HAVEN || SATORU GOJO

XXXIV

"OF COURSE I DON'T WANT TO FIGHT YOU, WHY THE HECK WOULD I?" 

The thirteen year old asked with a raised brow as she plopped onto the cold hard ground with a sigh of relief. "It was so hot in this kimono, I thought I was going to die." She continued to exasperate, fanning herself lightly while the boy she spoke to diligently played Digimon on his Nintendo DS, pressing a cold water bottle against her cheek.

She didn't waste any time in tugging the obi sash at her waist, allowing a few of the garment's layers to slip off, leaving her in a white silk robe that she also discarded, revealing the tank top and shorts that remained underneath.

If the Gojo clan retainers or even her own retainers had heard that she was wearing such revealing clothing in front of the heir of one of the three great clans, she would never hear the end of it, that was for sure.

"Wouldn't you want to fight your teacher? That's what most people do. Once they beat their teacher, then they'll know that they have nothing else to learn."

"You just want to wipe the floor with me. You're not slick, Satoru." Rieka whipped him across the face with her kimono as he let out a grunt, toppling over.

The girl had just gotten back from some ceremony .. that he was also supposed to attend, but skipped. His yukata was hanging right in front of them, untouched, despite all the trouble the tailors had gone through to customize it to his fit.

"Also you're not my teacher, you just so happened to correct a few things." She scoffed.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Sounds like a teacher to me."

"Just remember how many times your head hit the floor when I swept you off your feet in bokator, aikido and judo." Rieka mocked him. It was just down to the fact that she was much more physically flexible than he was .. also she was taller, having hit puberty already, slamming him onto the ground a fair share of times.

When it came to sorcery, to the expectation of normal sorcerers, she was extraordinary .. to the normal standard that she was typically upheld to, the girl was actually lagging a bit behind.

Her cursed technique was extremely fluid, it merely drained a lot of cursed energy that she replenished by eating cursed spirit's souls, something she learned to do last year.

"Besides .. if they ever put us against each other .. I'd probably let you win. It'd be embarrassing for the great Satoru Gojo to lose to a girl .. nonetheless one who doesn't have the Six Eyes to her advantage."

Gojo put down his game, smirking slightly as his eyes narrowed. "Was that a challenge?"

"I was just humbling you with a fact is all, since you don't seem to know many of those." Rieka flicked his forehead lightly as he scooted back with a frown.

There was nobody ever this mean to him. To say that she created his virtues of humility would be an understatement in itself.

At first, he tolerated her because she was entertaining to an extent, now she was incorporated as one of his only forms of socializing, if not then the only form at all. His eyes and his ears were her. The whispers from the elders all fell to her ears that would be passed on to his own.

He always took refuge in the Urashima estate after the incident that left the girl an orphan like him. It made life a bit easier that he didn't have to worry about someone stabbing him in the back every second in his own home.

At first — he did have his guard up around Rieka.

After a while of thinking, there was the realization that she would gain nothing out of killing him, especially considering that people were still after her.