Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Shades of the Trapped Bones

"Kouta?" Mana uttered, still doubting if she heard it right. The young man she still had feelings for and whom she had a particularly spiritually eviscerating break-up with.

"Yeah, I'm going to reach for your blindfold now, don't punch me in the face please." He shyly asked the magician as Mana felt the tight pressure on her temples and her hair loosen, she closed her eyes but that did not prevent from her eyes exploding into a flood of tears and sparks of painful itching and irritation. Then something plastic and light touched Mana's nose and the unpleasant sensations lightened up somewhat.

"You can open your eyes now", Mana could hear Kouta take a couple of steps back after he said that. Uneasily and slowly, the magician let her eyes open up just for a moment before closing them again, then repeating this process a couple of times before she could open them up a bit easier as the irritation was no longer as prevalent as it used to be whenever the magician tried opening them up before.

Kouta had put the shades he was carrying around on Mana.

"Wow, thanks, that's much better, I can almost see like this", the kunoichi turned around a couple of times, examining everything around her as closely as her dark and shady glasses allowed her. It has been a while since she could see this clearly... Just the sweet spot of where she missed being able to see but have not yet forgotten how amazing it was. The vision of ninja rabbits was really amazing if they did not suffer any of these symptoms. Then again, most of the rabbits that left the caves were adults, they younglings most likely underwent training to prevent just this same kind of outcome from happening.

"Do you have everything you need? I can still make a run for supplies..." Kouta wondered.

"What is this?" Mana calmly confronted him. "What are you doing exactly? Your own teammate is up next. You should be encouraging her."

"Have you even seen Erumo? She needs no encouragement, she was the only out of the three of us that never struggled with self-confidence." Kouta rubbed the back of his head, "Plus... Shit, I told her I wouldn't tell you this but... Those two kind of forced me to come see you."

"Wow. Okay..." Mana lowered her head before turning back and heading for the staircase that lead back up to the girls' observatory. Over the five months, she spent training in the rabbit caves she could navigate steps and stuffy, hard caves in total darkness. Now, with these shades, it'd be a cakewalk. She could probably put up a respectable effort against Stea with them...

"No, wait, it's... Not like that." Kouta reached out to stop Mana from leaving. "I kind of... I wanted to tell myself that I had no baggage from before but... They opened my eyes. I was so adamant to finish my shift in the hospital before coming here and yet I went out of my way to get those glasses for you. You see, the problem was that you kept changing in between two extremes, complete illumination or total darkness and you need to ease your eyes up..."

"You're babbling", Mana cut her beloved one down.

"Sorry. I guess I wasn't exactly without baggage. I guess I always thought I'd have no problem thinking of you as a friend but..." Kouta tried putting something cohesive together but he was too shy and too unfocused in his own feelings to say anything within a respectable timeframe.

"That's impossible?" Mana suggested a possible conclusion for him to draw.

"Right. No matter how cool I think I am, how completely devoid of bad karma between us I think I am... I can't ignore what happened. I don't hate you, I don't blame you, strangely, neither do Erumo and Yushijin but... I just can't think of you as just my friend. That's why I kept on avoiding you. I should have been there in the semi-finals, I should have known better than to let you tackle it all alone after having your feelings crushed. I need to clean that house." Kouta finally began making sense.