Chapter seven: another possible choice.
The sun roses again on the inn. Yoh wakes up, Anna by his sides. He slowly positions back her hair, without awaking her.
-Never again I would be separated from you.
He deposits a light kiss on her face and left without noise. He joins the kitchen where he undertakes to prepare the breakfast. When the girl goes down, he presents her eggs and a section of bacon roasted. Too much roasted.
-Sorry but kitchen and me...
The girl sits down while smiling slightly.
-Are you sure that you slept enough?
Again, she smiles to him. By compassion. How could he only continue to like her? Of course, he doesn't know anything of what occurs in her head. Her head and her heart. The problem is precisely that he can't know. Sometimes, she almost comes from there to hope that he develops the capacities of his brother.
-Hao, why me?
If he has known how to read in her thoughts, he will finally have understood her problem. She wouldn't have had any more whereas to await his reaction to know what to make. He would have probably rejected her, and the question would have been essential more for her. Just being understood and helped. It's all that she wants today. She eats without desire the breakfast that Yoh has prepared for her and leaves the part after having thanks him. She leaves then in the bath direction.
-Even my onsen doesn't interest me any more, she says with derision.
While water heat, she lays down on the stone slabs which surrounded the small basin, and drops one with her hands in tepid water.
-How could I make?
The rounds which her hand produce stretch on all the surface of the bath, increasingly large, like to answer the echo of the question which is essential on her deepest. I cannot do that. I cannot impose that to him... When water is finally hot, she slips inside, without making movement, and leaves herself carries by the soft heat which is spread in it. The raising sun find Hao prostrate on his stone. The sleepless night that he has passed has dug of the rings under his black eyes, and when he raises, the stiffness of his members drows a grimace to him.
-Still something that I owe you, small itako...
He smiles. A truth smile. As he hasn't known since any more tens, hundreds of years. Nobody has never seen a Hao's truth smiling. Just a show of joy, from time to time, when his power gives him the impression of being able all to achieve.
-All to achieve. All to have. What a joke... I am impotent! Power is nothing if it does not make it possible to have what one wishes.
He gives his long black hair their own places and moves from there towards the house. He there penetrates and finds his group make sleepy. Opacho and Rakist awaits his return close to the door, refusing to leave their station before the return of their Master.
-Neither you...You are my friends, but you cannot anything for me...
He smiles, of a smile without joy once again, and stretches himself lengthily.
-Nobody can anything for me. I fall into my own trap.
The day is already quite advanced when Anna moves towards the door of the inn.
-Where do you go? ask Yoh which has just appeared behind her.
He follows her to length of day, as if he was afraid which she disappears while passing a door.
-I leave. I need to walk a little. Alone.
She smiles to him slightly and leaves. She walks a long time, traversing the way between the inn and the Fumbari's hill, in a direction, then in the other. The sun, the fresh wind and the feeling of pain in her tired muscles enable her to think, more clearly than she has done it for a long time.
-What did I make?
A tear beads on her cheeks, and she sweeps it with an angry gesture. Nobody must see her crying. Never. She has lied. To lie, it's not most serious. It is not the first time, and surely not the last. But with him... She refuses to hide her questions longer to him. She must go to find him and all say to him. Her steps carry her out in a lane which she doesn't know. At the end a dark masonry, obviously abandoned. Anna continues to approach, as if she is attracted by this house.
-Why am I attracted thus? I don't understand...
A window of the house suddenly illuminates. The lane, slightly enlightened, enable her to hide best than how she is, and she recognizes the silhouette which takes shape in Chinese shade on still intact glass of the window.
-Hao...blows her.
Has she been attracted by his capacity? No, this assumption is stupid. She has come here, guided by his unconscious, because it was the only means which she has to bring an answer to these questions. Anna hides still a little more in the shades of the lane. She swallows with difficulty. Hao, sinks it, terrible Hao is with only a few meters of her, his group being probably just below his room, awaiting the orders of their lord to spread terror in the city.
-Runs away , idiot!
But her legs refuse to move. It seems to her that they has been fixed in the ground, refusing any movement which could have moved her away from this shade. Hao attaches his hair in a long horse's tail, each one of his gestures being amplified by the light and the play of the shades. Anna sighs. She couldn't return for him to speak. She doesn't have enought courage for it. Not yet. After all, he has removed her and sequesters her during several days...But later...Yes, later she would return, and then she could develop the things with him. And with herself.
-Later, she promises.
Amidamaru reappears gently in the principal room of the inn, the face closed. By seeing him, Yoh couldn't have said if he has good or bad news for him, but he has already a small idea on the question.
-So? Have you done what I ask you, Amidamaru?
The phantom agrees, the air darker than ever.
-I don't believe that it's correct, Yoh.
-I know. And I don't like that more than you. I can assure it to you. If I ask you to make it, it is because I rely on you. I know that you will hide me nothing.
The phantom denied head.
-I cannot submit you a report Yoh. It does not correspond with the ideas that I have duties of a samouraï and...
Yoh made it conceal of a gesture. He smiles, an afflicted smile, and agrees with the head.
-Stop. Please. I know that it isn't corresponding with what you wait of your Master. I know that you do that to save any sorrow to me, and I also know that I have a large friend who takes care of me...
A tear rolls on his cheek. He has a forced smile, but his chin tremble.
-But your absence of reaction in front of my request is simplest and most concise of all answers. You refuse of me the statement because you know that I would be shocked, wounded by the answer. But I ask you this question in all cause knowledge, and I must thus yield with the consequences of this one. Not the sorrow to hide it to me, I understand.
He swallows with difficulty, as if the words which flow his mouth be drawn for him from force, as if a violent poison burns his throat by going up entrails.
-She is gone back there, isn't it?
The samouraï doesn't answer and diverts the face. Yoh smiles to him and locks up it with alight "forgiveness", which he leaves on the ground. Then he roses and leaves the house, with the tears traversing his cheeks.
-It is funny... he says with derision. I weigh to have known the tops of the pain, the fear and sadness. I believe to have cry all the tears of my body when the torpor seize my spirit the other day. And I discover that for each one of these things, huge tanks still lived at the bottom of my heart. The life is thus only accumulated suffering?
He runs a long time, and his tears continue to run. The sky is covered and torn when, arrives at the top of the hill, he is dropped to knees to howl his despair.