Swept Away

Growth. (16)

If I had had my doubts about living with Murazaki-san, those quickly went away when he made it clear he wouldn't ever show up in front of me again. His previous appareance was actually his last. I could sometimes see him train in the back garden, or give lessons of bodyguarding and Aïkido to his different student in front of the old shrine. You would usually use the magnificent dojo, full of expensive tatamis, situated just next to the shinto temple, but it was currently where me and Frei were sleeping. His actual house behind the shrine beeing way too frugal to have guests. In any case, he barely used the Dojo as it is, he found the tatamis made you careless about your falling techniques.

Hard, irregular stones being way less forgiving.

We had a sole heater to heat up the 75m² room, so me and Frei were forced to sleep next to each other. Which brought quite a lot of problems. Frei had become Timid Frei after the kiss, and could barely look me into the eyes outside of training. She hadn't made another move and I hadn't either, probably both feeling like the impending doom of professional killers wasn't romantic enough to go the step further.

To be honest, even if I was way less obvious than my friend, I was also pretty disturbed by the whole situation. It had been a long time since I cared about a romantic relationship. Scratch that, it was probably the first time.

As such we came back to our no-talk, lots of training routine, which meant we were physically close the day, and the night. After 1 week, I actually began to have doubts about my self-control, which I usually am pretty confident about.

One specific night, an asleep Frei went and looked for the warmest place in the room, which apparently was my futon.

That night I learned she usually slept with big plushies. I won't tell you how I got that information, I think the context speaks for itself.

So considering the cold and that you wouldn't be surprised if I told you I barely slept.

After a week, the psychological torture got a bit better by the re-emerging of Frei's Dad. He was still barely looking at me, and didn't utter a single word, but I understood the silent message that we had to train with him. I think he would've rather only trained with his daughter, but I had nothing to do, as there was no Wi-Fi here, and I was already way over my mobile internet data limit, so I forcefully tagged along. He actually joined us in the dojo.

Frei didn't notice but I knew why he didn't let use taste the hard and cold rocks outside.

Those old school males and their pathological ineptitude in expressing their worries and emotions. I would know about that.

Still it meant me and Frei could finally get away from each other. A dad between us was doing the trick perfectly.

But it only made the nights even worse.

At first the new training meant I was too exhausted to think about anything in the evening, I was eating my hundreth onigiri of the week, this one with tuna inside. It wouldve been good if they hadn't added mayo. Frei and I had tried almost every meal sold inside the little conbinis (convenience stores), and I assure you, there are a lot. What's more they are actually pretty healthy. Still, as it was either rice or rice, with the occasional sandwich, I was getting fed up with it all. I didn't want to walk too far away from the Murazaki's Shrine, as some of the cameras of the city and stores could have been hacked to spot us.

The convenience store closeby had no cameras, and was a safe spot to go to. Some other restaurants were also without surveillance, and almost two weeks after we went into hiding, me and Frei had decided to try a steak bar two streets down.

It was horrible.

Not the food, no, the non-rice meal was a nice change, at least to me. Maybe it was her genes, but Frei didn't feel any discomfort in eating almost exclusively only rice for the last month and a half.