Nothing happened. He cut into the fruit easily, sliced it right in two down the middle. It didn't explode and not a single seed came ricocheting out of the thing. There were hundreds of little seeds lining the inside, tightly packed into the orange-yellow flesh. Ginko plucked two out with his gloved hand.

It was obvious that the seeds were mushi. There was no other answer, but it was interesting to up close. I watched him carefully, keeping my eyes on the fruit he was holding. His attention was on the seeds, and he was barely paying any mind to the two pieces in his hand. When he nearly dropped it in his inspection, I couldn't stand it anymore. I grabbed the two pieces from him as gently as I could. When our hands grazed I couldn't help but think back to what had happened in the spring.

Ginko looked up from the seeds and into my eyes. If I hadn't been wearing a mask he would have been able to see that my cheeks were light pink. My mind wandered places that I didn't always want it to go, I couldn't help it.

"This piece must have not been ripe enough to explode like the boy said, but this still helps."

"How so?" He took one of the slices back and touched my hand again. We stood up and walked closer to the tree.

"This seed is soft and kind of… squishy," he held up the first seed, "And this piece is rock hard. The soft ones are going to be easier to get out of people, but the hard ones will be a difficult."

"Oh," I didn't say anything more. "This tree must be some of kind of home for the mushi, huh?" It wasn't so much a question as a simple statement. I had seen many mushi trees before, but this one was a bit odd with its fruit.

I looked at the sun fading in the horizon. If that old man was infected that means that he would be walking out into the forest all alone and forgetting it the next day. Only if we weren't there that was. I placed my slice down next to the tree, leaning the side with the seeds on the bark.

"Ginko," I tugged on his sleeve, "We should go back to the village to watch that man." I said softly. Ginko looked as if he had been in deep thought and I hadn't wanted to startle him. He looked at me and set his slice down the same way.

"Yeah," he turned around. I put my hand on his shoulder as we began walking back.

"You're worried about something, it's obvious." I didn't look at him, but I could feel his him take a glance at me.

Admittedly, I was in an awkward position. Obviously, he was much taller than me, and putting my hand on his shoulder was not the most comfortable thing to do. "Other than the mushi being the old man, I'm not sure how healthy he is. I can't be certain if making him sick is a great idea." He shrugged, but I didn't move my hand.

"You didn't examine him?"

"He wouldn't let me," he turned his head so that when glanced up at him again, all my eyes were met with was a head of white hair.

"Why not?" My fingers tightened as I nearly tripped over a root sticking out of the ground. My other hand wrapped around his arm quickly to stop myself from falling. He looked down at me, surprised, once I had gained my balance again. We both stood there for few moments, just looking at each other. It was… weird, for a lack of better words.

"Sorry," I coughed, moved one of my hands away from him and began walking again.

"Anyway… he thought I was getting to 'touchy' with him."

I couldn't help but snort a little bit. "Well were you?" I nudged him, smirking.

He looked down at me, horrified. "No." His calm voice didn't match the slight look of panic in his eyes.

I chuckled again. "How didja' manage to convince him ya' weren't?" I moved my hand down to his elbow and nudged him again, this time I kept leaning on his arm.

"… I told him I had a… female traveling companion." I set my chin on his bicep and stared up at him, smiling like an idiot.

"Did you, now?" He looked away from me again.

"I did. What else was I supposed to tell him? Even when I talked about you he wouldn't let me take a look at him." Ginko grumbled under his breath.

"Good, hopefully you only told him the awful thing about me." I smiled again and kept leaning on him.

"I didn't really tell him anything about you." He shrugged and I let go of his arm. We had somehow managed to make it to the old mans' house during our conversation. "The man will let us stay here, but he only has one extra room."

I narrowed my eyes. "This happens too often," I pouted as we entered his house.

The man was sitting on the floor, smiling and drinking tea. He was singing an old tune to himself as he poured a small cup and brought it to his lips. Ginko tapped on the wall and smiled at the elder as he looked over at us.

It somehow surprised me how devious a wrinkled, old, man could look. His dark eyes didn't look like they had aged at all since he was a mischievous teen. "HELLO Ginko!" He hollered and waved, motioning us over to the low table. We sat down and the man poured us both cups of the tea.

"Hello…" I could tell he was going to say more, but the old man started speaking before he could.

"And you must be his lady-friend, right?" Both of the men's eyebrows raised the reason different and similar. I smiled, I liked this guy.

"I suppose you could say that," I smiled and sipped at the drink. I cannot describe how revolting the tea tasted. It was bitter and revolting. My face screwed up as I forced myself to swallow. Ginko raised an eyebrow at me and then at the old man. I set down the tea.

"I'm R, what's your name again?" I asked, watching Ginko sniff at his drink and set it down slowly.

"That's a funny name, a bit short if you ask me. I'm Motoki, and I doubt R is your real name, but carry on." He flashed us a crooked smile.

"Shockingly, you caught me. R isn't my given name, but it is the name you'll have to know me by in the time being." The man nodded, taking another sip of his tea.

"So… do you like that tea?" He asked, wiggling his eyebrows. I wasn't sure if he was playing a trick on us or if he really thought it tasted good. I was searching for words to describe the tea while Ginko spoke.

"It smells like your trying to poison us." He was an extremely blunt man. I stared at him, almost worried at what the old man would say, as he placed his chin in his hand, looking bored.

We all sat in silence, the old mans' face a deadpan. After an amount of time that was much more excruciating that it should have been, the man began laughing. He laughed so hard he nearly fell on his back. "Alright… alright…" he said between gasps for air. "You caught me… I made your tea taste awful." He burst out laughing again.

"It would have made it funnier had you two been nicer people and at least attempted to drink more than a sip." He comically glared at us, crossing his arms. I glared back, not quite as comically.

"You still need to be examined." Ginko said as the old man got over himself.

"I told ya', I'm not lettin' some stranger man, touch me up." It was amazing how childlike this guy was. It was annoying though, it was actually pretty funny.

"Well then I guess I will. Will it be okay if a woman examines you, just to see how healthy you are?"

"Well of course, but girly you can barely call yourself a woman. You're just over a decade old, aren't cha?" My smile didn't reach my aggravated eyes.

"I'm nineteen." I seethed.

"Oh… well that's good. I was a bit worried that he was aiming a little low… but then, that never really stopped me." The man looked proud of himself.

"We… we aren't like that, I just decided to travel with her to this town." Ginko looked even more annoyed.

Through a window at the other end of the room, I could see that it was nearly sundown. "Ginko," I looked at him, "Will you take my clothes and bed roll to the room?" I held them out from my bag.

"I'll show him where it is!" Motoki stood up from his spot on the floor and began walking away.

"Sure," he gently took the bags from me with his own box/bag slung over his shoulders and began walking with Motoki.

"Thanks, I'll have to dig around in my bag for some stuff while he's with you." I was speaking to myself more or less, but Ginko absentmindedly nodded anyhow. The two were out of my sight in a matter of seconds, Motoki's voice echoing off the thin walls while he talked Ginko's ear off.

"So…" Motoki spoke quietly now.

"Yes?" Ginko dropped my bags ungracefully on the floor and shrugged his own off his shoulders.

"C'mon lad, it's obvious you like the girl. When she's not lookin' at you you're starin' at her like you really like her." Ginko didn't turn to face the man yet.

"As soon as you're cured we're going our separate ways. We were simply traveling with each other until we made it here and cured you and figured out what was going on." Motoki could tell the boy was choosing his words carefully, but decided to press the matter.

"Did she ever say that she was just going to leave you as soon I was well?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Did you ever tell her that you like her, at the very least?"

"Wait, I don't, and we've only-"

"It doesn't matter what you think and it doesn't matter how long you've known her. I knew who the love of my life was the moment I laid eyes on her." He sounded genuinely proud of himself. "And before you ask if she was the most beautiful girl in town, the answer is no. She was actually a bit odd. I was fifteen when I first saw her, and I knew that was the girl I was going to marry when I got enough courage to. But I was afraid and didn't tell her until… until I was," he tried to recall the age, "twenty six. Sure I had my fun with some other girls, but I always regretted it.

"You on the other hand will just lose her forever if you just try and ignore your feelings. You seem smart, hell you've got to be seeing as how you're a Mushi Master. So don't act like an idiot." Ginko stared at the ground, still not turning to face the man. The young man looked defeated; he was caving in on himself.

"I am a nomad, a wanderer. Wanderers don't fall in love, they don't get married." Motoki opened his mouth to say something more. He might've retaliated by saying that nobody said anything about marriage and love, but stopped at the last moment. He walked away without another word.

"What's taking so long?" I stretched out on my back, trying to memorize every detail about the ceiling. I rolled onto my stomach, staring at the hallway they had left through. Just as I went to sit up and crack my back and neck, Mo (as I decided to call him for short now) walked through. He didn't look very happy at all, and barely bothered to put on a fake smile when his eyes met my concerned face.

"Why do you have to examine me, anyway?" He sat down across from me, the table a few feet away to the left of us.

"Because if we want to make you better we have to make you sick, so we have to make sure you're okay enough right now to get sick." I said, checking his breathing and heart rate.

"I guess that isn't too weird, getting someone sick to make them better." He turned away from me as I placed hand in the middle of his shoulder blades and had him breathe deeply.

"We'll have to make your stomach sick to get the mushi out. You'll have to be careful where you… throw up." I said softly.

"You know he likes you a lot, right?" I pursed my lips. I was done examining him, but he didn't turn to face me yet.

"Who? And who would even bother to like me?" I tried acting ignorant, packing away my implements.

"You both like acting stupid, but if you must know it's Ginko who's in love with you." I swallowed, he couldn't possibly like me. He was just going to leave me as soon as we were done here and I would never see him again. Ever.

"He doesn't love me." My force, faked laugh didn't fool the man.

"Of course he does, and you love him." I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking of what to say next.

"How can you prove that he does… that he does like me, at all." I sounded much more pompous than I had meant to.

"I can't, but you two can. C'mon isn't there anything that happened where he at least showed that he was worried or cared about you?" I thought for a minute.

"… Yes, I suppose."

"Tell me," he turned to face me finally.

"Well, we were bathing in a hot spring one time," Mo looked suggestive, "Not like that! We were on opposite sides of this short wall of rock and didn't see each other like that." The look on his face didn't go away. "Anyway, there were these people who wanted to… kill me. They almost saw me, but he grabbed me and hid my face from the men." I smiled at the memory.

"There ya' go, there's your proof." I looked at him sadly.

"Ginko will have to be the one to prove it. And I doubt he will."

"SO YOU DO LIKE HIM?!" Oh dear, this man was like a thirteen-year-old girl.

"I NEVER SAID THAT." I blushed fiercely and stood up, walking as quickly as I could to the hallway. I would be able to find my way to the room fairly easily. Instead I ran right into Ginko. I barely looked at him and mumbled a simple apology as I stumbled to the room.

Mo was picking his things up from the table as Ginko entered. "What did you say to her?" He leaned on the frame of the door.

"It's was she admitted that's got her in a twist. She as good as said she like you… or maybe she said she loved you." He trailed off, standing up.

"She did?" The young man looked more hopeful than Mo had imagined he could have.

"She did… but she doesn't think that you could ever even be bothered to like her in the slightest. You should change that, you know." Mo walked away to put his things away.

"She didn't say that and you're a liar." Ginko called after him, he had heard the majority of the conversation, and even though it might've raised his hopes, he wasn't convinced.

"We'll have to take turns watching him tonight. I'll take the first watch, alright." Ginko hadn't said a word to me since he walked back into the room. He didn't even look at me. It… bothered me.

"Ok," he rolled over in his bed and turned even further away from me. I breathed in and out through my teeth. I stood and was nearly out of the door before I stopped to look at his back.

I huffed. He was being… childish. He was acting like an idiot. I… it, he just made me mad for some reason. "Have you figured out how you are going to get him sick?" I asked curtly.

"I have a medicine that we can give him tomorrow, it's too late tonight." I stood still, not moving an inch. "Well aren't you going to go watch him? Don't just stand there."

My mouth gaped open a bit, slightly mortified at how rude he was being. I didn't say anything as I stormed out. Tears welled up in my eyes for a slip second before I blinked them back. I hadn't cried since… since my mother had died, and I wasn't about to let some jerk make me.

I'll be honest with you though. I think at that point I knew that I liked Ginko, a lot. Maybe I even loved him then, and I silently admitted it to myself. I never even thought of saying it to him though, especially after how he was acting at the moment.

I found Mo's room quickly and easily. All I had to do was listen to the sound of his singing and follow it. He was closing his eyes as I entered and sat down. "Thank you," I heard him murmur as his eyes closed and he fell to sleep.

Well that was interesting. I absolutely love how Motoki turned out! At first I was going to make him a sweet, old man without very much depth, but look what happened! It probably took me longer to make his character profile than it did for Ruri or any other of my own characters in this particular story. Also, I apologize if Ginko is acting a little OOC. He'll be back to his normal self in a little bit, he just needed to act this way for now because of what's going on. Another thing before I go, do you guys want character profiles at the end bit here. I would only do one every now and then, but I think I might next chapter or the one after that. Tell me watcha' think.