“Are you a samurai?”
“Takeshi,” Kenshin repeated. He sat back on his heels. For a long moment, the rain filled the silence. Then he said, “I ran too, once. I ran from a battlefield where my lord died. Every day since, I have carried that shame like a stone in my belly.”
The rain stopped. The fire dimmed. Kenshin stared at the boy for a long, strange moment. Then he did something he had not done in fifteen years: he smiled. It felt like breaking a rusted lock.
Takeshi considered this. Children have a way of cutting through the poetry of sorrow. “If you’re fallen,” he said, “you can stand up again.”
The boy wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Are you a bandit?”
The boy nodded slowly. Then he crawled closer and fell asleep with his head against Kenshin’s leg.
Perhaps that was enough.