Yoruhi

Who the heck was this child?

Was the first thought on Takashi’s mind upon seeing the little girl before him.

He was slightly relieved to see her however, because the presence of another child implied that a town must be close by.

“So…” Takashi said, not believing that she hadn’t been spying on him, “how long were you staring at me?”

The little girl made a pouting expression.

“I told you, I wasn’t spying on you!” she said.

He let out a sigh, realizing that this argument was stupid, and decided to get to the point.

“Uh, huh, yeah. Anyway, do you happen to know where the village is?”

He attempted to speak in a manner that seemed like he had always been from this world, hiding the fact that he had been reincarnated. He was already thankful that this girl spoke the same language as he did despite being from another world.

She gave him a smirked look.

“So you’re lost huh?” she asked in an oddly proud manner, “well I’m not telling you until you say I wasn’t spying on you!”

It hadn’t been even a minute with this child, and yet Takashi was already annoyed with her.

“Fine, you weren’t spying on me,” he relented, “now do you know where the village is?”

She gave him a satisfied smile that quickly melted into an expression of shy guilt.

“So you see… I don’t know either.”

Takashi took a deep breath. He couldn’t decide whether dealing with someone older or younger than him was more troublesome.

“So you’re lost too huh?” he asked, trying to keep himself calm.

“N-no!” she refuted, “my dad is with me.”

“Oh!” Takashi’s eyes lit up upon hearing that a trusted adult was around, “where is he?”

“...I don’t know.”

Takashi’s hands twitched as he felt the urge to facepalm, but refrained from doing so. Instead, he looked around the place, deciding that as the de facto older one, he had to take charge to get them out of this situation.

“Let’s go find him then,” he suggested.

The little girl’s expression however, continued to remain filled with guilt.

“So you see… I can’t really walk right now.”

Takashi looked over to her leg and flinched upon seeing the angle her ankle had been twisted in. He figured that it must’ve been the result of her tripping which had caused the noise in the bushes earlier, as indicated by the broken branch that laid snapped in half beneath her.

Instinctively, Takashi offered out his hand to lift her up, but upon seeing this, the girl just gave him a strange look without moving.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m helping you up.”

“...”

“What?”

“You can’t lift me up, silly.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I—”

And that’s when he remembered that he was in the body of someone that was much younger in terms of physical development than his past self.

She tilted her head at him and remarked, “you are a strange kid.”

I could say the same thing about you, he wanted to say, but he didn’t want to make her cry as children often do when they’re insulted.

Suddenly, a loud voice bellowed out loudly through the forest.

“TATSUKO!!! WHERE ARE YOU???” the male voice called out.

The little girl’s eyes lit up, which led Takashi to conclude that that must’ve been her name, and the one calling her was her dad that she had mentioned.

“I’M HERE DADDY!!!” she called back, equally as loud, “I NEED A LITTLE HELP!”

No DNA test needed, Takashi thought, covering his ears.

Before he could do anything else however, in a blink of an eye, a tall man appeared from the bushes in front of them. He had light brown hair that was tied back in a short ponytail and had striking golden eyes, just like Tatsuko’s. He was wearing the same exact haori that Tatsuko was wearing with the same exact sakura emblem stitched onto his chest. Wrapped around his left hip was a long, ornate, black sheath that seemed to hold a katana.

What? Takashi wondered, How did he get here so fast? Just now his voice sounded so distant...

But the man had appeared before them in literal seconds, and not even his footsteps could be heard approaching them. It was here that Takashi realized that the person standing before them must’ve been a powerful warrior.

“Hmm? A little boy?” the man asked upon seeing him, “what are you doing so far away from town? Where are you parents?”

But before Takashi could respond, Tatsuko cut in.

“Daddy!” she shouted, raising her arms out in anticipation, “can you lift me up please?”

He looked at her twisted angle and said, “ooh that’s not good… Try not to wander off next time okay? Let’s go get you patched up at home.”

He then lifted her up onto his shoulder with one arm and helped her adjust herself onto his back.

Watching this, Takashi felt a familiar sense of jealousy and longing brewing inside him. It was just like it was on Christmas, watching the other kids and their families getting along with each other.

The man suddenly looked in the direction where Takashi had come from as if sensing something. His eyes looked at the second pair of robes that now laid emptily in the snow, his expression carrying a sense of sadness behind it that Takashi couldn’t place.

“Little boy… do you know what happened here?” the man asked.

Takashi shook his head, before clutching it in fake pain.

“I… can’t remember anything that happened past an hour ago,” he lied, “I feel kind of dizzy.”

Of course, he wasn’t going to let this man know that he had been reincarnated, and if the man was going to let him get away with this lie, then it was for the better. No one was going to scrutinize a poor little boy anyway.

“I see…” the man said, his expression becoming sort of relieved before he smiled, “well then! Do you at least remember your name?”

“My name is—” Takashi tried to respond but paused upon realizing something.

The person before him didn’t have to know his real name. He hated it anyway. It was a common name, and one that was easily stereotyped into many things, and when combined with his taboo of an uncommon last name Haguro that didn’t sound appealing in the slightest, his own name became one of the many things he resented in his past life. Instead, he decided to come up with a new name on the spot.

“Yoruhi…” he finally said after a few seconds, “my name is Yoruhi… Yoruhi… Yukihana.”

The new name he had given himself was actually an etymological nightmare, but it contained the opposite of the many things he hated about his old name. First off, his first name was far from traditional or common. “Night fire” wasn’t a name that someone would normally give to a person, or at least certainly not in the etymological way that he had given it to himself, and it was something that a kid would come up with for an edgy username in an online game.

Lastly, his last name, although typically uncommon as well, was beautiful in nature, unlike his old one. Yukihana, written as “snow flower” was what he had decided on.

Tatsuko’s father thought for a moment and looked down at the snow and up at the sky above them.

“Yoruhi… Yukihana huh…” he mumbled, “I suppose that’s quite fitting.”

The man had guessed correctly where Yoruhi had gotten the inspiration for his name: from both the aurora in the night sky, and the carnations that bloomed in the snow.

“Well then Yoruhi,” he said, “let’s get you back to the city shall we? You’re good at following people unlike this little rascal right?”

“Hey!” Tatsuko shouted while her dad let out a hearty laugh.

The walk towards the city was quiet in a peaceful kind of way. Well, almost anyway. Tatsuko kept talking and talking about the most random things, and occasionally she would point to a small animal that passed by, describing them in a way that seemed both childish and professional as if she had studied them in the same way that Yoruhi studied flowers.

The sound of her voice gradually drowned out in Yoruhi’s ears as they continued walking. He seemed to be more focused on something else: the free hand on her dad’s arm that hung loosely by his side.

As they walked through the snow, he was reminded of the streets during Christmas, and began to silently wonder if it was okay to reach out for the man’s hand and hold onto it as if it was his own father’s. He refrained from doing so, however, too shy to make things awkward between him and the stranger he just met, but in truth, Tatsuko’s dad wouldn’t have minded if he had reached out.

After all, to him, Yoruhi was just another lost kid.