The forever piece
Chapter 9: Field no. 42

Soul groans loudly as we walk back toward the paddy fields. "I'm not sure I want to return there. That Akane dude is an asshole." Soul narrows his eyebrows. "He is up to something and I don't like it at all."

I squeeze Soul's hand and smiles toward him. "You know you don't have to come with me. If you don't want to be around him then there is no need for you to come with me. I have to return there but you don't have to if you don't want to."

Soul quickly shakes his head and his bangs brush his eyelashes. "Hell no. I'm coming with you. I'm not letting that asshole be anywhere close to you without me around. He is up to something and I'm going to find out what it is." Soul starts walking quicker and tugs at my hand so I will keep up with him.

How can I now be smiling like a fool when Soul is this amazing? He is so caring and loving in his own special way. Some girls don't like overprotective boyfriends but I kind of like it. It is Soul's way of really showing me how much I mean to him and how important I am. He isn't overprotective in a bad way really, it isn't like he keeps me away from all the guys or check all my texts and calls. He is overprotective in a healthy way.

We arrive at my grandparents' old house and we walk around the building and there I see a large rice field. I see more rice fields coming from behind it and at the sides. It stretches toward the horizons and on the fields there are countless of workers along with men in blue shirts and black pants. They look sort of like cops so they have to be the ones Akane talked about. The ones being in the Hoshi family.

"Let's go down there." I say and start walking down the slope to reach the edge of the mud of the field. "If these people are being treated badly then I want to stop them myself."

"Wait." Soul says and he follows me close. "How exactly are you going to stop them? You know they must be armed while we have nothing to protect ourselves."

I smirk wide toward Soul. Not a kind smile exactly, it is more like an evil one. "If they attack me, you can bet they will get fired. This is my land and I can quickly prove this is my land and that I want them to leave. This will be easy." I get up on the little bridge that divides the fields and starts to walk along in between the mud fields. Workers set their eyes on me and I hear them gasping and whispering something to each other in Japanese. I really should learn more Japanese. After all, my origins are in Japan.

It doesn't take long for a person with a blue shirt set his eyes on me and Soul. He yells toward us in Japanese and I give him a sharp glare. "Talk in English so I can understand you." I would have said please but there is no need showing them my manners since they are my enemy at the moment.

"You aren't allowed to be here!" The man screams toward me in English this time. He walks through the mud of the rice field. He glares back toward me.

I smirk back when he gets up on the little floating bridge. "You aren't allowed here. This is Hoshi property. Leave immediately or else I will use force." The man grabs a whip out and holds it in his hand.

"You won't be using that on me. This isn't Hoshi family property. The paddy fields belong to the Albarn family and my name is Maka Albarn. The paddy fields belong to me." I narrow my eyes at the man. "So if you are kind, put away the whip or I will have you leave my property."

The man snorts and keeps the whip in his hand. "You are an arrogant woman. Know your place."

I gasp loudly when he pulls the whip backwards and whips toward us. Soul quickly steps in front of me and the whip wraps around his forearm. "Don't you ever touch her!" Soul growls through his clench teeth. He grabs the whip and pulls it out of his hand. "You will have to step through me then. No one touches Maka and gets away with it!" Soul grabs my hand and squeezes it hard.

"You better get off my property right now or you will be escorted out by the police." I say while I look over Soul's shoulder and he looks absolutely petrified. I guess he had never had the tables turned toward him before.

A piercing cry cuts through the air and my head snaps toward the scream. I see another man with a clue shirt and a whip in his hand. A worker lies in the mud with bloody arms and his shirt is torn and bloody. The man with the whip yells at him in Japanese and he whips the worker hard. He yelps loudly and more blood spills from his back.

"Stop it!" I scream in Japanese. I'm lucky I can small words in Japanese since the man lowers his whip and both the man and the worker looks over at me. Without even heisting, I jump down in the mud and walks through it. "Let him be!" I yell this time in English. I quickly stride through the mud even though it is thick and hard to get through, and as girly as it sounds, I'm getting all my clothes dirty.

The man raises his whip again and his eyes lock at the worker bleeding out in the mud. I quickly throw myself over the man and the whip hits my back. I gasp loudly and yelp in pain. The whip hits my back and I swear I heard my shirt rip apart and my back is bleeding because my back hurt a lot. I can't even imagine what kind of pain the man is in.

"You fucker!" Soul roars loudly and the next thing I know Soul climbs up the bridge the man is standing on and he tackles him to the ground. He growls loudly while he pushes the man down to the ground. "Don't you ever hit Maka! She is your superior! She will get you fired for this!" Soul punches the man in the face to then shake him furiously.

"Maka-sama!" I see Gopher and Noah running toward us. "You are here―"

"Take care of the worker!" I quickly help the man up from the mud and hands his hand to Gopher before I climb up on the bridge as well. "Soul!" I yell and I put my hand on his shoulder. "Take a deep breath. We will solve this problem without violence."

"He freaking whipped you! He hurt you! He deserves more than a punch!" Soul growls as he stares at the man lying on the ground underneath him. The man looks absolutely shocked.

"The rumors are true. Maka Albarn-sama has truly returned!" The man whispers as he looks at me. "I'm truly sorry Albarn-sama! I did not know it was you!"

I smile warmly toward the man. "I appreciate the apology, as you already know, I am from the Albarn family and I own these paddy fields. Your leader Akane Hoshi stands underneath me. I am the one in charge of the paddy fields and that makes me your boss since you are on my property. I could easily banish you from my property and Akane Hoshi wouldn't be able to do anything." I kneel down beside him. "Listen, Soul is going to release you and you are going to go and tell everybody in the Hoshi family if they ever hurt or drive the workers to job too hard, then I will have those people fired and banished from the paddy fields, understood?"

The man nods eagerly. "Yes Albarn-sama! I will do as you say!"

I smile gently toward him. "Good, Soul, release him."

Soul reluctantly gets off of him and releases his grip on his collar. "You are lucky Maka is so compassionate. If I would have been in charge, you would have been gone so quickly from the paddy fields."

The man quickly gets up on his feet and runs away yelling something in Japanese.

"Maka-sama!" Gopher says while he and Noah take care of the wounded worker on the bridge. "You are the coolest! You just stood up toward the Hoshi family on field number 42! Field number 42 is the one with the most abuse and punishment by all of them! I knew you would save us but to jump in and save people in field 42 is totally amazing!" Gopher says excitingly while Noah takes care of the wounded worker.

"I have to admit you did better than I thought you would." Noah says while he tries to clean his wound by taking out the mud from his wounds. "Now all the ones in Hoshi family will know you are here and be afraid of you since you have stripped them off their power. Something big will definitely happen now. Akane won't be happy about this."

Akane. After he had made manipulated and pushed Soul's buttons yesterday it is safe to say he is a threat toward me and Soul. Of course he will try to regain his power in some way and I have to make sure he won't do it. For that to happen, I have to get rid of him. He needs to be fired or listen to my conditions for working on my paddy fields.

"I know." I say and I feel Soul putting his hand on my shoulder. "I have to take care of it and I will do it. I'm not going to leave before things change here. My mother didn't finish what she started but I'm sure I'm going to finish it."

"That was a nice speech and all Maka," Soul says while he massages my shoulder. "But we really need to take care of your back before it gets infected." Soul turns toward Noah. "Do you know where you have a first aid kit?"

"We don't have any. We were never allowed to leave work to treat our wounds if we hadn't reached our quota." Gopher and Noah help the man up on his feet.

"Then you are coming to my hotel. There should be something there for us to use to patch you up." I say and smile toward the worker.

Soul sighs and we all walk back toward my grandparents' house. On our way Soul calls for a cab and when we reach the house, the cab is already waiting for us. That was very quick. It was hard for me and the worker not to bleed on the car seats. I ended up sitting on Soul's lap with my face facing toward him so I wouldn't bleed on the fabric of the seats. Noah, Gopher and the worker named Joe shared the backseat and Noah and Gopher had him on their laps. When we arrived at our hotel much quicker than I thought, the seats were bloodied and dirty with mud from all of us.

We all walked up toward the hotel door and Soul was quick to find the first aid kit and let Noah and Gopher to take care of Joe while Soul took care of me.

"You know you are reckless. You got yourself hurt on my watch." Soul says while he cleans my wound.

I cross my legs which are now in dry and clean sweats. "I just did what was right. I couldn't let you get more hurt than he already was."

Soul sighs loudly while he rests his legs on either side of me. "It was still reckless. You got yourself hurt."

"You can't always protect me, Soul. I'm always going to end up hurt somehow. Maybe by just a paper cut or a ball to the head, you can't protect me all the time. You know that and I wouldn't ask you to always throw yourself in front of me because I want you to be safe. I don't want you to end up hurt because of me." I turn around and Soul is forced to stop cleaning my wound. "I love you and it would kill me if you ended up hurt because of me."

Soul shakes his head a little while he looks down on his lap. "Then you know how I felt." Soul lays his hand on my stomach and traces the scar Asura left on my stomach from when he stabbed me. He had aimed to hurt Soul but I had jumped in front of him and taken the blow for him. "It killed me when you got hurt."

I lay my hand on top of his and caress it with my thumb. "It was better than you ending up hurt. I was already hurt and it was better for me to take it than you ended up dead." I smile gently toward Soul. "I did survive. Asura already hurt you and that is another reason for you not to be hurt by him. If you want another one that is because I love you dearly and you deserve to have a happy life. I have already been through so much, another scar or a wound is a piece of cake that the luggage that I'm already carrying."

"Damn you Maka." Soul pulls his hand from mine and cups my face. "You are the one who deserves happy life and not more wounds. As you said, you are already carrying the world on your shoulders. When we were younger I told you didn't need to carry everything by yourself. That is why I'm here. Share that burden with me."

"Oh Soul." I lean toward him with the intention on kissing him and then when Noah, Gopher and Joe leave, I'm going to show him just how important he is to me. I do want to share that burden with him. He told me to be selfish and that is what I'm going to be, I'm going to share that burden because we both know I deserve to be lighter and happier. Soul will always be here for me. He is a strong person and he can carry my weight. If he can't then I'm here to support him back.

My lips brush his when a phone starts ringing.

"Damn it." Soul curses and pulls away from me. He fishes out his phone from his pocket and rolls his eyes. "Not this shit again." Soul answers his phone and for the first time, he gets up and walks angrily away from me. That's odd. He has never walked out of the room to talk to someone when I'm there. Something must be going on which he wants to keep away from me. Oh heck no. He should tell me what it is and if I know Soul right, he won't tell me.

Quietly I got up on my feet and I follow him. He walked inside of our bedroom and I stay outside and carefully put my ear against the door. I can hear Soul hiss into the phone.

"What is it you don't understand?!" Soul growls loudly. "I'm not going to come. Just send it to me. I have more important matters to take care of." I hear him sigh loudly in annoyance. I can almost picture him running his fingers through his hair angrily. "You have already said it! I refuse to come! Stop freaking calling me! My answer will always be a no!"

What exactly is going on? What is it Soul can't make it to? What is it they are supposed to send to him? I have missed something very important. Why haven't Soul told me about this?

"I'm hanging up now. My answer is no!" I guess Soul must have hung up now.

Soul mutters curses and I hear his footsteps moving closer to the door.

I will have to confront Soul about this.