Haru edged forward on the branch of his cherry tree as two ragged, travel-stained and obviously young travelers came walking up the road. The boy would scarcely have come up to his chin--not much of a shock there, as he was rather freakishly tall--and the girl was even smaller and more delicate in appearance, probably two or or three years younger than the boy. He could see that the boy wore the two swords of a samurai, rather than just the katana of a ronin or the wakizashi typical of a simple bushi--a solder of common birth. Masterless as he was, he took a lot of risk carrying two swords the way he did. Town officials might challenge his right to wear both swords since as a ronin, he didn’t have the right to both, not under the current laws.

The girl was carrying a long stave, a traveler’s walking stick, probably meant to help keep her feet steady over rocky ground.
The branch of the cherry tree dipped and swayed in a stronger gust and he finally saw their faces, only his own odd heritage giving him the ability as they were still a good distance away.

The both of them were wearing broad straw hats to keep the sun from their faces, which in turn kept Haru from getting a good look at them. He could see they both had falls of dark hair that had been tied back, though oddly the boy’s was much longer than the girl’s.

The boy raised his head, glancing up at something, the motion revealing his face to the gaze of the watching Haruhiro.

The man’s breath caught, heart stepping up its beat as he got a good look at the young man.

Even through the dirt, there was no mistaking the youth’s uncommon appearance. Like a pearl that had fallen into the dust, the luster was dimmed but impossible to fully conceal. Looking at him, Haruhiro didn’t think a solid layer of mud could have dulled this boy’s perfection.
The girl at his side showed that they were brother and sister even if her words had not already made that fact evident, for she had the same soft mouth and wide brown eyes, a fine straight nose and refined cheekbones. He could see both young people had a natural pallor that put the most famous geishas to shame.

And if anyone would know that to be true, it was Haruhiro. He’d seen more than his fair share of geisha--common prostitutes too, for that matter--to make him a good judge of such things. No wonder they’re wearing those hats.
He also had a fine appreciation of masculine beauty, and the boy...was affecting him the way few women ever could. He shifted on the tree branch, keenly aware that he’d sprouted a rather stiff branch of his own.

"Beautiful," he murmured. "Just like the old woman in that village said he was." The Shogun’s retainer was now convinced that he’d found the boy and girl he’d been trying to find. And it was about time, too.

He’d been searching the countryside for almost half a year, ever since he’d first heard rumors about the boy’s skill as a swordsman. Or, more to the point, since he’d heard the boy claimed to know the Autumn Wind style. In his twenty-some-odd years of life, Haruhiro had only seen one practitioner of that style and it had been one of the most beautiful displays of swordsmanship he’d witnessed in his entire life, and the man in question, an older samurai in the service of a lesser warlord who’d come to offer his fealty to the Shogun, had admitted he only knew the rudiments of the style.

If this kid even knows a bit more than that old samurai did, he’ll be worth apprenticing in the trade, the man thought as he watched the two make their slow way closer.