"Alright, Meyumi. You can stay as Makoto's maid if she wishes it," Kenshin said calmly when Meyumi had recovered a little. He was curious to see what would come of it.
"W-what…?" Meyumi said in surprise. Her first thought was indignation, but she wisely kept silent. Weighing the pros and cons in a second, she decided that the prospect of being a maid to a harmless girl wasn't so bad, and she was sure it wouldn't last long; sooner or later she would find the key to the sir's heart.
"Makoto, you won't drive me away, will you?" Meyumi asked with teary eyes, using every manipulation technique she had learned over the years.
"O-of course not! S-sir, I don't want anyone to serve me…" Makoto whispered. The thought of having her own maid was unpleasant; she considered it unfair to Meyumi and didn't want to be her mistress.
"Still, it's either that, or I'll throw Meyumi out at the next turn," Kenshin said with a smile. He derived enormous empathic pleasure from every such situation, feeling the all-encompassing warmth from Makoto's bright heart permeating his entire body.
"N-no, sir, please… Makoto, don't abandon me!" Meyumi pleaded, hugging the girl she had considered nothing more than a "flea" just hours ago.
"O-okay. Sir, I agree. Give her a chance; we'll do everything you say together!" Makoto declared. In the few hours spent with Kenshin, she had realized that her new master was very kind, and becoming a maid to such a person was hardly not the best thing that could happen to a girl from the House of Flowers.
Kenshin couldn't restrain himself and smiled, stroking the short-haired girl's head. As soon as he reached out, she flinched, squinted, and ducked her head, instinctively expecting another blow. But a second later she felt the long-forgotten sensation of affection and looked in surprise at her new master.
"You are a real flower among weeds, Makoto," he said with a smile, continuing to stroke her head. Even slightly dusty hair didn't make Kenshin remove his hand. In his eyes, even covered in dirt, Makoto looked like a real flower among the dirty and rotten weeds of this world, and with every second he became more convinced of his decision to care for this wonderful flower for the rest of his life.
"You're one disgusting old man. She could be your granddaughter! Aren't you ashamed?!" Noriko said with a laugh, scratching her itching stump.
Hearing her words, Kenshin merely chuckled quietly, not wanting to justify himself, and continued stroking the young brunette for several more minutes.
The whole time, Makoto looked like a boiled crab. Her entire face was red, and the desire to fall through the earth became the strongest it had ever been. She didn't understand why the sir was so kind and didn't know how to react. But the long-forgotten feeling of affection brought back memories of old times when her mother and father were alive, when she felt safe, and when the world was much brighter than it was now.
About an hour into the journey, when they had moved a decent distance from the city, Kenshin decided to make a short stop to tame all the horses, since Ichiro and Fifteenth had no skills in handling such obstinate animals, and Kenshin's empathic suggestion was weakening with every minute.
"If anyone needs the toilet, go now. The next stop will be in a few hours," Kenshin said calmly and stepped out of the not-very-comfortable carriage. He had many ideas for modernizing both the carriage itself and the horses, and he kept all interesting thoughts separate from the rest.
Obtaining perfect memory had only partially simplified his life, adding many new troubles. It wasn't enough to simply remember everything. He had to extract the necessary information from boundless layers of useless nonsense. He hadn't immediately learned to isolate the needed memories and "store" them separately from the others.
It was all so abstract and indescribable that Kenshin himself didn't understand what he felt and "saw," preferring to imagine it as numerous "boxes" with the necessary memories. He still hadn't mastered this skill perfectly and couldn't properly organize all memories, but the most important ones were in a separate "box."
"I'll go get some fresh air. It's been a long time since I was outside," Noriko said and began descending with difficulty. Kenshin couldn't watch her struggle, so he carefully helped her with telekinesis.
"You still haven't said what that ability is? Even my father wasn't capable of such a thing, and he was the mightiest warrior I've ever seen."
"It's telekinesis. Your father? What was his name? Maybe I've heard of him," Kenshin asked with interest. He was very curious about this incomprehensible ability the system called "Berserk." He suspected it was a type of Kekkei Genkai and understood that the system used its own names. The only thing unclear to him at the moment was the existence of some "database" the system referenced to produce the most similar term. Kenshin didn't understand whether the system relied on terms and abilities known to him.
He concluded that if the system had its own database, then all these abilities and terms must exist somewhere else. Or at least there must be someone who created this system and embedded a huge database into it.
"I doubt you've heard of him. We're from the Land of Demons, and that's very far from here…" Noriko sighed, pulling herself up with one hand and literally throwing herself onto the carriage roof. It was very uncomfortable for her to stand, and contemplating natural beauty was one of the few activities that calmed her heart.
Kenshin was quite surprised when he saw her physical strength. He mentally checked the chakra suppression formation once more and found no malfunction. Noriko casually demonstrated strength she couldn't possibly have without chakra or strong muscles. At the moment, all her chakra was blocked, and her body was practically exhausted from hunger and fatigue, yet she seemed to feel no weakness and calmly sat on the carriage roof, enjoying the scent of the endless forests of the Land of Fire.
"Ahem, the Land of Demons is indeed very far… How did you end up enslaved so far from your homeland?" Kenshin asked with interest, simultaneously drawing formations on the horses' withers with telekinesis. Although he was giving them peculiar, painful tattoos, the horses remained quite calm, feeling the empathic pleasure transmitted by Kenshin. He still hadn't fully learned to influence people this way, but he felt his psionic mastery growing with every day of practice and assumed that soon he would be able to control people's emotions without much effort.