Takiko thrust her hand out of the boat and into the lake, her fingers feeling the sensation of the cold water. She quickly flitted her hand back and forth and watched the ripples with a smile on her face. Rimudo, who had long stopped rowing the oars, perfectly content to let their little boat aimlessly float around, was gazing at her with his chin resting in the palm of his hand and his fingers curled against his cheek. The other seishi were back onshore setting up camp. Takiko had wanted to go out on the lake, and Rimudo, of course, was her escort.
A few months before, it would have seemed unlikely to him that a simple motion of a girl's hand in the water could have him mesmerized for hours. He had had no use for women then, thinking them an unnecessary distraction. Nevertheless, to him it seemed as if everything Takiko did was by some otherworldly magic. Truth be told, she was from another world, but it was hard to imagine that such a delicate-looking young girl could be so strong-willed. Among the women that Rimudo had grown up with, there had been no one nearly as spirited. Perhaps it was inevitable that his first and only love would be this girl from another world, destined to bring peace to Hokkan.
"It's a short life, a young woman in love, drifting on the waves like a boat. You put your soft hand on my shoulder. There's no one looking here." Takiko sang softly, as she continued to look down at the water. Clearly, she didn't expect Rimudo to be listening. He was accustomed to the song, and had to admit that he liked hearing her sing it. Every time they were on a boat, Takiko would hum it, and she would sing it when they were alone. It pained him to think that it was her small way of showing how homesick she was. He didn't like the thought of being separated from her. Rimudo leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on her cheek.
"You said that it's a popular song in your country. How does everybody know the song if a country is so large? It would be hard to learn the songs from one another across such distances," Rimudo spoke after some hesitation, initiating conversation. Most of the time, he tended to get caught up in the moment, but he never dwelled on things like kisses for too long.
Takiko pulled her hand out of the water and touched it to where he had kissed her. She smiled, and then looked up at Rimudo, who was much taller than she was, even while sitting. "In my world, you can record music onto large plastic flat discs, and then you can take the disc and play it on this machine called a record player to hear the music. We can make a lot of the same disc in factories, so anyone who wants to hear the music can. That's why the song is so popular, everyone in Japan can hear it," She explained.
Rimudo gave her a blank stare. "Muh-sheen? Plaa-stick? Faa-ktoh-ree?"
"Um. Well…I guess it's sort of hard to explain, since our technology is a lot more advanced than that of this world," she smiled apologetically.
"Technology?"
"Never mind, forget I said anything,"
