Nanashi sat sullenly with Haruto at his tavern mid morning. She was supposed to start working with Saif today, as his companion. Or his servant, nanny, minder, shield for the town. The thought of him and being so close to him for so long and often made her stomach curdled.
"Eat, child," Haruto prompted her, pushing her plate a little closer to her. She said nothing, staring at her half touched meal. There were too many butterflies in her stomach to make room for the rest of her meal. "He's not going to hurt you. He wants to protect the town, that means you included, pet."
She shook her head. "He's... part demon," she managed out. "Or whole demon. He doesn't seem to be sure himself even."
"Being demon doesn't equate evil 100 percent of the time," Haruto comforted. "Those impulses are there, and stronger than they are in humans, much stronger than in elves, but that doesn't mean they can't be circumvented."
She nodded, mulling that thought over. Everyone has good and bad impulses. It was easier for the elves, who were part angel in lore to chose to follow the good impulses and resist the bad impulses. For humans, who lore said were half elf, half demon, it was middle ground. For demons, bad impulses were tempting and good impulses were difficult to want to carry out.
"What if he hurts me?" she asked.
"He won't," Haruto promised unconvincingly.
"You have no control over him," Nanashi whined.
"He's coming here to pick you up for your first day. I will tell him that I will do equal to him anything he does to you. So will half the town if he tries to be heinous."
"No one here cares about me that much," she pitied herself.
Haruto shook his head. "You're cared for more than you realize. You just don't want to see it because you dwell too much on what your uncle blathers on about. Besides, with how handsomely the mayor has decided to pay you your service, your uncle will be cross if you were killed. All that money would disappear."
Before Nanashi could respond, Saif walked in through the front door without knocking. He shut the door behind him with his foot. He stood by the door, watching her unblinking, arms crossed over his chest. Nanashi felt a strong desire to cry.
She froze, not waiting to move. Haruto rose up and waltzed right in front Saif, puffing out his chest. "Look here," he towered over Saif. "You don't touch her, you don't hurt her, you don't lay a single hand on her. Nothing out of place. Or else you will have to deal with me. And it will not end well. Understood?"
"Hn," Saif merely grunted. He slipped out the door without so much as a word.
Nanashi knew she needed to get up and go after him. She rose to her feet, moving quickly to catch up with him. When she walked by Haruto however, he pulled her into for a quick hug. One that was not quite long enough to let her break down and cry.
"I would rather stay working here," she confessed.
"You'll be fine," he comforted. "I have a sharp knife in the kitchen, should you need to borrow it."
"More than one," she commented with a shy smile.
Haruto opened the door for her and shooed her out, warning if she stayed any longer, he would put her to work.
She ran out the door, huffing to catch up to Saif. She had a rare moment where she was unsure she would be able to find him. Yet she spotted his hair in a distance and ran towards him when she would rather run away.
She slowed to his pace when she caught up to him, walking just behind him. He showed no signs on realizing she was with him. He just kept on walking.
She kept following him along and up the hilly outskirts of the village's East side. They reached Kiyoshi's old home, a small, solitary one story house. Saif walked up to the house, using the key to open the lock. He went inside the house, leaving the door open for her. She had no desire follow him inside, but she did anyway.
The house was a small thing. Three rooms: a kitchen-main room, a bathroom, and a veranda. It was quite dusty looking and musty smelling, because no one had been in here since Kiyoshi's death.
Saif started rooting around on the veranda, tossing the cleaning supplies he discovered out into the main room. He wanted to clean his new house. Nanashi stepped up, starting with the cupboards. She blanched as she saw rotting food that looked like it was once bread molding on shelf. She found a cleaning rag, using it to pull the bread and other spoiled food from the cupboard.
She heard a loud bang behind her, making her jump. She turned around to see Saif had found the passage to the cellar beneath the floor boards. He had thrown the door open, allowing it to hit the other side of the floor. Saif disappeared into the hole while Nanashi found a suitable basket to throw rubbish away.
Together in silence they gave the small house a deep cleaning. When evening had arrived, they were half way finished. The only times they rested and ate were the two times, lunch and dinner, that Haruto showed up with meals for them. Haruto ate along side them, trying to elicit conversation that included both of them. She kept trying to get her to talk about her cousin Yusuke. How they would run around town with some of the other riffraff on the town by the docks. Yusuke, and rarely herself, getting into a tumble with some of the other kids and hoping her uncle would not notice.
The next day, she went back in the morning, working away at scrubbing the floor while Saif did the walls. When he finished before she did, he perched on the bed at the back corner of the room, watching her like hawk. She tried not to she had finished, she tossed the filthy, soapy water out the front door into the yard. She avoided the garden that was half vegetables, half weeds. She figured it would be her next task. She took the now empty cleaning bucket and set it down on the porch so the inside could dry before she put it away in the storage shed around back. She turned to the garden, starting to pull up the weeds that had shot up. She used her fingers, digging down deep in the semi-moist dirt, pulling up on the plants carefully to ensure she got the whole of the roots out. She tossed them carelessly behind her in the grass.
She noticed a shadow fall over her hunched form on the ground. She kept right on weeding. "Girl," Saif's voice cut throw the air. She did not stop working. "Girl," he said sharply again. "Girl," he said, seizing her wrist and pulling her over towards him.
She panicked, pulling her arm back, but could only go far enough for Saif to stumble, even though she fell on her backside. She took a handful of dirt in her free hand and threw it in his face. She tried not to quell in his presence.
He growled under his breath, letting her wrist go with a ruthless shake. He blinked at the dirt in his eyes and rubbed at his face. "Girl," he growled.
"Nanashi," she said, a weak bit of fight in her voice.
"I'll say your name when you earn it," he growled back. "I was simply trying to get your attention," he griped.
"You had it," she told him.
"Hn," he grunted. He stared at her in a harsh, yet curious studying manner. "Do you know why I asked the mayor for someone to assist me?"
She hummed under her breath, rising up to her feet and brushing herself off. She shrugged, not wanting to look him in the eyes. She could feel his hot gaze on her, but she refused to meet it.
"I didn't ask for some little servant whelp to just clean out the pantry, scrub the floor, or weed the garden," he told her.
He stopped speaking afterwards. The heavy silence made her crumble. "Then why am I here?"
"I told your foolish mayor I would be the interim town protector. Only for as long as it would take me to train up the next permanent one," he dead panned.
She looked him in the eye in shock of that one. "I can't," she gasped. The very idea terrified her. Fighting demons and demonic animals? They made her uncle look tame. She would never be strong enough for that. She could not imagine taking on a demon and winning. She felt herself go pale.
"Why not?" he asked, stepping closer towards her.
She backed away from him, not liking how close he was to her. "I don't know how to fight," she mumbled.
"Never?" he questioned in a voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. He sounded almost excited.
She shook her head, hands coming up towards her mouth.
"What? What about all those fights Haruto mentioned you and your cousin got into?" He asked her. "The mayor knows about them."
She hummed under her breath. "I rarely fought and never won."
He looked up and down appraisingly. It made her want to squirm. "You'll do," he stated, right before he threw a punch at her.
She threw her forearm up over her face, blocking the punch. Her arm stung where his blow landed. He punched her again. This time he caught her in the gut. She was too slow to block it. She staggered back, feeling the wind knocked out of her. Her hand came around her torso. She growled under her breath, backing away. She felt herself panicking, feeling on edge.
He threw a few more, slower punches at her. She blocked those. She wanted him to stop and felt frustrated with him over all this sudden fighting.
"Stop!" she shouted at him, hands coming up in front of her. She felt a kind of heat radiate from her hands, creating a small wind that pushed him away. It was Saif's turn to bring his hands in front of his face. She saw him be blown back a few feet. She panted, blinking over at him. She brought her hands to knees, feeling her whole body shake. "Stop," she mumbled breathlessly. She felt the world shift sideways as she collapsed to the ground.
She gasped as she came to, sitting bolt upright. She saw she was laying on Saif's bed in the main room of his house. He stood near her, watching her hawk like. She looked away from him and over to the window. Late afternoon sunbeams were streaming through the windows.
"You'll do," he declared. "You were out for a few hours."
She rose up, off the bed, not wanting to be laying there all of a sudden. "Good night," she said in a rush as she headed for the door. She felt too tired to run, even though she wanted to.
"Be on time tomorrow to start your training," he called after her.