"What if I'm far from home?
Oh Brother, I will hear your call.
What if I lose it all?
Oh, Sister, I will help you out."
If the sky comes falling down.
For you, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do."
("Hey Brother," Avicii)

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One of the few bright spots of Kaoru's time in Kyoto was continuing her budding friendship with Misao. Some nights when Iizuka-San, the coordinator of executions, slipped a black envelope into Himura's sleeve, Misao paid Kaoru a visit.
If Himura thought Misao would keep Kaoru out of trouble, he was sorely mistaken. Misao needed Kaoru to keep her out of trouble. Sometimes, she stole bottles of umeshu from the cellar and snuck them up to Himura's room. Kaoru had to play the innocent the following morning and tell Okami-San that she had no idea what happened to the missing bottles or how they ended up smashed underneath her window.

Misao took a swig of umeshu. "Are you going to the Gion Festival?" she said.
"I told Himura I'd like to." Kaoru moved one of her black game pieces across the go-ban and claimed one of Misao's white ones. "He hasn't said no, but he hasn't said yes."

"I'm having a hard time with Gramps too. He says that we're too busy with all the extra guests and he won't let me go alone."
With how eager Misao was to go to the festival, Kaoru suspected that she planned to meet up with a boy there.
Misao's parents died when she was a baby, and she was raised by her doting grandfather, Master Okina. Like Kaoru, she'd been spoiled rotten and allowed to run wild. But traveling across the country on a mission for the Oniwabanshu was one thing, and going out alone at night to meet a boy was another.
Kaoru looked at her friend across the go-ban. "It's your turn," she said. But Misao didn't listen.
"Gramps would let me go if you and Himura were coming with me." Misao gave Kaoru a look like a starving puppy begging for scraps.
"I'll see what I can do."
In celebration, Misao threw the empty bottle out the window and shouted, "bonsai."

Luckily for Misao, Himura also had a soft spot for her and didn't have the heart to refuse her wish.
"He promised Gramps he'd have me back in time for your father-in-law's party," Misao told Kaoru in the rickshaw on the way to Yasaka Shrine.
Kaoru turned toward Himura, who walked alongside them with a face like thunder. Lord Sejiro Hiko, his master and adoptive father, was in Kyoto for the Gion Festival and to put in an appearance at the Imperial Court. He'd sent a note to Himura, asking him to come to the Aoiya's tea house on July 8th, at the Hour of the Dog. "I want to meet my new daughter-in-law," Lord Hiko added as a postscript.
This was what had Himura in such a bad mood. It was scandalous to invite a respectable woman, a daimyo's daughter no less, like Kaoru, to a tea house, especially at the same time Lord Hiko was having an assignation with the courtesan, Kohana.
"He combined the two meetings for his own convenience," Kaoru had overheard Himura say to Katsura-Sama after he received Lord Hiko's invitation. "Killing two birds with one stone. How like him, the narcissistic ass."
Though Himura grumbled, he still obeyed, giving Kaoru the impression that her so-called father-in-law was someone who ordered rather than asked.
Kaoru folded her hands in her lap. Lord Hiko's invitation probably wasn't meant as an insult, but she took it that way nonetheless. Still, she would have to bear it.

Most of Kyoto was at the Yasaka Shrine that evening. Misao fought her way through the crowd to get a good spot in the Kagura Hall, where there was to be a puppet show. Kaoru held onto Himura's arm to keep from getting separated.
People stepped aside when Himura approached. They must have known who he was. After all, how many men in Kyoto had red hair and crossed scars on their cheeks? The same courtesy was extended to Kaoru because she was at his side.
Kaoru smiled. Being the great Battousai's consort had its perks.

When they caught up with Misao, she had cleared a spot for them in front of the stage. Misao fiddled with a jade brooch on her obi and appeared to be looking for someone. Kaoru smirked. Her boyfriend, perhaps?

"Aoshi-Sama..." Misao ran toward a tall, dark-haired young man and threw her arms around him.
Kaoru's ears pricked up, and her heart pounded. Aoshi?
Aoshi kissed Misao. "Misao-Chan," he said.
For propriety's sake, Kaoru used her fan to hide a giggle. Now it all made sense. The jade obi brooch. Hadn't Sano found something similar among Aoshi's things and suspected that he had a sweetheart? And Misao was in Mibu around that time. That's when she and Aoshi must have formed their attachment.
Aoshi, you sly dog. Misao, you clever girl. But was love enough of a reason for Aoshi to come all this way? 
Kaoru lowered her fan. "I'm thirsty," she told Himura. "Would you please get me some shaved ice?"  There was a long line in front of the shaved ice cart. This should keep Himura busy while Kaoru questioned Aoshi.
Himura bowed and went to get her what she asked for.
Misao dragged Aoshi back to the stage before she lost her hard-won spot for good. She waved to Kaoru. "Over here!"
Aoshi's face went pale when Kaoru approached.
"Surprised to see me," Kaoru said. Kyoto was too large a city for Aoshi to have imagined that his cousin and his secret girlfriend to be in the same place, let alone together.
As if to ask, "How do you know each other?" Aoshi shot Misao a look.
"Oh, Lady Kamiya and I go way back," Misao said. She then went on to describe how they'd met at an inn on the way to Edo when Kaoru was traveling with Himura.
Kaoru looked over her shoulder. Himura was still in the shaved ice line.
Aoshi's eyes darted in the same direction. "That husband of yours, I presume?" He said. "Is he good to you?"
Kaoru fanned herself.  How did one explain Himura Kenshin? "He's as possessive as a dragon with its jewel, but I know how to handle him. I convinced him to bring Misao-Chan and I here tonight."
"I've heard women were his weakness." 
This made Kaoru laugh. If only I was the type of woman who made men weak.  A woman like Tomoe.
Misao put her arms around Aoshi. "I think the show's about to begin." 

The puppet show told the story of the romance between the Gion festival's patron kami, Susanoo, god of the sea and storms, and Kushiinada-Hime, goddess of marriage and motherhood. Susanoo was famous for his impetuous behavior and fights with his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu.
Kaoru smiled. Otou-San always used to say that she and Sano were like Amaterasu and Susanoo.
After a particularly bad row with Amaterasu, Susanoo is banished from Heaven and wanders the Earth doing good deeds to earn his way back. He encounters a father and mother, the king and queen of a kingdom in what is now Kyoto, weeping over their daughter.
"Who are ye," said the Susanoo puppet, which resembled a wild-eyed young man with long, shaggy hair. "And why do ye lament thus?"
The King puppet furrowed its bushy eyebrows. "I am an Earthly Deity, and my name is Ashinadzuchi. My wife's name is Tenadzuchi." The Queen puppet was solid and maternal and had long, grey hair. "This girl is our daughter, and her name is Kushiinada-hime." In contrast to the distraught King and Queen, the Kushiinada-Hime puppet sat still and stoic, its pink junihito embroidered with green rice plants flowing around her gracefully. "The reason of our weeping is that formerly we had eight children, daughters. But they have been devoured year after year by an eight-forked serpent, and now the time approaches for this girl to be devoured." The audience booed. "There is no means of escape for her, and therefore do we grieve."
Aoshi came and stood next to Kaoru. "I'm glad you and Misao-Chan are friends," he said. "But I can't say I approve of all your new acquaintances, like that geisha you were here with last week. Tomoe was scandalized when she saw you."
Kaoru rolled her eyes. Well, Tomoe's a prig with a stick up her ass. "I take it you came to Kyoto with Tomoe and Akira? You're here for dear Misao-Chan, but them?"
Tomoe must have wanted to get away from Megumi, who, no doubt, had been making her life miserable. Poor thing. Kaoru almost pitied her.
Misao cut in. "They've come to Kyoto to pray at the shrines so they'll finally be blessed with a child."  Whispering wasn't among Misao's talents, and her voice carried across the shrine.
"Keep it down, girly," shouted a man near them in the crowd. "Some of us are trying to watch the show."
"Kiss my ass!"
Kaoru laughed, not only at her friend's boldness, but also that Tomoe's bareness was such a hopeless case that she needed to journey all the way to Kyoto. Little Miss Perfect wasn't so flawless after all.

"Kamiya-Dono?" Kaoru turned around. Himura had returned with her shaved ice, now melted to cherry-flavored slush.
"Thank you," Kaoru said. She would have to eat her shaved ice quickly, before it dribbled all over the lovely kimono she'd borrowed from Ikumatsu.

Misao pulled Himura closer to the stage. "You almost missed the best part," she said, her tone even louder than before.
"You again? Shut up!"
Aoshi sized up the man who'd heckled Misao and put a hand on his sword. The man backed off.
The "best part," as Misao put it, was Susanoo's fight with the dragon, Yamata-no-Orochi, to rescue Kushiinada-Hime.

Himura watched the battle between the two puppets with an almost child-like glee. While his back was turned, Aoshi leaned over and whispered to Kaoru, "be patient."

When the puppet show finished, Kaoru suggested that Misao and Aoshi go off on their own for a while. "Let's give the love birds some privacy," she said to Himura, who raised an objection but was easily overruled.
Kaoru wanted to keep grilling her cousin and give him a generous piece of her mind to bring home to his father, but keeping him and Himura apart was more important. The last thing anyone needed was a confrontation that could endanger innocent civilians.
Still, she went over Aoshi's words, be patient, countless times during the rickshaw ride to the Aoiya.
Lord Hiko was waiting for them in the tea house when they arrived. Beautiful women surrounded him: Shamisen players, dancing geisha, and the servant girls who made sure his sake bowl was never empty.
"Little Kaoru-Chan, all grown up," he said. His eyes went over Kaoru as she rose from a bow. "How is your father?"
"My lord father is well, last I heard," Kaoru said. She hadn't received any news of Otou-San since she left Mibu and didn't know if he was alive or dead.
Lord Hiko took a sip from his sake bowl. "And Sanosuke?"
"Sanosuke's married now. His wife is expecting a child."  Kaoru laughed behind her fan. Should she tell Lord Hiko that a kitsune had her poor, rooster-head brother by the balls, and he'd fathered her kitsune spawn?
"And little Yahiko?"
"He comes of age in the autumn." Yahiko might be becoming a man, but he hadn't stopped being a little shit.
"You children get older, but I always stay the same age." Lord Hiko crooked his finger at a serving girl, and she poured him more sake. "And you, Kaoru-Chan? Are you still smacking boys around with your boken?"
Kaoru lowered her fan to give Lord Hiko a smirk. "Of course." Wasn't that how she ended up here in the first place?
"Do you still practice with the naginata?"
"I'd like to." Kaoru's naginata was back in Mibu, and she hadn't picked it up in weeks. "If I could get my hands on one."
"Good, good. Too many young people are lazy and unmotivated these days."

Lord Hiko's attention drifted to Kohana's long-awaited entrance. Kohana had arrived accompanied by her entourage of "little sisters," young girls dressed up like the dolls Kaoru used to put out on Girls Day altar, who carried her train and helped her not to trip on her platform getas. The courtesan was no longer in the first bloom of youth but was still one of the most striking women Kaoru had ever seen and easily rivaled Tomoe or Megumi. Without a second thought, Lord Hiko left the table and went to join Kohana at hers.

Even Himura was entranced by Kohana. Kaoru huffed. The pervert! He tried to act like he was above the womanizing ways of his comrades in the Inshin Shishi, but he was as big of a kimono chaser as any of them. She would show him.
When Kaoru poured Himura's tea, she "accidentally" let her knee brush against his thigh, a trick Ikumatsu had taught her. He almost melted onto the tatami mats. Ikumatsu was right. That trick could turn any man into jelly.
Kohana and Lord Hiko looked cozy together at her table, sipping from the same sake bowl.
"Hiko-Sama," Kohana said. "Who is that young woman with Himura-San?"
Kaoru put down her tea cup. They were talking about her.
Lord Hiko glanced across at Kaoru. "That's Lady Kamiya Kaoru, daughter of Lord Kamiya Koshijiro, daimyo of Murkai."
"A genuine princess. I bet she wasn't cheap." Kohana had a haughty, barking laugh that was remarkably similar to Megumi's.
Himura was offended on Kaoru's behalf and was about to step in to defend her honor until Kaoru stopped him by putting a hand on his arm. This was a battle of wits she had to win on her own.
"I assure you, Kohana-San," Kaoru said. "Himura-San paid dearly."
Lord Hiko almost spat out his sake. Kohana chuckled into her sleeve. "So why did a princess get bored at daddy's castle and decide she wanted to show off her wrists in a tea house?"
"It seemed like a better fate than becoming a wife."
Lord Hiko winked at Himura. "I think I like this girl," he said. "Better than the last one."
Kaoru winked back at Lord Hiko. And I think I like you too, you selfish old bastard.

"You should take it as a compliment,
That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk."
("Gorgeous," Taylor Swift)

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One of the geisha led a drinking song called "The Lazy Kago-Bearers." When the song came to one of the lines that began with, "and I never...," she pointed to someone in the room. That person had to finish the line with the most outrageous thing they could think of. If they didn't come up with something in time, they had to drink their sake bowl dry.
Kaoru made sure to prepare hers ahead of time. She'd overheard Lord Hiko telling Himura about a place in Shimabara, where they have a girl who sits in a tank of water, embracing a live squid. This was so strange that she had to use it.
"And I never hugged a squid," she sang when the geisha pointed to her. The notes came out with an undignified giggle. Two or three bowls of sake had made Kaoru bold and giddy.
Kohana raised an eyebrow. Lord Hiko actually spat out his sake this time. Himura, eyes as round and wide as saucers, oro-ed. So, Kaoru knew she'd done well.
"This one doesn't think Kamiya-Dono understood what that meant," Himura said. That, being hugging a squid.
Kaoru giggled. "Oro, oro." She reached for her sake bowl.
Himura put a hand on her arm to stop her. "This one thinks you've already had enough."
"Oro, oro." Stupid, beautiful Himura with his irritating, prissy way of talking. "This one thinks you've already had enough." She picked up her sake bowl and emptied it in one sip.
A man sitting near Himura, who must have known him, nudged him in the shoulder. "I bet that little tanuki is more fun in bed than Yukishiro?"
Himura looked as though he was going to faint. Lord Hiko roared with laughter.
I'd bet too. Kaoru let out another uncouth guffaw. Tomoe probably just laid there like a plank of wood whenever she and Akira did their marital duties. But, Kaoru had never been with a man, so she had no idea how she would actually compare.
When the singing was over, Kohana, who Kaoru learned was a brilliant poet, composed a tanka on the spot about a mighty dragon being bested by a tanuki. Kaoru asked her to turn the poem into a piece of calligraphy to hang on the wall.

At the hour of the boar, as the Aoiya was winding down for the night, Kaoru and Himura were taken from the tea house to their room. The lamps in the courtyard went out, like a dozen eyes blinking shut. 

Their room was on the ground floor of the inn's main building and opened out onto a small garden that smelled of wisteria and jasmine.

Woodblock prints depicting scenes from The Tale of Genji hung on the walls: men in bullet-shaped hats seized women in flowing junihitoe with endless, inky black hair.
It was a room for an assignation or a honeymoon.
Kaoru knelt in front of the mirror to undo her hair and remove her makeup. She'd dressed to provide a contrast to whatever Lord Hiko's flashy courtesan wore. Her hair was pinned up in the simple, modest style of a respectable young wife, adorned by only a white ribbon. A quick wipe down with a damp towel did away with the minimal rice powder and rouge on her face.
Kaoru's fresh-faced, youthful looks needed no further adornment.
Himura poured a glass of water and gave it to Kaoru, a long with two pills made from willow bark, of the type Megumi often made in Wolf Castle's stillroom. "Take these," he said. "After all that sake, tomorrow morning won't be pleasant for you."
Kaoru swallowed the pills but not Himura's reproach. "I didn't drink half as much as Lord Hiko." Lord Hiko must have drank enough sake to sink one of those American dragon ships. It was amazing how he was still on his feet by the end of the night.
"Hiko-Sensei can handle his drink, and he isn't a lady. Don't use him as an excuse not to behave properly."
Kaoru rolled her eyes. Behave properly, like Tomoe? As if Tomoe never had a little too much sake. She was almost as bad a lush as Lord Hiko.
"Last time I checked," Kaoru said. "Proper ladies aren't dragged to tea houses." Tomoe at least drank at home.
Himura went to stoke the fire and hung a kettle of water over it. While his back was turned, Kaoru untied her obi and stripped down to her juban. She'd never taken off her clothes with Himura in the room before. Himura usually went out before Kaoru dressed in the morning and undressed at night. So he wouldn't see her in her underwear, she climbed into the futon before he returned with two cups of tea. Green tea. Good for hangovers. 

Kaoru raised her cup. "To Misao and Aoshi," she said.  It was best to change the subject to something happy. Why end such a fun night in a bad mood? "Kanpai!"
"Kanpai!" Himura clinked his cup against hers.
Sweet Misao-Chan seemed to have thawed Kaoru's ice king of a cousin's heart. If Kaoru's eyes weren't deceiving her, Aoshi might have actually smiled.
"Don't they make a handsome couple?"
Himura took a sip of green tea. "This one thinks they would certainly have handsome children."
Kaoru adored Misao and would happily welcome her into the family.  Life among the Kamiya-Saito clan was a good-natured but merciless brawl and you had to have a strong personality to keep up. This was where Megumi, who could give as good as she got, had succeeded while Tomoe failed. When Misao told that man at the festival to kiss her ass, Kaoru knew she would fit right in.
Two shadow approached the shoji screen door that opened out onto the garden.
"Himura-San!"
Himura went to answer the door. Kaoru adjusted herself to see who was there. Two of Himura's Inshin Shishi comrades stood holding lanterns on the engawa.
"I'm sorry to bother you," said one of the Inshin Shishi. The young man blushed when he noticed Kaoru. "...and Lady Himura, but it's urgent."
The other Inshin Shishi cut in. "It's Katsura-Sama."