Snippet #2701017

He sat back on his heels as she gave her name, and exhaled a deep breath while he studied her face, a small frown forming between his eyebrows. “Yahiko, huh? That’s a strange name for a girl…” Using a fake name and disguise, the chances of her being a spy were rising by the second, but a spy would have a bit more savvy than just to claim they didn’t see anything. He leaned forward and waved his hand in front of her eyes. Even if she tried not to, instinct would make her blink or at least move her eyes away from the hand. “Well, I don’t think you’re blind,” he concluded. “So … you must have seen something,” he said, taking her words absolutely literally. Obviously, he knew that wasn’t what she meant, but he wanted to prompt her to talk about what happened so that he didn’t have to directly ask her. After all, he’d been told to keep his nose out of whatever it was, and he couldn’t exactly disobey a direct order.

“Your father?” he asked, surprised that she had given out some information, even though it wasn’t anything he expected. At first he had just imagined her whole name was fake, but there was something about the name “Yukimura” that seemed familiar to him. Maybe she was the daughter of that Yukimura. “Eh, your father wasn’t a doctor by any chance?” he asked her. He remembered seeing that doctor once or twice, recognisable as such by his shaven head. He was skinny with a mild kind of face. As Yutaro recalled, he hadn’t seen him around recently at all. And anyway, there were hundreds of people called Yukimura… “Why are you looking for him?”

Mysteries aside, the girl’s next question was easy enough. “This is the headquarters of the Shinsengumi,” said Yutaro proudly, sitting up straight as he answered. “We’re protecting the city of Kyoto from rebels. I’m pretty sure if you’re not some troublemaking ronin or Choshu spy, you don’t have anything to worry about.” He smiled at her, but it wore a little forced around the edges, since he had as much idea as she did about what she was in for. Once again, she pleaded that she hadn’t seen anything, and he sighed, just a little frustrated. “If you really didn’t see anything, why don’t you tell me what it is you didn’t see?”