Marionette

Oceans, Chapter Forty Five - Tadaima [ただいま]

It turned out that what Shigure meant by first light wasn't when the sun first rose in the sky at all. In fact, it was much, much later than the 5am sunrise that Amaya had been roused from dreamless slumber.

Thunder rolled in the distance as Amaya opened her eyes Saturday morning, finding herself in a room all on her own, the old, dusty curtains drawn to let in the natural light from outside.

She was roused by the most peculiar sensations, a fuzzy vibrating against her feet that jolted her awake with a squeak.

Startled and unsure of what was even going on, Amaya threw the covers of the futon aside frantically as she scrambled as far away from the strange thing in her futon as she could.

The source of her sudden fright turned out to be something rather bemusing, and it had Amaya begin to realize that despite his rather serious disposition, Shigure had a particularly strange sense of humor.

A little round ball of fuzzy white material with plastic eyes and whiskers was rumbling away on the bottom part of the futon, a wind-up cat toy she surmised by the rather mouse-like design - It wobbled and rumbled over the material, and if it was set on the floor, it likely would start bouncing around with the force of it's vibrating.

It was the sort of thing she could imagine Karma throwing at her just because both the insinuation as well as the act itself would piss her off.

She prayed he'd never think of it, because she really might give him that long-awaited black-eye if he did.

Calming down after ascertaining that the intruder in her futon was not going to eat her, Amaya surmised that Shigure had wandered in and tossed the bemusing item in the foot of the futon to do the waking for him.

So she ignored it in preference for morning habits.

Getting changed into a pair of shorts, a black tank-top and a hooded jumper, Amaya began to make her way downstairs, her fingers running through her hair to untangle the strands.

Downstairs in the Tatami room, there was no sign of Shigure anywhere, however she could see that there were two cups of tea steaming away on the table.

Which meant he wasn't too far away.

'Good to see you're awake.' Shigure remarked, almost as if he was giving a response to her very thoughts.

Amaya let out a startled squeak as she stumbled forward a couple of paces, whirling around to look at the man who'd snuck up on her.

Shigure was smiling in that kind manner of his, tossing the little white cats toy in the air a little as he walked past her, leaving Amaya to glare at the back of his head.

She let out a breath and shook her head ever so slightly before she began to follow Shigure into the Tatami room.

Amaya wondered what kind of arrangements were going to be discussed between the two of them, and with an edge of discomfort, she wondered just what kind of treatment Shigure was thinking of for her.

She couldn't deny the fact that the word treatment itself made her uncomfortable.

'Amaya, there's no need to stand on ceremony.' Shigure spoke up all of a sudden, startling Amaya out of her small second of thought. 'Come sit down.'

She found that he was already sitting at the table, his cup of tea in his hands.

Amaya let out a breath as she decided to do as she was told.

She sat opposite Shigure at the table, tucking her feet beneath her as he took a sip of his tea.

The same kind of awkward feeling that had descended upon her the night before had returned, with increasing effect - It felt almost exactly the same as the night before, and she would have believed it if it wasn't currently somewhere between ten and twelve in the morning.