In which Pucca believes she is an adult, yet others still don't treat her as such.
Pucca lay on her bed, lips shut as tight as they had always been and Ching wriggled happily on a beanbag, gushing about her long-time crush – Abyo. He had stopped her from falling into a patch of brambles today. It was a very heroic moment, apparently. Ching simply couldn't get over it or, more so, him.
"He doesn't often show his caring side, you know." Ching told her. "He's always putting on some manly act – fighting, ripping off his shirt—"
If that heavy blush wasn't a dead giveaway of Ching's deep-rooted feelings for their friend, Pucca didn't know what was. It was another thing that hadn't changed. For years Ching had been pining over Abyo, yet nothing had changed in their relationship. If Pucca could speak she would have told her friend to confess to him already, make the first move to change.
Of course, she could speak (she had a few days ago after all), but there is a big difference between could and should. Very soon after breaking her vow of silence Pucca had realised the weight of her actions. Vows of silence are simply not broken. To break one would mean to bring dishonour upon herself, her Uncles and the Goh-Rong name for decades to come. She may have given up on Garu, but she had not given up on the ideals he had imparted on her. Pucca would not bring that kind of shame. She had made her vow in front of Master Soo and had sworn that she would not speak for so long as Garu maintained his silence, and Garu would remain under his own oath until he was deemed to have completed his ninjutsu training and become a master. That could take years (a fact Pucca was all too aware of).
Unfortunately, her run in with Tobe, the very last person she would have expected herself to have a heart to heart with, had revealed the addictive nature of her own voice. Talking was like a drug and she simply could not get enough of it. She had caught herself muttering over a simmering bowl of noodles as she worked on more than one occasion and, when away from prying ears, in her room, she would engage in full-blown one-sided conversations with her cat Yani. It wasn't quite enough to talk though. Pucca wanted response and that was certainly something her cat couldn't give.
Ching sighed loudly and pulled one of Pucca's fluffy cushions to her chest. She was lost in thoughts of her crush, for sure. Pucca had been around Ching long enough to know that her tender expression meant just that. "Maybe we should go see Abyo..."
It was a wonder really, how Ching had remained her friend for such a long time. Didn't she get bored when Pucca didn't talk back?
"I bet he's with Garu." She was smiling cheekily now, Pucca could see from the corner of her eye. She chose to remain lying on her back, not acknowledging Ching's expression, watching a spider crawl leisurely along the ceiling instead.
"Hey," Ching said in mock disgruntlement, throwing the pink pillow she had cuddled at Pucca's face, causing the noodle girl to splutter in surprise as she got a mouthful of faux fur. Pucca frowned, sitting up now, and threw the cushion back at her friend with no true force behind her throw. Ching batted it away, giggling. "Did you hear me? I said Garu will probably be with him."
Pucca huffed, nodded, and then flopped back onto her bed. Garu was old news. Very old. She was trying to move on and of course it didn't help to be reminded of him by everyone in Sooga village every moment of every day. Somehow everybody was still under the impression they had some kind of romance going on, an impression Pucca had once been more than welcoming of, but now... Now she wanted nothing to do with it.
Ching rolled off the beanbag and edged her way towards Pucca. "Pucca?" She called in concern, gently prodding her friend. "Are you not feeling good?"
Pucca gave a non-committal shrug.
"I'm sure seeing Garu will help you feel better. You can show him your new hairstyle." Ching said, with words that were meant to incite Pucca, which they may have done some time ago, but now they did anything but.
Ching, her closest friend, didn't even realise Pucca no longer wanted to chase Garu around. She thought that Pucca wearing her hair down was a new way to impress Garu when, in fact, it was a declaration to the world of her change and maturity. It just showed how much everyone was stuck in the past.
"Please, Pucca." Ching pleaded, pulling her best puppy dog eyes.
Pucca shook her head wearily. Those eyes wouldn't work on her today. She couldn't be near Garu, not until she was sure she wouldn't slip back into her old ways. It's not like she could suddenly stop caring for him. Things like that came gradually, with distance and time.
Ching moped for a little while, but she said she understood. Of course, she didn't understand, but Pucca had no way to bring that to Ching's attention. "You're ill. I get it Pucca. Don't worry." No Ching, you don't get it. That's the problem.
Her friend left with a warm goodbye, scooping up her pet chicken from the floor and promising to tell Pucca's Uncles that she wasn't feeling well. The door shut gently behind her and Pucca was left alone.
Pucca flipped onto her front and groaned into her pillow. So much for growing up. Everything was just as it had always been. She had been foolish to think everything would change just because of the undoing of her odangos and an oddly emotional chat with a former enemy. Crying in front of Tobe – what was that going to achieve? Nothing life changing, that's for sure. But, she thought, in a sudden horror, maybe her life would change and not in a good way. She had been so resigned on that clifftop, so done with everything that her life was, that she hadn't truly cared that she was spilling her soul to Tobe. He had taken an unlikely interest in her and he was removed from her situation. At the time, he had seemed the perfect candidate to unburden herself upon. But what if he were to tell on her? Citizens of Sooga village, your beloved Pucca has broken her vow of silence! No one would believe him. Surely not...
Pucca pushed off of her bed. She began to pace. "You're an idiot Pucca," she muttered to herself, "An absolute idiot." She had no one to talk to, so she had talked to Tobe, the only person who had ever rivalled her obsession with Garu (just in a slightly different way). Stupid Pucca. Stupid. He would want to use everything she had told him against Garu. He would want to ensure his downfall no matter who else he brought down along the way and, indisputably, he wouldn't care if Pucca was left to ruin. She had spoilt enough of his plans in the past for him to be glad of a way to hurt her.
Still, he had seemed genuinely interested in her troubles. He had sat with her for so long... He had even smiled at her. Pucca had never seen Tobe smile so pleasantly in all her time knowing him. Granted, she had never paid him too much attention before, only when he was out to get Garu. Maybe he wanted to change too. Maybe he—
Pucca's window opened with a slam and the noodle girl shrieked, staggering back into her book shelf in alarm. A shower of thick volumes came from above, Pucca barely protecting herself from the novels by throwing her arms over her head. The bookcase was rocking precariously behind her, and just as she feared it would fall and squash her, the shelf was righted and the books stopped dropping.
For a moment Pucca sat still, huddled at the base of her bookshelf, eyes squeezed shut. But then she heard a relieved sigh from somewhere overhead and very slowly she opened her eyes to see who had invaded her room.
How bizarre it was to see Tobe hovering over her, completely dishevelled looking, his unmasked face flushed from exertion and with clothes covered in small sharp makibishi (the kind she had seen Garu throw so often in training). They simply stared wide-eyed at each other for a while, Tobe with hands pressed firmly against her unstable furniture, panting, and Pucca sitting dazedly in a pile of books.
Pucca was the first to break the silence (ironically). Surprisingly, she summoned a small smile for her trespasser. "Hello again." It certainly felt good to talk.
"Hi," Tobe breathed out, undoubtedly just as surprised by the oddity of events.
"Pucca!" A muffled voice came from beyond her door. It was her Uncle Dumpling. "Pucca sweetie, hold on!"
Pucca didn't spare a moment. She sprang up and pulled Tobe across her room. With incredible speed and strength, she had Tobe lying underneath her bed before he knew what hit him. "Wha—" Pucca shoved her hand over his mouth, using the other to place a finger against her lips, signalling that he needed to be quiet. Tobe would likely later berate himself for complying so easily, even if Pucca had saved him from the potential wrath of a very niece-protective chef.
The bedroom door burst open and in came running Pucca's Uncle Dumping. Pucca jumped up to face him. "Pucca, are you alright?" He took a hold of his niece's arms and examined them, frowning anxiously. "You're hurt. What happened?"
Pucca pointed towards the bookshelf, trying her best to give her Uncle a reassuring smile when he still looked perturbed. "I should get something to sort them out," Dumpling said, eyeing her bruises, "And how about some medicine? Ching said something about you not feeling well."
Pucca shook her head vehemently, quickly rushing over to her bedside draws in which she took out a pot of salve and remedies. She showed them to her Uncle, willing him to deem them acceptable. "Well," he sighed and smiled weakly at Pucca, "I suppose you're prepared enough without me. Come downstairs if you need anything Kiddo."
Dumpling gently ruffled her hair, a gesture that Pucca was not sure whether she loved or hated, and left the room. She hung her head despondently, thinking of how (just as Ching had) her Uncle still treated her as a child. He even called her 'kiddo'.
Lost in thought, Pucca almost forgot she had a ninja hiding in her room. She practically jumped out of her skin when his hand emerged from below the bed. She collected herself quickly enough and helped Tobe crawl out from his hiding spot, seeing him flinch as the makibishi scattered across his front and back dug in further. He stood, looking rather peeved (all signs of earlier pain wiped from his face), brushing dust from his clothes. "Do you ever clean under there?"
"No, not really." Pucca said slowly, torn between her unexpected initial happiness of seeing Tobe and the more sensible wariness that her mind was urging her to act on. "Next time I'll make sure to run a broom down there before you come in through my window uninvited."
Tobe had the decency to grimace apologetically.
"What are you doing in my room?" Pucca asked him frankly and then, upon seeing the beginnings of blood beginning to splatter on her floor, said uneasily, "And why are you so injured?"
Tobe's face soured. "Garu decided to use me as target practice."
"What did you do this time?" Her words were laced with weary accusation and she could only try to ignore the heavy feeling settling in her stomach at the mention of her former love. "You know provocation will only end up with retaliation."
"That's the thing, I didn't do anything. It was when I walked past him and did nothing that he attacked," Tobe said with a grunt, pulling out one of the star-shaped metal pieces from his arm.
"And you're in my room because...?"
"Closest method of escape," Tobe muttered embarrassedly, "I saw that your window was ajar. It didn't really click that it was your room until I got in here..."
Pucca truly didn't know what to say, which was odd, she thought, for as a person who rarely got a chance to talk she should be brimming with unvoiced conversation starters. But this was Tobe. Never in her many fantasies of discourse did she dream up words she may say to Tobe.
He was still very much a novelty.
After a while of staring much too uncomfortably at each other, Pucca could only sigh nervously and mutter, "I think we both need patching up." She turned away from the ninja, feeling slightly frazzled, and made her way over to the bedside draw where her medical provisions were kept.
As Pucca rummaged for suitable remedial supplies, in the midst of trinkets and childhood junk she had not yet found it within herself to relinquish (much of which once belonged to an extremely embarrassing Garu shrine), Tobe took the liberty of settling himself on her bed. Pucca scowled into the draw but made no comment.
Tobe ran his eyes once over her room and, with a bit more than a hint of distain, he said, "It's very pink in here."
Pucca was suddenly realising the anger she should have felt when she first saw Tobe in her room and could only wonder why it was triggered after such a minor affront. She should have been furious the moment he stepped through her threshold. Why she had been happy before she could not fathom. She was absolutely seething now. She turned on him, arms full with salve and painkillers, teeth grinding. "That is the commonplace appearance of a room that once belonged to a little girl."
Yet still she was behaving courteously towards him. He had come into her room uninvited. She should have kicked him out ages ago, throwing books at his head as he went to see how he liked it. But she didn't. She was irked, but she didn't.
Tobe was only now appreciating that his precarious state of sanctuary relied upon Pucca's good nature, something she was sure to lose if he pushed the boundaries of his role as unwanted refugee too far. So he backpedalled, quite promptly, "There's nothing wrong with pink of course. I haven't been in many girls' rooms before, you see. I'm not familiar with this kind of decor."
She may have laughed at Tobe's recant – 'not familiar with this kind of decor' and 'I haven't been in many girls' rooms' – yes, it was certainly laugh worthy, but she needed to be peeved. She could not simply stop being irked by a man who intruded on her privacy. That would not be normal. But Pucca had never been entirely normal.
"Yes, well," she said tautly, lips quivering with contained amusement, "I'm not a little girl anymore. I was thinking about painting the walls a new colour."
Tobe was in the uncomfortable state of not quite knowing what to say but he was able to gather the impression that silence would only make the situation that much more uncomfortable, so he could only settle for an awkward, "That's nice."
Being angry would be good. It really would. She wanted to be, but alas she could not keep back the grin she had been holding. Watching Tobe squirm was much funnier than it should have been.
Pucca dropped down onto the bed beside Tobe, smiling now. "It is, isn't it? I was thinking a light plum colour." Tobe could only watch in bewilderment as Pucca busied herself by unscrewing a pot of antiseptic cream, no doubt baffled by the sudden change of mood. "Start taking the rest of those makibishi out, will you? They can't stay there forever."
"A-Ah, right." As if only just remembering he still had multiple weapons protruding from his chest, Tobe quickly went about pulling them out, barely even seeming to feel the pain now. Pucca could only presume that she had stunned him and she really couldn't blame him for it.
For a little while, just the idea of her sitting with Tobe like this made her giggle, to see him so closely and not just as Garu's enemy (then to an extension hers). She was able to see him as a fellow human, just a human and nothing else. No doubt the bizarreness of the situation was reflected in Tobe's thoughts too, but Pucca was the only one laughing about it.
Her laughter died down as she saw the blood pooling in the rips of his clothing. "He really got you good..." Garu. Garu really got him good, but she didn't think she could quite manage saying his name aloud yet. It would be an acknowledgement and an acknowledgement alone could easily set her back on the nearly inescapable path of infatuation, because it had been an infatuation.
Not love, Pucca tried to convince herself.
"Hardly," Tobe snorted, "We've been in much more volatile scrapes than this one – and I didn't even attempt to fight back this time."
And now that Pucca thought about it that really was strange. Tobe didn't take the chance to take a shot at Garu. She didn't understand it. Surely Tobe should be taking every opportunity he could get to fight Garu. That was the way it had always been after all.
"Take your top off please," Pucca said, hands already prepared with a cloth and dollop of antiseptic cream.
Tobe complied reluctantly, seemingly rather perturbed by the idea, but needless to say it would be a foolish idea to argue with a horrifyingly strong noodle girl (even if her strength had not been truly tested in quite a long time).
She rubbed antiseptic into his cuts and every so often felt his muscles tense under her hands. Clearly Tobe was not used to such contact. Pucca on the other hand was very familiar with feeling up male chests (though that had always been Garu's chest and more often than not it had been non-consensual on his part).
"So why didn't you fight—" She felt his name catch in her throat and coughed noisily to cover up her momentary stumble, "G-Garu?"
Tobe looked down at her sharply and, for a moment, she thought he was going to hit her. Instead, he posed a question back. "And why didn't you speak to your Uncle? You're vow is broken now. You don't have to stay silent."
It was now Pucca's turn to feel the hot shame of embarrassment. She ducked her head, stopping her application of salve, and spluttered out, "I-I asked you— f-first! Answer mine."
"How immature," Tobe droned, not quite sardonically.
"I am not!" She exclaimed shrilly and moments after realised the absurdity of her denial. It merely reinforced his comment. "I don't want to dishonour him, okay?" She said in a poor attempt of gathering any semblance of maturity she may have had. She would be the bigger person about this. "Not my uncles, not the restaurant, not myself."
Tobe watched her thoughtfully and soon mused aloud, "And if people see you've broken your vow they'll assume Garu has broken his. Instant dishonour. He really is all about his honour..."
Pucca sucked in a gasp, feeling her face heat up – no longer from discomfort but hot fresh anger. "You wouldn't—!" I knew it was too good to be true.
"No! No, I'm not— I don't do that anymore," Tobe said hastily, "I'm not trying to hurt Garu anymore."
Pucca didn't know quite what to believe. It was a struggle to imagine Tobe giving up an adversary he had pursued for years and years of his life. Garu was not that easy to let go of, Pucca knew that.
"Why?" She asked him.
"Truthfully?"
She nodded. "Truthfully."
He shifted uncomfortably. Pucca assumed he was reluctant to be any less 'Tobe-like' than he had already been, but he did answer her and she could safely say she was shocked by it. "Well... You."
"Me?" She gaped in incredulity.
"Before, when I found you, er," Tobe bumbled, as Pucca narrowed her eyes at him, in a warning, as if to say, you better not say crying, and he managed to adapt his words last minute,"near the beach, you said about growing up and you made me realise that I was still a child. A kid in a man's body. I can't go on fighting Garu like this. It would just be..."
"Pointless," Pucca breathed out and struggled hard not to let her eyes mist up.
Pucca understood. She understood so well it hurt. She watched him with empathetic eyes and she took up his hand into her own and tried to pass on a whole monologue of thoughtful words through a simple sentence. "We all have to reach adulthood at some point."
Tobe stayed for a while longer as Pucca finished up treating his multitude of small cuts, afterwards informing him that they probably shouldn't scar too much. Tobe grumbled that he didn't care either way and soon departed (after peeking out her window to check if the coast was clear). Pucca was left alone in her room to think mostly about trivial things (noodles, cats and fallen books) and a little more than she should have about Tobe.