[A/N] - Hi~ Read this please?

Oh my gosh, it's been so long. -glomps readers- I missed you all! Somehow I managed to be so busy that I haven't updated this for... well, the better part of a year. For that, I sincerely apologize.

That being said, there's no way I can manage to have what most would consider to be a normal updating schedule for this. It'll probably be whenever I have time and am not dead tired from all my other obligations.

But I did indeed miss writing this story for my OTP.

So please, enjoy the eleventh chapter of Maikaze!

Recommendations: Read in 3/4th page size. I personally think it looks cleaner that way.

Disclaimer: All this time has passed and I still don't own Hakuouki in any way, shape, or form. ;-;

"Oi, Chizuru-chan. We're getting ready to leave now."

Chizuru heard Souji's voice outside the door of her room, where she'd returned after receiving what was essentially Hijikata's permission to leave headquarters.

"Oh, already? Give me a moment," she replied, standing up from where'd she'd been sitting to rest a bit and securing her short sword at her waist.

"'Already?'" Souji repeated, chuckling. She could practically hear the smirk in his voice when he said, "If I were an enemy here to cut you down, you would have been dead on the floor a while ago. You shouldn't say something like 'already.'"

Indeed, when she slid open the door to reveal Souji, she found him to be wearing the signature blue haori of the Shinsengumi, as well as a smirk on his face, to which she sighed in response.

"Sorry for taking so long," she murmured, perhaps not putting as much remorse as she should have into the apology. She took a cursory glance around the hall to find that Souji was the only person there. "Where's Heisuke? You said he'd be doing the rounds today too, right?"

Souji started walking away from the room towards the gate that led from the headquarters out to the city streets. Chizuru followed after him, straining a bit to keep up with his longer strides. She tried to keep herself from tripping while listening to what Souji was saying at the same time.

"I did, but I meant that Heisuke would be doing some rounds today, not really that he was going to go with us." Souji looked over his shoulder at her with a slight, sideways smile. "Disappointed?"

"Er… no. Just curious." She wasn't disappointed – that wasn't the right word. Maybe… apprehensive?

Souji laughed, turning to face front again. "Very convincing. Hijikata-san actually told me that he wanted you to go with me and the First Division instead of with Heisuke and the Eighth."

"Why is that?" Chizuru found that slightly puzzling.

"He's going on the night rounds. Hijikata-san figured that it'd be enough of a pain to watch you during the day, let alone at night, so he stuck me with you so you can go around while the sun's out."

Chizuru felt that she should be offended at the way he was talking about her, as if she were a burden, but she also knew that the inflection his words had were true. She wasn't exactly a waste of space, but she couldn't call herself an asset, either. Hijikata-san has good foresight, at the very least. I don't think I'd want to wander around Kyoto at night anyway, even if I went with Heisuke.

"That makes sense."

"Doesn't it? He's such a nice demon of a commander too, making it easier for me to watch you and harder to do the rounds." They had reached the courtyard just inside the gates where Chizuru saw some familiar faces milling around in the mild spring sunshine. She didn't know them by name, but she bowed when they passed by her after Souji called out, "First Division, fall in! We're heading out now."

All of the men in their blue coats filed out the gate and into the network of streets towards Kyoto's main street. Souji and Chizuru followed the loose procession from the back, their footsteps measured and rhythmic.

"I'm surprised you still wanted to go on the rounds," Souji mused aloud after several minutes. "You got a pretty nasty cut on your arm from Hajime-kun."

"That wasn't Saitou-san's fault – I was careless and made a mistake," she argued.

Souji hummed noncommittally. "You managed to hold your own pretty well in the beginning – even though I was expecting you to cut yourself sooner, with the way you were swinging around your backwards sword."

"Backwards, you say…" Chizuru's brows drew together slightly. "If I was fighting as well as you said, then isn't it a good thing I was holding my sword that way?"

"Who knows? You are the one with the cut, after all. Swinging your arm around like that isn't going to make it close any faster though." He waved his hand lazily at her arms, swinging by her sides in time with her walk.

"I can't help it." She rubbed at the arm with Saitou's scarf still wrapped around it. I'll have to wash this before I give it back to him. "Just look - there are so many people around!"

Indeed, the streets were bustling, people moving to and from different stores and building, socializing and all around having a good time. They did, however, shoot the Shinsengumi in their infamous blue haoris glares and glances of disdain, quieting whenever they passed by and keeping their voices to a low mutter until they were out of their general space.

"The Gion Festival is coming up soon, so I'll give you that, but really? It's the main city street. What did you expect?" Souji seemed amused by her excitement.

"… Nothing, much, really, but I guess I'm just excited to be outside." Chizuru was embarrassed. I know it's nothing spectacular to be so happy about, but still – I can't help it. I guess being in the headquarters desensitized me to the feeling of being in a crowd.

"Well, Hijikata-san did keep you locked up for the better part of three months," Souji admitted, echoing her thoughts in his statement.

"That's true, but at least he thought about my well-being before letting me go."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Where'd you pull that from?"

Chizuru adopted a stance with one hand tucked under one arm and the other hand moving around to emphasize her point, continuing her measured pace forward. "You said it earlier – he didn't want me to go at night when it's more dangerous, so he told you to take me with you during the day when it's light out."

She believed her reasoning was sound, but it invoked a bout of laughter from Souji. She huffed a bit when he hid his mouth behind his hand, a half-baked attempt at masking his mirth. "Sorry, sorry," he said, chuckles still slipping past his lips even as he spoke. "Just – you see it so positively, it was kind of a shock to me."

"Is that a bad thing?" She frowned a bit.

"Not really," he replied airily. "Like I said before, we're risking our lives on these rounds, day or night, so whichever one you go on doesn't really make a difference. Not to mention, I don't really associate that way of thinking with Hijikata-san, either."

"If you say so…" I can't challenge that – they must've known each other for a very long time before I even thought of coming to Kyoto. "Oh, is it okay if I talk to some of the people around here?" She gestured to the people on the sides of the street that they were walking down. "They might've seen my father here."

A thoughtful look crossed Souji's face. "That's fine, I guess. Just don't stray too far away or I might not be able to pull your ass out of the fire when you find it."

"… Okay."

'When I find it?' Shouldn't he have said 'when it finds me?'

Keeping his cautionary words in the back of her mind, she drifted away from the rest of the First Division to approach some of the townspeople that weren't as intimidated by the Shinsengumi as some of the others who'd ducked into alleyways and small stores to avoid them.

"Excuse me… Sorry to bother you, but have you seen a man in his forties around here? He's bald and speaks with an Edo accent." She repeated this to several people, most of whom apologized to her and said they hadn't seen him. After a period of fruitless questions, she finally found someone who could answer her in the positive.

"Ah, I think I have seen someone like that," one man replied to her, smiling at her a bit. "If I remember right, he was heading to Masu-san's store." He pointed to a sunlit storefront in one of the alleys branching off the main street.

"Really?" Chizuru was elated. "Thank you very much!"

She caught Souji's eye after that, seeing him where he stood several steps away. He seemed to give her a warning glance before a yell cut through the low murmur of the people that'd made up the background noise of the street.

"You! Are you a rogue rounin? State your domain and name or you will be arrested!"

High-pitched screams and loud curses followed the declaration from one of the Shinsengumi's soldiers confronting someone in the street. Chizuru could see Souji's mouth form a 'tch' of annoyance before a surge of people running away from the street pulled her away from him.

"Wait – excuse me, can I –!" She tried moving against the flood of people to make her way back to Souji and the Shinsengumi, but she might as well have been pushing against a stone wall for all the progress she was making.

Sighing in frustration, she picked up the motion of someone waving at her from the corner of her eye and managed to slip into the alley where a kindly-looking old man was gesturing for her to come closer.

"You don't want to be close to that, boy. You're free to wait here while this blows over."

"Ah, thank you…" Wary but grateful, Chizuru made her way over to the store that the man was sitting in front of and noticed a length of cloth hanging next to the entrance. Her eyes widened when she read the characters painted on the makeshift banner and asked the old man, "Could you be… the owner of this store – Masu-san?"

"I am." He nodded.

"Oh, that's great! Actually, I wanted to ask you if you've seen –"

"K-Keimon-san!" One of the customers of the store suddenly yelled, standing up from his seat suddenly. "That kid – I saw him with that Okita from the Shinsengumi!"

The old man's demeanor changed in a flash, his amicable smile disappearing and a panicked look appearing on his face. "W-what!?"

Most, if not all the men in the store got up from their seats and made a mad dash to the door, shoving past Chizuru and elbowing her in the ribs and shoulder in their haste to get away. Chizuru was about to ask what was going on before she felt someone's presence behind her. She turned around and exclaimed, "Souji-san!"

The russet-haired First Division captain smirked down at her, a hand on his sword while he effectively blocked all the men in the store from leaving. "You seriously have the worst luck. How you managed to make something like this happen, you'll have to explain later."

"But I don't even –"

He grabbed her by the shoulder firmly and pushed her out of the store, where she saw more of the First Division behind him.

"Well, you're in trouble," she heard Souji announce to the men in the store. A collective hiss of swords being drawn echoed in the street before the Shinsengumi rushed into the store, starting a brawl that would last for several long, confused minutes as far as Chizuru was concerned.

Back at the Shinsengumi's headquarters, Chizuru found herself being led to the meeting room by Gen-san, who opened the door to reveal that most of the Shinsengumi's captains, as well as Sannan, Yamazaki and Shimada had gathered together. Sitting ahead of the other captains was Souji, apparently getting an earful from Sannan. Not quite sure what to do, Chizuru sat next to him, feeling that whatever Sannan was reprimanding him for was her fault.

"Like I said, it wasn't like I had a choice," Souji said, evidently annoyed. "Would you've rather had me let all those Chōshū escape from under our noses?"

Sannan's brows drew together, a frown bringing the corners of his mouth down. "I believe I'd already told you that we were letting Furutaka Shuntaro operate that store under the name Masu Keimon in order to observe his movements and gather information on the enemy. Despite that, you found it necessary to attack him?"

Heisuke decided to add, "Well, I mean, don't you feel sorry for Yamazaki-kun and Shimada-kun? They were the ones in charge of watching that store every single day, so I figure Souji did them a favor."

A stern glare from Sannan made Heisuke settle back down, but Yamazaki decided to speak as well. "In truth, we haven't been getting anywhere at Masu's for the past few days."

Shimada nodded. "We would have spoken to the Vice Commander about it soon, so I think all Captain Okita did was shortcut the process a bit."

Shinpachi, sitting towards the back along with Heisuke and Sano, chuckled a bit. "Man, you two are so easy-going. Souji, on the other hand…"

"We ended up arresting him." Souji folded his arms, a bit of petulance permeating the movement. "It's not like it was for nothing."

Sannan opened his mouth to rebuke Souji's statement, but Chizuru couldn't stand for Souji to take all the criticism because of something she'd incited. "It's not his fault." Sannan turned his attention to her and she felt herself shrink back from his cold eyes. "After that confrontation in the street, there were so many people running away from there, I got separated from him in the crowd. I should have gone back to him right away, but instead I ended up going to the store because I'd heard someone had seen my father there… They recognized me from when I was walking on the rounds with the others and –"

"Be as that may, whose job was it to look after you?" Sannan's frown deepened. "Even with such a simple assignment as keeping track of a single charge… Is this the best a captain of the Shinsengumi can do?"

Chizuru felt horrible by that point – it just seemed to be that no one could placate him, even if they thought his anger was unfounded. She didn't know what to say.

"If there's anyone to blame, it's me. I'm the one who let her go." This statement came after the door slid open for everyone to see Hijikata standing behind it, a stern look on his face.

Chizuru thought Sannan still seemed like he wanted to say something, but with the commander's presence and admittance, he settled down a bit onto his heels and sighed through his nose. In the meanwhile Hijikata strode over to the empty spot next to Sannan and sat down almost ungracefully, with a loud exhalation.

"Hijikata-san, if you're here, that means you're done interrogating Furutaka now, right?" Sano asked.

Hijikata was silent for a moment before nodding once. "… They're planning to set the city on fire on a windy day, to let it carry the flames, and to kidnap the emperor in the panic."

A stunned silence met his words. Even Sannan, in his stony disapproval, seemed shaken.

Heisuke was the first to speak up. "Kidnap the emperor? But aren't they imperialists? That kind of goes against that whole idea, right?"

"I don't know what they're thinking, but I do know that they're going to plan a meeting for tonight, now that we've captured Furutaka." Hijikata crossed his arms. "They won't want to stay in Kyoto for much longer – they've most likely already assumed that we've forced this information out of him."

He looked at Chizuru out of the corner of his eye, then turned to face her fully. "We also got some information on Kōdō out of him. Apparently, a man matching his description visited that store flanked by a group of men from Chōshū."

That shocked Chizuru. "But… But, isn't my father loyal to the shogunate?" Her voice was faint as she asked the question, expressing her confusion. "Why would he be with imperialist men?"

Hijikata shook his head, silently telling her and everyone else that he didn't know the answer to her question. He turned his attention back to the other men in the room and said, "We'll have to act tonight, before the Chōshū run out of the city. We won't be able to catch them if they do."

"We're going to go raid them, then?" Shinpachi's excited question elicited a nod from Hijikata and the room broke out into ecstatic activity.

Everyone seemed ready and raring to go – except for Chizuru, who was still lost in the fact that her father could be with the men the Shinsengumi were so eagerly preparing to kill.

[A/N] - Ah. Refreshing, to be able to write this.

I hope there aren't any inaccuracies or typos within this. It's been a while since I watched the first season, though I have watched the third and the OVAs recently.

I don't know how popular this series is anymore, but please, if you take the time to read this, leave a review as well. It's just me being personally selfish, but I do need something in my e-mail to encourage me or make me smile a bit these days.

But of course, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and have a wonderful until-the-next-chapter!