"What's your name?"

Piercing blue eyes stared at me, and I met his gaze straight on. My name. He was asking for my name. What must I tell him?‌ My real name?‌ His hand stayed clasped over mine, and I‌ blurted out the first thought that came across my mind.

"Seika Kiyomi."

The name Kazama had called me by on that fateful night. Saito pulled me up to my feet, a ghost of a smile on his lips. And that was how the first night of my life in the Shinsengumi quarters began.

ㅡㅡㅡㅡ

"You're out again."

I opened the door to see Saito sitting on the wooden porch. The same blue eyes that had looked upon me on a certain summer night turned to look back at me, a slight glint of amusement tinging them. I smiled back faintly. The snow fell from the dark sky, blanketing the garden in pure white. It was already winter. Months had passed me by in a blur, like water through my fingers, and before I‌ knew it, the air had turned frigid and what was once a playful breeze was now a noisy gale, a freezing draft.

The Shinsengumi had taken me in and I‌ found my place among them as a medic, patching up wounds and brewing medicine for the injured. It was a simple life, dotted with momentary happiness and soft laughter. But it was nevertheless a sad one- one filled with the pain and blood of swordsmen, and a constant yearning for something I couldn't reach.

I could never go back.

It hit me right then.

Nothing would ever be the same again. The pure, innocent girl I used to be before all this. One who laughed at the littlest things and held a burning passion for every living thing in the world.

When had I started to change?

Was it when I saw a life burn out in front of my eyes for the first time? When I had joined Okita and his men on their usual rounds, thinking naively that nothing bad would happen?‌

I still remembered the soldier's expression-eyes wide with fear, lips quivering-and his hands, flailing wildly, grasping for something that was slipping away from him. It was nothing like when I had heard the furies fall to my feet. He was a human being. A living, breathing being with his own hopes and dreams.

I desperately pressed at the deep cut on his abdomen. Keep pressure on it, and it should stop. It had to. It had always worked- in all the books I'd read and all the movies I'd watched-the patient always survived miraculously. Tears formed in my eyes as the crimson blood seeped out of his kimono and colored my hands a ghastly red. It wouldn't stop. Not his hoarse gasping nor the blood gushing out of his gaping wound.

And when all that was left to be heard was my own frantic panting,

I‌ knew I had failed.

A silent tear trickled down my cheek, hot against the cold winter air. I could see my breath above me, making its way up to the sky in a quiet ascent. The wind howled in my ears, echoing in the bare garden and lingering above the withered trees.

The snow fell without stopping-a ruthless, cruel beauty-reminding me of a pair of eyes that had met me, on a night that felt just as hopeless and bleak as this one.

Almost-blonde hair reflecting the moonlight, gently swaying in the wind. A foreign name spoken with affection, a name that I‌ now live by, and the slightest glimpse into the reason why I had been brought here. 

Maybe he wasn't someone I had to run from. Maybe this time, I would have to search for him.

"Seika."

Saito called me, his eyes filled with concern. Silent but loyal, he had helped me with life with the Shinsengumi from the start. He was the first one to reach out to me with compassion. The first one to have offered a smile, however small.

"Saito, do you think you could teach me how to handle a sword?"

I wiped my tear away swiftly.

I couldn't stop now.