Avatar Hitokiri Battosai {Kenshin Himura x Reader} Vol.1

~Prologue~

He was the son of an Earth Kingdom farmer. His first eight years were spent in a small village south of the Northern Mountains and just north of West Lake, the legendary lair of the Serpent. Even in his childhood, Shinta was different.

His hair was a strange reddish color, completely unheard of for even the village elders. In the sunlight, it would appear orange, the same shade as Kinmokusei, orange flowers which were known to grow in clumps among the shrubbery surrounding the village.

However, on days where the sun was shrouded in clouds and at night, the hair was maroon- the color of blood.

Shinta was told that when he was born, the midwife kept washing his head, thinking it was stained with blood from childbirth. Some villagers even wondered if Shinta, who hadn't a drop of non-Earth Kingdom blood, was somehow tied to the dreaded Fire Nation.

Also, it didn't help that Shinta's eyes were a soft violet, uncharacteristic of most Earth Kingdom people.

As a result, he was ostracized, a stranger in his own village. The adults shunned him, and the children taunted him and threw rocks.

However, no matter the abuse, Shinta never grew angry nor flew into a rage. He would cry a little in the beginning, yes, and he would sometimes frown- his face reminiscent of adults decades older- but he never retaliated in any way.

"That's my gentle boy," his mother used to say, a smile gracing her worn face. And he would smile back, eyes closed in happiness.

Two weeks before his eighth birthday, the second-to-last person in his village died of disease. If the illness had a name, nobody in the village knew it.

If it had a cure, nobody would receive it. Shinta's parents were one of the first to succumb, with fits of coughing, vomiting, and fainting overtaking their bodies. On his father's last day, Shinta could hardly bear to look at him anymore.

The first person Shinta ever buried was his mother, but she would not be his last. It took Shinta two days to dig that grave, another one to properly see her off, and another crying by her grave. A month later, he could dig two graves and send two people off into the next life in one day.

He did not cry anymore.

For some reason or another, Shinta was completely unaffected by the illness. Was it fate? Luck?

"It doesn't matter," Shinta mumbled to himself. "I can still move and breath, so I have to help." Two weeks before his eighth birthday, everyone who lived in the village, save Shinta, had died or fled the village.

After three days of huddling in a village hut, Shinta decided it was useless to linger any longer. He gathered the remaining morsels of food, wrapped himself in a ragged cloak, and left the village where he was born.

His village was very isolated, so it was without any real paths leading out of it. For a boy of Shinta's age, the going was rough. His routine for the next week or so was simple. Get up, eat a small breakfast, walk until noon, eat lunch, walk until dusk, start a fire, eat dinner, sleep. He traveled by the lakeshore, so he could quench his thirst when he needed to.

"I'm running out of food," he thought out loud. "I wonder if I could catch a fish from the lake." Of course, Shinta was without a fishing rod, and even if he had the forethought to bring one, he knew not how to fish.

It was almost twilight, the sun just about to surrender to the night. Splotches of orange were visible over the horizon, and the world seemed to be bathed in a soft golden light.

Shinta's hair seemed to glow, like embers in a fire, in the waning sunlight. Suddenly, Shinta spotted a campfire not far ahead. He had been so engrossed in the landscape, that he did not notice the campfire until it was less than 4 stone throws away. He noticed several figures sitting around the campfire. Before Shinta could think of whether or not to approach the group, something hard slammed into the back of his head, knocking him out cold.