouni Kenshin and the characters from this manga/anime are not mine.

Well, this is my new experiment.

KLEENEX ALERT!!!

THIS IS FULL OF SEISOU HEN SPOILERS, SO NOW YOU ARE WARNED; LEAVE IT NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW, AND IF YOU DON'T WANT TO CRY.

I want to express my gratitude to Mara who has been helping me with this a lot.

I want to express my gratitude to Mara who has been helping me with this a lot.

One more thing: I'm not a native English speaker, so if I do any speeling mistake, please, help me without flaming me. Thanks a lot.

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Hokkaido Prefecture, 3 San Gatsu, Meiji 28 (March 3, 1895)

The report was lying on his desk again as it had already been,

one month ago, so neatly written that the cold facts poured through it with the usual efficiency he was pleased with. He took it and went over its pages once more.

This time, however, there was a story behind those facts.

A story he knew, at least a part of it.

Barely one month ago he was reading one of those reports, a boring task he loathed but he knew he had to perform it in order to fulfill his bureaucratic duties.

There, among all these anonymous names and cases that he was revising as usual, one caught his attention.

A long lost and wanted criminal had been found.

Alone.

Dead.

It was ironic, he thought smirking.

He was the eldest of them.

Yet he had survived longer than his two old adversaries.

He puffed out a small cloud of smoke from the corner of his thin lips.

They had survived wars and atrocities, enemies and even a bloody past haunting them, calling for their lives.

But they couldn't survive the peace of the Meiji-era.

Short after reading the report the first time, he received a letter.

In company of the letter, the little parcel with the diaries came

His hand touched briefly the first book lying on the desk. These frail pages recorded eleven years of the life of that man, one of his old adversaries.

They were carefully protected, enveloped in a thin layer of white silk.

White.

The color of snow.

The color of mourning.

He was asked to perform a task in the name of honor. The last wish of a dead man.

Surely he would do it.

But as a researcher on criminal thought he would first study those gems.

A trip into a tortured man's mind, a bloody, reckless murderer.

It was priceless.

An enemy.

Now gone, a mere ghost, a shadow from the past, a past of which he himself was a main character and now he was nothing more than a pathetic bureaucrat sitting behind a desk

Well, not quite, actually.

An evil smirk crossed his sharp features.

Slowly, carefully, enjoying the moment, he lightened another cigarette,

sat down behind his desk and took the first volume in his hands.

The subtle scent of white plums filled the room when he opened it, his glance falling on the name on the first page. The name of a man he knew as a merciless murderer and respected as a skilled enemy.

Excited he leaned forward, starting a promising journey into the mind and the past of another man, so different from himself