[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

The muffled echoes of rapid footsteps on wood reached my ears and I straightened. Standing up in a fluid movement, I arched my back and stretched some lazy muscles which kept protesting whenever I decided to do some early morning training. I slashed the kodachi-sized wooden blade, focusing on my right arm, and listened to the sound the short sword gave rise to, feeling the ripples it triggered as it cleaved the air.

Adequate.

Saitou Hajime would have disagreed, of course. He'd have called me out of practice and he'd have proceeded to demonstrate that truth with a sharp and painful exchange of sparring...if he had condescended to do so, that was. But the man who was my husband wasn't here...never was here. With a half-sad, half-ironic smile, I thought that I might as well have married a ghost.

A ghost who sometimes stole inside the Sumeragi mansion and seemed to enjoy triggering my wards in the middle of the night. He almost always disappeared right before dawn. Where he went and what he truly did, I had no idea of. He had never volunteered any information, and I had never requested any. All I knew was that the Wolf of Mibu still lived by his "Aku Soku Zan" motto. That was a part of him as much as his heart was...as much as his samurai spirit and nobility were, which forced him to keep taking responsibility for what was happening in Japan even though the shogun's forces had been defeated during the Meiji Restoration. He was still the same man whom I had met in this very house, a bit more than fourteen years ago. During all these years, the Wolf had managed to keep a lot of himself walled away, hidden from me.

He was a set of shadows and patches of bright lights, a mystery. With a sad little nod, I let out an almost inaudible sigh. The man I loved was almost a stranger and that bare, merciless truth hurt at times.

Stop the nonsense, fool. Now isn't the right time for wallowing in self-pity. A grim smile came to my lips as I forced myself to snap out of the familiar gloom, and I looked up when the dojo's sliding panel was pulled open to let an adolescent step inside.

"You are late," I told him in a flat voice, and experienced a brief pang of remorse when I saw guilt and anguish flickering in the teenager's eyes. Inwardly grinning, I reminded myself that it had been he who had begged me relentlessly to teach him what I knew of the Way of the Sword. I knew of only one way to do that, and it required the most rigid discipline. Personal ties and relationships didn't belong in that equation; there was only a teacher and a pupil.

I studied the boy as he bowed deeply in apology. Eiji was a set of dangling limbs, the adolescent was a mixture of clumsiness, fiery energy, desperate determination and anger. Oh yes, there was a lot of anger boiling up in that thin body, anger which served to hide and deny the terrible pain born from the loss of loved ones. All that Hajime had told me when he had brought the boy home had been that his whole family had been tortured and murdered by fiendish criminals. Eiji was alone, and would forever remain so unless we could help him find a home.

At first I had been more than a bit put out by my husband's presumption in telling the Head of the Sumeragi clan to take care of a nameless orphaned boy, but I had surprised myself in growing to love the harsh, foul-tempered adolescent as if he had been my own. There no longer was any need to find Eiji a home, he had one here, both of his will and mine.

"Forgive me, Tokio-san," the young man had straightened and was now facing me, his eyes set on mine as he went on, "but petitioners from the government came at your door again, and they were unusually difficult to turn down."

I arched an eyebrow up in a quizzical fashion and then shrugged, telling him with an amused smile on my lips, "That's not your problem, Eiji. You don't have to wait on me and filter visitors to the house. Either I or the servants are here to take care of that kind of thing." With a friendly grin, I added, "It can in no way constitute a valid excuse for being late at a training session."

A glint of mischief flashed in the teenager's dark eyes at my words, and he held out a piece of paper to me. "What about a letter from Shunsuke, Tokio-san?"

With a burst of laughter, I took the offered letter and shook my head. "Not a chance, Eiji. Now," I let my smile uncover my teeth as I said, "start by wiping the floor of the dojo clear, will you?"

Bobbing his head in acceptance of his penance, the young man got to work without the slightest show of protestation. Things hadn't always been run that smoothly between Eiji and I; it had taken me more than a month to find the keys to a backdoor of the citadel of his heart. Hajime had been right in entrusting the boy to me, we both had known the pain and grief born from loss. We shared the same anger which sometimes threatened to choke us and rob us of reason, even if I could now control mine almost perfectly.

We were kindred spirits, Eiji and I. The Wolf had understood this at once, and had left me with the stray cub to discover that truth on my own. I fleetingly wondered if anyone else knew that Saitou Hajime, ex-captain of the third troops of the dreaded Shinsengumi, could care in that fashion. It was one of the myriad of facets of the apparently heartless, cold-blooded Wolf that couldn't be glimpsed easily.

Smiling softly to myself, I cut short to my musings and opened the letter from my son while Eiji was still busy wiping the dojo's floor clean.

Dear Mother,

Sumeragi Shunsuke.

Carefully, I folded the letter, fighting back a familiar ache which was spreading in my heart. Shunsuke was the most wonderful gift that Hajime had ever given me. My son saw deep and true into people's hearts, and he was wise beyond his thirteen years of age.

Storing the letter safely in my jacket's left sleeve, I looked up to see that Eiji was about to be done with his task. I waited for a few more minutes, and when he came to me I nodded. "Good. Now let's start working a bit seriously."

There wasn't the slightest sound in the room as Makimachi Misao stood up. She stared at the steaming cup of tea that she had just brought, and at the immobile man kneeling on its right, his back set to her. Shinomori Aoshi hadn't moved an inch when she had stepped into the room or when she had set the cup of tea right next to him. He hadn't reacted at all, not even to whisper a "thank you" in his quiet and detached voice as he usually did. The young woman bit her lower lip in half-frustration, half-worry. With a slow shake of her head, she eventually decided that her intuition must be correct.

Something was wrong with her Aoshi-sama.

She had first felt it on that weird night when a man had been murdered almost in front of them without any of them realizing what was happening. It had been an unsettling revelation, to discover that their finely honed instincts, all their training had been of no use, that they had been as unaware as if they had been normal people.

To think that one could come and take a life right under the noses of the Oniwabanshu had sent Misao's mind reeling. She hadn't thought that possible. She had been afraid, that night. Afraid, and angry: Kyoto was the Oniwabanshu's home, and now that they weren't the shadow guardians of Edo Castle any longer they had made it their duty to protect the ancient city and its inhabitants. And in the space of a few seconds, they had been confronted with the shocking realization that there existed an assassin who could strike freely, unhindered, while they were unaware of the smallest trace of danger. It had upset Misao until the morning after, and afterwards she had discarded the concern. Nothing special was happening in the city, everything seemed to be quiet and after all murders between rival gangs weren't exactly unheard of.

But her Aoshi-sama seemed to have been affected by the events of that night, much more so than she had been, which was telling. Why that was so, Misao didn't know, but she intended to find out. Her eye caught a quick glimpse of a sealed letter, neatly folded right in front of the Oniwabanshu leader, and she nodded to herself before pivoting on her heels and silently leaving the room.

She had easily identified the seal of the letter. It had come by carrier pigeon, and she knew the owner of those messengers. Briefly, she paused down the stairs. Beyond the constant buzzing sound of the cicadas, she could hear Jiiya cackling from another room. It was likely the old man was once again drooling over girls much too young for his age, or mercilessly teasing whoever was unlucky enough to be stuck in the same place as he. Misao considered going over to him for advice, for information, but eventually decided against it.

They all were much too protective of her; she knew that they would lie to her if they judged there was the smallest risk for her to be aware of the truth. Anger sparked in a shadowy corner of her heart, anger that they thought her so fragile that she couldn't be of any use, that she couldn't help those she loved, those who were her family. Even if Jiiya knew something, the old man would feign ignorance and call her a love-struck teenager who had lost her wits.

She wasn't that.

She might be over-enthusiastic at times, she might have a generally too genki attitude, but that in no way meant that she was a fool. She had a mind, and she knew how to use it. She had talent and skills which had been drilled into her since the day when she had been able to stand on her own feet, and now she'd put them to good use.

"Jiiya, I'm taking a walk, I'll be back by sunset!" She said loudly, and then she exited the Aoiya without waiting for an answer.

The young woman idly strolled in the street during a few minutes, indulging into the contemplation of some fashion stores and checking that she wasn't being followed at the same time. Once she was satisfied, she took her bearings and started off into the direction of the Kamo river at a trot.

Carrier pigeons were supposed to come to Jiiya. The Okina was after all the spy who gathered information and dealt with it. Carrier pigeons had been all but abandoned after the end of the terrible mess with Yukishiro Enishi. There was no more use for them now that everything had been settled and that they were at last free to live their own lives without having to fight or to worry that Japan would fall into chaos...was there? Yet carrier pigeons had started to return to the Aoiya again, not reporting to the Okina as they should have, but reporting directly to Shinomori Aoshi, to Misao's Aoshi-sama.

Why?

Focusing once more on her surroundings, the young woman came to an abrupt halt right in front of a small food store. Inwardly, she berated herself for being so absentminded: she had been so absorbed by her own thoughts that had almost missed her objective. With a wide smile, she asked the shopkeeper, "I'd like a sweet potato, please."

The middle-aged man looked up at her and his eyes widened in surprise as he recognized her. His face lost its expression of absolute boredom in the blink of an eye and he nodded, holding out for her the sweet she had requested. With genuine warmth in his voice, he said, "A good day to you, Misao-chan. It's been a long time." Quietly, he added, "What can I do for you?"

Makimachi Misao grinned as she took the offered sweet potato and took a big bite out of it. Oishii! Was the thought that formed in her brain as the sweet's taste filled her mouth. Once she had swallowed it, she turned her attention to the shopkeeper and told him in an uncharacteristically soft, but firm voice, "You've been sending pigeons to the Aoiya over the last month. I want to know what was in the reports they carried."

Focusing on the man's face, she watched him for the smallest change in his expression, but there was none. The man was a professional, and a good one. With a slight, noncommittal shrug, he replied, "Why not ask the recipient of those messages?"

The words were accompanied by an amused smile which told Misao that the man perfectly understood why she hadn't done that. Smiling back at him, she retorted, "Because I'm asking *you*, Tanaka-san," she took another bite of the sweet potato and then went on in a matter-of-fact voice, "and you're going to tell me."

The man stared at her in silence for a few seconds before abruptly bursting out laughing. "You're indeed the granddaughter of our founder! For a moment I thought he had come back to speak through your lips!" He shook his head. "That tone...." He let his voice trail off into silence, then eventually heaved a weary sigh. "Walk with me."

Makimachi Misao nodded wordlessly and fell into step with the man, who closed his store behind her and led her towards the back of the house.

"You see," he began as they stepped into a small garden, "a month ago he came and asked me to monitor the situation in the touchy, more delicate quarters of the city. 'Look out for anything strange, anything that the police will overlook, anything involving death....' I did so." The man gave a small shrug. "At first I thought it was a stupid, meaningless request, but very quickly I came to see a pattern in events which seemed completely unrelated." His voice reduced to a quiet whisper. "Men are being murdered in Kyoto." A humorless smile came to his lips. "the police doesn't realize that, the police thinks it's just accidents or natural deaths, but I know." He took a deep breath, as if courage was required to tell his tale. "When the moon is full, and when it's half-formed, on those nights someone will die. All of them are men, young or not, and there isn't the smallest trace of wound or poison or even violence on them. They're all walking back home after spending a lot of money in Shimabara quarter, and they all have a mask of fear or pain frozen on their faces."

A mask of fear or pain.... A shiver went through Makimachi Misao's body as the words echoed in her mind and as memories filled her, unbidden.

Anger.

Helplessness.

Fear....

"Most of them were minor members of known politicians' staffs. Some had incurred the enmity of rival political factions, but they never were a part of the target market...." Misao suddenly realized that her informant was still talking, and forced herself to focus on his words. "There's no factual evidence of it, but I'm sure all were murdered by someone very skilled, someone who got those contracts through means unknown to the Oniwabanshu." The man's hawk-like eyes set on the young woman. "Someone who lives in circles and places beyond our reach." He looked away then, and something that might have been fear seeped into his voice as he concluded, "There is an assassin loose in Kyoto, and tonight he'll take another life."

Tonight....

"It's the full moon...." Misao barely heard the hushed whisper that escaped her lips. "Tonight there will be a full moon...." The man nodded, turning to face her once again. And Aoshi-sama knows this, Aoshi-sama....

Panic filled Misao's heart, and the young woman flung herself forward. Just as she reached the edge of the garden, the man's voice reached her one last time. "The police is unaware of this, but some sections of the secret service might know. There has been some movement among the burakumin that they use as sources of information."

Those words were lost on Makimachi Misao. She exited the store and started running back towards the Aoiya.

Tonight there would be a full moon.

Tonight the nameless assassin would strike, it was his signature, it was the only trace he left, the only hint he gave. Seeing again the strange expression on her Aoshi-sama's face when the both of them had stumbled upon a corpse on their way back from a Western play, Misao felt her heart wrenching in anguish. Had he known? Had he understood what was afoot? What if her Aoshi-sama himself was threatened?

With clenched teeth, the young woman ran towards the Aoiya.

She wouldn't allow that to happen.

Never.

Beauty is a concept very hard to define or to explain. Some say that it's in the eye of the beholder. It may be so, but the young girl somehow doubts that that's true.

Beauty is elusive and ephemeral.

There.... She smiles as a drop of salty, warm liquid rolls down a cheek, smearing the already drying blood which has spilled from a shallow gash right under the left eye. The teardrop spreads the brown-reddish color and paints the skin under it.

One can capture beauty and hold it in one's hands if one has talent and if one is willing to work hard, to try again and again until one reaches perfection. She's willing to do all that.

She'll be a master one day.

A master, like Keisuke-ojisan.

"You're definitely getting better." Keisuke-ojisan's warm hand gently presses her shoulder in appreciation, and then he steps towards the trembling body which is standing in front of them. Its eyes are wide, impossibly so, but it doesn't try to move away. The young girl watches with rapt attention as Keisuke-ojisan weaves a sparkling web of shadows around the body and as a darkness which has neither existence or meaning grows over its heart.

Hungry.

Famished.

There is no reaction from the body, likely the prey has realized it is doomed by now. That's good.

"Pay attention, Keiko-chan." Keisuke-ojisan's soft whisper reaches the young girl, and she focuses her whole being on the sight set before her eyes.

For her eyes alone, because nobody else may see.

Only she.

Then, for a fraction of a second, during a single cycle of Time's great clock, she sees it.

Life.

Death.

Meeting.

Light.

Darkness.

Embracing.

Beauty spreads its wings before her eyes and flies away. This fleeting moment when life fades away, the last beating of a heart...that is beauty.

It hurts. The meaningless words are a barely audible whimper which comes from the darkest shadows of the young girl's soul. She's used to that voice, and she knows it now. Its echoes die as quickly as they've risen. Yet, obeying a nameless impulse, she walks up to Keisuke-ojisan's side and reaches out. Slowly, gently, she closes the empty eyes of the body turned corpse.

And somewhere, a little girl cries.

Somewhere far away.

The house was quiet, there was no sound to disturb the crickets' song in the night. Makimachi Misao carefully fastened her shoes and then stepped out of her room. She had no difficulty reaching the outside of the restaurant, and she soon found herself standing in the street.

Basking in the eerily bright light of the rising full moon.

One last time, she stopped to consider what she was about to do. Aoshi-sama hadn't showed any intention of confronting the nameless assassin; she had watched him most carefully during the whole evening and the taciturn Oniwabanshu leader had been his usual silent and frustrating self. Almost Misao had walked up to him to ask what was going on and what he intended to do about it...almost, but she knew what result such an action would have.

None.

With a firm nod, the young woman set off alone in the night, unheard and unseen.

She couldn't deny what her instincts and what her intuition were telling her. Something had to be done, she had to know and understand. She wasn't so foolish as to believe that she could prevent the murders from happening and take care of the killer on her own, but she was certain that she could at least gather invaluable pieces of information, even perhaps identify the assassin....

A muffled chuckle reached Makimachi Misao's ears, telling her that she had reached her destination. The moon wasn't at its zenith yet, and the activity in those outskirts of the Shimabara quarter seemed to be rather quiet. Everything felt normal, which perhaps meant that she had managed to get here in time.

Now, where would the assassin strike?

There was no way to know for sure, and the pleasure quarter was filled with dark, barely lighted narrow alleys which were all perfect spots for an ambush. Biting her lower lip in frustration, the young woman frantically searched her mind for a key to that riddle, to eventually come to the conclusion that the only thing she could do was to roam the place and hope she'd be close by when the assassin struck. She didn't like the idea at all, but it was either that or stand in the same spot during the whole night. A weary sigh escaped Misao's lips, and then she chose a direction and walked off in the night, followed by the soft, crystalline laughter of women rising in the air.

Misao rested her back against a wall and bowed her head. The full moon had now reached its zenith and was lighting the street brightly. The ghostly light gave the city a feeling that she would have been unable to name, the eerie sensation that she had left the world of the living to step into the land of the spirits. The thought had something frightening to it, and the young woman discarded it, unwilling to dwell on it any longer.

She hadn't noticed anything out of place during her watch, she had paid attention to the smallest details, analyzing places and how one could use their topology to plan murder. She was almost certain that she would be able to tell where the assassin would come from, no matter where he chose to strike. She would be ready for him. All of a sudden, the slightest of sounds caught Misao's attention and she looked up, squinting in the night to find its source.

Rustling of delicate fabrics.

There.

Stepping back under the shadow of a wall to remain hidden from view, Makimachi Misao saw two men come from a street on her right. The first one was bearing a lantern to light the way and had a katana at his side. A *forbidden* katana, in this Meiji Era. The young woman nodded to herself, certain that she was correct. Right behind the first man came the second, a middle-aged man who seemed to be passably drunk.

He's the prey.

The intuition filled Misao's mind and she shivered in the night. She didn't understand it, she didn't know how she could be so sure, but there was no place for doubts within her. For a fraction of a second she closed her eyes, and listened to her heartbeats.

Too quick. No good, Misao. She focused on the rhythm of her breathing and willed it to be slow and steady. Reluctantly, her body obeyed. For a fleeting moment, she wondered whether anyone at the Aoiya had noticed her escapade yet. Would they come for her, would Aoshi-sama make the connection and know where to find her? Teeth clenched, she chased the useless concerns away and started carefully following both men.

A cat stalking its prey in the night.

She focused on her targets and on their surroundings, shedding her own Oniwabanshu skin to wear that of the assassin. When and where would she strike if she were in his stead? The moon was full and high, and left little place for shadows and true darkness. It would be difficult to act unnoticed, even if the streets were all but deserted. Try though she might, Misao couldn't come up with a way to conveniently dispatch both men. There would be noise, one of them at least would have time to cry out and alert all the patrons of the nearby inns.

The young woman's preys took an abrupt left turn, and entered a narrow black alley. Staring at the darkness in front of her, Misao felt adrenaline coursing through her veins. She started after the two men, focusing her whole being on the night around her, her keen senses alert for any sign of danger.

Imperceptible breeze rising.

On instinct, Misao's right hand closed around her kunai.

"You're not the one I expected, little fish." The young ninja froze in her steps, her mind empty. The soft, gentle whisper had come from right beside her left ear and she could feel gooseflesh on her skin where a warm breath had brushed against her neck in a caress. "I dislike uninvited guests, but I suppose I can find you some use."

There was no time to react, there was no chance to flee or defend herself. Her mind stuck, glued by a raw, brutal fear that she could neither understand nor deny, Makimachi Misao willed her right hand to move, but in the same time something icy exploded inside her chest.

Something so horribly cold that it was burning.

She felt her eyes widening as pain filled her body, pain, panic and shocked refusal. It was happening too fast, all this was impossible; no assassin could steal behind an Oniwabanshu in this fashion, not when she had taken the precaution to scout the terrain beforehand. This didn't make any sense; hardly more than five heartbeats had gone by since the young ninja had felt an unnatural breeze rise in the night.

"Oyasumi nasai, little fish." The woman's voice, soft and perfectly pitched, never registered in Makimachi Misao's brain. From very far away, she felt her head tilt backwards and ethereal arms opened, reaching out to embrace her as she fell, in a slow motion.

Then darkness engulfed everything.

Katanagari-no-Cho sighed as he knocked on a door and pushed it open. Despite the late hour, he found the office occupied when he entered it, and stifled a cough with difficulty. The density of cigarette smoke in the air was enough to drown the lungs of any normal human being in tar, but then the man who was sitting at the desk was anything but ordinary.

Cho disliked being the bearer of evil tidings, the more so when their recipient was the man before him, but he had little choice in the matter. So he approached the desk quietly.

"What do you want?" The harsh voice cut through the silence and startled Cho, even though he was used to the other' man's behavior by now.

Not about to enter the game and reply as abruptly as the tone of the question would have warranted, Cho shrugged and said noncommittally, "There's some bad news for you. It just came in so I brought it up, and I'm going home, I need rest." Without waiting for an answer, Cho turned on his heels and exited the office before some nasty or cumbersome task could be placed on his shoulders.

Once the door had closed, Saitou Hajime reached out and took the message that Cho had left on his desk. He opened it and scanned its contents quickly, his face emotionless. Once he was done reading, he lit a match and carefully burnt the small piece of paper. Then he sat back against his chair and smiled in the grey light of the coming dawn.

He smiled a feral smile which would have frightened away anyone who would have dared enter his office in this moment. A minor politician and his bodyguard had died during the night, but he hadn't needed the message to tell him something like that would happen. The moon had been full and he knew the meaning of that, but for the first time there was more.

The assassin had moved. After so long, it seemed the man had at last caught something in his trap. Saitou Hajime had been waiting for this to happen for months now. The Wolf knew all there was to know about killing, and he had felt at once the wrongness in the fantastic assassin's actions. The man, whoever he might be, had reached an impossible level of perfection in his craft, and for such an artist to be stuck into a so easily identifiable pattern was more than unlikely.

A message, or a challenge, it had to be.

And at last, the true quarry had reacted...well not exactly the true quarry. Saitou Hajime doubted very much that the weasel girl could be involved in something so convoluted. Shinomori Aoshi, on the other hand....

The grin which came to the Wolf of Mibu's face wasn't pleasant. He had been forced to wait for months, unable to take action and to prevent the nameless assassin from taking lives as he saw fit, and that hadn't been something he had enjoyed. Now that some useful information had come into his hands, he would move as well. He had no idea what kind of fine mess the Oniwabanshu leader had allowed himself to be dragged into, but he would find out.

He would have answers.

Something in the back of his mind sighed in relief that Cho's report had been on young Makimachi Misao, and not on an annoying tomboy of a woman who thought she could call herself an adept at kenjustu. With an almost imperceptible shrug, Saitou Hajime admitted to himself, and himself alone, that he had feared during months that he knew whose name would eventually end up on the report he had just read. For once, he was glad that he had been mistaken, for he remembered.

He remembered the assassin whom his wife had known.

The assassin whom his wife had loved.

Sakurazuka Keisuke.

The Sakurazukamori, she had called him in a hiss. Saitou Hajime could still feel the fear and loathing there had been in Tokio's voice then, he knew the pain the merciless assassin had inflicted on the woman who was now the Head of the Sumeragi clan.

When he had first read reports and when he had understood how impossibly skilled the assassin seemed to be, the Wolf had thought that Sakurazuka Keisuke had come back to haunt their lives. Now he knew it was not so.

Nodding to himself, Saitou Hajime stood up and allowed himself another cigarette. First he needed to gather a bit more of information, and then he'd pay the Aoiya restaurant a visit. Slowly, he exhaled a long puff of smoke, then exited his office.

Outside, a new day was dawning.

End of Part 2.

Notes

Kodachi: the kodachi is a blade, shorter than a katana (so lighter than a katana), normally used more for defense--according to what gets said in the RK anime. The kodachi used to be Tokio's weapon, and it definitely is Shinomori Aoshi's most deadly weapon (he uses two kodachi blades).
Kunai: the weapons of Misao, they look like small knives, sharpened on both edges of the blade.
Ise: a city who holds Japan's most revered Shinto shrines. To be honest, Ise is the name it was given in 1956, before that year it was called Uji Yamada, but I decided to stick with Ise since I knew that name and not the former one. Okina: the Okina is in fact a mask of No, it's the mask of an old man with white hair...adequate for Jiiya, isn't it? ^^
Jiiya: the truth is I'm at a loss to spell this properly. In French, there's only a single "i", with an accent to indicate the sound is a long one. So I used two "i"s to try and keep this, and I hope it works.
Oishii: delicious.
Burakumin: a part of the Japanese population which were considered as "sullied" or "tainted" by "normal" people (and as such shunned by the population), most likely because their ancestors practised "impure" crafts which had ties with death or animal slaughter (so butchers, hide tanners, and so on. This notion was theoretically abolished by the Meiji government, but it didn't disappear easily from the Japanese society.
Oyasumi nasai: good night.
Katana-gari: literally, a hunt for katana. Cho's nickname in fact refers to the way the law (passed by the Meiji government) that forbade the use of sabers was called.
Sakurazukamori: for those of you who might not be familiar with Clamp's Tokyo Babylon, the Sakurazukamori isn't truly a name, it's more like a title, which means approximately: Guardian of the Sakura's Barrow.

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