❝𝑯𝒊𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈? 𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒊𝒕'𝒔 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒔𝒂𝒇𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆.❞
Japanese-American, Megumi Nakamura, decides to abandon the comfort of home after graduating to go live with her cousin in Asia...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Meg didn't see much of Taka for the rest of the weekend, however, her mind was still reeling over their last interaction.
As she spent longer periods of time with the man, his softer side was coming out more and more. She knew he likely wasn't the best person to get too involved with, but she couldn't get over the way he helped her overcome such a big fear of hers.
When he was showing her how to shoot, he had been patient and understanding. He made her feel confident in her own abilities, and he did it so effortlessly. For a while there, she was convinced the man was evil. But the way he treated her the other day was making her rethink everything. He really seemed like he could be a good person deep down.
He was so confusing though. After she had hit the target's head dead-on, he simply took the gun and protective gear from her before leaving all mysteriously.
"Hopefully you'll never have to use what I've shown you here today. But now you know how to protect yourself if the situation ever arises."
His last words kept replaying over and over again in her brain. She wondered if he felt there was a chance that she would have to defend herself sometime in the near future. Like he said, she now felt confident that she'd know what to do. But that didn't necessarily mean she felt confident in her ability to actually go through with shooting somebody, even if that was her only option.
He told her that everyone had been sheltering her from the realities of "this world," and Meg was beginning to think he was right. Though Ren had been honest about his involvement in the yakuza, he never really went into detail about what he actually did everyday. And with Taka making it a point to teach her how to handle a gun, she now realized this line of work was far more dangerous than he had let off.
She didn't have too much time to fester on it though as the village had turned fairly chaotic, and talk of Akira Ito's arrival was all anyone could talk about.
Apparently, the man had been away for nearly a month on important business, and everyone was working overtime to get the place tidied up for his approaching return. People were hustling about and doing whatever they could to provide a warm welcome for the man. Many of the women were cooking his favorite foods while others were cleaning his home—and they were all doing this by choice.
Meg hadn't heard much about the man since she arrived in Japan, but it appeared that it wasn't just Taka who was deeply cherished and celebrated by the village people. Akira and Ren were a very close second, and Meg could clearly see that everyone wanted to show their love and gratitude for their wakagashira for whatever he had been doing while he was away.
Though Meg thought their efforts were beyond sweet and she was happy to be of any assistance that she could be with all the preparations, you would've thought that the village was preparing for a Second Coming with how anal and particular everyone was about everything being nothing short of perfect.
